CHAPTER 4
The conference room door swung silently open. Lee nudged Amanda past the threshold, taking her arm to guide her to one of the padded chairs at the head of the long conference room table. Leaning across her slender form, he pulled a stack of thick, three-ring binders into an accessible position and flipped the cover of the top one.
Deep-set, dark eyes stared emptily from a glossy black and white photograph. With his close-cropped, salt and pepper hair, coarse features and nondescript gray suit, the man in the picture could have melted invisibly into any large crowd. Under the unsmiling visage, a two paragraph dossier summarized his known affiliations, specialties and habits.
"These are the most likely suspects," Lee said, settling his left hand on the back of Amanda's chair as he waved his right one over the binders. "Midlevel operatives, experienced couriers, a few semiretired diplomats who're familiar with the D.C area. If you don't find our guy --" Lee dropped the dead man's autopsy photo, paper-clipped to the outside of a thin manilla folder, onto the tabletop, "we'll move on to the less likely prospects." His eyes drifted to a portable bookcase which had been wheeled into the room and parked along the wall. Its three shelves were jammed with identical binders.
After staring at the laden shelves, Amanda shifted slightly and turned to look up at him, her loose, shoulder-length curls brushing the exposed wrist below his rolled up sleeve. The dark tendrils were silky and fragrant, like a field of wildflowers in springtime, and the tiny hairs on his arm straightened as though he had experienced a mild, electric shock. Unaccountably flustered by the innocent contact, he withdrew his hand and tried to beat a hasty retreat.
"You get started," he said, stepping backward and shoving the tingling appendage into his trouser pocket, "and I'll check on you later, if I'm not following another lead. If you do find a match, just pick up that phone --" he gestured toward a beige box on the wall close to the door, "-- and dial 888. Francine should be at her desk for the rest of the afternoon."
He had almost reached the doorway when a rhythmic tapping stopped him in his tracks. Not the sharp rap of tapering, manicured nails, he noted irrelevantly, but the soft thump of impatient fingertips.
Trying to project an image of command and professionalism, he turned an imperious stare at her and raised a sardonic brow. "Yes?"
She swiveled her chair to face him, and he lowered his eyes to avoid her disgruntled frown. His attention lingered for a moment on the shapely legs extending from beneath her pink skirt before he jerked his gaze back upward.
If she noticed his brief lapses, she didn't show it. Her brown eyes were narrowed with a stubborn determination he was fast coming to recognize. "Mr. Melrose said you'd answer my questions."
He sighed, rubbing his right hand across tight muscles in the back of his neck. "A-man-da. This is a simple assignment. You sit here; you look through the photos; you tell Francine if you find the guy. What else could you possibly need to know?"
She folded her arms across her chest and fixed him with an indignant glare. "I've spent the last two hours in the Agency, doing my best to help you," she said, a hint of steel beneath the even tone. "I haven't complained about the time I've wasted. I haven't complained about the resumes you ruined. I haven't complained about my soup. I've answered all of your questions and all of Mr. Melrose's questions. I think I have a right to know what's going on."
A flash of annoyance coursed through him. His case was in shambles, and he had only a few hours to pick up the pieces and fit them back together. He didn't have time to deal with a troublesome, inquisitive civilian. On the other hand, it would probably be faster to answer her questions than to listen to her rambling, and not entirely unjustified, griping. He sighed, pulling out another chair and slumping into it. "All right. What do you want to ask?"
She looked surprised by his sudden capitulation, and he felt a stab of guilt. He hadn't intended to be as dictatorial and ungrateful as she obviously considered him.
Reaching for the photo of the dead man, she studied it intently for several moments. Curiosity and compassion mingled in her serious brown gaze. "Why is he so important?" she finally asked.
Lee closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger as he began a grudging explanation. "Four days ago, there was a major security breach at one of the Army's top satellite research centers. Two men hijacked a waste management truck and infiltrated the facility. They drove off with the latest plans for the Army's HTK system."
Amanda's nose wrinkled, faint lines of concentration furrowing her brow. "HTK?"
"Hit to kill. It's one of the most promising technologies in the President's proposed multilayer antimissile defense shield."
Her eyes opened wide, the long lashes a dark patina against her creamy skin. "Star Wars?"
He couldn't help grinning at her rapt absorption in a technology so far removed from her day-to-day reality. "HTK is expected be our first line of defense in a Soviet missile strike. HTKs are sometimes called "smart rocks," because they don't have an explosive warhead. They use a heat-seeking device to zero in on a Soviet missile during the boost phase, when it's emitting a huge amount of infrared energy, and ram it."
Lee picked up a pencil and held it, pointing up at a slight angle, its eraser resting lightly on the smooth, wooden surface of the table. "Say this is a Soviet surface-to-surface missile, and it's aimed at D.C.." Picking up another pencil, he held it in the air, pointed toward the first one. "This," he said, nodding toward the second pencil, "is the smart rock. It's based in low Earth orbit where it's hard to target with anti satellite weapons."
