False Prophets, page 23
The guide listed estates and owners’ names but not their occupations, so he was forced to begin on the first page of the descriptions and work his way through them all, one by one.
Within half an hour he had come up with a German’s name. Alois Reichert, who owned Morning Rise, an ultramodern estate to the north of town, was president and majority stockholder of Kreuger Steel, A.G., which, if Mahoney’s memory served him correctly, was the fifth or sixth largest steel firm in the world, with plants in England, France, and Germany.
The third and fourth names came within a few minutes of each other an hour and a half later.
George Panagiotopolous, whose home incorporated the ruins of a pre-Tudor abbey, owned Harcourt International, Ltd., with offices in Athens, London, and New York. And Sir Rudyard Jonstone, who had one hundred and fifty acres to the east of St. Albans and whose estate had been in the family for two hundred years, was chairman of the board of ComSat, Ltd.
Bingo, Mahoney thought. ComSat, Ltd., the company that had designed and put up Israel’s spy satellite and had installed the receiving-station equipment at Al Qaryut.
The name wasn’t surprising. Mahoney thought he might find it here. Malecki had probably come to see Jonstone. It proved the connection between Malecki and the firm. Wasserman said the Al Qaryut project was initiated at Malecki’s suggestion. But how about others with whom Jonstone was associated here in St. Albans? Were there others connected with Malecki, and thus the network? And why had Malecki brought Sonja here: like a young suitor might bring his intended to meet his family? These people weren’t Malecki’s family. Or were they?
Mahoney continued to work his way through the guidebook, coming within twenty minutes to a second name in the newspaper photograph. Aubert Holmes, president and chairman of the board of Inter-Continental Technologies. It was a new one to him.
It was incredible, but the leaders of four—maybe five—of the world’s largest and most powerful firms had their homes in or around one tiny town north of London. Coincidence? he asked himself. He doubted it. But if they were indeed working together, or if they were somehow connected with the network, perhaps through ComSat, then their close proximity to each other like this—out in the open, with no attempt to disguise the connection—was a blatant piece of arrogance. They must be supremely confident that no one would suspect them.
More likely he was chasing after a will-o’-the-wisp, and there was someone else here Malecki had brought Sonja to meet. If they weren’t just pleasure trips after all.
Yet Wasserman’s words—that it had been Malecki’s idea for the satellite system—kept coming back to him. It had been his idea. ComSat had put it up. And Malecki had brought Sonja here. He hadn’t come alone, he had brought the woman he loved—a woman who was a Mossad operative. And she had been so impressed that she risked her life to cover for him.
He thought about Marge, and about the things he had done in his early days to impress her. He remembered that he would hold up for her approval the things that were most important to him. Achievements, insofar as he could discuss them outside the Agency. Friends.
Had Malecki done that with Sonja? And if so, who or what here did he list his proud achievement?
He looked at his watch. It was after eleven and he was tired, yet his mind refused to shut down. A kaleidoscope of images and thoughts raced in a jumbled patter. There was danger here, extreme danger, even though no one could possibly be expecting him. He was dead. Yet he felt there were eyes watching his every move. Waiting for him to make the one mistake that would reveal his purpose.
There’d be others, of course. This was the citadel, if he was correct in his assumptions. He sincerely hoped he was wrong, because the implications were more frightening than anything he had previously imagined. It was like being in the control room of a nuclear reactor and hearing the alarms go off.
He lay down on the bed, but his eyes refused to close. William Morrison was a tourist in St. Albans, which meant he could leave in the morning without attracting attention. But he could not leave tonight. It would be noticed.
Mahoney turned the thought over. His concern was not for his own physical well-being. Rather he was afraid of being cheated of the final satisfaction of exposing the network. Too many people had died—his family, his friends—to deny him that.
In the morning, he told himself, and he let his mind drift. In the morning he would find out. He fell asleep on that thought.
The morning was dreary, but the rain had stopped. Mahoney rose very early, had tea and toast sent up to his room, packed, checked out, and drove back to Heathrow. As he drove he wondered if he was being an old fool. Everything that had happened so far could have an alternate, less ominous, explanation. There was a network, of course. He had heard it from Henrys himself. But perhaps it stopped there. Perhaps it was merely a collection of operatives who performed tasks for Henrys.
He was clutching at straws, and he knew it. Even Henrys had admitted there was more to it. He said that the network was begun in the 1940s because of the American success with the atomic bomb. It had been started so that there’d never be an all-out nuclear war. But there was obviously more … something larger.
There was very little Sunday morning traffic. Mahoney had time to wonder if Henrys was correct after all. Perhaps peace at all costs was a valid philosophy when the alternative was nuclear war. For forty years the threat of nuclear war had hung over the world, but it had not come. There had been Korea and Vietnam and a host of other shooting matches, but never the dreaded nuclear confrontation. Was he right after all?
Mahoney turned his car in at the rental agency, then booked a seat on Pan Am’s midmorning flight to Washington, which left in two hours. At the bank of public telephones, he dialed the international operator. He had wanted to make these calls last night, but it would have been too risky from any telephone in St. Albans.
