False Prophets Read online

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Prologue

  THE RESURRECTION

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  THE INVESTIGATION

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  THE GENEVA COVENANT

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  Epilogue

  Also by

  PRAISE FOR SEAN FLANNERY

  Copyright Page

  This book is for a lot of people: for Lorrel Elizabeth, my wife; for Tammy Lynn, my eldest daughter; for Kevin and Justin, the boys; and for Gina, the baby. I love you all.

  Prologue

  It was late Tuesday evening in Washington, D.C., when Darrel Switt looked up from his reading. He was dressed in his dark suit from the funeral, only now his tie was loose and his shirtsleeves were rolled up.

  “You say that you’ve read this?” he asked.

  John Mahoney nodded his head slowly, as if he were afraid of breaking something. “What do you make of it?”

  “I don’t know what the hell to make of it,” Switt replied. He stood up and laid the thick bundle of notes on the coffee table, then stretched.

  “My father was a very pragmatic man. He wasn’t given to flights of fancy.”

  “Were you aware of what he did for the Agency?” Switt asked.

  “In a general way,” John Mahoney replied. “Not the specifics, of course, but sometimes we knew where he had gone. And we loved him all the more for his attempts to keep us insulated.”

  “Have you discussed this with anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Not even your wife?”

  “No one. My father trusted you. In his letter he told me to make absolutely sure no one but you got this package.”

  Switt seemed lost in thought.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Mahoney asked.

  “I don’t know … yet,” Switt said. “When are you going back?”

  “We’re not going directly home. We’ll be leaving Washington the day after tomorrow for Minnesota. We have to close down his cabin. The children are with us, so we’ll probably stay there for a few days.”

  Switt seemed to draw inward again for a moment. Then he asked, “Are you staying at the Marriott?”

  Mahoney nodded.

  “Fine. I’ll call you there before you leave. I have to think this out. I need some time.”

  “Good enough,” Mahoney said, rising.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to help.”

  “My father thought you were the man for the job.”

  Wallace Mahoney’s confidence went deeper than that, John knew. Switt had become for his father a son of a sort his own two could never be. During his last years with the Agency, John and Michael had lived far from Washington, while Darrel Switt saw Mahoney daily. They could discuss their work openly; the normal activity of talking about the office to one’s family was closed to men in the intelligence field. If the career to which his father had dedicated his life could be thought of as a family business, then Darrel was the heir to that business. John felt no jealousy; rather, he was grateful that another man had been able to give his father the sense that what he considered so important would continue to be done after his time.

  “I’ll call you before you leave,” Switt said, walking John to the door and shaking his hand.

  For a full five minutes Switt paced the room, every now and then glancing down at the bundle of notes he had been given shortly after the funeral, until he finally went to the phone and dialed an overseas number.

  It took ten minutes for his call to go through to Geneva, and by the time it did, he was sweating.

  “Yes?” a long-familiar voice said over the transatlantic line.

  “This is Ferret,” Switt said. “The Mahoney business isn’t finished yet.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I’ve just come from the funeral. His son gave me a manila envelope filled with notes. Your name is there, along with the entire Malecki-Larsen connection. He had everything.”

  “Has he shown them to anyone else?”

  “He said he hadn’t.”

  “Can you get away without suspicion?”

  “I’m on compassionate leave. Mahoney was a friend.”

  “I wanted to be his friend, but it was not possible.”

  “It’ll take me at least forty-eight hours to get away,” Switt said heavily.

  “Don’t take any chances. Just a little longer and we’ll have this bloody mess cleared up.”

  Switt hung up the telephone, slowly crossed the room to a sideboard, and poured another drink. The bloody mess would have to be cleared up, and at the moment Switt could think of only one way to accomplish that.

  THE RESURRECTION

  1

  Archivists who later put all the pieces together said the outcome was inevitable and had for its genesis two events that, although closely related, should never have happened.

  No one on the outside, however, really ever had the complete picture. There were those, such as Ezra Wasserman, the former head of Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, and now in retirement at Gan Haifiz, who knew or guessed a great deal. And Carl Margraff in Berlin, who had helped, in his own way, to ferret out the Israeli mole, had been having gut feelings about it all since his son’s death years earlier. And finally a certain groundskeeper in a Missoula, Montana, cemetery who received the shock of his life and talked about it for years afterward.

  There were others—legmen, contact teams, technicians, drivers, spotters, and a host of experts—who, if they could all have gotten together, perhaps in some dark corner of an obscure bar where the music was soft and the drinks mellow, might have come close to understanding.

  And there were stunned men and women at high levels in the secret services of a dozen countries who each thought they knew. Of course, none of them wanted to think about what had happened, much less talk about it openly or even among their colleagues.

