The Art of War: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  Sal Molina sighed and slurped.

  “I don’t want the job.”

  “You’re refusing a request from the president of the United States?” Molina said that as if Jake were Jonah refusing a commission from God.

  “Yep.”

  “How about saluting and saying ‘Yes, sir’? You military types are all supposed to do that.”

  “Bullshit,” Jake Grafton said.

  The telephone rang again. Robin said it was Merritt. Jake took the call.

  “The preliminary autopsy results are in. Tomazic drowned, all right, but he has some bruises on his left wrist and back. Plus the gash on his head where he probably hit the boat. Funny thing is, the ‘lividities’ occurred just seconds before death. Just enough time for some local capillaries to pop, then his heart stopped.”

  “What do they make of that?”

  “Well … it’s suggestive, they say. Suggestive of what they didn’t say. But the interesting thing is that divers found a piece of plastic under the boat. Clear plastic. They say it might have come from a scuba diver’s mask faceplate. Got to do some research on that to be sure, though.”

  “How long was that piece of plastic in the water?”

  “No guesses yet, but not long. No algae on it.”

  Jake sat digesting the information. Finally he said, “Thank you, Harley.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  Jake cradled the instrument and sat staring at the wall. After a bit he let his gaze wander.

  Sal Molina sipped on his coffee, now getting cold, and watched the man behind the desk. The skin on Grafton’s face showed the marks of too much sun through the years. Then there were those gray eyes. Everyone meeting Jake Grafton for the first time noticed the eyes. If he was angry, those eyes were cold as a North Atlantic breaker.

  Grafton had been a navy attack pilot in his youth. He had absorbed the lessons well. For years he was the Pentagon’s go-to guy when crises erupted here and there.

  Grafton was correct about one thing: National Security Adviser Jurgen Schulz had argued vociferously this morning against giving Grafton a jot more power. “He’s a loose cannon,” Schulz said, “who can’t be trusted. One of these days one of his little plots is going to blow up in his face, and this administration is going to be the party that gets badly burned.”

  The secretary of Homeland Security thought someone with more political savvy should be installed immediately as interim director, then senior leaders of the president’s party in Congress should be sounded out about possible permanent replacements.

  The president heard them all out, thanked everyone and shooed them off. When they were alone, he asked Molina what he thought.

  “Grafton,” the president’s man said. “I’d pick him for my team for anything from softball to hand grenades to nuclear war. That said, frankly, sometimes Grafton gives me the willies. He plays his cards close to his vest, doesn’t keep his superiors informed, and he’s perfectly willing to ignore all the rules. Yet he always gets results. Not the results we thought we wanted, but usually the best possible outcome.”

  The president mulled it while he twirled a pencil in his fingers. He instinctively distrusted the intelligence bureaucracy. And the military bureaucracy. Too damned many secrets and hidden agendas. On the other hand, Grafton got things done, he hadn’t stepped on any politicians’ toes lately, and this appointment was only an interim, “acting” deal, until the president could get a loyal man appointed and confirmed.

  “Okay,” the elected one said. “Grafton it is. Go tell him.” The president made a dozen or two decisions a day, and he wasn’t going to waste more time on this one.

  “Sometimes I get the feeling with Jake Grafton that I’m up on the back of an infuriated tiger,” Molina told the big boss, “and I’m about to fall off.”

  “As long as he’s our tiger.”

  “He’s America’s tiger, not ours. You can bet your tiny little political soul that no one owns him. Appointing him acting director won’t get you any points with him. With some of those people in Congress, maybe.”

  “What the hell could happen in three or four months?” the big banana asked rhetorically. “He’ll do until we get someone else. Go tell him.”

  That was this morning. Molina was jerked back to the here and now when Grafton cleared his throat. He had the president’s man skewered with his gaze.

  “I’ll take the job,” he said.

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “Mario Tomazic was probably murdered.”

  Molina rubbed his eyes. Oooh man! Here we go again. “Okay,” he said.

