Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (52 page)

It wasn’t until he went to switch the AK from his left to his right hand that he noticed blood flowing from a missing thumb and index finger. He decided to sit down for a while and bandage his hand.

As Teller contemplated his missing digits, the evacuation flight from Mae Sot came in two hundred feet above the runway. Charlie Meursault knew more about the music of hot landing zones than anyone still alive in this theater. The Pilatus Porter parked in the middle of the runway sang a melancholy song, the billowing smoke off the runway to the southwest added a plaintive second verse, while the upended burning vehicle and scattered bodies on the runway shouted the chorus.

Meursault pulled up on the stick, banked hard and headed back up the airstrip for another pass, this time tilting the wings to take a photo of the burning Land Rover. Matthews had promised him full payment so long as he flew over the airport at least once. He’d ticked that box, and now it was time to go home and smoke a bowl of opium. In his French-Vietnamese accented English, Meursault shouted into the wind, “Farewell, Robin Teller! I never liked you!” He waggled his wings and dipped low to evade any ground fire. Teller sat numbly as his putative rescuer flew off and disappeared into a low cloud to the northeast.

*  *  *  *  *

Michaels and Gerard arrived at the runway in time to see Meursault’s Piper Cherokee sail back toward Thailand. Michaels headed to the Portis to get it moving. Gerard worked his way to the Land Rover, using his field glasses to look for survivors other than the old white man seated in the runway. Lazum and the M60 had been taken out in one shot from two hundred fifty yards and change. The old man hadn’t moved other than to wrap a rag around his right hand. But Gerard also saw the AK by his side and the way in which Teller—it had to be Teller—was pretending he didn’t see him on the periphery. There was also an RPG launcher on the deck.

A grenade exploded in the car fire, showering the runway with smoking automotive debris. Gerard threw himself down at the flash of the blast, shock wave and shrapnel passing overhead. He picked himself up and used his binoculars to confirm that Teller wasn’t moving. Circling around to the prone figure from the rear, he kicked the AK away before nudging the blood-spattered torso with his boot. Teller didn’t make a sound, but the frothy blood bubbles on his lips moved. Hot damn! Next to Teller lay a satphone with a jagged piece of metal embedded in the screen. Time to pull out the medical kit and go to work.

*  *  *  *  *

Constantine braced for Burns’s reaction now that he’d informed him of Agent Patrick Long’s murder outside Nolan’s bungalow.

“Goddamnit! I gave a direct order that Nolan was not to be interfered with in any fashion.
Any
fashion! Not only did you go behind my back and tell Doyle to bug his hotel room, you managed to get one of our men killed!”

“I’m sorry, sir. My resignation letter is in your inbox.” Constantine’s two priorities in life were the Lord Jesus Christ and the Agency. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth in silent prayer.

“After this fucking fiasco is over will be the time to speak of resignations. Right now, I need to know where Nolan is!”

“We’ve tracked him to the Colombo Racquets Club. He seems to have taken up with a China passport holder we’re still unable to identify. They’re staying in adjacent rooms overlooking the ocean.” Constantine was rambling.

“I have news on that front. We’ve just learned that the MSS director and his protégé, the deputy head of Counter Intel lost their jobs on Tuesday. The newest Politburo Standing Committee member, Yi Xiubao, was keen to show that he was in charge. Director Liu is under house arrest, while his number two was demoted and packed off to Singapore. We’ve not laid eyes on her. It just occurred to my team that maybe this MSS officer Yu Kaili paired up with Nolan.”

“Nolan’s latest girlfriend is senior in the MSS?”

“Could be. Fly up to Tokyo tomorrow morning. Matthews is coming from Rangoon, as is this DEA character Hecker and his by-amateurs, for-amateurs boss. I want you to sit in on the meeting. Maybe if we finally start working together, we can figure out what in the hell’s going on.”

 “Yes, sir. Thank you, Director Burns.”

“And here’s one other thing. Pass along to Doyle directly that she should have a team ready at the embassy from 08:00 hours onward tomorrow to wait for Watermen and Nolan. It seems the CIA is cooperating with another intelligence service, and they’ve offered to produce those two in return for other considerations. DCI Perkins gave me that news not forty-five minutes ago. That’s why we have to leave Nolan alone.
It’s not your play to bring him in.
” Burns hung up without awaiting a reply.

