Night on Fire

3

3The scrambler phone clicked and sputtered in my ear, struggling to make the secure transatlantic connection. I held the instrument tightly and stared at the bare wall, the top floor of the embassy building silent as the grave at nine o’clock on a balmy night in June. It was midafternoon in DC and I was trying to reach my boss in the State Department’s counterterrorism office. I had to explain why I was still in Denmark.

I’d spent the early evening at the cop shop. A few minutes being printed. A couple of hours giving my statement, over and over. Jespersen followed all diplomatic protocols. Blixenstjerne was systematic. I was a fly caught on sticky paper. Not a move I could make that wouldn’t bind me tighter.

The phone crackled. “Renton Funke,” my boss answered.

“It’s Casey,” I said. I told him what had happened. I added, “The detective ordered me not to leave the country.”

“Great.” The disgust in his voice was audible.

I tried to stop his I-told-you-so. “I know you warned me off this assignment—”

He interrupted. “Nothing good ever comes from dancing with the spooks. You should have stayed in DC, like I told you.”

“You said it was my choice, as I recall.”

He snorted. “I figured you had better sense. I didn’t expect you to rush off to Europe because Gerry Davis asked for you.”

“I had good reasons,” I said.

“Oh, right. Going to Denmark was the quickest way to expand your knowledge of the black market in Stinger missiles.” The sarcasm sharpened his voice. “If you’d listened to me, you’d be in Bangor setting up at the crash site.”

“I’ll get to Maine,” I said. “But not tomorrow. Give me the task force’s local phone number and I’ll explain to Baldwin.” Sam Baldwin from the FBI’s domestic counter-terrorism unit had been appointed to head the task force.

Renton made a noise into the phone, a guttural rasping that hurt my ear. I could see him, fingers of his left hand yanking at his tie, loosening the collar. “Baldwin won’t cut you any slack. Ever since you talked to him, he’s been ranting about ‘the State Department prima donna.’”

“He must’ve had an attitude about me before we talked.” Sam Baldwin and I had met for the first time a week after my appointment was confirmed—and a day after Stefan left for Poland. I wanted to talk about the exciting work the task force would do. I hoped it would fill the gaping hole that had opened in my life. But I saw at once that Baldwin’s plodding, methodical plans for us were wrong. Unfortunately, I’d been too emotionally raw to keep quiet.

I said to Renton, “All I did was remind him the task force was set up to try fresh approaches, stimulate creative problem-solving.”

“And he loved hearing you tell him how to run his show.” Renton made his exasperated noise again. “The man has let everyone know that he works only with team players.”

I was silent for a few seconds, absorbing the implications. “Think he’ll use this delay to get me kicked off?”

“And the reason for it.” He paused and when he spoke again, anger raised the pitch of his voice. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

“Same question the cops asked. I can’t answer it. I don’t know how that body ended up in my flat.” Body. The word brought back the image, the head smashed onto the keyboard. I was still bothered by the memory of the open piano. Had the Bandido left something inside the instrument—some clue to his death? Again, I felt that odd hollowness behind my breastbone. I pressed the heel of my hand against my chest as if I could fill the emptiness.

Renton said, “Does this homicide connect to what you’re working on?”

“Link’s too obscure for me to see. I mean, a murdered Danish biker and a bunch of missing Stingers?”

Renton’s voice grew caustic. “Don’t rule it out. I can hear the CIA f*****g things up even at this distance.”

I didn’t want him to repeat all the reasons why I should have refused to help Gerry Davis. Quickly, I said, “Give me that number in Maine—”

“No.” His voice was gruff. “I’ll handle Baldwin.”

“I appreciate—” I began.