  “You go tell Merritt that the president wants me. Better make it good. He knows this agency inside and out, and I am going to need him just as much as Tomazic did.”

  “Sure.”

  Jake stood and walked Molina to the door. “I should be thanking you, I suppose, but I won’t. I will tell you this. If Tomazic was murdered, we’ll get the people that did it. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.”

  “Umm.”

  “Better tell the president that before he signs the interim appointment letter. If I’m in, I’m all in.”

  “Jake, this administration can’t afford another intelligence scandal.”

  “I understand. But I didn’t kill Tomazic. If someone did, it’s a problem that will have to be faced … regardless of where the trail leads or who over at the White House doesn’t want to hear about it. You can tell Reinicke and Schulz I said that.”

  Molina took a last good look at those cold gray eyes, grunted, then left.

  Jake Grafton went out to the coffeepot and poured himself another cup.

  *

  On Willoughby Spit, Zhang Ping and Choy Lee watched a thunderstorm roll out in the estuary. Dark, malevolent, flashing lightning and vomiting an opaque cloud of rain, it was impressive.

  Zhang wondered what would happen if a bolt of lightning struck near the warhead, but after a few seconds’ thought he stopped thinking about it. If the warhead exploded, he and everyone within fifteen miles would be instantly, totally dead. He wouldn’t even feel the transition from this life to the next. Actually, that would probably be a pretty good death. No debilitating old age, no loss of dignity, no shameful last-second thoughts. Click. And he would be gone to the next adventure, if there was one, which he doubted. But he would be beyond earthly concerns. That was an absolute fact.

  Zhang and Choy had just loaded the boat onto its trailer after a reconnaissance down the river to look over the naval piers and generally snoop around. Everything normal. Absolutely normal.

  Now they were in the SUV watching the storm.

  “Want to go get a beer?” Choy Lee asked.

  “Why not?”

  Choy started the engine and pulled the transmission lever into drive.

  That evening he took Sally to a movie, a soapy love story. Sally snuggled up against him in her theater seat and held his hand. Just like the American girls up and down the rows near them.

  She was an American, of course, third generation. She spoke not a word of Chinese and merely giggled when he spouted some occasionally. Unlike Chinese girls, she didn’t cover her mouth with her hand when she smiled or giggled. She showed off perfect white teeth that her father had paid a whopping orthodontist bill to provide. Choy thought she was very charming. And her hand was warm and firm, supple, sensuous.

  He felt very, very good. Maybe he should marry this woman. Maybe he should ask her. But there was Zhang. If it weren’t for him, Choy could just cease his activities for his controller, get a job, probably move, and Chinese intelligence would be out of his life and a part of his past. They would never find him among three hundred million Americans.

  He would need a job, of course, because without the controller the money would stop. But jobs were plentiful in America if you were willing to work hard and had a little bit of intelligence.

  Choy Lee thought about all this and held Sally’s hand and let the sensat
ions of life and love warm him gently.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  If men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail.

  —Ulysses S. Grant

  Coffee cup in hand, Jake Grafton walked down the hall to the director’s office. After a short word with an executive assistant in the outer office, he punched in the code on the door and went in, closing it behind him. Today rain was hammering against the double-pane security glass of the office window and wind was shaking the branches of the nearby trees, which Grafton could have seen if he had looked, but he didn’t.

  Acting director!

  He didn’t know where to start. Soon, perhaps tomorrow, he would have to talk to the department heads, see where the agency’s budget was and how the draft budget for next year was coming together, review all the big irons in the fire … and he was going to have to find someone to run Middle Eastern ops. There was no way he could do the director’s job and that one, too.

  The CIA was a huge, global operation. Not that the agency’s staff was the sole outfit in the government charged with gathering foreign intelligence, because they weren’t. Still, this agency was supposed to collect, analyze and pass on the intelligence it collected to the director of national intelligence, Reinicke, who was supposed to pass it on to senior decision makers in the White House, and in military and civilian agencies and departments.

