Code name, p.11
Code Name, page 11
“The question is,” Liz went on, “what do we do with you?”
The thought startled Laura. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do we do with you? Gates is convinced that you and Mark worked together on this scheme to come up with more money. Starting a family is an expensive proposition, and—”
Laura suddenly stood, her face flushed with outrage. “Mark and I have never done a single thing that is illegal, immoral or unethical. We certainly would never sell out our country! How can you even believe this, Liz, you’re our friend. You know us; you’ve been to our home.”
“Well, for right now, go to your office and sit there and don’t move. You just wait for me. I’ll be right back.”
Elizabeth Mabrey stood and looked pitiously at Laura. “Jackson!” she called loudly. The man opened the door to Mark’s office and stepped out. “Stand right here,” she pointed to a position just outside Laura’s office door, “and don’t move and don’t say anything about anything to anybody. You got that?” It wasn’t a request, it was a command.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he nodded, then glowered at Laura and took his position as Maybrey brushed past him and quietly closed the office door.
Laura sank into her chair and sighed in bewilderment. What in the world was going on around here? She knew Mark never sold documents to the enemy, yet he was being hunted like a criminal. And she was under suspicion for complicity in a matter of espionage. How could all this have happened?
She thought about the note – XO, hastily scribbled. She knew exactly what it meant, and it had nothing to do with hugs and kisses. She tried to imagine what had been happening to Mark as he wrote it and placed it so quickly.
And what about Larry Rogers? Had Mark actually sent this big man to the hospital with injuries? She didn’t believe any of it. The only thing she did believe was that Mark was on the run, being hunted by armed patrols. And she feared the worst would happen.
A moment later, Elizabeth Mabrey pushed the door open and motioned to Laura. “Gates wants to talk with you.”
Laura stepped around the desk and heard the unmistakable metallic sound of handcuffs, as her friend and now her accuser tightened one end of a set of cuffs to her own wrist and held out the other end for Laura.
“Just a precaution.”
Laura stiffened, then understanding the futility of it all took the open cuff and snapped it shut around her wrist and then she and Elizabeth Mabrey left Laura’s office for the last time. Laura never even had a chance to grab her purse.
Elizabeth walked fast, half a stride ahead of Laura, as the two women rushed through the complex of offices and cubicles to the hall leading to the elevator. Everyone was quiet and all their heads turned to watch the handcuffed Laura being lead away like a criminal.
“This is humiliating,” she complained to Elizabeth.
“Espionage has its rewards,” the older woman shot back.
“I am not involved in anything …”
“Save it for Gates.”
The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. Laura was actually thankful when the door shut, hiding her from the gaze of fellow workers.
On the ground floor, the women stepped into a busy lobby. They turned and walked the short distance to the second set of elevators that led into the underground bunker where the administrative offices were located. It took a special key to operate this elevator and Elizabeth was one of the few people at NIA who had one.
When the elevator opened at the bottom level, they stepped into the cold light of fluorescent tubes and a sterile concrete hallway devoid of potted plants or paintings or upholstered furnishings. Laura was astonished that the top brass at an organization as powerful as NIA chose to work in such austerity. But here it was before her, and it sent a chill up her back to consider that the men who ran this operation were so emotionally empty that they found this cold and barren environment acceptable.
Elizabeth yanked her cuffed arm forward, jolting Laura. She was surprised at the older woman’s apparent hostility, and the two of them exchanged stares.
“This way,” Elizabeth said, tugging her arm again.
Two guards armed with M16s and holstered Colt 1911 .45’s stood outside the steel door to Roland Gates’ office. As the women stepped inside, the guards followed and took positions on either side of the door.
The heavy steel door slammed shut, and the sound of a deadbolt left Laura with the feeling that this office was almost like a vault. With handcuffs still attached and two armed men by the door, she realized that these people must consider her a dangerous individual.
“Look,” she said, “I’m a pregnant woman. I’m not particularly strong. What do you fear from me?”
Roland Gates sat expressionless across a wide expanse of desk. His eyes were cold and lifeless.
“Sit here,” Elizabeth said, as she removed the handcuffs.
Gates stared at Laura, not even acknowledging the presence of Elizabeth Mabrey. He didn’t move, didn’t blink.
Laura knew the tactic was an attempt to intimidate. Although she had never personally met the man, she had heard that Gates had a ruthless reputation. No one dared cross him. What was true about him, and what was only rumor, was known only to him; that he had had people killed was quietly talked about, but nobody really knew for sure what to believe.
The irony of it all suddenly dawned on her – here in one of the most thorough intelligence-gathering organizations in the world, almost nothing was really known about the man who occupied this office. Rumors were all that she had heard, and those were passed around very quietly, for fear of retaliation.
Some people said that Gates was insanely power-hungry, a sociopath who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. Others believed he bordered on paranoia, hating public scrutiny, avoiding the limelight as if he had something to hide. The man was a mystery there was no question about that. He did, in fact, occupy a very powerful position in the intelligence community but, at the same time, he seemed to prefer anonymity, working from the second seat.
