Stuart Woods - Iron Orchid

“Your movements are restricted to the county, and you will be given a map of the county. You are not to contact any person-even friends or family-during the time off the installation, or to make any phone calls, land line or cell. You may take a cell phone with you, but it is to be used only to contact the duty officer, whose number you will be given, or to call 911 in the event of an emergency. If you receive a call from the duty officer’s number, you may answer it or return the call immediately and follow explicitly any instructions you are given.

If you should have an encounter with law enforcement, you are to stick to your legend, unless you are otherwise identified by fingerprints or your identity comes into question and you are unable to talk your way out of the situation. In that case, call the duty officer, and someone will deal with the situation.

“Finally, you are to conduct yourselves as responsible citizens. You are not to get drunk, commit traffic violations or otherwise break the law. Any questions?” He looked around the room. There were none. “Pick up your envelopes at the rear of the auditorium, and do not leave the installation until you have committed your legends to memory.”

The group left their seats and lined up to receive their envelopes. Holly took hers and repaired to her room. She ripped open the fat envelope and spread the contents on her bed. She found a wallet; maps of the county, of Virginia, and of the District of Columbia; a college transcript showing her to have graduated from Georgetown University with a B.A. in elementary education and a typed, six-page document that was a detailed biography of one Helen Bransford.

She opened the wallet and found the promised driver’s license and credit cards, along with a voter’s registration card for Washington, D.C, and a laminated ID. card identifying her as a teacher at a private school in D.C. She also found a Virginia license to carry a concealed weapon, giving an address in Floyd, Virginia, the home of Bransford’s parents. There was a map of D.C, with the address of Bransford’s apartment in Georgetown marked on it. Holly began reading the legend, memorizing items as she went. She read it three times, then recited all the relevant names aloud.

There was a knock on the door, and Harry Three opened the door. “Hi, you’ve got a car, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Can I go out with you tomorrow tonight? I’m without wheels.”

“Sure.”

The woman walked into the room and stuck out her hand. “I’m Lee Wan,” she said, spelling the last name. “I’m from New York. Chinatown, to be exact.”

“I’m Helen Bransford,” Holly said, shaking her hand.

“I hear there’s a hot spot down the road called Buster’s,” Lee said. “Want to try it?”

Holly shook her head. “I’ve been warned off the place,” she said. “Maybe you’d better ride with somebody else.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Lee said. “Why don’t we try the Holiday Inn? I hear there’s a restaurant and a piano bar.”

“That sounds good,” Holly said. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot tomorrow night at seven?”

“Sounds great.”

Holly went back to her legend, going through it twice more.

TEDDY FINISHED putting all his equipment away, then vacuumed the floor of his workshop. He was ready to go to work.

First, he spent an hour on the computer, hacking into the FBI’s counterintelligence files and locating the sources of various explosives in the New York City area. He was, in effect, working the Feds’ system backward: they would use these files to track down perpetrators in the event of a terrorist attack; he was using them to locate the explosives.

He found many sources for dynamite, mostly construction companies, but only four for plastic explosives, three of them military. Stealing from the military was too complicated for his current purposes, so Teddy zeroed in on the fourth source: the evidence depository of the New York field office of the FBI. This would be much simpler.

He hacked into the files of his old department at the CIA, which bore the innocuous name of Technical Services. From those files he downloaded templates for an FBI I.D. and for the Bureau’s stationery. He spent another hour building an I.D., then he inserted the I.D. into the Bureau’s central files. He printed out several sheets of the stationery, taking care to get the watermark right.

Then he wrote a letter to the agent in charge of the New York field office. He made the letterhead the personal stationery of the new director of the FBI, Robert Kinney, then downloaded a copy of Kinney’s signature from the files and affixed it to the letter. As a final touch, he downloaded the template of a rubber approval stamp from the Agent in Charge’s office, stamped the letterhead and affixed a copy of the AIC’s signature to the space provided.

TWO HOURS LATER, Teddy entered the Federal Building in Foley Square and, following a plan from the Bureau’s files, made his way to the subbasement where the field office’s evidence room was located. He presented his I.D. to the clerk, who wiped the card through a reader that checked the bar code against the Bureau’s central files, then handed it back to him.

“What can I do for you, Special Agent Curry?” the clerk asked.

Teddy produced the letter from the director ordering the AIC to produce four pounds of C-4 explosive and a box of detonators from the evidence room, to be transported to D.C. as evidence in a trial. The letter was stamped and endorsed by the AIC.

“That’s a lot of that stuff to be carrying around,” the clerk said.

“Yeah, that’s why we’re doing it on a Saturday night,” Teddy replied. “We’ve got a secure van outside, and a King Air waiting at Teterboro to take it back and deliver it to the U.S. Attorney.”

The clerk disappeared through a door, and Teddy began casing the place for escape, if he needed to. The wait became interminable, and Teddy was starting to worry. Then the clerk appeared, carrying a cheap, leather catalogue case and set it on the counter. “There you are, Mr. Curry,” he said. “Four pounds of C-4, complete with detonators. Just get it out of the building before you let it explode.” He offered a clipboard. “Sign here, please.”

Teddy opened the case and checked the contents, then signed. Ten minutes later he was on a subway, headed uptown.

BACK IN HIS WORKSHOP, Teddy went back into the Agency’s files for information on the head of security, Ali Hakim, at the East Side townhouse. He located a fairly complete biography, which yielded the information that Hakim, like many Arabs, was nuts about horses. Excellent, he thought.

Teddy then opened the C-4 and began to knead two pounds of it into a shape, using a craft knife to define its lines until he had what he wanted. When he was satisfied, he sprayed the little sculpture with a gray fixative which both sealed in any detectable fumes from the explosive and caused it to look like stone.

He then built a hollow plinth and assembled the necessary electronics, along with a detonator and a tripwire that could be fastened to a seam in the packaging. He also installed a receiver for a remote control.

Tired from his day’s work, Teddy stretched out on his bed, pulled a blanket over himself and got eight hours of untroubled sleep.

The following morning Teddy checked his assembly inside the plinth, fixed a lid to a bolt set into the sculpture and set the lid onto the plinth, screwing it into place. He took a moment to admire his handiwork, then he began packaging it in a tightly sealed wooden crate, taking care to boobytrap the lid. He addressed it to Ali Hakim and from the Agency’s files downloaded a stencil of the seal of the Royal House of Saud, which he affixed to the crate.