Collusion Read online

Valerie Mayberry stepped off the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, which once had been a railroad track. A 1960s urban planner had decided that converting the right of way into a walking, biking, and running course would be a better use. Fast-forward fifty years. Local municipalities were spending millions constructing an aboveground subway line less than a mile away. Why hadn’t bureaucrats thought ahead? They could have used the original train path for the subway line. Mayberry noticed such things.

  Her ultralight running shoes left prints on the January-morning frost covering the swath of dried grass and weeds that separated the trail from the high-density Reston, Virginia, Town Center complex, some twenty-two miles east of Washington, D.C. Entering Explorer Street, she jogged by PassionFish—all one word—a Millennial hotspot eatery tucked among the mix of high-rise offices and condos.

  Mayberry cared about history.

  Some people heard music playing in their heads. A looping tune. Mayberry retained an unending tsunami of facts, most only found useful at trivia nights. Founded in 1964, Reston was the brainchild of Robert E. Simon Jr., who sold New York’s Carnegie Hall to afford his vision of an urban utopia on 6,750 acres of farmland. Without restrictions based on race or income, he plotted a city composed of cozy villages each with lower- and middle-class and higher-end homes built together. Promising on paper, but troubled in reality. The nature paths turned dangerous to walk after dusk. The less expensive neighborhoods had become more expensive. Poorer families had been pushed into neighboring Herndon. That village was named after a Virginia naval officer who went down with his ship during a hurricane off the coast of Cape Hatteras.

  A photographic memory and Adderall. A combination of four salts of the two enantiomers of amphetamine, a nervous system stimulant of the phenethylamine class. It helped her focus—although taking brain-enhancing drugs was generally not something the Federal Bureau of Investigation looked on favorably.

  Mayberry’s six-mile morning run had lifted her mood. Self-generated endorphins. She needed them. Each morning she awoke sad. Technically, it was called “persistent complex bereavement disorder,” although psychiatrists couldn’t agree whether it was a legitimate mental illness, stating only in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that it was “under study” for possible later inclusion. She called it missing Noah. He had accepted her ADHD. She had accepted his constant need to save the world, right wrongs, and fight injustices. Her pragmatism versus his idealism. They had been a good fit.

  Pit-pat, pit-pat—the sound of her shoes hitting the sidewalk slowed to a walk as she entered the Midtown, Reston’s most exclusive condo building. Monthly HOA fees ran as high as many nearby house mortgages. Shiny ornate lobby. Valet parking. Doorman. Swimming pool. Owner’s gym. Big-screen-television party area. The works, including views of the Blue Ridge Mountains from her sixteenth-floor unit.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Williams,” a perky recent community college grad with cascading blond hair and perfectly polished teeth chirped from behind the lobby’s front desk.

  Williams had been Noah’s surname. She’d not legally changed hers from Mayberry after they’d married, but she was identified on the condo’s register of residents as Williams. It had made Noah happy and provided her with a thin veil of security if someone snooped into her professional life as an FBI agent. She still wore her wedding ring, although that had nothing to do with hiding her identity. There was something definite about taking it off—a final admission—that she wasn’t yet ready to make.

  “Good morning, Summer,” Mayberry replied, silently wondering what kinds of parents name children after seasons.

  Her cell phone rang while she was in the shower thinking of Noah.

  Her wet feet hit the bathroom’s heated tile floor. “This is Valerie.”

  It was her counterintelligence boss, Sally North.

  An assassination. Kiev. Ambassador Thorpe dead.

  “There’s a briefing at nine,” North explained. “The director will attend. Be on your best behavior. Think before you speak.”

  Mayberry dressed quickly. A burgundy structured blazer over a long-sleeve white J.Crew blouse with horizontal stripes and Paige Denim ankle-peg skinny stretch jeans, set off with a chunky gold necklace and black Ralph Lauren short heels. Her mother had been a stickler for style. She died without owning a pair of sweatpants or an article with a sports logo.

