22
ETHAN FOUND HIMSELF back in Fort Marcy Park for the third time in four days. He hadn’t driven here himself; instead, he’d parked his car in a lot near Washington Circle, and from there he took a cab into Arlington/Shirlington. He walked through The Village at Shirlington, an upscale outdoor mall, then caught a bus that took him to within a half-mile of the park, and he came the rest of the way on foot.
The long transit wasn’t his idea. Harlan Banfield instructed him to take a circuitous route during their brief phone conversation, after first telling him to leave his primary mobile phone at home. This all seemed like a lot of silly spycraft to Ethan, he’d looked over his shoulder several times and hadn’t noticed anyone tracking him, but Banfield insisted, and the old newspaperman seemed like he knew what he was talking about, so Ross reluctantly tossed his main phone on his bed, took his new phone, and left his house to begin something Banfield dramatically referred to as a “dry-cleaning run.”
He’d run around for forty-five minutes, it was the noon hour now, and as soon as he walked into the park Ethan saw he and his collaborators would not have the place to themselves as they had on their earlier meeting. In addition to Banfield’s Volkswagen, several other vehicles were parked in the little lot, and Ethan saw men and women eating sack lunches behind the wheel of their cars. A school group of twenty-five or so fourth-graders skittered around the Civil War–era gun emplacement, led, more or less, by a teacher and a park ranger, and a young couple wearing military fatigues—after all these years in the NSC Ethan still had trouble distinguishing the different branches by their utility uniforms—walked hand in hand on the trail.
For a moment he worried that everyone in the park—with the possible exception of the fourth-graders—were working for the FBI and were here only to catch him in the act. But he pushed this out of his head. He didn’t have anything incriminating on him, and Banfield had told him he’d wave him off if he didn’t feel comfortable with their level of privacy when he arrived.
Banfield and Bertoli stood by the cannon, in the exact same spot he saw them standing two days earlier. Ethan looked for a signal from Banfield—he had a newspaper under his arm that he would drop to the ground if he wanted Ethan to pass them by and keep walking, but he kept the paper under his arm as Ethan approached.
Banfield spoke as soon as Ross was close. “Do you absolutely know you weren’t followed?”
“Of course I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think so. I didn’t notice anyone, but I’m a White House policy maker, not some low-rent private detective.”
Bertoli waved the worry away. “What has you so upset today, Ethan? Yesterday’s polygraph?”
Ethan said, “The poly seemed to go okay, but the examiner asked me if I was taking medicines to keep me from sweating.”
Banfield winced. With a grave expression he said, “You told him, no, of course.”
“Of course I did. But I don’t think he bought it.”
“Might just be a fishing expedition,” announced Banfield, but Ross couldn’t tell for sure if he believed it.
“And then today. Special Agent Albright. He just showed up and questioned me, over and over. I asked if I needed to lawyer up and he backed off, but they are suspicious. At least I think they are.” He ran his hands through his blond hair. “I mean . . . shit. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just losing it.”
Banfield said, “They might be doing this to everyone who had access to the file.”
“Maybe. But he said he was going to interview Eve to see if she might have told me about techniques in passing that were used in the peace flotilla download. She would never betray me intentionally . . . but Albright is good. He could twist her up. Get her to say something that makes him more suspicious.”
The three of them stood quietly in the park for a moment, weighing the situation. Banfield said, “We can find out if you really are a person of interest, or if the FBI agent was just trying to rattle your cage.”
“How?”
“If you are a POI, they will put a surveillance package on you. Hopefully they haven’t done so already, but the drycleaning run I sent you on would have shook them off if they were tailing you.”
“Again, I didn’t see anything.”
“It wouldn’t be obvious, son. There would be a number of cars rotating in and out when you are in your vehicle. Half a dozen men and women, probably more than that, when you are on foot. They’ll tap your home and office phone, use a court order to get access to your mobile.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Calm down,” said Gianna. “Harlan, that would be a worstcase scenario. Let’s not make things more stressful than they have to be.” She turned to Ross. “We don’t know that they are watching you yet.”
