Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (29 page)

He read Hecker’s short account of his near fisticuffs with Matthews outside Club Avatar. Matthews asserted the CIA’s primacy. The DEA’s imported talent reported to him, all papers were to be handed over and the DEA was only to liaise with the local police. Additionally, Matthews had alerted Washington, and Hecker should expect to be recalled ASAP. Perhaps he’d best go home and start packing.

Hecker told Matthews to get fucked, adding, “When I’m done with you, the only threats you’ll be issuing will be from behind bars.” That gave Nolan a rare chuckle. For his part, Hecker let Nolan know that he’d recorded the entire Matthews conversation and figured the COS would be suspended or fired by sunup Wednesday.

*  *  *  *  *

Ryder was receiving more attention than a first-time mother in labor. The Toyota Prado weaved in and out of traffic headed away from Thilawa port, while Howard’s focus alternated between Ryder’s appearance and the exposure tags that had been clipped to his containment suit and placed around his neck. Gunny Tanner was riding shotgun, tight-lipped, head on a swivel and .45 in hand. Another DEA SUV with three of the Wild Bunch was fifteen feet behind them on a virtual bungee cord. Their progress was slow given that it was seven o’clock and traffic hadn’t thinned out. At Ryder’s feeble insistence, they were headed not to the hospital, but to the backup DEA safe house Hogwarts. Hecker had arranged for the US embassy’s preferred physician to meet them there.

Howard said for the third time, “Travis, I really don’t know what to tell you. The Geiger counter reading of 3,400 rad is critically high, yet your exposure tag shows only 2,800 rad and your neck tag is 2,400. That’s serious, but not likely to be fatal. How do you feel?”

“Like I’m going to pop you if you ask me again how I feel.” Ryder used a brave voice, but he was terrified. Radiation toxicity wasn’t on the career menu when he’d taken early retirement from the Navy after eleven years to join the DEA as South and Southeast Asia head of security and Hecker’s bodyguard. He’d rather walk the streets of 2004 Fallujah wearing only his jock than deal with U-235 decontamination.

A memory popped into his head, jolting him to full alertness. “Gunny, in case I don’t make it to the safe house, tell Hecker I saw a red-and-blue fish on the packing crate. A sticker or label. That’s important. And whatever you do, don’t let Howard take me to a hospital. The last embassy employee who checked in ended up gutted.” Falling back against the door from the effort, he wretched a little more bile into the flimsy plastic bag Howard held in front of him. The vehicle smelled of stomach acid as Ryder used the back of his hand to swipe at the spittle.

*  *  *  *  *

“Tell the team to stand down, Lieutenant Connors. Lower your weapons and walk as a group to the vehicles. Don’t give the Army anything other than the papers and files from the port. Keep your phones. They won’t lay a hand on you. If they continue to block your vehicles, stay in the SUVs and call me back. I’d be amazed if they didn’t move out of your way once you’ve mounted up. They may be acting tough, but they’re scared. Burma doesn’t want a war with the United States over who has possession of your camera phones. Call me back if there’s trouble on the way to the new safe house and I’ll come a running with the James Gang. For now, just try to maintain. And thanks for everything.”

Hecker had met Lieutenant Mark Connors for the first time earlier in the day. Connors and the rest of the Wild Bunch took leave to come to Burma on zero notice as personal favors to Ryder. These men never complained, expected no payment other than reimbursed airfares and laid their asses on the line.

When about thirty Army regulars rolled up in two canvas-backed trucks, the Wild Bunch responded by throwing up a thin cordon to buffer the DOE scientists while they wiped down Ryder and loaded him into the two-SUV mini-convoy. The Wild Bunch stayed on station for over two hours, watching Howard & Co. decontaminate the dock and allowing the crane operators to reload boxes back onto the
SS Bandana.
Sometime around 21:30 hours an armored personnel carrier and two additional dark olive trucks had roared up and disgorged another fifty or sixty commandos wearing cammies. Weapons lowered, they started advancing on Connors’s men.

After conferring with Hecker via satphone, Connors withdrew his remaining Special Forces operators, bartering the papers they’d collected from the port offices for safe passage. With only seven shooters among them, it took a big pair of
cojones
to stare the senior officer in the eyes and tell him he couldn’t have your phone, much less your weapon. All the while this was happening, Hecker couldn’t tell from Connors’s tone whether he was ordering a pizza or preparing to open fire.

