House Divided Read online

  Perry wasn’t a good friend, but he didn’t deserve that.

  Since he didn’t know Dillon’s phone number, DeMarco called directory assistance and was surprised to find that the NSA had a listed number, just like they were some sort of normal government agency.

  “You got an old spook there named Dillon,” DeMarco said to the NSA operator. “I’m pretty sure that’s his first name. I need to talk to him.”

  “Sir,” the operator said, “I have no idea who you want to speak to. This is a very large agency and I—”

  “Lady, listen to me before you hang up. This guy Dillon is in his sixties, tall, white hair, dresses like a million bucks. He’s probably six hundred pay grades above you and he’s trying to find me. He will have you fired if you don’t put this call through to him. Now I know you can’t possibly know everybody at the NSA, but Dillon’s not a common first name and, like I said, this guy’s a big shot. Somebody will know him. Now I’m just gonna wait five minutes, and if I’m not talking to him before five minutes are up, I’m gonna hang up and you’re gonna get fired.”

  DeMarco meant what he said: calling Dillon was dangerous and there was no way he was going to wait longer than five minutes. He knew that as soon as Dillon came on the line and realized DeMarco was on the other end, he’d trace the call and dispatch a bunch of armed thugs to pick him up. But DeMarco figured that unless the thugs were eating breakfast at the Hyatt, they wouldn’t be able to get to him in five minutes and he’d be gone before they arrived. He hoped.

  Three minutes later, he heard Dillon say, “Good morning, Joe. Where are you?”

  “You know damn good and well where I am,” DeMarco said, “and in two minutes I’m gonna be gone.”

  Dillon chuckled. “You’re right, of course. I do know where you are. But really, Joe, you’re safe from us. You are not safe from General Bradford’s people, however. Your life is in danger. So just stay there and someone will be by shortly to pick you up.”

  “I don’t think so,” DeMarco said. “Last night you almost got me killed. Anyway, the reason I called is I borrowed a car from a guy I know because I figured you had tracking devices on my car.”

  “Yes, we’re aware Mr. Wallace assisted you.”

  “Well, that’s why I called. I wanted to tell you that I didn’t tell Wallace anything. He doesn’t know about Bradford or Breed or Hopper or anything else. I just told him I was in trouble and needed a car—and that’s all I told him. So if you guys are holding Wallace and interrogating him, you need to let him go.”

  “Joe, who do you think we are, the Gestapo? We spoke to Mr. Wallace early this morning, very politely, and he told us he had loaned you a vehicle. We have no intention of troubling him any further. But you need to let us bring you in, Joe. I wasn’t being melodramatic when I said your life was in danger.”

  “I don’t think so,” DeMarco said again. “But that’s the other reason I called. I want you to know I have no intention of talking to the press or anybody else about what happened last night. I did what you wanted by meeting with Hopper and now I’m just gonna lay low and wait for this thing between you and Bradford to blow over.”

  Lying to Dillon didn’t bother him at all.

  “Claire,” Dillon said into his phone, “DeMarco just called me.”

  “Why’d he call?”

  “He called to tell me that his friend Mr. Wallace has no idea where he is and to assure me he’s not planning to talk to the press. At any rate, he called from the Hyatt in Crystal City. Find him, Claire. Use a satellite, assuming we have one that’s functioning.”

  Dillon let Claire absorb that little barb before he added, “Oh, and Claire, do one other thing. Check the phone he used at the Hyatt. See if he called anyone else.”

  DeMarco needed to get to Rosslyn, which was about four miles from the Hyatt. Since Dillon knew he was driving Perry’s ancient pickup, he imagined a flock of NSA geeks were watching traffic cameras so he couldn’t drive to Rosslyn, and the nearest metro stop was at least a mile from where he was. He decided the easiest thing would be to take a cab.

  There were four cabs waiting in front of the hotel, and he started to approach the first one in the taxi line—and then realized he didn’t have enough money to take a cab. He’d had about a hundred and twenty bucks when he’d checked into the Day’s Inn last night and now had four bucks left. And he was hungry. He needed money.

