Zero Day: A Novel (17 page)

She turned away, her face covered with tears. Maybe her father was right. Maybe she was throwing herself away on a bitter, secretive man. She stood up and removed her outer clothing to reveal a new bathing suit Vladimir ignored. She spread a blanket and lay back to bask in the sun.

A few feet away, an elderly woman caught her husband admiring the view and poked him in the ribs as she glared at Ivana. “Slut!” she said.

What if he was lying?
Ivana thought. What if State Security stormed their apartment? A chill spread across her body at the thought.

25

SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA

PARQUE MORAZÁN

SATURDAY, AUGUST 19

2:59 P.M.

Twenty-two-year-old Miguel Estrada stood across the street from the outrageously pink Del Rey Hotel in central San José and watched the gringos with disgust.
They’re turning us into a nation of whores and pimps,
he thought.

It was lightly raining, as it often did this time of year in San José. Estrada stood under a canopied doorway with several others, waiting for the rain to stop. In front of the Del Rey Hotel, American, Canadian, and German men laughed drunkenly, clutching lewdly at the buttocks of the prostitutes working as waitresses. It was all Estrada could bear to watch.

He’d read that government officials were cracking down on the sexual traffic for gay men and children, but from what he could see, nothing was being done about traditional prostitution. And in the open like this! Something needed to be done, or Costa Rica would be perverted beyond recall.

The rain stopped, and people began moving away. Estrada walked another block, then turned to his right, entering a doorway beneath a sign that read in English
FLAMINGO MASSAGE
. Gloria, the regular counter girl and the owner’s current girlfriend, was sitting at the counter. “Hello, Miguel. Rosa will be out in a few minutes. Have a seat.”

The spare waiting room was empty so Estrada sat by the door. He glanced at the same garish travel posters he’d seen countless times before. Four minutes later, a loud American in a florid shirt with a grin on his face emerged from behind a curtain. “You take care now, honey,” he said to Gloria as he walked out, ignoring Estrada. A few minutes later Rosa emerged. Spotting her boyfriend, she came over and tried to kiss him.

Estrada turned his face away. “Don’t. I know what you do back there.”

Rosa was twenty-six years old, with a Nordic look not uncommon to native Costa Ricans. She and Estrada had been dating for three months. “What do I do you don’t like?”

“You know.”

“I give massage, Miguel. That’s all. I’m not a
puta
. If you don’t like it, don’t come around.”

He sulked for a moment, then said, “I need to use the computer.”

Rosa glanced at Gloria, who was reading a magazine. “Why don’t you use the one at home? You spend all your time on it anyway.”

Estrada smirked. “Not for this, trust me. It will only take a minute. Please.”

Rosa shrugged. “Hey, Gloria. Miguel wants to use the computer for a minute, okay?”

Gloria glanced up from her magazine. “Sure. Don’t get caught.”

Miguel walked passed Gloria into the office. The computer was on and connected to the Internet. Slipping a disk from his pocket, he sat down and inserted it, clicked
RUN
, then waited three minutes as instructed. When he was done, he removed the disk and returned to the waiting area.

“Okay. When will you be home?” he said to Rosa.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Later sometime. See you then.” Again she tried to kiss him and again he turned his face.

As Estrada walked out, Gloria said, “You should get a new boyfriend. That one’s trouble.” She placed a piece of chewing gum on her wet pink tongue and pulled it into her mouth.

“He’s cute,” Rosa protested, who preferred a boyfriend without a job, as they were less trouble. “Anyway, if I didn’t support him, he’d starve. He’s too skinny as it is.”

“How was he?” Gloria said, meaning the customer.

Rosa laughed as she lit a cigarette. “Quick. We’re going to need more condoms.”

26

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA

SATURDAY, AUGUST 19

9:51 P.M.

George Carlton had been with the CIA for eleven years in 1999, when he was given the opportunity to travel to the Middle East.

