The Assassin (25 page)

Nasir Tabrizi was deep in thought as the secretary-general of the International Chamber of Commerce made his way to the podium. Tubrizi’s feelings toward the United States were decidedly mixed. During his years in London, the INC’s murky relationship with the U.S. government had made him extremely uncomfortable. At the same time, that relationship was largely responsible for his current position. His country was even more divided than he was. A recent poll had suggested that more than 80 percent of Iraqis wanted American troops out of the country. Tabrizi understood the sentiment, but he knew that a rapid withdrawal would likely cause the new government to break down completely. At the moment, the only thing holding it together was international pressure for results, and as one would expect, most of that pressure was coming from the United States. The troops were a highly visible reminder of the U.S. commitment to the region, and while the nature of that commitment was cause for constant debate, no one could deny that the Americans were in for the long haul.

Of course, the current situation left much to be desired. The attempted assassination of Nuri al-Maliki had led to numerous outbreaks of violence over the past two weeks, particularly between Sunni insurgents and followers of the Shiite cleric Moqtadr al-Sadr. Since that failed attempt, 30 American soldiers had died in Baghdad alone. Tabrizi knew that the U.S. president’s approval ratings were at an all-time low, hovering around 40 percent. Richard Fiske, the Democratic challenger, had promised a rapid withdrawal of troops as part of his election campaign, and the American people seemed to be responding to that platform. Tabrizi worried constantly about what the results of that election might mean for his country, but unfortunately, all he could do was watch from the sidelines.

A noise behind him caused him to turn. A French security officer tapped the face of his watch and whispered so as not to interfere with the speech being given at the front of the room. “Ten minutes, Dr. Tabrizi.”

“Thank you.” He nodded cordially, and the man retreated. After arriving in Paris two days earlier with the Iraqi delegation, he’d been surprised to find that three CRS men had been assigned to his security detail. Like all senior officials in Iraq, he was provided with an armed escort whenever he left the Green Zone, but that kind of protection was rarely afforded by other nations, even during official visits. Knowing they could count on Tabrizi’s voice in the legislature, the Americans had most likely slipped a quiet word to the French. At least, that was what he assumed had happened. Despite the attack in Baghdad, he didn’t think the security was particularly necessary. Still, the presence of his young guardians was somewhat reassuring, even in a city as civilized as Paris.

The secretary-general concluded his remarks, and the room filled with applause. Rising from his seat, Tabrizi shook a few extended hands and exchanged some pleasantries, then turned to the CRS man. “The next meeting will not take long. I assume the car is outside?”

A brief nod. “Yes, sir. The convention center is right across the street. I’ll walk with you that far, and the car will take you on to your hotel afterward.”

“Wonderful.” The Iraqi physician smiled and gestured toward the door. “Lead the way.”

CHAPTER 23

WASHINGTON, D.C. • VIRGINIA • PARIS

The restaurant was located on the 700 block of 6th Street, just across from the recently renamed Verizon Center. It was hard to spot from the street, and Kealey walked past it several times before he finally inquired in a video shop, which happened to bear the correct address. The sullen clerk on duty wordlessly guided him out to the road and pointed toward the entrance, a covered staircase running up the side of the building. Making his way up to the second floor, he was greeted at the door by a pretty Chinese woman in a red silk dress. He followed her through the busy dining room to one of several smaller rooms in the back.

He found Jonathan Harper digging into a plate of chicken curry, a cup of steaming amber tea at his right hand. The woman handed Kealey a menu and departed, softly closing the door behind her. It was quiet inside the little alcove, the only sounds the clanking of plates from the adjacent dining area, low snatches of conversation, and the rain beating against a small frosted window.

Harper pointed to a chair and said, “What kept you? Christ, you’re soaked.”

“I felt like walking.”

“From where? McLean?”

Kealey poured some of the tea and looked down at his damp clothes. “I got caught in the downpour.”

There was a slight tap at the door, and the woman reappeared. She smiled demurely and handed him a towel. He was surprised but accepted it gratefully. Harper murmured a few words in Chinese, and the woman departed.