Constantine sat stoically in his office. He’d been on the verge of canceling the Internal Affairs investigation into Nolan’s MH370 allegations, but now Burns had dropped the bombshell that Watermen and Nolan were to be handed to the CIA by another intelligence organization. Presumably it was the FSB, who already had Watermen and were likely to grab Nolan when he came to trade. So the Russians were giftwrapping Watermen and Nolan in return for . . . what, exactly?

This didn’t smell right. He needed more facts on MH370 before he was satisfied that Nolan was wrong. He already had National Intelligence Director Morris’s sign-off, so at least on this count his backside was covered.

*  *  *  *  *

They agreed that, if reinforcements showed up, Gerard would finish off Teller and head to the plane while Michaels covered him. Michaels was jogging toward the PC-6 when he noticed the figure approaching from the southwestern end of the runway. He put the SCAR’s scope to his eye and saw an elderly Caucasian alternatively walking and jogging. He appeared to be unarmed. Gerard needed to stop the old man’s progress before he could get close enough to damage the plane.

Mullen knew his chances of dying of old age rather than on this airstrip depended on Teller having lost the last gunfight. The fellow holding the weapon on him and walking down the runway was from the other side. His desert camouflage and size marked him as a foreigner, probably an American soldier. But if he and Teller were the good guys, why weren’t the other in-country troops on their side? This was all very muddled. Mullen was tired, thirsty and had gashed his shin climbing over the knocked-down fence surrounding the airfield. He stopped walking to ensure he had enough wind to talk once the soldier came into earshot. It also seemed like a good time to put his hands on his head.

*  *  *  *  *

Coulter had no problem picking out Tony Johnson in the sparsely populated dining room. He was the only 6’2”, deeply tanned, crew-cut, lantern-jawed man wearing dark mirrored wraparounds. As Coulter walked up, Johnson stood up, removed his shades and extended a hand in greeting.

Johnson couldn’t help but think that Frank Coulter should be bigger. Age hadn’t stooped him. He had been a runt his whole life. Ramrod-straight despite being in his mid-seventies, Johnson wasn’t fooled by that “ah, shucks” down-home demeanor. In his seventeen years in the military and affiliates, Johnson had bounced back and forth between the Army and the Spooks. Coulter was one of those types everyone had a story about, from his early days serving as a SEAL Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin, to fighting against Che’ Guevara on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in the Congo, to graduating from Harvard Business School before resuming his Agency career. And here he was, all 5’7” with a Huckleberry Hound look. In short order they both opted for the barramundi and chips. Johnson had another beer while Coulter ordered black coffee.

Coulter asked about Johnson’s family (
divorced, no kids and no current attachments
), and activities when he wasn’t training Afghan Special Forces and conducting the odd interrogation (
not much
). Johnson, for his part, didn’t get much out of Coulter other than he was frustrated in retirement, lived on a mountaintop sixty miles outside Redding, California, and from a second marriage had a young son whom he idolized. After the dining room cleared out, their conversation turned to work.

“What do you have for me?” Johnson asked.

“A sixty-something-year-old Iranian nuclear weapons research scientist. Western educated and good English. He has been well trained in resistance techniques, so our ex-ASIS hosts haven’t been able to get anything out of him since Monday afternoon. I told them to limit him to three hours sleep out of every twenty-four. To date he’s on a hunger strike. I just finished a short call with the fellow running the operation. He has log books and interrogators’ notes, plus video of the sessions so far.”

“Have they tried any enhanced techniques?”

“Not to my knowledge. Wilbur’s men aren’t very scientific. They were pleased to learn that you were available. I understand you didn’t come from Afghanistan, but from Burma. What happened up there?”

“I was in Rangoon. That was some crazy shit yesterday, with a gunship lighting up a residential neighborhood. Friends of the bastards I was interrogating tried to break them out. We erased that bunch, but the big boss was still on the loose as of yesterday morning when I flew out.”

“Sounds like a story for another day. What do you need to encourage the scientist to cooperate?”

“How presentable does he have to be when we’re done with him?”

