The Art of War: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  “I love you, Jake,” she said.

  He glanced at her, flashed that grin that had always warmed her and said, “I love you, too, Callie.”

  The Graftons got subs and soft drinks at a gas station/convenience store, and when they were rolling along munching and slurping, Callie asked, “Didn’t Tomazic have some bodyguards? Where were they?”

  “He always gave them the weekend off. Didn’t want them underfoot when he went to the Eastern Shore.”

  “So will you get bodyguards?”

  Jake glanced at Callie. That had slipped his mind. “Well, I guess so. When the interim appointment gets announced.”

  “Twenty-four/seven, or are you going to do the free-weekend thing like General Tomazic?”

  Jake put the rest of his sandwich back in the bag. He thought about bodyguards as he drove along.

  Callie wouldn’t let it lie. “If someone somewhere wanted the director of the CIA off the board, you may be next.”

  Jake pulled over to the side of the road and removed his cell phone from his pocket. He scrolled through his contacts, picked one and touched the screen.

  *

  A two-week vacation was a rare treat for me. My name is Tommy Carmellini. Forty-eight weeks a year I am a wage slave for the CIA as a tech-support guy, which means I install and monitor listening devices, break into computers, bug embassies, that kind of thing. However … every now and then I get dragooned by Jake Grafton, head of Middle Eastern ops, for special assignments. I had just returned to the States from one of those in Egypt a couple of weeks ago and managed to finagle a vacation.

  An old college buddy and I had used the last eight days to free-climb some cliffs in Yosemite. It had been a few years since I had that kind of a workout. I was sore as heck the first few days. Feeling fit and studly now. Mom’s bathroom scale said I had dropped seven pounds. My trousers were loose, and I was using a new belt notch.

  It had been a delightful interlude … until I got a good gander at her new boyfriend, Cuthbert Gordon. He was in his early seventies, short and not carrying any extra weight, with a huge white handlebar mustache and a tan that looked as if it came from a bottle. And he was a talker.

  I could hear a cell phone ringing. In the kitchen. I felt my pockets. Maybe I had left it there.

  Gordon was prattling on. “… retired from the university on Long Island and decided to try California. Teaching a couple of courses on investing at the community college here just to keep my hand in. A mutual friend introduced me to your mom. Wonderful lady. We’re thinking about an Australian vacation next month. It’s spring down there. I’ve been to Australia and New Zealand about a dozen times through the years and love it. Skin diving, the beaches, sightseeing … I think it’s perfect for your mother. I’ll pick up the tab, of course, and—”

  “Tommy,” Mom called from the kitchen, “it’s for you.” I kinda thought it would be, since it was my phone. “Some man named Jake.”

  Uh-oh. A call from Jake Grafton out of the blue was not good news. Hadn’t been yet, and doubtlessly never would be.

  “Excuse me,” I said to Mr. Wonderful. I put my glass of merlot on the stand beside the chair and went into the kitchen.

  Mom held her hand over the telephone mouthpiece and whispered, for the eighth or tenth time, “Isn’t he terrific?” She was smiling brightly.

  I didn’t have a high opinion of Mom’s taste in men. This one was even smarmier than the last one I met, three or four years ago. That one had been married five times and had all his chest hair waxed out every week or two … but I digress.

  I relieved her of the phone.

  “You’re calling about my promotion, right?”

  “Hey, Tommy.” Yep, it was Jake Grafton. “Have you been following the news?”

  “No. It’s called a vacation. Has war been declared?”

  “That’s next week. How about coming back ASAP? I need you.”

  I gave it a second to let him know I was unhappy, as if he cared, then said, “I’ll get a flight tomorrow.”

  We said good-bye, and I hung up the phone. “My boss,” I told Mom. “I’m going to have to go back to Washington tomorrow.”

  “Did you get a promotion?”

  “No such luck.” Mom was also kinda slow on the uptake.

