Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (38 page)

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CHAPTER THIRTY

ON THE RUN

WEDNESDAY NIGHT, MARCH 12, SINGAPORE

Nolan booted up his compromised home PC while he rummaged through the family safe, bundling together extra passports and spare credit cards. Their absence would work as a mild diversion. While he couldn’t safely use any of them, he could sell them through an internet pirate site with any fraudulent use creating false trails. He powered up the spare burner from the safe. Good: almost a full battery.

He figured his new work laptop to be the last unbugged device he owned. It could—and would—be disabled remotely at any time. On aching thighs, he squatted and sat on the floor under the built-in desk in his home office. If he was on candid camera, the watchers would take this as a signal to pounce. He logged into the Tor email account he and godson Mark used. Nothing from Watermen, but there was an email from Sergei with the subject line “Feet wet”—the signal that Nolan’s message had reached Watermen. Nolan completed the encryption and authentication sequences that transferred another ten Bitcoin of US taxpayers’ funds into Sergei’s outstretched palm before deleting the correspondence. As relieved as he was that Sergei had seen Godson, the message brought to the fore the Joanie/Mei Ling versus Watermen dilemma.

His cell buzzed and he answered, but remained mute. On the line a husky Asian female voice greeted him with, “Hello? Is this Bob? Hi, Bob. It’s Mimi Chan.”

*  *  *  *  *

Millie sat in her cubicle and forwarded the email to Nolan. Frank Coulter was flying from San Francisco through Sydney and on to Darwin, before ending up somewhere called Kununurra in the outback of Western Australia. Her internet connection died as soon as she clicked “send.” Seconds later, two security types were standing behind her chair.

“Millicent Mukherjee?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Gerald Flynn, head of security. This is Agent Walker. Please leave everything in place and make certain your desk and cupboards are unlocked. Hand me your access token and cell phone. Come with me. Director Constantine needs to see you in his office right away.”

This wasn’t good. Agent Walker was already in her chair, scrolling through the inbox.

As she walked away, a chorus of whispers rippled through the bullpen.

*  *  *  *  *

You played the hand you were dealt, and he now held the China card. Cameras be damned; he fetched the three fishing lures secreting the microSD cards. Two went into his pants pocket. Nolan was grateful that he’d had the foresight to put on plastic hook covers. He fished the minuscule memory sliver out of the third lure and encased it in two tiny re-sealable plastic bags commonly used by gem traders.

Logging on to the Agency laptop one last time, he wrote a short email to his family. Maybe only Bert would ever read it. What else could he write other than he had found out the truth about MH370 and the CIA was pursuing him as a criminal as a result? He closed with
I will help when I can, but I’m afraid you can’t rely on me for much right now. Love you guys
. Frustration welled within him at the impotence of that pathetic signoff. He vowed to do better.

Nolan scanned the Agency inbox. Still no interrogation transcript from Hecker. That was too much to ask for from a man who might have a career after today. Millie’s email popped onto the screen and received a ten-second scan.
Australia
?
What in the hell was Coulter doing in a flyspeck like Kununurra? He would have understood if he had headed to Perth where the MH370 search team was headquartered. Kununurra was well inland and nowhere near the offices of CIA sister agency ASIS or even FBI-like ASIO. Kununurra sat at the edge of the Martian landscape that was the Kimberley, so it wasn’t an interagency golf outing that had brought Coulter across the Pacific. What was he up to?

Nolan unplugged the one-terabyte portable drive taped to the back of the laser printer nestled in a bookshelf cubicle. He had a customized USB cable and cloaked software. Short of pulling the printer out of its cubbyhole, there was no way of knowing he was running a spare backup disk drive and a laser printer off a single USB port. He dropped the drive into his travel backpack. The home office PC was next to be decommissioned. Opening the metal CPU cabinet with care, he removed the hard drive module. He did the same thing with the Agency notebook, tiny screws slowing him down as he scrambled to take the Dell apart. Under the bathroom sink, he found the quart container of muriatic acid kept for such an eventuality. He opened the bathroom windows wide, dampened his handkerchief and slapped it across his nose and mouth. Into the sink went both hard drives, side by side. He poured acid over the casings until they were fully submerged, fumes burning his eyes. Nolan backed out of the bathroom, closed the door behind him and gasped for air.