Renton was still talking. “I convinced the under secretary to back you for the task force position. She went out on a limb for me. Passed over three senior people, pressured somebody in the AG’s front office—all because I argued that the task force needed your particular expertise. You can’t fart around, Casey. You have to be on-site.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Not good enough. You have to get out of Copenhagen in the next twenty-four hours. If Baldwin kicks you off the task force, the FBI will block us from sending in a substitute. They’ll argue this is a case of domestic terrorism, no role for us. They’d love to exclude the State Department. If that happens, the under secretary won’t be pleased. She’ll make me regret I ever put you up for the job.”

The phone was slippery in my palm. “I’ll talk to Gerry—”

“Forget Davis and his problems,” Renton said. “You get to Bangor.”

“I’ll leave tomorrow.” Trying to sound certain. I said goodbye and hung up the phone, then brushed my hair back off my forehead. The skin was hot and moist. I shouldn’t have let Gerry Davis lure me to Denmark. Sure, I was interested in his project, but I shared Renton’s aversion to spooks. I wouldn’t have agreed to work with any other twenty-year-career-man from the Central Intelligence Agency. Gerry, though, was different.

He and I had a connection that went beyond friendship. We’d met in 1986 during the Warsaw operation. With his help, I’d come through unscathed but he’d concluded I was too innocent to avoid all the bureaucratic land mines hidden in the intelligence field. I’d protested, but he’d insisted that I needed protection from a veteran operative and he’d appointed himself to the job.

The oldest of five children and the only boy in his family, it was natural for him to treat me like another younger sister. He snooped in my life and he bossed me around. He became as dependably nosy, irritating, and there, as if he really were my older brother. He bugged me—but his concern touched me, too. By now, he fit me like my favorite old pair of sweats—not flattering, but comfortably warm and certain to cover my backside.

So last spring when he’d asked if I’d help him out, I’d said yes, instantly. I had other motives for returning to Denmark. But my bond with Gerry was the main one and I’d dismissed Renton’s warnings about projects run by the CIA. I’d be working with Gerry, after all. But Renton had understood the situation better than I had.

Gerry had come to Denmark to deal with blowback from the CIA’s successful—by their standards—operation in Afghanistan. In the mideighties the agency had supplied a thousand state-of-the-art ground-to-air missiles to the mujahideen fighters battling the invading Soviet Army. Six hundred of the Stingers weren’t fired in the conflict. Some later turned up in Iranian hands and rumor spread that others had gone to North Korea, Somalia, Libya, and the IRA. In 1993, the CIA began offering cash for unused weapons, buying back missiles for more than a hundred thousand dollars apiece, over three times the original cost. Their motive was simple. Locking up the Stingers in US armories would ensure they weren’t used by hostile forces against American targets. The CIA had spent fifty-five million dollars making undercover purchases but sixty missiles still hadn’t been accounted for.

Before granting additional funding, Congress forced the CIA to accept State Department and Pentagon oversight on the agency’s final effort to track down the remaining missiles. The CIA picked Gerry to run the project. He was an expert on the covert arms trade and he had one other asset vital to the high-profile project—his reputation for uncompromising honesty. His superiors promised him a free hand and access to whatever resources he needed. The first thing he asked for was a base of operations in Copenhagen. The second was Casey Collins.

I wasn’t an obvious choice. My specialty was terrorist attacks on airliners. In my job in the counterterrorism office, I tracked the flows of manpower and materiel in Europe, using a sophisticated form of link analysis to tie people and events together. The bombing of Pan Am 103 in 1988 was my first big case. I painstakingly reconstructed the activities of the suspect terrorist groups, refining my analytical model as I went. Now, when a Western passenger jet exploded, I could pinpoint accurately which foreign terrorists had motive, means, and opportunity to blow it up. I wasn’t part of the FBI investigation of the TWA 800 crash, but I’d followed it closely.

I was intrigued by eyewitness claims they’d seen missile tracks in the sky immediately before the explosion. Although experts had an alternate explanation for the flaming trails, I’d kept an eye on the covert traffic in Stingers and their ex-Soviet counterparts. When I needed information from the CIA, I’d gone to Gerry. He gave me everything he had. Generous—and farsighted. He hadn’t been forced to waste any time bringing me up to speed.

