Once A Spy Part 28

A key snapped open the door bolt, startling Charlie. The ancient floorboards in the hallway were so whiney he'd antic.i.p.ated he would be able to hear a caterpillar's approach. The door popped open, and in sailed the man who introduced himself the other night as Smith, attorney with an expertise in negligence suits against boiler manufacturers. His real name was Dewart, Charlie had learned since. It took a beat to recognize him with the swollen face, which was Drummond's handiwork. As was the right wrist*stabilized now in a splint that permitted him full use of the hand. In the hand was a sound-suppressed SIG Sauer.

'Why would our Special Forces leave ammunition for the Vietcong?' came the reporter's voice. She sounded intrigued.

Dewart pantomimed for Charlie to hang up.

Charlie glanced out the window. A man now stood just below, on the ma.s.sage parlor roof, apparently inspecting the elevated water tank.

Charlie sighed in dismay. 'Listen, I'm sorry to have bothered you,' he told the reporter. Over her protest, he ended the call.

'What do you say we go grab a cold one, sport?' Dewart said.

'Gee, that'd be fun,' Charlie said.

He followed him out of the room, head lowered in defeat.

Really he was elated. He'd counted on their coming. He wanted them to think he'd gone to ground at an out-of-the-way fleabag. He wanted them to believe he'd gone so far as to plan an escape route to the neighboring building. Hopefully they'd heard every word of his call to the Washington Post Washington Post and accordingly believed he would have spilled the beans if Dewart hadn't broken into the hotel room when he did. In fact, Charlie would have revealed little, if anything, that the reporter couldn't have found in the archives of her own paper. But if the Cavalry thought of Charlie Clark as a bean spiller, they would worry that the call to the and accordingly believed he would have spilled the beans if Dewart hadn't broken into the hotel room when he did. In fact, Charlie would have revealed little, if anything, that the reporter couldn't have found in the archives of her own paper. But if the Cavalry thought of Charlie Clark as a bean spiller, they would worry that the call to the Washington Post Washington Post wasn't the extent of it and that their secret could be making its way into the blogosphere now or onto the morning news. So they would question him. And the response he had at the ready would enable him to get to Drummond. wasn't the extent of it and that their secret could be making its way into the blogosphere now or onto the morning news. So they would question him. And the response he had at the ready would enable him to get to Drummond.

Dewart didn't ask him anything, though. On the way out of the hotel, all he said was, 'The car's just up the block.'

As he drove them out of Little Odessa, Dewart listened to music on the car radio, humming along. 'Silent Night,' of all things.

When the song ended, he unpocketed a pill bottle and tipped two white capsules into his mouth. 'Your old man did a number on my wrist, I'll tell you that,' he said, swallowing the capsules. He chased them with a mouthful of bottled water, then glanced at Charlie. 'You've probably done painkillers before, right?'

Ignoring the implication, Charlie shook his head.

Dewart guzzled more water. 'The pharmacist said cotton mouth was one of the side effects, but this is ridiculous.'

Charlie looked out at Manhattan's sparkling skysc.r.a.pers as they began to appear from behind the big dark shapes on Brooklyn's side of the East River. Maybe Dewart was waiting until they reached 'Cuba' to ask questions. Or maybe he just lacked the requisite clearance.

Instead of taking either the Williamsburg or the Brooklyn Bridge, the most direct routes to Manhattan, Dewart followed the Brooklyn sh.o.r.eline north, into a stretch of darkened warehouses and factories. The East River here was notorious as a gangland corpse depository. Charlie began to think he'd wildly miscalculated. He contemplated opening his door and leaping out. With no traffic to contend with, the car was cruising at fifty. To strike the pavement at that speed would be to do Dewart's job for him.

Dewart swung the car toward the Queensboro Bridge's Manhattan-bound ramp. With an eye at the rearview, he said, 'Well, if anyone tailed us, they've perfected the invisible car.'

Charlie smiled as if amused, but really because he was pleased to be going across the East River rather than into it.