Banfield said, “Here is what we’ll do. I’ll run you around town a little bit, just have you go from here to there without a care in the world.”
“And?” asked Ross.
“And I watch out for anyone following you.”
“Will you be able to—”
“Of course I will. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. As I told you before, this isn’t our first time dealing with this sort of thing. How soon can we run a little test?”
Ross looked at his watch. “I am off for the rest of the day. I have a dentist appointment at one.”
“Good. You’ll buy a headset so we can stay in communication via your new phone, go back to your car, and go to your appointment. If there is surveillance on you and they lost you, they’ll know that’s where they can pick you back up. Once you’re finished, I’ll direct you to a location where I’ll be waiting to identify any FBI personnel following you.”
Ethan nodded distractedly, but Gianna stepped forward and gave him a hug. “Hopefully everything is fine,” she said. To Ethan, this was a massive understatement. “But if there are reasons for concern, we will take the steps necessary to keep you safe. Please, you must relax and trust me.”
Ethan looked into Bertoli’s eyes. He thought of his mother, even though Bertoli was twenty years younger. “I do.”
Banfield said, “You’re going to have to hurry to make your dentist appointment.”
DOMINIC SPENT half an hour sitting at his kitchen table, loading data from his phone into software on his laptop that would analyze and categorize his find. It was more work for the computer than it was for Dom, so while everything was loading and crunching he opened his slap-on GPS receiving app on his computer and began tracking Ethan Ross’s Mercedes.
He saw from the map display that the vehicle had been parked in a lot in Washington Circle for more than fifty minutes. Just sitting there. Dom took this to mean whoever Ross rushed out to meet either lived or worked in the area. If Ross was indeed the traitor this was seriously bad news, as the options in the area for a man with classified U.S. intelligence and the will to share it with unsanctioned parties were plentiful. Embassy Row was within walking distance to the north, and other embassies and foreign organizations dotted the area. Dom guessed there were more state-actor enemies of America in a ten-square-block area around that parking lot than in any other place in the United States.
But he realized he was getting ahead of himself, making assumptions based on a lot of speculation. He fought the urge to continue with these assumptions without, at least, checking into some competing theories about just what Ross was doing.
He typed in “dentist offices” in a Google Maps search of the area, and he saw a half-dozen within a couple blocks of the parking lot where the Mercedes sat.
Shit. For all he knew, Ross had simply gone to get his teeth cleaned.
“No.” He said it aloud. The bits of the phone conversation he’d picked up back in Georgetown made him near certain Ross was meeting with someone else. “Right the fuck now!” wasn’t something someone said to the receptionist at the dentist office. There was an emergency in Ethan Ross’s world, and Dom had to figure it involved the investigation into the SS Ardahan leak.
D
om knew this wasn’t enough evidence for Albright, he wouldn’t even reveal what he’d learned because it would only tip the FBI off that Dom was in play and inserting himself into the investigation. He thought about calling David, but he didn’t have anything for the Mossad to do at this point. He had a suspicious-acting character demanding a clandestine meeting with . . . someone.
It wasn’t much, but right now, it was enough for Dom. He decided he’d keep an eye on Ethan Ross to the best of his abilities. Dom was all alone, and couldn’t very well tail him effectively. But he decided he might as well try a soft mobile surveillance. He put his shoulder holster back on, checked the lay of his Smith & Wesson under his arm. He then put on a thick black leather jacket and grabbed his motorcycle helmet and his keys. He turned on his phone’s app for the slap-on tracker so he could follow Ross if he left the lot while Dom was en route, and then he headed down to his Suzuki TU250 street bike. . . .
DOM ARRIVED at the parking lot in Washington Circle just as Ethan Ross climbed out of a taxi just yards away from his vehicle.
