Black Ops (Presidential Agent) Read online

  Black Ops

  W. E. B. Griffin

  Summary:

  The Russian bear is stirring - and it's hungry. Delta Force Lieutenant Colonel Charley Castillo receives a series of back-channel messages concerning covert US intelligence assets gone missing and then, suddenly, inexplicably, found dead. One in Budapest; one in Kiev; one in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan - mere klicks from the Iran border. And then one in Virginia, along the Potomac River, practically in the shadow of CIA headquarters. Castillo suspects it's only a matter of time before the commander in chief assigns him and his group of troubleshooters to look into the deaths while the intel agencies fight among themselves trying to put the pieces together. Meanwhile, Castillo has problems of his own - fallout from recent missions involving a clandestine rescue of a DEA agent from South American drug runners, and the confiscation of some fifty million dollars from thieves in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal. He's made more than a few enemies, he knows. And then comes another back-channel message. All that has happened so far, it says, is just a warm-up for what's about to come out of the Kremlin...

  [ONE]

  Marburg an der Lahn

  Hesse, Germany

  1905 24 December 2005

  It was a picture-postcard Christmas Eve.

  Snow covered the ground. It had been snowing on and off all day, and it was gently falling now.

  The stained-glass windows of the ancient Church of St. Elisabeth glowed faintly from the forest of candles burning inside, and the church itself seemed to glow from the light of the candles in the hands of the faithful who had arrived to worship too late to find room inside and now stood outside.

  A black Mercedes-Benz 600SL was stopped in traffic by the crowds on Elisabethstrasse, its wipers throwing snow off its windshield.

  The front passenger door opened and a tall, heavyset, ruddy-faced man in his sixties got out. He looked at the crowds of the faithful, then up at the twin steeples of the church, then shook his head in disgust and impatience, and got back in the car.

  "Seven hundred and sixty-nine fucking years, and they're still waiting for a fucking virgin," Otto Gorner said, as much in disgust as awe.

  "Excuse me, Herr Gorner?" the driver asked, more than a little nervously.

  Johan Schmidt, the large forty-year-old behind the wheel, was wearing a police-type uniform; he was a supervisor in the security firm that protected the personnel and property of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. Otto Gorner was managing director of the holding company, among whose many corporate assets was the security firm.

  Schmidt's supervisor was in charge of security for what in America would be called the corporate headquarters of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., in Fulda, another small Hessian city about one hundred kilometers from Marburg an der Lahn. The supervisor had arrived at Schmidt's home an hour and a half before, and had come right to the point.

  "Herr Gorner wants to go to Marburg," he'd announced at Schmidt's door. "And you're going to drive him."

  He had then made two gestures, one toward the street, where a security car was parked behind the SL600, and one by putting his thumb to his lips.

  Schmidt immediately understood both gestures. He was to drive Herr Gorner to Marburg in the SL600, and the reason he was going to do so was that Herr Gorner--who usually drove himself in a 6.0-liter V12-engined Jaguar XJ Vanden Plas--had been imbibing spirits. Gorner was fond of saying he never got behind the wheel of a car if at any time in the preceding eight hours he had so much as sniffed a cork. The Mercedes was Frau Gorner's car; no one drove Otto Gorner's Jag but Otto Gorner.

  Gorner's physical appearance was that of a stereotypical Bavarian; he visually seemed to radiate gemutlichkeit. He was in fact a Hessian, and what he really radiated--even when he had not been drinking--was the antithesis of gemutlichkeit. It was said behind his back that only three people in the world were not afraid of him. One was his wife, Helena, who was paradoxically a Bavarian but looked and dressed like a Berlinerin or maybe a New Yorker. It was hard to imagine Helena Gorner in a dirndl, her hair in pigtails, munching on a wurstchen.

  Frau Gertrud Schroeder, Gorner's secretary, had been known to tell him no and to shout back at him when that was necessary in the performance of her duties.

