Exile Hunter Read online

  Dawn was nearly upon them when Linder and Denniston finally stuffed the chief into a taxi and sent him home, with a parking attendant following close behind in Bednarski’s vintage Mercedes. Linder arrived at the Hotel Cavalier in a separate cab just as a rosy glow began to suffuse the eastern sky over the Sannine Mountains.

  S2

  Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Voltaire

  SEPTEMBER, FRIDAY, WEST BEIRUT

  When the alarm rang at nine-thirty, Linder lowered his feet to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. The morning sun glared at him from the east window, forcing him to lower his gaze to avoid the painful light. He picked up the bedside phone and dialed.

  “Room service? Send up two cups of Arabic coffee, medium sweet, two large bottles of sparkling mineral water and a basic mezzé for two. I’ll pay double if you can get it here in fifteen minutes.”

  Linder’s temples throbbed and he felt as if the room were rotating. His pajamas stank with sour alcoholic sweat. He shuffled into the white-tiled bathroom and, for a moment, could not decide whether his stomach cramps were commanding him to sit upon or kneel before the porcelain throne. He wished he’d had the sense to vomit before going to bed, for now the whiskey, arak, wine, and brandy would punish him for hours until they were completely metabolized.

  Linder opened all four windows to vent the room’s stale air, then retreated to the shower, alternating at one-minute intervals the hottest water he could stand with the coldest. He had been scrubbing and shampooing for nearly a quarter of an hour when his meal arrived. He answered the door in his bathrobe, still dripping, and stood aside while the waiter set a place for him to eat. As promised, Linder offered a 100% gratuity, which the young man accepted with evident delight before he hurried out the door.

  As Linder sipped his first cup of coffee, Neil Denniston arrived with the disguise technician, an attractive Hispanic woman of about thirty with an eye-catching figure. After introducing herself by first name only, the technician opened what appeared to be an oversized purse, removed a disguise kit shaped to fit the bag’s interior, and laid out its contents on the coffee table. Denniston looked on in silence, his eyes concealed behind wraparound French sunglasses that made him appear in far better shape than Linder. Meanwhile, Linder’s eyes strayed to the disguise artist’s shapely derriere and held their focus there.

  “You shouldn’t have tried to keep up with him,” Denniston opened at last. “I swear, Bednarski has the constitution of a satyr. The only way I manage to stay on my feet is to water my drinks from the start.”

  “I’ll remember that next time,” Linder scowled. “Would you two care to join me for breakfast?”

  Denniston sniffed at the garlic-laced Lebanese specialties on the table and waved away the fumes with disgust. “It's not exactly what I would have picked to soothe a troubled gut.” The disguise technician wrinkled her nose and turned away, too.

  “It’s not about being appetizing,” Linder replied. “I need the garlic to mask the odor of alcohol oozing from my pores. Mormon Joe isn’t supposed to be a boozer, you know.”

  Denniston covered his eyes in mock shame.

  “Sorry, bud, it totally slipped my mind...”

  “Sure it did,” Linder replied between mouthfuls of tabbouleh.

  “Okay, whatever,” Denniston continued, helping himself to the spare bottle of Perrier on Linder’s breakfast tray. “The point is, Mormon Joe is the only rebel Philip Eaton has even considered meeting face-to-face in more than six months. It’s only after you spent the last two months posing as Joe Tanner with expats all across Southern Europe that we finally attracted Eaton’s attention. For some odd reason, the Mormon Return Movement has piqued his interest.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Linder replied. “Of all the rebel causes, why would Eaton care about the forced relocation of Mormons from Utah?” Linder asked. “His ties have always been to the Great Lakes.”

  The disguise technician waved Linder over to a chair she had carried into the bathroom so she could shampoo, cut and color Linder’s hair. He wolfed down the remaining tabbouleh, then followed her with Denniston in tow.

