A Sound of Freedom Read online

  Amused at the thought of all those state officials going to prison, it suddenly dawned on him that he, too, might be going to prison. Jack Johnson was AWOL, maybe even wanted for desertion. What if the only two people who knew what he had been doing for the last eight years were dead? He might be listed as a spy, with no way to prove otherwise. He remembered reading about an army officer on a secret mission for President Lincoln. Two days after President Lincoln was assassinated the officer was captured and unable to prove his innocence, was hung by his own troops. It could happen to him. He could be shot by a firing squad for treason. To compound his problems, numerous KGB agents in the United States would be watching, listening, and reporting. Did they have orders to kill if he reneged? Of course they did. He began to realize he had problems. Yes indeed, he had lots of problems. Hell, he didn’t even know what Gatorade was.

  NO PLACE TO GO

  The crowd was large, and everybody shouted questions at the same time. Security was having a hard time keeping everyone at what they considered a safe distance. But for Jack Johnson it was merely routine, another show and another con job. Every major TV network was there with their video cameras, all vying for the best position. Photographers from all the newspapers and magazines were clicking shutters continually. Jack was beginning to enjoy the charade, a moment in the limelight. Having already decided to go along with the Soviets’ plan until he could figure out what to do, he delivered a short speech and continued to answer questions as his attendants wheeled his gurney toward the helicopter that would deliver him to the Bethesda Naval Hospital. “Yes, he was treated well in the Soviet Union.” “Yes, he received excellent medical treatment.”

  Another crowd of reporters was waiting by the helipad outside the hospital. He made another short speech and again answered questions as his gurney was loaded into another ambulance for the short trip to the hospital. “Yes, Soviet hospitals were clean and well equipped.” “Yes, doctors were exceedingly skilled.” “Yes, the staff was very competent and conscientious.” Max wondered if anybody believed his lies. He figured the hate-America crowd and Communist sympathizers would believe it simply because they wanted it to be true; it didn’t matter. What did matter was that the KGB section bosses who cooked up the harebrained scheme would believe he was still on the team and carrying out their instructions to the letter.

  After the doctors poked and probed until they were satisfied, the lab technicians drew all the blood they wanted, and the X-ray technicians took pictures from every possible angle, he was put to bed, given a sedative, and was once again dreaming.

  Henri Tosi had finished dinner and was enjoying a cup of coffee as he watched the six o’clock news.

  Their lead story, the return of Ambassador David Harte, began with lots of commentary and speculation before cutting to the video, taped earlier at Andrews Air Force Base.

  Suddenly the coffee cup fell from Henri Tosi’s hand. He leaned forward in his chair, eyes glued to the television set, oblivious of the hot coffee burning his skin. He turned up the volume and continued to stare in disbelief. Yes, there it was again. It was impossible, but he heard it clearly and distinctly. Ambassador David Aaron Harte had spoken a code known to only one other man in the world besides himself, a code worked out in Budapest nearly nine years ago by two friends while sipping cappuccino made in a hundred-year-old porcelain espresso machine in Gerbeaud’s, after which Jack Johnson had walked out across Worosmarty Ter, turned right toward the Danube and disappeared.

  Still watching the TV, he picked up a phone and punched out a number, a series of clicks followed by a single short tone. At the sound of the tone he punched out another series of numbers. The man on the other end answered with a single word.

  “Langley.”

  “Connect me with the watch commander.” The voice on the other end asked for an identification authenticator. Henri complied. There was silence; neither party spoke as the young man fed the information into his computer. Smiling at the astonished and anxious expression he knew would be present on the young man’s face when he viewed the computer readout and realized he was speaking with the DDO, Henri waited patiently. In a matter of seconds the voice came back crisp and clear. “Yes sir, one moment, sir.”

  Five seconds later another voice answered. Henri spoke briefly with the second voice and hung up without waiting for a reply.