“This is a nice place,” Kealey remarked, working the towel through his hair. “How did you find it?”

“I know the owner. He’s Burmese, a former diplomat. I worked with him when I was attached to the State Department back in ’94. He liked the city so much he decided to stay. He bought this place when he retired. I don’t come here that often, but they seem to remember me.”

“So you weren’t just speaking Chinese?”

Harper shook his head and laughed. “I hope we never need you for anything over there. You’d be dead in a week, with those language skills.”

Kealey offered a slight smile. The DDO set down his fork and bent down to a case by his feet, then straightened and slid two manila folders over the patterned tablecloth. The younger man pulled them across and opened the first. It contained what he’d requested from Harper that very morning: black-and-white photocopies of Samantha Crane’s personnel file. He instantly began flipping through the pages.

“Interesting stuff,” Harper said, digging back into his meal. “I got the files through a friend at the Bureau, my old roommate at Boston College. He’s pretty high up now, a section chief at the Los Angeles field office, and he owed me a favor.”

“Some favor,” Kealey said.

“Yeah, well, he knows about this woman firsthand. Samantha Crane has a reputation of sorts, and it’s not the good kind. She was sworn in as a special agent six years ago. Since then, she’s killed eight people in the line of duty and wounded a dozen more.”

Kealey looked up. “Jesus.”

Harper nodded. “Amazingly, all of the shootings were cleared by the Office of Professional Responsibility, but as you can imagine, it left a bad taste in the Bureau’s mouth. They don’t like that kind of publicity. Fortunately for Crane, she has a guardian angel.”

The waitress returned, bearing more food. As she began unloading the dishes, both men fell silent, but Kealey continued to flip through the file. Samantha Evelyn Crane was born on June 8th, 1978, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She’d earned a degree in criminal justice from Penn State in 1999, but not before attending the Windward School in Los Angeles from ’90 to ’93.

“She was only a kid when she went to this Windward place. What’s that about?”

“It’s a private school and very prestigious,” Harper replied. “It turns out a lot of promising young actors; in fact, Crane did a fair amount of commercial work as a teenager. You won’t find this in the file, but she was in her second year at the school when she lost her parents. Her father was a full colonel, an army Apache pilot, heavily decorated. He was shot down behind Iraqi lines in ’91, but they never found the body. He’s still listed as MIA.”

“And the mother?”

Harper looked uneasy. “She killed herself. Slit her wrists two months after she was notified of her husband’s disappearance. I had some people check it out, though… Apparently, she was going downhill prior to the incident. Drugs, alcohol abuse, that kind of thing.”

Kealey turned his attention back to the paperwork, but Harper could tell his mind was somewhere else. He knew they were both thinking the same thing: that Samantha Crane’s childhood bore a remarkable similarity to that of William Vanderveen. Major General Francis Vanderveen had also been a heavily decorated officer, only with the South African Defence Force instead of the U.S. military. The elder Vanderveen was killed during the South African invasion of Angola in 1975, and shortly thereafter, his wife, Julienne, committed suicide, leaving Will Vanderveen an orphan at the age of nine. According to the file, Crane had not been much older when she’d endured the same.

The second folder contained info on Matt Foster, the agent who’d fired the shots that killed Anthony Mason. Foster was twenty-five years old, a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Exeter Academy. Interestingly, he’d never been involved in an on-duty shooting until the raid in Alexandria. Apart from that piece of info, there was little to go on. Disappointed, Kealey set the folders aside and started in on a plate of egg noodles. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he hoped the food might settle his queasy stomach.

Picking up the thread, Kealey said, “So what about Crane? Who’s looking out for her?”

Harper leaned forward, inadvertently shifting the tablecloth. “You’re never going to believe it, Ryan, but as it turns out, her aunt is none other than Rachel Ford.”

Kealey set down his fork and stared across the table. “As in
our
Rachel Ford? The deputy DCI?”

“One and the same.”

Kealey exhaled slowly, taking it in. “That’s incredible.”

“I know. I couldn’t believe it either.”