Dewart continued into Manhattan, traversing Central Park at 86th Street. He parked on West 112th, between Broadway and Riverside. By day the block was a ruckus of chatter and honking and boom boxes. Now, at 4:10 A.M., the only signs of life were a gypsy cab prowling for a fare and a few Columbia students who had stayed in town through Christmas break.

Dewart prodded Charlie toward the Perriman Appliances' building. The six-story Georgian postwar was faced with a creamy granite browned by the Manhattan air to match its neighbors, a mid-sized apartment building and a parking garage.

Inside, Perriman was as shoddy as Charlie remembered. Cramped offices surrounded the support staff's network of plastic workstations. The stagnant air smelled of copier toner. The poor souls who answered the phones and tabulated the legitimate end of the business probably hated this place, by design*diminishing the chance that curiosity would lead them downstairs to the moldy bas.e.m.e.nt and over to the grimy utility closet, then down the flight of stairs the 'utility closet' opened to.

Charlie and Dewart took precisely that route, arriving in a subbas.e.m.e.nt nearly as big as a hockey rink. Unlike the bas.e.m.e.nt*which had been stacked with file boxes, worn-out furniture, and old computers no longer worth the expense of hauling away*the subbas.e.m.e.nt was free of clutter. No reason to maintain the pretence here, Charlie thought.

At the far wall, Dewart pressed a cinder block, which slid aside, revealing a small scanner. He leaned his right eye into its gla.s.s screen. A few seconds later, locks within the wall clicked open. A rusty, seven-foot-high ventilation grate swung outward, exposing a bare concrete tunnel two city blocks long and wide and high enough to accommodate a light truck.

Charlie gazed into the facility in awe of its history. He was also terrified*the Cavalry's decision to make him privy to it was effectively a statement that they had no intention of letting him leave. More than anything, though, he was glad he'd been right.

7.

The eighteen-year-old who would become known in Columbia lore as Poughkeepsie Pete enrolled at the university's School of Engineering in 1990. From his first day on campus, wherever he went, he marveled at the possibility that the hallowed Manhattan Project tunnels might be beneath his feet. Little was known about the complex beyond its role in the Allied victory. Nothing about the offices and laboratories had been decla.s.sified. Entry was forbidden. The facility became Poughkeepsie Pete's holy grail. who would become known in Columbia lore as Poughkeepsie Pete enrolled at the university's School of Engineering in 1990. From his first day on campus, wherever he went, he marveled at the possibility that the hallowed Manhattan Project tunnels might be beneath his feet. Little was known about the complex beyond its role in the Allied victory. Nothing about the offices and laboratories had been decla.s.sified. Entry was forbidden. The facility became Poughkeepsie Pete's holy grail.

He learned that in years past, likeminded students had pried their way past boarded-up parts of Furnald Hall's bas.e.m.e.nt, where the famous grocery store had been. Those who made it farthest entered a dark, cement tunnel, empty but for a few wagon-wheel-sized wooden cable spools stamped U.S. ARMY. After a hundred feet, the tunnel dead-ended. The students turned back, generally thrilled at getting as far as they had.

Trying a brand-new tool, the World Wide Web, Pete found a site with a blueprint of the entire complex. Late one night, he snuck past a campus security guard and into the crew team's indoor rowing tank facility, across the quad from Furnald Hall. He easily hammered through what the same Web site had promised would be a thin plaster wall in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

At the back of a defunct boiler room, using a technique also provided by the site, he picked the lock on what appeared to be a closet door. It opened onto a short tunnel at the end of which he discovered a full-sized laboratory, seemingly frozen in time from 1945. The built-in tables and cabinets had been stripped of all equipment and instruments, save a dusty cathode ray tube. The cathode ray tube later drew dozens of awestruck cla.s.smates to his dorm room, where he held court with the tale of his experience. For years thereafter, Columbia students dodged campus security guards to visit 'Al's,' as the lab became known*Al was Albert Einstein.

