Point of Contact

“I was on the fast track — born and bred for it, right? Well, I was posted in Berlin until I got busted out of that assignment and demoted to Sofia—”

“Busted for what?”

“The ambassador’s wife.” Rhodes couldn’t suppress a smile. “At his home. In flagrante delicto.”

Asshole, Jack thought. “You need to finish this.”

“So instead of getting fired outright, I was posted to Sofia — a nod to my father, who was still a man of some influence back then. I was warned that it was my one and only chance to redeem myself — a way to work my way back up from the minor leagues. Truth was, I was never really that good at field craft — especially at recruiting local talent — and I was under a lot of pressure to succeed. The one Bulgarian source I managed to develop was a man in the CSS—”

“Who?”

Rhodes read Jack’s face again. A lie now was a risk, but burning Zvezdev would be even riskier. “Doesn’t matter. Probably not his real name, anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes. So I worked out an arrangement with this contact. He was desperate for computer chips, which I provided, and I was desperate for intel, especially on KGB activities in the region, which he fed me at regular intervals. The only problem was that the intel was weak, and not very interesting to Langley. My COS put a lot of pressure on me to up the ante or kiss my career good-bye.”

“Where did you get them?”

“My official cover at the embassy was the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service. I had access to department money, and I knew someone in Silicon Valley who supplied them to me through a shell company.”

“And your COS approved of this?”

“He had no idea about it.”

“Then you were breaking the law.”

“Sure, but I didn’t care. I was desperate.”

“You were selling high tech to our enemies.”

“Trading, not selling. And not all that high tech — CPUs for personal computers, mostly. It was a calculated risk. My Bulgarian contact couldn’t get enough of them. Of course, it was actually the East Germans that wanted them, and the bastard I was giving them to was actually selling them to the Germans. Making a killing doing it, too. I didn’t care. I just needed the intel he was giving me, and when my chief threatened to ship me back to the States and kill my career, I confronted my contact. Told him I knew he was selling those chips to Berlin for a profit, and that he’d be shot by his KGB handlers if they knew what he was up to. I told him if he didn’t help me to pull off a really big score, I’d not only cut off his chip supply, I’d turn him in to Moscow.”

“Where did Paul come into all of this?”

“About a week after I confronted my contact, I received a very late call. My Bulgarian friend was on the other end, very excited and scared at the same time. He promised me the biggest intelligence coup of my career — maybe anybody’s. He said he had a high-level defector who wanted to come over. The only problem, it had to be done within the next two hours. And to come alone.”

Jack frowned. “Sounds like a setup. Why did you believe him?”

“Because he was all about the shekels. He said it would cost me twenty thousand dollars. He knew I couldn’t raise that amount of cash on such short notice, but we’d done business together, and he told me he trusted me to get it to him within the week. It sounded legit, so we set a place and time for the meet.”

Jack checked his watch. “You’ve got about a minute, at most.”

“For what?”

A look fell over Jack’s face. It chilled Rhodes to the bone.

“So, where was I? Oh, yes. Paul. Truth is, I hardly knew him. I think we met once or twice at some interminable staff meeting. We were both with the Company, but he was just an accountant working in a shabby little office in the basement. Well, when I got the call that set the meet, I scrambled downstairs to the basement to grab keys for an old Lada we used for undercover work. The locker where the keys were kept was just outside Paul’s office, and there he was, burning the midnight oil, and—”

Rhodes glanced out the window. Two black SUVs pulled up to the curb. Doors opened. Men and women in coats and armored vests marked FBI scrambled out. Rhodes stood, leaning on his desk, panic on his face.

“Jack—”

“What?”

“There must be a way.”

“Afraid not.”

Rhodes’s eyes flitted to his desk for an instant. Jack followed his gaze. The Kimber .380 was only inches from Rhodes’s manicured hands.

Jack slid his coat jacket back, revealing a pistol on his hip. “I’m begging you. Pick it up.”

“I think not.”

“Coward. Pick it up.”

Rhodes took a step back from his desk, palms up. “I can’t shoot you, Jack. I need you.”

“Need me? What for?”

“You’re my insurance. This whole affair — you’re up to your eyeballs in it. So is your father. Defense contractors? Spies? North Koreans? Your father would never risk the scandal. It would ruin his administration. Call him. Call this whole thing off, now, before it’s too late.”

Two FBI agents marched into the study. One of them held a sheaf of papers in one hand. “Senator Rhodes?”

“Jack? Trust me, this can all go away. Make the call.”