To Free a Spy (37 page)

She drew in a deep breath and swung around to her phone.

* * *

Warfield sat in his office at the White House staring into space. He had to find a way to look into the CIA director’s whereabouts on the date Seth’s man met the American in Paris. He didn’t want to attract attention to Quinn or to himself. That could embarrass or even alienate his closest ally, President Cross, even if there was no truth to what Quinn had said about Cross in the car. Warfield couldn’t care less about some high-level appointment, but he didn’t want to scrap his name in Washington and in the intel community. He picked up the phone and punched in Paula Newnan’s number.

“Well, it’s Cameo again. What good fairy do I owe for all the attention I’m getting these days from my favorite eligible bachelor?”

“You always make things look better, Newnan.”

“What’s your problem now, Cameo?”

“Ah, no problem. Need to know where to find a little information.”

“Like what?”

“How about a beer after work. I’ll tell you then.”

“Well-l-l-l, I think I’m supposed to say I’m busy, but this time I’ll make an exception! May be the only way I’ll ever get you away from that gorgeous Fleming DeGrande.”

* * *

Paula walked the four blocks from the White House and had commandeered a table when Warfield arrived. Castrogiovanni’s was noisy because of all the hard surfaces. Walls, floors, doors and the bar itself were finished in polished cherry veneers that bounced the sounds all around the room.

They both ordered a draft.

“My staff thought I was sick when I walked out at six,” she said.

“Oughta take more time off.”

“I’d probably spend it in some place like this. I like it here.”

Warfield looked around. He’d been to Castro’s a few times. Something about the place reminded him of Rawlings, Texas.

“The drug store in my home town, Trane’s Pharmacy, we used to go there after ball practice, catch the girls hanging out at the soda fountain. Had a high tin ceiling like this place. We’d get a couple burgers, double fries, big shake, put quarters in the jukebox, flirt with the girls while we pigged out. Old man Trane would come around and turn down the music. As soon as he was back filling another prescription, we’d sneak behind that Wurlitzer and crank it up again.”

“That’s probably the least bad thing you did in those days.”

Warfield chuckled.

He signaled the waitress to bring another round.

“Speaking of trouble, Cameo, wanna know about Seth? Your mythology question. I had a chance to look it up.”

“Give it to me.”

“Okay, he’s got a long story, but the short version is Seth was a god in charge of storms, violence, disorder, unrest, usually drawn with slanting eyes, snout. A composite of various animals. If he wasn’t sufficiently appeased by his people, so it goes, they were hit with violent sandstorms, something like that. Not a popular god.”

Warfield didn’t spend much time thinking about it. “Need some info, Paula. Who keeps track of the comings and goings of the wheels?”

“I get the president’s itinerary, of course. Who are you talking about?”

“Quinn. I’d like to keep it quiet. Cross doesn’t need to know.”

“Quinn? You’re snooping on the head snoop?” Paula laughed. “That’s funny, Cameo.” Then she frowned and said, “but it’s also very dangerous.”

“How about it? Can you help?”

“I get Quinn’s itinerary if he’s traveling with the president, or if they’re going to be at the same place at the same time. That’s not often.”

“So if I gave you a certain date…”

“You haven’t changed since those drugstore days, Cameo. Still pressing the envelope, except the stakes are a little higher these days. About all Mr. Trane could do was run you out.”

Warfield nodded.

“Tell me the date and I’ll check.”

“Last year, 22 April.”

“Have some work to do at the office tonight. After everyone leaves I’ll see what I can find out. Call you first thing tomorrow.”

“Tonight.”

* * *

It was midnight and Fleming had gone to bed when his phone rang. Warfield answered in the great room. Paula said, “I know it’s late, but I wanted to call you from home.”

“What’ve you got?”

“Your man was at the New York Four Seasons Hotel on the night you asked about. Nothing unusual. According to the itinerary in the file, the president was there to address the U.N. He returned to Washington that day but your man stayed overnight. Looks like he was speaking at some committee meetings.”

“How long did he stay?” Neither of them used Quinn’s name.

