Rules of Deception (28 page)

58

Alphons Marti
popped his head into Marcus von Daniken’s unoccupied office. The overhead lights were extinguished. A sole desktop lamp burned, casting a halo on the papers covering the desk. It was eight o’clock in the evening, and he’d come for a briefing on the day’s progress. He wandered down the hall until he found an office still occupied. “Excuse me,” he said with a knock on the door. “I’m looking for Mr. von Daniken.”

A stocky bald man shot from his desk. “Hardenberg, sir. I’m afraid Chief Inspector von Daniken isn’t here at the moment.”

“I can see that. He was due to update me on today’s activity.”

“It’s not like him to miss a meeting. Was it scheduled?”

Marti avoided the question. The visit was unannounced. He hadn’t wanted to give von Daniken time to doctor his findings. “Where is he?”

“In Zurich. Looking into a lead regarding the financing of the operation.”

“Really? Aren’t the banks closed at this hour?”

“He’s not at a bank. He’s visiting Tobias Tingeli. They know each other from the Holocaust Commission. You can reach him on his cell phone.”

Marti considered this. “Not necessary,” he said after a moment. “I’m sure you can fill me in. You said that you’ve discovered a lead on the financing of this operation. Do you have any idea which group is behind the plot? Is it the Revolutionary Guard? Al-Qaeda? Islamic Jihad? Or is it some organization we haven’t heard of?”

“We’re not certain yet,” replied Hardenberg. “All we know is that Blitz’s house was purchased by an offshore company based in Curaçao. Once we find out who paid his bills, we’ll be a lot closer to knowing who’s behind this attack.”

“What’s standing in your way?”

“The law, sir. The existing bank secrecy requirements make it difficult for us to obtain the information we need. Still, Mr. von Daniken is confident he’ll be able to get around them. He has close ties with a number of bankers.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Marti, laboring to sound pleased. “Keep up the good work.”

Hardenberg accompanied him to the door. “I’ll tell Mr. von Daniken that you came by. I’m sure he didn’t mean to miss the meeting.”

Marti hurried down the stairs, a man with a mission.

Back in his office
at the Bundeshaus, Marti rooted around in the files until he found the paperwork relating to the government’s request to Swisscom, the national telecommunications authority, for a record of all of Blitz’s, Lammers’s, and Ransom’s phone calls. Papers in hand, he phoned the Swisscom executive in charge of judicial relations.

“I need a complete record of all calls made to and from these numbers,” he said, after introducing himself. He provided Marcus von Daniken’s business, home, and cellular numbers.

“Certainly. Is there any time period you’re interested in?”

“Last Monday from eight a.m. to four p.m.”

“Just last Monday?”

“That’s all,” said Marti. “How soon can you have it?”

“Tomorrow at noon.”

“I need it by eight a.m.”

“You’ll have it.”

Marti hung up. In less than twelve hours, he would have his proof.

59

Jonathan drove
until he was exhausted. He pulled off the highway in Rapperswil at the south end of the Lake of Zurich and maneuvered through the town and into the hills beyond. When he hadn’t seen a home or the light of another car for ten minutes, he pulled to the side of the road and killed the engine. Davos was another hundred kilometers ahead.

Using the emergency flashlight clipped to the interior wall of the glove compartment, he pored over the newspapers he’d bought. He knew little about the World Economic Forum other than what he’d glimpsed on the television news.

The WEF was an annual conference that brought together approximately one thousand political and business leaders from around the globe to share information about a subject deemed crucial to the world’s welfare. This year’s topic was the proliferation of nuclear weapons. An article stated that “eighteen heads of state, two hundred cabinet-level ministers, and forty-seven of the Fortune 100 CEOs” will be in attendance. This year’s guests included two former U.S. presidents, the British prime minister, the sultan of Brunei, the king of Jordan, and the chairmen of Shell Oil, Intel, and Deutsche Bank, to name a few.

An article in the
Financial Times
discussed security for the event. Some three thousand soldiers would assist a battery of two hundred local police officers in guarding the World Economic Forum. No one was permitted entry without prior vetting. There were photos of large fences cutting through snow-covered fields, imposing floodlights, armed sentries with German shepherds. Based on the photographs, Davos looked more like a concentration camp than a ski resort.