  Well, he decided, the more he knew about what was going on in the world, the sooner he could get on top of this job. He set his coffee cup on the desk, opened the director’s file cabinets and started in where he had left off.

  An hour into the mess, he found a Top Secret memo, or report, generated by the Pentagon’s IT staff. If had been forwarded to Tomazic by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Copious amounts of Tomazic’s green ink were all over the margins and footers.

  The Chinese had hacked into the Pentagon’s computers. The signature of Chinese computers was unmistakable in the telltale mouse droppings. U.S. Navy operational schedules were compromised. Apparently all of them. Nuclear submarine schedules and missions, aircraft carrier task groups, port calls, manpower problems, projects, budgets … It looked as if they had seen everything except technical data and ship plans. No, wait. Maybe they had cracked into those files, too.

  When he finished the printed report, he started on Tomazic’s handwritten notes. “Chinese espionage a huge problem. Their new stealth fighter an obvious clone of the F-35. Must get a handle on this. Our encrypted communications are obviously compromised—if the Chinese know what the messages might say, then they are easier to crack. How do we keep them out of this closet? Can we keep them out?”

  He stared at the memo. After scanning it quickly, he reread it slowly, carefully, ensuring he got every word and nuance.

  “Or should we simply let them look?” Tomazic had written in the right-hand margin.

  Grafton took out his pen and wrote in blue ink, his favorite, “Can we get into Chinese navy’s computers?”

  The phone buzzed. “Mr. Merritt, sir.” Robin must be overcaffeinated, he thought, calling him sir. The last time she got on a sir kick she wanted a promotion and pay raise.

  Jake opened the door. “Come in, Harley.”

  “I just had a long talk with Sal Molina,” he said. “Congratulations.”

  “I didn’t ask for this job,” Grafton muttered as he sat down on the couch, “permanently or on an interim basis.”

  “I didn’t either,” Merritt said blandly.

  “The job was offered, so I took it. If it had been offered to you, you would have taken it, too.”

  “Yes, I would have.”

  “Harley, I need your help. If Tomazic was murdered, we have a serious can of worms buried somewhere. We’re going to have to turn over every rock to find it. If there are physical clues that the killer left, the FBI will find and follow them. They will look into Tomazic’s private affairs, family life, military career, old enemies, all of that. We must start on our end, a motive due to his job as director of this agency. I want you to head up that staff review you ordered this morning. We have got to rule out people inside the Company, if we can, and try to decide if anything the Company has going could have stimulated a foreign government to kill him. Someone wanted Mario Tomazic dead for a reason. Let’s see if we can find it.”

  “We may find a half-dozen reasons.”

  “Or none,” Grafton said wearily. “Tomazic wasn’t the CIA; he was one man. You can’t kill a bureaucracy, no matter how hard you try.”

  “We don’t know that he was murdered,” Merritt objected reasonably. “Assassinated. We may be snipe hunting.”

  “Assume it’s murder until I tell you it wasn’t.”

  Merritt thought about that, then nodded once. “Okay.”

  Grafton eyed the man, sizing up his body language. Yeah, Merritt was disappointed, but he was a professional.

  “I didn’t want this job,” Jake said, “but I’ve got it. Let’s talk about how we can get me up to speed.”

  *

  He had a short interview with both of Tomazic’s executive assistants, telling them he had been told the president was going to appoint him interim director and he wanted them on the job tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. Then Jake Grafton left. He went to the parking lot, got in his Accord and motored off for the beach to pick up Callie. The gate guard gave him his usual friendly wave. Fortunately he was on the front end of rush hour so got around the Beltway and over the Bay Bridge without much trouble.

  As he drove he thought about Callie, his wife, about how she would take the interim appointment thing. They were married after the Vietnam War, while he was a young attack pilot. She had loyally supported his naval career, done all the things officers’ wives were supposed to do, while she continued to work as a teacher of languages at the college level. Hell, she knew seven or eight, last he heard. On the other hand, lately she had been dropping not-so-subtle hints about retirement. He spent too many hours at Langley. With his navy retirement pay as a two-star, bumped up some due to more federal service, they didn’t need any more money to live comfortably. They were already socking away a large chunk of his salary now.

