Iron Orchid (14 page)

After lunch he took a cab to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street and walked down the block toward Aria. He was a few feet short of the shop when a woman got out of a cab and walked across the sidewalk to the shop’s front door, passing no more than six feet ahead of him. He felt a physical shock; it was the woman he had taken to the opera the night before—Holly something. He kept walking.

She had not so much as given him a glance, of course, since he looked very different today from last night. He crossed the street and stood behind a parked truck, trying not to tremble, watching the reflection of Aria’s shopfront in a store window. What was she doing in Aria? Had they somehow traced his interest in the shop? Of course, she liked the opera, or she wouldn’t have been there last night, but still, this was too much of a coincidence. He fought the urge to run, to go directly to the bus station and leave New York. But no, he had worked too hard to create this existence to simply walk away from it before he was sure how much trouble he was in.

HOLLY WALKED INTO ARIA and stopped when she saw the woman behind the counter. Ty had found her a tough nut to crack, and she looked just as tough now.

“May I help you?” the woman asked.

“Oh, I’d like to find a good recording on CD of
La Boheme”
she said.

The woman got down off her stool and led her to a bin of CDs. “My favorite is the Pavarotti,” she said pleasantly. “Did you have a preference as to cast?”

“The Pavarotti sounds perfect,” Holly said. As she waited for the sale to be rung up she started to ask about anyone resembling Teddy, then thought better of it. She’d come back in a day or two and ask then. The woman might be more open if she recognized her as a previous customer.

“There you are,” the woman said, handing her a bag and her change. “Please come back.”

“I’d like to,” Holly said. “I went to see
La Boheme
last night at the Met. It was my first time at the opera, and I loved it.”

“We’ll always be happy to help you find recordings,” the woman said. “We have synopses and scores, too.”

“Thanks very much,” Holly said, smiling. She left the shop and walked toward Sixth Avenue.

TEN MINUTES LATER, the woman came out of the shop, and Teddy watched her back as she walked toward Sixth Avenue. Should he follow her or find out what she had done inside? Both, he decided. He ran across the street and walked into the shop. “Hi, Esmerelda,” he said to the clerk who was always behind the counter.

“Hi, there,” she replied, smiling at him.

“I thought I just saw someone I know just leave the shop. Was there a woman in here?”

“Yes, just a moment ago,” Esmerelda replied. “She bought a copy of the Pavarotti
La Boheme.
Said she’d seen the performance at the Met last night and loved it. Everybody loves
La Boheme.”

“Did she ask about me?” Teddy asked.

“No.”

“Esmerelda, I have to ask you a favor. I knew her a couple of years ago. We had a relationship that ended badly, and since then she’s stalked me, done everything she can to make my life miserable. If she comes back and asks about me, I’d really appreciate it if you could deny all knowledge of me.”

“Sure, I can do that.”

“She might even send private detectives, and those guys use false I.D.s, say they’re cops.”

“Now that you mention it, a guy came in and flashed an FBI I.D., said he wanted to ask me some questions. I threw him out; I hate those guys.”

“You did the right thing,” Teddy said. He glanced at his wrist-watch. “Oh, my, I’m late for an appointment. I’ll have to come back.”

He left the shop and hurried toward Sixth Avenue. As he turned the corner, he saw the woman getting into a cab. He hailed another and got in. “Not to sound too dramatic,” he said to the driver, “but would you follow that cab, please?” He pointed to the taxi ahead.

“Sure, brother,” the cab driver said, sounding bored. “Whatever you want.”

“Not too closely,” Teddy said, “just keep it in sight.”

The cab made its way to an address in the East Forties, an apartment building. As Teddy waited in traffic, he saw her get out of the taxi and go into the building. The doorman touched his cap bill and opened the door for her. She was known there.

“Okay, now what?” the driver asked.

“Take me to Sixty-fourth and Madison, please.” He took out a notebook and jotted down the address of the building. What was the woman’s name? Holly something. He couldn’t remember the last name, though he tried all the way home.

