The Consignment (32 page)

CHAPTER 42

“Mind if I join you?”

I looked up. Rita sat down opposite me, and I hung my head over my plate, and toyed with my food. Rita had been with Channon, waiting for us, when we were choppered onto the ship. I’d spoken with her briefly when I dropped off a copy of my report, and ever since then, she told me now, she’d been holed up in the Communications Room. She looked around the mess in some surprise. Marines in blue UN berets were passing among the diners, remnants of the civilian evacuees, women and children, about thirty of them, with packed bags by their chairs, waiting for the call to the helipad and the return flight to their homes in Kinshasa. Some looked ready to go, but others were discussing flight schedules between Kinshasa and various European cities. Rita smiled at one or two of the women, then returned her attention to me. She produced the five-page copy of my report from her purse.

I made a face, and she looked apologetic. “I’d put it off if I could, Ned.”

“If I think of something to add, I’ll tell you.”

She placed the report on the table between us and started talking, telling me which of her superiors she wanted me to speak with. At last she paused and waited for my response. I looked up from my plate.

“Rita. Hawkeye is finished.”

“Finished?” She reared back in disbelief. “This is so not finished.”

“Trevanian’s dead.”

“Hawkeye wasn’t about Trevanian.”

I stirred my fork through the cold beans and made no comment.

“It never was. It’s about the materiel. Everyone in the chain.”

I remarked that I didn’t expect the Congolese Minister for Police to hand his daughter over to us anytime soon.

“It wasn’t just Lagundi,” she protested. “What about Rossiter? The Congolese government. Damienenko. Greenbaum—”

“Okay.”

“This is so not finished.”

“Maybe not for you.” I dropped my eyes and concentrated on my cutlery. I was too physically drained and emotionally wrung, I didn’t want a debate, but she went on talking. And as I listened, it occurred to me that what Rita had seen on the streets of Kinshasa had energized her. It was as if her usual diligence and application had received a sharp and unexpected ethical spur. Before, she’d wanted Hawkeye wrapped up because that was her job, but now I detected a more distinctly moral note. She’d seen what the likes of the Haplon weapons were doing in the world, and now she wanted Hawkeye pursued to a successful conclusion—personal prosecutions, a tightening up of export procedures—because she believed that was just and right.

She leaned forward. “I know this isn’t easy for you, Ned. I can’t even imagine what it’s like, what you’re going through right now. But when you gave me this”—she put a hand on my report—“I thought you wanted, you know, to get back into it.”

“Maybe I did.”

“But now you don’t?”

“Now I don’t.”

“You can’t just drop the ball.”

“No one’s dropping the ball.”

“Excuse me?”

“Rita. I’m tired.”

She regarded me a moment. Then frustration got the better of her sympathy. “Well, how tired do you think I was when you hauled me down to the New Jersey docks? And when we were stuck in the
Sebastopol
? I’m not comparing that with what you’ve been through—I’m not crazy—but listen. You are not the only one who wishes this whole damn thing was over.”

I glanced across the mess to where some Marines in UN berets were moving among the civilian evacuees, reading names from a printed list. As their names were called, the women rose and collected their belongings, then led their children out. I faced Rita again.

“You think my report’s trustworthy?”

She gave me a surprised look. Say what?

“Me,” I said. “I’m the guy your people were spying on, remember?”

“Oh, give me a break.”

I put my knife and fork together and pushed aside my plate.

“Don’t be so damn childish,” she said. “If we get into pointing fingers, we could be here all week. There’ve been enough screwups to go around twice since this started, and then some. Not all of them mine.”

I slumped back in my chair. I raised my hands. She studied me a moment, and the aggression seemed to drain out of her. She leaned back.

“I’m sorry, Ned. This really isn’t the right time.”

“No.”

“I’m just so fed up with being one step behind. I guess it’s making me ratty.” When I nodded, she smiled wanly. “I wasn’t asking for your agreement.” In a reciprocal gesture of contrition, I confessed that my jibe about being spied on was cheap and petty. She waved that aside. Then she scooped up my report and returned it to her purse. “We’ll call this a postponement,” she said. She looked around at the departing evacuees and Marines, they swayed as they walked, and Rita wondered aloud if the high seas they’d been talking about up in the Communications Room had arrived. When she turned back to me, I could see she had something to say. Not business.