  But at the time—a certain late, balmy summer—no one could have predicted the startling outcome.

  It was an early Saturday morning in mid-August. The city of Geneva, Switzerland, lay under a thick pall of haze that, because of a rare temperature inversion, was a combination of fog and automobile exhaust. The pale wisps and tendrils had crept down from Hermance and, on the opposite shore, from Celigny, Coppet, and Versoix like some vital creature, infecting not only the atmosphere but the very fabric of the great city.

  The sun, still low in the eastern sky, which would later sparkle on the wavelets on the south bay of the lake, was this morning only a dull ball that could be stared at with no discomfort.

  Geneva was not normally a dark city. Its people, though stoic by reason of their Swiss heritage, had nevertheless learned to be good hosts to the thousands of tourists who descended annually. But today the haze seemed to carry a hint of something dark, foreboding, which Darrel Switt found disconcerting. He was a well-built man in his mid-thirties, dressed comfortably in a navy blazer, gray slacks, and a loosely knotted tie. He was obviously travel-weary, and from time to time during the cab ride he pulled at his long, drooping mustache, an unconscious gesture he had developed over the years.

  He had taken precautions this morning, riding a tram past the Voltaire Museum to the Cornavin railway station, where he had walked up to the post office before hailing this taxi.

  There had been no shadows, no tails as far as he had been able to determine, and yet he still had the over-the-shoulder feeling that caused him to turn suddenly, to double back, to look for chance reflections in glass windows.

  Paranoia. He thought now about the words of one of his tradecraft instructors.

  “It’ll strike you sooner or later. No getting away from it, gentlemen,” the man (Margolis was his name?) had told them. He leaned forward over the podium, his eyes flashing. “But if you understand it, the very fact will become your ally. Point: You’ve succumbed, and you’re jittery. The other fellow is looking for it. And he sees all the signs. He’ll expect you to run like a rabbit. Jump every which way. You can play him then, like a fish. Bounce him around. Jack him up so badly, he’s bound to make a mistake.”

  “But your counterpart is going to be paranoid as well, sir,” one of the younger recruits had piped up.

  Margolis leaned back, a broad grin creasing his craggy features. “A bright boy,” he said. “But quite right—unless, of course, your mark is jacking you around.”

  They had laughed at the time, but it wasn’t funny in the field. N
othing was funny out in the cold.

  The cab crossed the Rhône River on the Pont de l’Ile and turned up toward the Eaux-Vives section of the city. Switt sat up a little straighter in his seat as he redid the top button of his shirt, snugged up his tie, and smoothed his hair with his fingers.

  He had always been a young man. The baby of every group. From high school in Des Moines to college at Northwestern and finally the Company, his had been the baby face.

  He sat a little further forward now so that he could see his own reflection in the rearview mirror. Not young any longer, he thought. Lines around the eyes, which were no longer so bright and innocent. Creases at the corners of his mouth, which smiled less than before. And a few flecks of gray at his temples and even in his luxuriant mustache.

  Not age, but pressure. He had always been a high-pressure man. In college he had thrived in the competition for grades; no matter what the objective, he always seemed to come up with a way to meet it that often didn’t include studying. Later, with the Company, he had shone in his work. Moscow had been a veritable playground for him, where, no matter the intrigue or complexity of a situation, he could not seem to get enough.

  All that, however, had had its effects, some of which he could see now in his reflection.

  They had come to an area of residential streets, and the cabby, an older man with several teeth missing and the others crooked and nicotine-stained, turned and scowled.

  “The street number, monsieur?”

  “Right here is fine. On the corner.”

  “But the number you wish …”

  “Here on the corner is fine,” Switt said, handing over a two-hundred-franc bill.

  The cabby pulled up at the corner of the Rue du Lac and Quai Gustave Ador, and deftly flipped the meter flag up with one hand while digging in his leather purse for change with the other.

  But Switt jumped out of the cab and headed into the mist. The cabby looked after him with wonder at Americans and their senseless behavior.

  Switt worked his way east and south as if on a walking tour of the city, although there wasn’t much to see at this time of the morning under these conditions. At length he arrived at Route de Frontenex, a major city artery, where he got lucky with another cab.

  This time he directed the driver to take him to an address a dozen blocks deeper into Eaux-Vives, where he got out half a block from his destination.

  Turning down a narrow side street in an area of old, elegant homes, Switt hurried through a wide stone gate into a mews fronted by small apartments that had once been stables. They were backed by a line of a half dozen huge, ornately decorated three-story homes, each penetrated by a narrow tunnel driveway that led to the rear.