  “I’m sorry, Tommy. I thought Bertie and I could take you into San Francisco for an evening.” Bertie, no less. Ye gods!

  “Next time, maybe.”

  When she broke the news to the boyfriend, he asked me, “Who do you work for, anyway?”

  “It’s a government job,” I said evasively. I tried to remember what lie I had told Mom. Did I say I worked for the GSA or FHA? Or was it Freddie Mac?

  “Tommy is in housing,” she told Mr. Wonderful with a proud smile. “Mortgages and all that.”

  “Mortgages, eh?” he said. “I made a lot of money in mortgages—back before the crash, of course.” And away he went, regaling us with his adventures in secured debt instruments as we sliced up our dead animal and vegetables.

  After dinner, while Mom made coffee, I flipped through her stack of old newspapers. Found that the agency director, General Mario Tomazic, had drowned this past weekend. More riots in Egypt, the revolution in Syria was heating up again, North Korea was making more threats, another city had filed for bankruptcy … looked as if life on this old planet was perking perilously along as I climbed cliffs. A call from Jake Grafton—could this be about Tomazic? Hell, drowned is drowned. Wasn’t a thing I could do for the guy, whom I had met only once, except wish him a happy hereafter.

  Obviously something was up, but I wasn’t really curious. Sort of bummed about not getting to do some more climbing. On the other hand, one evening with Mr. Wonderful was quite enough.

  “Would you like some dessert, Tommy? I fixed your favorite, blueberry pie. Bertie likes it, too.”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  Afterward I helped her clean up. Slipped a knife and fork that Mr. Wonderful had used into the side pocket of my sport coat when Mom wasn’t looking.

  “That was a short call from that Jake,” she remarked.

  “Yeah. He always acts like Ma Bell is personally charging him for every word.” I let it drop.

  Curious phrase, “I need you.”

  The last time Grafton thought that only I could properly handle a chore, I spent a couple of months camping in the African outback. I said a silent prayer. No more camping, please! And I damned well didn’t want to go back to Egypt. Or Iran. Or Iraq. Or …

  Maybe Grafton just wanted me to bug someone’s embassy. As soon as possible, as if there were any other time schedule in the spook business. Knowing what the other guys were actually saying to each other, their real negotiating strategy, their real assessment of the international situation, was the gold standard of intelligence. I kinda hoped that was all there was to it, but doubted it. I knew Jake Grafton too well.

  On the way upstairs after coffee and blueberry pie, I swiped a manila envelope from Mom’s tiny office and carefully deposited the filched knife and fork in it, taking care not to smear any fingerprints on the handles. I wondered if Cuthbert Gordon also waxed off his chest hair.

  In Mom’s guest room I used my cell phone to make an airline reservation to get myself, complete with body hair, back to Washington, Sin City USA. Washington wasn’t hell, but you could see the smoke from there. And smell it. The good news was that when politicians died, they didn’t have far to go.

  After I broke the connection I looked at that cell phone with distaste. I may be the only person in America under seventy who loathes the damn things. I left it in my stuff here at Mom’s when I went climbing, but now I was back tethered to the thing. Aaugh!

  CHAPTER SIX

  All warfare is based on deception.… Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

  —Sun Tzu

  Accidental deaths are difficult to arrange. That is why murderers and hired assassins usually kill their victims the tried-a
nd-true traditional ways, with gun, knife, bomb, garrote, poison or blunt instrument. Amateurs rarely use accidents because they miss out on the satisfaction that comes from using violence on an enemy. Professional assassins don’t have enemies; they have targets. So when an assassin has time to set it up and wants to keep police guessing for a while, accidental death is the logical choice.