"So it's just sitting up there, waiting?"
"Right. Now, when the Soviet missile fires --" Lee started moving the first pencil slowly away from the table. "The smart rock detects the infrared energy from the booster rockets and . . . BAM!" The second pencil swooped swiftly downward, colliding with the first one; both clattered to the tabletop. "From our intelligence reports, this is the part of the Star Wars technology that really worries the Soviets, because it basically explodes their missiles in their own backyard. If the stolen plans fall into the wrong hands, the Soviets will be able to work out evasive procedures before we have the first HTK ready to launch. Our defense shield's gonna be set back years."
Skepticism clouded Amanda's brown eyes. "How can the shield be set back that far? The President just proposed the Star Wars defense last March."
"True, but the Army's been tinkering with the HTK concept since the mid-70's. With the new funding they expect in January, they hoped to be ready for preliminary testing by next Spring."
She nodded in understanding, her gaze returning to the dead man's photo. "Was he one of the men who stole the plans?"
Lee shook his head; the movement exacerbated the dull headache that had been threatening all afternoon. "No . . . we don't think the Soviets were directly involved in the theft, but they're usually first in line to take advantage of any satellite technology that comes onto the market. We have a few leads on the thieves, but nothing concrete. We've also put out feelers through all of our known brokers, and we haven't gotten a single nibble."
"How do you know this man was going to buy them?"
"The day before yesterday, we intercepted a message. It was incomplete, but we picked up the words "smart rock," today's date, and enough of the time to know an exchange is set up for sometime tonight. It also gave the address of the apartment building where you --" he gave a lopsided smile, "-- met the courier and instructions to stay put and await orders. This guy showed up at the apartment, so he must have been the recipient of the message."
"The apartment building wasn't where he was supposed to buy the missile plans?"
"No; the apartment was set up as a safe house -- somewhere for the courier to lie low and wait for further instructions. The Soviets have several of these places, sprinkled through the D.C. area. They're stocked with whatever their guy will need for a short stay."
"How do you know he was the Soviet courier? Maybe he was just visiting someone in the building."
"No; he went to the apartment, left briefly, and was on his way back when he collapsed."
"I thought you said he was ordered to stay put?"
Lee raked his fingers through his hair. "That's the puzzling part. He left for almost thirty minutes, against orders." Lee stopped to mull, yet again, that contradiction. "They never vary their routines; they never break orders," he muttered, more to himself than to her.
"Mr. Melrose said, if I can identify the dead man, you might be able to identify other possible couriers. But, even if the Russians find out he's dead, how can they get someone here in time to take his place?"
"Usually, for an acquisition this big, the Soviets have more than one possible courier. If one of their guys gets tripped up in airport security, he turns around and goes home; if one of them thinks he's being tailed, he goes on evasive maneuvers and keeps us busy. Odds are, at least one of their guys will make it to the meet. That's why we want a list of known associates. There's another courier out there . . . probably more than one. We may not find them before the sale goes through, but if we can come up with a few likelys, our guys on airport surveillance have a much better chance of keeping the HTK plans from getting out of the country. Now," Lee said, pulling himself to his feet and moving again toward the doorway, "I have work to do. Just do your best, okay? It could be important."
Her curiosity apparently satisfied, Amanda swiveled away from him. As she did so, the autopsy folder bumped the edge of the table and was jarred from her grasp. The attached photograph and several other documents slipped from the folder and fluttered toward the floor. "Oh," she gasped, her left hand flying to her mouth.
Lee leapt instinctively, grabbing for the tumbling papers. At the same instant, Amanda sprang to her feet. He might have considered her movements graceful had he anticipated them -- and had his usually suave self-image not been stinging from his unexplainable reaction to their earlier contact -- but he chastised her awkwardness, under his breath, when she collided with his chest. Shaking his head and glowering, he set both hands on her shoulders and pushed her firmly back into the chair. Then he knelt to gather the fallen paperwork.
She flushed, her teeth pulling at her lower lip as her fingers ironed the crumpled papers he had pressed into her hands. "I'll put everything back in order. I just need to figure out what order they're supposed to be in. What's this one?" When she held the top sheet toward him, it quivered in her grasp.
He caught her wrist in a loose grip and quickly released it. "It's just an inventory of the dead guy's personal effects: cufflinks, a ball point pen, cash, an airline ticket, a visa, and diplomatic papers . . . all in perfect order under a false name. None of this stuff is gonna help with identification."
"Three twenty dollar bills, a ten, a five, and sixty-three cents." Amanda read through the list as she straightened the pile on her lap. "It doesn't look like he was carrying enough money to buy missile plans."
"In a sale this big, the funds are transferred electronically. A courier only needs enough cash to look like a tourist and maybe handle a few incidentals, like cab fare. This one," he flicked the photo, "was a big spender. He gave the cabbie a twenty."
Amanda frowned as she ran a finger across the page. "Where'd he get the change?"
Lee shrugged as he finally made good his exit. "I have no idea. Maybe Grayson was right . . . maybe he went out for lunch."