To Caruso that looked fishy as hell. Why would he park his car and then cab it someplace else? Certainly he couldn’t imagine any scenario that involved a dentist.
Dom circled the block to give Ross time to get into his car, and by the time Dom made it back around he was pulling around the roundabout that served as the perimeter for Washington Circle Park. Dom expected him to head west on K Street back toward Georgetown, but instead Ross merged into traffic heading east on K.
Dom pulled into traffic several vehicles behind him. He kept himself shielded by the intervening cars and trucks, even though his smoked visor and the sheer distance would have made it impossible for Ross to identify his face even if he had been looking for surveillance.
Dom followed the bright red and easy-to-track vehicle all the way to Chinatown, where Ross pulled into a covered lot a block north of the Verizon Center, paying eleven dollars an hour for the privilege. Dom got lucky and found street parking a block to the south and he locked his bike while keeping an eye on the exit to the lot. Ross appeared a minute later, but instead of walking into Chinatown, he walked away from it, east on H Street. There were a number of office buildings here, but the NSC staffer just kept walking by entrance after entrance, continuing all the way to Massachusetts. Dom was well behind him and on the other side of the street, careful for any attempts by Ross to detect surveillance. This could have been an SDR; an attempt to see if anyone was on him, but Dom was playing it so soft he felt safe enough for the time being.
Finally, after fifteen minutes of walking through the cold, Caruso realized Ross was heading straight to Union Station. His first thought was that his target would descend into the Metro just outside of the station, which would have certainly made continued surveillance of him difficult if not impossible. But instead, Ross entered Union Station itself. He wasn’t carrying any luggage, just a leather messenger bag, so Dom doubted he would be skipping town this afternoon.
Dom assumed Ross was here to meet someone, either for a perfectly aboveboard late lunch or for a clandestine meet of some sort. If it turned out to be the former, Dom figured he would just go in and find a location to set up a static watch and keep tabs on the man, maybe see who he dined with. If the latter was the case, if he was here to interact with someone surreptitiously, well, Dom was a realist. Union Station was a huge area for one man to cover, with dozens of corridors, shops, restaurants, bathrooms, and trains.
Dom wasn’t going to stick so close that he would see anything too dramatic. That happened only in the movies.
As soon as Ross entered through the door near the Metro, Dom headed to the Massachusetts Avenue entrance, then entered into the huge cavernous main hall. It was after two p.m.—most people in D.C. took lunch between noon and one, so the area was far from crowded.
Ross entered from the West Hall into the Main Hall, passing forty feet from Dominic without even glancing his way. Dom watched him out of the corner of his eye as he walked around the circular Center Café in the middle of the marble floor, then he headed through a double doorway to the main level mall concourse of the station.
Dom stayed on him, far enough behind that he ran a significant risk of losing him if Ross tried any evasion tactics or “dry cleaning.” But he remained close enough to keep him in his sights as long as Ross kept things simple.
And Ross unwittingly cooperated. He entered a bookstore and browsed for a few minutes. Dom stayed across the hall in a clothing store with racks of suits high enough to hide himself if need be, and he found a mirror that just picked up the jacket of Ethan’s ski jacket while he stood at a book rack across the hall.
Ross didn’t buy anything, and soon he was climbing the stairs to the shops on the mezzanine level.
Dom let him go, deciding instead to wait it out down here on the main level and keep an eye on both stairwells that lead up to the mezzanine. If Ross had a meet planned on the second floor, then Dom would be out of luck, but surveillance was a tradeoff, and he absolutely did not want to spook this guy and cause him to raise his defenses.
Dom positioned himself between the two stairwells up to the mezzanine and pretended to make a phone call while he waited for his target to return. He spent his time watching others heading upstairs. Businessmen and businesswomen killing time while waiting for trains that would take them up to New York, Baltimore, Richmond, or Philly. Young mothers struggling with strollers on their way to the mezzanine-level shops. An elderly couple moving slowly up the staircase, who were quickly overtaken by two college-aged men wearing tracksuits and backpacks who climbed more quickly.