“There’s a difference between true power and the thin facade of power,” Mark had once told her. “The President occupies a position that leads people to believe he is among the most powerful men on earth. But in reality, people behind the scenes wield the actual power, under the cover of obscurity. Highly visible politicians are only a diversion, a distraction to serve as eye candy for the public.”
Mark had picked that up from Professor Henry, who had taught that the ploy works exceptionally well. “Just look at recent history and headlines that are crammed with one controversy after another involving the White House or Congress,” the old professor said. “It keeps the media occupied and off the trail of anything really substantial. And it keeps the public stirred up in petty partisan arguments about nothing at all, giving camouflage to the deadly games being played out behind the scenes.”
As she looked at him now, Laura knew that Roland Gates was one of the truly powerful men. That his office was concealed underground was somehow metaphorical to his preference for doing his work without being seen by the public, or even by most NIA employees.
She got the impression that he understood very well the awesome feeling of real power, and that he enjoyed it. She thought perhaps he didn’t mind being second in command at NIA, in fact it suited him perfectly: the director was more vulnerable to scrutiny, more accountable to other government agencies, more visible than the deputy director.
Laura stared into the cold dead eyes of Roland Gates. She had heard the stories about him, but now coming face to face with him and seeing the evil in his eyes, she was willing to believe the worst of the rumors.
A man without a soul, she thought, and her whole body began to tremble. She shifted in the chair, trying to hide the fact that she was quivering in terror.
He said nothing, only stared, unblinking. Then he spoke. “Your husband is now our enemy. He has stolen secret materials and sold them to the Communists. We know that you are involved.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Laura blurted.
For a moment he smiled, but it was a cold smile that slowly morphed into a sneer. “Yes you do. You are a traitor, along with your husband. Both of you will be punished. Of course, if you want to avoid the worst of a very bad situation, you will tell me where your husband has gone.”
“I’m telling you the truth. Mark and I would never do what you have said. Whoever told you we did something wrong is lying.”
His mouth was thin, without the softness of lips. The pupils of his eyes were black pinpoints that pierced her like sharpened ice picks. “Do you think I look like a fool?”
She stammered, “N-no.”
“Well, I already know the truth, and all your whining isn’t going to change that. If you know where your husband has gone, tell me; it will be better for you if you show a willingness to cooperate.”
The image of the folded note flashed into her mind. She knew where Mark was heading. But she also knew that he was not a traitor on the run. Something else was going on that made her husband run. As she looked at the hatred in the eyes of Roland Gates, she was willing to bet that whatever made Mark escape the way he did was directly related to this man.
She inhaled and intentionally slowed her breathing to steady herself, but there was still a hint of quiver in her voice. “Mr Gates, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want to see a lawyer.”
He spun his chair around to face away from Laura, and bruskly motioned for Elizabeth Mabrey to approach. She walked to the far side of the desk and bent close to hear his whispered words. Laura heard only mumbles, but thought she distinctly heard him use the word ‘apartment’.
Elizabeth straightened, crisply said, “Yes, sir!” and turned toward Laura.
The older woman’s face was pale and drawn. Her eyes were sad, but only for the briefest moment. She drew a deep breath and straightened herself to stand taller. Laura could see the earlier emotion fade from Liz’s face, as if she were becoming another person – a colder and harder person.
“Get up,” she commanded. Laura slowly stood. “Hold your hands out.” Laura complied, and the handcuffs were snapped in place. “Let’s go.” She shoved Laura toward the door. The guards stepped aside, one holding the door open for the two women to leave.
As the women were leaving the office, Gates picked up the phone. “Chief Randall, this is Gates. There’s a job I want you to take care of …”
Upstairs, the search suddenly expanded from Mark’s office to include Laura’s; in the parking lot, both Mark’s and Laura’s vehicles were gutted and searched.
A short while later, and miles away, a gray van pulled to the curb and parked a block from Mark and Laura’s apartment. Three men in dark blue coveralls stepped out of the van, each carrying a duffel bag. They quickly walked the block then climbed the steps leading to the front door, kicked it open and calmly stepped inside. Going from room to room, everything was trashed in the hunt for whatever the search team thought they were going to find. Furniture was overturned. Upholstery was torn open. Books were ripped apart. Clothing was thrown from closets and drawers.
When nothing was found, the very walls were demolished. From their duffel bags, the team took hand axes and gooseneck pry bars, and with them ripped open the sheetrock, leaving a fine haze of gypsum dust in the air that settled over everything in the apartment.
Then a fire was set in each room. The three men stood to watch it burn until the heat became unbearable.
Ten minutes after the men entered the apartment, two fire crews rolled onto the scene. Men jumped from the trucks and began laying hose to a hydrant, a few hundred feet away. Then, to the wonder of on-lookers, they did nothing. They waited, and finally smoke appeared from one window, then from the front door and then came the flames. Still they waited, and finally three men in coveralls stepped from the burning apartment.
