The Last Spymaster (30 page)

The geography of love was mysterious and bewitching—until betrayed. As she thought about that in the Milan terminal, she forced her attention back to the crowds. A babel of languages filled the air. Boarding announcements sounded from the airport’s speakers. She stopped at a currency-exchange booth to trade her euros and Swiss francs for dollars.

But as she walked off, her shoulders tightened. She had noticed abrupt movement to the side and behind. It was a man bending over to tie his shoelaces. He had been just slow enough for an experienced operative to make him.

She pretended to peer into the window of a Dufry store as he straightened up. Although handsome in a rough-hewn sort of way, he exuded a characterlessness that discouraged anyone from looking twice. Perhaps thirty years old, he wore dark pants, a knit shirt, and a loose sports jacket. There was a muted bulge under his left arm.

He had not flown in with her, nor did she recognize him from anywhere else. She stepped into a café and asked for a table. The problem was serious—if he were tailing her, that meant the CIA or the BND or both would be waiting for her at Dulles. As she turned to be seated, she glanced back at the café’s entryway, hoping she was wrong. Hoping he had continued down the concourse. Her hands were suddenly sweaty. There was someone else asking for a table—the man.

Outside Herndon, Virginia

It was the last few lonely hours before dawn, and the night felt like a black abyss. Following Ben’s directions, Elaine drove the Jag around his big stone house, her headlamps off. Ben had deactivated the outside floodlights while they were outdoors, and darkness cloaked the car.

At last she saw him, waiting alertly beside the smaller of two stone-and
wood garages, Browning in hand, a silhouette visible only because of starlight. Houri circled him, then paced toward the house, her long nose raised, sniffing suspiciously. Elaine parked inside the garage, grabbed her SIG Sauer, and stepped out. She surveyed the drive and trees as she joined Ben.

He closed the garage door. “While we’re here, I want to show you an escape route. With luck, you won’t need it.” He led her around to the rear, where he described the system he had invented.

As they walked back along the drive, she asked curiously, “Why have you been helping Jay?”

“A lot of reasons. One is that I owe him a large debt.” He turned over his wrist. In the faint light, the scar he had told her in prison was the result of a pipe cut looked even uglier. He held up the backs of both arms. Welted scars indicating deep wounds began at his elbows and vanished up under the sleeves of his T-shirt. “I have them all over, courtesy of the KGB. They decided to test some experimental interrogation techniques on me. Jay got me out of that mess.”

There was a lump in her throat. “How horrible for you.”

He shrugged. “I worked with Jay off and on for years. Never met anyone I respected more. I retired from the DO a while ago, so when Jay was sentenced, I had the time to put together the documents I needed to go deep cover and get a job with the Bureau of Prisons. Then I arranged a transfer to Allenwood. Of course, the FBI will eventually figure out I was the one behind Jay’s escape.”

“That’s why the house is packed up. And Zahra? Who’s she?”

“My wife. Between shifts, I’d live here as Ben Kuhnert. I had an apartment near Allenwood where I was David Oxley. Zahra’s found us a new place far away. Maybe someday we’ll be able to come back.” His gaze swept over the lawns and trees and old stone buildings with an intimacy that announced emotional claim. “Hope so, anyway.”

“Maybe you can answer a question. . . . Why do you think Jay turned on America, Ben?”

He glanced at her, surprised. Then he nodded to himself. “You haven’t worked with Jay enough yet to realize he’s an enigma. He’s capable of anything within reason—
his
reason. He’s brilliant, witty, egotistical, impatient,
and—above all—courageous. As a spymaster, he exuded an optimism that was contagious, and his people developed a sense of pride and an esprit de corps others envied. Partly that’s because he’s got such a strong sense of who he is that he doesn’t bother much about what a bureaucracy’s going to think. But that fed his reckless side, too. If he did sell us out to the Russians, he had a good reason—or thought he did.”

“If?”
It was the first time anyone outside her own mind had expressed doubt.

“There’s always an ‘if’ in our world.”

“But you don’t know what that reason could be.”

