“Yes, excuse me.”
“No problem.” The young lady smiled at her computer. Ghosn wondered if she'd survive the event. The huge glass windows faced the stadium and even at this distance the blast wave… maybe, he thought, if she ducked fast enough. But she'd already be blinded from the flash. Such pretty dark eyes, too. A pity. “Here you go. I'll make sure they switch the bags over,” she promised him. That Ghosn took with a grain of salt.
“Thank you.”
“The gate is that way.” She pointed.
“Thank you once more.”
The ticket agent watched them head off. The young one was pretty cute, she thought, but his big brother — or boss? she wondered — looked like a sourpuss. Maybe he didn't like to fly.
“Well?” Qati asked.
“The connecting flight roughly duplicates our schedule. We've lost a quarter hour buffer time in Mexico. The weather problem is localized. There should be no further difficulty.”
The terminal was very nearly empty. Those people who wished to leave Denver were evidently waiting for later flights so that they might watch the game on TV, and the same appeared to be true of arriving flights, Ibrahim saw. There were scarcely twenty people in the departure lounge.
“Okay, I can't reconcile the schedules here either,” Goodley said. “In fact, I'd almost say we have a smoking gun.”
“How so?” Ryan asked.
“Narmonov was only in Moscow two days last week, Monday and Friday. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday he was in Latvia, Lithuania, the Western Ukraine, and then a trip down to Volgograd for some local politicking. Friday's out because of when the message came over, right? But Monday, our friend was in the Congress building practically all day. I don't think they met last week, but the letter implies that they did. I think we got a lie here.”
“Show me,” Jack said.
Goodley spread his data out on Ryan's desk. Together they went over the dates and itineraries.
“Well, isn't that interesting,” Jack said after a few minutes. “That son of a bitch.”
“Persuasive?” Goodley wanted to know.
“Completely?” The Deputy Director shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It's possible that our data is incorrect. It's possible that they met on the sly, maybe last Sunday when Andrey Il'ych was out at his dacha. One swallow doesn't make a spring,” Jack said with a nod towards the snow outside. “We need to make a detailed check on this before it goes any farther, but what you've uncovered here is very, very interesting, Ben.”
“But, damn it—”
“Ben, you go slow on stuff like this,” Jack explained. “You don't toss out the work of a valuable agent on the basis of equivocal data, and this is equivocal, isn't it?”
“Technically, yes. You think he's been turned?”
“Doubled, you mean?” Ryan grinned. “You're picking up on the jargon, Dr. Goodley. You answer the question for me.”
“Well, if he'd been doubled on us, no, he wouldn't send this sort of data. They wouldn't want to send us this kind of signal, unless elements within the KGB—”
“Think it through, Ben,” Jack cautioned.
“Oh, yeah. It compromises them, too, doesn't it? You're right, it's not likely. If he'd been turned, the data should be different.”
“Exactly. If you're right, and if he's been misleading us, the most likely explanation is the one you came up with. He stands to profit from the political demise of Narmonov. It helps to think like a cop in this business. Who profits — who has motive, that's the test you apply here. Best person to look at this is Mary Pat.”
“Call her in?” Goodley asked.
“Day like this?”
Qati and Ghosn boarded the flight on the first call, taking their first-class seats and strapping in. Ten minutes later the aircraft pulled back from the gate and taxied out to the end of the runway. They'd made a smart move, Ghosn thought. The flight to Dallas had still not been called. Two minutes after that, the airliner lifted off and soon turned southeast towards the warmer climes of Florida.
The maid was having a bad day already. Most of the guests had left late and she was way behind on her schedule. She clucked with disappointment at seeing the keep-out card on one doorknob, but it was not on the other, connecting room, and she thought it might be a mistake. The flip side of the card was the green Make Up Room NOW message, and guests often made that mistake. First she went into the unmarked one. It was easy. Only one of the beds had been used. She stripped off the linen and replaced it with the speed that came from doing the same job more than fifty times per day. Then she checked out the bathroom, replaced the soiled towels, put a new bar of soap in the holder, and emptied the trashcan into the bag that hung from her cart. Then she had to make a decision — whether to make up the other room or not. The card on the knob said no, but if they didn't want it, why didn't they do the same thing for this room? It was worth a look at least. If anything obviously important was laid out, she'd stay clear. The maid looked through the open connecting door and saw two ordinarily messed-up beds. No clothing was on the floors. In fact, the room was as neat today as it had been the day before. She stuck her head through the door and looked back towards the wash area. Nothing remarkable there either. She decided to clean it, too. The maid got behind her cart and turned it to push through the door. Again she did the beds, then headed back to—
How had she missed that before? A man's legs. What? She walked forward and—
It took the manager over a minute to calm her down enough to understand what she was saying. Thank God, he thought, that there were no guests on that side of the motel now; all were off to see the game. The young man took a deep breath and walked outside, past the coffee shop and around to the back side of the motel. The door had closed automatically, but his pass-key fixed that.
“My God,” he said simply. At least he'd been prepared for it. The manager was no fool. He didn't touch anything, but rather walked into the connecting room and out that door. The desk phone in his office had all the emergency numbers printed on a small card. He punched up the second one.
“Police.”
“I want to report a murder,” the manager said, as calmly as he could manage.
President Fowler set the fax down on the corner table and shook his head. “It really is unbelievable that he'd try something so blatant.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Liz asked.
“Well, we have to verify it, of course, but I think we'll be able to do that. Brent is flying back from the game tonight. I'll want him in my office early for his advice, but I figure we'll just confront him with it. If he doesn't like it, that's just too damned bad. This is Mafia stuff.”
“You really do have a thing about this, don't you?”
Fowler opened a bottle of beer. “Once a prosecutor, always a prosecutor. A hood is a hood is a hood.”
The JAL 747 touched down at Dulles International Airport three minutes early. Out of deference to the weather, and with the approval of the Japanese Ambassador, the arrival ceremony was abbreviated. Besides, the sign of a really important arrival in Washington was informality. It was one of the local folkways that the ambassador had explained to the current Prime Minister's predecessor. After a brief but sincere greeting from Deputy Secretary of State Scott Adler, the official party was loaded into all the four-wheel-drive vehicles that the embassy had been able to assemble on such short notice, and headed off to the Madison Hotel, a few blocks from the White House. The President, he learned, was at Camp David, and would be coming back to Washington the following morning. The Japanese Prime Minister, still suffering from the lingering effects of travel, decided to get a