Company policy was that when managers reached a certain level and possessed a specified tenure, they should travel. The idea was to broaden horizons and give them the chance to put faces to the names they saw in so many reports. The more personalized the operation of the Company was, it was believed the more likely managers would exercise caution when making decisions that could impact lives. These junkets, as they were called at Langley, were much sought after, since they required no real work. They were, more or less, extended vacations at taxpayer expense.

In November of that year, Carlton had flown directly to Paris, where he spent several pleasant days. From there he flew to Madrid, then on to Rome. At the American embassy, he was reacquainted with Meade Gardner, the senior State Department adviser to the American ambassador for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They had belonged to the same fraternity at Yale; not Skull and Bones—neither of them had been so fortunate—but Delta Kappa Epsilon. The association had served Carlton well over the years, though not as well as he’d anticipated when he’d been initiated.

Following the various introductions, the pair had retired from the smoke-clouded salon to the patio overlooking the embassy garden. Amid fragrant Cuban cigar smoke and cognac they had reminisced. Twice divorced, Gardner was currently “between marriages” as he put it. Tall and angular, he was, in Carlton’s opinion, a bit pompous—but the two had been roommates and good buddies for a time. “How do you like Riyadh?” Carlton asked to be polite. Through French doors, a quartet played Brahms softly.

“Disgusting,” Gardner said, slurring the word a bit. He’d downed more than his share of Scotch since the pair met. “The Saudis are an arrogant bunch. They know they’ve got us by the short hairs and make no bones about it. If they turned off the spigot, it would be back to the Stone Age for us. It gives them clout and that’s something they understand. Revolting people, just revolting.”

Carlton didn’t disagree. He had no love of Arabs. “What about your social life? It must be awkward in a Muslim country.”

“You’ve got that right.” Gardner made a face. “Everything’s tied to one of the embassies. They house us Westerners in our own compound, and until a few years ago I hear it was pretty good. Booze, parties, babes away from home the first time. A little bit of home in the Muslim desert. But the Wahhabi mullahs objected and the religious police were allowed to crack down. Now it’s as sterile in the compound as it is everywhere else in Riyadh. Five million Arabs, the men horny as hell. You ask me, they’re all a bunch of perverts. They can’t even see a woman unless she’s a sister or wife. I can’t stand a culture that puts its women in bags. A few strip clubs and brothels would set things right, if you ask me.”

“Still, all that money,” Carlton mused. “It must be interesting at times. It surely isn’t all doom and gloom.”

Gardner grimaced. “Oh, I suppose. The embassy parties sound more like board meetings at times. They’re swimming in dollars, I tell you. They hardly know what to do with them. But they’re accustomed to being thought easy marks, so they’re careful as hell. They’ve got so many Western-educated men these days, they prefer partnerships to outright investments.”

Carlton hid his interest, but an hour later he’d managed to receive an invitation from Gardner to join an American delegation of computer representatives to Saudi Arabia, though Carlton had been scheduled for Ankara, Turkey. The State Department was sponsoring the trips of certain business representatives in hopes a few would land contracts with either the Saudi government or some of the businesses headquartered there. Carlton would travel in open cover, meaning he would use his real name and passport, but his credentials attached him to the delegation of Applied American Computing Solutions, Inc., from Dallas, Texas. The owner of the company was the sole representative of his firm, but he enthusiastically added Carlton to the trip when he learned he was honoring a favor for the American Saudi ambassador.

They’d sat together on the nonstop from Rome to Riyadh two days later. Peter Houser of AACS was a bit short and had gained a substantial paunch and lost most of his hair while prospering selling software.

“I was lucky,” he admitted shortly after takeoff. “I didn’t know software from hardware, but I figured computers were the coming thing and bought a well-run company. For the most part, I’ve just stayed out of their way.” He gazed out the window as the plane banked over the Mediterranean. “You’re not a spook, are you?” he’d asked unexpectedly.

Carlton had almost smiled. Instead, he’d eyed the man as he replied, “You never know.”

Two thousand feet above sea level, Riyadh was a sprawling traditional Arab city with a distinctly modern heart. The Kingdom Centre, the tallest structure in the city, was a massive building of modern art more suited for Brasília than the Saudi desert. The temperature was a balmy eighty-two when they stepped from the airplane at King Khalid International Airport.

