Murder in Foggy Bottom Read online

  “Go right ahead,” Forrester said, tossing a critical look at the antismoking member of his team. Another agent brought an ashtray from a table and placed it in front of Jasper.

  “All right,” Jasper said, “you want to know if I shot down those three planes. Right?”

  “We’d like to know if you have any information that would help us find who did, Mr. Jasper.”

  Jasper ran a hand over his chin and frowned. “You’re aware I could consider this harassment,” he said, smiling. “You’ve got me here because I and my people aren’t especially fond of you and the whole damn government you represent.”

  “No one’s harassing you, Mr. Jasper,” Forrester said. “You came voluntarily.”

  “I’m glad you’ve taken note of that,” said Jasper. “I know nothing about those planes being shot down. I’m as appalled as anybody at what happened.”

  “How many people live with you at the ranch?”

  “That’s none of your business, no insult intended. I’m here to answer your questions about those planes. Nothing else.”

  “Discussing weapons you have at the ranch would be fair game, wouldn’t it?” Forrester asked.

  “No.”

  “Weapons brought down those planes, Mr. Jasper.”

  “Soviet-made SAMs, as I hear on TV.”

  “Do you have any missiles at the ranch?”

  A dismissive laugh this time. “Now, why would I have missiles on a working ranch? Hell of a way to shoot a deer or a rabbit. Maybe overkill.”

  “You could help us, Mr. Jasper,” Forrester said. “You get around the circuit.”

  “The ‘circuit’? You mean other groups that share my dislike for the government and all it stands for?”

  A simple nod, and a small smile, from the agent.

  Jasper sat up straight and leaned his elbows on the table. “Let me tell you something,” he said, his voice demonstrating the first sign of pique since he had sat down. “I may hate the Jew-nited States of America and its fascist government. I may be a white supremacist. I might be all those things. But I don’t approve of innocent American citizens being slaughtered by some foreign terrorist group.”

  “Why are you so sure it was a foreign group?”

  “Had to be. You know how they are.”

  “ ‘They’?”

  “Yes, foreigners.”

  They talked for another fifteen minutes before Jasper was escorted from the building, placed in one of the cars, and driven back to his ranch, where two of the young men who’d accompanied him waited. This time, they cradled rifles in their arms.

  Forrester said as Jasper was about to depart the vehicle, “You’d make me very happy, Mr. Jasper, if you’d invite me inside to see this ranch of yours.”

  Jasper’s tongue worked the inside of one cheek before he responded, “That sort of invitation is usually called a warrant.”

  “I’d rather not go to the trouble of having it printed. You know, just a friendly visit.”

  “You know what Harry Truman said: ‘If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.’ Sorry, but I’m not in the mood for a party. It was a pleasure meeting you. We’ll have to do this again sometime.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  Forrester called a number from a secured radio telephone in the car as he and the driver drove away from the ranch: “Forrester. We just dropped Zachary Jasper back at his ranch.”

  The agent on the other end of the call sat in a large room at FBI headquarters in San Francisco that had been designated and equipped as the western-sector command center for investigating the downing of the aircraft. She’d been taking calls all day from teams assigned to seek out and question known right-wing militia groups.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  “No. Claims to know nothing. I’d like a warrant to go in.”

  “No can do, at least at this stage. Justice is doing its usual blinders-on act, turned down a blanket request to search all known hate group locations. No probable cause.”

  “I thought—”

  “Careful. That can get you in trouble.”

  “I thought they were getting info from inside Jasper’s so-called ranch.”

  “Be a good soldier, Warren. It’s not for us to question wisdom at the top.”

  “Christ,” Forrester said into the phone, loud enough for the driver to turn and raise his eyebrows. “What are they waiting for, another plane to come down?”

  “No, they’re operating on the theory that it was the act of a foreign terrorist group.”

  “What do they back that up with?”

  “Looks like the administration wants it that way. You’re heading for Portland?”