“I’ll probably never know. That’s where loyalty comes in. It reveals character, and it’s a measure of whom one can trust enough for friendship and, ultimately, whether one can trust oneself. The Russians have a good saying—‘Tell me who your friend is, and I’ll tell you who you are.’ ”

They turned onto a brick path beneath tall oaks and cut across the side lawn toward the kitchen. Houri ran ahead, feathered ears flying. As soon as they were indoors, Ben reactivated the floodlights, and Elaine hurried to the big kitchen window to keep watch. From there she had a complete view of the circular drive and the two stone houses on either side.

Ben took eggs and cheese from the refrigerator and put a frying pan on the gas stove. As he turned on the burner, he considered her. There was a forlorn quality to her as she stood against the dark glass in her dirty T-shirt and pants, gripping her weapon, staring out, her blond hair wild. A smudge of dirt streaked down her cheek.

“You like him,” he decided, “but you’re having a hard time getting past the idea that he’s a traitor.”

“I may never.”

He nodded. “If it’ll help, I believe he’s a good man. Fair. Decent. And a hell of a liar. Intelligence systems are based on secrecy, so lying’s necessary. You know that. But it does wear on you, change you, especially since you’re doing it in hopes of creating a better world, and a better world can’t be based on lies. If you’re on the firing line long enough, you’ll forget who you used to be, and then you won’t care. Because if you care, you can’t keep doing the work.”

She peered at him, her pale blue eyes large, then she gazed back out the window into the daunting night. “I thought I understood that.”

Ben raised his voice. “Hello, Jay. Aren’t you tired of standing in the doorway? Come on in.” He looked behind him.

Jay did not move. His skin was dark with grime, the bristle of his growing beard an iron-colored mat. He was studying Elaine, his eyes soft, not hiding his fondness for her. “The key is belief. You have to believe in something worth caring about. Something good. But first you have to figure out what that is for you.”

She gave a small, unsure smile and nodded.

Ben noisily set a bowl of scrambled eggs and a plate of whole-grain toast onto the wood trestle table. “Sit down and eat,” he ordered. “Both of you.” Sharp cheddar cheese blanketed the eggs, melting. The savory aromas filled the kitchen.

“Thanks, Ben.” Elaine pulled out a chair and settled gratefully onto it.

When Jay said nothing, Elaine and Ben turned to watch as he padded toward them, his gait light, almost menacing. His face was more than sober, it was grim, and he radiated hyperwariness. He skinned off his jacket so that he was wearing only his shirt and his holstered Browning. The flap was open so he could pull the gun out quickly. He tossed the jacket onto a chair and put a hand into his jeans pocket and withdrew it.

Mystified, Elaine watched him open his fingers. Her breath caught in her throat—a triangle-shaped gold piece glittered on his palm. She remembered the photo she found in his cell in which he was wearing the piece as a pendant. Jay let it drop onto the tabletop, where it spun like an arrow. She touched it, stopping the spin. She looked up at Ben, saw his expression had grown detached, cold.

Jay’s hazel eyes were dark pits. “Ben?”

Ben stared at Jay a moment. Then he nodded. Never taking his gaze from Jay, he went to the fireplace mantel, picked up something small, and shot it in a fast slide across the table. It came to rest next to Jay. It was another gold triangle.

Ben announced, “In case you don’t remember—Palmer’s fits one side of yours. Mine fits the other.”

Jay did not respond. He adjusted them until their toothy sides joined. He lifted his head and smiled widely.

Ben grinned back. “Okay, fill me in.”

As the tension evaporated, Elaine exhaled: She had just witnessed something almost primitive.

Ben went to the kitchen window, taking over her post. Jay sat across from her and piled scrambled eggs onto his plate. But he did not eat. “I’ll start at the beginning, Ben. The reason I asked you to break me out of Allenwood was a story in the
Herald Tribune
about the accidental death of Kristoph Maas.” He hesitated. “He was Raina Manhardt’s and my boy.”

“You and Raina Manhardt? I had no idea. How long were you and she—?”

“Not long enough.” Again Jay hesitated. “I didn’t see them after ’94. Raina and I sometimes phoned. At Christmas she’d send photos.” He almost smiled. Then he recalled how difficult it had been to have a normal conversation with her. The last time was the worst, when he told her about his arrest.

