The Ambler Warning Read online

  “Sometimes you make best use of a weapon by giving it up,” the man said, his eyes almost twinkling. “Tell me, do you see the guy in the airline uniform, standing at the gate counter? He’s just arrived.”

  Ambler glanced over. “I see him.”

  “He’s with us. He stands ready to shoot you, if that proves necessary.” The seated man looked up at Ambler, who was still standing. “Do you believe me?” The question wasn’t a taunt but a point of inquiry.

  “I believe he’ll try,” Ambler responded. “For your sake, you’d better hope he doesn’t miss.”

  The fake Sikh nodded, with approval. “But then, unlike you, I’m wearing Kevlar, just in case.” Again he looked up at Ambler. “Do you believe me?”

  “No,” Ambler said, after a beat. “I don’t.”

  The man’s smile widened. “You are Tarquin, aren’t you? The package, not the deliveryman. You see, your reputation precedes you. They say you’re devilish good at reading people. I needed to be sure.”

  Now Ambler took the seat next to him; the meeting would be less conspicuous that way. Whatever the man had in store for him, it wasn’t a quick death.

  “Why don’t you explain yourself?” Ambler asked.

  The other man extended a hand in greeting. “The name’s Arkady. You see, I’d been told that quite a legendary field agent, alias Tarquin, might now be ‘available.’ ”

  “Available?”

  “For recruitment. And no, I don’t know your real name. I am aware that you seek information. I do not have that information. What I have is access to that information. Or rather, access to those who possess the information.” Arkady cracked his knuckles. “Or access to those with access to those who possess the information. You will not be surprised to learn that the organization to which I belong is carefully partitioned. Information flows only where it must.”

  As he spoke, Ambler watched him intently, concentrating. Hopefulness sometimes obscured perception, he knew, and so did despair. As he had regularly explained to colleagues who were bewildered by his gift, We don’t see what we don’t want to see. Cease wanting. Cease projecting. Just receive the signals that, willy-nilly, are being sent. That was the key.

  The Sikh before him was a lie. But he was not lying to him.

  “I have to say the speed of the invitation is puzzling,” Ambler said.

  “We don’t like to waste time. That’s something we have in common, I’d guess. One punctual stitch obviates nine such, as you Americans say. In the event, the squawk went out yesterday morning.” The squawk—trade jargon. An alert that had been radioed to all the country’s intelligence services had gone out on “the squawk.” The channel was used when urgency overrode secrecy; it was a leaky form of communication. A message sent to that many ears was liable to reach a few eavesdroppers as well.

  “Even so,” Ambler said.

  “I think you can connect the dots. Clearly, your admirers have been waiting for this moment. Quite likely, they had hoped to recruit you even before you disappeared from view. And, no doubt, they think they have competition for your services. They don’t want to let the moment pass.”

  Clearly . . . quite likely . . . no doubt. “You’re speculating, you’re not stating for a fact.”

  “As I told you, information is strictly partitioned in the organization. I know what I have to know. I can surmise a certain amount beyond that. And, of course, there is a great deal I must be content not to know. The system works for us all. It keeps them safe. It keeps me safe.”

  “But it doesn’t keep me safe. One of your guys tried to kill me.”

  “I very much doubt that.”

  “The large-caliber bullet that grazed my neck would beg to differ.”

  Arkady looked bemused. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Yeah, well, the Southern guy looked pretty surprised, too, the moment before the bullet traveled on through the back of his head.” Ambler’s voice was a low rasp. “What kind of a crazy goddamn game are you guys running?”

  “Not us,” Arkady said. Almost to himself, he murmured, “This sounds like a case of interference. It just means we weren’t the only people to hear the squawk and respond.”

  “Then you’re telling me there was a second party involved.”

  “There had to have been,” Arkady said, after a long pause. “We’ll do the analysis, make sure there’s been no breach. But it very much sounds like a parasitic visitation, so to speak. It won’t happen again. Not once you’re with us.”

  “Is that a promise or a threat?”