I glanced at the clock. A full minute had elapsed since I’d said goodbye to Renton and hung up the phone. The office door swung open and Gerry grinned at me from the hallway.

“You were listening,” I said, but there was no bite in the accusation. When I’d taken the job with Gerry, I’d known I’d have no privacy. An aging spy, eavesdropping was so automatic with him that he no longer had to count out the sixty seconds he habitually delayed before “happening upon” an unaware person-of-interest. Besides, Gerry insisted, I’d end up in real trouble if he didn’t keep his eyes—and ears—on me. I let him get away with that pose. I’d been an only child and Gerry’s big-brother act made me feel as if I had more family than I really did.

He sauntered toward me. “See what happens when you try to run off and leave me,” he said reprovingly.

Earlier, he’d tried to persuade me to remain in Denmark instead of joining the task force. I’d refused to consider that option. “I bet it was you who left that body in my flat.” I gave him a dark look. “Wet work, isn’t that what you guys call it?”

“And you say I’m paranoid.” He shook his head sadly, then put both palms on the desktop and leaned closer. Pink scalp showed where the strands were too sparse to cover the crown of his head. When I’d met Gerry in Warsaw, his hair was so thick and unruly, he used up a bottle of oil weekly keeping it slicked down. He’d mellowed in the years since. Given up the facial stubble and the unstructured jackets with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. Tonight, he was dressed middle-aged-cool in a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, knee-length Dockers and sockless Top-Siders. His appearance was more CPA than CIA. He studied me closely and his expression grew as serious as mine. “You’re looking pretty grim.”

“Feeling it,” I said. “Dead biker turns up at my place. A pair of Danish cops gives me the third degree. And my boss beats me up because I can’t get out of here.”

“You knew this dead rocker?” He used the Danish word for “biker.”

I shook my head. “Unfortunately, he had my initials on the palm of his hand.”

“Hunting for you?”

I shrugged. “Damned if I can imagine why.”

Gerry looked at me speculatively. “This murder might connect to our project. European motorcycle clubs are well armed.”

“But not with shoulder-held missiles.”

“The local bikers might have heard what’s become of them.” He chewed at his lip for a few seconds. “What if they’re talking to the criminal organizations in the old East bloc?”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Gerry shrugged. “Only a guess. Bet your buddy Krajewski could fill us in on that. You know what he’s working on in Poland?”

“I have no idea.” The words tasted bitter, the flavor of unpleasant truth.

Gerry said, “Maybe it’s not such a stretch, dead biker to missing Stinger.”

“You’re dreaming,” I said. “This murder has nothing to do with your project. I’m not one of your field agents. Even if a Danish biker did know something about missiles, he wouldn’t come looking for me.” But as I said the words, I recalled Bella’s distress. She’d looked shocked, as if she’d recognized the biker. Could she have sent him to me? But why would she do such a thing?

“Anybody can find out the embassy closes at five.” Gerry studied me the way he did when he was trying to read my mind. “Looks like the dead guy was waiting for you to get home from work.”

“I thought of that.”

He asked, “How’d the cops hear about it so fast?”

“Anonymous phone tip.”

“Anonymous?” Gerry’s eyes brightened. “So the caller was the killer.”

“Almost had to be,” I said gloomily. Danes started every telephone conversation by announcing their names. No good citizen acted anonymously.

Gerry jerked his chin down in a crisp nod. “The killer wanted the cops to go to your place immediately.”

Why would the killer want that? I didn’t have a clue. And I didn’t want to guess. I could tell Gerry was fitting the new facts into the case he was building. He wanted me to stay in Denmark. He’d interpret anything I said as interest in his project. He’d be certain that his pleas were getting through to me. I kept my mouth shut.

“I think we should check it out,” he said.

“You’ll have to do the checking,” I replied firmly.

