Thomas knew he would need more than that--strong Georgian coffee or even
stronger Russian cognac--to warm him after the reception he expected to
receive at the embassy. Unfortunately, keeping secrets from your own
people was part of the spy business, too. Hopefully, they would vent a
little, Thomas would act contrite, and everyone could move on.
Thomas was met by a staff car from the embassy. He didn't rush tossing
his single bag in the trunk. He didn't want any Russian or Azerbaijani
agents thinking he was in a hurry. He paused to pop a sucker into his
mouth, stretched, then climbed into the car. Be boring. That was the
key when you thought you were being watched. Then, if you had to speed
up suddenly, chances were good you might surprise and lose whoever was
trailing you.
It was a thirty-minute drive from Baku International Airport to the
bay-side region that housed the embassies and the city's commercial
district. Thomas never got to spend more than a day or two at a time
here, though that was something he still meant to do. He had been to
the local bazaars, to the Fire Worshipper's Temple, to the State Museum
of Carpets--a museum with a name like that demanded to be seen--and to
the most famous local landmark, the Maiden Tower. Located in the old
Inner City on the bay and at least two thousand years old, the
eight-story tower was built by a young girl who either wanted to lock
herself inside or throw herself into the sea--no one knew for certain
which version was true. Thomas knew how she felt.
Thomas was taken to see Deputy Ambassador Williamson, who had returned
from dinner and was sitting behind her desk, waiting for him. They
shook hands and exchanged a few banal words. Then she picked up a pen
and noted the time on a legal pad. Moore and Battat came to her office
moments later. The agent's neck was mottled black and gunmetal gray. In
addition to the bruises, he looked exhausted.
Thomas offered Battat his hand.
"Are you all right?"
"A little banged up," Battat said.
"I'm sorry about all this, Pat."
Thomas made a face.
"Nothing's guaranteed, David.
Let's see how we can fix it."
Thomas looked at Moore, who was standing beside Battat. The men had met
several times at various Asian embassy conferences and functions. Moore
was a good man, what they called a twenty-four seven--an agent who lived
and ate his work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Right now,
Moore was making no attempt to conceal his dark, unforgiving mood.
Thomas extended his hand. Moore accepted it.
"How have you been?" Thomas asked.
"That isn't important," Moore said.
"I'm not happy now. There was no reason for this to go down the way it
did."
"Mr. Moore, you're correct," Thomas said as he released his hand.
"In retrospect, we should have done this all differently. The question
is, how do we fix it now?"
Moore sneered.
"You don't get off that easily," he said.
"Your team mounted a small operation here and didn't tell us. Your man
says you were worried about security risks and other factors. What do
you think, Mr. Thomas--that the Azerbaijani are wet-wired into the
system? That we can't conduct a surveillance without them finding out?"
Thomas walked to an armchair across from Williamson.
"Mr. Moore, Ms. Williamson, we had a short time to make a quick
decision. We made a bad one, a wrong one. The question is, what do we
do now? If the Harpooner is here, can we find him and stop him from
getting away?"
"How do we bail you out, you mean?" Moore asked.
"If you like," Thomas conceded. Anything to get this out of reverse and
moving ahead.
Moore relaxed.
"It isn't going to be easy," he said.
"We've found no trace of the boat Mr. Battat says he saw, and we have a
Harpooner has left today."
"What about working backward?" Thomas said.
"Why would the Harpooner be in Baku?"
"There are any number of targets a terrorist for hire could hit," Moore
said.
"Or he may just have been passing through on his way to another republic
or to the Middle East. You know these people. They rarely take a
direct route anywhere."
"If Baku was just a layover, the Harpooner is probably long gone,"
Thomas said.
"Let's concentrate on possible targets in the region and reasons for
hitting those targets."
"The Nagorno-Karabakh and Iran are our biggest concerns," Williamson
said.
"The people in NK have voted themselves an independent republic, while
Azerbaijan and Armenia are both fighting to claim it. The whole region
will probably explode when Azerbaijan gets enough money to buy more
advanced weapons for its military. That would be bad enough for both
nations, but with Iran just fifteen miles to the south, it could end up
being quite an explosion. As for Iran, even without the NK situation,
Teheran and Baku have been gnawing at each other for years over access
to everything from offshore oil to Caspian sturgeon and caviar. When
the Soviet Union watched over the Caspian, they took what they wanted.
