Espionage Games Page 5

  “Look to Lady Justice,” Farrow said. “Blindfolded, and holding a balance and a sword. It’s meant to give the hording masses respect for the system. Except the system is made up of exactly the kind of fallible people you’re talking about. If it weren’t, the guilty would always pay the price and the innocent would always be cleared.”

  “I have to get a philosopher yet,” she said.

  He smiled. “And Coyote? Do you think he’s guilty?”

  “Probably. But of what?”

  “And I have to get a deep thinker,” he said, opening the car door.

  6

  Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia

  Monday, August 18

  VIKKI KIDD STROLLED toward the nearest rise of a rolling hillside and followed the crowd as it approached the John F. Kennedy Memorial. Another woman silently drew alongside her. She had come from the direction of the Viet Nam Memorial, and like Vikki, mingled with the crowd in a pilgrimage of remembrance.

  Neither had been born when the 35th President of the United States was taken out by a marksman hunkered down at the Texas School Book Repository in Dallas. The assassination of any leader is tragic, but the assassination of an American President in relatively modern times is a stain on history, especially when the event was filmed by an amateur photographer in living color. Though grainy and taken from a distance, the video was widely available and clearly showed the moment of impact when JFK was first hit by two bullets before the third and deadly bullet blew apart his skull while his fashion-plate wife sat beside him. She was close enough to him to be hit as well but gratefully wasn’t. The shock of having her husband die in her arms was punishment enough. To escape the carnage, she clawed her way out of the back seat and made it as far as the trunk of the moving convertible before a Secret Service agent came to her rescue. The image was destined to outlive generations and indelibly scar the soul of a nation.

  “I thought you might not show up,” Vikki said to the woman. They pretended to be unacquainted with one another, as if their walking beside each other was just a coincidence.

  “I didn’t think I would either,” Janey Matheson said.

  While paying respects at the gravesite of John Sessions, they had caught sight of each other from afar. Vikki first met the deputy director at a casual political gathering. Since both were divorcees raising teenagers, they had much in common. It became a springboard. They exchanged pleasantries for the most part but also made comment about politically charged news items of the day. In that brief exchange, both had assessed the other as possible conduits for exchanging information. Only a few weeks after their initial encounter, Matheson tracked down the journalist’s phone number. Since then, they had spoken to each sporadically while laying a foundation for further communications.

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Not sure why,” Janey said. Her mouth had turned down as if swallowing something distasteful. “Okay, I do know why. John wasn’t just a colleague. He was a friend. One of the good guys. He had integrity, you know. Few in this town can say that. I think ... no, I know ... I would have trusted him with my life. I can’t let him go out with just a whimper. I want to shout it out.”

  Long lines of public mourners snaked along the walkway that would deliver them to the resting place of President Kennedy and his family. Vikki and Janey walked along with them, just two women of differing heights in a subdued crowd. Janey was a plain-featured woman, her hair parted on the side and falling into two straight plaits to her shoulders. The somber gray suit she chose for an equally somber occasion was utterly unflattering. The skirt stopped just above her knees, emphasizing thick calves and wide thighs. The one-inch heels of her scuffed pumps did nothing for her already short height.

  “You were talking to Soderberg,” Vikki said, breaking the silent impasse between them. “How do you know him?”

  “In passing.” She was being cagey. “All right, more than just in passing. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I was going for my graduate degree. He was a visiting professor. Almost a hero. In my eyes anyway. He’d been with the State Department for years and survived, something I aspired to. I took his course in foreign relations. What can I say? We hit it off. He was away from home. Long distance marriages are almost never successful. We ended our relationship, if you could call it that, almost as quickly as it began.”

