by Tom Clancy
“You planning a book on the subject, Jerry?” Sam asked lightly. The chief analyst was taking a single factoid of hard information and spinning it into a complete soap opera.
Rounds just tapped his nose and smiled. “Since when do you believe in coincidences? Something smells about this one.”
“What’s Langley think?”
“Nothing yet. They’ve assigned it to the Southern Europe Desk for evaluation. I expect we’ll see something in a week or so, and it won’t say much. I know the guy who runs that shop.”
“Dumb?”
Rounds shook his head. “No, that’s not fair. He’s smart enough, but he doesn’t stick his neck out. Nor is he especially creative. I bet this doesn’t even go as far as the Seventh Floor.”
A new CIA Director had replaced Ed Foley, who was now retired and reportedly doing his own “I Was There” book, along with his wife, Mary Pat. In their day, they’d been pretty good, but the new DCI was a politically attractive judge beloved of President Kealty. He didn’t do anything without Presidential approval, which meant it had to be run through the mini-bureaucracy of the National Security Council team in the White House, which was about as leaky as RMS Titanic, and hence beloved of the press. The Directorate of Operations was still growing, still training new field officers at The Farm in Tidewater, Virginia, and the new DDO wasn’t a bad man at all—Congress had insisted on someone who knew how to work the field, somewhat to Kealty’s dismay, but he knew how to play the game with Congress. The Directorate of Operations might be growing back into proper shape, but it would never do anything overtly bad under the current administration. Nothing to make Congress unhappy. Nothing to make the freelance haters of the intelligence community get loud about anything other than their routine complaints about historical wives’ tales and grand conspiracy theories, and how CIA had caused Pearl Harbor and the San Francisco Earthquake.
“So, nothing will come of this, you figure?” Granger asked, knowing the answer.
“Mossad will look around, tell its troops to stay awake, and that’ll work for a month or two, and then most of them will settle down to their normal routines. Same with other services. Mainly, the Israelis will try to figure how their guy got fingered. Hard to speculate on that with the information at hand. Probably something simple. Usually is. Maybe he recruited the wrong guy and it bit him, maybe their ciphers got cracked—a bribed cipher clerk at the embassy, for example—maybe somebody talked to the wrong guy at the wrong cocktail party. The possibilities are pretty wide, Sam. It only takes one little slip to get a guy killed out there, and the best of us can make that sort of error.”
“Something to put in the manual about what to do on the street, and what not to do.” He’d done his own street time, of course, but mainly in libraries and banks, rooting around for information so dry as to make dust look moist, and finding the occasional diamond in a pile of it. He’d always maintained a cover and stuck to it until it had become as real to him as his birthday.
“Unless some other spook craps out on the street somewhere,” Rounds observed. “Then we’ll know if there really is a ghost out there.”
THE AVIANCA flight from Mexico touched down at Cartagena five minutes early. He’d flown Austrian Air to London Heathrow, and then a British Airways flight to Mexico City before taking Colombia’s flag carrier to the South American country. It was an old American Boeing, but he was not one to worry about the safety of air travel. The world had far greater dangers. At the hotel, he opened his bag to retrieve his day planner, took a walk outside, and spotted a public phone to make his call.
“Please tell Pablo that Miguel is here . . . Gracias.” And with that he walked to a cantina for a drink. The local beer wasn’t all that bad, Mohammed found. Though it was contrary to his religious beliefs, he had to fit in to this environment, and here everybody drank alcohol. After sitting for fifteen minutes, he walked back to his hotel, scanning twice for a tail, which he did not see. So, if he was being shadowed, it was by experts, and there was little defense against that, not in a foreign city where everyone spoke Spanish and no one knew the direction to Mecca. He was traveling on a British passport that said his name was Nigel Hawkins of London. There was indeed a flat at the indicated address. That would protect him even from a routine police stop, but no cover legend went forever, and if it came to that . . . then it came to that. You could not live your life in fear of the unknown. You made your plans, took the necessary precautions, and then you played the game.
It was interesting. The Spanish were ancient enemies of Islam, and this country was composed mostly of the children of Spain. But there were people in this country who loathed America almost as much as he did—only almost, because America was to them a source of vast income for their cocaine . . . as America was a source of vast income for the oil of his homeland. His own personal net worth was in the hundreds of millions of American dollars, stored in various banks around the world, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and most recently, the Bahamas. He could afford his own private plane, of course, but that would be too easy to identify, and, he was sure, too easy to shoot down over water. Mohammed was contemptuous of America, but he was not blind to her power. Too many good men had gone unexpectedly to Paradise for forgetting that. It was hardly a bad destiny, but his work was among the living, not the dead.
“HEY, CAPTAIN.”
Brian Caruso turned to see James Hardesty. It wasn’t even seven in the morning. He’d just finished leading his short company of Marines through their morning routine of exercise and the three-mile run, and like all his men he’d worked up a good sweat in the process. He’d dismissed his people to their showers, and was on his way back to his quarters when he’d encountered Hardesty. But before he could say anything, a more familiar voice called.
“Skipper?” the captain turned to see Gunnery Sergeant Sullivan, his senior NCO.
