The Spy House Read online

  “She does not. The First Lady has invited me to dinner with six other ladies, all of whom have transcended glass ceilings to become corporate CEOs, captains of industry, political power players.”

  Bäcklund frowned. “Why did she ask you to come?”

  “Perhaps to show them that an old dog can learn new tricks. I’m there to impart the navy’s latest strategy to attract more female talent into its ranks.” Mason checked his watch. “The point of mentioning the aforementioned appointment is that I don’t have much time right now. So, bullet points, please.” The admiral looked at Bäcklund. “What have your sources in the Agency told you about Patrick and Cochrane?”

  Twenty-four hours ago he’d tasked Tanner and Bäcklund to find out if Cochrane and Patrick were up for the job.

  Bäcklund replied, “Patrick joined the CIA after a short service commission in the infantry. Prior to that, he graduated from MIT. Thirty-six years in the Agency. Overseas postings to Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Damascus, London, and Paris.”

  “Plum postings,” Mason mused. “He’s on the fast track.”

  “Well, yeah. Sort of. He’s a director, though that’s kept quiet; not many in the Agency know what he does or his rank.”

  “They’ve given him seniority, but he won’t reach the top?”

  “Exactly. No doubt he’s an excellent operator, but he doesn’t tolerate fools. Playing politics—internally or externally—isn’t his thing. That said, the Agency knows his strengths. A few years back, it gave him control over a joint U.S.-U.K. task force.” Bäcklund looked momentarily annoyed. “My sources couldn’t give me any details about the force, beyond that it was recently shut down, and Cochrane was its lead field operative.”

  Mason decided the CIA officer was a rule breaker, someone who’d do whatever it took to get the job done, even if in doing so he forestalled any chance of further promotion. This increased Mason’s respect for the man. He turned his attention to Tanner. “Cochrane?”

  Tanner stopped spinning his pen. “Grew up in the States. Father was American and worked for the CIA; mother was English. Both are dead. One sister who’s a couple of years older than him. She’s a lawyer, doesn’t have much contact with her brother. He joined the French Foreign Legion when he was seventeen and served in its parachute regiment before being selected for Special Forces. When he left, he went to England. Four years at Cambridge University. Graduated with a double first-class degree. Was talent-spotted by one of his professors who put him forward for selection into MI6.”

  “And?”

  Tanner shrugged. “Aside from knowing that he worked for the joint task force, that’s pretty much all I could get on him. Although, there’s a rumor that on joining Six, he was handpicked to go on a twelve-month program. Only him. Others before him had failed. The course was designed to push his mind and body to their limits and way beyond. He passed.” Tanner held a hand up. “But I stress that’s only a rumor. I know you like hard facts.”

  That wasn’t strictly true. Admiral Mason also reveled in possibilities. “What’s his status in MI6 now?”

  “There isn’t one. He was told to leave four months ago.”

  “Interesting.” Mason stood and grabbed his jacket. “I can’t afford to be complacent. Almost certainly, the first thing Cochrane is going to do is travel to the States to speak with the dead CIA officer’s wife. He may even be this side of the pond by now. I want one of you to liaise with Patrick’s office and tell him that when Cochrane’s in town, I need to meet with him.”

  FIFTEEN

  The farmhouse, in a rural area of southern Lebanon near Rmaich, was being observed by eight Israelis who’d crossed the border in the dead of night. Two of them were highly trained Mossad officers, the remainder Special Forces. They’d parachuted into Lebanon and walked fifteen miles, wearing head scarves and Bedouin clothes, underneath which they wore military uniforms and had assault rifles strapped to their bodies.

  They’d been in position for three hours, their Arab disguises discarded until needed for their return journey, spread out and lying on the ground in places that gave them sight of the isolated property from all angles. All of them had night-vision binoculars and were using them to watch the place. Two vehicles were parked outside the house; six men were inside. Beyond the farmstead was rolling countryside that contained Roman ruins and not much else. The warm air was filled with the sounds of insects, the volume intensifying as the night wore on.

  The senior of the two Mossad officers was in charge tonight, because this was an intelligence-led operation and he had to be certain they were observing the right men. It was his idea to come here in person, rather than using a heavy-handed long-distance strike wherein they wouldn’t know for sure if they’d neutralized the correct target. But, as a result, the risks to him and his men were obvious.

  He checked his watch. Three hours until sunrise. They were running out of time because they needed to extract themselves under cover of darkness and reach a stealth helicopter that would whisk them back over the border into Israel. Glancing at some of the soldiers nearest to him, he knew there was nothing more he could do now than trust them to do their job. He hated that reality, because his whole career had required him to trust no one else to get things right. Spies, he’d long ago decided, were borderline obsessive-compulsive-disorder types. They had to be. Getting the tiniest detail wrong could result in your death. Whether it was OCD or meticulous attention to detail, a spy survived not by his wits, but by assuming others would mess up if the task in hand was delegated to them. Now, the Mossad officer had to watch others go to work and finish what he’d initiated.