  He ran back into the Hyatt and used the hotel’s ATM. He knew Dillon’s people would be able to see that he’d used the machine, but he figured that didn’t matter because they already knew where he was because of the phone call he’d made to Dillon. Once he had the money he’d split, and unless the NSA had somehow managed to stick a GPS device up his ass when he wasn’t looking, Dillon’s guys shouldn’t be able to track him.

  Two minutes later, he was in a cab and on his way to Rosslyn.

  Claire assigned Gilbert to see if DeMarco had called anyone other than Dillon from the phone booth at the Hyatt. She then dispatched Alice and three other agents toward Crystal City. She knew DeMarco wouldn’t still be at the Hyatt but she figured he’d be someplace close by and she wanted Alice headed in that direction so once they located him, Alice would be there to pick him up. And Claire knew she’d locate the bastard shortly—particularly with a satellite at her disposal.

  Five minutes later she acquired the satellite she needed, and after that it was a thing of beauty, the way her technicians worked. They took a satellite image of the greater D.C. area at the exact time DeMarco had called Dillon and displayed the image on a screen in the operations room. They zoomed in until the image showed the Crystal City area. They zoomed in again until they were looking at the entrance to the Hyatt. Then they ran time forward and saw, looking down from the stratosphere, DeMarco walking out of the Hyatt and getting into a taxicab. They ran time forward again and watched DeMarco exit the cab in Rosslyn near the metro station and enter a McDonald’s. Two minutes later, Claire was watching DeMarco in real time, looking like a bum in his baggy gray sweat shirt, munching on a breakfast burrito, trudging up Nash Street toward Wilson Boulevard.

  Claire sat back and smiled.

  The smile lasted about three seconds,

  “Claire,” Gilbert said, “right before DeMarco called Dillon a call was made from that same phone booth to an FBI agent named Diane Carlucci.”

  “Aw, shit.”

  Two seconds later, another technician turned away from his monitor and said, “Claire, DeMarco used an ATM at the Hyatt before he left there.”

  “Oh, that idiot!”

  “He used an ATM when he was at the Hyatt,” Claire said.

  “That’s not good,” Dillon said.

  “Yeah, but that’s not the worst news. Right before he called you, it looks like he called an FBI agent named Diane Carlucci.”

  Dillon closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and said, “How long was he on the phone with her?”

  “Thirty-eight seconds.”

  “He couldn’t have told her the whole story in that amount of time. He probably set up a meeting with her. Carlucci must be someone he trusts at the Bureau, maybe someone he’s worked with before.”

  “Do you want me to find out?”

  “No, we don’t have time for that. Find out what Carlucci knows and stop her from meeting with DeMarco.”

  “And how do you propose I do that?” Claire asked.

  “Talk to the woman, Claire. Be convincing.”

  Walking back into the operations room, Claire said, “Where’s DeMarco now?”

  Using a laser pointer, Gilbert placed a red dot on the front entrance of a building that was visible on the wall-mounted screen. The image of the building was coming from the satellite they’d used to follow DeMarco.

  “He’s right there,” the tech said, “in that coffee shop.”

  “Good. Stay on the bastard,” she said.

  Claire went into her office, shut the door, and dialed a phone number.

  �
�This is Agent Carlucci.”

  “Agent, my name is Claire Whiting. I work for the National Security Agency.”

  “Five minutes ago DeMarco used his ATM card at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City,” Perkins said.

  “Good work, Perkins,” Levy said. He sat for a moment, thinking, and then said, “Fax a photograph of DeMarco to the front desk of the Hyatt. I’ll take it from there.”

  Levy waited three minutes and called the Hyatt. “This is Agent Douglas Kirk, United States Secret Service.”

  The person at the Hyatt who’d answered the phone inhaled sharply and said, “What?”—the reaction you’d expect from a person who’s just been told he’s talking to the Secret Service.

