Dead or Alive

by Grant Blackwood

  “You catch any rugby while you were over there?” their escort asked.

  “A little. You have to be nuts to play that without pads,” Clark offered. “But they are a little peculiar over there.”

  “Maybe they’re just tougher than we are.”

  The ride toward D.C. was uneventful, helped by the fact that they were just ahead of the evening rush hour and not going all the way into the city. The effects of jet lag struck even these experienced travelers, and by the time they got to the hotel, the presence of bellmen seemed a very good idea. Inside five minutes they were on the top floor in adjoining suites, and J.C. was already looking at the king-size bed he’d have to himself. Patsy gave the same sort of look to the bathtub-it was smaller than the monsters the Brits built, but there was room to sit down, and a limitless supply of hot water just on the other side of the tap. Ding picked a chair and got the remote, and settled in to get reacquainted with American television.

  Next door, John Clark left the unpacking to Sandy and raided the minibar for a miniature of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7. The Brits didn’t understand bourbon or its Tennessee cousin, and the first stiff shot, even without ice, was a rare delight.

  “What’s tomorrow?” Sandy asked.

  “Have to have a meeting on the seventh floor.”

  “Who with?”

  “He didn’t say. Probably a deputy assistant director of operations. I haven’t kept track of the lineup at Langley. Whoever he is, he’ll tell me about the great retirement package they have set up for me. Sandy, I think it’s about time for me to hang it up.”

  He couldn’t add that he’d never really considered the possibility of living this long. So his luck hadn’t quite run out? Remarkable. He’d have to buy himself a laptop and get serious about an autobiography. But for the moment: stand up, stretch, pick up his suit jacket and hang it in the closet before Sandy yelled at him for being a slob again. On the lapel was the sky-blue ribbon and five white stars that denoted the Medal of Honor. Jack Ryan had arranged that for him, after looking into his Navy service record and a lengthy document written by Vice Admiral Dutch Maxwell, God rest his soul. He’d been away when Maxwell had checked out at eighty-three-he’d been in Iran, of all places, trying to see if a network of agents had been completely rolled up by Iranian security. That process had begun, but John had managed to get five of them out of the country alive, via the UAE, along with their families. Sonny Maxwell was still flying, a senior captain for Delta, father of four. The medal was for getting Sonny out of North Vietnam. It now seemed like something that had happened during the last ice age. But he had this little ribbon to show for it, and that beat a kick in the balls. Somewhere packed away were the mess jacket and black shoes of a chief bosun’s mate, along with the gold Budweiser badge of a Navy SEAL. In most Navy NCO clubs he wouldn’t have been allowed to buy his own beers, but Jesus, today the chiefs looked so damned young. Once they’d seemed like Noah himself.

  But the good news was that he wasn’t dead yet. And he could look forward to honorable retirement, and maybe doing that autobiography, if Langley ever let him publish it. Not very likely. He knew a lot of things that ought not to be known, and he’d done one or two things that probably ought not to have been done, though at the time his life had ridden on that particular horse. Things like that didn’t always make sense to the people who sat at desks in the Old Headquarters Building, but for them the big part of the day was finding a good parking place and whether or not the cafeteria had spice cake on the dessert stack.

  He could see Washington, D.C., out the window. The Capitol Building, the Lincoln Memorial, and George’s marble obelisk, plus the surpassingly ugly buildings that housed various government departments.

  To John Terrence Clark it was just a whole city composed of headquarters pukes for whom reality was a file folder in which the papers were supposed to be properly filled out, and if a man had to shed blood to make it that way, well, that was a matter of only distant interest. Hundreds of thousands of them. Most of them had wives-or husbands-and kids, but even so it was hard not to regard them with distaste-and, on occasion, with outright hatred. But they had their world, and he had his. They might overlap, but they never really met.

  “Glad to be back, John?” Sandy asked.

  “Yeah, sorta.” Change was hard but inevitable. As far as where his life would go from here… time would tell.