  The mirror reminded Mayberry of her condition. Down exactly 17.2 pounds since Noah’s death. An old copy of Ultimate Jogging magazine she’d read noted that world-class athletes weighed two pounds per inch. She was under that now, under what a five-foot, six-inch world-class runner should weigh. A dusting of makeup and downstairs to the underground parking garage to her silver Jaguar F-type R coupe; 550 horses. Zero to sixty in 3.9 seconds. The sound of the exhaust alone was worth its hundred-grand-plus price tag. Like cannon fire. A luxury she’d bought after Noah’s death. He would have disapproved.

  When CIA traitor Aldrich Hazen Ames had been caught spying for the Russians, the agency had been heavily criticized because no one at Langley had asked how a CIA employee could afford to pay cash for what was then a fifty-thousand-dollar Jaguar coupe—equal to his annual salary. The only eyebrows that her Jaguar had raised were jealous ones. Everyone in the FBI knew she had a trust fund. Word of such things spread quickly.

  It took an hour to reach FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. Congress had been arguing for decades about where to move the bureau. The 1975 building was crumbling. Fabric nets strung outside some upper floors had been installed to catch falling pieces. It had been an eyesore from the start. A gaping hole where a second floor should be. That was intentional to keep protestors from using ladders to break into the oddly shaped structure. An empty moat along one side. Again, designed to limit entry by demonstrators. It had been the late 1960s when the design was accepted. Rioting students. Vietnam. J. Edgar Hoover had been paranoid. No offices or windows on the street level. Instead, thick concrete support slabs. A courtyard. Rumor was Hoover had wanted spikes installed in the trees planted outside to keep them from being climbed.

  Mayberry entered the director’s conference room ten minutes before 9:00 a.m. Breakfast snacks. A clear signal that FBI director Archibald Davidson—Mack to his friends—would be attending. She didn’t bother with any coffee, tea, or pastries.

  She was the only woman present until Sally Norton entered precisely at nine accompanied by Davidson. He was old-school. Former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. A political appointee but he knew his stuff. Gruff. Spit and polish. A lifelong law-and-order type.

  “We believe Ambassador Thorpe was the main target in Kiev,” North announced while nodding at a large monitor. Everyone’s eyes followed hers.

  “When the shooting began, the television news crews filming the press conference ran for the exits,” she said. Smirks by some listening to her. “This video is from permanent security cameras mounted in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s ceiling. Their government has asked for our forensic help.”

  The monitor split into four screens, each a different vantage point. Ambassador Thorpe could be seen poised behind the podium on one screen while three intruders shown on another burst into the ballroom.

  Mayberry’s eyes darted between images. Thorpe and Ukraine’s minister hit by gunfire. Chief of Mission John Harper and two State Department bodyguards falling dead. Scrambling attendees. More gunfire. Three assailants hurrying toward a side door. One assisting another. Clearly wounded. An armed man appearing on the opposite side of the ballroom. Two pistol shots. One miss. The other causing the attacker holding his buddy to drop the injured assailant on the floor. Two escape. More security guards arrive. One makes his way to the stage, kneels above Ambassador Thorpe. The camera showed his face. Wait. Mayberry recognized him. Brett Garrett. His photo had been on every television network newscast during a Senate inquiry into Cameroon. A botched mission. A senator’s son killed. Garrett was responsible. What wa
s the former SEAL doing at a Ukraine press conference?

  The monitors went dark.

  Mayberry scanned her fellow agents in the briefing. Surely they had recognized Garrett, too. She had questions but remembered North’s warning. No one dared interrupt Sally North during a briefing—unless it was the director. They were there only to listen, not question or comment. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. George Orwell and federal protocol.

  Stay focused. Don’t let your mind wander.

  North continued: “The most logical suspects are Donetsk-based separatists being backed by the Kremlin. This has President Kalugin and General Gromyko’s fingerprints all over it, but, so far, no direct links. Our best clue is the left-behind shooter.”

  Photos of a dead frozen face now appeared on the monitors. “INTERPOL identified him as a French national. Gabriel de Depardieu, whose address is a flat in Paris’s Latin Quarter. Neither our people nor the DGSE has any records about him. No known ties to Russia or the separatists. Nothing on Facebook or social media. The French are leading the deep probe since he was one of their own.”

