Critical Mass (11 page)

Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass

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“I HATE PIGEONS. THEY SHIT OVER EVERYTHING AND YET THE city protects them.”

Tom Lynch looked up from where he was seated on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg as a heavily built, swarthy man approached and sat down next to him. It was a few minutes after nine in the morning, the day already pleasant. It was Monday so there weren't any children around.

“Squab.”

“Nothing but an overpriced dead pigeon,” Phillipe Marquand said. He'd brought a small paper bag of cracked corn and he tossed out a handful for the birds who immediately flocked around.

“I thought Frenchmen were all gourmands.”

“I'm a Corsican,” Marquand flared. “And I didn't come here to discuss food.”

“I didn't think you had,” Lynch said mildly. He didn't like the SDECE colonel, but this was a friendly country in which the CIA had to walk with care. His instructions from Langley were to meet with the man, but give him nothing. The official line was that our people were making a routine trip to Switzerland, and that the terrorist attack had been nothing more than just that â¦ a random act of violence.

The U.S. State Department's Anti-Terrorism Task Force was working hand-in-hand with the French, which was as far as the White House wanted it to go for the moment.

“The Swiss kicked McGarvey out yesterday, did you know that?” Marquand asked. “We tracked him through London as
far as Dulles, but then lost him. You wouldn't happen to know where he is now?”

“No,” Lynch said. “Should I?”

“I would think that someone would want to ask him a few questions about Friday.”

“I understand you and he spoke.”

Marquand nodded.

“Is that why you knew he'd gone to Switzerland? It was an old flame of his aboard that flight. He'd known her from Lausanne. Said he was going to pay his respects.”

“He is apparently a generous man, your McGarvey. But it was not the only reason he went to Switzerland.”

“No?” Lynch said quietly.

“He was showing his face, hoping that the friends of Karl Boorsch might show themselves.”

“Should I know this name?”

“He's the man who shot down one-four-five,” Marquand said. “Former East German STASI hitman. Belongs to an organization of ex-STASI thugs who've gone freelance.”

The information given so freely was breathtaking, but Lynch managed to maintain his control. “Have you any other names?”

“Not for now. But obviously Boorsch and his people want to stop your inquiries in Switzerland. Would you care to share anything with me?”

“Not at this moment,” Lynch said looking the Frenchman straight in the eye.

Marquand's jaw tightened. “There were Frenchmen aboard that flight. Vacationers, most of them. Some with their families. In one case it was the mother and father, twin five-year-old girls, and the old grandmother. They will be buried in a common grave, what bits of their bodies were found, that is.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Yes, we all are. But it was no random act of terrorism, as you would like us all to believe.”

Lynch started to object but Marquand held him off.

“Two of your people were escorting a Swiss citizen to Geneva. It is our belief that the STASI group wanted them stopped. We simply want to know why. What are you investigating?”

“I can't say, Phillipe,” Lynch replied carefully, realizing by even telling the SDECE colonel that much he was giving away more than Langley had wanted him to give away.

Marquand nodded. “I told McGarvey this â¦”

“He is a civilian.”

“But a special man. I also told him that we believe the ex-STASI group is well financed, maintaining its bank in Switzerland. Did you know this?”

Lynch held his silence, but he was seething inside. McGarvey should have told him about his meeting with Marquand. But he had lied.

“What we didn't know â¦ or I should say suspect â¦ is who has provided the bulk of their financing.” Marquand looked away. “In the old days we might have suspected the Soviet Union. Perhaps the PLO, they sometimes fund outside groups. But it was none of these.”

“No?” Lynch said.

Marquand turned back. “No,” he said. “Our sources in Switzerland tell us that the currency paid into those accounts was in the form of yen. Japanese money. Now, what do you think about that?”

Seventy-five yards away, a man dressed in a French police uniform stood at an open window on the second floor of the School of Mines main building. He'd followed Marquand from Action Service Headquarters off the Boulevard Mortier, and it was only by happenstance that he spotted Lynch seated alone on the park bench in time to get into position.

He'd put it together that Marquand had come here to meet with the American CIA chief of station, and he knew that whatever those two men had to say would be of extreme importance.