  Fish was a professional. Had been since he got out of reform school at the age of eighteen and an up-and-coming mobster paid him to whack his boss. Fish did the job cleanly and fatally, leaving the police with no clues. The mobster was appropriately grateful and began steering business his way. Five years later, Fish was paid to whack his benefactor, and did so. He had no sense of loyalty, none of the so-called higher emotions. He was a sociopath without a shred of conscience. Smart, too. He read up on police methods, knew most of the latest scientific discoveries used in forensics and was a methodical craftsman. He also enjoyed his work in the same way a fine mechanic enjoys repairing a well-made machine. He knew how to do it and he did it well. That was enough.

  His nickname, Fish, came to him early in life. His childhood acquaintances labeled him a “cold fish,” later shortened to Fish. He didn’t care one way or another.

  Tonight he sat in a stolen car in the parking lot of a large apartment complex near the Potomac in Georgetown. He was waiting. Had been since six that evening. Now, at twelve minutes after ten, his target arrived in a limo followed by a car containing two guards. The target got out of the car, muttered something to the driver, flapped a hand at the guards in the trailing car and went inside the building.

  The limo and guard car soon disappeared into traffic.

  From where Fish was sitting, he could see the windows of the target’s apartment on the eighth floor. Sure enough, six minutes after the target entered the building, the lights in the apartment came on. Fish rolled down the window of the Lexus, chosen because it would blend in perfectly with the other cars parked nearby, and lit a cigarette. He smoked it down and crushed it out and put the butt in his pocket. Time passed. After an hour, he lit another.

  He was patient. He watched other cars arrive and people enter the building. He paid attention to the sights and noises from the street. Listened with the window down and occasionally smoked a Marlboro.

  At two minutes before midnight, the lights in the target’s apartment went out. Or almost out. There was a suggestion of a light in one window, perhaps a night-light or an adjustable light that functioned as one.

  Thirty minutes, precisely, after the lights went out, Fish reached behind him and took a small box from the backseat. He opened it on his lap. Two remote controllers were there. He selected one that he had previously labeled, turned it on, waited for a green “ready” light, and when he got it moved the control lever forward, then full aft. He looked again at his watch, turned off the power and put the first controller away.

  He had allowed ten minutes in planning for the next stage, so he lit another cigarette and sat smoking it as he watched the windows of the target’s apartment, checked traffic and the rare pedestrians, watched two more cars arrive and their drivers and one passenger go inside the building, and he listened. Listened to the night. Listened to life happening up and down the length and breadth of the great city.

  When the ten minutes had passed, Fish opened the case and removed the second controller. He turned it on and waited for the green light that indicated it was ready to use. Meanwhile he started the engine of his car.

  The green light came on. Fish aimed the controller at the window and moved the joystick full aft, then full forward.

  Five seconds later he saw the glow in the apartment window, which quickly grew brighter. Then the apartment exploded. The windows blew out in a gout of fire.

  Fish put the controller back in its box, closed the box and laid it on the seat behind him. He snicked the gearshift lever into drive and fed gas. Thirty seconds later he was rolling eastward, paralleling the Potomac, toward the center of town. Two minutes passed before he heard the first siren. He lit another cigarette.

  *

  The newspapers carried the story on the front page. Navy Rear Admiral (ret.) Jake Grafton had been appointed by the president as the new acting director of the CIA. I bought copies of three of the papers before boarding my plane in San Francisco and read the stories as the big bird winged its way eastward toward Sodom on the Potomac. According to the White House propaganda minister, the president needed several months to find a suitable candidate to be permanent director, nominate him or her and let the Senate do its advise-and-consent role.

  Staring out the window as we flew over the Rockies and out over the Great Plains, I wondered what in the world Jake Grafton needed me for. He certainly wasn’t going to give me a big promotion and a department to run. Maybe he wanted me to bug the Oval Office. Or maybe not. With Jake Grafton, predictions were worthless.

  I’d worked with him enough the last few years to know how his mind worked, which might best be described as unconventionally. He didn’t go from A to B to C and thereby arrive at D. He went straight from A to D. He was usually sitting on D while I was trying to figure out where B was. So Grafton was now acting director while I remained a grunt in the spook wars.