  “This is urgent,” Levy said, “and involves the protection of the president of the United States. You’ve just been faxed a photograph of a man. Do you have the fax?”

  “Lemme see,” the man said. Two minutes later he was back on the line, sounding breathless. “Yeah, I’ve got it. What’s this about?”

  “Do you recognize the man in the photo?”

  “Oh, my God! He was here just a few minutes ago. He used a pay phone.”

  “Did he use the ATM?”

  “Yeah. How did you know that?”

  “Did you see where he went after he used the ATM?”

  “He left the hotel.”

  “In which direction was he headed?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see outside the hotel from the front desk. But wait a minute. I’ll go ask the parking valet.” A moment later the clerk was back on the phone. “The valet said he caught a cab.”

  “Which cab company?”

  “He just said it was a maroon-colored taxi.”

  “Thank you, sir. We appreciate your help.” Levy hung up and immediately called Perkins. “Perkins, DeMarco took a maroon-colored cab from the Hyatt after he used the ATM. Figure out which company he used and find out where the cab took him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Agent Carlucci,” Claire said, “you received a phone call from a man named Joseph DeMarco about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “How do you know that?” Diane said.

  “Did you hear what I said when I introduced myself? I said I work for the National Security Agency. We’ve been watching DeMarco.”

  There was a pause as Carlucci absorbed that shocking nugget. “Why?” she asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” Claire said. “You don’t have need to know.”

  “How do I know you’re NSA?”

  “You mean other than the fact that I know DeMarco called you? Well, call the agency. We’re in the book. Ask for me. Or call anyone you know at the NSA and have them verify I work here.”

  “I don’t know anyone at the NSA.”

  “Agent Carlucci, I need to know what DeMarco told you.”

  “If you know he called me, why don’t you know what he said?”

  “Because we didn’t have a warrant to tap the phone he was using. Now will you please tell me what he told you, or do you want my director to call your director?”

  Carlucci went silent again, probably thinking: Go ahead. Call my director. Claire had already gotten the impression that there was some steel in Carlucci and she wasn’t going to be able to walk right over her.

  “Okay, Carlucci,” Claire said. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but …”

  Claire was treading on dangerous ground here. She didn’t know what DeMarco might have told Carlucci, but she agreed with Dillon that he wasn’t on the phone long enough to have told her the whole story.

  “… but DeMarco has been dating a woman who works for the CIA and this woman is currently in Afghanistan. The other night she called DeMarco. We know this because we monitor almost all communications coming from that part of the world. Well, what DeMarco’s lady friend passed on to him is controversial. Politically controversial. And it involves the CIA, the NSA, and high-ranking members of the U.S. military. I’m sorry to be so cryptic, but that’s all I can tell you.”

  “Joe said it involved the FBI.”

  “Only in a peripheral way. DeMarco’s girlfriend disagrees with what her superiors are doing in Afghanistan regarding a particular operation and when her chain of command wouldn’t listen to her she spoke to the FBI’s legal attaché in Kabul. The attaché had the good sense to know this was not an issue in which he should get involved, he told Ms. DiCapria’s superiors that she was talking out of school, and now Ms. DiCapria is in hot water, both legally and professionally.”

  “And if I call our legal attaché in Kabul, he’ll confirm this?” Carlucci said.

  “No, he won’t,” Claire said. “This operation is highly classified and strictly need to know. But I imagine five minutes after you talk the attaché, the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility will be in your office asking how it is you happen to have information on this subject.”

  “Why would Joe call me about this?”

  “I won’t know that until you tell me what he said to you.”

  Claire held her breath until Carlucci responded.

  “All he said was that he needed to see me, that he couldn’t talk on the phone, and that it involved the FBI.”

  “That’s all he said?”

  “Yes.”

  Thank God!

  “The only thing I can assume, Agent Carlucci, is that DeMarco’s trying to help his girlfriend. May I ask what your relationship is with DeMarco?”

  “We were involved with each other about three years ago but I’m married now.”

