Christopher Reich - Rules of Betrayal

Exiting from his car, he pulled his navy workman’s cap low over his forehead and dug his hands deep into the pockets of his pea coat. Setting off up the brick sidewalk, he looked no different from any undergraduate en route to the Georgetown University campus, a few blocks away. He turned right on N Street and spotted the address of Connor’s neighbors. He let himself in the side gate and came upon the shed at the back of the garden.

Though the shed abutted the back fence and appeared to belong to the neighbor’s home, it was in fact linked by an underground passage to Connor’s house. The Ripper jimmied the shed’s lock and slipped inside. The beam of his flashlight shone on an old stone stairwell leading steeply downward to a low, damp tunnel redolent of the Potomac River, which flowed barely fifty yards to the south. A door blocked his way at the far end of the passage.

“No alarm,” the boss lady had said. “The tunnel is Connor’s secret. If he doesn’t acknowledge it, no one else will.”

The Ripper defeated the double-action bolt lock inside thirty seconds. With infinite patience, he turned the knob and opened the door. He stepped inside, his feet landing on a hardwood floor. His hand withdrew the carpet cutter from his pocket, and he advanced the triangular razor from its metal sheath. He wasn’t disobeying orders. As far as he was concerned, suicide was a natural cause. Disgraced spy-masters killed themselves all the time.

Step by step, he climbed to the third floor. Step by step, his heart beat faster as he closed in on his kill.

The Ripper marveled at how much blood spilled out of a wrist when you cut the vein properly: vertically, long and deep; never horizontally.

Frank Connor paced the floor of his secret study like a condemned man. His phone had been confiscated and his landline restricted. Likewise, technicians had disabled all Internet access, both Ethernet and wireless. Even his cable TV had been cut off. His isolation was complete. He might as well be in prison already.

Pouring himself a glass of bourbon, he threw off his jacket and loosened his tie. His initial interrogation by the FBI had been brief and to the point. He’d decided up front to tell the truth. Piece by piece, he’d revealed the operation. The unauthorized attempt on Prince Rashid’s life with the explosive bullets was the first strike against him. Nine innings’ worth more followed. There was no point in lying. If he hadn’t already, Erskine would offer up his own version of the events. Connor’s every action of the past six months would be put under the microscope-every phone call, every e-mail, every meeting. His only hope was for the WMD to be found inside the hangar. Results meant exoneration. Failure meant punishment. Frank Connor was a big boy. He knew the drill.

Connor pulled up the section of floorboard and unlocked his private safe. Inside was a stack of virgin BlackBerries. Terrorists weren’t the only ones who didn’t want the government eavesdropping on their calls. He chose a phone and called his assistant, Lorena.

“Did they find it?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “Mr. Sharp made me leave right after you.”

“What about Ransom and Danni? Any word?”

“I don’t know, Frank.”

“And Haq?”

Lorena started crying. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t find out anything.”

Connor hung up, walked through the closet to the bedroom door, and opened it an inch to make sure none of the marshals were nearby. Satisfied that he was alone, Connor called his colleague at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. “Got anything?” he whispered.

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

Connor’s spirits lifted. “Shoot.”

“I checked Erskine. He’s clean.”

“I thought you said you had something for me.”

“Hold on to your pecker. I’m just getting started. It’s our policy not only to check the primary suspect but to look at everyone around him. So anyway, Erskine has a home equity account linked to his payroll account. That’s normal. I do, too. But Erskine’s always taking money out of the home equity account and never putting anything back in.”

“That sounds about right,” commented Connor.

“Here’s where it gets interesting. There’s a second account linked to the home equity line of credit-Erskine’s wife’s. Check this out: it’s his wife who’s making the occasional repayments, keeping the line of credit at a manageable level.”

“I know her. They just got married six months ago. She’s a nice gal. Lina.”

“Lina Zayed Erskine.”

Connor felt the floor shift beneath him, and a sharp pain radiated from his chest. “Go on.”

“Except that she’s putting in twenty, thirty, forty thousand at a time.”

“That seems kind of steep for an attorney over at Justice.”

“A GS-12. Annual salary of $74,872 before taxes. Obviously, that nugget got my attention, so I decided to look a little closer, see where she might be getting all that disposable income if it wasn’t courtesy of Uncle Sam.”

“And?”

“Turns out the money was wired into her account from a certain bank domiciled in the Cayman Islands that we here at FinCEN are very familiar with. This establishment turns up much too often in connection with some of our shadier targets-drug dealers, arms traffickers, even the occasional link to our friends in Islam, if you get my drift. Naturally, it was a numbered account. No name, no nothing. Knowing that this might be important, I gave the head of the bank a call myself. He was none too happy to hear from me. When I mentioned the account in question, he practically had a coronary. One of my best clients, a man of unrivaled reputation, a humanitarian. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was talking about the Good Lord himself. Finally this jerk tells me that if I knew what was good for me, I would never mention this account again. End of discussion.”

“The client sounds more like Pablo Escobar than Jesus Christ.”

“Bingo. First thing I did after I hung up was put this numbered account through our tracking system.”

“Any results?”

“Big time! We got a dozen hits right off the bat, all of them linked to some very questionable characters.”

“All right, I’ve still got my pecker in my hand, and you’ll be happy to know it’s hard as a rock. A real diamond cutter. Just tell me who the account belongs to.”

“I don’t have a definitive, but there’s one name that keeps popping up.”

“Who?” Connor listened to the name and felt his chest tighten. It was suddenly difficult to breathe. “Frank… you there?”

“Yeah,” said Connor, finally drawing a breath. “Forward what you’ve got to my BlackBerry. I’ve got a new number. Here it is.”

There was a knock on his bedroom door and Connor hung up, hurrying from the study and stuffing the phone into his pocket. He unlocked the door, and one of the marshals peered inside. “Would you like something from your kitchen before bed, sir? I know chow down at the J. Edgar Hoover Building ain’t so great.”

“How ’bout a tuna sandwich and some coffee,” said Connor.

“Yes, sir.”

The door closed and Connor locked it. Hurrying back to his safe, he withdrew $50,000 in neat packets of hundreds, and with them two clean U.S. passports in the names of Donald Maynard and John Riggins. Connor was a Jets fan from way back, but he drew the line at Emerson Boozer. Finally, reaching deep into the safe, he withdrew a polished oak box. He unclasped the lock and removed a sleek stainless steel semiautomatic pistol, a Ruger. 380. The sight of guns made him nervous, and he handled it clumsily, struggling to insert the clip and chamber a round.

Satisfied that he had everything he needed if circumstances forced him to become a permanent fugitive, he closed the safe, turned off the lights, and walked across his bedroom to fetch his gloves and overcoat.