“Checked in on the twenty-first, a Tuesday. Made a speech at eight the next morning, the twenty-second. Then another speech Thursday the twenty-third at noon. Checked out of the hotel that day.”

“Thanks, Paula.”

“No thanks necessary, Cameo. By the way, I heard that Fleming DeGrande has a contagious fatal disease. Wouldn’t go near her.”

“I’ll check it out.” Paula was a good-looking woman. Fortyish. Smart. Damn responsible. Worked all the time, which he figured was the reason she never remarried. After her husband died in a car accident years ago she seemed to turn all her energies to her work. She joked around with people she liked. She worked for Cross even before he entered the government sector and was the administrative standard of excellence by which others could evaluate themselves.

Warfield eased into bed and contoured himself to Fleming’s nude body without waking her, and tuned in to her breathing pattern. It was slow and peaceful, strangely in sync with the old grandfather clock that stood at the end of the hallway outside the bedroom, ticking off the seconds with undisputed authority as if it were the Chief Clock over all others.

He stared into the darkness and thought about Quinn, relieved and at the same time disappointed. Quinn was in New York at the time of the Paris meeting. It wasn’t that he hoped to find that the CIA chief led two lives, but it left Warfield back at the starting line. He had nothing. Quinn could be a bastard, but it was unimaginable that he was a traitor.

Warfield woke up tired the next morning. He’d dreamt he was a corporate accountant and couldn’t make his books balance. The dream kept coming back around but the numbers never made sense: The computer-generated financial reports bore no resemblance to the input data and the reality of the financial status of the business.

The dream stayed with him all morning. He called Paula back. “Those records show whether my man had anybody with him on that New York trip?”

“You mean someone other than officials?”

“Right.”

“They don’t.”

* * *

Helen Swope dabbed at her eyes and then her forehead with a lace-bordered white handkerchief. The Reverend Ebenezer Fuller sat beside her and gently squeezed her bony shoulder in his large hand. “You’re doin’ the right thing, Sister Helen. Don’t you fret.” His tone comforted her. Helen was Austin Quinn’s once-a-week housekeeper during the time Ana was living there. She had testified at Ana’s trial that she saw Ana sitting in front of Quinn’s CIA computer terminal taking notes on several occasions.

Not long after the trial Helen began having headaches that kept getting worse. Her fingers took on a tremor and she lost from one-hundred-eighty down to ninety-five pounds. A tic developed that caused one corner of her mouth to spasm every few seconds. She hadn’t worked in six months. Her doctors couldn’t explain any of it.

A few weeks ago she confided in her minister, the Reverend Fuller, what she had done: She’d lied on the witness stand about Ana Koronis. And she knew her maladies were God’s punishment. She didn’t even know the name of the man who paid her the five thousand dollars to do it. Never saw him before the day he came to Quinn’s house when she was working alone on a Saturday, her usual day, and sat down and talked with her about Ana and what Helen must say at the trial. He said he couldn’t reveal to her all there was to know about the case, but justice could be served only if Ana was convicted and sent away. Helen would be doing a fine service to her country and even to her God, and the man didn’t want her to think of herself as being anything other than patriotic.

Helen and Austin Quinn had never exchanged so much as a single glance about it, before or after the trial. She was certain he never knew it happened. She didn’t know now any more than she knew at the trial about Ana’s guilt or innocence, but she did know she had stood there in front of that judge and that jury and her God and she put her hand on that Bible and said she would tell the truth, and then she got on the witness stand and knowingly spoke lies.

Her attorney Filmore Dunstan sat across the desk and leaned on his left elbow, chin in hand, making notes on a legal pad with the other. He told Helen he didn’t know how this was going to play out, but Helen made one thing very clear. She wanted to get it off her chest to the authorities. Come clean, whatever the consequences. Dunstan’s secretary brought in the phone number he had asked her to find, but he had some questions for Helen before he placed the call.

“The man who talked to you that Saturday, Helen. He tell you how he knew you, or why he thought you’d be at Quinn’s place that day?”

Helen shook her head.

“Would you recognize him if you saw him?”

“Doubt it. He wearin’ a hat and he had on some real dark glasses all the time he talkin’ to me.”

“Anybody ever ask you those questions at the trial?”

