White: A Novel (29 page)

Diplomatic license SA-227,
she reminded herself.
Charcoal BMW Z4. Male driver. Arab. No passenger.

They made it sound so intriguing. Hotel rooms in different cities. Plane tickets Saturday mornings to places she had never been. There was always a different face, someone offering just enough encouragement to string her along. It was more a chase than an employment process, she now knew. A delicate seduction.

There.
She saw the sleek little sports car moving out of the fast lane, accelerating past eighty miles per hour to avoid a couple of black kids in a Toyota XRS.
Maintain a two-car buffer,
the Camp Peary surveillance instructors had told her during the first phase of instruction.
Stay right or left whenever possible. Most drivers look there only when changing lanes.

They had first approached her in the college library, between the stacks. A soft-spoken woman in a Burberry skirt and sandals had asked her something in Farsi. An innocuous question that she had answered without much thought. This was Harvard. People spoke in all kinds of tongues.

Move closer,
instinct told her.
That car is faster than this one; don’t let him get too far ahead.

They shared common interests, common goals. This woman looked plain, like she did, and she liked to read. They met for coffee a couple times and became friends.

Damn that little thing is fast,
she thought, pressing down on the accelerator.
Should have remembered that diplomatic immunity gives these assholes a get-out-of-jail-free card. Traffic laws are little more than a nuisance to them. Should have rented something a little more powerful.

They went to New York for spring break and stayed with one of the woman’s friends. There was a nice dinner, some wine. More wine. Then late at night, a question that ignited feelings she didn’t know she had.

“Do you believe in anything strongly enough to die for it?” the woman had asked. They were in a bar. The woman’s friend leaned back into his seat, watching her reaction.

Faster,
she chided herself. Her speedometer read eighty-five, but the car was still pulling away.
That’s the exit, less than a mile ahead.

“Strongly enough to die for?” GI Jane had answered. “My family, I guess. Certain friends. Why?”

“What about your country?”

She remembered feeling the wine and the noise around her and the overwhelming sense that something was not what it seemed. First she felt strangely threatened, then excited, like the first time she’d stood on a diving board looking down. The moment prickled on her skin then settled between her thighs. It was the first real sense of thrill she had ever experienced.

Pull up behind him,
she coached herself.
Anticipate, calculate, close the gate.

It had gotten better from there. First the meetings with people who asked her questions like “How well do you think you can lie?” and “What’s the largest thing you’ve ever killed?”

Some people would have recoiled and run, she thought at the time. But that was the whole point. They probably approached lots of candidates who had the basic smarts and background to do the job. The subterfuge helped weed out the posers.

Make it look like a pass,
she told herself.
No sudden movements to draw attention. Wait until just before the exit and move with him.

It had all been very calculated and professional. The woman in the Burberry skirt and sandals had made her from the start.

Right front bumper even with the Z4’s left rear bumper,
she thought.
Keep a decent standoff until . . . hold . . . hold . . . now!

GI Jane eased the steering wheel right. The speedometer read seventy-nine miles per hour as her front bumper gently nudged the car in front of her. Traffic was heavy. It was a move Washington’s busy I-495 beltway had seen a thousand times.

Sccccrrreeecchhh!

But this time, the bumpers touched. The Z4 broke traction just like the Camp Peary instructors had taught her it would. A PIT maneuver, they called it: pursuit intervention technique.

The Z4 began to spin in a slow, counterclockwise motion. The driver realized too late what had happened and tried to countersteer, but there was nothing he could do. The racy little convertible bolted back out into traffic, knocking a minivan into the path of a tractor trailer.

GI Jane saw the explosion in the rearview mirror as she pumped her brakes and disappeared around the exit circle.

All eyes focused on the carnage behind her, but even if they had managed to jot down her license plate, there would be no way to trace the rental car. Just as the CIA had transformed her life that day in the stacks of Harvard’s Widener Library, the Burberry ladies had taken care of everything.