  “Maybe because the Great Lakes insurgency has been moribund for over a year,” Denniston answered a moment later. “And because Eaton’s prime contact in the Cleveland militias has gone missing. Which means that Eaton is sitting on a war chest with no troops to spend it. For somebody committed to overthrowing the Unionists, that can’t be very satisfying.”

  “Maybe so,” Linder agreed. “But that still doesn’t mean he’ll back Tanner. Eaton is too smart to let the money burn a hole in his pocket. He’d rather wait for the right deal to come along.”

  “Even if he does, I think Tanner is still our best bet under the circumstances,” Denniston asserted. “The MRM carries a compelling story and, if we can get Eaton to make even a single wire transfer, Headquarters will be able to trace the money back to the source and grab it.”

  “And if Eaton doesn’t bite?”

  “We back off and take a different approach,” Denniston continued. “We’ve got too much riding on Tanner and the MRM in other exile sting operations to risk compromising them with Eaton.”

  “Maybe we should request electronic surveillance to follow the chatter among the exile networks.”

  “Done that,” Denniston agreed. “We’ve also got audio and video coverage of Eaton’s living room, dining room, and kitchen if you get that far. If the listening post picks up any sign you might be at risk there, we could have a security team dressed in Lebanese gendarme uniforms drop in within fifteen seconds.”

  “I like that,” Linder nodded.

  “All right, then,” Denniston addressed the disguise expert, “Let’s go, Chiquita. Time to turn this man into Joe Tanner.”

  “If you call me that one more time, frat boy, I’ll deck you,” the woman replied without looking up. “My name is Rosita.”

  “Well, excuse me, senorita. My Spanish, it not so good,” Denniston replied offhandedly and turned away.

  An hour later, the disguise artist raised a mirror to Linder’s face. He had become accustomed to this transformation in recent months. His usually dark brown hair, eyebrows, and beard stubble were now a light brown or dirty blond; his brown eyes were covered with blue contact lenses; and his bite and his diction were altered with a dental prosthesis. He wore a charcoal business suit over a starched white shirt and regimental tie and, while resembling the stereotypical Latter-day Saints missionary, also could have easily passed for one of the legion of Russian or German businessmen who frequented the city’s commercial districts.

  Once Linder and the technician had compared the details of his transformation to control photographs and initialed the disguise checklist, Denniston dismissed her and remained behind for Linder’s final briefing before the afternoon meeting with Kendall. Under normal circumstances, far more time would have been allotted for the final pre-op briefing, which would have been preceded by days of study and rehearsal. By comparison, the preparation for this operation had been unaccountably shoddy.

  When the session finished, Denniston rose from the stuffed chair opposite Linder’s bed as if to leave. But before he could offer any parting words, Linder strode to the window, looked outside, then turned around to address his colleague. “Listen, Neil,” he began. “I’ve been feeling kind of strung out lately and I guess I haven’t recognized just how far I’ve pushed my luck the last few years. I haven’t told anyone else, but I have bad dreams most nights now and it’s been hard to get enough sleep to stay on top of my game. I think my body is telling me it’s time to back off a bit.”

  Linder watched for Denniston’s reaction and, seeing his face become an expressionless mask, decided to continue whether the Desk Chief liked it or not.

  “I think it may be time for me to do a tour at Headquarters. But the idea has me a little worried. Sometimes I get the sense that certain people back there resent my staying out
in the field so long and see me as a pampered prima donna. I won’t name names, but I have it on good authority that some of the people I’ve relied on for support may have turned on me.”

  “And how would you like me to help?” Denniston responded, folding his arms across his chest and looking askance at Linder.

  “I’m not exactly sure, but maybe you could sound out the powers-that-be about my coming home short of tour,” Linder ventured.

  Denniston listened quietly before crossing to the window and laying a cold hand on Linder’s shoulder.

  “Believe me, Warren,” he replied firmly. “I know exactly how you feel. But this is not the time to throttle back. Our work isn’t done until we have uprooted the last vestiges of the insurgency at home and flushed out every last rebel financier hiding overseas.”