“Yeah, Chief, we’ve got an apartment fully engulfed in flame here,” the fire captain shouted into his radiophone. Then he paused to listen.
“Right, Chief, I got it.” He hung up the headset and shouted to his crew.
“All right, I want you to re-lay those lines to the other hydrant. The captain pointed down the street in the other direction.
The firefighters looked at each other in bewilderment. Then shrugging, they disconnected from the one hydrant and ran the lines to the other.
Precious minutes passed. Flames poured from the windows, threatening neighboring apartments. Finally, the firemen were given the nod, and they leapt into action. Men in smoke-stained Nomex coats flipped their face-shields down and, with air packs on their backs, dragged heavy hoses into the flaming apartment.
They entered on hands and knees to try to see below the heavy smoke. Once the nozzlemen were inside, the signal was given for the hoses to be charged with water. The snaking tangle stiffened, and the men inside began their work in earnest. Firefighters outside the building directed their nozzles to create curtains of water to protect neighboring apartments from the heat.
As it had been planned, every room was completely involved in flame. The firefighters were forced to crawl from room to room, feeling their way slowly through the dense smoke, to keep from blindly stumbling over furniture and debris in unfamiliar rooms. Over the roar of flames, the rhythmic inhaling and exhaling of their own labored breathing through the air pack regulators was all the men could hear.
Within fifteen minutes of being allowed inside, the firemen had the flames extinguished and saved the structure, but there was nothing left of Mark and Laura’s belongings. The stall tactic had worked and the fire had been allowed to burn long enough to destroy everything, leaving only a soggy mass of ash and charred debris. In the corner of one small bedroom stood the metal framework of what was once a baby’s crib.
Quietly, a block from the scene of the fire, a gray van pulled away from the curb and lost itself in traffic.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Pages 1–7, notebook #2 (Spence, this is the beginning of David’s entries in notebook #2)
Two guards followed the women along the hall from Gates’ office, past the elevator, through a steel door and into a narrow corridor that was really just a tunnel of undecorated concrete walls. The floor sloped down at a slight angle, and a steel handrail gave passengers of this hallway something to hang onto as they descended.
There seemed to be no end to this tunnel, at least none that Laura could see. Dim overhead lightbulbs showed only that it continued straight ahead. Pipes along the ceiling indicated that this was a service tunnel through which water, electrical and natural gas lines were routed.
The sharp echo of their footsteps was the only sound. They walked for what seemed to Laura to be at least five minutes, without turning a corner and without an end to the downward slope. The angle was just enough to cause discomfort in her feet, cramming her toes into the tight ends of her dress shoes. The slope was, she concluded, to enable water to flow from the main building, like a drainage system, in case of flooding.
Abruptly, the tunnel ended at a gate made of heavy steel bars. The four of them stopped and waited. One of the guards reached up and pressed a rubber-covered button, and a voice burst the silence.
“Twenty-one.”
Startled, Laura looked around, but saw no one, then noticed a small speaker in the ceiling.
“Seven-one-three-Victor-Xray-three,” the guard spoke a code, and the gate slid back into a slot in the wall as if it had been pulled away by an invisible hand.
Elizabeth pushed Laura beyond the gate.
“Three-Xray-Victor-three-one-seven.”
The gate closed with the guards left behind on the other side. Without a word, the two men turned and began the long, slow climb back up the tunnel.
Laura could feel a difference beneath her feet, and looked down to see that the floor was an expanded metal grate suspended over a deep chasm that was too dark to see to the bottom. This floor was level, a relief to Laura’s feet. Otherwise, the tunnel was the same as before, except that up ahead there was a hint of daylight and she felt a slight breeze of fresh air.
She wondered if perhaps there were other tunnels, maybe an entire network of them beneath this building, leading to who knows where. For the first time, Laura began to understand that this government agency she worked for was not as it seemed from the surface. The beautiful grounds surrounding NIA headquarters were only window dressing to camouflage a maze of underground passageways, a snarl of secrets, a web of lies and a tangle of cover stories to conceal secrets.
She wondered what else went on in this agency that no one knew about. And if they did know about it, would the American public allow it to continue? She doubted it. If this were general knowledge, there would surely be an uprising of concerned citizens to put an end to it.
But then, she thought, maybe she was fooling herself. The American public was becoming more complacent and less involved in government affairs, allowing the politicians to get away with just about anything. So maybe nothing would make any difference. Maybe people just wouldn’t care, or simply say that the government knows what they’re doing, so let them do it.
She knew that’s all it takes to let a government get out of control. Nothing more than complacency or misguided faith that leads people to let down their guard. Next thing they know, there are black budgets for covert operations that nobody knows anything about. That pretty well describes NIA, she thought.
I’ve worked here for years, and I know very little about what NIA really does, she had to admit to herself. Nobody in the organization knew any more than what was necessary to carry out their own duties: do your work, collect your paycheck, then go home and keep your mouth shut. That was all there was to it. Forget NIA, go play tennis or have a baby or whatever else you’re going to do with your life. That was the way it was with everyone in the agency.
