The Ambler Warning Page 3

  “You with Barlowe’s team?” the driver grunted.

  Barlowe? “You know it.”

  “He’s a real shitheel, isn’t he?”

  “You know it,” Ambler repeated.

  At the wharf, the men who were in the express cruiser—the boat’s pilot, a paramedic, and an armed guard—grumbled when they were told that the body was to be accompanied by an attendant from the facility. They weren’t trusted to do the job right? Was that the message? Besides, the paramedic pointed out, the patient was already dead. This was going to be a morgue run. But the combination of Ambler’s blasé manner and the driver’s shoulder shrugging reassured them, and nobody wanted to loiter in this weather. The crew members each grabbed one end of the aluminum-framed stretcher, shivering slightly in their navy windbreakers as they transported the body to a below-deck sleeping berth, toward the rear of the boat.

  The forty-foot Culver Ultra Jet was smaller than the vessels that transported staff to and from the facility. It was also speedier: with its twin five-hundred-horsepower jet drives, it could complete the distance to the coastal medical center in ten minutes, faster than it would take to summon, land, and load a helicopter from either the Langley Air Force Base or the U.S. Naval Base. Ambler kept close to the pilot; the boat was a recent military model, and he wanted to make sure he understood the control panels. He watched as the pilot adjusted the stern and bow thrusters, then shifted the throttle to full. The boat was riding high in the water now, pressing past thirty-five knots.

  It would be ten minutes to shore. Would the ruse survive that long? It wasn’t hard to make sure that the photograph on his ID badge was flecked with shore mud, and Ambler knew that people took their cues from tone—from voice, from manner—rather than from documents. After a few minutes, Ambler joined the paramedic and the guard on a bench behind the helm.

  The paramedic—late twenties, red-splotched cheeks, curly black hair—still seemed offended by Ambler’s presence. Finally he turned to Ambler and said, “They didn’t say anything about the body being accompanied. You realize the guy’s dead, right?” A Southern accent, the speaker someone bored and irritable, probably resentful of having been sent to retrieve a patient who was already dead.

  “Is he?” Ambler stifled a yawn, or pretended to. Christ, would he let it go already?

  “Damn right he is. I checked myself. So it ain’t like he’s gonna escape, you know?”

  Ambler remembered the officious air of the man who had worn his badge. That was the tone to take. “Until they got a notarized certificate, your say-so ain’t shit to them. Nobody at Parrish has that authority. So the rules are the rules.”

  “It’s such bullshit.”

  “Quit busting his balls, Olson,” the guardsman said. It was not solidarity; it was sport. But that was not all it was. Ambler could tell that the two did not know each other well and were not comfortable around each other. Probably it was the classic problem of unresolved authority; the paramedic wanted to act like he was in charge, but it was the guardsman who carried the service weapon.

  Ambler gave the guardsman a friendly glance. He was burly, in his mid-twenties, with a haircut that came from a military barber. He looked to be an ex–Army Ranger; certainly his hip-holstered HK P7 pistol, compact and deadly, was a piece long favored by the Rangers. He was the only armed man on the boat, but Ambler could tell he was no slouch.

  “Whatever,” the paramedic said after a pause. But he wasn’t deferring to the guardsman; he was saying, What’s your problem?

  As the three resumed an uncompanionable silence, Ambler allowed himself to feel a tincture of relief.

  The boat had gone only a few miles from Parrish Island when the pilot, wearing headphones, gesticulated to get the attention of the others and pressed a lever that brought the radio on the cabin speaker. “This is a Five-Oh-Five from Parrish Island.” The radio dispatcher’s voice sounded agitated. “We have an escaped-inmate situation. Repeat: an escaped-inmate situation.”

  Ambler felt his stomach clutch. He had to act, had to use the crisis. He jumped to his feet. “Christ on a raft,” he grunted.

  The speaker crackled again with the dispatcher’s voice: “Cruiser 12-647-M, the inmate may have stowed himself on your vessel. Please confirm or disconfirm immediately. Holding.”

