“Yeah,” Rudolph agreed. “There’s a lot of that going around these days.”
“Keep me up to date,” McGarvey said.
“It’s a two-way street, Mac. Sorry you had to lose one of your people that way. Especially his family.”
“There will be a payback,” McGarvey said, and he broke the connection. He looked at Otto who was sitting cross-legged on the chair. “You said lavender.”
“Hardly any impurities,” Rencke replied, almost dreamily. A number of years ago when he was trying to work out the mathematics and physics of a very complicated link between advanced bubble memory systems, he’d struck on what for him was a very simple, but sophisticated notion: how to explain color to a blind person. Using tensor calculus, the same mathematics that Einstein had used for his general theory of relativity, Rencke had come up with a set of equations that he’d tried out on a blind Indian mathematician, who’d made the observation afterward: “Oh, I see.” Reversing the process, Rencke developed a method by which he thought of colors to represent mathematical equations that described highly complex real world variables. Lavender was for very bad.
“Are you talking about the man that Trumble was worried about at his meeting with bin Laden?”
“I came up with a dozen candidates I was going to show him when he came back.” Otto shook his head in sadness. “But that’s not it, Mac. It’s the other thing. The bad, bad thing. Bin Laden didn’t have Allen killed. At least I don’t think so. But one of his lieutenants might have ordered it because bin Laden is probably crazy, and his people want to save their own gnarly hides, ya know.”
“Does he want to negotiate, or what?”
“Oh, he wants to talk to somebody, all right. But his troops are passing purple peach pits ’cause they don’t know what he wants to do. They’re playing with serious fire and they’re all wondering if they’re going to get their fingers burned big time.”
McGarvey felt a cold draft on his neck. “Do you have the proof?” Otto was almost always right, but he had to ask.
Rencke took a diskette out of the thick file he’d brought with him. “When it boots up hit any key.”
McGarvey started the disk, and immediately a complicated engineering diagram in 3-D came up on his screen and began to slowly rotate around its long axis. He stared at the device for a long time, his stomach sour, because he knew exactly what it was capable of doing to them.
“I matched the number Trumble gave us with the Russian device.”
Sometimes Rencke amazed even McGarvey. “How’d you come up with that?”
Otto grinned. “The FSB is running its own investigation, and I talked to some friends of mine in Amsterdam who hacked the system. That one was missing.”
“Why didn’t you get in yourself?”
“I wanted to keep it arm’s length this time. No telling what the fallout’s gonna be.”
McGarvey nodded at the obvious understatement. “Where’d it come from?”
“Right where we suspected all along. Yavan Depot.”
“Tajikistan,” McGarvey said. The former Soviet ground forces special storage depot was located about twenty-five miles southeast of the capital city Dushanbe. It had long been suspected, but never proved, that a small Russian maintenance crew, mostly officers, had been left behind to look after their equipment, for which the independent government received money and kept silent. But money, which was not a problem for bin Laden, was tight in Russia so loyalties had blurred.
“I’m going to need more than this,” McGarvey said.
Rencke laid the thick file on the desk. “I made hard copies. I got the names of the four Russian officers under investigation, their contacts, the how and when they got it out of the depot three months ago, the thirty million U.S. they were paid for it, and where it crossed the border at Nizhny Pyandzh into Afghanistan.” Otto shrugged. “After that it disappears.” His eyes were wild. “But bin Laden has the number, so we know where it showed up.”
“Okay, who are these friends of yours in Amsterdam?” It was the news he’d been expecting, and yet it was none the less frightening.
“Just kids,” Rencke said. “Their parents were the ones who hacked the system over at Lawrence Livermore in the eighties. Only way we found out about it was because they’d screwed up the payroll section. Wouldn’t balance.”
“Think they can get back into the FSB system?”
“The Russians aren’t spending much on security, but their encryption programs are still pretty good. What do you want them to look for?”
“I want to know what the FSB is doing about this. They sure as hell wouldn’t tell me if I picked up the phone and called Kuznetsov.” Anatoli Kuznetsov was the director of the Federal Security Service, which was the new KGB.
“They got in that far, they could take the next step.” Otto grinned again, which he did whenever he was contemplating doing something illegal. “I can give them a little incentive.”
McGarvey gave him a hard look. “I brought you back to help out, not to give away the store.”
“Mac, this is worth it, if we can stop the bastard. The next time out ain’t gonna be so pretty. All I’m giving them is an encryption buster. An old one we don’t use anymore.”
“Okay, so what about the guy with bin Laden that Allen told us about?”
“I came up with a dozen possibilities, but I’ve gone as far with them as I can without more hard information. A description from another source, something in his handwriting, maybe a strand of hair, or a recording of his voice. Anything.”
“Maybe I can help with that.”
Otto’s eyes went wide. “Come on, Mac, you’re not telling me what I think you’re telling me now, are you? Bzz, wrong answer, recruit. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
McGarvey smiled sadly for his friend. Candide once said that optimism is a mania for maintaining that all is well when things are going badly. He’d never been guilty of that frame of mind, or of its opposite, though both were common maladies in Washington. He was going to drop a bombshell in the President’s lap, and he hoped the man was up to the decisions he was going to have to start making. A lot of lives depended on it. But Otto was as naive as he was brilliant. One of his failings was trying to keep his friends out of harm’s way. Maybe it was a failing they all should have.
