Sheep Dog and the Wolf

by Douglass, Carl;

  “I agree with both of you,” said the president. “You are both recommending a firm diplomatic approach although Jeffery wants it softer than you do, Michael. Jeffery, please make arrangements to have the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Israel meet with the two of us today, and have the Swiss get on the horn with their Iranian friends; so, we can get some sort of dialogue going with them as well.”

  “Do you think it wise to meet with Ehud ben Cohen’s people so soon and so openly, Mr. President? That could never be kept a secret, and the Arabs and the Persians will know about the meeting before we even have a chance to come up with a mutual statement. They will be furious at what they will perceive as an insult and a veiled threat,” Secretary Southem queried earnestly.

  “I can’t sit back and let them all think I’m a wussy. More importantly, I can’t let the American voters get that idea into their heads. Our fine right wing friends are already worrying that horse to a froth.”

  “So let them. We have control of both houses, all but four of the governorships, and more than 70% of the state legislatures, to say nothing of our most helpful friends in the media. We can control any attacks from the loonies on the right.”

  “I have an appointment with the CIA at four. This is apparently something that they didn’t bring up in the morning briefing. I’ll let you know what they’ve learned or what mischief they’ve been hatching up. I think we’ve done about as much as we can here. Let’s all get out and reassure the public that we have the situation under control and that we have a plan that concentrates both on diplomacy and preparedness, ladies and gentlemen.”

  The president stood up effectively adjourning the cabinet meeting. All members stood and waited until he left before collecting their papers and beginning to file out of the room. Jeffery Southem gave Michael Chisholm a frosty diffident look, and The secretary of Defense failed to return the gesture with even a convincing diplomatic smile.

  The friends to whom Oliver referred were conveniently waiting in the Prentiss’s spacious third floor office. They had been there since nine-thirty, and were becoming mildly antsy before Oliver finally got around to letting Hunter know they were already present and were looking forward to talking to him. It was ten forty-five.

  “You seem to be taking me for granted, my friend,” Hunter said goodnaturedly. “I have the feeling that I’m about to learn a bit more about your world than I picked up in the better part of ten years in ‘Nam with you.”

  “Withhold judgment until we’ve had a chance to talk.”

  “I always weigh motivations, recommendations, and decisions seriously, Oliver. You should know that.”

  “I do know that, Hunter. You certainly know how much respect—even admiration—I have for you. Frankly, you wouldn’t be here, and this meeting would never take place if I didn’t have that well-founded impression of you and if I had not been able to convince the others of your bona fides.”

  Oliver led the way up a set of back stairs that were the equal of the impressive spiral stair case leading from the entryway to the sitting room where he and Natalie had greeted Hunter. Natalie—for her part—had unobtrusively disappeared through a side door. Oliver’s office was neat and everything was expensive, but unlike the rest of the house it was all function with form following function all the way. The chairs were comfortable, but designed for people to do serious work and not to be entertained. The rest of the house was expensive wood and stone; the office was chrome and glass and technology. There were several computers, a bank of television screens, security cameras, recording devices, and locked wall safes. It must have been patterned after the presidential situation room. Hunter thought it must be somewhere on a par with what the president himself could command.

  “Hunter, I believe you recognize the DCIA.”

  Hunter nodded to Gerald Lang, impressed that he was meeting one of the most powerful people in the world.

  “I don’t think you’ve met Mac Withers. He’s involved in some of the less public aspects of our work, you might say.”

  Hunter shook hands with both the DCIA and Mac Withers.

  “Happy to meet you, gentlemen,” Hunter said with a note of caution in his voice.

  “And this is the brains of the outfit, Olive DeSanctis. She’s an MIT PhD in computer science, one of the world’s foremost cryptologists, and an organizational genius. She is also particularly shy of the public eye, and I’m sure you will be discrete about having the opportunity to meet her.”

  Oliver gave Hunter a meaningful glance. Hunter nodded, and shook the proffered hand of the senior agent, a dour appearing study in grey and black. She was not at all physically attractive, but she had penetrating deep brown eyes that could see through a man and into his inner computer. Not a one to cross, Hunter decided.

  “Well, Hunter, to coin a phrase, perhaps you’re wondering why we called this meeting,” said the DCIA, a commanding presence for all of his nondescript appearance—balding, short, fat, and dressed in a three piece black suit, tie, belt, and shoes right out of central casting for a KGB puppet master.

  “It had occurred to me to wonder, sir.”

  “Let’s cut to the chase. I know you’re a straightforward person, and so am I. So are all of us for that matter.”

  Hunter could just bet.

  “The three of us and the head of NSA and Homeland Security are going to meet with the president at four this afternoon about some thoughts we have about dealing with the recent spate of terrorist hits on this country. We don’t like them, and we don’t feel like sitting on our thumbs while those nice Arab peace lovers blow our country and our citizens into oblivion. We all know that you are more aware of the consequences of their actions than anyone else in this room, and we unitedly and very sincerely offer our condolences.”

  Hunter gave a small nod.

