There was the click of a keyboard, then, “Here he is: sixteen counts of tax evasion, same number of conspiracy to evade taxes, a dozen counts of mail fraud… Shall I go on?”
“No need. I have a copy of the indictment. You guys really like to pile it on.”
“Oh, c’mon! We didn’t charge him with adultery and fornication, something he’s guilty as hell of.”
“Only because they’re not federal crimes, and I can’t recall the last time a state chose to prosecute. The tender mercy of the United States attorney is well-known. I was calling to see if there might be a plea deal available.”
“Sure, he pleads and the judge deals him about twenty years.”
Lang inhaled deeply. “I’m serious, Alicia. The man is, after all, a preacher anxious to return to his flock.”
“More anxious to fleece his flock, I’d say. He’s done a pretty fair job of that, but I’ll see what we can do and get back to you.”
His previous discomfort forgotten, Lang was smiling as he hung up.
He began sorting the slips into three piles: return ASAP, return when convenient and the last stack on the edge of the desk, which a single sweep of the hand would send into the trash basket.
He had almost finished the task when his phone interrupted. “Lang, it’s someone called Miles. He said you’d know who he was.”
Lang got up, crossed the office and shut the door before he picked up. “Yes, thank you, Miles. I’m healing nicely.”
There was a two count before Mile’s relay replied, “Glad to hear it. How long will it take to get to a pay phone? I noticed there were several in the lobby of your building.”
Lang was not even sure Miles was correct. He hadn’t noticed. With cell phones more common than neckties these days, who used pay phones? Answer: people who suspected their calls, or those of people calling them, might be intercepted. The sheer randomness of selecting a pay phone made eavesdropping unlikely if not impossible.
“Same number?” Lang asked.
“Same number.”
“Gimme about five minutes.”
Three pay phones were, in fact, in the lobby, lined along a wall like books in a shelf. The first was clearly out of order. The second was splattered with some gooey substance, the origins of which Lang chose not to speculate upon, although he suspected it might have something to do with the homeless. Those beggars, addicts and mental cases populated the city’s downtown area, using the facilities of any building whose security was lax. The chamber of commerce’s pleas to the municipal government to solve the problem of aggressive panhandling went unheeded.
After all, the homeless voted, as did the bleeding hearts whose sympathies for their less-fortunate brethren did not include working downtown.
The third phone appeared to be intact and reasonably sanitary. Lang poured in the change required for a longdistance call to the Washington, D.C., area code.
“Lang?”
“Here, Miles. I’m guessing you called to make certain my good looks will not be permanently disfigured.”
“That and a minor matter of national security.”
A few feet away, the body language of a couple in front of an elevator bank said they were arguing. Rather than stare at a blank marble wall, Lang watched.
“I’m not in the national-security business anymore, remember? I did you a favor going to Haiti and got my face rearranged for my troubles.”
“No good deed goes unpunished. But wait till you hear what your pal Colonel Dow had to say.”
The man’s hands were on his hips, his head inclined forward. From his expression, Lang was glad he couldn’t hear what was being said.
“I don’t want to know, Miles. The only reason you’d tell me is to hook me in further. I’m retired and want to stay that way.”
During the pause before Miles’s answer, the woman reacted to whatever the man had said by stepping into the first elevator that opened, although it was in a different bank, going to a floor other than the ones served by the cars for which she had been waiting.
“Well, that’s your business, Lang, but as an old pal, I’ll give you some free advice.”
“No doubt worth every penny I pay for it.”
The man started to follow. He got one foot in past the door before he received a slap to the face that reverberated across the marble lobby. He jerked back as though attempting to avoid the strike of a venomous snake.
“OK, don’t take it. But were I you, I’d beef up whatever security you have around the house.”
A mechanical voice interrupted the conversation, demanding more money.
Lang shoved it in. “Whoa! What about security?”
“Dow pretty well spilled everything he knew after a little, ah, persuasion.”
“I’m disappointed he didn’t get the works, but what about security around the house?”
The man who had been slapped was frantically pushing the up button of the bank of elevators the woman had taken.
“OK, so he was probably in a little more hurt than you were when the Dominicans finished with him. Fact is, he’s under guard in a prison hospital. One of the things he mentioned was, his superiors think you know something you shouldn’t. You know how the Chinese handle that problem. The Guoanbu ain’t good people. They’re going to be on you like white on rice until somebody in the government pulls them off or-”
“I get the picture. And you have a plan to make someone call off the dogs.”
“Of course!” Miles was cheerful, the way he always was when he was getting his way.
Lang sighed. Dealing with the Agency was like waltzing with the tar baby: there was no way not to get stuck.
An elevator door opened. The man got on. Seconds later, another opened and the woman got off. Lang turned to stare at the wall. It was more restful.
“OK, Miles, tell me what you have in mind.”
“First, a little background. About a year ago, ECHELON picked up an exchange of messages between the People’s Republic and Haiti.”
Miles was referring to the system operated by the British, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians that intercepted any message in the world sent via satellite. Landlines were becoming as obsolete as buggy whips. Consequently, ECHELON’s volume was so great that computers had to search communications for key words before the number of messages of possible interest could be reduced to numbers a finite staff of humans could listen to or read.
“Since any communication by the Chinese to a country of this hemisphere is of interest,” Miles continued, “we followed the conversation. China has no embassy or even trade attache in Haiti and the two countries have no common code, so the messages were in the clear, something about establishing a trading partnership. As you remarked before going there, there’s damn little Haiti exports that China wants and even less the Chinese manufacture that Haiti could afford.
“Obviously this exchange had some other meaning, so we alerted our asset in Haiti to watch the airport and see who arrived.”
“Whoa,” Lang interrupted. “You told me you had no assets in Haiti.”
“True, we don’t. We had a guy, but we haven’t heard from him nor been able to contact him for some time. I’m afraid he’s been silenced. Anyway, he e-mailed us a photo taken with a special camera we supplied of the Chinese visitor getting off a private plane. It wasn’t some bureaucrat from the trade department. It was Chin Diem.”
“Someone I should know?” Lang asked.
“Undersecretary for foreign relations. Pretty high up the food chain to be making a trip to negotiate the price of coffee.
“Anyway, Diem made one or two more trips. Our asset couldn’t find anyone around the current prez for life who knew what was up. Our guy did lay some serious bling on a waiter in a local restaurant who served Diem and
