fifty-fifty chance of succeeding in such a way that he could take her out and then manage to get away. “I’ll take your one million euros as an opening bid, but I’ll need a further one million when it is done.”
“No.”
“Then go home, Herr Wolfhardt,” DeCamp said, satisfied by the quick expression of surprise and dismay in the German’s eyes. They’d never given each other their real names, and DeCamp didn’t know exactly who the ex- German spy worked for after Prague, but he knew at least some of the man’s prior history. A friend in South African intelligence had gotten the information for him a couple of years ago. “Be careful of this bastard, mate, he could turn around and bite you on the arse.”
Wolfhardt nodded. “I’ll go now and present your proposal to my principals. I’m sure some accommodations can be made.” He held out the manila envelope. “May I leave this with you?”
“Of course,” DeCamp said, taking it.
“The material is quite sensitive, and included is the name and background of an ally who is almost always with her.”
“Is this person to be trusted?”
“Implicitly,” Wolfhardt replied.
After a quiet lunch in the garden, during which the appearance of the man in the dark Mercedes wasn’t brought up, DeCamp led Martine into the high-ceilinged bedroom where they made slow, passionate love. It was something they always did before he left on one of his assignments, and as always this afternoon their lovemaking was bittersweet, for Martine because it signaled another period of being alone, and for DeCamp because he could see the end of his life here with her.
“Must you leave?” she whispered afterwards. She was lying in his arms, and she looked at him, her dark eyes wide and already filled with loneliness.
“This will be the last time,” he told her.
And she smiled, not knowing the entire meaning of what he had promised. “Then
That evening Wolfhardt telephoned with the news that the one million would be paid within twenty-four hours, and an additional million when the assignment was successfully completed. DeCamp had expected his offer would be accepted.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Director of Central Intelligence Walter Page had a lot on his mind, most of it troubling, as his armored Cadillac limo was admitted through the West Gate onto the White House grounds, where it pulled up under the portico a few minutes before one in the afternoon. He was a man of medium build, totally undistinguished looking, with a pleasant face and calm demeanor who’d been president of IBM before being tapped to head the CIA.
Don Morton, the assistant chief of Caracas station, had flown up and together with Marty Bambridge, the Deputy Director of Operations, had gone over everything that he and his boss Lorraine Fritch had put together about Miguel Octavio and his connection with the Marinaccio woman and their shared business ventures, including ties to the UAE International Bank of Commerce.
On the surface none of that should have risen to the level of ordering the assassination of a high-ranking embassy officer, especially not the CIA’s chief of station, nor was her death some random act of robbery, or even a hit by one of the terrorist groups down there.
Morton and Bambridge, but especially Morton, were convinced that whatever Ms. Fritch had learned at the end, which caused her to charter a private jet to bring her to Langley to speak with her boss, was the reason she was killed.
“She sounded excited on the phone,” Bambridge said. “What she was bringing was too important to trust, even to one of our encrypted Internet circuits.” He was a narrow-shouldered man with a perpetual look of surprise on his dark features, as if he could never quite believe what he’d just heard.
But neither he nor Morton had the slightest idea what it might be except that it probably had something to do with Octavio and the rest of what they had dug up.
“But there had to be a catalyst of some sort to send her running for headquarters,” Morton had suggested.
And Page had sent him back to Caracas to do a full court press on the problem. After he walked out Page had ordered word be sent to as many of their field agents working under nonofficial cover as they could reach without causing a stir. But Bambridge was doubtful much would be turned up.
“It could come down to a matter of burning some serious assets we’ve been cultivating over the long haul.”
“Do it,” Page had ordered.
And the question that hung in the air, that still hung in Page’s mind and perhaps the reason for the president’s call, was a possible connection between Octavio, Marinaccio, the UAE IBC, and Hutchinson Island. It had to do with the timing; Ms. Fritch dropping everything to fly up to Langley immediately after the nuclear power plant attack was simply too coincidental for Page not to speculate.
He was met at the door by one of the president’s security detail who led him down the West Wing corridor to the Oval Office where Lord’s secretary told him that the president and his National Security Adviser Eduardo Estevez were expecting him. No one smiled when he walked in. The president, seated behind his desk, motioned for the door to be closed, picked up the phone, told his secretary that he was not to be disturbed, and then gave Page a hard look.
“Thanks for coming over, Walter. You have your hands full.”
Estevez, seated on one of the couches, was watching a newscast on a laptop about the aftermath of the Hutchinson Island disaster. He looked up, the same hard expression in his eyes as the president’s.
“I assumed you wanted an update on the situation in Caracas, Mr. President,” Page said. He sat down on one of the chairs in front of the president’s desk. “No one has come forward claiming responsibility for her assassination, but we think her death may have been a result of an investigation she was conducting on Miguel Octavio, and his connections with the IBC in Dubai.”
Estevez looked up and laughed, but without humor. “That’s not possible,” he said, coolly. “In the first place he’d have no need to involve himself with those people, and neither would the Saudis. We’ve covered that ground already.”
Page shrugged. He was getting boxed in just like every other DCI had when they tried to tell a president something the administration simply did not want to hear. Anything involving the Saudis, and now especially the Venezuelans, was tricky. The oil-producing nations had us by the short hairs, and policy planners and threat assessors over at the Department of Defense had been warning for years that our dependence on oil posed a real national security problem.
No administration, including this one, had cared to listen to that warning. The problem with facing the issue head-on was one of interims. Switching to alternative sources of energy, or even talking about going that way — if such talk were at the diplomatic level — could create a terrible ripple effect. Especially from the Saudis who had threatened to severely restrict OPEC’s output, putting a squeeze on the economy like had happened in the seventies that would all but drive the U.S. into bankruptcy. We wouldn’t have the money in the interim to wean ourselves from fossil fuels.
No president wanted to risk that happening, and people like Octavio were off-limits. Only this time it wasn’t going to be so easy.
“Ms. Fritch was a highly thought of station chief,” Page said, careful to keep any hint of confrontation out of his tone. He was reporting facts. “Bright, steady, experienced. She would not have wasted the agency’s time on something that wasn’t worthwhile.”
“She was wrong,” Estevez said. “Goddamnit, Walter, you know where this could lead if we’re not careful.”