  Arkady winced. “Oh dear. We really have gotten off on the incorrect foot, haven’t we? But I tell you this. My employers would very much like to keep you safe—so long as they can be assured that you will do the same for them. Trust must run in both directions.”

  “That they can trust me,” Ambler said steadily, “is something they’ll have to take on trust.”

  “But that’s the one thing they never do, you see.” Arkady sounded apologetic. “Such a bore, I know. They have another idea. In fact, they want to kill two fowl with one rock. They have a little job for you.” For the first time, Ambler could hear the diphthongs of the man’s native tongue, which was obviously Slavic.

  “Like an audition.”

  “Exactly!” Arkady’s eyes lit up. “And it’s all terribly ‘win-win,’ as my employers like to say. The job we have for you is small, but . . . ticklish.”

  “Ticklish?”

  “I won’t lie to you—what would be the point?” He beamed. “It’s a small job, but it has defeated others. Yet it must be done. You see, my employers have a problem. They are careful people—you’ll see, and you’ll be grateful of it. As the maxim has it, birds of same plumage seek out one another’s company. But maybe not all their friends are quite so careful as they are. And maybe a penetration agent made some inroads with some of their confreres. All that coruscates is not gold, alas. Maybe such an agent, having collected some evidence, is about to testify in a legal proceeding. All very messy.”

  “A penetration agent? Let’s be clear. You’re talking about an undercover federal agent.”

  “It’s awkward, isn’t it?” Arkady said. “ATF, in fact.”

  If the investigator was with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the investigation quite likely involved gun smuggling of some sort. That did not mean the organization Arkady worked for was involved in the trade; confreres was the word Arkady used. The obvious assumption was that gunrunners who supplied the organization had been ensnared.

  “One day this man will die,” the fake Sikh went on contemplatively. “A stroke. A heart attack. Cancer. Who can say? But like all of us he is mortal, and one day he will die. We simply wish to place a rush order on that eventuality. That is all.”

  “Why me?”

  The Sikh made a face. “This is so embarrassing, really.”

  Ambler just stared.

  “Well, the truth is, we don’t exactly know what he looks like. Occupational hazard, right? The person he had direct dealings with isn’t in a position to help us out.”

  “Because he’s dead?”

  “The reason is irrelevant—let’s not get distracted from the big picture here. We’ve got a venue, we’ve got a time, but we don’t want to take out the wrong person. We don’t want to make a mistake. You see how scrupulous we are? Some people would just machine-gun everyone in the vicinity. But that’s not our way.”

  “Mother Teresa, watch your back.”

  “I’m not saying we’re in competition for sainthood, Tarquin. But then, you aren’t, either.” His dark eyes flashed. “To return to my point: you’ll be able to tell at a glance who the mark is. Because, being the mark, he knows he’s marked. That’s the sort of thing you’ll be able to pick up on.”

  “I see,” Ambler said, and he did, or was beginning to. Some sort of rogue outfit wanted his services. The job discussed was indeed an audition—but what they needed to establish was not his ability to r
ead people. No, by killing a federal agent, he would be proving his bona fides—proving that he had severed all loyalties to his former employers, not to mention conventional morality. They must have had reason to believe that he was sufficiently embittered and disaffected to entertain the assignment.

  Perhaps they were misinformed. Perhaps, though, they simply knew more than he did—perhaps they knew, as he did not, exactly why he had been committed to Parrish Island. Perhaps he had cause for grievance far beyond that of which he was aware.

  “Then do we have a deal?”

  Ambler thought for a moment. “If I say no?”

  “You’ll never know, will you?” Arkady smiled. “Maybe you should say no. And resign yourself to ignorance. There are worse things. They say that curiosity proved fatal to the feline.”

  “And that satisfaction brought it back.” Not to know was the one thing he could not survive. He needed to know, and he needed to serve justice on those who had tried to destroy his life. Ambler glanced at the blue-jacketed man behind the gate counter. “I think we can do business.”