  He spoke into his radio. “One more minute of watching the place. Providing all remains quiet, after that we move.” He stared through his binoculars, the night-vision equipment giving his surroundings the look of the rudimentary 1980s computer games he’d played as a kid. Nothing suggested that the occupants of the farmstead were aware of being watched. But he kept looking for anything that suggested they were agitated. It was vital that he knew their state of mind, because they were experienced murderers. “Everyone good to go?”

  His team members responded in the affirmative.

  “Remember, no head shots. Okay. On my command: three, two, one. Go!”

  The men leapt to their feet and ran silently toward the farmhouse from all sides of the property, their rifles held high and ready to fire. There were two doors into the building. Four men moved in a crouch position alongside a wall toward one of the entrances; on the other side of the building, the others did the same.

  In a whisper, the Mossad officer said, “Breach.”

  Two Special Forces soldiers used breaching hammers to force open the two doors. Behind them other men tossed in stun grenades. All then rushed into the building. What followed happened too fast for the occupants to do anything in response. Four of them were staggering on their feet, their hands clasping their ringing ears, and they were immediately shot in the chest. The remaining two were sitting at a table, still disoriented as they tried to reach their pistols. They were knocked off their chairs as bullets slammed into their upper bodies.

  The two Mossad officers stayed with the dead bodies as the rest of the team searched the house. They relayed their location and findings in turn.

  “Stairs clear.”

  “Room one clear.”

  “Corridor clear.”

  “Kitchen clear.”

  “Room two clear.”

  “Room three clear.”

  “House clear.”

  The Special Forces team immediately went back outside and set up a protective perimeter.

  The senior Mossad officer took out photos that had been shot three months ago from a distance by covert Israeli cameras. He crouched by the two dead men at the table and examined their faces, comparing them to the photos. He glanced at his Mossad colleague, who nodded. Standing, the senior officer placed the photos in his jacket pocket and withdrew his cell phone.

  He cal
led his boss in Tel Aviv. “No doubt about it: correct targets neutralized.”

  The dead men at the table were two high-ranking Hamas leaders. Code-named Stradivarius and Stravinsky, they were the men the Gray Site team had intended to eavesdrop on to find out what happened in Paris. The sole purpose of today’s Israeli assault had been to neutralize two very dangerous men who Israel was convinced had ordered the assassination of its ambassador. But, in successfully conducting the assault, Israel had killed two men who would not only have been able to provide evidence about the assassination, but also information about Thales.

  SIXTEEN

  Experienced spies are furtive and fearful travelers. But less experienced secret agents are emboldened by their initial experiences of first- or business-class air travel. They drink free champagne with panache; strike up conversations with nearby strangers because they want to flex their superior minds; and revel at traveling in the guise of someone else, as if they’re attending a classy masquerade party.

  It is not until you get dragged into an interrogation room upon landing in Beijing Airport that you realize you’re not James Bond. If you’re en route to Bangkok and your plane makes an unplanned emergency landing in Tehran, you have no panache when Revolutionary Guards inflict a mock execution on you. Fear and sometimes tears emerge when a gun is pointed at your head and you realize your life may end in Damascus, or Moscow, or Pyongyang.

  If a spy survives all that, he becomes a nervous traveler, constantly aware of real danger. The passport he carries could be his death sentence, because it’s not in his real name. It belongs to a false life that he must know backward—the schools he went to, the names of his teachers and friends, the jobs he’s had, the places he’s lived, the false reasons why this false man is entering a country he wants to spy on, and the minutiae such as the name of his hometown’s church and the beers on draft in his local pub.

  The immigration and security desks of transportation hubs are the places spies fear the most. Will the official behind the desk remember that the man pretending to be a businessman traveled here six months ago but with a different name? Did he go to the same school that the spy allegedly went to? Worse, did he once live on the same street that the spy claims to live on? These things happen.

  I once got questioned by an official as I entered Luanda. The name on my passport was Paul Jones. When asked what I did for a living, I told him that I was an academic from the University of East Anglia’s School of Development Studies. I added that I was traveling to his country to study the results of aid agencies’ work to enhance the yields of farmers’ crops. The official was a young native of Angola, and he beamed as he responded that last year he’d undertaken a Master of Arts at my school. Naturally, he started barraging me with questions about lecturers at the school and students who were still studying there. Through a combination of prior preparation and quick-thinking bullshit, I managed to get through the immigration desk without raising his suspicions.

  But it could easily have gone the other way.

  Despite entering what was technically a nonhostile country, as I approached one of the immigration desks in Washington, D.C.’s Dulles airport my stomach muscles tightened as they always did in these situations. I was traveling under the name Richard Oaks. I’d had to return all of my other alias passports to MI6, and the only reason I’d managed to keep this one was that Alistair had covered up that it was still in my possession.

  An angry-looking official stared at me as I handed him my passport and the immigration questionnaire containing questions such as “Have you ever been a Nazi war criminal?” and “Have you ever been engaged in espionage activities?”

  “What’s the purpose of your visit?” He kept his eyes on mine.

  I rubbed my face, as if I was tired after the overnight flight. “Research. I’m writing a book about political capitals around the world.”

  “You’re a published author?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What’s your day job?”

  “I’m a teacher.”

  The official handed me back my passport. “Okay.” He looked at the next person in the queue, no longer interested in me.