  “Okay if I call you Hunter?”

  “Sure.”

  He was not about to call the man Gerald, however.

  “I’ll get right to the point; then I have to leave. I presume I can count on your strict discretion, Hunter?”

  “Certainly.”

  The DCIA nodded his satisfaction with Hunter’s laconic answer.

  “This president will not order any kind of military action unless he is absolutely pushed into it—say by a frank nuclear attack on U.S. soil. That’s not the opinion of a politician, but my studied professional opinion. We have to have another means of resetting the scales with the members of the peaceful religion. What we are going to propose is the recruitment and training of some, what shall I call them?…equalizers. We are fully aware of your work in the Phoenix Program. Both you and Oliver were highly instrumental in the defeat of the Viet Cong, and neither of you flinched at doing your duty. We won that war, and the hippies and liberals threw it away. The whole thing was very public and—in retrospect—very stupid. We intend to be as obscure as spider web this time around. We want you to be one of our agents. We are prepared to renew your status as a full-fledged agent of the Company, and we are prepared to offer you a full navy captaincy as a legitimate—albeit covert—status. What do you think?”

  “I’ve got a lot of questions, like why me since I’m getting a bit long in the tooth, and what if I decide not to go forward at any point?”

  “You don’t look particularly ‘long in the tooth’ for a forty-two year old. You pose good questions. We have full faith in you, and guarantee you every protection and resource we can offer. I’ll not be coy. While we will train you, supply you, find you safe havens and safe entrances and exits, you will largely be on your own. You know the drill: if you get exposed or captured, we never heard of you.”

  “Fair and honest enough. I’m in, at least to hear the proposition out.”

  “Good. I’ll take off. This meeting never happened, of course; and no one ever suggested that you might operate a bit to the side of the law, so’s to speak. Okay?”

  “I understand. I appreciate the head’s up.”

  DCIA
Lang stood up and moved his bulk out of the room without further explanations or pleasantries. Hunter turned his attention to Olive DeSanctis and Mac Withers.

  Oliver spoke first, “Hunter. For the record, as I’m sure you’ve recognized already, I stayed with the Company after ‘Nam. I have a cushy desk job somewhere in the bowels of the Langley building. If you get on board, I’ll have a hand in your operation on the daily ground level, but we won’t be corresponding pen-pals or e-mail buddies.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Olive DeSanctis spoke next, “Hunter. Please call me Olive. One thing I have to get straight with you is that we don’t have any further conversation without you signing a limited official secrets act agreement. By so signing you will be bound in perpetuity not to divulge anything that you hear in our meeting. As the director said, so far as anyone else might be concerned, our get together today didn’t occur. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  Mac Withers produced a brief and simple but no-nonsense document. Hunter read it quickly. He could never talk about, publish in any form, or in any way divulge information regarding what was said during the meeting. The date, time, and location of the meeting were accurately described, and Dr. DeSanctis had already affixed her notary seal to the bottom of the page below where Hunter was expected to sign.

  Hunter shrugged and signed with alacrity.

  “Good, Dr. DeSanctis said. “Now let’s get to it. Without going into detail, we intend to recruit and train a core of dedicated assassins to rid the earth of a number of particularly venomous creatures who either commit or support terrorist activities against our country and our allies. I am sure you know that many of the niceties of international law are going to be circumvented. As Sir Winston Churchill said when the British took over Iran in 1941, ‘Inter arma silent leges—In times of war, laws are silent’.”

  Hunter nodded his understanding.

  “Your participation in the Phoenix Program was stellar. I’m not a flatterer, Hunter, we just don’t have the time or patience for that sort of thing. You have a set of experiences and skills that seem altogether apt for our needs, for the needs of our country which is in trouble. You won’t be a big shot, anymore than any one of the three of us are. We all make a small contribution, and we are asking you to make one as well.”

  “If I can do something other than sit behind a desk, I am pretty much sold. I have to tell you that, although I can be professional about my work, this is definitely personal. It won’t get in my way; but I have a deep and abiding conviction that those people must be stopped; and, frankly, most of them eradicated.”

  His face, body language, and stone hard eyes left no doubt of the intensity of his declamation.

  “Can you take orders?” Mac asked.

  “I can.”

  “You’ll get some that will give you a moment of pause, if all goes as we hope it will.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Can you work on your own without direct assistance?” Dr. DeSanctis asked.

  “You know my background and experience. My résume—my real resume—speaks for itself.”

  “It certainly does,” Oliver interjected. “I can personally vouch for that.”

  “I have a couple of questions before we get too far into this.”

  “Go ahead,” Mac said. “Better to get it all on the table now than to have regrets later.”

  “Okay, I wanted to find a way to get at the terrorists. Until today I hadn’t the foggiest notion how to get involved. I’m so long out of the loop that I have something of a hard time believing that the CIA would pay attention to me as an applicant since there are some 14,000 other applicants for this year alone.”