  It was madness, and it was the one thing that might save him from madness. Ambler recalled, from some long-ago classroom, the Greek legend about the labyrinth of Crete, the lair of the Minotaur. The labyrinth was so intricately twisted that those imprisoned within could never find their way out. But Theseus had been aided by Ariadne, who gave him a ball of thread, and tied one end to the door of the maze. By following the thread, he had made his escape. At the moment, this man was the closest thing Ambler had to a thread. What he could not know was which end of the maze it would lead to—to freedom, or to death. He would chance either rather than remaining lost in the maze.

  Finally, Arkady began to speak in the tone of someone who had committed precise instructions to memory. “At ten A.M. tomorrow, the undercover agent has a meeting scheduled with the U.S. Attorney for the southern district of New York. We believe that an armored limousine will bring him to the corner of 1 St. Andrew’s Plaza near Foley Square in lower Manhattan. He may be accompanied, part of a group; he may be alone. Either way, it will be a rare interval of vulnerability: the agent will have to traverse an extended pedestrian area on foot. You must be there.”

  “No backup?”

  “One of our people will be there to help. At the appropriate time, our person will pass you a weapon. The rest is in your hands. All we insist is that you follow the instructions exactly. I realize this is like asking a jazz musician to follow the notes on a score rather than improvise, but in this instance, there can be no improvisation. How does that American expression go? ‘It’s my way or the thoroughfare,’ right?” Yet another English idiom he had obviously learned in his native tongue; the double translation was exacting a considerable toll. “The plan must be respected in its particulars.”

  “It’s highly exposed,” Ambler protested. “A lousy plan.”

  “As much as we value your particular expertise,” Arkady said, “you must grant us ours. You don’t know the facts on the ground. My employers do, and they’ve studied them. The target is a cautious man. He isn’t skulking under bridges for your convenience. This is actually an extraordinary opportunity. We may not get another for a long time, and then it will be too late.”

  “There are dozens of potential problems,” Ambler persisted.

  “You’re free to walk away,” Arkady said, a glint of steel in his voice. “But if you do complete the assignment, as per instructions, you will be introduced to someone up my line of command. He’s someone you know. Someone who has worked beside you.”

  Someone, then, who might well know the whole story of what had happened to Harrison Ambler.

  “I’ll do it,” Ambler said. He was not thinking ahead—was not thinking about what he was agreeing to. He knew that if he let this thread drop, he might never find it again. Ariadne’s thread—yet which way did it lead?

  Arkady leaned forward and patted Ambler’s wrist. From a distance, the gesture would look affectionate. “Really, we don’t ask so very much. Only that you should succeed where others have failed. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  No, Ambler mused, but it might be the last.

  SEVEN

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Clayton Caston was looking thoughtful when he returned to his windowless office. Not lost in thought, Adrian Choi decided; found in thought was more like it. Caston looked as if he had his hooks in something. Probably something to do with a very long spreadsheet, Adrian thought gloomily.

  So many things around Caston seemed to involve spreadsheets. Not that Adrian thought he really had this fellow figured out. His very blandness was mystifying. It was hard to imagine he was even in the same profession as, say, Derek St. John, the swashbuckling hero of those Clive McCarthy novels Adrian treasured. Caston would give him a hard time if he ever found out, but Adrian actually had the latest paperback from the Derek St. John series in his backpack, had read most of a chapter over breakfast. It involved a nuclear warhead hidden in the wreckage of the Lusitania. Adrian had left off during an exciting sequence: Derek St. John, scuba-diving through the wreckage, had just narrowly avoided a harpoon grenade launched by an enemy agent. Adrian would try to sneak in another chapter or two during his lunch hour. Caston would probably be reading the latest Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance.

  Maybe it was a form of comeuppance, his having been parceled off to someone who had to be the most boring man in the whole entire Central Intelligence Agency. Adrian realized he had come on a little strong in his job interview. This was no doubt someone’s idea of a joke; probably someone in Human Resources was thinking of him right now and blowing soup through his nose.