“It makes sense, though.”

“What do you mean?”

Kealey told him about the confrontation at the hotel that morning. “She said something strange, John. She was talking about the raid in Alexandria, and the way I knocked her to the ground to get her out of the line of fire. I guess I was a little rough. Anyway, she said, ‘Your little college flashback didn’t stop him from shooting me.’”

“So?”

“So I played cornerback at the University of Chicago. Just two seasons, and I didn’t start, but how the hell could she have known that unless she was checking up on me?”

Harper nodded slowly. “That makes sense. And the only way she could do that is with help from someone high up in the Agency. Someone like Ford.”

“That’s probably how she found out I had the laptop as well.” Kealey’s face tightened in anger. “This Ford woman is really starting to piss me off. Why is she going after me, and why in this way?”

“The accusation carries more weight if it comes from another agency, Ryan. And I already told you why she’s after you — because you keep making it easy for her, and because you’re part of my directorate. It doesn’t matter, though; you’re in the clear on the laptop.”

“Really? How did that happen?”

“The attorney general received a call from Harry Judd this morning. Basically, Judd accused us of interfering in a Bureau investigation and tampering with evidence. He was calling to ask about the possibility of filing charges.”

Kealey closed his eyes and shook his head. Crane must have set things in motion right after she left his room.

“Anyway,” Harper was saying, “the attorney general advised the president of the situation.”

“That probably wasn’t a good idea.”

“It wasn’t,” Harper agreed. “Brenneman already has too much on his plate. The election is coming up. He needs to be campaigning, but instead, he’s dealing with this shit in Iraq. More U.S. soldiers have died in the past week than in the past two months combined. A pissing contest between the Bureau and the CIA is the last thing he needs right now.”

“So he sent word to the respective directors to work it out themselves,” Kealey guessed. “Or face the consequences.”

“I know Andrews got the call, but I can’t say for sure what happened at the Hoover Building. Anyway, you said that Crane instigated this. My guess is that word trickled down from the director’s office. Someone probably told her she was lucky not to have gone the way of the ADIC and to keep her mouth shut.”

Kealey nodded. Craig Harrington, the assistant director in charge of the WFO, had already been placed on administrative leave. The Judiciary Oversight Committee was looking for someone to take the fall for the disastrous raid on Mason’s warehouse, and Harrington was emerging as the most likely candidate.

“The Bureau will still want the computer, though,” Kealey pointed out.

Harper nodded. Having cleared his plate, he set his fork aside and said, “Andrews advised me we are obliged to turn over the laptop within twenty-four hours. I guess he struck some kind of deal with Judd. Either way, I can’t postpone it forever, Ryan. I hope Naomi is working fast.”

At that moment, Kharmai was hurrying back to her temporary desk in McLean, holding a half-empty can of Sprite. Over the past two hours, she’d done everything she could think of to generate leads on Mason’s files. She’d entered every name she could find into the NCIC, but so far, no flags had been raised. She’d struck out with Interpol as well. In a final act of desperation, she had placed calls to a number of CIA stations, all of which were located in countries with ports on Mason’s list. She was hoping something might come of her last-ditch effort, but she wasn’t holding her breath. Her phone started to ring when she was halfway across the floor, and she immediately increased her pace.

Sprinting the last few feet, she snatched it up. “Kharmai.”

“Naomi, it’s Bill Staibler.”

Her heart thumped with anticipation. Staibler was a veteran case officer operating out of Cairo. She’d first gotten through to him two hours earlier. During that brief conversation, he’d intimated that his network of agents included a number of dockworkers on the Egyptian coast. That little tidbit made him a star on her sad little list of prospects. “Hi, sir. Thanks for getting back to me.”

“No problem.” He sounded tired. Naomi remembered the time difference and glanced at her watch. It was nearly 7:00 PM in Cairo; Staibler must have been coming off a long day.

“According to your information,” he was saying, “this guy Mason had a container on the
Kustatan
, a Panamanian vessel which docked in Port Said East on the eighteenth of August. Unfortunately, you don’t have a container number. Is that correct?”