This woman was the sister of a Middle East terrorist?
“Abbas, you sure about that?”
“It is from Hassan. And what he has told us to now has proved true.”
Hassan again. “What does he have to say about her?”
“He does not know of any communication between Seth and his sister now, but he says she lived with Seth in Iran for six or seven months, then moved back to Washington. That was a few years ago, after her family was killed, but Seth was the same outlaw then.”
“So you’re confident about this.”
“I am, Cameron,” said Abbas in his baritone voice.
Warfield hung up knowing he had a decision to make. Ana Koronis couldn’t be condemned simply because her brother was a terrorist, but it would be flat-out irresponsible to ignore the connection. He searched the Internet for “Ana Koronis” and came up with three-hundred-ninety-eight hits, not an extraordinary number for a person of notoriety, many of which were newspaper and magazine references that included everything he knew of her and much more.
None of the information he found was in-itself damaging but the irony was too great. Talking to the FBI was not an option but he remembered a United States attorney he’d met on a case a couple of years ago and trusted. He dialed Joe Morgan and reintroduced himself.
“Sure,” Morgan said. “The Rattarree case. Been a while. How’s it goin’ Warfield?”
They met at Louie’s Blue Plate in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, outside the Washington Beltway. It was a retro joint with plastic laminated table tops and chrome chairs, and its reputation for vegetables and chicken fried steak was legendary. Earth Angel by the Penguins was playing on the juke box when they arrived. It was loud enough to assure a private conversation.
Warfield told Morgan what he’d learned from Abbas and the Internet about Ana Koronis. Her life resembled a Greek tragedy as much as it did a spy case. During her courtship with Spiro Koronis, society magazines pictured a beautiful, olive-skinned Ana along with the ambassador week after week, referring to him as one of the most eligible men in the world and describing Ana as a charming, brilliant young attorney who grew up in Chicago and moved to Washington to practice law. It happened that her law firm had ties to the State department, where she met the ambassador.
People photographers had found a way into the palace in Greece where the couple married. They had a child soon, and Ana left her law practice so she and son Nikko could be with the ambassador in Athens.
The press coverage was no less frenetic during the three years after their marriage. There were photos of them aboard their yacht, at the embassy in Athens, on Santorini with friends and always with beloved Nikko, who never failed to favor the cameras with a happy smile. They became America’s Couple. But the fairy tale was cut far too short by a terrorist incident at the airport in Athens. Spiro and little Nikko were taken hostage inside an airport restroom and dragged onto a hijacked passenger jet as the other armed terrorists covered them. The other passengers had been ordered off the plane.
A pair of U.S. warplanes sandwiched the hijacked plane as it crossed the Mediterranean but despite military communications that reached all the way to the Pentagon — and to the White House, some later said — the airliner crossed into Syrian air space before the F-15 Air Force pilots were given authorization to take any action. The U.S. fighter jets impotently turned back at the border.
Months later, after the U.S. had refused to meet the abductors’ demands, photos were released to the international press showing the slain bodies of Spiro and Nikko Koronis. It was never clear what the Air Force fighter pilots could have done even if authorized, but the American press blasted the Pentagon and the White House for allowing the ambassador and little Nikko to be taken to their deaths with impunity.
Warfield found no record of any negative public statements attributed to Ana, but the New York Times reported that she had privately expressed bitterness, even to the extent of threatening to find a way to set things straight with the U.S. Government for standing around with their hands in their pockets while her loved ones were taken to their eventual deaths. Ana had denied the story.
In the aftermath, it was revealed that the ambassador had lived beyond his financial means for years and had nothing but debts to leave Ana after his death.
Morgan looked through the magazine and Internet articles Warfield had printed out and made notes while he talked. It was a sensitive matter given Ana Koronis’s high standing in the Washington community but Morgan left the meeting saying he would look into it.
They were out in the parking lot, about to get into their cars to leave when Morgan said, “See much of Stern when you’re at the White House? He’s the national security advisor now, right?”
“In a meeting now and then. You know Stern, though. Doesn’t say a lot.”
“Little surprised Cross put him in the sensitive job he’s in.”
“Never thought much about it. He was cleared after the Ames case,” Warfield said.
Morgan looked as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t.
“Anything I should know about Stern?”
Morgan opened his car door. “Nah. That case is closed.”
Warfield hadn’t seen Fleming since the morning before, when the Washington Post carried the story about Cross and him, and they hadn’t been out to dinner in a week. He parked in the turnaround at Hardscrabble and let himself in through the garage. Fleming was standing in front of her bedroom mirror adjusting the straps on her dress when he walked in. The ivory dress accented her tan and her hair was cut above her shoulders the way he liked it best. Fleming’s look was always fresh, a little different, never routine — even when he was with her every day. His concerns about Fullwood and Ana Koronis and Boris Petrevich moved for the moment to an obscure fold in his brain.
She gave him a light kiss. “That’s all you get,” she said, patting him on the cheek. “I’m all dressed.”
Warfield showered and put on a pair of tan slacks and a Tommy Bahama knit shirt. He was ready in ten minutes.
He put the top down on Fleming’s convertible when they got to the end of the gravel driveway. The orange ball hovering above the western horizon cast long shadows on the winding rural roads as they drove toward Middleburg. Warfield often contrasted the Virginia countryside with the plains of his West Texas heritage — where there were no stone fences and you could drive for hours and never even see a stream. They called them runs here in Virginia and you couldn’t go a mile without crossing one. Weathered stone fences still defined what once were thousand-acre estates, but high-paid Washington officials and business types willing and able to pay the asking price for this respite from the Beltway swarmed to Hunt Country with dreams of looking out from their verandas at pastures full of grazing horses. Laser-straight four-board wood fences bordered the new fifteen- or twenty-acre mini-farms.
Some of the newcomers were horse people who knew what they were getting into, but most of them were not. Traditionalists whose families had lived there forever didn’t like the newcomers destroying their once-tranquil countryside but no one could deny the positive economic impact on the area. Blacksmiths got hundreds of dollars to shoe horses, and plumbers, electricians and stonemasons had more work than they could keep up with. It took a trainer a year to get a rider and horse ready for the steeplechases and foxhunts, and this brought on new stables and more jobs for trainers. It was a thriving free-market economy.