The Book of Spies

5

AS SOON as he dropped off Judd Ryder, Tucker Andersen phoned headquarters.
"I'm coming in now."
Watching carefully around, he parked the Olds at the back of a busy mall outside Chevy Chase, caught a taxi, and phoned his wife. Then he hailed another cab, this time directing it back to Capitol Hill.
The headquarters of the highly secret Catapult team was a Federalist brick house northeast of the Capitol in a vibrant neighborhood of lively bars, restaurants, and one-of-a-kind shops. This sort of busy neighborhood provided good cover for Catapult, a special CIA counteroperations unit--counterterrorism, counterintelligence, countermeasures, counter-proliferation, counterinsurgency. Catapult worked covertly behind the scenes, taking aggressive action to direct or stop negative events, both in triage and planning.
Tucker let the taxi pass the unit's weathered brick house with its shiny black door and shutters. The porch lamps were alight. The discreet sign above the door announced COUNCIL FOR PEER EDUCATION.
Three blocks later, he got out and strolled back as if nothing was on his mind. But once inside the fenced lot, he hurried past the security cameras to the side door, where he tapped his code onto the electronic keyboard. After a series of soft clicks, he pushed open the door. It was heavy steel, engineered to protect a bank vault.
He stepped into the hallway. While the exterior of the house was elegant with history, the interior was utilitarian and cutting-edge. The plaster walls and thick moldings were painted in muted greens and grays, and stark black-and-white photographs of cities from around the planet hung on them, reminding the few who were allowed to enter of the far reach of Catapult.
Glancing up, he noted the needle-nose cameras and dime-size motion detectors as he passed a couple of staffers carrying high-security blue folders. In the reception area, the office manager, Gloria Feit, reigned from behind her big metal desk. To his right was the front entry, while to the left a long corridor extended back into the house, where there were offices, the library, and the communications center. Upstairs were more offices, a conference room, and two large bedrooms with cots for covert officers and special visitors in transit.
Gloria's shift had begun at eight o'clock that morning, but she still looked fresh. A small woman with crinkled smile lines around her eyes, she was in her late forties. Once a field op herself, she and Tucker had worked together off and on for two decades.
Her brows rose over her rainbow-rimmed reading glasses. "You're on time."
It was a constant debate between them, since he often ran late. "How can you tell? I'm usually here."
"Except when you're not. Did you have good luck?"
"Luck is the result of preparation. I was prepared. But I didn't have as much luck as I'd hoped. Sometimes I think you know too much, Gloria."
She smiled. "Then you've got to quit telling me."
"Good point."
She had a remarkable memory, and he relied on her for details he occasionally lost in the barrage of information with which he dealt daily. Plus she was a walking encyclopedia of those with whom they had worked, both domestic and foreign.
"Why are you still here?" he asked. "You were supposed to go home hours ago."
"Now that you've arrived, I'll leave. Ted's taking me out for a late dinner. Karen called to check that you got into Catapult okay. You'd better phone her."
"Why does everyone worry about me so much?" But the truth was, Karen had spent too many years wondering where he was and sometimes whether he was alive.
"Because you worry, Tucker." Gloria turned off her computer. "The rest of us are necessary to make sure you're able to concentrate on worrying. It's a heavy job, but anything to serve the country." She grinned. "Your messages are on your desk. As soon as I saw you on the outside monitors, I let Cathy know you were here. She's waiting in your office. Have fun." She snapped up her purse, took out her car keys, and headed for the door.
Feeling the weight of Jonathan's death, Tucker walked down the long corridor. His office was the last one, chosen because it was quieter when the place was most active. As second in command, he got a few concessions, and his office was his favorite one.
He opened the door. Sitting in one of the two standard-issue armchairs in front of his cluttered desk was Catherine Doyle, the chief of Catapult.
She turned. "You look like crap."
"That good? Thanks." He shot her a grin and went to his desk.
Cathy Doyle chuckled. She was the same height as Tucker and dressed in a camel-colored pantsuit, her ankle boots planted firmly on the carpet. At fifty-plus, she was still a beauty, with short, blond-streaked hair and porcelain skin. She had been a model to support herself through New York University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, then went on to earn a Ph.D. in international affairs from Columbia University, where Langley had recruited her.
"Gloria's gone home." He sat. "I can call over to Communications for coffee or tea."
"I wouldn't mind something stronger."
"That strikes me just fine." Tucker rotated in his chair to the file cabinet and unlocked the bottom drawer. He pulled out a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label Scotch and held it up, looking back.