  They reached the memorial and paused to reflect. The grave of President Kennedy faced northeast toward the Washington Monument. At moments such as these, when one reflects on the brevity of life, the frailty of man, the fragility of human existence, and the fates of great men, it was natural to take the long view by linking the past and the present with the future. If an acting president could be assassinated in the modern age, no one was safe. The eternal flame Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy requested for her husband’s grave flickered yet. She was buried alongside him, partnered with her husband in death even if not always in life. Two of their children were interred close by, a small white cross marking the location of their still-born daughter and a small headstone indicating the site of a son born prematurely. The president’s brothers also lay nearby, Bobby only fifty feet away, himself the victim of a lone assassin, and Teddy a hundred feet distant. The ashes of John F. Kennedy Junior did not lie with his family since his ashes along with those of his wife were scattered at sea off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

  They meandered away from the memorial. After a brief silence, Vikki asked, “You’ve been with HID for how long?”

  “You probably know better than me.”

  Vikki smiled. “Eleven years. Long enough to know just about everything.”

  She hedged. “Not quite everything.”

  “For instance, what do you think about the Tobias kidnapping?”

  Janey’s eyes slid sideways. Then she laughed, skittish, fearful of someone or something. “You’re so certain it really was a kidnapping?”

  “If murdered, the remains of his body would have been found by now. No, they took him.”

  She shivered inwardly, holding her breath, shaking off her qualms. “What should I know about Tobias? I’m just in research.” She was being evasive. To speak the truth was to accept the obvious.

  “Why he was kidnapped. Where he is. And who’s holding him.”

  She thought about it. Thought about putting anything into words that couldn’t be taken back once spoken. Vikki could see it in her eyes. Terror. Terror of the unknown. Terror, even, of the known. “I have my theories.”

  “From my information, Tobias set up special operations.”

  “And became a victim himself. Ironic, don’t you think?”

  “You’re sure of that? Sure of HID’s involvement?”

  “I have no direct knowledge. Everyone denies it. Except ....” Her voice trailed off.

  “Except Tobias knew something. Had to know something. True? Or not true?”

  “It’s what he didn’t know.”

  “Okay,” Vikki said, taking the bait. “What didn’t he know?”

  “His phone was tapped.”

  “You have direct knowledge?”

  “None. But I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Vikki paused to consider. “Who set up Coyote?”

  “Was he set up?” Matheson was being evasive again. Throughout their conversation, she repeatedly glanced over her shoulder, scrutinized strangers, focused on anyone acting suspiciously, made sure no one was eavesdropping. She was probably scared of her own shadow. Given the company she kept, she should be.

  “Sessions must have known something. Did he mention anything?”

  She hesitated before saying, “I believe he spoke with someone earlier in the evening, someone who gave him a heads-up about the article.” Without saying it, Janey was referring to herself.

  “Has this person told the authorities?” Vikki asked.

  “What good would it do?” Janey compressed her lips, rationalizing, and then shook her head, more to cast off lingering doubts than to deny i
nvolvement. “He didn’t confide in me. I only know he and Brandon were on the outs. It was an all-out war. About what, I couldn’t say. I’m the last to know anything. But I’ll tell you this. I worked closely with John. His death came as a shock. He’s the last person who would have killed himself. Even if he reached rock bottom ... for what reasons I wouldn’t know ... he would have chosen a cleaner way. Even if it sounds histrionic or self-serving or whatever, I want ... no, I need ... answers. When Milly was killed, I cried. God knows how I cried. For Milly. And for Jack. It was one of those horrible things that happen to other people, not to us. Everyone wrote off Jack. I didn’t. I’m not that naïve. Or stupid. I was almost ... almost, mind you ... prepared to accept it, railing against the gods as I did. But when we found out Harry disappeared, too, and on the same night ....” Shaking her head, she paused for a moment. Glanced down at the pathway beneath their feet. Swept her eyes out toward the unspoiled battle array of dead soldiers, there lingering. And finally turned toward Vikki. “I don’t believe in coincidences. I was suspicious. More than suspicious. Because everybody else seemed to accept what happened, I took the coward’s way out and didn’t say anything. I should have then. But when John―” Once again, she shook her head, her face pale and drawn. “I gave him a heads-up about the article that night. If it hadn’t been for me―” She shook her head.