A second-year medical student from California thought they were fools. Why didn't they find it odd, he asked, that the same Web site that mysteriously provided the blueprint also provided the method to pick the lock? Or that of the hundreds of kinds of locks, the formidable Manhattan Project complex was protected by perhaps the simplest, a basic pin and tumbler? He suspected the laboratory was real, but utilized as a decoy by someone with extensive knowledge of the complex, the aim being to divert students from the relatively mundane tunnel they'd breeched so often in the past. Although the medical student never had given much thought to the Manhattan Project complex before, he found himself unable to stop wondering what was going on there now.

Determined to find out, on Christmas Eve, 1990, at 11:45 P.M., he accessed Furnald Hall's bas.e.m.e.nt by prying open the shaft of an outmoded service elevator and rappelling down. He sprung the old employee washroom door's intricate lock with a quiet surgical drill. Leaving the door ajar, he crept into the tunnel.

The tunnel ended after about a hundred feet at a grimy cinder block wall. He suspected the rusty ventilation grate there, wadded with a half-century's worth of dust, was really a door*the dead end of a tunnel was an odd place for a ventilation grate. If so, the door probably opened with a retinal scanner concealed somewhere. Even if he knew where, the odds were one in 100,000 at best that his eyeball would open it. If he had brought a torch and five or six tubes of acetylene, or a grenade launcher, the odds would have been a bit better. These were still odds, he thought, that the people inside the complex could live with.

He concealed himself in the core of one of the giant cable spools. He planned to stay the entire weekend, during which time he would not eat. He would drink a minimal amount of a citrus beverage he'd made after reading about it in one of his books on desert survival. The beverage was stored in the small rubber bladder he'd sewn onto his backpack. He'd taken preventive measures so that his bodily waste would be limited to urine, discharged into a tube and stored in the rubber bottle secured to his thigh by spandex bicycling shorts. Just being balled up in the cable spool for so many hours might have been torture, but he'd spent three weekends rehearsing in his small clothes closet. Also he viewed self-deprivation as something of a sport.

His plan hinged on his theory that the tunnel's entry door was outfitted with at least one motion sensor. His backpack contained forty-eight small lab rats. At precisely 12:00 A.M., four minutes after his arrival, he sent the first of his rats scurrying out of the cable spool, through the open tunnel door, and into the Furnald bas.e.m.e.nt, where he'd placed a hunk of cheddar cheese. At exactly every hour on the hour thereafter, he sent another rat on the same course. The first rat was meant to simulate the motion of his own departure. The subsequent rats were intended to make whoever was in the Manhattan Project complex conclude that the motion sensor had gone haywire, then come out to do something about it.

At 9:07 the next morning, the ventilation grate swung outward and two men in business suits emerged. The medical student revealed himself to them and owned up to what he'd done. They invited him into the complex. Although not one for emotional displays, he found himself pumping a fist.

While gloomy, the labyrinthine facility dazzled him. Racing the n.a.z.is to develop 'the gadget,' the Manhattan Project scientists never got around to decorating or even painting the concrete walls. The medical student would learn that when the current occupants moved in, they had no more time or inclination. But in the early '80s, on one of the chaotic August days that Columbia students all arrived on campus, the custodial alley behind Furnald Hall received a truckload of items confiscated by the DEA from a local drug kingpin*tables and chairs and fixtures befitting the Palais de Versailles in jarring combination with furnishings better suited to Las Vegas. Typical of the resulting scheme was the conference room, with an elegant antique Persian carpet and a contemporary black lacquer table inlaid with a shiny soaring hawk rendered in silver, gold, and bronze.

At the head of the table on the morning of December 25, 1990, sat Drummond Clark, then in his mid-forties. When brought into his stern glare, the medical student considered for the first time that he might be killed.

'We're undecided what to do with you as yet,' Drummond said. 'Some of my colleagues have suggested that, as a penalty, you have to work here.'

And so, after the usual vetting, Nick Fielding joined the Cavalry.

Now, nearly two decades later, Fielding entered the same boardroom and stood at the head of the same hideous conference table. Snowflakes from the 165th Street helipad still glinted on his suit coat. Drummond sat slumped at the foot of the table, in a chair whose scrolled ironwork formed a pattern of diamonds within diamonds. One of its front legs had been bent so that its occupant couldn't get comfortable. This was a trick as old as interrogation. And it wasn't working: Drummond was fast asleep. If not for the handcuff clamping his right wrist to the arm of the chair, he would have slid to the floor.