“No sir.”

Filmore Dunstan dialed the number for Joe Morgan, identified himself and asked Morgan if he remembered Helen Swope from the Koronis trial.

“How could I forget the key witness.”

“She’s sitting in my office. Has some information for you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yep.”

“Something like a guilty conscience?”

“Yep. Could involve others, as well.”

“She was put up to it?”

“Could be, but look, Helen wants to tell you all of this in person.”

“I’m outta town next three days. How about my office Friday morning at ten.”

* * *

“So, we meet again, Colonel Warfield,” Ana said.

“Need a little more input.”

She nodded blankly as she smoothed a wrinkle in her prison garb.

“You traveled with Quinn on official trips?”

“Sometimes.”

Warfield looked at Ana for a moment, sitting there in her orange ADC jumpsuit, plain Jane, used to such a different life, another world. “Guess that was an ordeal. All the security around him, I mean.”

“I was not unaccustomed to security, you know, married to the ambassador. But it can get to you.”

“Ever able to get away from it, even for a short time?”

“Austin had many of the same security people for a long time. Sometimes he’d put on some sort of token disguise—hat, sunglasses, mustache even, when he was feeling a little frisky—and tell whoever was in charge of his security detail he didn’t want them tagging along. I think they were pretty used to it.”

“It happened often, then?”

“I think Austin left them guarding an empty room now and then. I don’t know, didn’t travel with him too much because of my work.”

“How long would you stay out without security?”

“Sometimes we’d get a cab, go shopping, out to dinner, the theatre. Several hours, I guess.”

Warfield put away his notes. “Speaking of Quinn, seen him lately?”

She smiled dismissively. “I’m…I’m sure he’s been busy.”

“You still…oh, sorry.”

She shook her head. “It’s okay. I still think of Austin. Nothing romantic. That was over before the trial, but I know the whole thing was hard on him, too.”

“Saw him yesterday. He asked about you.”

She nodded. “Wouldn’t mind spending some time with him one day. You know, closure. Some old issues we never got to talk about.”

Warfield mulled over the meeting as he headed back to Washington. Nothing incriminating about Quinn shaking his security detail now and then. Warfield figured he would do the same thing himself under the circumstances. But Warfield’s bottom line was that he wasn’t satisfied.

He dialed Paula. “Can you meet me at Castro’s?”

“It’ll have to be later, say, seven.”

* * *

After Warfield left, Ana stood at the narrow window in her room at ADC. Birds were chirping, flying tree to tree, chasing each other around the compound, Ana thinking of their total freedom. She wondered how much longer before she was free. She was pleased at her progress with the colonel. And Suri. Suri had more of an impact on Warfield than Ana would have imagined.

* * *

Castrogiovanni’s was a place you didn’t worry about being overheard. The noise level took care of that.

Warfield asked Paula, “Can you find out who was on Quinn’s security detail at a given time? That New York trip for example.”

“Security Protective Service may have provided us a crew list. I can check.”

“Before noon tomorrow?” Warfield pressed.

Paula groaned. “Gonna get me fired, Cameo.”

* * *

When Warfield got to his office the next morning there was a voicemail from Joe Morgan, the U.S. attorney. “Only got a second before I catch my plane. The lawyer representing Helen Swope called. You remember Swope—the Koronis trial. Something on the little lady’s mind. Impression is somebody helped her with her testimony, and now she’s having a problem with it. Wants to talk. Meeting’s Friday at ten. Knew you’d want to know.”

Warfield hung up and mulled that little tidbit over for a moment. What a bombshell that would be. But until he learned more on Friday it would be a waste of time to speculate on it. Things like that came up frequently.

Paula walked in with a tan envelope containing the information he had asked her for, put it down with a smile and left. Warfield dumped the contents onto his desk. The agent in charge of Quinn’s security on the New York trip had been Randall C. Coffman.

* * *

Warfield waited until evening to call. “Mr. Coffman, this is Cameron Warfield. I work in—”

“Uh, sure! That Japanese bomber, Yoshida, was it? That’s you, right?”

Warfield acknowledged it was him. He told Coffman he needed information about one of his assignments.