  “Probably true. But we know something about you; and, frankly, we have clout. We also have secrecy. We would rather have a seasoned vet who knows the ropes about real secrets than some new enthusiast who might well feel like becoming a whistle blower if the heat gets turned up. Look, I am going to be straight with you. We have stuff on you. It shouldn’t take a lot of thought on your part to know what I mean. You and the rest of the PRUCs have been lying low since ‘Nam. You all are afraid that you would be branded as criminals and probably tried…probably found guilty of a significant number of felonies if the Company ever got real put out about you and let some records accidentally leak out. In the hard core short of it, you would be in a terrible position to make a fuss.”

  Hunter’s face became grim. “You are still something less than the Christians In Action, I see. So, am I to understand that you are going to extort me into being your hit man?”

  Oliver started to speak, but Mac held up a quieting hand to him.

  “Not at all. You can walk out of here tonight and never hear from us again unless you think it would be a lucrative opportunity to sell the story of this meeting to The Enquirer. That would upset some very unforgiving people. You are looking at three of them, and you saw one of them earlier. We are not people to mess with, Hunter. We can and expect to be very good friends of yours; but turn on us, and you will wish you had never been born; and that is not just a trite turn of phrase.”

  “Hunter, I’m your friend. I will do anything in my power to help you, to protect you. But you recognize that this is war, just not a war that will make the news. No one in or out of this room can be allowed to have the kind of information we are going to give you and to betray the Company without prejudicial consequences,” Oliver said. “That’s not really a threat so much as it is a fact. The stakes are too high.”

  Hunter reflected on the precise terminology Oliver had used. ‘Prejudicial, as in to ‘terminate with maximum prejudice’. He had been ordered to kill people by such orders and had given those same orders to other men and women. Hunter Caulfield was not a new guy who had to learn the ropes, not those ropes.

  “If you are interested and want to go on, we will have to have a contract, and you will have to be sworn. You can still back out; but you will be bound by the Company’s secrecy policies; and in this case they would be most stringent and watchful of you for years to come if you did,” Dr. DeSanctis said quietly.

  Hunter laughed, knowing that he was being swept into an entangling net like an unsuspecting fish, but the opportunity to make a contribution—even a small one—towards getting justice, or, call it by its real name, revenge, for the deaths of all nine members of his family was sufficient bait.

  “Okay, I’m still in even after the beating you all just administered. What’s next?”

  Oliver said, “My friends, I think we’ve covered enough for one night. Let’s get to Langley tomorrow and make all of this official and get onto serious work. That all right with you, Hunter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Olive?”

  “Let’s get Hunter to my office by eight tomorrow. I like an early start.”

  “Mac?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “I’m pooped,” Oliver said, “and I’m sure Hunter needs his beauty rest before tomorrow’s work. Let’s call it a day. It’s quarter of one, and I have to meet the director then brave the lion in his oval den.”

  Mac and Olive nodded and took their leave.

  When they were alone, Oliver turned to Hunter and said, “You are perfect for this. Don’t be put off by the hard approach; it just underscores the seriousness of what we’re asking you to do with us. If this project goes south, we’ll all lose our heads. We want you to succeed. It is in our best interests at the Company, and we believe in you. You realize that we have vetted you from Able to Zotz. You are the man for the job. These are your qualifications: you are unattached, rich, bored, and looking for something worthwhile to do. You have no familial attachments. Your businesses can run by themselves and provide a good cover for you. You are as fit and strong as men half your age. You are good with weapons and scary in the martial arts. You are bright, a fast learner. Above all—and this I remember best about you—is that you are able to keep secrets. We both have some things we did for the
Phoenix Program that we have never divulged and in all frankness don’t dare tell anyone for fear of prosecution or worse.”

  “Thanks,” Hunter said softly knowing that he was not being flattered.

  Oliver’s rendition of his qualifications was factual, and his friend’s pre-sumptions about his motives were right on.

  “Here’s the dossier we have compiled on you. I gather that you want to do something to even the scales against the terrorists. You can think on it overnight. I leave for work at six. If you want to get back in, we can drive in together and get the ball rolling. That sound reasonable?”

  Hunter nodded his assent.

  CHAPTER SIX

  White House Oval Office-1100

  PRESENT: POTUS, SECRETARY OF STATE, FOREIGN MINISTERS OF SAUDI ARABIA, SYRIA, SWISS REPRESENTATIVE FOR IRAN

  Neither man spoke in the Oval Office as President Storebridge and Secretary of State Southem sat waiting for the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the Swiss representatives of Iran to arrive for their strongly requested appointment. It was two twenty-five and the ambassador then the foreign ministers were due begin arriving in five minutes. The secretary did not voice his serious misgivings about the whole concept of having the meeting. He saw it as at least a partial unraveling of all of his efforts to bring the United States back into the good graces of the moderate Arab world and a mistaken unnecessary provocation of the crazies from Iran.

  There was a soft knock on the door.

  “Come in,” The president said.

  “Mr. President, the Swiss Ambassador-at-Large, Jeremy LeFevre,” Sally Rose Mathews, the appointments secretary announced.