  “I see,” Claire said. “Well, all I can think is that DeMarco is trying to take advantage of your former relationship. Agent, I can’t order you not to meet with DeMarco, but believe me when I tell you that doing so would not be a career-enhancing move.”

  Carlucci didn’t say anything.

  “When were you supposed to meet him?”

  “In half an hour.”

  “Where?” Claire said.

  “I thought you guys were following him,” Carlucci said.

  Claire almost laughed. Carlucci was testing her.

  “We are. Right now he’s sitting in a coffee shop in Rosslyn on Wilson Boulevard.”

  “That’s where we’re supposed to meet,” Carlucci said.

  “Okay, Agent. Thank you for your cooperation and, again, I want to stress that it’s not in your best interest to get involved in this.”

  Claire had no idea if Carlucci would call the FBI’s legal attaché in Kabul or meet with DeMarco, but her gut told her that she wouldn’t do either of those things. All that really mattered at this point was that she knew that DeMarco hadn’t told Carlucci anything significant—and she needed to get him out of that coffee shop.

  “Sir,” Perkins said, “the cab dropped him off in Rosslyn, near the metro station.”

  “Did he go into the station?” Levy asked.

  “No. He went into the McDonald’s near the metro but he’s not there now.”

  “All right, Perkins. I want you to get four cars over to Rosslyn and start looking for him. Tell your men when they find him that they’re not to talk to him. I want DeMarco tossed into a car and I want your people to remain outside the car until I get there.”

  “Claire,” Gilbert said, “we’re picking up radio traffic from Pentagon police vehicles. They’re searching Rosslyn for DeMarco.”

  Shit. She knew that was going to happen. Levy’s men had seen DeMarco use the ATM at the Hyatt, found out from the Hyatt’s people that he’d taken a cab, and it was a cakewalk from there. The good news was they didn’t know exactly where DeMarco was. But if DeMarco left the coffee shop—which he would do eventually when Carlucci didn’t show up—the Pentagon cops might spot him walking on the street.

  “Where’s Alice?” Claire said.

  “She’s still ten minutes from Rosslyn.”

  “What the hell is taking her so long?”

  “Traffic.”

  Even the NSA couldn’t do anything about the tra
ffic.

  “Connect me to that coffee shop,” Claire said.

  DeMarco looked at his wrist to check the time, and realized he no longer had a watch. He asked a lady sitting near him for the time and she told him—but made it clear that she wasn’t interested in starting up a conversation with an unshaven guy dressed like an escapee from a poor man’s gymnasium. Diane was late. Only ten minutes late, but she’d always been a punctuality freak. Maybe she’d gotten held up in traffic.

  “Sir, is your name Joe DeMarco?”

  DeMarco had been looking out the window. He turned to see who was speaking and saw it wasn’t the lady who had reluctantly given him the time. It was the barista, a cute gal in her twenties—but she really should lose the nose ring.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, but he was wondering how the girl knew his name. He’d been in the place a couple of times but had never introduced himself. The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand at attention.

  “You have a phone call,” the barista said.

  “A phone call?”

  “Yeah. Some lady. She said it’s real important.”

  It must be Diane calling, probably to tell him that she’d been delayed—or maybe to say that she’d changed her mind about meeting him.

  “Sir, do you want to take the call?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take it,” DeMarco said. He walked over to the counter and picked up the phone. “Hey, Diane, are you on your way?” he said.

  “This isn’t Diane.”

  Oh, shit, if it wasn’t Diane, it could only be the NSA. Goddammit! How in the fuck did they find him?

  “Is this you, Alice?” DeMarco asked. “How did you find me here?”

  “It’s not Alice, it’s Alice’s boss—and how we found you is irrelevant. All you need to know is that the Pentagon Force Protection Agency is cruising Rosslyn looking for you, and the Pentagon cops work for John Levy.”

  “Who’s Levy?”

  “He’s the man who tried to kill you last night at Tuckahoe Park.” Before DeMarco could ask another question, the woman said, “You have a choice to make, DeMarco. You can either stay in that coffee shop—”