  He wasn’t aware of the blistered skin underneath his coffee-soaked clothing yet—even the pain, when he bent to retrieve the fallen cup, did not penetrate his train of thought. Placing the coffee cup on the breakfast bar he continued into the dressing area of his bathroom, removing his shirt as he walked. Sitting on a valet chair he removed the rest of his clothing, tossed everything into a hamper and pulled on a bathrobe as he walked toward the kitchen. With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, he returned to his chair opposite the television set, picked up the remote control unit and started tuning through channels on his satellite receiver, searching for another news broadcast.

  Although Harte was mentioned in the news from time to time he was normally pretty low profile. Henri had never met the ambassador and knew very little about him. With bandages on his head and face it was difficult to tell anything about his features, yet there was something vaguely familiar about the man. He did know, however, that in his speech at Andrews, and again at the Bethesda Naval Hospital was a clear cry for help from an old friend he had never expected to see again. They had become the best of friends in the five years they worked as a team in Europe, one the teacher, one the student. The student had disappeared behind the Iron Curtain—very few ever made the return trip.

  The telephone rang. Henri lifted the receiver to his ear and spoke once, listened intently to the voice on the other end, passed on more instructions, and hung up. He wouldn’t get much sleep tonight.

  The hospital corridors were busy at seven in the morning. He found the room he wanted, presented his identification to the two men sitting outside, took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, opened the door, and walked inside. The man on the bed, clad in standard blue hospital pajamas, still slept, his breathing slow, even, and rhythmic. Henri walked carefully from one side of the bed to the other and back again. The size and weight were right, about two hundred pounds, a little heavier than he remembered. With bandages covering most of his face it was difficult to tell, but if fingerprints didn’t lie, this was his old friend. Henri pulled up a chair and sat down.

  He thought about those five years and about the friendship that had evolved. They were more than friends—they were the best of friends. He thought also of the wealth of information Jack had gotten out of the Soviet Union. Puzzling, though, was the fact that no information had been received from Jack in nearly a year. The flow had ended abruptly. Henri had assumed his friend was dead, identified as a spy and executed in secrecy. But if Jack was alive, several developments of major importance were about to unfold.

  At the moment the whereabouts and well-being of the real David Harte was not one of the developments concerning him, but rather the implication that someone in the chain stretching from Langley to Moscow and back was about to sell out his country to the Communists. This person was collecting information, tactics, routing procedures, and, most importantly, names. When that person decided to “go over” he or she, no doubt, had evidence in place to incriminate Jack, evident by the fact that he was alive. Even without useful information to send the CIA, Jack would still have sent situation codes. But if Jack Johnson was passing himself off as David Harte this meant there were other plans in the works which could mean a lot of surprises for people in high places.

  No movement betrayed consciousness before the eyes opened to stare across the space of three feet into the face of Henri Tosi. Unable to speak because of the lump swelling up in his throat, his eyes closed again, to reopen several seconds later, moist and reddened. He heaved a sigh and calmly said, “You remembered.”

  “Yeah, I remembered,” came the reply. The one brief emotional moment had come
and gone. “So, how’ve you been?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” Jack countered. Either man would, without reservation, sacrifice his own life to save the other, yet there was little to suggest the strength of the bond between the two men as the conversation began as casually as when they had left off more than eight years ago. Jack’s parting sentiment had been, “See you around.”

  Henri had replied with an equally offhanded remark, “Yeah, well, don’t take any wooden nickels.”

  The two men reminisced at length, taking their time getting around to the problems at hand. Problem number one, what to do about David Harte, and problem number two, how to ferret out the conspirator. Henri had been considering these problems since two o’clock that morning when information reached him confirming that the fingerprints of the man registered at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, as David Aaron Harte matched those of Sergeant Jackson Jefferson Johnson, wanted by the United States Marines for desertion. The operative had removed fingerprints from the sleeping man in one of the VIP suites at Bethesda and delivered them personally to the FBI for identification. An expert at the FBI matched the prints to Sergeant Johnson, but was told nothing. No entries showed in FBI records. There would be no paper trail—only five people knew the facts.