  The next morning Clark turned right off the George Washington Parkway, looping to the left and through the gatehouse, whose armed guard had his tag number on his list of “okay to admit” strangers. John was allowed to park in the visitors’ area just in front and to the left of the big canopy.

  “So how long before they tell us to find new employment, John?” Domingo asked.

  “I give it maybe forty minutes. They’ll be polite about it, I’m sure.”

  And with that assessment, they exited his rented Chevy and walked to the front door, there to be met by an SPO, or security and protective officer, whom they didn’t know.

  “Mr. Clark, Mr. Chavez. I’m Pete Simmons. Welcome home.”

  “Good to be back,” John responded. “You are…?”

  “I’m an SPO, waiting for a field assignment. Got out of The Farm two months ago.”

  “Who was your training officer?”

  “Max DuPont.”

  “Max hasn’t retired yet? Good man.”

  “Good teacher. He told us a few stories about you two, and we saw the training film you did back in ’02.”

  “I remember that,” Chavez observed. “Shaken, not stirred.” He had himself a brief laugh.

  “I don’t drink martinis, Domingo, remember?”

  “Not as good-looking as Sean Connery, either. What did you learn from the film, Simmons?”

  “Keep your options open, and don’t walk in the middle of the street.” Those were, in fact, two good lessons for a field spook.

  “So who’re we meeting?” Clark asked.

  “Assistant Deputy Director Charles Sumner Alden, ADDO.”

  “Political appointment?”

  “Correct. Kennedy School, Harvard, yeah. He’s friendly enough, but sometimes I wonder if he really approves of what we do here.”

  “I wonder what Ed and Mary Pat are doing now.”

  “Ed’s retired,” Simmons told him. “Working on a book, I hear. Mary Pat’s over at NCTC. She’s a pistol.”

  “Best instincts in a field spook I ever encountered,” Clark said. “What she says, you can take to the bank.”

  “Makes you wonder why President Kealty didn’t keep her and Ed on the payroll,” Chavez observed.

  Unclean, unclean, Clark thought. “How’s morale?” Clark asked on the way through the security card readers. Simmons handled that for them with a wave to the armed guard at the end of the gate line.

  “Could be better. We have a lot of people running around in circles. They’re punching up the intelligence directorate, but mine was the last class through The Farm for a while, and none of us have field assignments yet.”

  “Where’d you come from?”

  “Cop, Boston city police. I was hired under Plan Blue. My degree is from Boston University, not Harvard. Languages.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Serbian, some Arabic, and a little Pashtun. I was supposed to go out to Monterey to polish them up, but that got shelved.”

  “You’re going to need the last two,” John advised. “And work on the jogging. Afghanistan-I spent some time there back in the mid-’80s, and it’ll wear out a mountain goat.”

  “That bad?”

  “The people there fight wars for fun, and there ain’t no good guys. I found myself feeling sorry for the Russians. The Afghans are tough people. I guess in that environment you have to be, but Islam is just an overlay on a tribal culture that goes back three-thousand-plus years.”

  “Thanks for the tip. I’ll cross it off my list of preferences,” Simmons said as the elevator reached the seventh floor.


  He dropped them off at the secretary’s desk. The plush carpet told them that the office was an important one-it looked fairly new. Clark took a magazine and paged through it while Domingo stared placidly at the wall. His former life as a soldier allowed him to tolerate boredom fairly well.

  31

  AFTER FORTY MINUTES, Charles Alden came to the anteroom, smiling like a used-car salesman. Tall and thin like a runner, old enough to seem important to himself, whatever he’d done to earn this post. Clark was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, but the doubts were piling up rapidly.

  “So you’re the famous Mr. Clark,” Alden said in greeting-and without an apology for keeping them waiting, Clark noted.

  “Not too famous,” Clark replied.

  “Well, at least in this community.” Alden led his guest into his office, not inviting Chavez to join them. “I just read through your file.”

  In fifteen minutes? Clark wondered. Maybe a speed-reader. “I hope it was illuminating.”