The last half day was the toughest in Hecker’s professional life. No sooner had Matthews left Club Avatar than Zaw and Hecker found themselves in a diplomatic fight with Rangoon’s police chief general over the custody of the prisoners being interrogated by SPC 4 Johnson. Realizing he was on thin ice, Hecker gave up Teller’s surviving men plus the two crewmen off the
SS Bandana
. After ninety minutes of cigarettes, arm-waving and raised voices, Zaw arranged a semi-amicable handover. The battered, bruised and drugged hostages were hooded and plastic cuffed as Zaw’s men walked them out of Club Avatar and into the back of a deuce and a half.

In return, Zaw negotiated a hands-off on the safe house itself with one of the on-site staff officers. Zaw promised the chief of police to produce Johnson at 08:00 hours at police HQ for questioning the next day, which everyone knew was really a deportation order. All of Hecker’s DEA staff at the safe house kept their weapons, a reasonable request in light of their blown-out windows, a gaping hole in the living room wall and a perimeter wall missing a twenty-foot section. 

Zaw neglected to mention to the chief of police that his men had taped Johnson’s interrogation sessions. The recording was safely back at Dubern Park, where DEA staff could transcribe it. Perhaps this was all for the better, Hecker mulled. Had Johnson been given any more time with the prisoners, he might have made good on his promise to start clipping fingers and toes to promote cooperation.

His DEA skeleton force had spent over four hours cleaning up Club Avatar, moving Ryder’s arsenal surreptitiously into their SUVs, packing personal effects, shredding nonessential documents, and boxing up others, along with their computers and other electronics. Hecker’s people worked with frenzied intensity to salvage as much as they could, for as soon as they left, the Army surely would strip the house bare.

This latest confrontation at the port was disastrous on several levels. For starters, they didn’t know what the container held other than a highly radioactive object housed in a six-foot-plus-tall packing crate surrounded by sandbags. Gleaning that small bit of information had cost Ryder dearly. Losing the paperwork from the port would make tracing the ship’s ownership much more difficult, although some deft camera phone work had captured several pages, according to Connors.

Clearly, Teller was connected to a powerful government faction, one that could defy the president of Burma and muster troops at will. Hecker realized he should have expected that, given that Teller already accessed immigration records and vehicle registrations in near real time. For once, Matthews wasn’t the culprit. This was orchestrated by a local sitting high up the food chain. Traditionally, the US got out of these sorts of messes by spreading cash like poppers at a gay disco. Hecker wondered whether that would work this time, and what Nolan would make of it all.

Hecker got in the SUV and told his driver to take the long way to Hogwarts in case they were being followed. He swapped batteries and rebooted his dead cell, spotting a text from Sophie. The wife would have to wait.

“Bob? Sam here. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“Well, it’s nearly midnight and I was just about to email you. Anything new since the Battle of Club Avatar?”

“Plenty. Let’s start with Travis’s getting a look inside a highly radioactive container at the port, and possibly absorbing a fatal dose in the process. He’s on his way to our other safe house, and the embassy’s preferred doctor is waiting there to examine him. We’ll have him on the first plane to Singapore tomorrow, and have the Navy docs and acute radiation sickness specialists take it from there.”

“Oh, hell! That’s terrible. What did he find in the container?”

“We’re not certain. Getting a detailed rundown will be the first thing I do once he gets here. Travis called me once he was back in cell range. A big forklift, a crate over six feet high by maybe eight to ten feet wide and an indeterminate depth, surrounded by burlap bags full of sand, dirt, lead—we just don’t know. That’s as much as he saw in the five seconds he was shining a light. Oh, and one other thing. He saw a packing sticker on the crate: a red-and-blue fish.”

“The Malaysia Airlines logo! Email me a photo when you have a chance. If you’ve got a bomb disposal robot in country, you can use it to remove the sandbags and—”

“Bob, Bob! Slow down. The Army surrounded our team and we’ve left the port. At one point there were maybe eighty guns against fewer than ten. The team barely got out with their asses in one piece.”

“The key to the hijacking and the credibility of what we’ve been saying since Saturday is in that MAS-labeled crate. When can your men return?”