In the
Tages-Anzeiger,
he found a boxed feature discussing a Swiss firm that manufactured the identification card readers utilized by the law enforcement authorities to govern access to the event. The company’s chief executive boasted that no one could get past his card readers. He noted that there were three levels of security. The green zone was free to residents and visitors, who nonetheless had to present a form of identification at one of three security checkpoints before being issued an official Forum identification that they must wear around their necks at all times. The yellow zone encompassed that part of the town nearer the Kongresshaus where the Forum would actually take place, as well as common areas in proximity to hotels putting up the event’s VIPs. To gain access to the yellow zone required an official invitation to the event and prior vetting by the Swiss Federal Police.

The red zone included the Kongresshaus, where all speeches were delivered and breakout sessions held, as well as the Hotel Belvedere, where many of the VIPs boarded. Identification badges permitting visitors access to these areas carried not only photographs but also memory chips loaded with pertinent information about the individual. Those individuals granted access to the red zone received their own personalized card readers. These readers scanned a ten-meter-square footprint around them to pick up signals from their fellow attendees, flashing that person’s name, photograph, and bio on the reader’s display. While no one would fail to recognize Bill Gates or Tony Blair, the oil minister of Saudi Arabia was a different story.

Jonathan dumped everything from the glove compartment onto the seat next to him. He reasoned that if Emma were to deliver the car to P.J. in Davos, she had to have been given an ID allowing her into the red zone. He sorted through the automobile’s user’s guide, a service book, and customs papers, then leaned over and ran a hand over the glove compartment’s surface. Nothing there.

He sat back, thinking. If the ID wasn’t in the bags Blitz sent to Landquart, it had to be in the car. But where? The user’s manual explained that armor wasn’t the vehicle’s only unique feature. The car also boasted run-flat tires, antiskid brakes, and automated parking.

He found what he was looking for listed under “Custom Specifications”: a strongbox hidden beneath the rear passenger seat. He got out of the car and opened the rear door. Leaning into the cabin, he muscled a tab in the center of the banquette. The seat rose. In the space beneath it was a dull black steel box. He popped the catch. A manila envelope lay inside with the name “Eva Kruger” typed on it. He ripped it open. A plastic identification card strung with a cloth lanyard fell into his hand. The ID was issued by the World Economic Forum and bore the same photo that adorned her driver’s license. There was more: a French passport with Parvez Jinn’s photograph inside and a cell phone.

A passport to go with the one hundred thousand Swiss francs and the armored Mercedes sedan. All, Jonathan surmised, in return for “Gold” to be provided by Parvez Jinn, Minister of Technology of the Fundamentalist Islamic Republic of Iran.

He picked up the phone. It was one of the cheapest models. He turned it on and saw that it had been charged with fifty Swiss francs. Why leave Emma a phone unless she had to call someone…someone who only wanted to be called on a certain number. Parvez Jinn? He checked the directory, but found no numbers listed. He wondered if Jinn was supposed to call her? That made more sense. The minister of technology would have to find a suitable moment when he was free of his guards.

Jonathan began to gain a sense of what was taking place. He didn’t fathom all of it, just the bare bones. Shipments in exchange for information. “Gold,” they called it. There was only one type of product that he imagined the Iranians desired. Products the Western world had forbade them.

Heart pounding, he sat up straighter. He logged on to the Intelink website and began reviewing the shipping lists. Centrifuges, navigation units, vacuum tubes. He worked backward through the months: December, November, October. Carbon extruders. Maraging steel. Coolant systems. And further back still. September, August. Ring magnets. Heat exchangers. He had no doubt but that the items were falsely labeled. It made no difference whether or not he knew their exact functions. He knew their purpose and that was enough.

Suddenly, he was overcome with a need to be free of the car. Stumbling outside, he set off up the road. His stride lengthened and he began to jog up the incline, pushing himself, reveling in the burn in his legs, the pounding of his heart, the scuff of his breath.