He gave her his international credit card number, told her he would be making three calls, and gave her the first number, then settled back with a cigar to wait for the call to go through.
A woman answered after two rings. “Ja?”
“This is Mr. Morrison. I would like to speak with Carl, if he is there,” Mahoney said in German.
“Morrison?” the old woman repeated, confused. She was Carl’s cousin.
“Yes,” Mahoney said. “I was there the other night visiting with Carl. It is very important I speak with him.”
“Just a moment, please.”
A few moments later Carl Margraff came on. “Mr. Morrison?” he said carefully.
“It’s me,” Mahoney said. “There was one last thing I forgot to ask you.”
“Leave me alone,” Margraff said. “I don’t want to hear any of this. I spoke with Ezra. He’s back in Tel Aviv.”
“I expected that,” Mahoney said. “There is still a lot to be done. I need your help, this one last time.”
There was a short silence. “What is it? What do you want?”
“After these trips to St. Albans, did Sonja ever mention anything—anything at all—about the people she met?”
“I told you before, nothing. She didn’t talk about it.”
“You told me she never talked at length, Carl. Which means she must have mentioned something. A first name, a dinner engagement. Anything, no matter how inconsequential. I don’t have to tell you the drill. You’ve been through it before.”
“There’s nothing—” Margraff said, then stopped short.
“What is it?”
“It’s not much, but I do remember Sonja raving about rugs. Persian rugs, I think it was. She and Chaim had just returned from England, and she had this frenzy all of a sudden for Persian rugs. Does that mean anything to you?”
Mahoney was back in the guidebook. The Pattons’ home held the most extensive collection of Persian rugs in the country. “How about a name or names? Lawrence or Kathleen Patton?”
“No,” Margraff said. “There’s nothing more. Honestly, she never talked about her private life. Not really. Just that she and Chaim had gone to England. And the rugs. Nothing else.”
“Thank you, Carl. Thank you very much.”
“Don’t keep me posted,” Margraff said. “But good luck just the same.” He hung up.
His next call took nearly ten minutes to go through, and when it did, a woman answered with a single word, “Yes?”
“Tell Ezra that it is extremely important that Mr. Morrison speak with him immediately,” Mahoney said, and he gave the Mossad operations clerk in Tel Aviv the telephone number of the phone booth, then hung up.
The airport was beginning to get busy as Mahoney waited for Wasserman to return his call, he smoked his cigar and watched the people going by.
Wasserman’s call came less than five minutes later.
“Morrison?”
“It’s me,” Mahoney said.
“What are you doing at Heathrow?”
Mahoney was impressed. Wasserman’s staff had researched the telephone number rather quickly. “On my way home. I need one more piece of information before I go.”
“No.”
“ComSat provided the electronics. Who provided the on-site construction? An Israeli firm?”
Wasserman said nothing.
“It’ll happen all over again, Ezra. The same thing. I’m trying to prevent it.”
“Not an Israeli firm. ComSat recommended a firm they always use. We hired them.”
“Harcourt International?”
“That’s a matter of general knowledge,” Wasserman said. “But yes.”
Athens, Mahoney thought. So long ago, it seemed, but it was connected. The gigantic construction conglomerate had its offices in Athens, where a bomb meant for him exploded in the airport locker. “Thanks,” Mahoney said.
“Have you got anything that can help me?”
“Not yet. But soon, I hope.”
With twenty minutes to go before his flight was scheduled to take off, Mahoney got his last call through, this one to McBundy at his home.
“Are you on a secure line?” Mahoney asked. “Has it been swept recently?”
“Every week,” McBundy said. “Where are you calling from? Greene has got his hands full, and the shit is just about ready to hit the fan.”
“I’m on my way in. I’ll be at the safe house later today.”
“I’m calling a halt to this today.”
“No!” Mahoney retorted a little too loudly. He looked around to make sure he hadn’t attracted any attention. “You said another week. We’re almost there, goddammit!”
“It’s costing too much.”
“What do you think it’s cost me? John is out there somewhere. You’re not going to back down now.”
“We’ll talk when you get back.”
“You’re goddamned right we’ll talk. But meanwhile, don’t do anything, Bob. I need your promise on it.”
“I’ll wait until you’re back. But it’s over.”
“One question first. I’ll need something on it by the time I get back. Who manufactures Soman?” It was the nerve gas that had killed all the troops at Ataruz, the strike force that had destroyed Al Qaryt.
“Christ,” McBundy said. “This is an open line.”
Mahoney waited.
“Inter-Continental Technologies,” McBundy said at long last.
Everything, every last piece, fell neatly into place for Mahoney. All the anomalies were gone. There was only one last operation now, which would give them everything they needed.
“Have Kopinski there. And we’ll need a couple of legmen,” Mahoney said.
“They found Len’s body,” McBundy said. “On the Italian side of the Simplon Tunnel.”
“How’s Bobby holding up?”
“I’ve called him back. Len … was in pretty bad shape. There wasn’t much left.”