  The third person who didn't hold Gorner in fearful awe didn't have to. Herr Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger was by far the principal stockholder of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. Gorner worked for him, at least theoretically. Gossinger lived in the United States under the polite fiction that he was the Washington, D.C., correspondent of the Tages Zeitung newspaper chain--there were seven scattered over Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary--which constituted another holding of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H.

  It was commonly believed that the heir to the Gossinger fortune seldom wrote anything but his signature on a corporate check drawn to his credit and instead spent most of his time chasing movie stars, models, and other female prey in the beachside bars of Florida and California and in the apres-ski lounges of Colorado and elsewhere.

  "I said it's been seven hundred and sixty-nine fucking years, and they're still waiting for a fucking virgin," Gorner repeated.

  "Yes, sir," Schmidt said, now sorry he had asked.

  "You do know the legend?" Gorner challenged.

  Schmidt resisted the temptation to say "of course" in the hope that would end the conversation. Instead, afraid that Gorner would demand to hear what the legend was, he said, "I'm not sure, Herr Gorner."

  "Not sure?" Gorner replied scornfully. "You either do or you don't."

  "The crooked steeples?" Schmidt asked, taking a chance.

  "Steeple, singular," Gorner corrected him, and then went on: "The church was built to honor Elisabeth of Hungary, twelve hundred seven to twelve hundred thirty-one. She was a daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary. He married her off at age fourteen to Ludwig IV, one of whose descendants was Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, who lost his throne because he became involved with an American actress whose name I can't at the moment recall, possibly because, before this came up, I got into the wassail cup.

  "Anyway, Ludwig IV, the presumably sane one, went off somewhere for God and Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire. While so nobly employed, he caught a bug of some sort and died.

  "Elisabeth, now a widow, interpreted this as a sign from God and thereafter devoted her life and fortune to good works and Holy Mother Church. For reasons I have never had satisfactorily explained, she came here and founded a hospital for the poor, right here behind the church--our destination, you understand?"

  "I know where we're going, Herr Gorner."

  To see a dead man, he thought. A murdered man.

  So why am I getting this Gottverdammt history lesson--because he's feeling no pain?

  Or because he doesn't want to think about the real reason we're here?

  "That was before the church was built, you understand," Gorner had gone on. "The church came after she died in 1231. By then she had become a Franciscan nun and given all her money and property to the church.

  "So, they decided to canonize her. Pope Gregory IX did so in 1235, and in the fall of that year, they laid the cornerstone of the church. It took them a couple of years to finish it, and nobody was so impolite as to mention that one of the steeples was crooked.

  "But everybody saw it, of course, and a legend sprang up--possibly with a little help from the Vatican--that the steeple would be straightened by God himself just as soon as Saint Elisabeth's bones were reburied under the altar. That happened in 1249. The steeple didn't move.

  "The legend changed to be that the steeple would be fixed when the first virgin was married in t
he church." He paused, then drily added, "Your choice, Schmidt--either there was a shortage of virgins getting married, or the legend was baloney."

  Schmidt raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  "The steeple was still crooked three hundred years later," Gorner continued, "when Landgrave Phillip of Hesse threw the Romans out of the church and turned it over to the Protestants. That was in 1527, if memory serves, and it usually does.

  "He threw the Dominicans out of their monastery on the top of the hill"--Gorner turned and pointed over his shoulder--"at about the same time and turned it into a university, which he modestly named after himself. That's where I went to school."

  "So I have heard, Herr Gorner."

  "Enough is enough," Gorner said.

  "Sir?"

  "It could be argued that inasmuch as poor Gunther is dead, there is no reason for us to hurry," Gorner said. "But an equally heavy argument is there is no reason we should wait while they stand there with their fucking candles waiting for a fucking virgin. Sound the horn, Schmidt, and drive through them."

  "Herr Gorner, are you sure you--"

  Gorner reached for the steering wheel and pressed hard on the horn for what seemed to Schmidt an interminable time.