“Channon said you told your wife about Hawkeye.” When I nodded, she said, “She understood that? That you weren’t an arms salesman?”

“Yeah.”

“And you told her about you and me. She knew that we weren’t—”

“Yeah.”

She lifted her head. “Good,” she said.

I didn’t say anything.

“And Brad knows about Hawkeye?”

“Most of it.”

“He won’t blame you.”

“He doesn’t have to.”

“You’re the same man.”

I turned aside. I didn’t want to talk about it. Not with Rita. Not with anyone.

She said, “It’s changed everything for you, hasn’t it.” When I faced her again, her eyes shone. “It has, hasn’t it. Everything.”

I nodded.

“After my mom died,” she said, “I went kind of loopy. It was my dad who got me through it. He gave me about the only decent advice he’s given me in my whole life.”

“What was that?”

“He told me not to turn my grief into a shrine.”

We looked at each other. Then she stood up, telling me she had to get back to her cabin. I offered to walk her, and we left the mess together.

We walked in silence for a while, then Rita said, “You know, I don’t know if this is presumptuous or not, but if there’s anything I can do.” She gestured vaguely. I thanked her for the thought, but we both knew there was nothing anyone could do. She hugged her purse to her chest as we climbed the stairs to the next deck. She asked about Brad. I told her what the doctors had told me, that the only reason they were keeping him down in the IC unit was to make sure he rested. In a few days they expected him to be walking around.

“Give him these,” she said, reaching into her purse and producing two CDs. They were still in their wrappers, purchased from the shop aboard the carrier. She looked apologetic. “I thought he might appreciate the distraction.”

The thoughtfulness was unexpected, and touching. I asked if maybe she didn’t want to come down and give them to Brad herself.

“Strangers bearing presents and sympathy?” She arched a brow. “I know how that feels. When my mom died, we had half the neighborhood calling. No thanks.” She held the CDs out to me. A thought darted through my mind, she read it on my face. “I’m not trying to be pushy, Ned. If you’d rather I keep them—”

“No.”

“Really?”

I took the CDs. Gangsta rap and heavy metal. Brad was going to loathe them. I thanked her again. We moved down the gangway, swaying on our feet, then finally reached her cabin.

“Something you can do for me,” she said, searching in her purse for her key. “Get Channon to see me before he goes.”

“Goes?”

“Departs. Before he leaves the ship.” She found her key and closed her purse. “He’s flying with the Marines into Kinshasa.”

“Why?” I screwed up my face. “When’s this?”

“He’s the Pentagon’s man on this peacekeeping thing. Seems they needed a senior officer, he’s here, so he’s it, at least till they get someone out from Washington.”

I asked Rita why she couldn’t go see him herself.

“I’ve tried. A million times. Hawkeye’s disappeared clean off his radar. The way things are going,” she remarked dismally, “I’ll have to buy my own ticket to Zug.”

Some evacuees and their Marine escort came along the gangway, we stepped aside and let them file past.

“Zug, Switzerland?” I said.

“Ah-ha.”

The Marine led the evacuees up to the next deck, they were asking if the pitching ship was going to cause problems with the chopper. He told them not to worry, and they disappeared out of sight. Rita put her key in the door. I grabbed her arm.

“What do you have to do in Zug?”

“Aren’t you the guy who just told me Hawkeye was finished?” When I gave her a look, she pulled her arm free. “We’ve traced Trevanian’s late payment.”

“For the Haplon materiel?”

She nodded, smiling now. “We threatened Rossiter with a subpoena if he didn’t give us access to his banking records. We told him we were checking some other deal Haplon did last month. There it was. A transfer of twelve million dollars.”

“You know who it came from?”

She nodded. “Now all we have to do is get the canton of Zug to rewrite its entire statute book so that we can find out who’s behind Biron.”

“Biron,” I said.

“The company that made the payment.”

My head reeled. I dropped my eyes to hide my confusion.

She opened her door, offering to show me the paperwork, all the e-mails that had gone back and forth between her and Customs in New York. When she looked back at me, my head was still bowed. “You okay?” she said, suddenly concerned.

I raised my head slowly. I gestured in the direction of my own cabin, telling her that the ship’s movement was starting to get to me, that maybe I’d come and see the paperwork later, that right then I just needed to lie down. She nodded, sympathetic, and I walked away, numbed.