His mind took flight and he imagined himself in the mountains, deep in the wilderness, at the moment a few days out on an expedition when it finally hit that, at least for now—for a sharp, glinting moment—you’d left everything behind: your past, your present, your future. It was a new world, separate from everything that had come before, with no ties to bind you and no expectations to draw you forward. You were just a solitary man, alone with rocks and trees and fast-running streams. One beating heart surrounded by a world that had been there long before mankind had begun to despoil it. For that moment, you were boldly and gloriously alive.

After ten minutes, he reached the crest of the hill. A cairn had been erected on the summit. He circled the stones, his lungs burning, his eyes stinging from the cold. To the north the long, curving shadow of the Lake of Zurich fell away like a scythe bordered by sparkling jewels. To the south the valley was long and dark, lit at varying distances by clusters of light. Hardly a kilometer away, the foothills of the Alps pushed against the plain, erupting from the flat, fertile land as towering granite escarpments that rose in vertical plains a thousand meters or more, capped by jagged summits.

Why, Emma?
he demanded silently. How could she send these materials to the most dangerous country in the world? It’s to make bombs. And not just any bombs.
The bomb.

After a while, he headed down the hill. In ten minutes, he regained the Mercedes. He climbed inside and turned on the heat. One question stayed with him above all.

Who was she working for?

He laid his head back and closed his eyes, but his mind was racing. He didn’t fall asleep until much later, when the first light of dawn crept above the horizon and lit the sky a dead, ashen gray.

60

It’s none of your business.
Leave it. It can only go badly for you.

Philip Palumbo mulled over the words, then leaned across the front seat of his car and removed his service sidearm from the glove compartment. It was because nobody took a stand that the world was in such sorry shape.

The pistol was a Beretta 9mm, left over from his days as an officer with the 82nd Airborne. He’d given fourteen years to the military, including his time as a cadet at West Point, and advanced as high as major before getting out. There were plenty of opportunities in private enterprise for a man with his background, but he’d never had much of an interest in making money. Seven weeks after signing his separation papers, he put his name on a contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. And despite all that he’d seen and all that he’d done, he still considered it the best decision he’d ever made. He did not relish giving it all up.

He checked that the magazine was full, chambered a round, and clicked down the safety.

The house was a two-story colonial with forest-green shutters and a shake roof. He took the stairs two at a time and rang the bell. A slim, unprepossessing man wearing a gray cardigan, bifocals hanging from a chain around his neck, opened the door. “There you are, Phil,” said Admiral James Lafever, Deputy Director of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. “A matter of some urgency, I take it.”

Palumbo entered the home. “I appreciate you seeing me at such short notice.”

“No problem at all.” Lafever led the way into a spacious foyer. He was a workaholic and lived alone. “Can I get you some coffee?”

Palumbo declined.

Lafever walked into the kitchen and poured himself a mug of steaming coffee. “I understand that you got solid information out of Walid Gassan that helped prevent an attack.”

He knows,
thought Palumbo.
Someone’s tipped him off.

“Actually, that’s why I’ve come.”

Lafever added some sugar to his coffee, then signaled for Palumbo to go ahead.

“On my way back from Syria, I got a call from Marcus von Daniken, who heads up the Swiss counterintelligence service. He was investigating the murder in Zurich of a man named Theo Lammers, a Dutch national who was shot outside his house. It was a professional job. Clean. No witnesses. Lammers owned a business that designed and manufactured sophisticated guidance systems. On the side, he built drones. Unmanned aerial vehicles. Small ones, big ones, you name it. Von Daniken was looking into it when a colleague of Lammers also got killed: an Iranian by the name of Mahmoud Quitab who was residing in Switzerland under the work name of Gottfried Blitz. Any of this sound familiar?”

“Should it?”

“With all due respect, sir, I think it might ring a few bells.”

Lafever added some milk to his coffee. When he returned his attention to Palumbo, his expression had changed. The social portion of the visit had officially concluded. “Go on, Phil. Let’s save my part for the end.”

Palumbo knew an order when he heard it. “I called Marcus to fill him in on the details of Gassan’s interrogation.”

“You mean regarding Gassan’s involvement in a plot to shoot down an airliner?”

“That’s correct. Von Daniken was surprised, to say the least. It turns out that the two deceased gentlemen he was looking into were Gassan’s co-conspirators.”

“Quite a coincidence.” Lafever’s voice made clear that he knew it was anything but.