“Come on, Case. You can’t let me down.” He kept his gaze on me, beseeching. “You know I need you here to make this project work.”

“Somebody like me,” I corrected him. “And you’ll get that. State will send you a replacement for me.”

“You know damn well State hasn’t got anybody else like you.”

I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. “You must be desperate, sucking up to me like this.”

“See, I’ve proved it. I need you. You know this stuff. And I’m not counting on State sending anyone else. Not the way things have been going. I struck out with the Pentagon.”

“Defense is still refusing to give you Fuentes?” Jaime Fuentes was an analyst who’d done cleanup after a stinging GAO report in 1994 castigated the Department of Defense for their faulty Stinger inventory system. “Last week, you said you’d convinced them he was the best man for the job.”

Gerry grunted. “Somebody unconvinced them.”

“So they’re sending Colonel Markham after all?”

“Which is why you have to stay. Markham has spent his whole career focused on Latin America. Doesn’t know diddly about covert weapons transfers in Europe.”

“He’ll pick it up.” There was no painless way to quit Gerry’s project, but I didn’t have to wallow in guilt. At least I could lighten the bleak picture he was painting. I didn’t want to talk about Andy Markham but I forced out his name, my tone as casual as I could make it. “Andy likes to hit the ground running.”

“‘Andy’?” Gerry’s voice was sharp, the same suspicious tone I imagined he’d used with his little sisters when they tried to slip something past him. “Just how well did you know him in Salvador?”

Too well. But Gerry’s most endearing trait was the way, grouching and complaining, he always took my side against the world. I couldn’t tell him what had happened in San Sal. He would inevitably cast Andy as the villain in that long-ago soap opera. And he’d never be able to work well with a man who’d done me wrong. So I said, “I know he’s a quick study.”

Gerry’s eyes narrowed. “Last week you weren’t praising Markham.”

“Last week I thought the Pentagon was sending Fuentes. He’s the better choice. But Andy can handle it. He’s sharp and he’s thorough.”

“Thorough? You’re stretching, Case. He’s so thorough, why didn’t he figure out the Salvadoran Army was shooting the wrong people?”

I sighed. “He never denied something horrible had happened. He went out to Morazán early in 1982, right after the newspapers started reporting there’d been a m******e of civilians. But he found no proof.”

“A decade later, the forensic anthropologists dug up plenty of bones. Maybe Markham didn’t look closely enough. They probably were hard to see.” Sarcasm tightened Gerry’s voice. “Some of them were very small.”

Baby bones. I shuddered, remembering. “I got to Salvador six months later. I didn’t go looking for skeletons. You’re not saying I wasn’t thorough enough.”

“You were a vice-consul interviewing visa applicants. Uncovering military atrocities isn’t something you can do from inside the embassy. That was Markham’s job.”

“Not technically. And there was a civil war going on—”

“Listen to you. I can’t believe you’re defending this guy. Only reason you’re building him up is to get yourself off the hook. I understand you want to be on that task force. But you’re not going to convince me I can do this job without you here. I’m getting a very bad feeling about the whole thing. The support I was promised just isn’t there. Markham’s not up to the job. You are.”

“Enough,” I said, holding up my hands, palms toward him. “The bullshit’s getting way too deep in here.”

“That’s no bullshit, and you know it. If you’d gone out to the Salvadoran provinces looking for evidence of a m******e, you’d have found it. Neither a war nor technicalities would have stopped you. You never give up. That’s what I love most about you.”

“Don’t do that.” I shoved at my hair. “This has nothing to do with how you feel about me or how I feel about you. You heard my end of the conversation. I have to join that task force. My career is on the line.”

“If we’re into careers, let’s talk about what’s happening to mine.”

I pushed myself upright. “You’re in a bind. I know that. I wish I could help you out of it. But the first time the task force sends for me, what am I supposed to do, say ‘sorry, my old pal Gerry needs me now, call back later?’”

Yes. I could read it on his face.