He pulled the SIM card and battery from his cell phone and threw a Hawaiian shirt, clean tee shirt, underwear and socks into the backpack. As an afterthought, he added a business class toiletry bag. It was show time.

*  *  *  *  *

Flynn frogmarched Millie into Constantine’s office, where Melissa and two preppie lawyers Millie didn’t know stood at the COS’s desk. Constantine glowered at her. “On whose authority did you use Nolan’s credentials to access
Top Secret/SCI
databases?”

“No one’s, sir. Other than his.”

Melissa said, “So Nolan gave you orders to conduct these searches and shared his passwords? What about the biometrics?”

“The biometrics weren’t yet activated on his new laptop. He ordered me to do the searches. I wouldn’t have even thought to look into thirty-year-old files. Bob’s been chasing ghosts.”

“I thought you were Nolan’s biggest fan,” Melissa said.

“I was until I found out earlier today that he’s a traitor.”

*  *  *  *  *

He padded downstairs into the kitchen. The maid was out back hosing down the tiles. He looked in drawers until he found the plastic wrap, which he folded several times around the tiny plastic bags holding the microSD card. He placed the wrapped card, no bigger than a pants button, on the sticky side of a square of duct tape. Next he pasted his portable pension plan on the inside of a biking water bottle near the top, where the mouth widened slightly. He smoothed down the edges to ensure it was watertight.

“Juanilla, can you come in here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m going for a ride, but you are not to tell anyone that I took the bike.
Do you understand?
”

Sir looked about as threatening as a dead sheep. This was probably to do with the voluptuous Indian gal he had taken to bed two nights ago. “Yes, sir.” She handed him his cycling gloves and helmet from the countertop where they’d been airing.

“I need you to do one more thing for me. Don’t ask why; just do it. Unlock the front door. Go up to my office, and count slowly to sixty. Then I want you to scream as loudly as you can, five times in a row. And stay in the bedroom. Some men will come upstairs and ask you questions. Tell them I left, but don’t say a word about the bicycle. Tell them you don’t know where I went.”

“Sir?”

“Go upstairs, Juanilla, and scream. Scream if you ever want to see Ma’am or me alive again.
Scream as if our lives depended on it
.”

Maybe this wasn’t about Sir’s new girlfriend after all. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Remember to count to sixty first.” He shouldered his backpack and put on the helmet and gloves. He walked out the kitchen door and slipped on the soapy tiles, nearly falling. He took his bike down from its hanger in the eaves and slotted the water bottle into the bracket. With effort he was able to lay the bike along the top of the wall that separated his house from that damned storm drain he’d crawled up and down twice before. He scrambled and clawed his way over, then wheeled the bike down the drain a few houses until he found the same wall he’d used on Monday for his escape on foot. He didn’t make a racket, and better yet, no one was looking out the window at the funny white man with a mountain bike.

Nearby, someone began screaming bloody murder.

*  *  *  *  *

“Nolan has a copy of the NSA files Watermen stole?” Even Constantine was surprised.

“He told me today at lunch that he was keeping them safe for Mark Watermen. I was going to tell you. I wanted to finish researching Frank Coulter’s whereabouts first, so Nolan wouldn’t punish me in case we didn’t meet or you didn’t believe me.”

Lying little bitch, thought Flynn. “Chief, I’ve seen the transcript of their lunchtime cafeteria conversation. There’s no mention of NSA or Watermen.”

“He told me on the walk to the cafeteria.” Millie looked imploringly first to Flynn, who was having none of it, and then to Constantine.

Turning to Shoenstein, Constantine asked, “Do we now have enough for a good arrest?” The former Columbia Law School salutatorian nodded.

“Good.” Turning toward Flynn, Constantine said, “Call the surveillance team and detain Nolan at his home. Then get the ISD over there for the formalities.” Flynn picked up Constantine’s desk handset and dialed.