Palumbo went on. “The next day, von Daniken received a report from the coroner that both victims were killed by someone who liked to dip his bullets in poison. This coroner had asked around if anyone had ever come across a similar case. One of his colleagues at Scotland Yard knew exactly what he was talking about. The man was a former British Marine, and had seen that same poison used in El Salvador back in the early eighties. I guess it was a common practice among the Indians down there. Some kind of local voodoo to ward off evil spirits. The Englishman shared his belief that it was
us
that trained them. According to him, whoever killed Lammers and his partner had at one time or another been working with the CIA. Von Daniken wants to know if we have an op running on his turf. Sir, if we have credible information about a cell looking to take down an airliner in Swiss airspace, it’s our duty to keep them in the loop.”

“And what did you tell him?” asked Lafever.

“I said I’d look into it.”

“So you haven’t spoken to him since?”

Palumbo shook his head. “You were running the station in San Salvador back then. Wasn’t Mourning Dove one of your operations?”

“That’s classified information.”

“I have classified clearance. One of the locals was recommended for recruitment. His name was Ricardo Reyes. His mother was half Indian. He did some training up at the Farm, then was sent overseas. He’s still on payroll.”

“Been digging, eh?”

“I’m guessing he’s the one who pulled the trigger.”

Admiral Lafever stepped closer and Palumbo could smell the coffee on his breath. “What concern of yours is one of my ops?”

Palumbo shifted his weight and felt the pistol digging into his back. “None. I’m out of my depth here. It’s just that I was able to track down some info on Lammers, the man who was shot and killed in Zurich.”

“And so?”

“Sir, we’ve got a file ten inches thick on the man. He was on our payroll for ten years. He worked in industrial espionage and was run out of our London substation. He fell off the books in 2003. I asked myself why in the world was Walid Gassan delivering explosives to men even remotely affiliated with the U.S. government. Something didn’t feel right to me about the whole thing. I made some calls around town to ask if Lammers had gone over to the other side.”

“What did you find out?”

“Oh, he’d gone over to the other side, alright. Lammers was picked up by the Defense Department two years back. At the time of his death, he was working as a consultant to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Admiral, can you tell me what in God’s name we’re doing taking out American agents?”

“I thought you’d be more concerned about why the Pentagon is trying to take down an airliner.”

“That’s my next question.”

Palumbo had been expecting a tirade. Instead, Lafever put down his coffee cup and smiled bleakly. “Are you familiar with a unit called Division?”

“Division? No, sir, I’m not.”

“Didn’t think so.” Lafever led him by the elbow toward a sliding door in the kitchen. “Let’s go outside. I need a smoke.”

Palumbo followed Lafever onto the back patio and down a flight of stairs into his backyard. It was a cold evening, the sky grim and forlorn. Their feet crunched in the snow as they ambled through a thicket of barren trees.

“It’s that Austen. He’s the problem,” said Lafever, shaking loose a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros. “Crazy Christian sonuvabitch will have me yet. Between all his prayer meetings and fundamentalist mojo, he can’t keep his fingers out of the other guy’s pie.”

“Do you mean Major General John Austen of the Air Force?”

“The one and only. It started eight years back, even before 9/11. The boys at the Pentagon wanted to start mounting clandestine operations on foreign soil. They were pissed off at how terrorists were nailing our overseas installations and had taken to going around town saying that we at CIA couldn’t do squat to stop them. The Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the numerous attacks against U.S. multinationals operating abroad. Austen went to the president and asked if he could put together a team of operators and give it a shot. The president didn’t need much convincing. He’d been riding us hard to find out who was behind the attack on the USS
Cole
and we weren’t able to help him. Austen’s team found the culprits lickety-split. Thirty days later, the president signed a National Security Presidential Directive authorizing the Defense Department to run units overseas.