And not only are there problems, but the problems overlap," Williamson
added.
"Sloppy drilling by Azerbaijan has caused a quarter-inch-thick oil film
in parts of the sea where Iran fishes for sturgeon. The pollution is
killing the fish."
"What is the oil situation, exactly?" Thomas asked.
"There are four major oil fields," Williamson said.
"Azeri, Chirag, Guneshli, and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan and the Western
Consortium members that underwrite the drilling are convinced that
international law protects their exclusive rights to the sites. But
their claim is based on boundaries that are defined by fishing rights,
which both Iran and Russia insist do not apply. So far, the arguments
have all been diplomatic."
"But if someone perpetrated a new action somewhere," Thomas said, "such
as an embassy explosion or an assassination--" "There could be a
disastrous chain reaction reaching into a half-dozen surrounding
nations, affecting oil supplies worldwide, and drawing the United States
into a major foreign war," Williamson said.
Moore added sarcastically, "That's why we like to be kept informed about
covert actions in our backward little outpost."
Thomas shook his head.
"Mea culpa. Now, can we all agree to look ahead instead of back?"
Moore regarded him for a moment, then nodded.
"So," Williamson said, looking down at her notes.
"As I understand this, there are two possible scenarios.
First, that the individual who attacked Mr. Battat was not the
Harpooner, in which case we may have nothing more than a drug smuggler
or gunrunner on our hands.
One who managed to get the drop on Mr. Battat and then slip away."
"Correct," said Thomas.
"What are the chances of that?" Williamson asked.
"They're unlikely," Thomas said.
"We know that the Harpooner is in the region. An official from the
Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research was on a Turkish
Airlines flight from London to Moscow and made a tentative ID of the
Harpooner. He tried to follow the target but lost him."
"You're saying an INR guy and the world's most wanted terrorist just
happened to be on the same flight?" Moore said.
"I can't speak for the Harpooner, only for the DOS official," Thomas
replied.
"But we're finding that more and more terrorists and spies take the
diplomatic routes.
They try to pick up intel from laptops and phone calls.
DOS has issued several alerts about that. Maybe it was a coincidence;
maybe there was a diskette or phone number the Harpooner wanted to try
and steal when the official went to the rest room. I don't know."
"The official was able to identify the Harpooner based on what?"
Williamson asked.
"The only known photograph," Thomas told him.
"It was a good picture, reliable," Moore assured her.
"We were notified and did some checking," Thomas went on.
"It fit with some intel we had picked up independently.
The passenger was traveling under an assumed name with a fake British
passport. We checked taxi records, found that he had been picked up at
the Kensington Hilton in London. He'd only been there for one night,
where he met with several people who, according to the concierge, looked
and sounded Middle Eastern. We tried to track the individual in Moscow,
but no one saw him leave the terminal. So we checked flights to other
areas. Someone matching his description had shown a Russian passport in
the name of Gardner and flown to Baku."
"It is the Harpooner's boat," Deputy Ambassador Williamson said
suddenly.
"It has to be."
The others looked at her.
"You've heard of it?" Thomas asked.
"Yes. I went to college," Williamson said.
"Gardner is the captain of the Rachel in Moby-Dick. It's one of the
ships that was chasing the elusive white whale. She failed to capture
him, I might add."
Thomas regarded Battat unhappily.
"The Harpooner," Thomas said.
"Dammit. Of course. He planted that for us to find."
"Now, there's a smart terrorist," Moore said.
"If you recognize the allusion, you would have thought it a joke and
wouldn't have bothered to pursue. If you thought it was real, then the
Harpooner knew just where you'd be looking for him. And he would be
there, waiting to stop you."
"But the boat was real," Battat said.
"I saw the name--" "A name that was put there to hold your attention for
a while," Thomas said.
"Shit. We fell for that one, big time."
"Which brings us to the second and suddenly very likely scenario,"
Williamson said.