  “It would have happened anyway.”

  It took a while for her to regain her composure, her body quaking, her eyes moist. She shivered away her despair. “I was terrified before. Now I’m pissed off. I’ve been doing what I can. Working behind the scenes. I want to expose whoever put out the order. Because whoever he or she is, is a traitor.” She shrugged away her shivers. “I’m putting myself at risk. But hell, aren’t we all? If this could happen to John, it could happen to any of us. For me, though, this is personal. Damned personal.”

  Instinctively, she grabbed Vikki’s hand and squeezed it, telling her without words that she didn’t feel quite so damnably alone. Afterwards she lifted her head and walked away, looking neither left nor right but focusing her vision straight toward the horizon, head held high.

  7

  Republic of Nauru, Micronesia

  Monday, August 18

  THE TOUR GUIDE was waiting for Jack at the appointed hour. Wearing a tropical shirt and an infectious grin, he introduced himself as Emmanuel. His face had been weathered into the shape of a shriveled grape. He opened the back door of his metro vehicle and flourished a hand of invitation. Jack preferred to ride up front.

  Emmanuel drove like a maniac, but a skilled maniac, his body pointing forward, his hands riding the steering wheel at eleven o’clock and one o’clock, and his eyes roving like pinballs in an arcade game. He pointed out the island’s best assets, interspersing his picturesque narrative with personal essentials. “There’s the house where I was born. The school I went to. My church. My wife shops at that store over there. There’s my wife’s cousin. He’s a barber. Hello, Jacob!” he called out, and without slowing down, yelled something to this cousin in Nauruan, upon which, the sightseeing tour immediately resumed.

  He used broad hand gestures and turned towards his passenger every few words while a vortex of wind whistled through the lowered windows and his gray hair whipped around his face.

  The South Seas island, he explained, was surrounded by a coral reef exposed at low tide. A recent typhoon had all but wiped out everything. This afternoon’s low tide made evident the manifold protrusions composed of seemingly lifeless though intricate shells where colonies of polyps and other sea creatures lingered. Anchored underwater, the coral apartments were mostly blackened, both above the shallow depths and below, and lacking the usual pastel hues of a thriving reef.

  “The reef lives still,” Emmanuel assured his passenger. “It will come back. In a year or two or three, God’s paint brush will restore the beauty so that once again we can feast our eyes on it. Life,” he said with an accepting shrug, “goes on.”

  Northeast trade winds blew from March to November, he explained, usually bringing heavy rains. Deep waters bounded Nauru on the seaward side while pristine beaches flanked its inland shores. “We are in the middle of a draught. Climate change,” he said with another of his expressive shrugs. “The oven effect.”

  He changed the subject, pointing out the many trees that at first appeared like a fruit cocktail sitting in a shallow dish but upon further examination did not appear quite so colorful. While coconut palms, figs, almonds, mango, wild cherry, pandanu, and tomano trees seemed to be thriving, palm trees boasted frondless poles and pandanus wore black crowns. Seaside golf courses had been reduced to an unremarkable canvas of dull hues even while golfers persisted in playing the greens, green no more but motley shades of yellows and browns. Beneath the trappings of an island paradise lingered the pangs of a slow death.

  “We import fresh water from Australia,” Emmanuel said. “It’s a nuisance.”

  Now the sea, the sea was altogether different. Given the terrain, there was no natural harbor, but offshore moorings were the deepest anywhere, and world-class sailboats and pleasure yachts bobbed in sapphire waters.

  “Who do they belong to?” Jack asked.

  “Drug runners.”

  “Where do they come from?

  “Everywhere.”

  “Why do they come here?”

  “Because they are welcome.” He winked with conspiratorial knowing. “Like the banks.”

  Frigate birds swarmed the sky, their plumage mostly black, or black and white with some gray, and their enormous wings catching wind currents, allowing them to sail over the waters with effortless ease.

  “They can stay aloft for days, sometimes a week or more,” Emmanuel said. “They search for tuna.”