  The guardsman gave Ambler a hard look; a thought was beginning to form. Ambler would have to get ahead of it, redirect it.

  “Shit,” Ambler said. “I guess now you know why I’m here.” A beat. “You think it’s an accident they’ve insisted on putting security reps on every vehicle leaving the island? We’ve been hearing static about some kind of escape attempt for the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Could’ve told us,” the guardsman said sullenly.

  “Not the kind of gossip the facility’s looking to spread,” Ambler said. “Gonna check that body right now.” He scrambled to the rear below-deck berth. Inside, to the left, was a narrow tool closet, recessed into the cargo area of the inner hull. There were a few oily rags on the floor. On a platform of steel checker plate, the body was still bound to the stretcher with Velcro straps; it looked bloated, perhaps 250 pounds, and the gray pallor of death was unmistakable.

  Now what? He would have to work fast, before the others decided to follow him.

  Twenty seconds later, he raced back to the cabin.

  “You!” Ambler said accusingly, thrusting his fore-finger at the paramedic. “You said the patient was dead. What kind of bullshit was that? I just felt the guy’s neck, and guess what. He had a pulse same as you and me.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the paramedic said indignantly. “That’s a goddamn corpse down there.”

  Ambler was still breathing hard. “A corpse with a pulse rate of seventy? I don’t think so.”

  The guardsman’s head swiveled, and Ambler could tell what he was thinking: This guy sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Ambler had a momentary advantage; he had to press it.

  “Are you part of it?” Ambler demanded, fixing the paramedic with an accusatory glare. “You in on it?”

  “What the hell are you saying?” the paramedic replied, his splotchy cheeks reddening further. The way the guardsman was looking at him riled him even more, and the effect was to make him sound defensive, insecure. The paramedic turned to the guardsman. “Becker, you can’t be taking this guy seriously. I know how to take a pulse, and that’s a goddamn stiff we got on the stretcher.”

  “Show us,” Ambler said grimly, leading the way back to the berth. The pronoun us was a powerful one, he knew: implicitly it drew a line between the man he was accusing and the rest of them. Ambler needed to keep everyone off balance, needed to foment dissension and suspicion. Otherwise the suspicion would gravitate toward him.

  He glanced back and saw that the guardsman was bringing up the rear with his pistol out of its holster. The three men stepped around the transom platforms and proceeded to the rear berth. The medic swung open the door to it and then said, in a stunned voice, “What the hell . . . ?”

  The two others peered inside. The stretcher lay askew, its Velcro straps undone. The body was gone.

  “You lying sack of shit,” Ambler exploded.

  “I don’t understand,” the paramedic said, his voice unsteady.

  “Well, I think the rest of us do,” Ambler said in a freezing voice. The subtle sway of syntax: the more he used the first-person plural, the greater his authority. He glanced at the tool-closet door, hoping nobody would notice how the slide latch was bulging with the strain of keeping the door shut.

  “You’re telling me a corpse walked hisself out of here?” the buzz-cut guardsman demanded, turning toward the curly-haired Southerner. The guardsman gripped his pistol firmly.

  “Probably just slipped over the side and went for a nice swim,” Ambler sneered. Push your scenario; prevent them from thinking of alternate ones. “We’d never have heard, and in this fog, we’d never have seen. Three miles to shore
, at this point, not too strenuous if you keep your blood flowing. Typical corpse behavior, right?”

  “This is crazy,” the paramedic protested. “I had nothing to do with it! You gotta believe me.” The form of denial was automatic, but it effectively confirmed the crucial element of the allegation: that the man on the gurney was the escapee.

  “Guess we know why he was so pissed off they made me tag along,” Ambler said to the guardsman, just loudly enough to be heard over the engines. “Listen, you better call this in ASAP. I’ll keep a watch on the suspect.”