'Duck?' Fielding said.

Seeming to snap to, Drummond said, 'Sorry, it's been a long night.'

'How are you feeling?'

'Fine, fine. Yourself?'

'Not so fine. But I'll be better when I find out if you've spilled Placebo.'

Drummond looked him over. 'Oh, I thought you were the fellow who was here before.'

Probably he meant O'Shea, the guard who stood outside the conference room. O'Shea had fair hair like Fielding. He also had fifty more pounds and twenty less years. Fielding was troubled by his mentor's failure to recognize him, but only insofar as he couldn't tell whether it was attributable to illness or artifice.

8.

Ventilators the size of jet engines heaved fresh air into the complex. Still, the tunnel from the Perriman subbas.e.m.e.nt was clammy, the way Charlie imagined a submarine would be. It ended at an ordinary door, through which Dewart ushered him into a stark, concrete hallway lit with fluorescents that caused the walls to shimmer in a dull blue. size of jet engines heaved fresh air into the complex. Still, the tunnel from the Perriman subbas.e.m.e.nt was clammy, the way Charlie imagined a submarine would be. It ended at an ordinary door, through which Dewart ushered him into a stark, concrete hallway lit with fluorescents that caused the walls to shimmer in a dull blue.

In the sporadic dark offices and meeting rooms on both sides, activity was minimal. Charlie saw only a desk chair roll partly into view and a shadow fluctuate just so. His hope that Drummond was still alive rested in large part on the length of time it took to fly an interrogator from the Caribbean to New York. Twice when he tried to ask questions, Dewart shushed him.

Dewart stepped into the employee lounge, an alcove whose amenities included a spotty coffee urn and a refrigerator on which somebody had taped the note THROW OUT OLD MILK. THROW OUT OLD MILK. Still clacking a dry tongue, he opened the refrigerator and plucked out a bottle of Gatorade. Still clacking a dry tongue, he opened the refrigerator and plucked out a bottle of Gatorade.

'Have a throne,' he said to Charlie, indicating a bridge table surrounded, incongruously, by a quartet of high-backed, gilded chairs that could have come from Liberace's dining room. 'c.o.ke or something?'

'I'm good,' Charlie said. He sank into a velvet-covered cushion.

This was hardly the interrogation upon which his plan hinged.

Dewart plunked his Gatorade onto the table and sat as well. 'So there's a small matter I wanted to run by you, Chuck. We have a recording of a cryptic phone call this evening between you and twice-convicted felon Leonid Grudzev, a.k.a. Leo Kuchna and Leo the Terrible. Do you have any interest in explaining this?'

'Well *' Charlie said. It was about time.

'Well, what?'

'You're not going to be too happy about this.'

'I promise you, I'll be a lot less happy if you don't tell me.'

'Okay, have it your way. Once Mr. Hattemer was killed, I figured anyone else in this country with the power to help me probably would be having a bad fall down a flight of stairs or something like that. I called Grudzev because he knows people in low places, and I hoped one of those places might be the new KGB.'

'The SVR?'

'That's the one. As everyone's favorite philosopher, Sun Tzu, put it, My enemy's enemy is my friend.' I figured if the Ivans knew about Placebo, it wouldn't be much of a secret anymore. I know this isn't the ideal solution, but it's more ideal than getting killed because I know the secret myself.'

'My enemy's enemy' is an is an Arab Arab proverb,' Dewart spat. He jerked Charlie up from his chair, slung him against the refrigerator, and handcuffed him to the adjoining refrigerator and freezer door handles, slapping on the cuffs with more force than necessary. Then he was off; Charlie heard his hurried footfalls long after he'd disappeared down the corridor. proverb,' Dewart spat. He jerked Charlie up from his chair, slung him against the refrigerator, and handcuffed him to the adjoining refrigerator and freezer door handles, slapping on the cuffs with more force than necessary. Then he was off; Charlie heard his hurried footfalls long after he'd disappeared down the corridor.