Ethan Ross came down the stairs at the opposite end of the shopping hall a few minutes later. Dom fell in behind him as he headed back up the length of the main floor, then passed by as Ross stepped into a clothing store, crossing a large mirrored wall near the front.
As he checked the mirror, Dom noticed for the first time that his target was wearing a Bluetooth headset in his right ear. He didn’t seem to be in conversation with anyone, but Dom could not be certain.
He also noticed that Ross wasn’t on any real surveillancedetection route, because at no point did he check for a tail, or even look into the mirrored wall for any easy indication someone was following him.
The pieces came together slowly for Dom, but they did come together. The idle wandering around, the utter lack of interest in his surroundings, the headset in his ear.
Ross was on an SDR, but he wasn’t the one doing the detection. Someone else was here, a confederate of his, watching him or, more accurately, watching for anyone on his tail.
The hairs stood up on Caruso’s forearms under his jacket as he thought about enemy eyes on him right now.
23
THE MORE DOM MENTALLY retraced his own steps over the past half-hour, the more he convinced himself he’d played his surveillance correctly so far. He’d not followed Ross up the obvious choke point of the mezzanine stairs, he’d let the man come to him in the mall instead of just walking behind him. If Dom had been pinged by the opposition, whoever and wherever they were, then he was certain he’d just been pegged for closer scrutiny as one of many potential tails. He was sure he hadn’t tipped his hand definitively that he was a surveillant.
Ross walked out of the clothing store now—again, he hadn’t bought a thing—and he headed back to the staircase, this time descending to the food court in the basement.
Caruso’s first inclination was to back off, to get the hell out of Union Station before Ross’s fairy godmother, somewhere close by with eyes on right now, tipped him off that he was being followed by a guy in a black biker jacket. But as he started to walk, Dom decided his best move was to make it obvious he wasn’t a tail by blowing his coverage on purpose. So he walked to the staircase, caught up with Ross, and then passed him going down, nearly brushing against him as he descended. It was such an overt move that, Dom determined, he would be discounted as a potential watcher by anyone who saw him. br />
In the food court, Dom got in line at a gyro stand. For nearly three minutes he willed himself to look straight ahead, hoping that anyone suspicious of him was watching him the entire time, noting his complete disinterest in anything other than his lunch. He ordered a lamb kabob and a Coke and paid for them, then waited while his order was prepared. All the while he looked ahead at the gyro stand or down at his phone. Only when he had his food in hand and found a plastic chair and a little table by the center staircase did he glance up and out at the big room.
It was just a quick peek, and then he looked back down to his lunch, but Dom had been trained to use a single glance to take a still picture of his surroundings with the camera in his brain. As he began eating, he processed the photo he just took. There were the fifty or so tables in front of him, the food stalls going down the right-hand side, the hallway to the restrooms on the left, and there, facing away and heading toward the restrooms, was Ethan Ross.
Dom looked up again as he took a sip of his Coke, keeping his gaze relaxed and natural. Ethan disappeared down the hall to the men’s room. There was no way Dom would follow him, even if he didn’t suspect Ross had a spotter somewhere in this room watching his back. The hallway was another choke point the spotter would send Ross down to ID an overzealous tail.
Nope, Dom decided he’d let his target piss on his own.
Caruso ate another bite of food, but stopped chewing suddenly when he saw something curious in front of him. A man in his thirties and wearing a charcoal-gray suit and an overcoat walked toward the bathroom hall to the men’s room. There was nothing particularly interesting in that, but Dom noticed the man exchange a quick but unmistakable look with two young men sitting at a table eating pizza. On second glance, Dom realized these were the two college-aged men in the tracksuits he’d seen behind Ross heading up to the mezzanine ten minutes earlier.