  “Yeah. We have the two groups to check out there.”

  “Keep in touch.”

  As Special Agent Forrester and his colleagues headed for Portland, Oregon, to check out two known white supremacist groups, one comprised of neo-Nazi skinheads, the other led by an aging minister who used his self-consecrated church as headquarters, Mac and Annabel Smith watched the news on TV in their Watergate apartment. A special report was in progress about a rash of bias crimes that had sprung up across the country in response to the assaults on the aircraft. The window of a clothing store in Detroit, owned by a Pakistani family, was smashed by a chanting crowd; two black teenagers, the sons of a Nigerian diplomat, were attacked on Mass. Avenue. An Arab man in Houston was chased by a club-wielding gang and forced into a busy street, where he was struck by a car and taken to a hospital. His injuries were reported as not being life-threatening.

  The anchor’s report ended with:

  “The president himself has asked the American people not to take the law into their own hands or judge people by their national origins. Every resource of the federal government is being utilized to determine who was behind the callous destruction of civilian commuter planes that took the lives of eighty-seven men, women, and children.”

  Mac switched off the set. “Doesn’t take much, does it, to turn loose the posse?”

  “Inevitable,” Annabel said, “and unfortunate. I’d better pack.”

  “Oh, that’s right. You’re off to New York tonight.”

  “I’m really excited about seeing those pieces Mr. Relais has up for sale.”

  “I’m sure you are. What shuttle are you taking?”

  “The seven-thirty.”

  He drove her to the airport in time for her flight to New York and dropped her off in front of the busy terminal. They embraced. “I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “If all goes well, I should be able to catch a flight around three.”

  “I’ll be teaching.”

  “I know. A taxi will do just fine.”

  “Provided you find a driver who knows how to get to the city from the airport.”

  Annabel didn’t respond. She couldn’t help but reflect on Mac’s comment about DC’s cab drivers. Most of them were foreign-born; their reputation for not speaking good English or knowing their way around Washington was as established in the minds of visitors and residents as was the confusion of the city’s system of traffic circles and one-way streets, thanks to Pierre L’Enfant, who designed it in 1791 “like a chessboard overlaid with a wagon wheel.”

  Stereotypes.

  Cab drivers wearing turbans.

  A store owner with dark skin.

  Anyone different.

  Someone to look down on, feel superior to.

  She’d ridden the Metro that day and realized she was especially wary of foreigners carrying packages. Not Americans. Just foreigners. She felt slightly ashamed. And justified.

  What was the world coming to?

  Homicide detective Pete Languth, too, was pondering the fate of the world as he sipped his Black Velvet at the bar in the Carlton Hotel waiting for Joe Potamos to arrive. He’d come from a particularly grisly double murder, a domestic dispute that got out of hand, and as inured as he was to violence and its predictable after-math, this one got to him.


  “You’re late,” Languth said to Potamos when he walked in at six-fifteen. Nathan, the bartender, delivered a Rob Roy without being asked.

  “Right, I’m late,” Potamos said. “You know any editors?”

  “Editors? No. Why should I know editors?”

  “There aren’t any good ones anymore. I work for an idiot. Name’s Gardello. I just left him.”

  “You hit him, Joe?” the big detective asked, chuckling at the question.

  “No, I didn’t hit him,” Potamos said, laughing, too. “You come up with anything on the Canadian, Wilcox? Gardello told me to get off the story, stick with human-interest stuff on the grieving widows from the plane crash.”

  “So why do you want this?” Languth asked, sliding a thin file folder along the bar. Potamos opened it and glanced at its contents.

  “This all you have, Pete?”

  “Hey, how about showing a little gratitude? That’s the case file. They wouldn’t be happy I copied it for you.”

  “Yeah, sorry. Thanks. Anything you know that’s not in this?”

  “You are buying, right?”

  Potamos slapped his American Express card on the bar.