Charlie had misattributed the 'enemy's enemy' quote on purpose: it was misdirection, designed to distract attention from his actual intent. His call to the Washington Post Washington Post and his intentionally clumsy cell phone tradecraft also had been misdirection. As Sun Tzu in fact had counseled, 'Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.' If Charlie's incompetence act worked, the Cavalry would worry that spilled beans were now rolling toward the Kremlin. Which meant the spooks would hold off neutralizing him or Drummond. And before they determined that Charlie's story was pure fiction, hopefully Leo the Terrible would arrive and shoot the place up. and his intentionally clumsy cell phone tradecraft also had been misdirection. As Sun Tzu in fact had counseled, 'Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.' If Charlie's incompetence act worked, the Cavalry would worry that spilled beans were now rolling toward the Kremlin. Which meant the spooks would hold off neutralizing him or Drummond. And before they determined that Charlie's story was pure fiction, hopefully Leo the Terrible would arrive and shoot the place up.

9.

Leonid Kirilovich Grudzev parked an anonymous cargo van on the uptown side of West 112th Street. Through a windshield steamed by their breath, he and his men studied the Perriman Appliances building, trying to plot a way into the Manhattan Project complex. Grudzev parked an anonymous cargo van on the uptown side of West 112th Street. Through a windshield steamed by their breath, he and his men studied the Perriman Appliances building, trying to plot a way into the Manhattan Project complex.

Breaking into the appliance company offices ordinarily would take a good three days of casing and planning, Grudzev reflected. Doing the whole deal tonight was additionally complicated by the American popped by Charlie Clark. They'd found the kid in the narrow alley behind the sweet shop, gagged and practically mummified from the waist up in twine. He lay unconscious in the back of the van now, the bullet wound much worse than Charlie had estimated. Despite Karpenko's makeshift compresses and other on-the-fly remedies, the life was spilling out of him. Once he died, his retina would start to decay. According to Charlie, if that happened as little as five seconds before they reached the retina scanner at the entrance to the Manhattan Project tunnel, they might as well turn around and go home.

Grudzev tried to hide his worries from his men. 'I'm thinking we go in through the little offices on the fourth floor,' he said in Russian. Perriman took up the first three of the building's six stories. One-man travel agencies, tarot card readers, and such had the upper floors. Most building managers, in his experience, were lazy, cheap, or both, and put alarms on only the lower two floors, occasionally the third, and sometimes the roof.

'What if somebody sees us and calls nine one one?' said Pyotr from the pa.s.senger seat. The onetime Red Army weapons specialist was so tall and burly it was a wonder the van didn't list to his side.

He and Grudzev both turned to the backseat to Veshnijakov, a veteran second-story man everybody called Bill, short for Chern.o.byl, a reference to his face, badly pitted by childhood acne. Although too old to scale buildings, he still had the wiles, as they say in the old country, to outfox a wolf.

'A couple roach traps ought to solve that,' he said.

Grudzev, who considered himself a religious man, muttered a quick prayer, then pressed a few b.u.t.tons on the intercom panel at the front door of the apartment building that neighbored the office building. As most New Yorkers knew, getting into a locked apartment building in the middle of the night was as simple as. .h.i.tting enough b.u.t.tons on the front door panel until a resident intent on getting back to sleep decided he just wanted to shut the buzzer the h.e.l.l up. Grudzev was thus in the lobby in twelve seconds.

Many of the wall-mounted mailboxes were swollen with mail. No surprise there: It was Christmastime. Affixed to Apartment 4A's box was a note instructing the residents to contact the post office upon their return to receive overflow items.

Grudzev climbed the stairs and knocked on the door to 4A. When no one answered, he slipped on cotton gloves, flicked a torsion wrench and a feeler p.r.o.ng into the lock, then fished around. Thirty seconds later, he was gratified to hear the faint snap of the bolt skipping free of the doorframe.

The apartment was hot and smelled of dust*good signs in terms of occupancy. He groped for the intercom panel and buzzed in Bill, who would admit the others.

The bedroom had been hit by a hurricane of last-minute packing. Stepping over a skirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts that hadn't made the cut, he raised the window and looked out onto the sliver of an alley between the apartment and the office building.