CHAPTER 43

“Come!” Channon called when I knocked on his cabin door, and I hesitated a second, then went in. He had his back to me. He was in uniform, seated at a small desk top that folded down from the wall. He went on writing as I closed the door. “Just take the bag,” he said without turning. “The rest can stay.” On his bunk was a suitcase, zipped up and buckled. Beside the suitcase, a light blue UN beret. He continued writing, so I picked up the beret and inspected the badge. Olive-leaf garland of peace, wrapped around planet Earth. Finally Channon sensed something amiss, he glanced over his shoulder.

“Ned.” Surprise.

“Am I interrupting?”

“No.” He capped his pen and closed his pad. “No, just running through my diary. I’ve had a tap on the shoulder from home.” He indicated the beret in my hands. By home, he meant Washington. The Pentagon.

“I heard.” When he raised a brow, I said, “Rita told me a couple of hours ago. She cornered me down in the mess.”

“She getting on your case?”

I shook my head, no.

“If she is, I’ll have her taken back to Kinshasa. You don’t have to put up with it, Ned. This isn’t the time for her to be doing her bureaucratic bullshit no-stone-unturned act.”

“She just wants to see Hawkeye through.”

Channon made a face. “Didn’t we all.” He flipped up the desktop and locked it, then he crossed to his bunk and opened the suitcase. I remarked that he made it sound like Hawkeye was over. “It is over,” he said. He slipped his diary into the suitcase. “How’s your son?”

“Did you look at my report?”

He nodded, then paused in thought. At last he faced me. “Why didn’t you tell me Brad was out here in the Congo?”

“It wasn’t relevant to the operation.”

“Reading between the lines of your report, I’d have to say that wasn’t strictly true.” He smiled, but there was no warmth in it.

“I didn’t ask to be shipped out here.”

“No. But once we’d gotten you out of jail, you could have boarded the Navy chopper, like I told you.”

“The Haplon materiel was still out there.”

“So was Brad.”

I didn’t say anything.

He pulled the straps tight on the suitcase and rebuckled it. “You make some pretty big assumptions about Trevanian too,” he remarked.

“He killed Dimitri.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“He did it.”

“Motive?”

“He said Dimitri threatened him.”

“With what?”

“He didn’t say.”

Channon made a face. He told me that did not sound like evidence.

“Trevanian wasn’t up for a jury trial.”

“Well, you made sure of that, Ned, didn’t you. You made real sure of that.” I cocked my head. He grimaced. “Without the evidence Trevanian could have given us, we’re nowhere. You wonder why I’m talking like Hawkeye’s over. It’s over because Trevanian’s dead.”

“You want me to feel sorry for that?”

He raised a hand. “I’m just telling you why Hawkeye’s over.”

I studied him closely. Even knowing what I did, I couldn’t detect one single sign that he was being anything but straight with me. I turned his UN beret through my hands, then tossed it on the bunk by his holstered pistol. I asked him what I should do with the beacon, the one I’d retrieved from the container at the airport.

He shrugged. “Hit it with a hammer. Drop it over the side.”

I reached into my pocket and took it out. I held it up between my thumb and forefinger, and he stared at it a moment, then held out his hand.

“Here. I’ll have it tested, see what went wrong.”

“I already had it tested.”

He looked at me. He didn’t speak.

“I took it along to the engineers in Communications and Signals. They opened it up. Checked out the electronics. They even got another carrier up in the North Atlantic to see if it could pick up the beacon’s signal. Guess what.”

He squinted. “It’s working?”

I nodded.

“Jesus Christ.” He laughed grimly. “Now it works.”

“It’s never stopped working. Not since the day I picked it up from the DIA engineers.”

“Bullshit.”

“Every pulse this thing pumps out is recorded inside it. According to the engineers upstairs, it’s been working like a charm.”

He threw up a hand. “What do they know? They weren’t there when the signals weren’t coming through. They weren’t. I was.”

“Were you, Alex?”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

I could drag it out, or I could just say it. I’d had enough of the horsing around so I just said it. “I know who paid for the Haplon materiel.”

“Trevanian.”

“Don’t fuck me around, Alex.” His eyes narrowed. “Biron paid,” I said. “Biron, registered in Zug, Switzerland.” He bowed his head, one hand covered his eyes. “As I recall, Biron was set up by the DIA to fund Hawkeye.” Channon stepped across to his bunk and sat down. Now both hands covered his face. “God,” I said. “God, I could fucking kill you.” His hands fell, he stared at his feet. “You were never going to tell me, were you. You were just going to close the book on Hawkeye, let me go on believing the whole disaster was my doing.”