  So maybe the joke was on Adrian now. Every day, the man he worked for showed up in an identical Perma-Prest white shirt, a near identical tie, and a Jos. A. Bank suit that ranged in hue from an exciting medium gray to a wild and crazy charcoal gray. Adrian knew he wasn’t working for GQ, but wasn’t this taking routine a little far? Caston not only looked bland, he ate bland: his unvarying lunch was a soft-cooked egg and lightly toasted white bread, washed down by a glass of tomato juice, with a swig of Maalox on the side. Just in case. Once, when he had asked Adrian to fetch him his lunch, Adrian had brought him a V8 instead of plain tomato juice and Caston had looked betrayed. Hey, live dangerously once in a while, Adrian had thought of telling him. The guy never seemed to use any weapon more dangerous than a sharpened No. 2 pencil.

  Still, there were moments—moments when Adrian wondered whether he had the full measure of the man, wondered whether there might, in fact, be another side to him.

  “Anything I can do?” Adrian said to Caston now, eternally hopeful.

  “Yes,” Caston said. “As a matter of fact, there is. When we put in the request for Consular Operations files pertaining to the special-access alias ‘Tarquin,’ we were only given partials. I’ll need anything they can scrounge. DCI-level clearance. Tell them to verify clearance conditions with the DCI’s office, and expedite this.” There was the faintest trace of Brooklyn in Caston’s voice—it took Adrian a while to pick up on this—and he spoke technical jargon and billingsgate with equal fluency.

  “Wait a minute,” Adrian said. “You’re cleared to the DCI level?”

  “Those clearances are allocated on a project-by-project basis. But yes, as a general rule.”

  Adrian tried to conceal his surprise. He had heard it said that fewer than a dozen people in the entire agency were ever cleared to that level. Was Caston really one of them?

  But if Caston was cleared way up, then he, being Caston’s assistant, must have been vetted pretty heavily, too. Adrian flushed. He had heard it said that there was automatic surveillance for newer people exposed to high-level secrets. Could they have bugged his apartment? Adrian had signed endless documents before his appointment had been finalized; he had no doubt that he had signed away any privacy rights he might have enjoyed as a citizen. But could he really be the subject of operational surv
eillance? Adrian turned over the possibility in his mind. He found it—well, if he was honest with himself, he found it delightful.

  “Also, I need more from Parrish Island,” Caston said. He blinked a few times. “I want their personnel records for everyone who was working at Ward 4W over the past twenty months: doctors, nurses, orderlies, guards, everyone.”

  “If the records are digital, they should be able to send them via secure e-mail,” Adrian said. “Should be automatic.”

  “Given the patchwork quilt that is the U.S. government’s complex of operating platforms, nothing automatic is really automatic. The FBI, the INS, even the goddamn Department of Agriculture all have their proprietary systems. The inefficiencies are staggering.”

  “Plus some of this stuff might still be paper. Could take even longer.”

  “Time is of the essence. You need to make sure everybody’s clear on that.”

  Adrian was silent for a moment. “Permission to speak freely, sir.”

  Caston rolled his eyes. “Adrian, if you want to be granted ‘permission to speak freely,’ you should have joined the Army. You’re in the CIA. We don’t do that.”

  “Meaning I can always speak freely?”

  A quick shake of the head. “You seem to have confused us with the Culinary Institute of America. It happens.”

  Sometimes Adrian was convinced that Caston’s sense of humor was nonexistent; at other times, he decided it was just extremely dry—Death Valley dry.

  “Right, well, I got the sense that they were dragging their feet at Consular Operations,” Adrian said. “They didn’t seem too happy with the request.”

  “Of course not. Then they’d have to acknowledge that the Central Intelligence Agency is, in fact, this country’s central intelligence agency. It offends their sense of pride. But I can’t solve the entire organizational mess today. The fact remains that I need them to cooperate. Which means I need you to get them to cooperate. In fact, I’m counting on it.”