“Yeah, Gunny. The people looked pretty sharp this morning.”
“Yes, sir. You didn’t work us too hard. Good of you, sir,” the E-7 observed.
“How did Corporal Ward do?” Which was why Brian hadn’t worked them too hard. Ward had said he was ready to get back into the swing, but he was still coming off some nasty wounds.
“He’s puffing some, but he didn’t cave on us. Corpsman Randall is keeping an eye on the lad for us. You know, for a squid, he isn’t too bad,” the gunny allowed. Marines are typically fairly solicitous to their Navy corpsmen, especially the ones tough enough to play in the weeds with Force Recon.
“Sooner or later the SEALs are going to invite him out to Coronado.”
“True enough, Skipper, and then we’re gonna have to break in a new squid.”
“What you need, Gunny?” Caruso asked.
“Sir—oh, he’s here. Hey, Mr. Hardesty. Just heard you were down to see the boss. Beg pardon, Captain.”
“No problem. See you in an hour, Gunny.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Sullivan saluted smartly and headed back to the barracks.
“He’s a pretty good NCO,” Hardesty thought aloud.
“Big time,” Caruso agreed. “Guys like him run the Corps. They just tolerate people like me.”
“How’s about some breakfast, Cap’n?”
“Need a shower first, but sure.”
“What’s on the agenda?”
“Today’s class work is on comms, to make sure we can all call in air and artillery support.”
“Don’t they know that?” Hardesty asked in surprise.
“You know how a baseball team does batting practice before every game, with the batting coach around? They all know how to swing a bat, right?”
“Gotcha.” The reason they were called fundamentals was because they really were fundamental. And these Marines, like ballplayers, wouldn’t object to the day’s lesson. One trip into the tall weeds had taught them all how important the fundamentals were.
It was a short walk to Caruso’s quarters. Hardesty helped himself to some coffee and a newspaper, while t
he young officer showered. The coffee was pretty good for a single man’s making. The paper, as usual, didn’t tell him much he didn’t already know, except for late sports scores, but the comics were always good for a laugh.
“Ready for breakfast?” the youngster asked, all cleaned up.
“How’s the food here?” Hardesty stood.
“Well, kinda hard to screw up breakfast, isn’t it?”
“True enough. Lead on, Captain.” Together they drove the mile or so to the Consolidated Mess in Caruso’s C-class Mercedes. The car marked him as a single man, to Hardesty’s relief.
“I didn’t expect to see you again for a while,” Caruso said, from behind the wheel.
“Or at all?” the former Special Forces officer asked lightly.
“That, too, yes, sir.”
“You passed the exam.”
It was enough to turn his head. “What exam was that, sir?”
“I didn’t think you’d notice,” Hardesty observed with a chuckle.
“Well, sir, you have succeeded in confusing me this morning.” Which, Captain Caruso was sure, was part of today’s plan.
“There’s an old saying: ‘If you’re not confused, you’re misinformed.’”
“That sounds a little ominous,” Captain Caruso said, turning right into the parking lot.
“It can be.” He got out and followed the officer toward the building.
It was a large single-story building full of hungry Marines. The cafeteria line had racks and trays of the usual American breakfast foods, Frosted Flakes to bacon and eggs. And even some—
“You can try the bagels, but they aren’t all that good, sir,” Caruso warned as he got two English muffins and real butter. He was clearly too young to worry about cholesterol and the other difficulties that came with increasing years. Hardesty got himself a box of Cheerios, because he had gotten that old, rather to his annoyance, along with low-fat milk and non-sugar sweetener. The coffee mugs were large, and the seating permitted a surprising amount of anonymity, though there had to be four hundred people in here, of various ranks from corporal to full-bull colonel. His host steered him to a table in a crowd of young sergeants.
“Okay, Mr. Hardesty, what can I do for you?”
“Number one, I know you have security clearances, up to TS, right?”
“Yes, sir. Some compartmented stuff, but that doesn’t concern you at all.”
“Probably,” Hardesty conceded. “Okay, what we’re about to discuss goes a little higher than that. You cannot repeat this to anyone at all. Are we clear on that?”
“Yes, sir. This is code-word stuff. I understand.” In fact, he didn’t, thought Hardesty. This was actually beyond code word, but that explanation would have to wait for another venue. “Please go on, sir.”
“You’ve been noticed by some fairly important people as a prime recruit prospect for a rather . . . a rather special organization that does not exist. You’ve heard this sort of thing before in movies or read it in books. But this is quite real, son. I am here to offer you a place in that organization.”
“Sir, I am a Marine officer, and I like that.”
“It will not prejudice your career in the Marines. As a matter of fact, you’ve been deep-dipped for promotion to major. You’ll be getting that letter next week. So, you’ll have to leave your current billet anyway. If you stay in the Marine Corps, you’ll be sent to Headquarters Marine Corps next month, to work in the intelligence/special-operations shop. You’re also going to get a Silver Star for your action in Afghanistan.”
“What about my people? I put them in for decorations, too.” It was the mark of this kid that he’d worry about that, Hardesty thought.