Hope you’re satisfied, Mr. Mitchell,
she thought, racing away from the accident scene. But of course he wouldn’t be. This assignment was just another test of allegiance, another question mark in a tireless choreography of doubt.

“I LIVE BY
myself,” the homeowner said. “I don’t keep much in the way of groceries.”

“We’re fine,” Mitchell replied. He and Trask sat on a vinyl couch that had been covered with a macramé throw. An upright piano stood against the wall to their left; a wood fire in the scatter-brick fireplace to their right. There was a coffee table, some bric-a-brac on a wrought-iron bookshelf, and an oversized rocking chair in pine.

“You knew a lot of powerful people,” Mitchell said. Framed photos covered flat spaces and most of the walls. They were pictures of a political life—rallies and fund-raisers, and ribbon-cutting ceremonies with Massachusetts luminaries: Tip O’Neill, Ted Kennedy, Michael Dukakis, Barney Frank, Silvio Conte.

“I served in the Massachusetts legislature for a number of years,” the man said.

“From 1989 until two years ago,” Trask spoke up. “Chairman of the Transportation Committee, member of Banking and Commerce as well as the Board of Regents for the university system, trustee at Fleet Bank. Married once; widowed in ninety-nine.”

“What do you want?” the former politician asked. He was no stranger to negotiation.

“In the mid-1980s, the U.S. government developed an asynchronous warfare scenario code-named Civil Defense Scenario Four: Project Megiddo,” Mitchell said. He tossed the folder of classified documents on the table, next to a backgammon board. “Twelve men with one mission: to get elected.”

“Is that so?” The man shrugged. “Are you supposed to be telling me stuff like this? I mean, those papers, there, say ‘top secret.’”

Mitchell continued as if he’d not even heard him.

“The project was run by a colonel named Buck Ellis, a former Special Forces soldier who found his way over to the wet side. MAC-V-SOG, Phoenix, Medal of Honor with a classified citation. He did time with the CIA and eventually ARPA.”

“Sounds like an interesting guy,” the politician said. Mitchell judged him a superb liar. “I was Special Forces, too, for a few years. Got out to finish college and then went into politics, as you seem to know. What’s ARPA?”

“There were twelve men, handpicked from half a million soldiers,” Mitchell continued, ignoring the question. “West Pointers, Delta operators, War College instructors—the best-looking, fastest-thinking, most articulate candidates the U.S. Army could produce.”

The politician crossed his legs, then his arms.

“Colonel Ellis groomed them. First an education: Harvard, Dartmouth, University of Virginia. Boston College in your case.”

Mitchell stood and walked to the bookcase. He lifted one of the photos and studied it closely. It showed five men around a poker table. Two were former governors, one a former president.

“Then they went to charm school; acting lessons, public speaking classes, plastic surgery—just a touch-up here and there—instruction in how to shake hands, mnemonic name recall, civics and political science and grammar and sociology.”

Mitchell looked over a picture of the man at ground breaking for the Big Dig.

“Two years later, the twelve soldiers received trumped-up military service records that would have made Wesley Clark envious. Then they got honorable discharges.”

“And?” the man of the house asked. He seemed genuinely intrigued by the story.

“And then they simply vanished,” Trask said. “All of them. Gone without a trace.”

“All except one.” Mitchell replaced the photo and turned toward his host. “One of them we happened to find. It wasn’t easy, mind you, but I have formidable resources.”

“Me?” the man asked. “You think I had something to do with this? To what end? You see what I’ve got: a bunch of old pictures and a couple dozen vacation houses I caretake to supplement my pension. What kind of conspiracy could I have a role in?”

He laughed a stiff, sarcastic huff.

Mitchell walked over to the file and turned to page thirty-two. Someone a long time ago had typed a curriculum vitae for a man identified only as Candidate Nine. Mitchell handed it to the man in the rocking chair.

“You say you read the papers; I assume you know that this country is under attack.”

The politician read the dossier, holding his hands against his knees so his guests wouldn’t see them shaking.