The DDO’s conference room was a long, windowless space that was mechanically and electronically isolated from the rest of the building, and from the outside world. Anything said or done in the room was completely safe from any kind of eavesdropping. The weakest links were the people who gathered here, and McGarvey knew and trusted all of them. It was all he’d ever had, all he’d ever wanted and worked for—trust. Now that he had it he was afraid of letting his friends down.
When he arrived at 1:25 A.M. all nine of his staff members were seated and waiting for him. They included Dick Adkins, his assistant deputy director of operations; Randy Bock, chief of Foreign Intelligence which was in charge of espionage activities; Jared Kraus, Technical Services; Scott Graves, Counterintelligence; Arthur Hendrickson, in charge of the Covert Action section, which was responsible for propaganda and disinformation; Raife Melloch, Missions and Programs; David Whittaker, the area divisions chief in charge of the CIA’s bases, stations and missions worldwide; Brenda Jordan, Operational Services, which came up with cover stories and legends for field agents; and Otto Rencke.
“Good morning,” McGarvey said, taking his place at the head of the long table. “Thanks for coming in, but it’s going to be a long night, so take your coffee strong and black.”
Everyone around the table was angry and pumped up. One of their own had been murdered. But worse than that, his family had been killed too. They would have no trouble staying awake this night.
“As you know by now, our Riyadh chief of station Allen Trumble, his wife and two children, and two other innocent bystanders were shot to death seven and a half hours ago in the parking lot of Disney’s EPCOT in Orlando. This was not a simple dr
ive-by shooting, it was a carefully planned operation carried out by professionals. Our first tasks are to find out who ordered the hit and why.”
“I don’t think there’s any question about that,” Adkins said. His eyes were on fire, he looked like an angry pit bull ready to attack.
“I don’t agree,” McGarvey replied sharply. “So I want all of you to go into this with open minds. There are no foregone conclusions. Clear?”
Heads nodded, but he could see their skepticism and reluctance.
“We’re going to generate a SNIE this morning, which I want on my desk no later than 0800.” National Intelligence Estimates, which listed targets for the entire U.S. intelligence community, estimates of future international events and enemy strengths, a technical intelligence review, and decisions on which product was to be shared with which U.S. allies, were usually generated once a week. They came from the U.S. Intelligence Board made up of the director of Central Intelligence, the heads of the military intelligence branches, the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, FBI, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Treasury Department. Special National Intelligence Estimates were done by any of the agencies on an incident basis. The purpose of the documents was to brief the President and the nation’s top policy makers on whatever crisis the U.S. was faced with. “If it’s a fact, state it. But if it’s a wild-ass guess, make that clear too.”
“Where are you taking this, Mac?” Adkins asked. “Because from where we’re sitting it looks pretty clear. Allen met with bin Laden and a week later he was assassinated. At least one of the shooters had a connection.”
“Okay, that goes in the SNIE as your guess, or as a consensus estimate. The Bureau thinks there’s a strong possibility that the other three shooters took a commercial flight out of Orlando to Havana. I want our resources there to see what they can come up with. But I don’t want anyone burned trying to get to the air crews in Havana this morning. They’ll be back in Miami or Orlando later this morning.
“Fred Rudolph is handling the Bureau’s investigation, so it’ll be a good one. But I’m telling you now that he thinks the Jersey City trucking company where Yousef was apparently employed hasn’t been a bin Laden operation for five years. I want you to keep that in mind.
“I want you to keep a number of other things in mind too. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack yet, something bin Laden’s followers always do, even if he doesn’t take any of the blame personally. Allen met with him in Khartoum, so why’d they wait for him to come home to kill him? And bin Laden told Allen that he wanted to meet with someone else. Someone with more authority, which means he might have something on his mind that he wants to talk about.”
“Maybe he just wants to burn a bigger fish,” Whittaker said. Trumble’s murder had devastated him. His chiefs of stations were family.
“That’s a possibility too,” McGarvey said. “And I want it in the SNIE. But we’ve been waiting for bin Laden to pull off something big. I believe he’s made his plans, and now he’s having second thoughts. He really does want to talk to someone.”
“Bullshit, Mac,” Adkins exploded. “He’s setting up a trap and someone’s supposed to walk into it?”
McGarvey didn’t mind the outburst. He expected nothing less than complete honesty from his staff, and they gave it to him. “Maybe, maybe not. But if he wanted to lure someone else close enough to take the shot, why kill Allen and his family?” McGarvey shook his head. “Doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well then, who did it?” Adkins asked, frustrated.
“One of bin Laden’s people who might be afraid that his boss is getting cold feet.”
“It’s a warning?” Whittaker asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“It could be that they don’t want bin Laden talking to us.”