  A new face appeared. “French authorities have identified this American as someone of interest. Aysan Rivera, a twenty-six-year-old from Baltimore. Her name surfaced when the police were questioning Gabriel de Depardieu’s landlord. Rivera and De Depardieu shared the same apartment for about a year. She stopped coming there six months ago when the landlord began hassling them for more money because De Depardieu was only paying for one tenant. The landlord knew her name because Rivera occasionally received mail from her family at De Depardieu’s flat.”

  Director Davidson grunted. “Ms. Rivera has no interest in being cooperative,” he said.

  North continued, “Agents from our Baltimore field office paid her a visit. As soon as they mentioned Gabriel de Depardieu’s name, she handed them her father’s business card.”

  Another photo appeared on the monitor. A distinguished-looking fifty-something male posing with a similarly aged, striking woman. Both dressed in black-tie evening wear. “Rivera’s father, Gregory Rivera, is an international lawyer and president of the American branch of a Turkish shipping company headquartered in Baltimore. His wife, Sirin Nadi Rivera, is the sister of the second-richest businessman in Turkey and a close friend of the Turkish president. Neither of them or any of their four children have criminal records. No ties to terrorists or Moscow.”

  Director Davidson again jumped in. “Sirin Rivera called the Turkish ambassador after our agents showed up. The ambassador called the State Department and the White House to complain. Both called me. The Turkish ambassador is insisting we leave Aysan Rivera and her family alone. The family claims Rivera has not seen De Depardieu in the past six months. A mere college acquaintance.”

  North continued: “Aysan Rivera reportedly met Gabriel de Depardieu at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. For those unfamiliar with the ENS, it is the highest-ranked university in France and ranked among the top fifty universities in the world. It’s within walking distance from Depardieu’s flat. Rivera graduated last spring with a degree in philosophy. Since returning to Baltimore, she’s lived in the Four Seasons condo building at Harbor East, overlooking Baltimore Harbor. Condos there sell for an average of a thousand dollars per square foot.”

  A few under-the-breath but audible whews.

  “To summarize,” Director Davidson said, “we have a twenty-six-year-old woman from an incredibly wealthy family with strong political connections. She has no history of criminal activity and neither she nor her family has any interest in being questioned about her dead French terrorist ‘acquaintance.’” He stood. “The family already has hired a team of Washington lawyers to prevent us from interviewing Aysan Rivera. I have a meeting with the attorney general. Sally will take the point on the agency’s role in the ongoing Kiev investigation.”

  North spoke for a few minutes after Davidson was gone, then asked Mayberry to stay behind while everyone else left.

  “Valerie, I want you to go after Aysan Rivera. Be discreet.”

  “What’s that mean, exactly?”

  “Undercover. Befriend her. You’re rich. She’s rich. You just happen to bump into her. Off the books. A convenient coincidence. Get her to talk about De Depardieu.”

  “Rich families do background checks when someone suddenly pops up in their social circle, especially when their daughter is under suspicion of bedding a terrorist.”

  “Your family is well known. You’re legit. You can walk the walk.”

  Mayberry was quiet for a moment. “What was Brett Garrett doing in Kiev?”

  “You recognized him.”

  “Anyone who didn’t should be fired. Is Garrett working for the agency or was he there as an actual security guard?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” North said. “He’s scheduled to land here later today. See what you can get out of him about the Kiev shooting. Human intel is always better than security footage.”

  Eight

  With his right hand, Brett Garrett gently ran his fingers across his left side, moving downward under his armpit to his hip. Even through his plaid flannel shirt, he could feel the bumpy scars. Was there anything more painful than being burned? In the old days, medics had jabbed a shot of morphine into a wounded soldier. In 2011, the military began using a new wonder drug. “The lollipop.” Such an innocent name. Medically OTFC. An acronym for oral transmucosal fentanyl citrate, 400 micrograms on a white stick that indeed was a lollipop.

  “The fentanyl lollipop offers our medics a faster way to ease the pain of a battlefield injury because the drug can be absorbed more rapidly through a lozenge in the mouth than from a needle injected into a muscle,” the Pentagon announced.