The one-room Globetrotter Travel office would be a short jump. A mist of streetlight outlined a diagonal grid of metal mesh within the pane there: shatterproof gla.s.s, the best kind from the burglar's point of view in such a situation. When knocked in properly, a shatterproof pane falls in one piece, as opposed to a regular pane, which rains bits of gla.s.s and gets the attention of everyone within a couple of blocks.

When Grudzev felt certain no one was watching, he climbed out the window and onto the ledge. He stepped across the dark alley, touching down firmly on the far ledge.

Police sirens ripped into the night, freezing him, until he gratefully recalled Bill's 'roach traps.' To cut down the number of cops available to respond to a call here, Bill had dispatched a man to do a torch job in Riverside Park, a block west, and a second man to heave a garbage pail through one of the storefront windows up by Columbia, to which the university's a.s.s-kissing 26th Precinct gave disproportionate attention.

Grudzev kicked the pane as if it were a soccer ball. Other than a dull thud, nothing happened. Undaunted, he tried hitting the gla.s.s with an open palm. The entire pane recoiled and plunged into the travel agency, landing with a muted tap on pile carpet. He slid into the office, then beckoned the silhouettes ma.s.sed at the bedroom window across the alleyway.

Although loaded down by Kevlar and weapons, the men crossed the gap like birds. First Karpenko, then Bill, and finally Pyotr with the unconscious American cradled in his ma.s.sive arms. Grudzev helped them into the office. He thought the vapor seeping from the American's mouth a beautiful sight.

Habitually wary of building employees working late, Grudzev used gestures to direct his men into the dark hallway and toward the rear stairwell, clearly demarcated by an illuminated sign. They raced down the stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt, where, beneath the monstrous growl of the furnace, they were free to speak.

Pointing to the utility closet, Grudzev said, 'That's where our guy thinks the entrance is.'

It wouldn't open, not even when Pyotr tugged.

'We need to find a service box,' Bill said.

'Got it.' Pyotr pointed to the box ten feet down the dark wall. 'But *'

The access panel was padlocked shut.

'No problem.' Bill drew a can of Freon from his overcoat and sprayed. The lock glistened but nothing more.

With a condescending snort, Karpenko aimed his AK-74 at the lock.

'No, wait, stop!' Grudzev shouted.

Karpenko held his fire, but he didn't lower the gun. Grudzev sought short, simple words to explain to the trigger-happy brute that they'd yet to spot any heat or motion sensors, and that they wanted to postpone announcing their presence to the Manhattan Project complex security guards until the last possible instant. If the guards could be taken by surprise, they would be limited to the weapons on them*likely sticks and stones compared to what the Russians had. Along with a .357 Magnum and a Walther machine pistol designed for close-quarter combat, Grudzev's x.x.xL leather overcoat concealed an AK of his own with an underbarrel grenade launcher capable of piercing armor two football fields away. Karpenko packed at least as much punch, Bill carried incendiary devices, and Pyotr was a walking a.r.s.enal.

Bill said, 'Abracadabra' and struck the padlock with the base of the spray can. The frozen lock shattered as if made of porcelain. Grudzev expected Karpenko's face to be red, but the big fool gaped as if he'd witnessed real magic.

Bill opened the service box and pulled the lever inside. The utility closet door sprung outward, revealing a flight of stairs. Ecstatic, Grudzev led the charge down.

There were no lights in the giant subbas.e.m.e.nt, but the fluorescent ring in the stairwell was enough to reveal the door-sized ventilation grate on the far wall.

'That's gotta be it, yeah?' Grudzev said.

Advancing for a closer look, Bill said, 'The plating's awfully thick for a vent.'

'That better be it,' said Pyotr with uncharacteristic anxiety.

A glance at the young man in his arms explained it: He'd lost color, and his breathing was barely noticeable.

Bill examined the grate. 'Did the horses guy have any idea where the scanner is?'

'No, but I'm sure we'll find it,' Grudzev said, keeping private his fear that they wouldn't. Studying the huge, essentially featureless room left him at a loss.