“They called it Division. Austen ran it out of a little-known office called the Defense Human Intelligence Service, whose official job is to manage military attachés assigned to our foreign embassies. He moved fast. Within a year, he had five teams in the field. We’re talking the blackest of black ops. Clandestine. Deniable. Operating without any oversight from Congress, or even the president. The kind of blanket authorization any intelligence officer would kill for. Me included. They did some good work. I won’t deny it. Took out that murderous lunatic in Bosnia, Drako, and a couple of warlords in the Sudan. The successes went to Austen’s head. He started overstepping his bounds. Got his fingers dirty in that affair with the Lebanese prime minister. Got mixed up in the insurgency in Iraq. We are intelligence officers. It’s our job to gather information and pass it on. It’s not our job to be judge, jury, and executioner. That’s policy, and the last I looked, it was run out of the White House. Anyway, by God, Phil, after a while I’d had enough.”

“But, sir, they’re American agents.”

“They’re not American. Quitab’s an Iranian. Lammers is Dutch. Foreign born and foreign bred.”

“Even so, sir, why didn’t you go to the president?”

“And say what? I’d only look like a jealous suitor. It was the president who authorized all this. Only he can pull the plug.”

“I don’t think he would authorize U.S. agents working in concert with an Iranian illegal to take down an airliner.”

“I agree, but he wouldn’t authorize me running a mole in Austen’s network either. What with his beliefs pinned on his sleeve and all those shiny medals on his chest, John Austen is what passes for a saint on Pennsylvania Avenue. He was in the fight since the beginning. By that I mean our holy war against Jihad, Incorporated. Austen set up the plan to rescue our hostages in Iran back in 1980. He organized the first Special Ops teams. And like our commander-in-chief, he burns for Christ. What’s a whiskey-drinking pagan like me to do?”

“But that rescue attempt in Iran was a fiasco,” said Palumbo. “We crashed and burned. We lost eight men.”

“It doesn’t matter, Phil. John Austen is a hero. Like being on the hill at Calvary way back when. Whatever he says, goes…until proven otherwise.”

“With due respect, Admiral, I can’t just stand by and let him take down a plane.”

“There’s no other way, Phil. This country can’t have two separate espionage services conducting operations without one talking to the other. For too long now, the boys at Defense have been out of control. Once this thing blows up in their face, it will be over. John Austen will never be allowed to put a team in the field again. The Pentagon will be permanently out of the espionage business.”

“So you sent over Reyes to put a stop to it?”

“I sent Ricardo Reyes to show that we weren’t just sitting around with a thumb up our ass while this was going down. If we get caught flatfooted on something this big, it will just go to prove that everything Austen’s been saying to the president about the CIA is true. But if we can get within a hair’s breadth of knocking down that drone…if we can take out members of the plot…we will look like the heroes.” Lafever crushed his cigarette beneath his shoe. “Mr. Reyes won’t be able to stop the attack, and frankly, I don’t want him to. Once that plane goes down, I can go to the president with proof of who did this and show him just how badly things got out of hand. I can also show that I tried to stop it. The president will have no choice but to back me to the hilt. Division will be shut down in a second. At the end of the day, those pricks at Defense will have their asses handed to them, and the Agency will be back on top.”

Palumbo had nothing to say. He stood rooted to the spot, stunned and saddened.

Lafever stepped closer. “I can’t have any flag-waving officer of mine running off at the mouth about what he thinks he’s discovered. I need your word that you’re going to keep quiet.”

“But, sir, the plane…all the passengers…”

“I need your word.”

“But, Admiral…”

“But nothing!” said Lafever. “It’s a small price to pay to make sure that Austen doesn’t do anything else even more foolish.”

Palumbo sighed. He knew then how it was going to turn out. “I’m sorry. I just can’t allow it.”

Lafever looked at him like he was a poor, dumb rube just off the farm. “Neither can I.”

When he raised his hand again, he was pointing a compact, nickel-plated revolver at Palumbo’s heart. It was a throwaway piece with its registration filed off, loaded with standard ammo he’d probably gotten from the armory. The old man’s tradecraft was strictly by the book.

The gun fired twice. The bullets struck Palumbo in the chest and knocked him to the ground. He lay there a moment, eyes wide, the wind knocked out of him. Lafever advanced a step and stood over him, shaking his head. Then Palumbo coughed and Lafever realized that he was wearing a vest. Hurriedly, the deputy director of operations of the Central Intelligence Agency brought his gun to bear. This time, he was too slow.

Palumbo’s shot struck him in the forehead.

Admiral James Lafever was dead before he hit the ground.