DEADMAN SWITCH (Joe Brennan Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  “Most of the students have gone home for the Christmas break,” she said. “There are a few dedicated types still kicking around, and some like myself who don’t celebrate the season.”

  They each bought a coffee from the machine in the corner then sat down at one of the long, empty tables. “So I got onto this when I was a student. My former prof at U of M was Dennis Carruthers, who did most of his work in fission. He passed away last year, unfortunately.”

  “My condolences,” Brennan said, with Ballantine echoing the sentiment.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “He was very old when he died; he’d been an intern on the Manhattan project, and he was well into his nineties. Anyway, twenty years ago he was advising the South Africans on how to safely disarm in the wake of its shift to a democracy.”

  Ballantine seemed shocked. “So he knew about the weapon? But surely he passed the word on to authorities…”

  “Oh most certainly,” Han said. “But all he had was the vaguest story, references to something that was rumored to have happened. He tried initially to discuss it with the South African government but was rebuffed. And he did mention that UN officials had inquired after it during the inspections that followed, again with no indication that it was actually true.”

  “But you think it is?” Brennan said.

  She nodded. “The details at the time were interesting; there was no information about where this weapon was allegedly stolen from, or its yield, or anything like that. But there was a story that it had been smuggled out of the country by land, north along the West African coast. Problematically, Namibia is a desert and Angola was – and still is – rebuilding after decades of civil war, and that’s where the trail ran cold.”

  “Is it possible it could have just been sitting there this entire time, without being discovered?”

  “In Angola?” Ballantine said. “There are parts of the country that are extraordinarily remote. If someone wanted to hide it, and the people looking for it didn’t know where to start? Absolutely.”

  2./

  JAN. 17, 2016, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  When Alex Malone awoke at eight o’clock, she followed her usual routine; she rose as the sun streamed through the small bedroom window, grabbed her robe from its usual spot on the floor and searched in vain for her slippers for about ten seconds before giving up and staggering, blearily, towards the kitchen.

  The coffee machine was on its usual timer and a steaming cup awaited her, black as pitch. She retrieved her favorite mug from the rack by the sink, shambled over and poured a cup, then dipped her head slightly to slurp up the first inch. Her eyes rolled back in her head slightly at the joyful flavor, the autonomic bliss of knowing the caffeine would hit at any moment. “Geez, what a night,” she said to the empty kitchen.

  Most of the evening had been spent at a benefit staged by the Nigerian embassy. Malone had been trying to get to a particular source for a story she was working on, but it had required drinking his assistant almost under the table. Her head hurt, a throbbing reminder that she wasn’t twenty-one anymore.

  She took the doorway on the other side of the kitchen, to the short, twisting staircase that led to the front door of her townhouse; Malone opened the door and squinted at the glare of the sun, both thankful it was a nice day and immediately stung by it due to the hangover; she reached down to retrieve her morning copy of the Washington Post from the top step.

  Only there were two.

  At first, they appeared identical and Malone assumed the deliverer had just made a mistake. She left them both on her kitchen table while she went to get ready.

  Five minutes later, she was rushing back to the kitchen, head and body wrapped in towels. She’d just stepped under the water when she realized why one paper looked slightly different: it didn’t have her address scrawled on the front. Her carrier did it with all the papers on his route. She would have ignored it, but her reporter instinct was kicking in. So she rushed downstairs, realizing half way that she hadn’t even bothered to properly dry herself first.

  Sure enough, the paper on top was address-free. There was no way he’d miss one; even in the modern age of free electronic muck, the Post still printed multiple sections daily.

  She picked up the copy and leafed through it, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. She went back to the beginning and started again. On the second read through, she was eighteen pages in when she noticed the blue dot, a tiny pen mark next to the second line of a story, halfway down the page. Malone went back to the beginning of the paper and started again. Sure enough, there was a series of dots. Every few pages, they’d be substituted with a short line. She collected the letters next to each of them and began rearranging them, using the lines as word divisions, until she had: Sheridan Fifth Lv 2 p lot 9 pm.

  Sheridan and Fifth was the site of a popular rec center, Malone knew. “P lot” obviously meant parking lot. At least whoever sent it had a sense of history, she thought. Meeting a source in a Washington parking lot was very Deep Throat, very Woodward and Bernstein. It also made her nervous as hell; Malone had been a good reporter for more than a decade and generally dug her own stuff up. She didn’t do ‘anonymous’, and she certainly didn’t meet people she didn’t know in dark parking garages.

  But… the newspaper was a tactful touch. If someone crazy wanted to take a shot at her, she reasoned, they could just have called her up about a potential story and lied. Whoever left the newspaper wanted complete privacy, but in a place public enough to allay some of their fears.

  It was enough. It wasn’t enough to make her feel safe; but it was enough to make her go.

  Eleven nerve-clenching hours later, she was seated in her car on level two of a parking garage near the corner of Sheridan and Fifth. She waited as the clock approached nine; then she watched it go by; she gave it another ten minutes before it became apparent no one was going to make an appearance.