Back in his apartment he went to the computer and logged onto the CIA server. What was her last name, dammit? He could check the Agency and FBI records for a file. He couldn’t think of the name.

Instead, he did a search for the address of the building she had gone into. The computer found three references to the address. He clicked on the first and found himself in a long, boring budget file. He checked the second reference. It was a memo: purchase of the building at that address was recommended, through a front real estate company.

He clicked on the third reference to the address and found a copy of a memo to the director from the head of purchasing, reporting on the appraisal of a building under construction and suggesting that it could be bought, approximately half-finished, for fifteen million dollars and finished to Agency specifications for another twenty million.

The building that the woman had entered was, at the very least, a CIA safe house, and, given the costs involved, more likely a center of some sort.

He slapped his forehead: he had sat through a performance of
La Boheme
next to a CIA officer.

“Jesus Christ,” he said under his breath. How had this happened? Were they that close to him? Impossible, he thought. If she’d realized who she was sitting with, she would have called in support, and yet she had let him walk. A coincidence? He hated coincidences.

TWENTY-EIGHT

HOLLY WAS CALLED into a meeting with Lance and Kerry Smith in the twelfth-floor conference room. Ty was there, and several other people who looked like FBI.

“Sit down, Holly,” Kerry said. “We’ve run a thorough check on your Hyman Baum character. There are several in the New York phone book, but none matching your description, and there is nobody recently in the garment industry by that name.”

“We think you’ve scored, Holly,” Lance said, “and I want to compliment you on your observation of this man. If he’s not Teddy Fay, then he’s someone else of the same description who goes around impersonating elderly dress manufacturers.”

Holly didn’t warm to the praise. “I didn’t score; I just stood there outside the opera and let him walk away. Or rather, run.”

“Don’t beat up on yourself,” Kerry said. “What’s important is that we now have a location and a target date for Teddy. We know he may be at the Metropolitan Opera next Friday night in seats H two or three. If he shows, then, for the first time since Maine, we’ve got a real shot at taking this guy off the street, and it’s all because of your good work.”

“Thank you,” Holly said.

“What we’ve got to do now is to formulate a plan for taking him in a crowded concert hall without anybody getting hurt,” Kerry said. “What I think we should do is put our people in seats all around him, and take him before the opera starts, the moment he sits down.”

“I’m not sure that would work,” Holly said.

“Why not?”

“Because Teddy has these same seats every week, and so do all the people who’re sitting around him. If he walks in and sees a lot of strange faces around his seat, he’s going to bolt. I think it would be better to take him either as he enters the building or as he leaves.”

“You have a point,” Kerry admitted.

“Holly,” Lance said, “you met him outside the hall, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, then, let’s have you meet him at the same place again.”

“He invited me for next Friday night, but I told him I would be in London by then.”

“So, your plans changed, and you went back to the opera in the hope of being able to accept his invitation after all. At the very least, if he sees you, he’ll come over to ask why you aren’t in London.”

“It could work,” Holly said.

“We’ll arrange a visual signal: you’ll change your handbag from one shoulder to the other when you see him, and as soon as you start to talk, we’ll be all over him.”

“I’m game,” Holly said.

TEDDY CALLED Irene at home and had her walk out into her garden. “How are you?” she asked.

“I’m well. I got in with the new codes, but I had to log in as Hugh English the first time.”

“I thought that might happen,” she replied.

“If anybody notices, can you tell them that you logged on using his codes, just to be sure they were working?”

“Yes, I can do that; it might work.”

“Let’s hope nobody notices. Do you know a CIA officer based in New York with the first name of Holly?”

“No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

“I sat next to this woman at the opera, and later, when I saw her on the street, I followed her to an address on the East Side.” He gave her the address. “Does that ring a bell?”

“Yes, it’s a new, joint CIA-FBI counterintelligence operations center. If she got past the doorman, it’s because she’s authorized to enter. Do you have a last name for the woman? I can check her out.”

“No, I can’t remember it, and even if I could, she was probably using a cover name.”