Constantine also wasn’t buying Millie’s story. “Maury, please advise Ms. Mukherjee of her rights. We’ll need to interview her more formally. Maybe she’ll have better luck on the polygraph than those two Russians did this morning.”

Millie felt nauseated. Her career was over and Bob headed to jail. Why had she said that?

Flynn put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Dick, they’re already in Nolan’s house. They heard screaming from the helper. He’s gone. His home office is a mess, and the laptop and home PC hard drives are sitting in a sink full of acid.”

“Damnation! Put out a domestic arrest order for Nolan via the Singapore Police. Alert the Terrorist Screening Center that he’s a priority arrest and add him to Secure Flight’s no-go list as well. Get all available field agents on the street. And I want copies of all his calls from whenever the taps started. Do we have any video footage?”

“No, Collins only wired it for audio and data. Don’t worry, we’ll get him. We should have a two-mile radius cordon up within ten minutes. I’ll have the police alert the cab companies, too,” Flynn said.

Millie’s stomach knotted into a softball. She groaned and clutched her abdomen, rocking in place on her chair. Flynn caught Constantine’s eye. “You should read the lunchtime printout. Nolan sounds as if he has hard evidence of current or former CIA involvement in the MH370 mess. You know Compliance has a copy of the transcripts, but I doubt they’ve read anything yet or else you’d have heard from them.”

Constantine turned to his PC and checked his email. Looking up, he said, “Nothing here.” Millie was still clutching her stomach and grimacing. Shoenstein looked on in discomfort, waiting for Constantine to act.

“Go to Compliance and pull the hard copy out of the tray if it’s still there,” ordered Constantine. Shoenstein winced and turned away. Millie had straightened up, her jaw clenched tight. The room fell silent.

*  *  *  *  *

Around the front of the neighbor’s house, he unlatched the wrought iron driveway gate, exited and re-latched it without alerting either man or beast. It was now fully dark. Nolan might have been pushing fifty-five, but he was deceptively fast on a bicycle given his mountain biking forays over Singapore’s mean streets and the hilly jungle park within a few miles of home. He figured Juanilla would keep his secret for five minutes at most. He started pedaling as hard as he could and within five minutes he was in the near-deserted city campus of the National University of Singapore. Another five minutes of uphill pedaling took him onto Nassim Road. Many foreign embassies, including Russia’s, were on this quiet, moneyed street. If the watchers were sufficiently on the ball, their surveillance cameras would pick him out. Although unlikely, he kept his head down and continued to ride hard.

Ten minutes later he arrived at Orchard Towers, hooker bar central. From the basement to the fourth floor, he knew every nightspot; he’d had many a beer and a few fondles during the thirty months since the Joanie-imposed sex embargo post-Melissa. While a couple of the girls might know him on sight, at 7:30 p.m., the hostesses who could pick him out of an ID parade were still at home putting on their makeup. The top-drawer whores didn’t come to work before nine. Their businessmen clientele needed to wine and dine before they wooed and screwed. He chained the bike to a railing in the darkest area abutting the parking lot.

Climbing the back stairs two at a time, he was breathing heavily when he arrived at the fifth floor. This was above the popular fourth-floor demarcation line for debauchery. Fifth-floor office tenants included importers, marketing agents, the occasional property manager and a few two-man accountancy practices. The blue steel door with a peephole and an automated security lock at the end of the hall was what held his fascination: the illegal Paradise Alley, the only on-premises brothel in Orchard Towers. He’d visited here half a dozen times since the marital ice age started. How it hid in plain sight had always been a puzzle. He rapped his knuckles hard twice, paused for a full two count and repeated the sequence. Linda Leong, the mama-san, pulled open the door.

“Mr. Gladstone! Do come in. May I offer you some company, or would you like to freshen up first?” While over forty, she sported a voluptuous figure thanks to diet and twice-weekly expensive electro-shock treatments. Nolan could see how she might still command six hundred Singapore dollars a night when the standard rate was four hundred. “Lickin’ Linda” possessed the looks, conversational ability and performance-enhancing sexual techniques that fifty-year-old married men craved.

“Were you able to buy those things I asked for?” he asked.

“Of course. They’re in your room along with the change. Would you like a girl to keep you company?