Stephen Coonts - The Disciple

“Solzhenitsyn’s, perhaps. On H Street. Do you know it?” Another man’s voice, with a pronounced accent, yet easily understandable.

“Perfect. The usual time?”

“Right.”

The connection was severed.

Grafton listened to the conversation two more times, then picked up the telephone and called a colleague in the FBI, Myron Emerick.

After the social preliminaries, Emerick asked, “So what can we do for you today, Admiral?”

“I want a restaurant bugged under that National Security John Doe warrant we got last week. Solzhenitsyn’s on H Street.”

“When?”

“Just as fast as you can get it done. Meet may be tomorrow night, ‘at the usual time.’ That could mean this evening, tomorrow, Friday, Saturday, Sunday noon, whatever.”

“You don’t want to wait until they close tonight?”

“No. Invent an excuse to close them when you get there. Leaking gas next door, whatever.”

“What if ‘the usual time’ means someplace else?”

“Then they’re just too clever for us old fudds.”

“I’ll get right on it.”

“I’m a phone call away. If the bugs pick up that voice, call me immediately.”

“I know the drill.”

“Thanks, Myron.”

After Jake hung up, he sat staring at the cassette. The conversation on this cassette had been picked up by a computer that sampled tens of thousands of telephone calls an hour, listening for particular voices. The voices were actually compared by voiceprints, no two of which were exactly alike. When the computer found a voiceprint it recognized, it began recording the conversation.

A similar, although smaller, computer would monitor the bugs the FBI agents were secreting all over the Solzhenitsyn restaurant. No conversations would be recorded, protecting the privacy of the diners, until the computer recognized that voice. The agent monitoring the computer would alert Grafton, who had to be nearby. He would need a hotel room in the neighborhood.

He called Robin in, and together they examined a map of downtown Washington.

The hotel nearest to the restaurant turned out to be right above it. Solzhenitsyn’s was in the basement. Robin reserved three rooms, one for Jake and two for the FBI. Jake went home, packed clothes and managed to get to the hotel by four that afternoon. A light rain was falling from a low gray sky.

A gas company truck was parked in front of the restaurant, and the door sported a closed sign. The hotel seemed to be doing business as usual, though. He left his car with the valet, gave his bag to the bellman and went inside.

The hotel was in a building that had been a bank. The lobby was huge, three stories high, and a round open safe door formed part of one wall. Patrons went through the safe door into a cocktail lounge. The check-in counter had obviously once been a teller window. The counters and floor were marble.

As Jake signed in, he asked, “I notice there is a gas company truck parked right outside. Is there a problem?”

“Routine maintenance, sir.”

“Fine.”

His room was on the fifth floor. He had a view of a side street and an apartment building across the street. After a few minutes of standing at the window watching Washington in the rain, he rigged up his computer, arranged his cell and encrypted satellite phone on either side, took off his shoes and sagged into the padded easy chair. Callie had given him a copy of the Post and Wall Street Journal , so he settled in with them. By seven, after sunset, he was disgusted with the state of the nation and the planet. He turned on the television, found a baseball game and ordered dinner from room service.

At nine his wife called. “Any fish yet?”

“No.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“I’m taking my pulse every quarter hour to ensure I’m still alive.”

“Sooo… I don’t have anything scheduled for tomorrow morning. Mind if I join you in your little love nest?”

“Take off your wedding ring, sneak in and don’t let anyone see your face. Room five-oh-seven. Seriously, take a taxi and use the side entrance. The elevators are in a hallway off the lobby. Don’t go into or through the lobby.”

Callie chuckled. “See you in about an hour.”

They were still awake at midnight, lying in bed watching raindrops on the window. A light shining on the side of the hotel made every drop visible on the glass. Apropos of nothing, Jake said, “I’ve had a good life, you know.”

“It isn’t over yet.”

“I know. I’m just commenting.”

“We are very lucky,” she told him. “We’ve had each other all these years, Amy, good health, interesting jobs… This fish you are waiting for-has he anything to do with Iran?”

“Yes.”

“You are going to have to go there one of these days, aren’t you?”

“One of these days,” he said and kissed her before she could say any more.

Israeli agent and embassy janitor Tom Mottaki stopped by the break room where Frank and I hung out when we weren’t denying Paradise to the locals. Since he and I were the only people there just now, he showed me a photo. The camera had captured an image of a figure dressed in a chador, on an empty street, with the remnants of an iron pipe fence behind her.

“She serviced the drop.”

“Man, I can’t make out her face.”

“Welcome to the club. That photo was taken with a little unmanned surveillance camera mounted in a tree. The camera actually took twelve pictures of her, and that’s the best one.”

“Terrific. Who the hell is it?”

“A woman, probably,” Mottaki said, pulling the print out of my grasp. He studied it for a moment. “Maybe not.”

“Okay. What did she put in there?”

From his pocket he pulled a sheaf of papers. I opened them. They were copies of government documents, reports of production of enriched plutonium. One of the documents was the plan for testing a neutron generator, the trigger for an atomic weapon. The last sheet in the pile was a timetable. I studied it. According to the timetable, if I was reading this correctly, the Irani ans were still a year away from having an operational warhead.

When I finished perusing the papers, I asked Joe, “Do you have your own copies of these?”

“Yeah. The originals went back in the drop.”

“I’ll keep these, then, and send them to Washington.”

“Okay.” Joe got up and walked toward the door as I folded the papers and stuck them in my pocket. “Hazra al-Rashid always goes around in a chador,” Joe said, tossing the words over his shoulder.

“She and a million or two other women in this town.”

“Just a thought.”

“Sure.”

The Graftons ate breakfast in the hotel dining room on the top floor. The satellite phone was in its case at his feet, and his cell phone was in his pocket. Afterward, Callie headed off for her ten o’clock class at the university. Jake took a complimentary newspaper back to his room and settled in. Robin called him from the office on the encrypted phone, and three long conversations took up most of his morning.

The afternoon passed slowly when he wasn’t on the telephone. Fortunately, telephone conversations took up about half the time. He looked at his watch at least every five minutes, so he took it off and put it in his pocket. The clock on the television control panel said it was a few minutes after six when he hung up for the last time.

He ordered dinner again from room service. He had finished eating and was watching the Discovery Channel when his cell phone rang. He grabbed it.

Myron Emerick. “Our guy is in the restaurant. He’s got the table in the back left corner as you stand at the door. One man is having a drink with him.”

“Okay. I’m on my way.”