“Well, if she was that close to you, why didn’t she call in the cavalry?”

“Because she didn’t know who I was. She may have figured it out later, though.”

“Mike, if you’re in New York, maybe it’s time to go somewhere else.”

Teddy was not going to confirm this to her, so he ignored the question. “I need a new target,” he said. “What do you have?”

“Well, if you want one in New York, the U.N. embassies make for a target-rich environment.”

“Who’s running intelligence operations out of U.N. embassies besides the Iranians?”

“Who isn’t? How about the Syrians or the Israelis?”

“I’m not interested in the Israelis, but the Syrians sound good. What’s going on in their embassy?”

“They’re spying on the Israelis, of coarse, They’ve rented an apartment across the street from the Israeli embassy, and they’re doing everything they can to listen to their conversations or read their mail. So far, the Israelis’ counterintelligence has kept them at bay. But if you attack the Syrians, they’re going to blame the Israelis. Do you want that?”

“I don’t much care,” Teddy said. “Since they blame everything on the Israelis, nobody will pay any attention to what they say. I might take a look at their rented apartment.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mike,” Irene said.

“Why not?”

“Because if you start showing an interest in that particular street, the Israelis are going to notice you, and that would not be good. They might think you were casing them instead of the Syrians.”

“You have a point. Who is the head of Syrian intelligence in New York?”

“A very nasty character named Omar Said, or that’s the name he uses. We’ve been keeping an eye on him for at least a year.”

“Maybe he’s my target,” Teddy said.

“Same problem as with the Israelis: you start following him around, and our people are going to notice you.”

“Well, then,” Teddy said, “I’m just going to have to be unnoticeable. Where is the Syrian U.N. embassy?” He wrote down the address: three blocks from the Iranian house he had destroyed. “I’ve got to run, Irene; we’ll talk later.” He hung up.

Teddy went back into the Agency’s computers and did a search for Omar Said. Soon he had a photograph of a tall, balding Arab in a London bespoke suit and shirt getting out of a black Cadillac. A couple of more clicks, and he got a license plate number: a New York City diplomatic plate, SY 4.

At least the guy didn’t ride in a Lincoln Town Car, like half the other people in New York. He went carefully over the available pictures of the car. Nothing that he could see indicated that it was armored. Said’s only protection in the rear seat was blackened windows. He didn’t even appear to travel with a guard, other than his driver.

Teddy began to formulate the rough outlines of a plan for taking the Syrian. He wasn’t quite sure where, just yet, but he had a very good idea about when.

TWENTY-NINE

WILL LEE WAS WORKING in his private study off the Oval Office when his secretary buzzed him.

“The director of Central Intelligence for you, Mr. President.”

Will picked up the phone. “Good morning, Madame Director.”

“Mr. President. You asked for any news on the Teddy Fay hunt.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Fay apparently went to the Metropolitan Opera last Friday night and picked up a lady. Unbeknownst to him, she was a CIA officer.”

“Did they take him? Why wasn’t I told sooner?”

“They did not take him, because she didn’t realize who he was, even though she was looking for him. He’s that good at disguise.

The good news is, he told her he has the same seats for every Friday night performance, so they’re planning an operation for that night.“ ”I have to wait until Friday?“

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be patient, as will we, Mr. President.”

“I’m getting worse at being patient as I get older,” Will said.

“I’ve noticed.”

“How did Fay get the tickets? Were they mailed to him, maybe?”

“An excellent question, Mr. President. He went to the box office and bought season tickets with cash, then he hung around until somebody showed up to collect tickets for better seats than his, and negotiated a swap. The ticket seller remembers him, but, of course, his description was different from last Friday’s.”

“A slippery fellow,” Will said.

“We trained him well,” Kate replied. “Unfortunately, we’re sometimes not as good at catching our own people when they go bad as we are at finding outsiders.”

“Is this the only lead you have?”

“There’s a record shop specializing in opera that we think he might go to now and then, so we’re keeping that under surveillance, but we have no hard evidence of that.”