“—to your team being executed,” the academic completed.
“They were not expecting him.”
“He wasn’t expected in Miami either, was he?”
Now it was the bullish man who hedged. “Could he have already been aware—”
“Not then. Now, well, what we’re facing here is a coincidence with potentially dire consequences once McCracken makes the connection.”
“Unless we can find him before he does.”
A look of taut concentration had returned to the academic’s features. “Or use the inevitability of his succeeding action against him.”
“How?” the bullish man wondered.
The academic told him.
For Vasily Conchenko, Russian ambassador to the United States, lunch at the Mayflower Hotel was a daily ritual, even on Saturday. The hotel was only a few blocks from the Russian embassy and Conchenko always enjoyed the walk, especially in spring. In fact, he enjoyed everything about America, more so than ever now that the old divisions were a thing of the past. He could walk the streets freely without concern of being followed or watched. His moves were no
longer scrutinized because there was no reason to scrutinize them. He felt exuberantly free.
He ordered the Mayflower turkey club without bothering to gaze at the menu, then began to read Saturday morning’s edition of
The New York Times,
which he preferred infinitely to
The Washington Post.
He had barely gotten through the first article when a shape hovered at his side. Thinking it was the waiter with his sparkling mineral water he gazed up politely.
“Good afternoon, Comrade Conchenko,” greeted Sergei Amorov.
Amorov had been the final KGB station chief ever to serve in Washington. The Soviet Union’s tumble had left him nothing to return to. As a result he had remained here in the capital city of the United States he, too, had come to love very much. If his wardrobe was any indication, Amorov must have amassed quite a fortune in his years as KGB station chief. Today he wore an olive green full-cut Armani suit that fit him exquisitely. Conchenko had never seen him wear the same suit twice.
“We have nothing to say to each other, Sergei Ivanovitch,” the ambassador snapped at him, scanning the restaurant carefully in case anyone had noted their meeting. Fortunately, since it was Saturday, the restaurant was all but deserted.
“Ah, but we do. I’ve ordered a cocktail. It’s being sent over.”
“Have it sent somewhere else.”
Amorov frowned. “How, then, would I be able to do you the great favor I am prepared to, comrade?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Habit. Forgive me.”
Conchenko tensed as Amorov sat down after unbuttoning the jacket of his double-breasted suit. Again his eyes swam about across the other tables. He shifted his chair away from the former KGB station chief with noticeable distaste.
“This is not the way to treat a man who is going to make you a hero, comrade—excuse me—Vasily Feodorov.”
“Or make me a pariah.”
“You must learn not to judge so harshly.”
With that, Amorov pulled a small shipping envelope from his pocket and placed it within Conchenko’s reach. The ambassador made no move to touch it.
“What is this?” he demanded.
“More old habits, I’m afraid. Just to pass the time, you understand.”
“No, I don’t.”
“The greatest coup of my career. Even when the Union dissolved, I could not abandon it.”
“Abandon
what
?”
Amorov slid his chair closer and this time Conchenko made no effort to pull away. “I was able to have a bug planted within the office of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“What?
How?” Conchenko had to remind himself to stifle his enthusiasm. Old habits die hard and this was something that would have been cause for great excitement only a few years before.
“The CIA seal hangs behind his desk. When it was sent out to be refinished some years ago, we managed to plant a bug within it. The paint we used acted as a screen against detection.”
Conchenko fidgeted nervously. “Get to the point!”
“After my … reassignment, I, er, neglected to have it removed. I still listen to the recordings, out of habit mostly, I suppose, and boredom. They make for great entertainment sometimes.” Amorov tapped the mailing envelope. “Thursday night’s was a prime example.”
“This is a
tape
?”
“Yes, comrade, it is.”
Confusion crossed the ambassador’s features, then suspicion. “You’ve heard, of course, that the CIA director was murdered early this morning.”
Amorov slid the envelope closer. “I think you should listen to the tape, Vasily Feodorov, and maybe you will understand why.”
“I don’t see any file folders in the vicinity, Hank,” McCracken said to the figure seated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
“And you won’t, either,” Belgrade returned, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Sit down, McNuts. I’m giving you three minutes. After that, it might not be safe anymore.”
“Sounds ominous.”
“Two minutes fifty-five seconds. I don’t know what you got yourself into last night, but Washington’s gone crazy this morning. Langley, to be more accurate.”
Blaine had called Sal Belamo from a room in the Jefferson Hotel after fleeing Rock Creek Park the night before. He had abandoned that room as Soon as the phone call was complete and checked into a second hotel in Alexandria’s Crystal City.
“Wow,” Belamo commented after McCracken had filled him in. “Looks like I might be missing tomorrow’s episode of ‘As the Shit Chums.’”
“Find out what Operation Yellow Rose and Prometheus are and I’ll spring for a big-screen TV. Get Johnny Wareagle down here,” Blaine added, referring to the big Indian he called upon in situations like this, “and I’ll throw in a stereo.”