  Retirement. He had done a couple of years of that before going to the CIA. Flew all over the country in his Cessna 170B. Still had it, but hadn’t flown it in six months. No time.

  What was he doing at Langley that someone else couldn’t do? Couldn’t do as well or better? Didn’t he and Callie deserve a few years of retirement while they were still hale and hearty? After this interim thing. Then, he thought. Then. Get the plane out. Go on some cruises. See some of Europe. Maybe Israel. Spend some time with daughter, Amy, and the grandkid.

  Jake Grafton promised that to himself.

  He arrived in Rehoboth Beach on the Atlantic about seven o’clock Monday evening. Callie was packed and ready. After a kiss, he hit the bathroom, showered, shaved and changed clothes. He felt better. At least the director’s office had a shower, and he vowed to use it. He topped off his suitcase, loaded their bags into the car, locked up the house, and off they went the other way, back toward Washington.

  “It was on the evening news Saturday night that Mario Tomazic is dead,” Callie said. “Big write-up on Tomazic in the newspaper this morning. I kept a copy of the Post in case you didn’t see it.”

  “We couldn’t sit on it,” Jake explained. “The local sheriff was there, plus the county coroner. There was a news chopper overhead before I could get out of there.”

  “Drowned!” Callie exclaimed. “With his daughter and grandchildren asleep in the house. How horrible!”

  “Yep.”

  Jake concentrated on driving.

  “Was it an accident?” Callie asked suspiciously. She could read him like a book.

  “Maybe. Maybe not…” He decided to be honest. “Probably not.”

  “Who in the world?”

  “Damn if I know.”

  “So is Merritt going to run the agency until a new director is confi
rmed?”

  “No. I am.”

  “You? For Christ’s sake, Jake! You?”

  “Yep. President’s choice, according to Sal Molina. I didn’t want the job—don’t want the job—but thought it over and said yes.”

  “Oh, my God!” his wife moaned. “There went our holiday season!”

  “You getting hungry? I thought we could stop somewhere ahead and get a hamburger.”

  “Amy is coming in two weeks, bringing the grandbaby,” Callie said bitterly. “And you’ll be locked in at the office. Damn it!”

  “No, I won’t. You’ll see.”

  “Why can’t you just retire, for God’s sake?”

  “Tomazic was probably murdered, Callie.”

  “Maybe, you said.”

  “It’s just an interim appointment. I’ll be acting director. Get to use the director’s parking place for a couple months, shower in his office, deal with the Beltway trolls for a while, make lots and lots of new best friends, then that will be that.”

  His wife sat watching the countryside go by. Jake had been lukewarm to the idea of retirement in the past, told her he’d think it over. Now this!

  The silence was broken several minutes later when Jake asked, “You want a hamburger or Subway for dinner?”

  “Whatever.”

  Callie Grafton was peeved, but as she sat watching the road unwind before them she tried to put it all into perspective. She had known Jake Grafton was a warrior when she married him, way back when, and he had proved it many times since. Mario Tomazic was not Jake’s personal friend, but he was a brother officer, and Jake stood by his fellow warriors. It was in his DNA. Tomazic’s fight was his fight. She bought it when she married Jake and she bought it now. She sighed inwardly. She was ready to ditch it all and do the grandparent thing, let life slow down, hang out with other retirees. Jake obviously wasn’t. And perhaps he never would be. He could smell a fight from a mile away, and he found the prospect irresistible. That was who he was.

  She had never liked the president, had voted for the other man, but thank God the stupid SOB had the sense to appoint Jake as interim director. He couldn’t have found a better man if he had scoured the earth for candidates. No doubt Sal Molina had something to do with it: Callie had heard Jake mention his name several times. Molina was the president’s right-hand man, his brain trust, if any of those idiots in the White House had any brains. Many pundits assured their readers daily that they didn’t.