  Languth waved for another drink, turned to Potamos, and said, “The deceased, one Jeremy Wilcox, was working on some sorta treaty on fishing rights.”

  “You already told me that.”

  “Don’t interrupt. Because you’re so interested—why? I don’t know and don’t care—and despite the fact you’re a hardheaded Greek with no common sense, I called a friend who knows another friend who knows somebody who knew the deceased. He was supposedly a trade type at the embassy, but maybe he wasn’t.”

  “Meaning? Nathan, one more, please, a little sweeter this time.”

  “Meaning he might have really been a spy type.”

  “ ‘Spy type.’ What the hell does that mean?”

  “You know, making like he’s here in the States to negotiate fishing treaties, but maybe working for some Canadian intelligence agency.”

  “No kidding? Who is this person who knows that?”

  “I wrote it down inside. I didn’t know they had one. An intelligence agency. The Canadians.”

  “Everybody’s got an intelligence agency.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t figure why the Canadians would want to spy on us. We’re friends, right?”

  “Everybody spies on us, Pete, and we spy on everybody. Remember Israel?”

  “What about it?”

  “They got caught spying on us, and we’re friends. Do you think Wilcox got it because he was a ‘spy type’?”

  Languth shrugged his massive shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s not being considered a street crime. Maybe having something to do with politics, or a rub-out. Drugs, maybe, some sorta criminal thing he got himself involved with.”

  “Hmmm,” Potamos said as he tasted his second drink, gave Nathan a thumbs-up.

  They talked about other things until a half hour later, when Languth announced he had to leave.

  “Thanks for the drinks, Joe.”

  “Yeah, sure. Thanks for this stuff,” Potamos said, tapping the file folder.

  “Why don’t you drop it, Joe?” Languth said, standing. “Follow orders. Your editor says drop it, you drop it, save yourself another headache.”

  “You might have a point. I’ll think about it. We’ll catch up.” Career advice from a cop?

  Potamos read what was in the folder as he finished his drink, paid, left the hotel, and went to Roseann’s apartment. She was gone when he arrived, but Jumper gave him a wet greeting. After walking her, Potamos wrote a series of notes on the computer. Although there wasn’t much useful information in what Languth had given him, there was enough to spur his interest. Besides, Gil Gardello’s order not to follow up was motive enough to keep going.

  14

  A Week Later

  Moscow

  The American Embassy

  “Well, well, well,” Bill Lerner said as Pauling knocked and paused outside his office door in the American embassy, a nine-story yellow-and-white building on Novinskiy Bulvar. “He returns to the scene of the crime.”

  Max Pauling grinned and stepped inside. He’d arrived that morning at Sheremetevo II Airport on a British Airways flight from London, after flying there from Washington. He had declined the airline’s food so when he checked into the Metropol Hotel, a long block from the former KGB headquarters and across the street from the Bolshoi, he ordered blinchiki varenem— small pancakes with jam—and coffee from room service, then showered, changed his shirt, and went to the Kremlin, a five-minute stroll and one of his favorite sights in the world, before hailing a taxi to the embassy. He was happy to be back.

  Lerner came around the desk and enthusiastically shook Pauling’s hand. Although he was a section head in ECO/COM, the embassy’s economic and commercial office, like Pauling he, too, answered to a different and distant superior, in Langley, Virginia.

  Lerner was tall, six feet four, a loosely jointed man with unruly reddish-brown hair and a face comprised of folds, sags, pouches, and putty-colored half-moons beneath his eyes. He was no fashion plate; he wore cheap suits and shirts that hung haphazardly from his angular frame, and drab wide ties of no known color.

  “What crime did I leave behind?” Pauling asked.

  “The names escape me, Max, but I do remember they were attractive. Coffee?”

  “Speaking of crimes . . . no, thanks.”

  “You’re at the Metropol?”

  “Yeah. Living well is the best revenge. Who said that?”

  “The Duchess of Windsor.”

  “I guess she knew. What’s new here? I miss anything in the past year?”