  The amount of time required to trap the conspirator would depend on how long it took to get an operative in place inside the embassy in Moscow. Couriers were no longer used or needed for getting information out of Russia. The space age had made life less risky for agents when, on a secret mission, shuttle Colombia had launched two satellites. One of these satellites passed over Moscow at regular intervals, then on the other side of the earth it intersected the orbit of the other satellite. After the two satellites rendezvoused, the second satellite continued on its orbit which took it directly over Haines, Alaska. The satellite passing over Moscow, by design, appeared to be inoperative with no transmissions back to earth, thus the code name, “Dead Man.” However, utilizing open-ended receivers, it listened to radio signals as it crossed the Soviet Union and passed this information, by way of a narrow beam at very low power, to its sister satellite each time their orbits intersected. The second satellite then beamed the information down to the listening station in Haines as it passed over Alaska, where it was coded, scrambled, and rerouted through a third satellite to Langley. One very special signal intercepted by Dead Man, when it passed over Moscow, came from the American embassy. This signal transmitted at very low power—a mere 10 watts—on a vertically transmitted conical beam, less than two tenths of a degree in diameter at the source, with the carrier frequency controlled by a randomly firing oscillator which shifted thousands of times a second, made transmissions virtually undetectable either from adjacent rooftops or from airplanes flying overhead.

  For the last two years intelligence gathered by agents in Russia had traveled on this beam to CIA Headquarters in Virginia. Within the last year Jack had reported to only four agents. These four agents were all inside the embassy and had access to incoming reports from everyone working for the CIA inside the Soviet Union. Many of those agents were Soviet citizens as well as members of the military and state officials. It was imperative to place an operative, unknown and unannounced, in the embassy before the conspirator could cut his deal with the Communists. Failure would result in total devastation of the CIA intelligence-gathering network behind the Iron Curtain. Agents throughout the Eastern Bloc would be at the mercy of the KGB. Torture and death, not mercy, were the watchwords of the Komitet Cosudarstvinnoi Bezopasnosti.

  Getting up from his chair, Henri said, “I have to take care of a few things, shouldn’t take over three or four hours. I’ll stop back by about lunchtime and we’ll work out this little problem of yours.”

  He reached the door before Jack inquired, “What’s Gatorade?”

  Henri laughed, “I’ll send you some.”

  David Harte would die in a fiery automobile accident in which a John Doe from the city morgue would burn beyond recognition; his dental work would be the only thing to identify the ambassador. It would be simple enough—a traffic-related fatality occurred in the D.C. area on an average of once a week. A little plastic surgery, a new identity, and Jack could, maybe for the first time ever, get on with his life—a life of his own, not a life totally immersed in and dedicated to the service of his country.

  Henri thought about his own life. In thirty years he had never gone fishing, been on a picnic, nor had a birthday party. He wondered what life was like for people who worked five days a week, went home to a wife and kids, mowed the lawn on Saturdays, and watched ball games with friends…

  “That will be four eighty-five, sir.” The girl at the drive-through window jolted Henri back to reality. He reached for his order, placed it on the seat beside him, counted out the money, and handed it to the girl. Driving away, he wondered how agents had kept from starving before fast-food restaurants.

  It was almost noon when he reached the hospital. The same two men sitting outside the door nodded in recognition as Henri approached. One motioned towards the door indicating identification wasn’t necessary.

  Jack, watching the midday news on a small bedside television, looked up and waved Henri into the room. “Am I, David Harte, really this popular or is there nothing worth reporting today?”