  The guardsman looked confused, and Ambler could read the conflicting impulses on his face. Now Ambler leaned over and spoke confidingly into the guardsman’s ear. “I know you had nothing to do with it,” he said. “My report’s gonna make that real clear. So you got nothing to worry about.” The message relayed was not to be found in the content of the words. Ambler was perfectly aware he wasn’t addressing the guardsman’s concern: it hadn’t yet occurred to the man that anyone might suspect him of being involved in an escape from a maximum-security facility. But in giving assurance on the matter—and speaking of his “report”—Ambler was subtly establishing his authority: the man in the dove-gray tunic now represented officialdom, procedure, the discipline of command.

  “Understood,” the guardsman said, and he turned to Ambler for reassurance.

  “Give me your pistol and I’ll keep an eye on this joker,” Ambler said, his voice level. “But you need to radio this in right now.”

  “Will do,” the guard said. Ambler could tell that he was feeling a pang of unease, even as events—bewildering and unaccustomed events—overrode his normal caution. Before handing the fully loaded Heckler & Koch P7 to the man in the gray tunic, he hesitated for a moment.

  But only for a moment.

  TWO

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Even after nearly three decades of service, Clayton Caston still relished the small details of the CIA complex—like the outdoor sculpture known as the Kryptos, an S-shaped copper screen perforated with letters, which had been a collaboration between a sculptor and an agency cryptographer. Or the bas-relief of Allen Dulles on the north wall, beneath which were incised the eloquent words: His monument is around us. Not all the more recent additions were as pleasing, however. The agency’s main entrance was actually the lobby to what was now known as the Original Headquarters Building—it had become “original” when the New Headquarters Building was completed in 1991, and nomenclatural habits were such that there was no longer anything called just Headquarters Building. One had to choose between the Original and the New, an array of six-story office towers that were built into a hillside next to the OHB. To reach the main entrance of the NHB, then, you had to go to the fourth floor. It was all very irregular, which was never, in his view, a recommendation.

  Caston’s own office was in the OHB, of course, but nowhere near its brightly windowed exterior walls. It was, in fact, fairly hidden away—the sort of windowless interior space that usually housed copying machines and office supplies. It was a fine place if you didn’t want to be disturbed, but few people saw it that way. Even agency veterans tended to assume that Caston had been the victim of internal exile. They looked at him and saw a mediocrity who had surely never accomplished much, a time-server in his fifties, gently pushing around pieces of paper while ticking off days until he could retire with a pension.

  Anyone who saw him take his seat at his desk this morning, his eyes fixed on his desk clock, pens and pencils arrayed on his blotter like silverware on a table mat, would only have had such preconceptions confirmed. Eight fifty-four, the clock said: six minutes before the workday properly began, in Caston’s opinion. He pulled out a copy of the Financial Times and turned to the crossword puzzle. His eyes flicked to his desk clock. Five minutes. Now he went to work. One across. What’s over the facade, after I am reduced? An obstacle. One down. An annoyance: sounds like someone’s visiting the WC. Four across. A gamble about a short priest elevates you without a raise. Two down. Authentic British capital. Soundlessly, his pencil filled in the boxes, seldom pausing for longer than a second or two. Impediment. Inconvenience. Brevet. Sterling.

  And now he was done. Eight fifty-nine, the clock said. He heard a rattling by the door: his assistant, arriving just on time, breathless from having jogged down the hall. Punctuality had been the subject of a recent conversation between them. Adrian Choi opened his mouth, as if about to deliver an excuse, then he glanced at his watch and slid quietly into his seat before his smaller, lower workstation. There was a hint of slumber about his almond-shaped eyes, and his thick black hair was damp from the shower. Adrian Choi was all of twenty-one years old, with a discreet stud below his lower lip and still cutting it close.

  At 9:00 A.M. on the dot, Caston put the Financial Times in the wastebasket and activated his secure e-mail list. Several e-mails were agency-wide notifications of little interest: a new Wellness Program, a minor emendation to the dental insurance, an intranet address whereby employees could check on the status of their 401(k) plans. One was from a clerk at an IRS office in St. Louis who, though mystified by getting a request from the CIA’s Office of Internal Review, was happy to oblige with the details of the special-purpose entities formed by a light-industrial firm over the past seven years. Another was from a small company listed on the Toronto stock exchange and contained the list Caston had requested of the trading activities conducted, in the past six months, by its board members. The comptroller did not see why Caston had needed the actual time of day for each transaction but had duly complied with the request.