“There’s talk of an operation called Jafar al Tayar, or Jafar the high flyer,” Mitchell continued. “Sources say the bad guys have a mole in our government—somewhere high enough to accomplish devastating effect. We believe Jafar al Tayar may be one of your Megiddo project cronies.”

The man receded into himself as if he’d just been told there was no God.

“I have a bad memory,” the man all but whispered. “But let’s say I could remember a different time in America, when the Cold War and airliner hijackings and kidnappings and suicide bombings made the government look for creative solutions. Let’s say I played a role.”

“Let’s say we cut this bullshit and talk like soldiers!” Trask barked. “We need the names of the other eleven operatives.”

“There are no names!” Candidate Nine erupted. He shook visibly now. A secret life of twenty years had just landed squarely on his chest. He could barely breathe.

“Don’t you see? We never knew each other, just the mission. There could have been two of us or two hundred for all I know. The only Megiddo operative I ever heard about was me.”

Mitchell was the one who crossed his arms this time.

“I had considered that possibility,” he said. The chief executive looked disappointed but by no means defeated. “It will make things more difficult, but not impossible.”

Mitchell thought silently for a time, then motioned to Trask. He stood, and the two men moved toward the door. They still had a busy day ahead and no time to dally.

“Don’t forget your file,” Candidate Nine said, surprised that they would go so quickly. He held up the folder with a trembling hand.

“Keep it,” Mitchell said. “You deserve that much.”

Candidate Nine let Mitchell get to the front step before deciding to stop him.

“Wait,” he conceded. “There is something.”

Trask kept walking, but Mitchell paused. Big flakes fell around him as he stood on the front step.

“I was at DLI in Monterey when they selected me. First they sent me to Boston College for a law degree, like you said; then they sent me down to the Farm for months of one-on-one instruction. Charm school. Lots of role-playing and video feedback. They would give me a tape after each scenario so I could study myself and learn from my mistakes.”

Candidate Nine walked over to the fireplace and began feeding Mitchell’s file into the flames.

“One evening, I was doing my homework. I slipped the day’s videotape into a VCR to study my performance, but when I got to the end of the tape, there was more—more video of another student doing the same thing. I figured it had to be another candidate like myself, and that the instructors had just recycled the tape.”

Mitchell stepped back inside. The fire flashed bright orange and yellow with the file of this lonely man’s past.

“You recognized this person?” Mitchell asked.

“Not at the time, no,” the man replied. “It was just a face. But later . . . yes, I know the person on that tape.”

“They’re a public figure now?” Mitchell asked. It was the only explanation.

“You could say that.” The man nodded. He showed no reaction except a vague squint against the rising flames.

“Are you going to tell me who it is?”

Mitchell pulled the door closed behind him.

“I might”—the man nodded—“if you give me your word that you’ll never come back here. And if you promise not to tell me I’m crazy.”

XIV

Friday, 18 February

02:55 GMT

Council Bunker, The Homestead

“
MY NAME IS
Jeremy Walker.” The FBI agent shielded his eyes, trying to focus better on his predicament. Two of the robed men carried long guns—a Ruger Mini-14 and some Eastern bloc AK variation. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“We ask the questions,” the colonel said. His voice sounded firm and level, authoritative but not brash. “First of all, there’s no record of any Jeremy Walker with your date of birth in the DC teamsters union. All stagehands have to belong. Second, the address you listed is rented in your name, but utilities are paid by someone named John L. Anderson.”

Are they testing me?
Jeremy wondered. Surely the FBI would have covered all this in their backstop.

“I had to use a different date of birth on the application,” he said, trying to come up with something reasonable. “I’ve got a felony conviction, and that makes it illegal for me to own a gun. I figured you’d never let me in if you ran a background check and found out.”

Jeremy knew his instructors had told him to stay close to the truth, but this was no classroom. Ellis and his thugs were going to kill him if he didn’t come up with a convincing lie.

“What were you convicted of?” one of the men demanded.

“Firebombing an abortion clinic,” Jeremy said. He tried to sound proud.