He had missed the opening chitchat, but not the meat of their conversation. Lowering the four-inch parabolic antenna,
which he'd carried in a leather haversack, he watched as Lynch walked off.

Spranger would pay well for this information, especially because it was the worst of all news.

THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE'S CHAUFFEURED Cadillac limousine headed down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House a few minutes before 9:30 A.M. As usual, Monday morning traffic was heavy, but the day promised to be beautiful.

Murphy was in a puzzled, almost pensive mood. For the first time in his long government service career he was running up against a situation for which he had no clear answers. They could provide the President with the dataâspeculations, actually, because that's all they really had to this pointâbut it would be up to him to make the decisions.

In the transition period between the Cold War and what the politicians were now starting to call the “new world order,” there was no predicting what could and would happen.

“Look at the war with Iraq and the subsequent fallout in the Gulf region,” he'd told a gathering of U.S. military intelligence chiefs at the Pentagon. “There was no way in which we as an intelligence-gathering service could have foreseen even in broad strokes what came to pass.

“We can provide the raw data. We can provide spot analysis. And we can even point out what we believe are the current trends. But when the leadership of a foreign power we're monitoring doesn't even know where it is going, there is no chance for us to provide any realtime recommendations.”

The unspoken crux of the situation, however, as all of them that day knew, was that their customersâthe leaders
who made use of the intelligence information they were providedâwanted the realtime advice.

As the President would today, he thought. Only this time there were no answers, not even any clear speculation.

Murphy's limo was passed through the White House gate to the West Portico, where he was ushered immediately upstairs to the Oval Office, his bodyguard waiting downstairs.

It was precisely 9:30. The President rose when Murphy came in and went around to the serving cart. He poured two cups of coffee and handed one to his DCI.

“You know, whenever you come in here with that look on your face, Roland, I automatically brace for the worst,” the President said. He was a tall man whose face showed the strain of the office. But his eyes were penetratingly sharp, and he seldom if ever missed a beat. His staff had to keep up with his schedule, not the other way around.

“You haven't had the messenger shot yet,” Murphy said, setting down his coffee cup. He took a leather-covered folder from his briefcase and handed it to the President. “This is the latest from Paris.”

“Have a seat,” the President said, putting down his coffee and sitting in his rocking chair. Murphy settled onto the leather couch across the coffee table.

“My chief of Paris Station met this morning with a colonel in the SDECE's Action Service, and was given some information. What I would call startling information.”

“You've not pussyfooted before, General, don't start now,” the President said, not yet opening the report. “Spell it out for me.”

“The terrorist attack on the Swissair flight out of Orly on Friday may have some deeper, more ominous significance than we first suspected. The French intelligence service has identified the attacker as a man by the name of Karl Boorsch. An officer in the old East German intelligence service. We have him in our files as missing, and presumed still at large somewhere in Europe.”

“You don't think he went to the Soviet Union?”

“No, sir,” Murphy said. “But he wasn't working alone. The French found a walkie-talkie of an unusually advanced design in the van Boorsch used to penetrate Orly security.”

“Go on.”

“We haven't been able to figure out exactly how it works yet, but we know that it encrypts the signal, compresses it into an incredibly brief duration, and sends it out. Virtually undetectable by any equipment we currently have in the field.”

“Who built it?”

Murphy shook his head. “There are no manufacturing plates or marks anywhere on the device.”

“German?”

“Possibly. But it means that Boorsch had help.”

“Which tends to verify the Swiss engineer's story,” the President said.

“The French believe that an organization of ex-STASI members has been formed, presumably somewhere in Europe, perhaps even Switzerland, which tends to confirm the reports we've been hearing.”

“Just what we need.” The President shook his head and looked away for a moment. His presidency had been a successful one to date, but definitely anything but quiet. Someone in the media had begun calling him “America's crisis president,” and the moniker seemed to be catching on.

“Apparently they're organized well enough to maintain at least two bank accounts; one in Zurich, and the other in Bern.”

“What do they think they're trying to do? Retake East Germany? What's their purpose?”

“It's unknown at this point, Mr. President,” Murphy said.

“Where are they getting their money? Who is supplying it?”