  This earned them looks of shock and indignation from the candle-bearing worshippers, but after a moment the crowd began to make room and the big Mercedes moved through the gap.

  In the block behind the church, at Gorner's direction, Schmidt illegally parked the car before a PARKEN VERBOTEN! sign at the main entrance to the hospital, between a somewhat battered silver-and-white Opel Astra police car and an apparently brand-new, unmarked Astra that bore a magnet-based police blue light on its roof.

  [TWO]

  There were two men sitting on a bench in the corridor of the hospital. One was a stout, totally bald, decently dressed man in his fifties, the other a weasel-faced thirty-something-year-old in a well-worn blue suit that had not received the attention of a dry cleaner in a very long time.

  When they saw Gorner, they both rose, the older one first.

  "Herr Gorner?" he said.

  Gorner nodded and perfunctorily shook their hands.

  "Where is he?" Gorner said.

  "You wish to see the victim, Herr Gorner?"

  Gorner shut off the reply that sprang to his lips, and instead said, "If I may."

  "The 'mortuary,' using the term loosely, is down that way," the older man said. "But I was ordered to have the body moved here from the coroner's morgue."

  Gorner nodded. He had been responsible for the order.

  When the security duty officer at the office had called Herr Otto Gorner to tell him he had just been informed that Herr Gunther Friedler had been found dead "under disturbing circumstances" in his room in the Europaischer Hof in Marburg, the first thing Gorner had done was to order that his wife's car be brought to the house with a driver to take him to Marburg. Next, he had called an acquaintance--not a friend--in the Ministry of the Interior. The Interior Ministry controlled both the Federal Police and the Bundeskriminalamt, the Federal Investigation Bureau, known by its acronym, BKA. The acquaintance owed Otto Gorner several large favors.

  Gorner had given him--"And yes, Stutmann, I know it's Christmas Eve"--two "requests":

  One, that Gorner wanted a senior officer of the BKA immediately dispatched to Marburg an der Lahn to "assist" the Hessian police in their investigation of the death of Gunther Friedler, and, two, that while that official was on his way, Gorner wanted the Hessian police to be told to move the body out of the coroner's morgue; Saint Elisabeth's Hospital would be a good place.

  "What's this all about, Otto?"

  "I don't want to talk about it on the phone. Your line is probably tapped."

  There was no blood on either the sheet that the weasel-faced plainclothes policeman pulled from the naked corpse of the late Gunther Friedler or on the body itself. There were, however, too many stab wounds to the body to be easily counted, and there was an obscene wound on the face where the left eye had been cut from the skull.

  Someone has worked very hard to clean you up, Gunther.

  "Merry Christmas," Otto Gorner said, and motioned for the plainclothes policeman to pull the sheet back over the body.

  The completely bald police official signaled for the plainclothes policeman to leave the room.

  "So what is the official theory?" Gorner asked as soon as the door closed.

  "Actually, Herr Gorner, we see a case like this every once in a while."

  Gorner waited for him to continue.

  "When homosexual lovers quarrel, there is often a good deal of passion. And when knives are involved . . ." He shook his bald head and grimaced, then went on: "We're looking for a 'good friend' rather than a male prostitute."

  Gorner just looked at him.

  "But we are, of course, talking to the male prostitutes," the police official added.

  "You are?" Gorner asked.

  "Yes, of course we are. This is murder, Herr Gorner--"

  "I was asking who you are," Gorner interrupted.

  "Polizeirat Lumm, Herr Gorner, of the Hessian Landespolizie."

  "Captain, whoever did this to Herr Friedler might well be a deviate, but he was neither a 'good friend' of Friedler nor a male whore."

  "How can you know--"

  "A senior BKA investigator," Gorner said quickly, shutting him off, "is on his way here to assist you in your investigation. Until he gets here, I strongly suggest that you do whatever you have to do to protect the corpse and the scene of the crime."