  Apparently, no one had paid attention to its key ingredient: fentanyl. Only after the national opioid epidemic erupted had that drug become familiar to the public.

  He turned uncomfortably in the narrow seat of the KLM Airbus A330 about to touch down at Dulles International Airport, west of downtown Washington, D.C. He’d never been afraid of dying. What was the phrase? Some run away, while others run forward. He’d not been afraid when Senator Cormac Stone had ordered him to appear before Congress for a predetermined public humiliation about Cameroon. But the intense, physical craving, the constant need for painkillers, that had broken him.

  Garrett unbuckled his seat belt so he could reach into the front right pocket of his denim jeans while sitting and withdraw his prescription. Two thin pieces of film quickly tucked under the tongue. Not fentanyl. Suboxone. The bitch’s twin. The unintentional addict’s pharmacological best friend. Buprenorphine and naloxone. It was supposed to offer salvation for the opioid addiction created during his months of hospitalization at Walter Reed Medical Center for treatment of burns and bullet wounds. The bullet holes had healed, and so had the burned skin. But his need for powerful painkillers had lingered. Suboxone was his best shot at getting clean, but he was still weaning and privately unsure if the cravings would ever end. It had started with a medic sticking a cute lollipop into his mouth while being airlifted out of Cameroon.

  Relief.

  Garrett always traveled light. Everything he needed, with one exception, was inside the backpack stored in the aircraft’s overhead bin above him. His SIG Sauer P226 pistol was the exception. Most others had switched to Glock 19s, but the SIG had been a gift from Garrett’s Navy SEAL instructor, a master chief petty officer—the same one who had given him the hated nickname Hillbilly. It had been the instructor’s last SEAL class. Retirement. The SIG had been his combat weapon. Handed down with much respect. Garrett preferred a weapon that had already drawn blood. A buddy who flew military transport planes to Joint Air Base Andrews had promised to deliver it stateside. Garrett was traveling commercial. Too much hassle to explain it.

  Garrett was coming home, but he didn’t think of it like that. More like returning to a base camp. He’d bought a one-bedroom condo in Rosslyn not far from a metro
stop. Two suits, one black, one gray, both off-the-rack, hung in its closet. Five collared shirts—three whites, two light blue. One tie. Red. Running gear, several pairs of denim jeans, T-shirts, boxers, and military fatigues. No car, but he owned a Norton Commando Interpol motorcycle—made in 1975 by the Brits for police use only. He’d recovered it from a barn in Belgium and personally rebuilt it. His daddy had taught him about engines and motorcycles, just like his daddy had taught him about shooting.

  The Norton helped him unwind. When Garrett couldn’t sleep, when the memories, second-guessing, and cravings became too much, he’d ride west at night along Highway 50 until he reached the right turn just outside Aldie, Virginia, onto the Snickersville Turnpike—although calling that winding bit of unmarked asphalt a turnpike was a grand embellishment. The two-way weaved through scenic Virginia hills that took travelers across a 180-plus-year-old stone bridge that enemies Robert E. Lee and “Fighting Joe” Hooker had both crossed at times. It wasn’t Civil War history that called him. In a vanishing countryside being overrun with subdivided tract houses, Snickersville was one of the last rural stretches still defined by waist-high stone walls and pastures. There were no stoplights. As he leaned into the curves, the Norton’s headlight would cast its beam only twenty yards into the curving blackness. Glowing eyes. A scampering raccoon. A fear-frozen deer. No time to react. No time for error. That was when the music started, as his favorite author, Hunter S. Thompson, had described it. The dance with fate. Pushing life to its edge. A patch of sand. A greasy spot. The slightest miscalculation. Catastrophe. Was he suicidal? No, it was a way for him to become completely focused. To drive out the distracting demons. The second-guessing that never ended. Some nights Garrett couldn’t say. Maybe it was suicidal. All he knew was he could sleep soundly after those late-night runs. He could momentarily forget the brown tabs now dissolving under his tongue and the dishonorable-discharge papers that he kept at the bottom of a foot locker in his condo closet.