The Phoenix Affair

by Paul Clark

II. Langley

  “Bobbie, see if there’s any decaf in the pot still” he half yelled out of his open office door. From without, he heard her response “There is, but you’ll ruin your afternoon if you have any!” “Nice,” he thought, and was about to say something he’d regret, but thought better of it. Instead he said “take pity on an old man, then, and bring me some anyway. I’ll skip tomorrow morning if you’re still counting then.” There was something that might have been an expletive muttered out there, but then he heard it being poured and the clink-clink of the spoon stirring in the cream and sugar. “Good woman, Bobbie” he yelled, and returned to the file on his screen.

  Randall “Randy” Anderson thought she was the best secretary a man could want, even if she could be a little stingy with the coffee after lunch. “Whodathunk the DDO of the CIA would have to do battle with a moat dragon like that every day of his working life” he thought with a chuckle. “Well, she’s the best anyway and keeps me honest as nobody else could but Amelia when she was alive.”

  Anderson was, in fact, the DDO, Deputy Director, Operations, for the CIA. That meant, of course, that he was not master of the CIA, but rather, master of the spooks that made it famous. It was the funnest job in the agency if you had the guts and the stomach to get there, and Anderson did in spades. He had come up as an Operations agent, all his life a spook in the field somewhere. He knew how it worked out there in Indian Country, which was just about everywhere these days, and he knew how to support his people and get things done when they needed to be done. He was also an uncanny Washington politico, which is what really got him into the DDO’s chair.

  Born something of a northeast blue blood, he’d played lacrosse through high school and then at Holy Cross as an under grad. He’d taken a turn as an entry level broker on Wall Street, but after a year had been bored despite having already made something of a small fortune, and that’s when the Company found him. He was what the recruiters liked best when they could get one. Independent, tough, good on his own without much of a team around him, smart as hell, aptitude for languages though he spoke none but English (the tests told them that). He’d done well in the training, and in every post he’d had in career that spanned all of the world to the East of Vienna. Like most of the guys (they were mostly guys back then) he’d eventually been “blown” out there and had to come back to Langley to “run” agents rather than play one. He was good at that, too, and racked up successes that put him in charge of more and more people and money. Eventually, there was nowhere else to go, and he’d ended up in the DDO’s office, sitting behind the big desk in the glass walled office at Langley, moving the pieces around the board in the greatest and most dangerous game in the world.

  It was that moving of pieces that had got him so far. Of the many innovations he’d brought to CIA, one of them had been something he’d worked out with the Agency’s personnel folks and those of the Department of Defense back in 1988. When he was “out there” Randy’d met a lot of agents who had been ex-military people who were really, really good at what they did. When he got to the staff at Langley, though, he was surprised to learn that there was no systematic way of tapping into this pool of people. Up to then, the CIA waited for these guys to get out of the service and come looking for the Agency, not the other way around. So, it was a relatively simple but brilliant idea to put the personnel people and DoD and CIA together in a loose sort of way to make some “referrals” between the former and the latter which might work to the benefit of the US government’s service.

  The scheme was simple. The DoD would funnel the names and unit addresses of each officer who’d formally petitioned to separate from the services to the CIA recruiters. CIA could then screen these names and do a quick background check to see if anyone looked “interesting.” Interesting prospects received a postage-free brochure through their military units’ address which (it was hoped) would provoke these desirables to consider a new career in the CIA. Back in ’88 there were lots and lots of pilots leaving all the services to go fly for the airlines. Lots of special ops guys were leaving the Army and the Navy, too. It was very simple, and it worked. Some of the best field spooks in the Agency had come in just this way over the last 20-plus years. Good pieces made for a better game, and Randall Anderson loved to play, so much the better with good pieces.

  So it was that in the summer of 1990, and just before Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait put an end to the late 80s airline hiring binge, an Air Force pilot by the name of Captain Paul Cameron had apparently decided to seek greener pastures and applied to separate from the service effective in January 1991. As agreed, his name and service number were sent from the USAF to DoD and thence to CIA. The good Captain received an envelope from the CIA in his squadron mailbox in mid October 1990.

  Cameron would note later that he’d not heard that any of the many other squadron guys who’d left in the past few years got such a letter. On the other hand, most of the guys just wanted to fly something forever, so maybe they just tossed them in the trash and never thought about the CIA again. Paul was intrigued, though, and thought at the least that he might supplement the notoriously low first-year airline salary with some side income from the CIA. It seemed perfect to him. He had no idea what the CIA had in mind, but it might be a natural way to get people into and out of all kinds of places in the world without being noticed. Airline crews, after all, passed through separate checkpoints without much examination, and they came and went without much remark by anyone. Perfect, as Cameron thought it.

  Which was exactly what Randall Anderson had had in mind, frankly. He was a little disappointed from the very beginning, however, with the low response rate he got out of the many Air Force pilots to whom he sent invitations. He was never, on the other hand, disappointed with the quality of those who did respond, and certainly not with Captain Paul Cameron. From the beginning, he’d thought Cameron a very interesting and promising case. He watched his application and testing process carefully, noting that he had exceptional language ability though at that point he spoke only Spanish (however well). He scored very high in physical strength and endurance despite his average height and build. His IQ was in Mensa territory, but he didn’t seem to know or care, both of which were very positive. Conversation and oral exam was where he really shone, though. Quick thinking, brilliant at free association, a natural master for connecting disparate things he already knew or was just learning into an intricate tapestry of a big picture. Anderson saw very early that Cameron was nearly perfect for what he had in mind, and was determined to have him.

