“Stay seated, gentlemen.” Wilkins had no regular chair, but parked his bottom wherever the mood struck him, a habit that led to small side bets among the department heads who regularly attended meetings here. Today he took a seat directly across the table from Grafton. The secretary, who was Goldman’s boss, seated himself with an empty chair between him and Wilkins. In the bureaucratic shuffle that followed 9/11, the Secret Service had been removed from the Treasury Department and put in the new Department of Homeland Security.
“So, Jake, tell us this fairy tale you sold the president,” Wilkins began.
Grafton stated that he believed Abu Qasim was going to attempt to assassinate the president, and gave his reasons, including the history of his attempts to bring Qasim to bay. He discussed the murders of Zetsche, Tchernychenko and Gnadinger, and devoted several minutes to discussing the break-in and murders at the Petrou chateau in France.
Wilkins let him talk without interruption.
When Jake finished, the secretary spoke right up. He was a veteran of the Washington bureaucratic maze and was fairly good at reading between the lines. “There’s a whole lot here you haven’t told us.”
“He can’t and won’t reveal ongoing covert operations,” Wilkins said heavily.
“But what’s the logical thread between these murders and an assassination attempt?”
“Abu Qasim tried it last year, and he may try again.”
“That’s a logical fallacy. Does the president know more than you’re telling us?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re selling us another pig in a poke,” the secretary grumped to Wilkins, who didn’t smile. “Another fucking hunch.”
After the moment of silence that followed that remark, Grafton continued, “I had a telephone conversation this morning with the head of MI-5. He says Alexander Surkov, the Russian emigre assassinated with polonium in London, had four passports in his safe deposit box at his bank that may have been made in Russia. The working assumption in London is that he was a dealer in fake paper, which he got from a contact in the SVR.”
“And that tidbit leads us where?” the secretary said heavily.
“Tchernychenko, Surkov’s boss, was killed by a car bomb Saturday. Perhaps by Islamic extremists. Perhaps at the urging of Abu Qasim, who may have been a Surkov client.”
“This is a house of cards,” Goldman observed. “Surkov’s murder could have been ordered in Moscow, and so could Tchernychenko’s. I’ve heard about Janos Ilin’s little disclaimer and request to Grafton, and it was a farce. All you people are doing is reading tea leaves.”
“You want sworn testimony, go to the federal courthouse,” Wilkins shot back. “This is a spy agency. This is about as good as it gets, guys.”
Goldman took a deep breath, then exhaled. “Okay,” he said heavily. He turned to Grafton. “When and where, do you guesstimate?”
Jake told him. Twenty minutes later the secretary and Goldman departed, leaving Wilkins and Grafton alone in the conference room.
“How confident are you that it will go down the way you told those two?” Wilkins asked the admiral.
“This isn’t just my guess as to his intentions. Marisa Petrou also thinks this is the scenario.” He paused, then decided that the time had arrived to show all the cards to his boss. “I think she might have killed her husband, who was probably selling information to Qasim. I think she has made some kind of deal with Abu Qasim to keep him from killing her mother-in-law, Isolde. He may have told her to tell me this tale, but I doubt it. I think she is telling the truth as she believes it to be about his intentions. The bottom line is that she wants Abu Qasim dead. So do we.”
“Is she or is she not his daughter?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t believe she does. Sometimes she thinks she is, sometimes she is sure she isn’t.”
Wilkins rubbed his forehead with his fingertips as he digested that remark.
“You know,” he said conversationally, “I’ve been in this business for twenty-five years. Without a doubt, this is the goddamnest tangle I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen them all.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And letting the president get these amateurs involved … Damn that Molina, with his fingers in every pie!”
Wilkins took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then said, “Tell you what — if Homeland doesn’t snag our buddy Abu in the interim, or if he doesn’t make his try on the president next Thursday night as you have so persuasively predicted, I want your resignation on my desk on Friday morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
Grafton’s condo was on the eighth floor of his building, and it occupied the entire eastern end of the floor. Looking out the living room window, I could see over the buildings on the east side. See the roofs and the apartments they contained. Could see the spire of the Washington Monument in the distance, a white phallic symbol poking up above the trees.
The main bedroom where the Graftons slept was on the northeast corner. Marisa was asleep in the adjacent guest room when I tiptoed in. Looking out the window, I could see more of the same. I drew the curtains and tiptoed out.
When I wandered into the kitchen, Callie was there with Isolde, gabbling in French. I knew that Callie, a language professor at Georgetown University, loved opportunities to gas with native speakers of one of her languages. She and Isolde, a smart, dynamic, experienced executive with a wealth of life experience almost as broad as Callie’s, would soon be fast friends, I suspected.
Each of them was working on a glass of white wine. Callie offered me a glass, but I refused. A door off the kitchen led to a tiny balcony which jutted out from the building on the east side. The kitchen windows on the south side of the room faced apartments in the buildings across the way, each with its private balcony and its windows.
This condo was a sniper’s wet dream. I lowered the blinds and drew the curtains.
“Surely they won’t be here so soon, Tommy,” Mrs. Grafton said.
I didn’t think so, either, but I said, “Can’t be too careful.”
She and Isolde went back to their cookbook, which was open on the butcher-block island in the middle of the room, and switched to English, in deference to my presence. Apparently dinner was going to be a production.
I watched them until Callie looked my way again. “Hanging out here with Abu Qasim on the loose is going to be very dangerous,” I said.
She smiled tightly. “I know.”
“And lately I haven’t been doing very well at the bodyguard gig. Actually, I’ve been doing terribly.”
“Isolde and Marisa are still alive,” Callie pointed out.
“They’re alive because Abu Qasim didn’t want to kill them. Then. If and when he gets around to it, they’re going to have a serious problem. As you and I do.”
“Marisa told me that he’ll probably send a colleague named Khadr,” Callie said. She got busy removing food from the refrigerator.
Isolde was standing beside the cookbook watching us and listening. Now she said, “She thought Khadr was the gunman who attacked my chateau.”
Here it was again: Ol’ Marisa knew a lot, to hear her tell it, and one suspected she knew a lot more that she wasn’t telling. That sure put a damper on the conversation.
I watched the two of them dice vegetables and cut up a chicken for a casserole.
“I’ll say it one more time,” I said to Callie. “I think you should go with your husband to Connecticut, or at least slip off to visit friends in the wilds of California or wherever.”
“I know you and Willie will do your best.”
“My best hasn’t been very good. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Besides, even if I were Superman, I’m only one guy. Who knows how many of them will come after us? Hasn’t it occurred to you that they want me, too? Kill me, then the coast is clear to wax you, and every other person in this building. Every move I make leaves other options open for them. Surely you can see that.”
“Amy will be joining us for dinner,” Callie said, glancing at me, “and she’ll be staying with us for the next week or so. Jake thought that wise.”