  “Colorful. Getting the Gerasimov family out of Russia was quite a job. And the mission in Tokyo, with a Russian cover… impressive. Ex-SEAL… I see President Ryan got you your Medal of Honor. Twenty-nine years with the Agency. Quite a record,” Alden said, waving Clark to a chair; it was smaller than Alden’s own chair and designed to be uncomfortable. Power game, Clark thought.

  “I just did the jobs they gave me, best I could, and I managed to survive them all.”

  “Your missions tended to get somewhat physical.”

  Clark shrugged this off.

  “We try to avoid that now,” Alden observed.

  “I tried to avoid it back then. Best-laid plans.”

  “You know, Jim Greer left behind a lengthy document about how you came to the Agency’s attention.”

  “Admiral Greer was a particularly fine and honorable gentleman,” John observed, instantly on guard for what that file might say. James Greer had liked his written records. Even he’d had his weaknesses. Well, everybody did.

  “He discovered Jack Ryan, too, correct?”

  “And a lot of others.”

  “So I have learned.”

  “Excuse me, sir, doing research, are we?”

  “Not really, but I like to know who I’m talking to. You’ve done some recruiting, too. Chavez, for example.”

  “He’s a good officer. Even if you discount the stuff we did in England, Ding has been there when our country needed him. Got himself educated, too.”

  “Oh, yeah, he did get that master’s degree at George Mason, didn’t he?”

  “Right.”

  “A little physical, though, like you. Not really a field officer, as most people understand the term.”

  “We can’t all be Ed Foley or Mary Pat.”

  “They also have colorful files, but we’re trying to get away from that as the world evolves.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Well, it is today. The world’s changed. The Romania job you and Chavez pulled off-that must have been exciting.”

  “That’s one way to put it. Not often you find yourself in a foreign country in the middle of a revolution, but we got the job done before we skipped the country.”

  “You killed your subject,” Alden said, somewhat distastefully.

  “He needed killing,” Clark said in reply, eyes locked on to Alden’s face.

  “It was against the law.”

  “I’m not an attorney, sir.” And an executive order, even a presidential one, wasn’t exactly statutory or constitutional law. This guy was a quintessential desk-sitter, John realized. If it wasn’t written down, it wasn’t real, and if it wasn’t authorized in writing, then it was wrong. “When someone points a loaded firearm at you,” Clark said, “it’s a little late to start formal negotiations.”

  “You try to avoid such contingencies?”

  “I do.” It’s better to shoot the bastards in the back and unarmed, but that’s not always possible, Clark thought. When it’s life and death, the concept of a fair fight went out the window. “My mission was to apprehend that individual and, if possible, to hand him over to appropriate authorities. Didn’t work out.”

  “Your relations with law enforcement have not always been friendly,” Alden said, flipping through pages of the classified file.

  “Excuse me, does that file have my driving record in it?”

  “Your friendship with senior people has been helpful to your career.”

  “I suppose so, but that happens with a lot of people. I generally accomplish my missions, and that’s why I stayed around so long. Mr. Alden, what is the purpose of this interview?”

  “Well, as deputy DO I have to be familiar with people in the Clandestine Service, and looking over this, I see that you’ve had a most colorful career. You’re lucky you lasted this long, and you can now look back on a singular career.”

  “And my next assignment?”

  “There is no next assignment. Oh, you can go back to The Farm as a training officer, but really my best advice would be for you to take your retirement. It’s well earned. Your retirement papers are ready for processing. You’ve earned it, John,” he said, with the cold hint of a smile.

  “But if I were twenty years younger, you would not have a place for me?”

  “Maybe an embassy posting,” Alden said. “But neither one of us is twenty years younger. The Agency’s changed, Mr. Clark. We’re getting out of the paramilitary business, except when we have people assigned directly to us from Delta Force, for example, but we’re trying to get away from the hands-on stuff that you and Chavez have specialized in. The world is a kinder and gentler place.”