  Captain Cameron promptly dashed these ambitions, however, when in early January 1991 he concluded on his own that their would be a real, live, shootin’ war in the Gulf that spring, early spring rather than late because of the heat at the top end of the Gulf. He retracted his separation application from the Air Force and signed on for 7 years in hopes of joining his squadron in Saudi Arabia before the war might end. That quick, Cameron slipped through Anderson’s fingertips. The latter could not believe his bad luck, and spent a whole weekend thinking in front of a TV he never saw, over scotch on the rocks he didn’t drink, trying to figure a way to get this boy back. He did not, but he did have an idea that worked almost as well.

  It was clear Cameron was back in the Air Force for the long haul, so what Anderson did was what he did best: he thought of the long haul and the big picture. If he could not have Cameron now, he would wait until later. Such a man, if given the right training, education, and experience, would be even better in 20 years than he would be now. That weekend Randall Anderson, DDO, invented another of his little known secret personnel schemes, and he called it “Phoenix.”

  Cameron was asked to take leave for 3 days and come to Langley, which his curiosity would not allow him to skip. He came. He never knew it, and did not know it to this day, but his first meeting with the DDO took place on that trip. Anderson posed as a personnel geek for the interview so he
could get a first hand look at Cameron. He also wanted to make sure the personnel guys didn’t blow it. The pitch to the young Captain went this way: CIA proposes that you become a very deep cover sleeper employee. You don’t do anything for now, follow your own career, learn what it can teach you. From time to time we may send opportunities your way, so that you learn some things we need you to learn. Don’t worry, they will also be things the Air Force wants you to learn. Most, maybe all, will not be anything you recognize as having come from us. We may not need to help you much at all, indeed we don’t expect to have to. We believe your own abilities and interests will take care of most of what you need. You work, you train, you learn, you live, you progress like a regular Air Force Joe. When the time is right, and we need you, we’ll call. When that happens, it’s an opportunity for you. You owe us nothing, but we offer you the chance to do something we think will interest you. If not, you walk away. If you like it, we arrange it with the Air Force, or if you’re retired, we arrange it with your employer. Don’t worry about that. What do you say?

  To Anderson’s great relief Cameron accepted immediately. Simple arrangements were agreed about methods of communication and contact, which should wait, Anderson said, for CIA to call him and not the other way around. No money was involved, he told the new recruit, but that was not quite true. Anderson took care of his people. He wanted to make sure that in 15 or twenty or however many years, when he needed Paul Cameron, Paul Cameron would have the resources he needed to respond to CIA’s call. It wasn’t much, but CIA would place $25,000 a year tax free into the Agency thrift savings plan in Cameron's name. Paul Cameron was on the payroll from that day. He was only just about to find out 21 years later.

  “Alright Boss, here it is, but you’re skipping a cup tomorrow as you’ve said!” It was Bobbie and the coffee shattering this reverie as she blasted through the office door like only she could do. Bobbie was a compact woman, full of lively energy and what the English would call “pluck.” Indeed, Randy Anderson’s opposite number in MI6 had called Bobbie “a rare plucked ‘un”, but not when she could hear it. The mug and its contents came to rest on the desktop to his right as Anderson looked up at the half smile, half snarl, of his protector and defender. “You have 10 minutes until the staff meeting, after that the meeting with State over at his place, then back here for the regular four o’clock down in the tank with the usual suspects which will last you the rest of the afternoon. I’m leaving at five to go pick up the girls tonight, so if you need anything, make sure it’s on my desk before you go to the staff meeting.” He loved her when she was this way. “Thanks, you’re the best. Great coffee” he mumbled, and she smiled and stormed back out to her desk.

  “Well, ten minutes,” he thought, and returned to Camerons’s file on the screen. All things considered, the boy had done pretty well on his own. He’d got himself picked to spend a year at a prestigious graduate school studying international affairs. He’d spent nearly 25 months in Saudi Arabia on various assignments, also some contacts in Bahrain, the Emirates, Tunisia, Morocco, Spain, Paris, Turkey—he’d done very well with travel. Anderson noted with a smile that the Agency had quietly managed to have Cameron meet the Saudi Ambassador twice. His Highness would not remember, but Cameron would have learned something each time. Very good. War College with the Air Force over 10 years ago, and now the boy’s a Colonel. Aha—he’s taken some martial arts training? Interesting. He read a report from an agent who’d been sent by someone down in the Phoenix office last year. “J. Smith, Operations Directorate, attended 2-hour evening Aikido class with subject on two occasions, once in Arlington, VA and another time in Terre Haute, IN. Smith did not identify himself to the subject, but did train with him on both occasions. Smith reports student has made excellent progress and should earn first degree black belt in early 2009.” “Intrepid rascal, and at his age” Anderson thought. “What’s this guy, going on 45? Randy, my boy, you can still pick ‘em.”

  Bobbie bellowed “Two minutes” from outside the door, time to go. Randall Anderson gathered his papers and coffee for the staff meeting, and killed the file he’d been reading on his computer. Rising to leave, he smiled as he mused: “I’ve got 15 of these guys, first time we’ve tried to use one. Should be an interesting play.” He walked out of the office and into the conference room across the hall looking happier than the staff had seen him in a month.