He look up angrily. “Well, whose fault do you think it was? Who asked you to get yourself shipped out here? Who asked you to go jerking around the country in the middle of a goddamn coup?”

“My wife’s dead. Don’t play games with me.”

“That had nothing to do with Hawkeye.”

“That had plenty to do with Hawkeye. She was out here—Brad was out here—because of me. Because of what I’ve been doing with the past two years of my life. And what I’ve been doing is Hawkeye. Only now I’m not so sure I know what that is.”

“Who told you about Biron?”

“Rita.”

“Holy shit.”

“All she’s got’s the name. She doesn’t know Biron’s a DIA front. Not yet.”

He looked up. “I’m assuming that’s not a threat.”

“You’re assuming wrong. You tell me what Hawkeye was really about, or I’ll blow the goddamn whistle loud and strong. When Customs finds out Biron belongs to the DIA, they’re not going to let it go. Before it’s over, you’ll be in Washington giving sworn testimony to a Senate commission. It’ll be Iran-Contra all over again, only this time the star won’t be Ollie North, it’ll be you.” The color drained from Channon’s face. “You tell me what was going on with Hawkeye,” I said, “or you’re history.”

We eyeballed each other. At last he turned aside and swore.

I pointed. “You lied to me.”

He got up, turned his back on me, and rested his arms on the top bunk. He shook his head.

“You lied to me for two fucking years.”

“Who was it dreamed Hawkeye up, me or you?” he said.

“I dreamed up a surveillance operation.”

“Yeah,” he said bitterly, turning on me. “Then you convinced me to bring Dimitri on board. Dimitri, your old buddy. Action man from Delta Force.”

“Dimitri’s not the issue.”

“He’s very much the goddamn issue. If it wasn’t for Dimitri, do you think we’d be standing here? We’d be sitting on our butts at home, supervising a surveillance operation like we planned.” Channon saw that he’d lost me. He turned left and right, but there was no way out for him. “Look,” he said finally, spreading his hands. “Dimitri didn’t come to us clean.”

“He wasn’t gambling.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He took a breath, then blew. “He wasn’t working for us. Even after I signed him up for Hawkeye, he wasn’t answering to me.” I squinted. Say what? “He was already signed up elsewhere,” said Channon.

“He’d left Delta.”

“Sure, he’d left Delta. He’d left Delta and joined the fucking CIA.” When I turned my head in bewildered disbelief, Channon went on, “Oh yes he had. When you tried to recruit him, he passed your offer up the CIA’s chain of command. Word came back to him that he should take the job with us, so he did. From that point on, Hawkeye was compromised. It wasn’t strictly a surveillance operation anymore.”

I looked at him askance. “Crap,” I said. I said the CIA didn’t operate on U.S. territory.

“Right after 9/11 they did. Probably still do.” He nodded his head, slow but firm. My heart sank. I recalled now what Dimitri had told me that summer before 9/11. That he’d offered his services to the CIA. I hadn’t even come close to guessing that they’d actually accepted his offer. Dimitri hadn’t dropped so much as a whisper.

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I didn’t know myself,” he said. “For the first year, he seemed to be doing the job just like you. Regular contact with Durranti at Customs, monthly reports to me. Then one day Durranti comes knocking at my door. She’s got it into her head that Dimitri’s not giving her the full picture on some deal he’s put through at Fettners. When I confronted Dimitri, he denied it. I dropped it, but she kept on at him about it. He finally told his CIA superiors, next thing I’m called into a meeting with some jackass from the Central Africa desk at the CIA.” I made a sound. “These are the guys he’s been reporting to all along,” Channon said in disgust. “That’s how I found out what the bastard was up to.”

I stayed silent. I could hardly take in what I was hearing.

“I hit the fucking roof,” said Channon. “Much fucking good it did me. Turned out they’d already had Dimitri shepherd a deal through the export system. Nothing major. Ordnance. Resupply of friendlies out in Africa. Middleman, Jack Trevanian.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It was taken out of my hands. The big brass from both agencies, DIA and CIA, they butted heads for a while, then they cut a deal. Dimitri stayed. I was ordered to let Hawkeye run.”

I leaned back against the cabin door. It felt like I’d been sapped.