Houser announced that this was his first trip to the “Arab world,” and his curiosity was untouched by the slightest hint of anticipation. “Sooner this part’s over, the better,” he said as he walked, his carry-on firmly clenched in his hand. His next stop, he’d told Carlton, was Cairo, where he was looking forward to seeing the Pyramids. “Can’t see one damn reason in the world to be here, of all places,” he said, using his free hand to gesture about him, then winking at Carlton, “unless I get a contract of course.”

The fourteen-strong delegation was met by a State Department public affairs officer and ushered through passport clearance before boarding three heavy-duty vans. Houser remarked that the glass seemed unusually thick as they pulled away from the curb. “No need for concern,” the young officer said, “but there have been some attacks and caution is always in order.”

Houser met Carlton’s eyes with an expression that said,
What am I doing here?

The drive to the Al Faisaliah Hotel in the Olaya district consumed an hour of Carlton’s life he would never get back. During that time he formed the conviction that Riyadh should be placed high on the list of nuclear targets. If an exchange of such weapons ever occurred, it seemed to him the powers that be should take advantage of the opportunity to rid the world of this eyesore. Everywhere he looked he saw backwardness; never a smile on a single face. It was as if night had descended over the city even during the glare of daylight.

That afternoon he stretched out on his bed, took a nap, then dressed and wandered down to the hotel bar, only to discover the hardest drink being served was tea or something called a mocktail, fresh fruit juice served with Arabic coffee. The hotel itself was gorgeous; situated on the highest ground in the city, it offered a spectacular view of an uninspiring expanse of buildings, at least in Carlton’s opinion. At seven that evening the delegation was taken to the American embassy for a reception.

The embassy struck Carlton’s keen eye as a deceptively designed fortress. A modern structure designed to blend in with older buildings, it was elegant and state-of-the-art, for which he was grateful. Perhaps two hundred were in attendance. Traditional Arab dress was as common as Western-cut suits. With just a handful of exceptions, the only women were Western and their evening dress was far more demure than what he’d seen in Paris, Madrid, or Rome. It was like attending a cocktail party in Salt Lake City, he decided—except for the Arabs.

Most of the Arab men were wearing a
thoub,
the familiar flowing robes of the desert, with the red-and-white-checkered
shumagg
banded with a black
ogal
. Perhaps a third of them wore a formal, dark-colored, gold-edged
bisht,
a sort of cloak, over a dazzling white
thoub
. The few non-Western women were, he gathered, from India and Asia. He wondered which of the Arabs were in business.

Shortly after eight o’clock Carlton was approached by a middle-aged Saudi of average height, with startling fair skin and jet-black hair. He’d noticed the man earlier, as he was perhaps the most elegantly dressed of the Arabs and moved with an almost catlike grace.

“Allow me to introduce myself. I make it a practice to meet everyone I do not know at these affairs. I am Fajer al Dawar.” Carlton took his hand and gave him his name, briefly mentioned his cover story. “Computers? You don’t look like a computer type to me.”

Carlton smiled. “I’m management. I don’t know that much about them in detail. And what do you do?”

“I’m president of the Franco-Arab Chemical Company.”

The men visited for perhaps five minutes before Fajer moved on. Part of Carlton stirred. He felt instinctively that this was the sort of man he’d hoped to meet, someone in a position to make all his dreams come true. Carlton wanted desperately to talk to him longer, but there was no way to manage it in such a setting and Fajer certainly hadn’t seemed interested. So later that night, after Carlton had gone to his room at the hotel, he was surprised to see an envelope slipped under his door. Opening it he read:

Mr. Carlton,

Please join me tomorrow evening for a private dinner at my home. I will send my driver for you at eight. Tell no one.

FAD

Carlton was stunned. It was as if the man had read his mind. He breathed a sigh of satisfaction. His first impression had been correct. He considered going to the business room and searching the Internet for Fajer’s name and that of his company, but decided better. Saudi Arabia was a virtual police state, and he couldn’t expect that even a harmless Internet search would go undetected. Better not to take the risk.