  After collecting my luggage and clearing customs, I entered the arrivals hall. Numerous men were lined up, holding placards marked with the names of passengers. Written on one of the placards was my false name. I introduced myself to the driver. Without saying a word, he led me to the parking lot nearest to the terminal. He placed my bag in the trunk of a black sedan, opened the rear passenger door, and gestured for me to get in. Patrick was sitting in the back.

  The driver engaged gears and drove the car out of the lot.

  Patrick was wearing a suit. “Good flight?”

  “It was crap.” I was wearing jeans, a hiking jacket, and mountain boots. “Cattle class.”

  Patrick laughed. “You better get used to it. Ninety-nine point nine percent of normal civilians travel that way.”

  “And abnormal civilians?”

  “Same statistic, if they’re no longer getting fancy travel on government or corporate expenses.”

  “Where are we going?” All Patrick had told me was that he’d meet me when I arrived.

  “The fucking Pentagon” was his response. He said nothing else for the duration of the journey.

  I’ve been to the Pentagon twice, and on both occasions I felt that its vast pentagonal shape resembled a 1960s NASA installation. Inside it is an endless series of offices, conference rooms, operations centers, smaller arterial routes, and around its circumference a vast corridor.

  It was close to 9 A.M. when we stopped in one of the Pentagon’s parking lots. I could see legions of men and women exiting their cars and heading toward the building. I thought of them as worker bees, all homogenized into the singular purpose of protecting a queen bee who wasn’t here but instead lived in the White House.

  Patrick said, “Come with me.”

  We joined the worker bees on foot, me looking out of place in my casual attire, the bees all wearing coats to protect them from a fine rain. We approached the reception desk.

  Patrick gave one of the guards his name, pointed at me, and said, “He’s got an appointment with Admiral Tobias Mason.”

  Ah, that’s why I’m here, I thought. The admiral wanted to check me out, see if I was up to the task of investigating Gray Site and giving America just cause to prevent or support war in the Middle East.

  The guard told me to hand over all my ID and my cell phone. I gave him my false documents. Together with my cell, they were sealed in a plastic bag. I was told to collect them when I left the building.

  Patrick gestured to the bag. “Good to see you’re carrying your phone again. I want you to be contactable day and night. I’ve got another driver who’s going to take me to Langley. My driver will wait for you, take you wherever you’re staying in D.C.” He held out his hand.

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  He shook his head. “Mason wants to see you alone.” We shook hands as Patrick added, “And I won’t see you again until you’ve finished your job. Good luck.” He walked out of the building.

  Another guard guided me through the labyrinth for twenty minutes before stopping by a door. He said, “This is you. I’ll come back and get you when you’re done.”

  I knocked on the door and entered.

  A man, quite small, immaculately dressed in a suit, in his mid-fifties, I estimated, rose from behind a large wooden desk and walked quickly to me. “Mr. Cochrane. Admiral Mason.” He shook hands and gestured for me to sit in a part of the oak-paneled room that contained comfortable chairs and a coffee table. After pressing a button on an intercom and saying, “He’s here. Make sure we’re not disturbed,” he sat opposite me and rested one ankle on his thigh. His shoes were military-gloss standard. “When did you arrive?”

  “I came here straight from the airport.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Mandarin Oriental hotel.” I wante
d Mason to cut the pleasantries.

  He stared at me for a while before saying, “Cochrane’s a good name.”

  “It’s not the name I used to enter this building.”

  “I do hope not.” His eyes were fixed on me, and they were flickering. No doubt, he was thinking fast. “Are you related to him?”

  Him? I had to identify who he was referring to, otherwise I would fall at the first hurdle. Mason was a military man through and through. Navy, though. Patrick had told me that he’d had an excellent career at sea and had been singled out by the president to be his close and trusted adviser. Patrick hadn’t told me much else about him. Within the space of two seconds, thoughts raced through my mind. Gray Site was Mason’s idea. Clever. Creative initiative. Adviser? One the president would turn to when no one else had a clue what to do? The president had plenty of military experts around him. He didn’t need another. Mason was therefore different. He was an independent thinker. A creative man. And that meant he was unconventional. But he loved the navy—his appearance, his demeanor, and the décor of the room showed that. He’d be fascinated with naval history. The combination of both traits meant he was referring to the nonconformist nineteenth-century British admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane.

  I said, “My father was American, not Scottish.”

  Mason smiled. “So you’ve guessed who I’m talking about. And your ancestors?”

  I shrugged. “I once tried to find out whether I was related to the admiral. But my family history is vague.”

  Mason interlinked his fingers, keeping his gaze on me. “Do you know much about Thomas Cochrane?”

  I told Mason that I knew Cochrane was probably the first person to use other countries’ flags to dupe French and Spanish men-of-war, and that he consistently defeated far larger and more heavily gunned vessels, such as the skirmish in which his small frigate famously encountered the Spanish destroyer El Gamo. He had once attended a fancy dress ball in Malta dressed as a common sailor, whereupon he’d got in an argument with a French officer and they’d ended up in a duel. Cochrane wounded the officer and later corresponded with the man, apologizing for the incident.