“If we lay that on his doorstep, whoever’s behind this has to know he’d be risking another missile attack on their camps,” Jared Kraus said. “Makes him either very stupid, or a man who knows something that we don’t.”
“Or thinks he does,” McGarvey said. “Bin Laden gave Allen a serial number that Otto has found a match for.”
Rencke had loaded his briefing into the large-screen rear-projection television monitor built into the wall at one end of the room. He dimmed the lights and the same 3-D diagram that he showed McGarvey came up. It got everyone’s attention, and for the next ten minutes he explained what he’d come up with and what he thought it meant. When he was finished the room was so quiet that they could hear the gentle rush of air through the AC vents. The only thing left showing on the screen now was the engineering diagram of the device.
“I can see why he wants to talk to somebody,” Adkins said, subdued. “This might be too big even for him.” He tore his eyes away from the monitor. “Who are we going to send … ?”
Whittaker interrupted. “That could be a moot point unless we can find him first. Our contacts in Kabul say he’s dropped out of sight again. The Taliban aren’t saying anything, as usual, but it’s possible he’s no longer in Afghanistan.”
“He’s done that before,” McGarvey said. “If he wants to talk to us, he’ll get the word out when he’s ready.”
The telephone console at McGarvey’s position burred softly. He picked it up. “Yes.”
“I’m here.” It was the CIA director, Roland Murphy.
“We’re just finishing, General. I’ll come over in a few minutes.”
“Very well.”
McGarvey hung up and checked his watch. It was coming up on two. “Okay, we have six hours to put this together. In the meantime I want our assets and people hunkering down for the moment.”
“While trying to find out where bin Laden is hiding out, and who ordered the hit,” Adkins said dryly.
“Right,” McGarvey said.
“You still haven’t told us who you’re going to send to meet with him if we can arrange it.”
“No, I haven’t,” McGarvey replied softly. There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times. Voltaire wrote that to Cardinal de Bernis. He was talking about the Catholic Church, which he despised, but the idea was no different here and now, McGarvey thought, because he was even wondering about admitting the whole truth to himself just yet, except that he had let Trumble and his family down.
It was one of the worse times in McGarvey’s life, because in his heart of hearts he knew that he was to blame for the deaths of Allen Trumble and his family. And he knew that he was going to have to drop a bombshell in the lap of the new President. When he walked into the DCI’s palatial office with its view of the river valley, Murphy was on the phone. He poured a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette and took a seat in front of the desk.
Anger would come, he knew, but for the moment it was his job to keep his head on straight so that they could pick up the pieces and avert a much larger, more terrible, even unimaginable disaster from befalling them. He also knew that he would forever look back at this time as a watershed in his own life; a new chapter in his long career in the Company beyond anything he’d ever imagined in his most violent nightmares. The same insistent voice in his head that had told him on countless occasions to get out while he could, to put as much distance as possible between himself and the people he loved and respected so that when the bad guys came looking they would find only him and not his friends, was hammering at the back of his head now. And he had run, more than once; from Lausanne, from Paris, and even from Milford, Delaware where he’d once taught eighteenth-century literature. But it had done no good, because each time the call to action had come he had responded. And each time someone he had cared for had lost their lives. Marta Fredricks, Jacqueline Belleau, even his ex-wife and daughter had almost been killed because of him. Now it was Allen and his family. McGarvey tried to see the good in what he had done, especially in the year since he had been called back to take over the DO, but he was having a hard time focusing.
He could almost hear the distant sou
nd of trumpets; the battle horns; the sounds of men shouting and screaming, bullets flying; people dying because he knew that this one was going to be bad. A call to arms again, like he’d heard for twenty-five years? Or just now this morning an overwrought imagination caused by tiredness and guilt.
He looked at his hands and he could see Allen Trumble’s blood on them.
Roland Murphy finished his conversation and put the encrypted telephone down. He stared speculatively at McGarvey for a few beats, then the expression on his craggy, bulldog face softened. “I know how you feel,” he said gently. “We’re all feeling the same thing. But this was not your fault. Do you read me?”
“Ultimately everything that happens in the DO is my responsibility,” McGarvey replied softly. It wasn’t a matter of whose fault anything was, that was Washington bureaucratic bullshit. The only thing that mattered right now was making the right response. Already his black mood was being replaced by a quiet anger and determination, but he knew that he would have to be careful not to lash out at everyone around him. It was one of his least endearing character flaws.
“You’re right,” Murphy conceded. “But don’t beat yourself to death over it, because we have work to do. That was Dennis Berndt. We’re briefing the National Security Council at nine o’clock.” Berndt was the President’s national security adviser, and he was no friend of the CIA’s, though no one knew why. “They’re going to ask some tough questions, and we’re going to have to give them some tough answers.”
“The SNIE will be ready by eight,” McGarvey said. “But attacking bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan again is not one of the answers I’m going to give them.” He kept his anger in check and his tone reasonable. “There was no reason for him to kill Allen, and especially not his wife and children. Not now.”
“Speculation, Kirk, nothing more.”
“Maybe. But there’s no hard proof that bin Laden ordered them murdered.”
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