Cathy nodded, and Tucker poured two fingers into two water glasses. The spicy fragrance of the blended whiskey rose into the air, complex in its smokiness and scents of malted grain and wood. He handed a glass to her and cradled his, warming it between his palms.
"That license plate number came up," she told him. "It belongs to a Chevrolet Malibu reported stolen earlier today."
"Not surprising. Anything about the Library of Gold, an international bank, and jihadist financing?"
A slew of Washington's agencies--CIA, FBI, DIA, Customs, the IRS, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the Office of Foreign Assets and Control, and the Secret Service--sent names of suspect individuals and groups to Treasury, which then forwarded them to a vast database of dubious financial transactions. The database compared the names to existing files and identified any matches.
Cathy shook her head. "Nothing yet."
"What about SWIFT?"
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, SWIFT monitored international financial transactions on behalf of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, looking for suspicious transactions that might be for terrorist financing, money laundering, or other criminal activity. The problem was, the information SWIFT had was no better than that provided by the banks at either end of the transactions.
"Nothing," she told him. "If we had at least the name of the bank, we'd have something to go on. In any case, the usual suspicious transactions have turned up, and they'll be investigated thoroughly anyway. And nothing about the Library of Gold was there, either."
"What about Jonathan Ryder? Travel records, phone logs."
"Zero so far. We're still looking." She studied him. "What's been happening with you?"
He told her about the funeral and listening to Judd Ryder's "bedtime story."
"Interesting the father would do that," she said. "Shows he had a longtime connection of some kind to the Library of Gold."
"Exactly. Then I went to the Ryders' place, and Judd and I searched Jonathan's office. The only thing I found was a file in his desk--an unmarked file." He handed the clippings to her. As she read them, he said, "All are about recent terrorist activity in Pakistan and Afghanistan--mostly the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In terms of money, there's one about how difficult it is to track jihadist financing--finding a needle in a haystack is the cliche the article uses. Another talks about how subsidiary jihadist groups are funding themselves through fraud, kidnappings, bank heists, petty crime--just a fraction of what we know--and then tithing back to al-Qaeda central."
Decimated by intelligence agencies and the military, and largely cut off from previous sources of income, al-Qaeda's highly skilled, operationally sophisticated inner circle no longer could carry out attacks across continents. Now the major threat was the al-Qaeda movement--the numerous regional franchises and grassroots operations being born or refashioning themselves as affiliates.
"I'm eager to hear what the analysts think," Tucker said. "Several banks are mentioned in the articles. Right now it seems to me Jonathan was gathering research but didn't know precisely what he was looking for."
"My thought, too, although he was focusing on the two countries." She set the clippings on his desk.
"After I left the Ryders', I had another incident." He described the Chevy Malibu's chase. "I figure the guy spotted me at Jonathan's funeral, so he knows what I look like now. I can't drive the Olds again until this is over."
"Damn right. You can't go home, either. He may figure out where you live."
"I'll sleep here. It's cozy." He grimaced and drank. "Karen's packing. She's driving to a friend of hers in the Adirondacks until this is over. You have the adjustments to my cover at State set up?"
"I did that first. Probably an hour ago. Took you long enough to get here."
"I had to dry-clean my trail--you know the drill." He sat back, turning his whiskey glass in his hands. "I got a hit about the Library of Gold in our database. A few years ago a man who claimed to be the chief librarian managed to get in touch with one of our operatives. He said all sorts of international criminal activity was going on with the book club--those are the people who own it--and he couldn't escape. Unless we extracted him."
"What kind of activity?"
"He wouldn't be specific. Claimed the information might be traced back to him and get him killed, but he'd tell us everything once he was safe. When we asked him to prove his bona fides, he smuggled out one of the illuminated manuscripts--The Book of Spies. It was created in the 1500s. We lost contact with him after that, and now Langley has the book somewhere in storage."
She nodded thoughtfully. "You have a plan?"
"I'm putting one together."
"Okay, but it'll be hard to let you have any bodies. I'm shorthanded as it is, especially if you're going to work on this."
"No problem." He described how Judd had found him in the garage where he had hidden from the Chevy. "His full name is Judson Clayborn Ryder. I want to put him on board as a private contractor. He's got the credentials, and I can use him."
"Bad idea. He's emotionally involved."
"True, but he calmed down quickly, and he's going to look into it no matter what. This way I can keep my eye on him, and he was military intelligence, so he's got expertise."
She thought about it. Finished her whiskey. "I'll have Langley check his background."