  She switched on her headlights and started the engine. As she did, a figure stepped out from behind a nearby vehicle. Malone turned the engine off, and the lights, and then got out of the car.

  The person was standing in the shadows. “You know who I am?”

  She’d recognized him immediately. Malone came closer, her heels clicking slightly on the cold concrete. “Of course.”

  “You’ve been investigating David Fenton-Wright, the deputy director of the agency. The rumor is that he’s next in line to become director.”

  “Okay,” she said, offering nothing back. The less she said the more dead air was left for him to fill.

  “He’s just an errand boy. You need to start with the two dead diplomats, work backwards from there.”

  She knew he was talking about the EU sniper, a topic of discussion for months but recently quiet. “You mean Lord Abbott and the Marie Lapierre? What does that have to do with….”

  “Start there. Everything else follows. The chairman has his fingers in many pies.”

  “I don’t understand; What chairman? Her committee? Why would anyone care about an environmental committee to the point…”

  “That was a great front for La Pierre, but not much more,” the source said. “She was into much deeper issues. You’re aware of what happened in Dar Es Salaam last year?”

  “Of course; the UN did some heavy handling of a group of eco-terrorists, and in turn they killed their hostages. But I don’t see…

  “Be quiet, I don’t have long,” he said. “Compare that with other events over the last two years. Look for similarities. It’s all there. Then look up a firm called AK Industrial SARL, based in Paris and Montpellier. You’ve heard of Ahmed Khalidi?”

  “Sure, oil magnate from the Middle East.”

  “He is the chairman, and is based in Jordan. He has a group of insiders, political types who he meets with far more often than is healthy; it’s official name is the Association Commercial Franco-Arabe, or ACF. We’ve obtained information from a deep source, and that’s all you get on that. But the names of his board mem
bers are worth looking into. Boris Miskin, former Russian cultural attaché to America. He has some sort of personal feud going on with the Khalidi right now, but we’re not sure why; Fung So Dook, a state secretary for Qiangdon province in China; Yoshi Funomora, a businessman from Japan; and Hans-Karl Wilhelm, the German representative, a physician and former national politician. La Pierre was also a member and, we suspect, Abbott as well.”

  “We? As in the…”

  “The U.S. intelligence community as a whole. We’ve been investigating the ACF for several years, trying to tie it to operations that ultimately supported Islamist terrorist cells, among others. We believe Khalidi’s true goal is destabilization and reaping the economic consequences of being able to predict it will happen in each locale, but the group also has heavy political connections, policy connections; they’ve used them for purposes both good and bad, sharing those connections and working as a united front.”

  It was a lot of information, a ton of innuendo. “What am I supposed to be looking for?” Malone asked. “I’m assuming these people have had lengthy careers already or they wouldn’t have been involved with a guy like him in the first place. Why would someone shoot two of his board members?”

  “Concentrate on Khalidi,” he said. “Most people in the public have never heard of him or from him, despite being the chairman of a major conglomerate. But he has some interesting history of his own.”

  “Interesting as in ‘ha ha’, or interesting as in ‘blam, blam’.”

  “Definitely the latter,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for our need to pipe oil through and from the region, he might have been dealt with a long time ago. Khalidi has some interesting beliefs and even more interesting friends.”

  Malone wondered about the group he’d named. “Where did we get this information? Do you have someone close to…”

  He cut her off again. “We did, yes. But that person is dead.”

  “Anyone I know? A certain French diplomat maybe?”

  “Look, that’s all you get for now. If you need more or get stuck on something, leave a paper out, same spot, same method.”

  “Can I just…”

  “No, I have to go.” He turned quickly and strode between the cars, disappearing into a darker area of the garage. Malone didn’t try to follow; she knew who he was, knew his intel would be good. And she knew she had some work ahead of her.

  JAN. 29, 2015

  Boris Miskin was late for dinner, and Ivana was preparing potatoes stuffed with bacon and cheese, which meant he did not want to be late.

  The driver had gotten stuck in traffic on the Beltway after Miskin’s meeting with a trade delegation, but had done so on the one night when Miskin didn’t want an excuse to be somewhere other than with his wife. When he climbed out of the car in front of their brownstone Georgetown home just off Thirty Fifth Street– his permanent residence when not working in Europe – the sidewalk was dusted with snow and it was already near dark.

  Still, better late than never, Miskin thought – before realizing how grim an idea it was in light of recent events. He’d come home for Christmas because, despite his love for his own country, he’d become accustomed to the style of living in America. On top of that he was convinced that a disgruntled individual was behind both shootings, someone aware of his collusion with the ACF. It seemed unlikely that person would follow him across the Atlantic Ocean; Miskin did not exactly advertise his U.S. residence, and a person would have had to go back several years in library newspapers to find a reference from when he was cultural attaché, which in turn had merely been a KGB cover.

  He rang the doorbell and the maid, Bernice, answered the door. “Welcome home sir,” she said. “May I take your bag upstairs?”