  My old 1964 Mercedes 280SL coupe was right where I’d left it in the long-term parking lot at Dulles Airport. I threw my bag in, stuck the key in the ignition as I said a little prayer for the battery, then gave the key a twist. The starter ground a while before combustion began. I pumped the accelerator. After a pleasant roar, the old gal settled into a rocking idle with clattering valves. One of these days I am going to be forced to choose between trading cars and becoming a long-distance hiker.

  It was nearly six in the evening, but I figured with his new elevation and all, Grafton would still be at the office. I confess, I was kinda curious about the sudden summons from an all-too-rare vacation. I tooled over to Langley, showed my pass to the gate guard and was admitted to the grounds.

  I knew where in the complex the director’s office was, of course, although I had never before had occasion to visit the inner sanctum. The secretary in the outer office looked at my building pass and matched the photo to my dishonest phiz. I tried to look handsome. She had a nice jawline and good eyes, which I happen to like in women. Her long blond hair was tied up in a ponytail. Her legs were under the desk, so I couldn’t tell about them. Everything in sight looked great, though. She was at least a Goddess Third Class. Perhaps even a Goddess Second Class. Goddesses of any rank are rare, in my experience, especially in government service. The plaque on her desk said her name was Jennifer Suslowski.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Unfortunately—”

  “Admiral Grafton is in conference right now. Perhaps—”

  “I have just returned from Moscow with Putin’s evil plan for world domination. Send him a note that I’m around and I’ll go get a sandwich. See you again in a half hour or so.”

  In the cafeteria I got a turkey sandwich and a cup of lukewarm coffee. While I ate, I eyed up some of the egghead chicks and the seminary crowd, who were huddled over their tables and talking about anything but shop. The guys at the next table were discussing the football fortunes of the Redskins, who were trying desperately again this year to rise above mediocrity. At the table on my other side they were talking about the demise of the late director—was his death accident or murder?

  Murder? The word jolted me.

  A television mounted high in one corner of the room was airing a news channel. Finally I began paying attention. There had been a fire in an apartment building in Georgetown in the wee hours this morning. At least seven people died, including Director of National Intelligence Paul Reinicke, a retired air force four-star general. Police suspected a gas line leak, they said.

  The White House press secretary had some wonderful things to say about Reinicke, whom I had never met. By reputation, which was merely Company shop talk, he was a paper-shuffling boob
who demanded that intelligence analyses be edited to conform to his view of the world, which, amazingly enough, mirrored the worldview of the White House and National Security Council staff. “He’ll be greatly missed,” the press secretary said. Nothing was known yet about the other victims. Three people were hospitalized in critical condition with burns.

  The director of the CIA, now the DNI. Being a big weenie in Washington was getting unhealthy.

  A half hour later I was back looking at the director’s secretary, the goddess without a wedding ring. She glanced at me as I seated myself in one of the three empty chairs, and kept on with whatever she was doing on the computer. After a minute her phone buzzed. She answered it and talked in a low whisper. When she hung up, she said to me, “You may go in now.”

  I went. Gave her a smile in passing, a deposit for the future. She didn’t smile back.

  Grafton was pounding the keys of his computer when I entered the director’s office and closed the door. He didn’t look up, just said, “Hey, Tommy. Grab a chair.”

  The director had pretty good digs. A wall-to-wall carpet, of course. A flag on a pole behind the desk, oil paintings on two walls, drapes for the windows, three padded chairs and a couch, motion detectors mounted high in the corners, infrared sensors. There were three doors, the one I had entered and two others, both closed.

  When Grafton quit typing and swiveled toward me, I said, “Congrats. Maybe. Can I have your old office?”

  “This job is temporary.”

  “I read that in the papers, but who believes any of that stuff?”

  He passed over the secretary’s note. It was a printed form. The block labeled TO SEE YOU was checked. There was a handwritten note: “Mr. Carmellini with Russian plan for world domination. Will return at 7:50.”