  Taken aback at such a doctrinaire response from a fast-and-loose guy like Denniston, Linder suppressed an urge to laugh.

  “Now, don’t get me wrong, Neil,” he began with a conciliatory smile. “I don’t want to come across as a shirker, but what you’re saying seems like an awfully tall order. Eliminate all opposition at home and abroad? That would take generations. Meanwhile, I need some R & R fast.”

  “It’s your choice, pal,” Denniston answered. “I’ll see what I can do. But, right now, we could really use your help in rolling up Old Man Eaton. Not only is he an insurgent financier with enough money stashed away to keep his pot boiling for years, but the old man is also a recognized leader within the insurgent movement. It will be a major score to roll him up and, when we do, you’ll own a piece of it.”

  “And how would that work, exactly?” Linder questioned.

  “For one thing, consider your next promotion in the bag. As it happens, I’ll be sitting on your promotion panel this year. And if that’s not enough to push you over the top, the Chief of Operations owes Bob some favors. So, play ball with us a bit longer and you can have virtually any slot you want when we’re done.”

  Linder returned Denniston’s expectant gaze with a weary nod. “All right. I’ll do my part if you do yours. Let’s get on with it,” he said. “

  “Good. Now, go as far as you can with Eaton, but don’t overdo it,” Denniston warned. “Better to return for another pass than scare him off.”

  Without bothering to respond, Linder stepped to the nightstand, picked up the phone and called the front desk for a taxi. A moment later, he turned to Denniston.

  “Okay, I’m off. It may be a few minutes before my ride comes, so please wait ten or fifteen before going down. I don’t want the desk clerk to connect us.”

  “Sure thing,” Denniston answered after emptying his bottle of Perrier. “But there is one more complication. The surveillance team reported this morning that Roger didn’t come alone, after all. His wife and stepdaughter are staying with him at the Sofitel. So far, they haven’t been to Eaton’s apartment, but I thought you ought to know they’re in town.”

  “Patricia Kendall? Here in Beirut?” Linder asked, his voice rising.

  “Apparently they arrived from the Continent, which is why surveillance didn’t pick them up earlier. Why does it matter? Do you think she might recognize you? You two haven’t crossed paths before, have you?” Denniston searched his colleague’s face closely.

  Linder shook his head and looked away.

  “No, it just complicates things, that’s all. I don’t like it when targets have their families around during a meeting. You can never be sure where things will lead with wives and kids.”

  “Don’t worry, pal. They won’t be at the flat. Eaton’s not that stupid,” Denniston said, approaching Linder so that he was cornered between nightstand and bed. “But, come to think of it, you were posted to London around the time that Eaton and the Kendalls arrived, weren’t you? Are you sure you didn’t cross paths?”

  “We overlapped for a while but I never ran into them,” Linder answered, stepping around Denniston to straighten his tie in the wall mirror.

  “And not before then, in Cleveland, maybe? Didn’t you grow up in the same part of town as the Eatons? Over on the East Side, by Shaker Heights and the University, where all the rich people used to live?” Denniston now stood directly behind him so that the two men looked at each other in the mirror.

  “Not exactly, Neil,” Linder retorted. “Our house was in Lyndhurst and the Eaton estate was in Gates Mills. They’re only about five miles apart, but Gates Mills was a different world.” Evading the Branch Chief, Linder checked his watch as if to point out that it was time for him to be on his way. But Denniston would not be put off.

  “Okay, but if you lived in different worlds, how do you explain this?” he asked, pulling a folded clump of papers from his pocket and handing it to Linder. To Linder’s astonishment, the first page was a photocopy of a newspaper article about the Cotillion Ball and the Cleveland debutantes presented to society that year, including Patricia Eaton. The following page included a photocopy of an annotated guest list showing Linder’s name with a check mark next to it, and a photograph showing a wide-eyed Warren Linder dancing with a less than enthusiastic Patricia Eaton.