In hardly typical fashion, by this morning Belamo’s efforts on all fronts had proven futile. He could find no mention of Operation Yellow Rose or Prometheus on any data bank, accessible or otherwise. And Johnny Wareagle was nowhere to be found.
“That’s not all,” Sal had finished grimly. “Cops found no
trace of the five guys you waxed. Can only mean somebody came in and got them, boss, and they must have been damn quick about it.”
The best Sal could do was set up a meeting for Blaine with someone who might have the answers that he lacked: Hank Belgrade. Belgrade was a big, beefy man who like a select few in Washington drew a salary without any official title. Technically both the Departments of State and Defense showed his name on their roster, but in actuality he worked for neither. Instead, he liaised between the two and handled the dirty linen of both. He had access to files few in Washington had any idea existed.
“Clifton Jardine was murdered,” Belgrade resumed after a long pause.
McCracken sat next to him on the far left-hand steps of the Memorial. The news didn’t surprise him. A man like Daniels wouldn’t requisition a paper clip without proper clearance. It figured the director would have been involved and aware. If Daniels was killed for what he knew, the same fate would very likely have awaited Clifton Jardine.
“My clock still ticking, Hank?”
“Depends on whether the reason for this meeting’s linked to Jardine’s death.”
“You really want to know that?”
“I bring it up or what, McNuts?”
“Fine. Your choice. Jardine wasn’t the only Langley man killed last night. You get back to the office, see if anything’s come in on Tom Daniels.”
“You in the area at the time?”
“After the fact, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Daniels had time to talk, Hank. Someone’s moving on the country. Someone’s trying to take over.”
Belgrade fixed his stare on Blaine. “We talking about an overthrow of the government here?”
“Daniels told me I had ten days to stop it, then died before elaborating further.”
“Ten days …”
“Maybe nine now. I killed the five men who killed Daniels. But don’t bother checking that part out on the wire, because the tracks have been covered.”
Belgrade’s hand swept nervously across his double chin. “Christ, that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“It was Daniels who mentioned Operation Yellow Rose to you, right?”
“That and Prometheus.”
“Well, I drew a total blank on Prometheus and near total blank on Yellow Rose.”
“Near?”
“File’s been deleted, McNuts.”
“Even from your eyes?”
“You should’ve called me yesterday.”
“What are you saying?”
“That the deletion was logged on at two-thirty A.M.
this morning
. Sound familiar?”
“Jardine’s and Daniels’s murders …”
Belgrade nodded. “Somebody musta figured you or someone else would be looking.”
Blaine looked right at him. “And you wouldn’t be here if they didn’t leave something behind.”
“I did some cross-checking. Had to log on myself to do it, which means my access code was recorded. That means whoever made the file disappear will know I was looking for it. Under the circumstances, that doesn’t make me a very happy man.”
“Tell me what you found before my time runs out.”
“Two obscure references, MacNuts, the first being the term ‘Delphi.’ Mean anything to you?”
“Nope.”
“Likewise here. Data banks came up with
nada
when I ran a search.”
“And the second reference?”
“A name: H. William Carlisle.”
“Never heard of him.”
Belgrade slid a little closer. “Ever hear of the Trilateral Commission?”
“A conspiracy theorist’s dream, wasn’t it?”
“And remains so today,” Belgrade told him. “The commission’s founding dates back to the early seventies, its stated purpose being to foster an enduring partnership between the ruling classes of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan—hence the term ‘trilateral.’”
“Make the world safe for Western business interests, right?”
“In a big way.”
Belgrade went on to provide a capsule summary of the Trilat’s history, beginning with its formation in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski. A series of international and national shocks in the late sixties and early seventies, culminating in the Arab oil embargo and Nixon’s New Economic Policy, led the Western business community to fear for its very survival, or at the very least hegemony. The Trilateral Commission became the means by which the international elite fought back. Together the multinational corporations represented by its members believed they could control or at least affect world policy through the pursuit of a carefully charted dogma. These members saw themselves as custodians more than manipulators, but the difference, in theory as well as action, was little more than semantics.
For men like George Ball, Henry Kissinger, and Jimmy Carter the ideal response was to pursue collective management of world economic affairs. So vague had the line between politics and economics become that their goals could be brought within reach by achieving a broad-based global corporate capitalism. Foremost among these goals was guarding against future international events that might adversely effect the collective. Unilaterally none of the international legs of the Trilat could wield sufficient power to bring about that end. But joined together they had unlimited potential.
“Never did pull it off, though, did they?” Blaine broke in.
“Hey,” retorted Belgrade, “they’re still trying. The commission’s listed in the Manhattan phone book if you want to give them a call and see how things are going.”
“Organizations bent on world domination usually have unpublished numbers.”
“Only if they’re trying to disguise their methods.”
“Which brings us back to Operation Yellow Rose.”
“And H. William Carlisle … .”
“A Trilateral commissioner, no doubt.”