“That’s not for me to say. I’ve got Ambassador Martin working on Biden, who’s reverting to President Thein to ask what the hell happened to our port access. I gave Martin the recording I made of Matthews threatening me this evening at Club Avatar. He’ll lobby the veep to have that sonofabitch fired or recalled by tomorrow morning. Martin’s finally figured out that Matthews has to be complicit in shielding Teller. Martin’s a windbag, but at least he’s got Biden’s ear. That counts for something.”

“Test the prisoners you’re interrogating for radiation sickness. I’ll bet you at least a couple of them were at the airstrip. The ones who have the highest readings were the ones handling that crate.”

“More bad news. The Rangoon chief of police showed up here and pulled rank on Zaw. We handed over our prisoners in exchange for a hands-off on Club Avatar, but we kept the recording of Johnson’s Q&A sessions. The translators at Dubern Park are transcribing as we speak. The snippets I’ve read are highly interesting. One of Teller’s security detail said a big white jet landed Saturday morning on Airstrip One about 03:10 hours. It was on the ground for maybe fifty minutes and took off again. He wouldn’t or couldn’t say if it was a Malaysia Airlines plane, but what else could it be? He also confirmed that they unloaded cargo and toppled a big crate while taking it out of the hold.”

“That’s it—the radioactive items must have been encased in lead. Otherwise, the security screens at the KL Airport would have found them. When Teller’s men dropped the crate, the lead containment vessel broke. Maybe they didn’t even know what they were handling. With the crate off the pallet, there would be no easy way to move the contents into a container. That explains the twelve-hour delay until Saturday afternoon when Kyaw and I saw the three container rigs on the road. I’m guessing they rebuilt the crate and a bunch of people got sick. Once they determined something was wrong, they trucked sandbags out to Airstrip One to pack around the crate for shielding once it was in the container. Whoever did that work must be in a bad way.

“That’s the other thing we heard from the prisoners Johnson was working on. They think that there was a dread disease on the airplane, because several of their colleagues are dead and others are bedridden.”

“Severe radiation poisoning. Anyone near that crate when they dropped it surely picked up a high dose. Teller was probably exposed, too. He’ll need treatment. Where in Rangoon would you go if you had a potentially fatal illness no one knew how to handle?”

“I have no idea, but the expats use one of two clinics. I’ll send agents to them tomorrow when they open and see if Teller shows up. For all we know, he might be already dead.”

“If he were dead, you wouldn’t have been thrown out of the port or lost your prisoners at Club Avatar,” Nolan said. “He’s still on the scene. Let me know how Travis is doing and call me if anything else happens on your end. I wonder if there was a second plane on the airstrip that night. One that could have been used to fly out a VIP.”

*  *  *  *  *

It was almost half past midnight when Juanilla knocked on the sliding doors that walled the family office off from the master bedroom. “Sir? You have a visitor at the front gate. It’s Millie and she says it’s urgent.”

Nolan stood on the other side of the wooden gate sealing his driveway. Unlocking the pedestrian door, he stepped out into the street. “Yes, Millie, what is it?”

“Aren’t you going to even invite me in?”

“No, I’m not. I’m in the middle of things and need to keep working.”

“I can’t believe that last night you held me in your arms and tonight you won’t even invite me in for coffee.”

“Millie, this isn’t a good time to have this conversation, but since you’re here, we can sit down over there.” They occupied opposite ends of the teak bench used for donning and doffing shoes. Partially mollified, Millie handed him a thick envelope.

“What’s in it?”

“Oh, some bits and pieces on contract pilots and air charter companies. There seems to be only one, at most two, firms that did the flights out of Asia post-9/11 and Jemaah Islamiyah. That’s the group connected to that Indonesia cleric Bashir, who masterminded the Bali bombings. I think you’ll find it of interest.”

“I’m sure I will. I’ll read it tonight,” he said. They sat in silence. He looked at her through new eyes. She was still pretty, but having her over to his home was lighting a stick of dynamite under his marriage.

“Look, Bob. I know we’ve had only a couple of nights together. I’m not asking you to leave your wife. That’s presumptuous on both sides, but after sleeping together, don’t you find it odd that now you don’t want to talk to me at all?”

“I’m happy talking with you. We talked all day today. On the analysis front, I need your help. I also really like you, and would like to spend more time with you. Last night was special.” Nolan’s smile was sincere, her return gaze suspicious. He kept up the charm offensive. “You’re a lovely woman. I don’t know what bad experiences you might have had with Travis—”