“I’m really sorry about the boy, Jay,” Ben said. “Must be terrible for you.”

“It hasn’t been great,” he admitted. He described the news story and photos that included Raina’s signal that she needed help. “It seemed logical that whatever had happened, it involved Kristoph. I planned to lie low after you busted me out and wait for her to get in touch. Instead, Theosopholis tried to scrub me as I was leaving the prison, a janitor attacked when I stopped to pick up supplies, and another janitor was waiting at Palmer Westwood’s place. He tried to wipe me, too. When a wet squad arrived, Palmer and I barely escaped. But that time I was in luck—I recognized two of the shooters. Both were Whippet.” He paused. “Whippet is a Langley unit.”

“Langley? No!”

“It gets worse.” Jay picked up his fork. “Elaine?”

“My assignment to hunt Jay came through Whippet,” she told Ben. “I was just starting to make progress when a janitor attacked me. I was able to wipe him, but when I got back to Whippet, I not only discovered everyone
there had been liquidated, his corpse was lying on a desk. He was really a Whippet operative in disguise, which was strong evidence they’d tried to scrub me, too.”

As Ben stared at her, Jay picked up the story: “I’d arrived earlier, just as the wet squad was leaving, and I got a good look at most. Later I spotted two outside Elaine’s town house.” He described knocking out Billy, taking his cell phone, and planting a bug on him. “So what we know from the recording and my conversation with Jerry is that some kind of big deal is going down today and that Jerry works for a Mr. G, who’s the force behind it.”

Ben said nothing, shaking his head gloomily.

“A few hours ago,” Elaine went on, “we were attacked again. That’s because I was able to sneak a phone call to Laurence Litchfield. He told me he’d send a team to capture Jay.” She grimaced, feeling again the terror. “Instead, Jerry and his killers showed up. They ambushed us.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ben said. “Larry Litchfield, too?”

“The entanglement is deeper,” Jay said. “Kristoph was a programmer. When he died, he was on a job for an outfit called Milieu Software. Milieu is a Whippet front company. Larry runs Whippet.”

Ben swore loudly.

Jay leaned forward and clasped his hands. He looked down at them and then up at Ben. “Whippet was over in Geneva doing something that probably got Kristoph killed, so the deal isn’t confined to the United States. Raina is being hunted, too. Whoever Mr. G is, he’s got the resources to penetrate a high-security federal pen and plant Theosopholis. At the same time, Larry Litchfield wouldn’t touch anything unless he understood exactly what was going on. Whatever the deal is, he must think it’s failure-proof. Since he’s been informing on us, he must be working directly with Mr. G, because he wouldn’t bother with anyone lower. As for Mr. G, he’s got steel nuts to order Whippet butchered.”

Ben inhaled. “Holy shit. This deal must be
huge
.”

Jay nodded. “Huge and dangerous. We need to find out exactly what it is and stop it. That’s going to take experienced operatives. Only the best will have a chance. I want the old team.”

Ben peeled away from the window casing. “I’ll phone them.”

“Everyone but Palmer. He wanted to help because of Raina, but he’s over seventy now. I’ve already told him no.”

Ben headed toward the hallway. “Understood. Finish eating and get your showers so you’ll be ready when they get here.”

Ben Kuhnert sat at the big computer in his office, and Houri laid her head in his lap. He petted her absentmindedly as he gathered himself, shaking off unease. Finally he tapped into his online address book and ordered the computer to dial out.

Frank Mesa lived thirty miles away. He answered quickly, but his voice was turgid with sleep. “Yeah?”

“This is Ben. I need you. Bring your piece of the medallion.” “Are you crazy?” The voice rose with indignation. “Go look at your goddamn clock!”

“Your gold piece—bring it,” Ben said. “Come armed. We’ve got a situation.”

There was a long pause. A noisy clearing of a throat. A defeated sigh. “Okay. But indulge me—I’m going to throw on some clothes first.”

As soon as he heard the dial tone, Ben again went to his address book, and again the computer dialed.