  Switt went directly to the largest of them, ducked down the tunnel, and at a side door mounted the one step and rang the bell.

  He had been here only once before, several years earlier. He had been full of pride and ambition then, filled with expectations and purpose, filled indeed with a self-righteousness that had been greeted with wholehearted acceptance. This time, however, Switt admitted to himself that he was frightened.

  As he was about to reach out and ring the bell again, the heavy oak and glass door swung open. An older man, partially bald, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and dressed in morning coat and trousers, stood there blinking a moment before he stepped back.

  “Won’t you come in, sir?” he asked, his voice soft, British.

  Switt went inside to a wide foyer. Beyond, he could see the main corridor off which were the living room, vast dining hall, and, to the left, toward the rear, if his memory served him correctly, the master study.

  The butler closed the door and stepped ahead of Switt. “Just come with me, then, sir.”

  Switt followed him across the hallway, where a huge portrait of an old man with muttonchops and gold pince-nez stared severely down at all who dared enter what was obviously his domain.

  The study was huge, with tall stained-glass windows and French doors that would have afforded a view of the rose garden but were covered with heavy, wine red drapes. Three walls were completely covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes, a ladder on tracks in one corner. The center of the room was dominated by a leather-topped desk, to one side of which stood a mammoth globe with ornately carved gimbals and legs. On the opposite side of the room, just in front of an oak sideboard built into the bookcases, was a grouping of soft leather chairs, a wide couch, several lamp tables, and a matching coffee table. A thick Oriental rug covered the floor.

  “Please have a seat,” the butler said. “May I bring you some coffee?”

  Switt stared at the books and at the bric-a-brac in every nook and cranny. “Please,” he replied. “And maybe some brandy.”

  “Of course, sir,” the butler said. He turned and left the study, softly closing the door.

  Switt stood for several seconds, then moved across the room and sat down in one of the leather chairs, avoiding the temptation to go to the desk and look through it.

  Missed opportunities never return, their instructors had hammered into their heads. “You let the golden moment slip by, and it’ll never come again.”

  He stared at the desk, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Back at Wallace Mahoney’s funeral. Back to Mahoney’s son, John, and the man’s wife and children. Back to what he had set in motion. He shuddered with a sudden chill.

  The butler returned shortly with a tray upon which was a silver coffee service and two cups and saucers. Without a word he set it down on the coffee table in front of Switt, poured two cups of coffee, then went to the sideboard and brought back a bottle of cognac and two snifters. He poured a generous measure in each glass before he straightened up and left the room.

  Switt watched the door for several seconds. Then he picked up the snifter, drained it, and poured another.

  From outside he heard voices. He got to his feet as McNiel Henrys entered the room.

  “You took the usual precautions, I presume,” Henrys said. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man in his late fifties, with a touch of gray at his temples and in his neatly trimmed mustache. He wore freshly pressed slacks, a light-colored shirt with an ascot at the neck, and a linen smoking jacket.

  “Yes, sir. Flew in last night and did a lot of jumping around this morning.”

  They shook hands, and Henrys motioned for him to sit down.

  “How was the funeral?”

  “There was hardly anyone there,” Switt said. “McBundy and a couple of his cronies from the Company. And of course, John and his wife and three kids.”

  Henrys was nodding as if Switt were giving him sage advice. “How have you been these past few days?”

  “Nervous. And I’m not afraid to admit it.”

  Henrys sat down, looked with surprise at the cognac, then picked up his coffee, crossed his legs, and sat back, balancing the cup and saucer on his knee. “Did you bring the notes Mahoney’s son passed to you?”

  Switt nodded, got to his feet, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned his shirt. He had the notes taped to his chest. He handed the package to Henrys and restored his clothing before sitting down again. “It’s all there, including Mahoney’s conversation with you.”

  Henrys set down his coffee cup, removed the notes from the envelope, and thumbed through them. “Who had he finally pegged as the CIA liaison?”

  “McBundy.”

  Henrys shook his head. “His only serious mistake, trusting you,” he said, an odd edge to his voice.

  A sudden bitterness at the way things had turned out welled up in Switt. “He didn’t make many. He was a fucking legend in the Company.”

  “He was a bloody saint, for my money,” Henrys said without looking up. “Malecki, Larsen, and Arlemont are all out of the network now.”

  “He had your name, and Zwiefel’s in Bonn, and Rubio’s in Rome.”

  “At this point it’s nothing but the conjecture of a dead man.”

  Again the bitterness rose at the back of Switt’s throat. “In there he mentions that you agreed to tell him everything. He said you met. Here at the house.” He wanted to take a shot at Henrys, to jar him loose somehow from his apparent complacency. “Would you have told him everything?”