  “Tell that to New Yorkers, maybe?” Clark asked evenly.

  “There are other ways to deal with things like that. The trick is finding out ahead of time and encouraging people to take a different path if they want to get our attention.”

  “How, exactly, does one do that-theoretically, of course?”

  “That’s an issue we address here on the seventh floor, on a case-by-case basis.”

  “Out in the field, issues like that one don’t always arrive in your lap in a manner which allows referral to headquarters. You have to trust your people to take the initiative, and support them when they do so intelligently. I’ve been there. It can get awfully lonely out there in the field if you do not have confidence in the people behind you, especially when they’re five thousand miles behind you.”

  “Initiative works well in the movies but not in the real world.”

  When’s the last time you were out in the field in the real world? Clark wanted to ask but did not. He was not in here for an argument or even a discussion. He was here only to listen to the voice of God, and relayed from this academic asshole. It had happened before at the Agency, but back in the 1970s, when he’d avoided involuntary retirement for the first time, with the help of James Greer, he’d made something of a name for himself working in the Soviet Union on “special” missions. It had been nice, once, to have an enemy everyone believed in.

  “So I’m out?”

  “You will retire honorably, with the thanks of the nation, which you have served well, and at peril to your life. You know, reading through this, I wonder why you don’t have a star on the atrium wall.” He referred to the white marble wall with gold stars that memorialized the names of field officers who’d died in the service of the CIA.

  The book that listed those names-it was in a glass-and-brass case-had many blank spaces showing only dates, because the names were themselves classified, even fifty years after the fact. In all likelihood, Alden took the executive elevators up from the security parking under the building, and so was not routinely forced to look at the wall-hell, not even to walk past it.

  “What about Chavez?”

  “As I told you, he’s eligible for retirement in just ten more weeks, counting his time in the Army. He’ll retire as GS-12, with full benefits, of course. Or if he insists, he can have a training post at The Farm f
or a year or two, before we send him off to Africa, probably.”

  “Why Africa?”

  “Things are happening there-enough things to keep us interested.”

  Sure. Send him to Angola, where they’ll take his Spanish accent for Portuguese and help him get whacked by some leftover guerrillas, right? Not that you’d care one way or another, Alden. These kinder and gentler people never really cared much for individuals. They were too interested in the big-picture issues of the day, forcing square reality pegs into the round theoretical holes of how the world was supposed to look and act. It was a common failing among the politically astute.

  Clark said, “Well, that’s up to him, I suppose, and after twenty-nine years, I guess I have my retirement pretty well maxed out, eh?”

  “Pretty well,” Alden agreed, with a smile about as genuine as a man about to close the sale on a 1971 Ford Pinto.

  Clark stood. He did not extend his hand, but Alden did, and Clark had to take it out of simple good manners, and good manners were always disarming to the assholes of the world.

  “Oh, I almost forgot: Someone wants to see you. You know a James Hardesty?”

  “Served with him once, yeah,” Clark replied. “Isn’t he retired by now?”

  “No, not yet. He’s working with operational archives, part of a project for the DO we’ve been running for about fourteen months-sort of a classified history project. Anyway, his office is on the fourth floor, past the kiosk by the elevators.” Alden handed over the room number, scribbled on a blank sheet of paper.

  Clark took it and folded it into his pocket. Jimmy Hardesty was still here? How the hell did he evade the attention of people like this Alden prick? “Okay, thanks. I’ll catch him on the way out.”

  “They need me in there?” Ding asked when Clark came out the door.

  “No, he just wanted me this time.” Clark adjusted his neck-tie in a prearranged signal, to which Chavez did not react. And with that, they took the elevator down to the fourth floor. They walked past the kiosk staffed by blind vendors who sold such things as candy bars and Cokes-it always struck visitors as creepy and sinister, but for the CIA it was a laudable way to provide employment to the handicapped. If they were really blind. One could never be sure of anything in this building, but that was just part of the mystique.