"If the Harpooner has been in Baku, there are two things we need to find
out pretty damn quick. First, what he wanted and second, where he is
now. Is that about right?"
Thomas nodded.
Moore rose.
"I'm betting he's no longer using the Russian passport. I'll get into
the hotel computers and check the names of the guests against our
passport registry database. See if any new names pop up."
"He may also be working with people here, in which case he may not be
staying at a hotel," Thomas said.
"I'll give you a list of known or suspected foreign cells," Moore told
him.
"You and Mr. Battat can crosscheck those with people the Harpooner
might have worked with before."
Battat said he would do that.
"There's one other thing we should try," Thomas said.
"We pretty much tapped out our Moscow-based sources on this before Mr.
Battat came down. It wasn't very productive, but that was all we had
time for. What about other governments in the region?"
"We haven't made any significant intelligence inroads with any of them,"
the deputy ambassador admitted.
"We don't have the personnel to nurse the relationships, and a lot of
the republics, including Azerbaijan, have had their resources strained
with internal problems.
Everyone is busy spying on each other, especially on Chechnya."
"Why there?" Battat asked.
"Because despite the coalition government that exists on paper, Chechnya
is really controlled by Islamic militias intent on destabilizing and
bringing down the other republics, including Russia," she said.
"I'm hoping that the initiative the president announced last night in
Washington will remedy that."
"What initiative?" Battat asked.
"An intelligence cooperative with the United Nations," Moore told him.
"He announced it last night in Washington."
Battat rolled his eyes.
"You know, there is one place we might be able to try," Thomas said.
"A couple of years ago I remember hearing that the National Crisis
Management Center was involved with a Russian group based in Saint
Petersburg."
"A Russian crisis management group," Moore said.
"Yeah, I remember hearing about that."
"I can call Washington and have them contact Op Center Moore said.
"See if they still have a relationship with the Russians."
"When you do, have them contact Bob Herbert over there," Thomas
suggested.
"He's the head of intelligence--a really capable guy from what I hear. I
understand that the new guy running the place. General Rodgers, is
something of a hard-ass."
"He's not running Op-Center," the deputy ambassador said.
"Who is?" asked Thomas.
"Paul Hood," said the deputy ambassador.
"We got a directory update this morning. He withdrew his resignation."
Moore snickered.
"I'll bet he won't be involved in the UN intelligence program."
"Regardless," Thomas said, "have them contact Herbert.
The Harpooner may try to slip out of the region by heading north, into
Scandanavia. If he does, the Russians may be able to help us up there."
Thomas agreed. Everyone rose then, and Thomas offered his hand to the
deputy ambassador.
"Thank you for everything," Thomas said.
"I'm truly sorry about all this."
"So far, no real harm has been done."
"We're going to see that it stays that way," Thomas said.
"I'll have a room prepared for the two of you," Williamson said.
"It's not fancy, but it's a place to crash."
"Thanks," Thomas said.
"But until we find our man, I have a feeling I won't be getting a lot of
sleep."
"None of us will, Mr. Thomas," Williamson assured him.
"If you'll excuse me. Ambassador Small is due back from Washington at
ten p.m. He'll want to be briefed on this as soon as possible."
Thomas left and walked down the corridor to Moore's office. The ADPI
hated having lost the Harpooner. But he also hated the fact that the
bastard was probably laughing at them for taking the whale bait. He
also wondered if the Harpooner might somehow have known that Battat had
come from Mosco
w. Maybe that was why he'd let the agent live, to create
conflict between the CIA office in Moscow and Baku. Or maybe he did it
just to confuse them, have them waste time wondering why he hadn't
killed Battat.
Thomas shook his head. Your mind is all over the damn place, he chided
himself. Stop it. You've got to focus. But that was going to be
tough, Thomas knew, because the Harpooner was obviously a man who liked
to keep his trackers off balance by mixing games with reality.
And so far, he was doing a helluva job.
Washington, D.C.
Monday, 3:00 p.m.
The cell phone rang in the office of the red-haired man. He shooed out
two young assistants who closed the door behind them. Then he swiveled