“Everyone’s been approved. Now, you’ll be able to return to the Corps whenever you wish. Your commission and routine advancement will not suffer from this at all.”
“How did you manage that?”
“We have friends in high places,” his guest explained. “So do you, as a matter of fact. You will continue to be paid through the Corps. You may have to set up new banking arrangements, but that’s routine stuff.”
“What will this new posting entail?” Caruso asked.
“It will mean serving your country. Doing things that are necessary to our national security, but doing them in a somewhat irregular manner.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
“Not here, not now.”
“Can you be any more mysterious, Mr. Hardesty? I might start understanding what you’re talking about and spoil the surprise.”
“I don’t make the rules,” he replied.
“Agency, eh?”
“Not exactly, but you’ll find out in due course. What I need now is a yes or a no. You can leave this organization at any time if you find it not to your liking,” he promised. “But this isn’t the proper venue for a fuller explanation.”
“When would I have to decide?”
“Before you finish your bacon and eggs.”
The reply caused Captain Caruso to set his muffin down. “This isn’t some sort of joke, right?” He’d taken his share of razzing due to his family connections.
“No, Captain, it isn’t a joke.”
The pitch was deliberately designed to be nonthreatening. People like Caruso, however courageous they might be, often regarded the unknown—more properly, the not-understood unknown—with some degree of trepidation. His profession was dangerous enough already, and the intelligent among us do not blissfully go seeking after danger. Theirs is usually a reasoned approach to hazard, after first making sure their training and experience are adequate to the task. And so Hardesty had made sure to tell Caruso that the womb of the United States Marine Corps would always be available to take him back. It was almost true, and that was close enough for his purposes, if not, perhaps, to the young officer’s.
“What’s your love life like, Captain?”
The question surprised him, but he answered it truthfully. “No attachments. There’s a few girls I date, but nothing very serious yet. Is that a concern?” Just how dangerous might this be? he wondered.
“Only from a security point of view. Most men cannot keep secrets from their wives.” But girlfriends were a different question altogether.
“Okay, how dangerous will this job be?”
“Not very,” Hardesty lied, not skillfully enough to be entirely successful.
“You know, I’ve been planning to stay in the Corps at least long enough to be a light colonel.”
“Your evaluator at Headquarters Marine Corps thinks you’re good enough to make full-bull someday, unless you step on your crank along the way. Nobody thinks that’s likely, but it has happened to a lot of good men.” Hardesty finished his Cheerios and returned his attention to the coffee.
“Nice to know I have a guardian angel up there somewhere,” Caruso observed dryly.
“As I say, you’ve been noticed. The Marine Corps is pretty good at spotting talent and helping it along.”
“And so have some other people—spotted me, I mean.”
“That’s correct, Captain. But all I am offering you is a chance. You’ll have to prove yourself along the way.” The challenge was well considered. Capable young men had trouble turning away from one. Hardesty knew he had him.
IT HAD been a long drive from Birmingham to Washington. Dominic Caruso did it in one long day because he didn’t much like cheap motels, but even starting at five in the morning didn’t make it any shorter. He drove a white Mercedes C-class four-door much like his brother’s, with lots of luggage piled in the back. He had been stopped twice, but on both occasions the state police cars had responded favorably to his FBI credentials—called “creedos” by the Bureau—and pulled away with nothing more than a friendly wave. There was a brotherhood among law-enforcement officers that extended at least as far as ignoring speeding violations. He arrived at Arlington, Virginia, just at ten that night, where he let a bellman unpack his car for him and took the elevator to his room on the th
ird floor. The in-room bar had a split of a decent white wine, which he downed after the needed shower. The wine and boring TV helped him sleep. He left notice for a seven o’clock wake-up call, and faded out with the help of HBO.
“GOOD MORNING,” Gerry Hendley said at 8:45 the next morning. “Coffee?”
“Thank you, sir.” Jack availed himself of a cup and took his seat. “Thanks for calling back.”
“Well, we looked at your academic records. You did okay at Georgetown.”
“For what it costs, you might as well pay attention—and, besides, it wasn’t all that hard.” John Patrick Ryan, Jr., sipped at his coffee and wondered what would be coming next.
“We’re prepared to discuss an entry-level job,” the former senator told him right away. He’d never been one for beating about the bush, which was one of the reasons he and his visitor’s father had gotten along so well.
“Doing what, exactly?” Jack asked, with his eyes perked up.
“What do you know about Hendley Associates?”
“Only what I’ve already told you.”
“Okay, nothing of what I’m about to tell you can be repeated anywhere. Not anywhere. Are you clear on that?”
“Yes, sir.” And just that fast, everything was clear as hell. He’d guessed right, Jack told himself. Damn.
“Your father was one of my closest friends. I say ‘was’ because we can’t see each other anymore, and we talk very rarely. Usually because he calls here. People like your dad never retire—never all the way, anyway. Your father was one of the best spooks who ever lived. He did some things that were never written down—at least not on government paper—and probably never will be written down. In this case, ‘never’ means fifty years or so. Your father is doing his memoirs. He’s doing two versions, one for publication in a few years, and another that won’t see the light of day for a couple of generations. It will not be published until after his death. That’s his order.”
