Twice a Spy

“Three hundred.” Although the sea was a placid blue green, he had the sensation of entering a dark alley.

“When you hit, get out, as soon as you can. Among other things, the plane might flip, it might fill with water, or it might get too dark for you to see. So just go for the cabin door. There should be a life raft and vests there. Can you see the raft?”

There was an orange pile of rubber next to the door. “Needs to be inflated.”

“On the way out of the plane, put on the vests as soon as you can. Inflate the raft after you get out or you won’t get it out.”

“And then what?”

“Category of desirable problems.”

Charlie was sorry he’d asked. “At a hundred feet now,” he said. The looming sea made him feel minuscule.

Alice maintained her calm. “Pull the throttle back just a hair, then leave it alone.”

He set it, glad to have one less item to worry about. “Seventy feet.”

“Both hands on the yoke.”

The moment that he’d continued to hope would not come: It had come. “Forty feet.”

“Slowly now, pull the yoke back. Keep the wings in the center of the circle.”

He did. His stomach contracted to the size of a Ping-Pong ball. The water flew up at him. “Fuck. Twenty feet.”

“Bring the nose slowly up ’til you hit the water.”

The water was so close that Charlie could taste the salt. He fought an impulse to close his eyes.

A perfect shadow of the plane floated on the waves ahead, slowing, as if trying to meet him. The water was serene. He made out individual, sparkling droplets in a gauzy mist lofted by the waves, when-WHACK-the tail hit water, pulverizing his muscles, joints, and tendons. His face smashed into the yoke, forcing him to release his grip. With a whine, the left propeller dug into the water, throwing a mass of spray that battered the fuselage. The nose of the plane slammed down onto a swell, sending his body in different directions at once. Water rose over the front windows.

Finally, the plane settled afloat in a gentle drift, but not for long. Seawater rushed into the cabin.

“We should get out, don’t you think?” said Drummond, unbuckling his safety belt. He appeared rested, and unperturbed by the events of the past few minutes.

Charlie popped free of his harness. “Sure, why not?”

Drummond led the way out of the cockpit, fighting the influx of water to reach the cabin door.

Tugging the life raft free of its Velcro mooring and grabbing the vests, Charlie said, “Now we just need to reach land, which was too far to fly to, using two rubber paddles.”

Drummond pointed outside at the svelte yacht heading their way. “Actually, I think that boat is going to rescue us.”

45

Stanley sat below deck of Corbitt’s USS Perk in a startlingly spacious living room with taxpayer-funded, rich mahogany paneling and a copper-plated bar containing a transatlantic crossing’s worth of single-malt whiskey. Every fixture or component involved either precious metal or crystal-even the Kleenex, dispensed from a crystal cube within silver latticework. There was a fireplace, too, with antique brass andirons piled with logs that required a third look before Stanley was sure they were fake. The only reminder that he was at sea rather than in an English gentlemen’s club was the set of pedestals, in place of legs, to fasten the seats to the floor-a floor swathed in antique Persian carpet.

The captives sat in a pair of red leather wing chairs. Wet and bedraggled, they seemed far less menacing this time around. Drummond was struggling to stay awake. Charlie was so frenetic in his narration of their adventure that he could barely stay seated. “Your capturing us is the best thing that possibly could have happened,” he was saying. “I know that sounds crazy now, but let me tell you what we’ve learned.”

“The best possible thing would have been if we’d gotten to you before you sold the bomb,” Stanley said.

“Who was the buyer?” asked Hadley. She sat to Stanley’s left on the camelback sofa, facing the fugitives-her thousand-euro heli-taxi ride from Martinique would probably be overlooked by headquarters in light of their having coralled the Clarks.

She aimed a Glock at them. After her experience with Bream, Eskridge had finally granted her permission to carry. The teakettle’s purple imprint was visible on her forehead. The gun was unnecessary, though. Shortly after Charlie’s Mayday calls had enabled Echelon to pinpoint his whereabouts, a second helicopter had landed on Corbitt’s yacht, depositing four marines with enough weaponry to stage a coup on some of the area islands. The yacht resounded now with the dull thuds of their combat boots. The opportunity to stay on deck and “command them”- Corbitt’s words-ended his protest over his exclusion from the debriefing.

“When we last saw the device, Bream’s men were loading the washer into a Zodiac,” Charlie said. “We have reason to believe they’re planning to ship the bomb to India. So you ought to have plenty of time to intercept them.”

Hadley looked to Stanley. “What do you think?”

“Nothing to lose by checking it out.”

She dropped the Glock into her shoulder bag and withdrew her new BlackBerry. She began tapping out a cable to Eskridge, at the same time saying to Charlie, “The thing that puzzles me now is how you could sell a weapon of mass destruction in the first place.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Stanley said. His concerns actually ran much deeper.

“It wasn’t a sale,” Charlie said. “It was ransom.”

He was polite, Stanley reflected, not petulant, or acting in any way that pointed to dissembling. “Why didn’t you go to the authorities?”

“The bad guys would have killed Alice. And the authorities would have tried to kill us. Like last night.” Charlie indicated Hadley with a tilt of his head. “But things are different now. Now we have proof of everything I told you. The Cavalry’s plot is all right there on the Web. A few minutes online and you’ll be able to see exactly how we were set up, plus how Bream was able to learn about the existence of the bomb.”

Her cable dispatched, Hadley placed the BlackBerry back into her shoulder bag. “This story sounds familiar,” she said to Charlie. “Don’t tell me: Bream revealed the whole plot to you as he was leaving you to die in a plummeting airplane instead of simply shooting you?”

“I wondered about that too,” Charlie said. “Whoever he really is, he’s got more than his share of ego. He was proud of his plan and wanted to brag about having outsmarted the best and the brightest. But he’s nobody’s fool. Maybe he wanted our deaths to look accidental. Why add the murder of a CIA Trailblazer to the list of reasons you have to hunt him? In any case, to verify my story, all you have to do is flip on the Internet, go to Korean Singles Online-dot-com, and throw some decryption software at Fielding’s hidden text. His mistake was not living long enough to delete it.”

“Well, I’d be shocked if Corbitt doesn’t have this brig equipped with high-speed satellite Internet access.” Hadley started to rise, presumably to go up on deck and ask the base chief.

“Hold on just a second,” said Stanley, turning to Charlie. “If what you’re saying is true, why wouldn’t Alice Rutherford or her NSA colleagues have taken action?”

“I was too busy landing the plane to mention Korean Singles Online-dot-com to her. And once we hit the water, I lost the phone-not that she’d have been able to stay on long. Odds are the same people who wanted us have sent a hit team after her too, right?”

“Probably so,” Stanley said. “We need to ensure that no one ever sees that Web content.”

“But it could exonerate these men, Bill.” Hadley searched his eyes for a clue to his thinking.

“It would be the death knell for the Cavalry.” Stanley lifted the Glock and its silencer from her shoulder bag.

Charlie froze. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”