  A population of ten thousand souls inhabited the island, everything made accessible by a single loop of paved road lined with palm trees and bordered by sea. For twenty minutes Emmanuel drove his client around the near-perfect circle of Nauru, stopping once at a small store carrying white bread and diet soda. Since both knew there was only one reason, or possibly two, why an American would fly to the tiny island nation, the sightseeing tour took place with respectful camaraderie. Emmanuel slowed down when he approached a factory spewing great clouds of choking smoke.

  He turned to Jack, his expression no longer happy-go-lucky. “We Nauruans are a proud people, a resourceful people. We have belonged to many nations, officially and unofficially. America. Germany. Australia. Each took what they wanted. Whales, coconut, phosphate. After they took everything away, they left us with sunshine and ocean, which is enough for us. It is where we started as a people. Now we are a proud republic, beholden only to ourselves. We get by. The boat harbor has been rebuilt. Very modern. Very efficient. We can withstand anything the seas send our way. More goods from Australia and New Zealand come every day. Instead of whaling, we have deep-sea fishing. Jackfish tuna, marlin, dolphin fish, skipjack, and sailfish. Coconuts and bananas when there’s nothing else to eat. Instead of phosphate, we have banking. Also smuggling. And always there is snorkeling and scuba diving. We have pleasant surroundings, no? An ocean away from the strife and wars and trivial worries of the rest of the world. Nauru is the way it has always been. And so it goes with we Nauruans. We fight and squabble and make up and make love and make the best of what God has given us. It is our way. There is no more.”

  Emmanuel was more than driver or tourist guide. He was a philosopher, a man in tune with his environment, an accepter of life, and a thinker. He was also a hustler.

  “If you want to go swimming, I can take you to Anibare Harbour. Most of the other beaches are too shallow and rocky, you see. Or if game fishing interests you, I can arrange a charter with one of the best. Darrell. Darrell Roberts. He has his own boat. It’s a beauty. You want to see Topside now?”

  “Topside?”

  “Our nickname for the interior, where the phosphate is mined.”

  “You said the mining was over.
”

  He shrugged at the contradiction. “Every now and then, they find pockets and veins, always a cause for celebration and work.”

  He turned up a winding dirt road and drove slowly with the windows rolled up and air conditioning turned on. Parallel to the road, an active railway transported massive boulders down to the factory.

  “Phosphate is used for fertilizer, but you probably already know that.”

  He pulled over, got out of the car, and stretched up his arms, flagellating his fingers as if he were a supplicant in the throes of adoration. Jack followed him to the edge of the road where, less than a yard distant, the shoulder abruptly dropped off. The dizzying view embraced a lunar landscape of excavated canals, limestone towers, and coral outcroppings. A colossal pit—sheared of vegetation and quarried down to bare rock—had been hollowed out of the island’s heart.

  “The reason we have drought is the oven effect,” Emmanuel was saying. “The scorched air rises up fast enough to blow away the rain clouds. The government intends to remove the barren highpoints and reshape the land to make it useable again, but it will take years, maybe decades, and a great deal of money. We squabble over what belongs to who, and beg from the bankers, telling them it will be the best investment they will ever make. When it is done, the land will welcome vegetation once more.” He gazed up at the sky. “And the birds will return. When I was a boy, everything here was jungle. Green as far as the eye could see, and even farther, over to the back of beyond, on the other side of the rainbow. My friends and me, we would come up here and hunt for black noddy birds. Today, no more noddy birds. They are gone like the wind.”

  He made a gesture, fingers striking thumb and dispelling unseen spirits. Afterwards he quietened himself in the airy stillness, just another rock on the mountain while the heat of the sun beat down on his head, his eyes closed against the brightness. Perhaps he was seeing other kinds of images. Pictures of the mind. Memories of his youth. Loved ones who long ago left this world but remained in the recesses of his heart. Outlining the plains of his face like the serrated edge of a knife was a deep-seated sadness along with something else. Shame. Shame for his people and shame for the place he called home.