“Also unknown,” Murphy said, girding himself. “But the French Action Service officer told my Chief of Station that they had identified the currency in which payments had been made into at least one of the STASI organization's accounts.”

The President's left eyebrow rose. “Is this fact significant?”

Murphy sighed. “Well, Mr. President, if it is, I think we're in big trouble.”

“As I said, spell it out.”

“The payments were made in yen. Japanese yen.”

“It's a stable currency,” the President said. “I'm told that there's a small but growing movement to suspend trade on the international marketplace in dollars. The yen might be the next logical choice.”

“Japan may be the country of origin for the payments into the STASI accounts.”

“Could also be a ploy to throw off the investigation.”

“I don't believe so, Mr. President, although it's a possibility.”

“Because, Roland, God help us if what I think you're suggesting has even the slightest grain of truth.”

Murphy said nothing, allowing the President to come to the same conclusions he'd come to earlier.

“If this group of ex-STASI officers is the same group who went after the engineers at ModTec, and from what you're telling me it looks as if that's the case, and if they're being funded by the Japanese, possibly the government â¦”

“I'm sorry, Mr. President, but there's no evidence to that effect.”

“If that's the case, Roland, then it could mean that the Japanese are in the market for nuclear weapons technology.”

Murphy sighed deeply and sat back. “I simply don't know.”

The President had another thought. It was clear from his expression that he was still on the same path Murphy had gone down.

“Could this walkie-talkie the French found have been designed and manufactured by a Japanese company?”

“It's possible.”

“Is it likely?” the President pressed.

“I can't answer that, sir,” Murphy said. There was more to come.

The President's eyes narrowed. “What was Jim Shirley involved with when he was assassinated in Tokyo?”

“He was meeting with a man who claimed to be a Belgian banking adviser to a consortium of businesses in Japan. But he was an imposter, and there is no such consortium.”

“Coincidence?”

“On the surface one would have to say no. But only on the surface. There is absolutely no solid connection between Japan and this STASI group. Nor has there been the slightest hint that the Japanese, that anyone in Japan, has the slightest interest in nuclear weapons technology.”

“Give me a reading on this, Roland,” the President said.

Murphy shook his head. “I'm sorry, Mr. President, but I can't do that.”

“What is being done?”

“We're investigating ModTec to see if anyone else has been approached, and to see if the technology has already changed hands. We're also looking into the French assertion that the STASI accounts exist and that they've received Japanese currency payments.”

“And in Japan?”

“We're investigating Jim Shirley's murder, of course. But beyond that â¦ I'll need your authorization. Considering the pending trade agreement between our countries, if it were to come out that the CIA is spying against Japan it would go badly.”

“You have my authorization, Roland,” the President said. He sat forward. “Let me make myself perfectly clear. You are to take this investigation to its logical conclusion. No matter what resources you have to use to do it, and no matter which nation you're led to scrutinize.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I want results, Roland. Soon.”

Carrara came up as soon as Murphy returned from the White House. The DDO was harried. He'd been on the job, or at least in the building, for more than seventy-two hours. Ever since 145 had been shot down.

“We've got the green light to step up the investigation in Tokyo,” Murphy said.

“How far can we go?” Carrara asked.

“All the way, Phil. You've got carte blanche on this one.”

“If we're caught there'll be a lot of political trouble, not only from the Japanese, but from the Swiss as well.”

“This is your operation â¦” Murphy said, but Carrara interrupted, which in itself was a mark of his tiredness.

“Yes, it is, sir. But I just wanted to make sure that everyone understands exactly what we're up against. Lynch thinks that the Action Service is playing us both ends against the middle, and although Kelley Fuller is going back over, she's going to be hard to control.”

Murphy was impatient.

“What I'm getting at, Mr. Director, is that so far as I see it, either operation could blow up in our faces.”

“We'll take the risk,” Murphy said. “Now, where the hell is McGarvey? Is he here in Washington or isn't he?”

“He came through Dulles last night, but then he disappeared.”

“Find him,” the DCI ordered.

“We're watching his ex-wife's house. He'll show up there sooner or later.”

“Good. The minute he does, I want him up here.”