Belgrade half nodded. “And before that the boy wonder of Wall Street, alias Billy the Kid, who had branched out into politics and had become a kingmaker before his thirtieth birthday. Prime force behind Eisenhower’s two terms and counted as his only failure Nixon’s near miss in 1960. He’d made up for that, though, in the ‘68 election, but pulled away from the Dickster after Nixon tried to reinvent the economy in ’71. Ended up as one of the Trilat’s founding members. Then in 1978 he disappeared. Walked out of his mansion one morning and never came back. Suicide was strongly suspected, or even foul play.”
“And Operation Yellow Rose?”
“Like I said, MacNuts, all I’ve got is cross-references to Carlisle and the Delphi, whatever that means. No dates, no prospectus, nothing else.”
“Doesn’t sound like I’m gonna be able to learn much from him under the circumstances,” McCracken said drolly.
Belgrade leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. “Carlisle’s still alive, MacNuts. He never even left D.C.; just changed his address. To the streets.”
“He became a bum?”
“He dropped out. I got limited surveillance files on him dating back to ‘78, but ending in ’90. They must’ve figured why waste the money and gave up on the effort. But if he’s alive today, you can bet he’s still out there. Trick becomes finding him.”
McCracken was already standing up. “I think I’ve got a good idea where to start.”
Lafayette Park fronts the White House on the Pennsylvania Avenue side and is therefore often cluttered with protesters. Today the park was crammed with a relatively quiet lot who were content to hoist their hastily scrawled picket signs the White House’s way. DODD, most of the signs read, a number adding FOR PRESIDENT, and several of these NOW. The message was there for the President to see every time he gazed out his window.
McCracken slid behind the protesters, who were almost eerie in the reserved, singular devotion they brought to their cause. Their seeming lack of emotion underscored their commitment. A few bystanders watched, snapping pictures from up close or taking it all in from a seat on the rim of the park fountain. Several of Washington’s homeless, meanwhile, loitered the day away in a cherished patch of shade atop spread-out blankets, their life’s possessions stored in bags never beyond reach of an outstretched hand.
The numerous benches were deserted for the most part. One set in the sun instead of shade featured a single man sitting comfortably with his arms outstretched on either side of him and legs crossed. The man wore a black overcoat marred by a number of bad stitching jobs and faded at the shoulders and ankles. His white hair and beard were thick and unkempt. A pair of torn canvas luggage totes lay beneath the bench, guarded closely by his legs. As Blaine looked on, the man began twirling the long strands of his beard. McCracken pulled out the picture Hank Belgrade had supplied of H. William Carlisle and tried to match the face to this one. Any resemblance was slight, but after this many years, how could it not be?
Blaine approached from the side so as not to draw any attention. The man didn’t so much as look his way, even when McCracken sat down on the end of the bench. But
Blaine noticed him tuck his legs a little tighter around his two packs of belongings.
“Nice view, Mr. Carlisle,” McCracken said, taking a chance. “Of the White House, I mean.”
“My bench,” came the raspy reply, years of wear telling on the voice.
“You come here every day?”
“And no one ever bothers me.” He still hadn’t turned Blaine’s way. “You hear that, sonny? Get on home now. Shoo, shoo, shoo.”
McCracken slid a little closer. A crust of dirt and grime covered the man. The smell was revolting. Blaine cocked his gaze toward the White House.
“You’re already close to home, aren’t you?”
“Belongs to the people, doesn’t it?”
“It’s supposed to. Sometimes a few see it as more theirs than others.”
“Right or wrong?” the man snapped.
“Depends, I guess. Or maybe it doesn’t.”
A pair of red-stained, beaten eyes regarded Blaine for the first time. “You’re damn right it doesn’t. 1600 belongs only to those smart enough to own it.”
“Tell that to them,” said McCracken, gazing toward the stoic supporters of Samuel Jackson Dodd.
The eyes looked at him more closely. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Name’s McCracken.”
“You got a reason to think you know me?”
Blaine didn’t hesitate. “Operation Yellow Rose.”
McCracken stared at the raggedy pile of a man seated next to him, and only then was he sure that it was indeed H. William Carlisle, Billy the Kid himself. The man’s chapped and broken lips pulsed. His eyes narrowed into slits of suspicion.
“Go to hell,” Carlisle said without much resolve.
“You’ve been there for almost twenty years, Mr. Carlisle.”
Carlisle smirked. “I left hell, Mr. What’s-your-name.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“What makes you want to listen?”
Blaine’s eyes gestured across Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. “Take a good look, Mr. Carlisle, because the tenants just might be changing ahead of schedule.”
“What are you saying?”
“Someone dug up Operation Yellow Rose. Unless I miss my guess, it’s somehow connected to a plot to overthrow the government.”
Fear blanketed Carlisle’s grime-encrusted face. He lurched toward Blaine in a sudden motion and reached to grab him at the lapels. Blaine let him, closing his nostrils as best he could against the stench.