“By the time he put the second deal through,” Channon said, “we were too far down the line to turn back.”

“Second deal?”

“You’re not cleared.”

I looked at him. He couldn’t face me, he dropped onto his bunk and buried his head in his hands. I asked him again, and he lowered his hands.

“Second deal, same operation. More Fettners materiel. It went through Trevanian to the Congolese army under a Nigerian End User Certificate. Bigger than the first shipment, enough for training, but not enough to launch a strike.”

I recalled the two payments made into Dimitri’s daughters’ trust fund. One the year before, then one in the spring. I asked Channon when the deals had taken place.

Last November, he told me. The second one in April. “Then in August I got that call from Dimitri telling me to meet him in L.A. Him and his friends from Internal Revenue. He was in debt up to here.” Channon raised a hand over his head. “It was pretty clear we had a problem. The CIA didn’t want Dimitri involved in deal three. They wanted him cut out.”

“Cut out,” I said.

Channon caught my tone, he screwed up his face. “Christ, not that. He was in a financial mess, no one trusted him. But he knew there was a third and final deal coming up. He got fixated on it, like if he just got that right, everything would come good for him.”

I turned that over. I said, “So you switched deal three to Haplon. It was meant to be Fettners’ order, but you switched it to Haplon.”

Channon nodded. “The Congolese soldiers had been trained by Trevanian’s men on the Fettners weapons. The Haplon materiel was the only stuff compatible.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

He got up, agitated. “You were Dimitri’s friend, for chrissake. And you didn’t need to know anyway. Trevanian had opened up a direct line to Rossiter. If Rossiter could have just shepherded the deal through quietly, that would have been it. I’m not saying I liked it, Ned. All I wanted, frankly, was to get it over with, then shut Hawkeye down. The whole operation had turned into a big fucking mess. Then Lagundi insisted on going out to Springfield. Up jumps Dimitri like some demented jack-in-a-box.”

“So Trevanian shot him dead.”

Channon’s glance slid away. “Dimitri threatened him. That’s what I was told.”

“You already knew Dimitri was dead when I called you that day. You already knew Trevanian had killed him.”

“No I didn’t. I got off the phone from you and called the Central Africa ringmaster at the CIA. I floated the idea that maybe Trevanian was responsible, and I was advised to drop it. Death by misadventure, that’s the official line.”

“Unofficially?”

He chewed his lip. “Unofficially, Dimitri made some stupid threat. Depending who you listen to, either Trevanian took things into his own hands, or he called and reported the threat up the line, then got told what to do.”

“He used Lagundi’s gun.”

“He must have,” Channon agreed. “That threw me too.”

I had a flashback to that day at Springfield. Dimitri in front of me, hands braced on the table, leaning forward with a wild look in his eye. My order, he’d said. The order that he was counting on. For the financial kickback that would get him out of a deep financial hole. For the chance to salvage his reputation with the Agency. The order he needed to resurrect his life. Looking back, it seemed only too likely now that Dimitri would have gone on to threaten Trevanian. Dimitri had pushed his luck one final time, and lost everything.

“So the Haplon deal,” I said. “Start to finish, it wasn’t anything to do with surveillance. It was us rearming the Congolese government. That’s what we were doing all along. Giving them the firepower to take out the rebels.”

“The country was turning into a nightmare. A failed state in the heart of Africa. Another goddamn Afghanistan.”

“So we sent them more guns?”

“I didn’t dream up the policy.”

“You implemented it, Alex. You implemented it by using me.”

“Using you? I did everything I could to keep you out of it. If you hadn’t gotten on board the damn
Sebastopol
—”

“You could have closed Hawkeye down.”

“You begged me not to. Remember?”

I didn’t buy that. I turned it over. “You needed me to keep you informed of what was happening with the deal. You didn’t trust Trevanian, not after Springfield, you needed him watched. That’s what I was doing.”

Channon turned away from me. He picked up the UN beret and turned it through his hands. “After Springfield, there was a lot of pressure. When Lagundi started screwing around with those fucking diamonds, just trying to piece together what was happening was hard enough. She was telling her father and his cronies back in the Congo that Trevanian had the diamonds. Trevanian was telling us that she had them. Rossiter started threatening to recall the Haplon materiel. Meanwhile, the rebels were getting ready to strike Kinshasa. The Haplon materiel had to sail.”