  "Polizeidirektor Achter told me about the BKA getting involved when he told me you would be coming, Herr Gorner."

  "Good."

  "Can you tell me what this is all about?"

  "Friedler worked for me. He was in Marburg working on a story. There is no question in my mind that he was killed because he had--or was about to have--come upon something that would likely send someone to prison and/or embarrass someone very prominent."

  "Have you a name? Names?"

  "As far as I know, Polizeirat Lumm, you are a paradigm of an honest police officer, but on the other hand, I don't know that, and I never laid eyes on you until tonight, so I'm not going to give you any names."

  "With all respect, Herr Gorner, that could be interpreted as refusing to cooperate with a police investigation."

  "Yes, I suppose it could. Are you thinking of arresting me?"

  "I didn't say that, sir."

  "I almost wish you would. If you did, I wouldn't have to do what I must do next: go to Gunther Friedler's home on Christmas Eve and tell his widow that her thoroughly decent husband--they have four children, Lumm, two at school here at Phillips, two a little older with families of their own--will not be coming home late on Christmas Eve because he has been murdered by these bastards."

  [THREE]

  3690 Churchill Lane

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  1610 24 December 2005

  After carefully checking his rearview mirror, John M. "Jack" Britton, a somewhat soberly dressed thirty-two-year-old black man, turned his silver Mazda MX-5 Miata right off Morrell Avenue onto West Crown Avenue, then almost immediately made another right onto Churchill Lane.

  Churchill Lane--lined with clusters of two-story row houses, five to eight houses per cluster--made an almost ninety-degree turn to the left after the second cluster of homes. Britton followed the turn, then pulled the two-door convertible (he had the optional hardtop on it for the winter) to the curb in front of the center cluster. He was now nearly right in front of his home.

  Britton got out of the car, looked down the street, and then, seeing nothing, walked around the nose of the Miata, pulled open the passenger door, and accepted an armload of packages from his wife, Sandra, a slim, tall, sharp-featured woman who was six days his senior in age.

  They had come from a Bring One Present Christmas party held in a nearby restaurant by and for co-workers. Jack Britton had changed jobs, but he and
his wife had been invited anyway. They came home with the two presents they had received in exchange for each of theirs, plus the door prize, an electric mixer for the kitchen that seemed to be made of lead and for which they had no use. On the way home, they had discussed giving it to Sandra's brother, El-wood, who was getting married.

  Knowing that her husband couldn't unlock the front door with his arms full, Sandra preceded him past the three-foot-high brick wall that was topped with a four-foot-high aluminum rail fence--one that Britton bitterly complained had cost a bundle yet had done absolutely nothing to keep the local dogs from doing their business on his small but meticulously kept lawn.

  Sandra was just inside the fence when Jack looked down the street again.

  This time he saw what he was afraid he was going to see: a pale green Chrysler Town & Country minivan. It was slowly turning the ninety-degree bend in Churchill Lane. Then it rapidly accelerated.

  "Sandy, get down behind the wall!" Britton ordered.

  "What?"

  He rushed to his wife, pushed her off the walkway and down onto the ground behind the wall, then covered her body with his.

  "What the hell are you doing?" she demanded, half angrily, half fearfully.

  There came the sound of squealing tires.

  Britton reached inside his jacket and pulled a Smith & Wesson Model 29 .357 Magnum revolver from his shoulder holster. He rolled off of his wife and onto his back, bringing up the pistol with both hands and aiming at the top of the wall in case someone came over it.

  There then came the sound of automatic-weapons fire--Kalashnikovs, he thought, two of them--and of a few ricochets and glass shattering, and the tinkle of ejected cartridge cases bouncing on the macadam pavement of Churchill Lane.

  And then squealing tires and a revved-up engine.

  Britton crawled to where he could look out the gate to the street. He saw the Town & Country turn onto Wessex Lane but knew there wasn't time for a shot at the minivan. And he realized he couldn't have fired if there had been time; another cluster of houses was in the line of fire.