  “Granted, it’s going back pretty far, but it’s not the kind of thing a guy would easily forget—not when the party is for someone as rich and good-looking as Patricia Eaton. What do you say, does this refresh your memory?”

  Denniston took a seat on the bed and waited in silence while Linder inspected the papers.

  Linder’s heart sank. The newspaper article was in the public domain, but the DSS could have obtained the guest list only by means of an informant in the Eaton household. If they had this kind of material, what else might they have on him?

  Linder took a long look at the photograph before raising his head to offer Denniston a sheepish grin.

  “It wasn’t one of my happier nights, which is probably why I buried the memory,” Linder explained truthfully. “As I recall, the only reason I would have been invited was because Patricia and I had been in ballroom dance class together in seventh grade. We had just run into each other at a dance in Boston while away at boarding school and I expect the party planners needed some extra boys from the right schools to provide gender balance. They must have reached pretty far down the list to get to me.”

  Denniston nodded and stuffed the papers back into his jacket pocket before responding.

  Linder sensed from this that Denniston had noticed his embarrassment and believed his story to be true. If so, Denniston might be willing to deep-six the documents and thereby prevent some paranoid counterintelligence analyst from launching an investigation. He shuddered to think of what could happen if Bob Bednarski had found the documents. But, with Denniston, a favor always came at a price and, until it was paid, his old friend would hold the upper hand.

  “All right,” Denniston conceded at last. “I’ll let it go. But you’d better not be hiding anything else, buddy. If you do anything to screw up this operation, there will be hell to pay.”

  Linder nodded in solemn agreement while praying that his story would hold.

  * * *

  Shortly before one o’clock, Warren Linder exited the cab and straightened his tie again in the display window of a trendy men’s clothing boutique near Place Sassine in Christian East Beirut. He was now fully in character as Joe Tanner, diehard Mormon rebel leader, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to meet Roger Kendall, offshore banker to the anti-Unionist insurgency.

  According to the cover legend developed for the operation, Tanner had traveled by freighter from Vancouver to Korea on an alias Australian passport, then boarded a flight to Dubai, and then another to Beirut with help from a friendly Asian intelligence service. He had risked his life to escape, and would risk it once again on his return in order to win the financial and operational support of wealthy American emigrés like Kendall and Eaton.

  In Tanner’s mind, the survival of the persecuted Mormon Church and the very lives of his coreligionists depended on winning support from Roger Kendall and his in
fluential father-in-law. More than a million Mormons were now languishing in resettlement camps in Alaska and the U.S.-occupied Yukon, having been forcibly removed from Utah and Idaho during the insurgency when the President-for-Life declared the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a terrorist organization. The Mormons now demanded a “right of return” to their ancestral homeland in Utah and the Mormon Return Movement was created to fulfill it.

  Linder remained before the display window when a well-heeled foreigner in a raw silk suit passed behind him carrying a shopping bag with the Dunhill logo. The man was slightly shorter than average height but exuded an air of confident authority that befit a former Wall Street law partner like Roger Kendall. Linder waited until Kendall had advanced twenty or thirty paces, then followed him up Rue Sioufi toward the Place Sassine.

  Seen from behind, Kendall gave the impression of someone intensely aware of being watched but affecting not to care. The perfect tailoring of Kendall’s bespoke suit, his bronzed complexion, the freshly trimmed gray sideburns, all contributed to Linder’s assessment that, despite the impeccably groomed shell of the former corporate litigator, inside dwelled a hollowed-out soul like that of hundreds of rebel exiles he had known since the fall of the Third American Republic.

  These men had escaped Unionist America with their money but had left behind their businesses, their professions, their contacts, their clubs, their neighborhoods, their charities, their connectedness to the communities that defined who they were. Linder had come to know men like Kendall during his student years at Exeter, Kenyon, and Columbia. Good-looking, sophisticated, well-traveled youths from Greenwich and Rye, Brookline and Cambridge, Wilmington and Philadelphia’s Main Line, who by young adulthood had little time to spare for anyone outside their interconnected circles of privilege.