  “Oh, you’re a popular guy all right,” Henri answered, as he pushed two chairs together, placed his package on one and sat down in the other. “You should see all the reporters hanging around outside. If the doctor didn’t have you quarantined—I thought it might be better to have the public thinking you picked up something contagious on your trip—you’d have a regular parade through here.” He pulled a Big Mac out of his bag and tossed it over to Jack.

  “I’ll bet you haven’t seen one of these lately.” Jack gave out a low whistle.

  “You’ve got that right. You wouldn’t believe how popular Mc-Donald’s is in Moscow. With a room full of these and a truck load of Levis you could be the richest man in the Soviet Union by the end of the day. Would you believe the waiting time to get into McDonald’s in Moscow is six hours? You wouldn’t happen to have any of those skinny little fried taters in that sack, would you?”

  Henri pulled out a container of French fries and passed them to Jack, then pulled out another Big Mac and took a bite as he unfolded the morning newspaper, intending to pass it over to Jack.

  “I see you made the front page.” Jack switched off the television and reached for the paper, but Henri pulled the paper back as one of the headlines caught his eye. He read intently for about thirty seconds, then exclaimed, “This is it.”

  “This is what?” asked Jack.

  “This is your escape hatch. I had figured on arranging a traffic accident, but this is better. Fewer complications.”

  The article speculated that an upcoming trip, scheduled months in advance, might be canceled or postponed. Because of the unfortunate accident in the Soviet Union, the article explained, the ambassador might need an extended period of recuperation. The pending trip was scheduled for the following Monday, less than a week away.

  “This is perfect. Do you think you can pull off three or four more speeches for the press?”

  “A piece of cake. What do you have in mind?”

  Henri grabbed another Big Mac and headed for the door. “I’ll tell you later, but first I have to arrange a few things.”

  It had been six days since Henri left Jack’s hospital room. The two men now sat, with a cup of coffee, in front of the television, waiting for the evening news. Henri’s den was not rustic, with lots of dark wood and overstuffed brown leather furniture. Much to the contrary, the den as well as the rest of his apartment was ultra modern with clean lines designed to be comfortable and serviceable. Four chairs, separated by small tables that fanned out in front of a large-screen TV, were good examples. Each chair reclined and molded to the body at the touch of a button. Considerable space separated this minitheater from the computers, telephones,
recording equipment, and various other electronic gadgets located on or above the built-in desk that ran the length of the opposite wall. Except for a wet bar, two desk chairs, and a world globe six feet in diameter, no other furniture existed. The two walls adjacent to the desk were lined with books from floor to ceiling. Those along one wall covered every aspect of the cold war. The remaining shelves were filled with reference books, history books, and books on constitutional law.

  Henri had not collected an array of paraphernalia during his assignments around the world as most people do. The only memento to be found, the Medal of Merit, still in its case, rested out of sight in a desk drawer. Henri’s one vice was the luxury of his home, a vice he could well afford. His job paid well and he had invested every cent. There had been little opportunity to spend anything until recently, when time in service, dedication, and hard work had moved him up in the ranks to a position requiring him to spend most of his time at Langley.

  Having spent too much time in hostile and substandard environments, he welcomed the chance to give up the excitement of travel and the thrill of danger to the young and able. He had paid his dues and was ready for some quiet and comfort in his life.

  He had first considered an estate around McLean, not too far from CIA headquarters, but, settled for a high-rise condominium overlooking the Potomac off Rock Creek Parkway in southwest D.C. near George Washington University.

  The less-filling-versus-great-taste beer commercial ended and the newscaster came on with the lead story. Only hours after being released from Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he had been recuperating from injuries sustained in an automobile accident while touring the Soviet Union, Ambassador David Harte had flown to the Middle East. The U.N. ambassador was to mediate a new round of peace talks beginning tomorrow in Beirut. Shortly after arriving, Ambassador Harte was abducted from his hotel room. A splinter group of the PLO claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. No demands had yet been received. An analysis of details surrounding the kidnapping was followed by a review of the ill-fated trip to the Soviet Union.