  Caston realized how drab his activities seemed to most of his colleagues. The ex-jocks and frat boys who used to work in the field, or hadn’t yet but still hoped to, treated him with genial condescension. “You gotta go if you wanna know” was their watchword. Caston never went anywhere, of course, but then, he didn’t subscribe to that dogma. Often, settling down with a sheaf of spreadsheets could tell someone everything he needed to know without his ever leaving his desk.

  Then again, very few of his colleagues actually knew what Caston did. Wasn’t he one of the guys who audited people’s travel-and-entertainment accounts? Or was his oversight more to do with requisitions of paper and toner cartridges—wouldn’t want anybody fiddling with the back office ledgers, right? Either way, it was a job just slightly above the custodial in prestige. There were a few of Caston’s colleagues, however, who treated him with deference, even something close to awe. They tended to be the members of the CIA director’s inner circle, or of the very top tier of the counterintelligence directorate. They knew how Aldrich Ames was really apprehended in 1994. And they knew about how a slight but persistent discrepancy between reported income and expenditures was the thread that led to the exposure of Gordon Blaine and the unraveling of a larger web of intrigue. They knew about dozens of other victories, some of comparable magnitude, that would never come to public attention.

  It was a mixture of qualities and skills that enabled Caston to make inroads where whole bureaus failed. Without leaving his office, he burrowed deep through the twisting maze of human venality. The realm of emotion held little interest for him, though; rather, he had an accountant’s preoccupation with columns of digits that did not add up. A trip booked but not taken; a receipt claimed for a conveyance that was at odds with a reported itinerary; a credit-card charge for a second, unreported cell phone: there were a thousand small slips to which the prevaricator was prone, and it only took one. Yet those who wouldn’t brave the tedium of collation—of making sure that No. 1 across was consistent with No. 2 down—would never detect them.

  Adrian, his hair starting to dry, came to his desk with his hands clutching various memos, animatedly explaining what he had sorted through and thrown out. Caston glanced up at him, taking in the young man’s tattooed forearm and the occasional glimpse of a tongue stud, nothing that would have been allowed when he was starting out, but no doubt the agency had to change with
the times.

  “Be sure you send the quarterly I66 forms out for processing,” Caston said.

  “Super,” said Adrian. He said super a lot, which had a midcentury ring to Caston but had apparently taken on a new life. It meant, so Caston inferred, something like I’ve heard what you just said and have taken it to heart. Perhaps it meant less; it certainly did not mean more.

  “As for this morning’s incoming: Anything out of the ordinary? Anything . . . irregular?”

  “A voice mail came in from the Assistant Deputy Director of Intelligence, Caleb Norris?” A hint of Californian uptalk entered Adrian’s voice—the questioning intonation in which young people so often sheathed their assertions.

  “You’re asking me or you’re telling me?”

  “Sorry. Telling you.” Adrian stopped. “I have a feeling it’s kind of urgent.”

  Caston leaned back in his chair. “You feel that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Caston studied the young man, like an entomologist scrutinizing a gall wasp. “And you’re . . . sharing your feelings. Interesting. Now, am I a member of your family, a parent or sibling? Are we pals? Am I a spouse or girlfriend of yours?”

  “I guess—”

  “No? Just checking. In that case—and here’s a deal I’m proposing—please don’t tell me what you feel. I only care about what you think. What you have reason to believe, even with only partial certainty. What you know, by observation or inference. As far as these nebulous things called feelings are concerned, keep them to yourself.” He paused. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt your feelings?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “That was a trick question, Adrian. Don’t answer it.”

  “Very enlightening, master,” Adrian said, a smile hovering about his lips without actually settling on them. “Point taken.”

  “But you were saying. About nonstandard incoming messages.”