“I’ll be back this afternoon,” Mahoney said. There was still a lot to be done, and he was acutely conscious of the fact that time was very short for his son. For all of them. Greene was going to have to pull himself together. They were going to have one shot at this, and only one shot. It either worked, or they’d never get another chance. In forty years the network had made only one mistake. If they didn’t pounce on it, they’d not be making another very soon.
THE GENEVA COVENANT
21
It was coming very nearly to the end, although it was not until much later that historians could look up over the rims of their eyeglasses and pedantically intone that these were the last phases. Mahoney was of a single mind in those final few days. There wasn’t a moment in his waking hours when he wasn’t working on what came to be known as “the project.” Such a mundane title, but one that later came to stick, as if the project were magic words that could sanctify the entire messy operation.
In the main it was not a particularly contemplative time—except for the one very brief period in Missoula—and ran contrary to Mahoney’s usual behavior prior to a difficult and complex operation. Rather, as he expressed it, it was a busy time of juggling.
McBundy and General Lycoming had to be juggled off each other. McBundy wanted to call a halt to the entire affair, and the DCI was nearly, but not completely, ignorant of the proceedings. The DCI had to remain that way, and McBundy’s motivation to see to it had to constantly be shored up.
There had been trouble, to that end, from the moment Mahoney had returned to the States and moved back into McBundy’s new safe house, in Washington, another float.
Mahoney had been back scarcely half an hour, and had just taken off his jacket and poured a drink, when McBundy showed up.
“We can go to Lycoming right now, or we can talk it out and go first thing in the morning.”
Mahoney was tired and in no mood for McBundy’s bullshit. “I’ll either do this with your help, Bob, or I’ll do it alone. Your choice.”
McBundy glared at him. “I’d have you arrested for treason.”
“You don’t want that kind of a mess. I wouldn’t back down, and that’d mean a trial. An embarrassing, long, messy trial.”
“I could have you shot.”
He liked McBundy, but at the moment he had the almost overwhelming urge to hit the man in the face. “Are you a hundred percent sure I haven’t sent off another letter to someone somewhere? Or how about my son? Would you kill him as well?” Mahoney shook his head. “There are a lot of loose ends, Bob.”
McBundy drew himself up to his full height, his stomach unnaturally flat for a man his age, and told Mahoney exactly what kind of pressures he was under with the DCI and Congress breathing down his neck. The next day, when he thought back on it, he couldn’t quite remember what he said. But he did remember clearly Mahoney’s next words.
“We’ve only a few days to go. And when it’s over, the network will be smashed. If you can’t go along with me on this, then I’ll have to do it on my own, because it has to be done. Just don’t get in my way.”
Kopinski had to be juggled as well when he balked. His job was to act as banker for the short but intense operation, and as such he was going to have to perform some sleight-of-hand in the Agency’s computer center.
“What you’re asking me to do, Wallace, is grossly illegal,” Kopinski said with his birdlike motions.
“But think of where we’ve come from, Stan,” Mahoney said. Kopinski had come to the safe house later that same evening. They were going to have to work very fast, Mahoney explained. John was on the loose, and there was no telling what effect he was having on their time lines. But he wasn’t helping matters any.
“Besides,” Kopinski told his wife the next week, “the man was dreadfully frightened for his son. Every hour that went by, the certainty that his boy would wind up dead rose a thousand percent or more.”
Kopinski cooperated, of course, with the financial arrangements, which included housing, travel, cars, provisions, and equipment. The entire gamut for such an operation.
A pair of Larry Jensen’s old teammates, Thomas Jones and Jim Carron, were brought onto the team, and it was very late that same Sunday night when they came around at McBundy’s request. Neither knew what was happening, and it took a bit of time for them to recover from the shock of seeing Mahoney alive. More time was wasted bringing them up-to-date on everything that had happened so far, including all the deaths.
Jones and Carron were both young, in their thirties. Both were built, Mahoney commented at the time, like small mountains. But they were bright. Sharp as tacks. They caught on immediately, but then it became a juggling job to keep them reined in. They wanted to hop on the next plane and start the operation immediately. Mahoney was glad that the operation was to be put into effect within the next seventy-two hours, because he did not think he could have kept those two down much longer than that. He sent them off to arrange transportation at both ends, as well as phone links and communications equipment for operational use.
Then came the confrontation he had dreaded most, the main act in the juggling revue, in the person of Bobby Greene, who flew in from Milan Monday morning and demanded to see Mahoney.
Greene was beside himself with fury. When he came into the safe house, his body seemed to fill the doorway and then expand so that there was little or no breathing space in the living room for anyone else.
He and Mahoney did a little dance together, shaking hands almost as if they were posing for photographs. Then they went for a walk, at Mahoney’s request. It was before noon and the streets were busy. Mahoney had hoped that being in public would in some small measure help to calm Greene down.
“We found Len,” Greene said, carefully controlling himself for the moment.
“I heard,” Mahoney said.
“He was on the Italian side. Outside Domodossola. He was in pretty bad shape. I mean really terrible condition. He fell under the train. He was dragged for a long way.”
“We knew he was dead, Bobby. The main thing is that we’ll have him back. He’ll be home.”