“Tomorrow morning we’re flying two hours to the Mitchell Plateau and landing on an abandoned WWII runway. From there, a jet helicopter flies us another ten minutes to the world’s most remote fishing camp. It’s still the wet season, so there aren’t any fishermen around. The nearest town is over two hundred miles away. There aren’t even any Aboriginals wandering around out there. As the scientist is presumed dead, it doesn’t really matter how he looks when you’re finished. He’s crab bait either way, but the information he possesses is extremely time-sensitive.”

Johnson noted that Coulter’s accent had nearly disappeared now that he wasn’t in character. The interrogator said, “I’ll take a straightforward approach and aim for quick results. What’s the payload of the airplane?”

“Just us, three hundred fifty pounds of victuals to keep the team fueled, and another fifty pounds allowance for whatever you buy locally.”

“Alert the pilot that we won’t fly tomorrow morning until the local hardware store opens.”

“I think we can arrange that.” Coulter wondered where the Agency found these types. Still, Johnson’s track record was second to none.

*  *  *  *  *

Gonzalez’s forged photo was a minor masterpiece. He’d matched the details down to finding a brown K-Line box to shoot inside, even though the picture didn’t even show the container’s exterior. Hecker liked the way he’d used natural light—arranging the box north-by-northwest, just like the original out at Thilawa Port. Hecker could see the top half of a crate poking over stacked sandbags, and a Malaysia Airlines blue-and-red angel fish on a white background partly obscured in the shadows.

“You take care of the time and date stamp?” Hecker asked Gonzalez, already knowing the answer.

“Of course, but we’ll have to convert my old phone to look like it’s his. I’ll do a factory reset on my Blackberry. Where’s Travis now?”

“Delayed by a day in Singapore. Flying out tomorrow to Hawaii. If you can finish the work by tonight I’ll drop the phone off while in transit in Singapore.”

“I’ll call and alert him. I’ll also need a couple of passwords so I can sync my old Blackberry to his contacts and calendar, and download and log onto his apps. For good measure, you need to get Travis’s real phone off him and take it to the beach.”

“The beach? Why?”

“Oh, a little snorkeling or scuba diving. That sort of thing,” Gonzalez said.

“Will do. Find out what’s happening at Mong Hsat. Call Zaw and see if he can raise the pilots on the radio. I need all the evidence I can get ahead of Friday night’s Tokyo meeting. If I still have a job, I’ll be back on Saturday evening.”

Gonzalez whistled. “It can’t be that serious.”

“Oh, but it is. We really need to produce Robin Teller alive. That’s the one rabbit that saves my ass and Bob’s.”

*  *  *  *  *

Michaels finished patting Mullen down. “What’s your name, and what are you doing here?” he asked.

“My name’s Vaughan Lee. I was on that Malaysia Airlines flight. I’m an ex-commercial airplane pilot. I survived a cabin depressurization engineered by the hijackers by deploying an oxygen mask that ran off a bottle in an overhead bin up in the front of business class. When the plane landed in Burma, they were surprised to find anyone alive in the back. I told them I was certified to fly jets, prop planes and helicopters, so they decided to keep me alive. I think they wanted me to pilot your plane to take Teller to Thailand for radiation poisoning treatment.”

“Whoa, whoa! You’ve lost me. Look, we have to get the hell out of here before dark. It’s one hundred and fifty yards to that plane. You and I need to double-time it over there. Can you walk all right?

“Walk, pshaw! I’ll run
to that plane just as soon as you tell me that Teller is dead.”

“Near ’nuf as far as I can tell, though my partner is doing his best to plug the bigger holes. Let’s get moving, Mr. Lee.”

While Vaughan Lee emptied a canteen, Michaels dealt with an insurrection. Sai was so distraught at the news of Lazum’s death that he’d refused to help carry the wounded Teller to the plane. In disgust, Michaels gave Sai a tarp, saying, “Go put the pieces of your friend in this.” Michaels was barely able—just short of pulling a weapon—to convince the copilot Hpan to accompany him back to where Teller was lying inert on the pavement among the corpses, weaponry and Land Rover pieces.

Collecting Mullen and cockpit negotiations couldn’t have taken ten minutes. Michaels was surprised to look up only to see a big truck pulled up next to Teller, with a dozen more soldiers wearing yet another funky uniform arrayed in battle formation. Gerard had retreated at the truck’s approach and stood with hands outstretched maybe fifty yards away, weapon slung as he stepped steadily backwards down the runway toward the Porter.