  After she’d left to tend to the laundry, he took off his topcoat and hung it in the closet. Ivana had not come to the door to greet him, which was no surprise. It had been many years since his wife had been excited by the prospect of his return. He walked down the carpeted hallway to the living room entrance. She was propped up on the couch watching television, her suicide blonde hair almost in a beehive, it was stacked so high, the dry threads of it barely illuminated by the TV screen. “You keep dinner hot?” he asked.

  “In the oven,” she said, without turning away from her show.

  He strode through the doorway at the far end of the room, which connected it to the kitchen. He kept his head down as he walked over to the stainless steel refrigerator to retrieve his chilled, pre-mixed bottle of vodka and Pepsi, then reached up to the white cupboards to get a glass.

  “You should be careful, Boris Mikhailovich,” a man’s voice said in flawless Russian. “Too much drink has been many a man’s downfall.”

  He turned quickly. The man sitting at the kitchen table was a stranger, dressed in black. “You know me, my friend, but I don’t know you,” Miskin said calmly. He slowly reached for the cell phone in his pocket.

  Brennan shook his head. “Put that away, Boris. We need to talk civilly, and that is difficult to do if I’m being arrested for trespassing. Beyond that, I’m sure you’re aware that the local response times are hardly those of the police in Moscow.”

  He withdrew his hand from his pocket. “Again, I don’t know with whom I’m speaking. Please explain.”

  “I’m just a bird who decided your window was a good place upon which to alight,” Brennan said. “Let’s leave it at that. But you have a piece of information I need.”

  “I see. So this is… what, a kidnapping?”

  “No, just a couple of quick questions.”

  “And if I choose to not answer these questions?”

  “Well… then things do get a bit more difficult. But let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Okay, guy in my kitchen, tell me more. I see if I can help.”

  “Tell me what the connection is between Ahmed Khalidi’s ACF and a missing nuclear bomb from South Africa.”

  If Miskin was a poker player, he was a damn good one, Brennan thought. “I don’t know anything about this,” the big Russian said, seemingly oblivious.

  “What about the name ‘Borz Abubakar’?”

  Miskin looked deep in thought. “It seems familiar. Is this someone I should know?”

  “Chechen dissident…”

  “Oh sure! Now I get you.”

  “You knew him.”

  “I knew of him. He is the one who…”

  “…blew up a bus with two dozen people aboard in Peru, back in oh-nine. Allegedly.”

  “Allegedly?”

  “I’ve got a source that suggests the device may have been elsewhere at the time.”

  “Yeah? You want to share this source with Boris?”

  “Why would it matter if it has nothing to do with Khalidi’s group?”

  He shrugged. “Assuming we accept your suggestion that Mr. Khalidi fronts such a group, a loose nuke is something we all should worry about. Not that it sounds likely.”

  “What about Khalidi? I understand you’ve worked together but do not think much of each other.”

  “This is no secret,” Boris said. “But if you think he or anyone else is connected to this other matter, it is a bit foolish. We are a business networking group, nothing more. We review political policy as a hobby, recommend changes to our various contacts in government.”

  “Really? That’s all?”

  “Of course, my intrusive friend.”

  “Because I’d heard you were working outside that mandate a little.”

  Miskin’s head dipped for a moment and he took on a wry smile. “This is very imaginative, yes? What did you hear?”

  “Just that your group may be a little more active that is advertised. I don’t know yet; but I’ll be looking.”

  “I tell you, there is nothing that…”

  Brennan cut him off. “Keep in mind, Boris Mikhailovich, that whoever shot your colleagues may yet have you in his sights. Perhaps you need outside friends more than you realize.”

 
; Boris turned back to the refrigerator and put the bottle of Pepsi and vodka away. “I don’t know what you think you will find, but…”

  But when he turned around, the back door was open once more and the man had gone.

  By the time Miskin poked his head outside to see where the intruder had vanished to, Brennan was already over the back fence and around the block. His rental was parked half a street away from the house. As he approached it, he heard voices behind him. He hugged the wall of the adjacent building to stay out of sight, then peered back around the corner, across the street to the Russian’s residence.

  There was a woman at the door; she was familiar.

  The bar, when he’d met Walter months earlier. She was the woman who’d walked in and made everyone nervous.

  It couldn’t be coincidence. He pulled out his phone and dialed Lang’s number. Maybe he’d talked to her for long enough to get an ID, Brennan thought.

  3./

  It was late, after ten o’clock. Malone got home tired and frustrated. The tipster’s information was pure dynamite, story-wise. But confirming any of it was going to be nightmarish.

  She closed her townhouse door and put her keys in the top drawer of the small telephone table by the entrance. She switched off the light on the table, always left on during the day to give the place the look of someone being home, in case anyone peeked through the front window.

  Then she hung up her coat in the closet behind the door before taking the stairs to the kitchen. She put her purse on the nearby kitchen table and moved to the small sideboard she used as a stand-in for a bar, grabbing a bottle of rum and heading towards the fridge for mix.

  “Don’t turn around,” a voice said. She gasped inwardly and dropped the bottle… and it was caught, by man’s hand, from right behind her. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you,” said the voice. The man put the bottle down on the table, behind them.