  “Of course you did,” Lerner said, returning to his swivel, high-back office chair and laying one long leg over the other, displaying short black socks and an expanse of white leg. “What was a confused situation when you left has become more confused. Your Russian friends—”

  “What Russian friends?”

  “The ones with the funny noses. Your unsavory contacts in Russia’s leading industry, the underworld, are thriving.”

  “Including arms sales?”

  “Oh, yes, especially arms sales. Since you’ve rudely turned down my offer of coffee, would vodka be more to your taste?”

  Pauling glanced at his watch. “Noon. A little early for me, even if this is Russia.”

  Lerner unfolded himself from the chair and went to the window. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  “Are we going for lunch?”

  “Yes.”

  They left the building, stopping on their way for Pauling to exchange greetings with others with whom he’d worked, and walked up the busy boulevard in the direction of Moscow’s zoo. Pauling knew from years of having worked for Bill Lerner that leaving the embassy had more to do with security than hunger. Lerner defined paranoia when it came to discussing sensitive matters within the building, and for good reason: The Soviets had attempted to install bugs in it during its construction; such Cold War mentality died hard.

  They entered a small park that divided the boulevard and went to a shashlik, a kiosk offering barbecued meats and fish, freshly baked bread, and a small selection of vegetables.

  “Hello, hello, Mr. Lerner,” the elderly man in the kiosk said. His wife looked up from her food preparation and smiled sweetly.

  “Privet,” Lerner said, returning the greeting.

  “A new favorite restaurant?” Pauling asked.

  “Yes. Zagat hasn’t discovered it yet. They’re friends, occasionally helpful ones.”

  Pauling smiled and peered into the kiosk at the food cooking on the grill. “Smells good.”

  “Might I recommend the pirozhki and khatchapuri ? He has a touch with them.”

  Pauling laughed. Lerner spoke excellent Russian and took considerable pride in it. Pauling had become almost fluent during his seven years in Russia, although he was not, and would never be, up to Lerner
’s standard.

  Lerner placed the order and led Pauling to a bench a few feet from the kiosk. The park was busy with lunchtime workers from nearby office buildings. Two uniformed city police leaned against a utility pole on the opposite side. It had warmed considerably since Pauling arrived in Moscow that morning. He removed his tan sport jacket and loosened his tie.

  “What did you learn before leaving Washington?” Lerner asked as though not caring what the answer was.

  “Nothing, except that they were Soviet-made missiles.”

  “We know more than that now,” Lerner said, “but you’ve been traveling, wouldn’t be up to date.”

  “Tell me.”

  “According to what we’ve been told, they—I’m speaking of the missiles, of course—they were SA-7, shoulderfired, infrared homing after optical sighting, range—I don’t have all the specs with me. They’re back in the office, complete with batch and serial numbers.”

  “Narrows it down to a hundred thousand or so,” Pauling said as the kiosk chef’s wife appeared carrying two paper plates with ravioli-like stuffed grape leaves and slabs of hot cheese bread overflowing their edges.

  “Pivo, pazhalsta,” Lerner said to her.

  “Da, pivo,” Pauling said, also in the mood for a beer.

  “It won’t be quite as daunting as you think, Max. The batch number was intact on one of the missile fragments. Should help compress the process some. We’re having dinner tonight with Elena. She’s looking forward to seeing you again.”

  “I meant to ask about her. You’re still with her?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Different apartments, getting together when the need arises, which is less often as I get older. Our friendship is still between us, of course.”

  “Of course. She still work for the Central Bank?”

  “Yes. But you can catch up on us tonight. I have a lead for you, Max.”

  “Good. Who?”

  “Well, speaking of banks, a banker. A crooked one, successful because he is crooked. Very well connected in the district committees, the Central Committee, Council of Ministers—the usual criminal chain of command. Answers to the mafia, but that’s nothing new in Russia, is it? You’ll have to get to him through one of the names in your little black book.”