“And loving it,” Vic said sweetly, fluttering her eyes.
Heading back to the motel, gulping the drink, her mood was much improved—so much so that she stopped at another stand and bought croissants for Abe and Stephanie.
All told, she was enjoying herself. The unpleasantness with Stephanie in Knoxville was behind them, and they’d just come off an intense but fruitful work cycle. Soon there’d be some action. Some payback.
Vic was grateful. The last thing she wanted to do was go back to work. The park was all well and good, and playing guitar in Seattle on the weekends kept her busy, but this extended op was making it clear how much more she liked doing these things, being with these people, than she did spinning out her carefully humdrum life back home. She wondered if she should make a change, get out of the parks service and the Pacific Northwest, maybe find a job in law enforcement someplace. For a moment her mind got away from her, and she flashed on a fantasy of getting a job with the FBI, maybe in Milwaukee . . . Stop it, she thought. Stupid. Stupid.
Her mood had soured again. She felt conflicted and confused. She took a gulp of her mocha and wrestled her thoughts back onto the situation at hand.
Now if Alphonse would just call, she thought impatiently.
Joseph Camp sat in his office at the Library of Congress, Federal Research Division. His office was small and tidy, decorated only with some old photographs from his Army days. He liked to regale his assistants with stories of the war, usually bawdy ones involving smuggled liquor shipments and beautiful Chinese whores. He created the impression of a man whose best days were long, long behind him, and who was now content to toil in obscurity and live on his memories.
The truth, of course, was very different. Joe Camp was never really in the Army, though he was given the rank of major for logistical purposes. He was a spy. He joined the Office of Strategic Services—the OSS—in 1942 out of Harvard, and spent the war in China working for the organization’s DELTA GREEN operation. They were allegedly conducting psychological warfare using occult folklore against superstitious members of Hitler’s elite in Europe and their counterparts in Japan; in reality, Joe and his associates were fighting a shadow war against very real and very inhuman powers that had only tangential connections to the horrors of the Axis or the conflict that had set half the world aflame.
When the war was over, the OSS was disbanded. Joe spent some down time doing research and catching up with family and friends, then signed up with the new Central Intelligence Group (forerunner of the CIA) the following year. The CIG stuck him with mundane analysis work, keeping an eye on post-war Japan, until Delta Green was reconstituted as an independent agency under the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1947. He worked for DG full-time until it was disbanded again in 1970. Joe then found work with the Library of Congress’s Federal Research Division, and he’d been there ever since. He knew he should’ve retired years ago, according to the rules, but he’d become a resource of such singular value and had so many connections throughout the U.S. intelligence community that he’d held onto the post. Joe was an institution within the FRD, though he made sure to stay a very quiet one; despite his sometimes-dramatic OSS service and his brief affair with fellow OSS agent Julia Child, his name had never cropped up in a single history book or memoir. He liked it that way.
Carssandra Buie, one of Joe’s chief researchers, knocked on the open door. “Joe? I’ve got that file you wanted.” She lay a dingy folder down on his desk; it was closed with rubber bands that looked to have been there a long time. “Just get it back to me before I go home so I can drop it back by Frank’s office. He’ll have to do some paperwork if it’s out overnight.”
“Thanks,” Joe said, smiling at her kindly. “I’ll tie a string around my finger.”
Carssandra smiled back and left. Joe got up and closed the door.
The file was from the CIA. Carssandra had an old college friend over there in the records division who occasionally slipped her information that the FRD needed. Technically, the FRD was only supposed to use unclassified materials in their analysis work for various federal agencies. They sifted through books, magazines, newspapers, and so forth, reading between the lines and putting together summaries for their “clients.” Carssandra’s friend wasn’t adverse to loaning them CIA files for an afternoon, as long as the documents didn’t address current operations. It was a security breach, but Joe was careful to ask only for moldy old stuff that no one else cared about, much of it scheduled for declassification whenever the CIA got around to it.
Here was a case in point. The file Joe had requested contained old contracts and duplicates of analysis documents from a private think tank called OUTLOOK Group. They specialized in global political and military issues—usually one and the same—and had a contract with the CIA in the late 1950s and early 1960s to prepare forecasts, conflict scenarios, and other egghead projects with little day-to-day relevance. OUTLOOK had a minor security clearance, but they didn’t appear to have been anything very special. In fact, according to the documents Joe was reading, the CIA had canceled their contract not long after the Bay of Pigs disaster. OUTLOOK was one of several think tanks who had provided data and scenarios on a possible Cuban rebellion, and got a pink slip in the general scape-goating that went on afterwards. A follow-up memo noted that most of the think-tank employees were soon let go by OUTLOOK’s founder and owner, a political scientist named Dr. Lewis Strater. A newspaper clipping recorded Strater’s death in a household burglary in 1963.
That was the extent of the file. Countless think tanks had come and gone over the years, and OUTLOOK appeared to be little more than a footnote among them.
Joe Camp wrapped the file back up and put it to the side of his desk. He stroked his bearded chin and sat for a moment, lost in thought. Then he picked up some photocopies that had come during lunch from the Prince Georges County Dept. of Records and looked at them again. It showed that the Bountin property at the end of Marginal Way where Agent Susan had been taken was owned by OUTLOOK Group Inc., a privately held company who had purchased the land in 1960 and been there ever since. They always paid their property taxes, and reported annual gross income of about three million dollars to the state of Maryland for 1998. Other documents showed that the company had just two officers and owners, Valentine Krogen and Albert Yrjo. Joe didn’t recognize Yrjo, but Krogen’s name was unsettlingly familiar—he was the author of the CIA memo describing Dr. Strater’s scaling-back of OUTLOOK Group after the Bay of Pigs. Presumably, Krogen had been a CIA employee at that point in time. But now?
Joe felt certain that the CIA had more records on OUTLOOK Group than the one dusty old file Carssandra’s friend had sent over. Of course, it was hardly surprising for the CIA to be holding back information.
He got up slowly, joints creaking, and left his office. He padded down the hall, stopping by Carssandra’s desk to drop off the file and thank her for getting it for him. Then he made his way through the building to the rare-document storage vault, where the Library kept numerous items too fragile or too important to go in the general collection. He rummaged around for some time before he found what he was looking for: a yellowing box about the size of three thick phone books. Hefting it under one arm, he returned to his office, stopping by the bathroom on the way to relieve himself.
Back at his desk, he opened the box. It contained copies of documents that together comprised a very rare copy of an infamous work, known in the intelligence community as the Family Jewels. Inside were all of the CIA’s dirty little secrets—at least, all the old ones. Collation of the document was ordered by Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger during his brief 1973 tenure, to provide a full internal accounting of all of the CIA’s illegal activities up to that time. It was part of a general housecleaning going on then among U.S. intelligence agencies, signaled by the death of FBI director Hoover in 1972 and the Vietnam-fed recognition that times were changing. In retrospect, the disbandment of Delta Green in 1970 could be seen as a trem
or of the earthquake to come.
The Family Jewels documents had eventually been made public in the mid-1970s—at least, most of them had. Joe had obtained a complete copy from Bill Casey in 1986 when Casey was the head of the CIA, in return for an old favor from their OSS days, best forgotten. By ’86, of course, the Family Jewels were well out of date; they were even moreso now.
This set had an index of sorts, a summary labeled “Potential Flap Activities.” It listed OUTLOOK Group.
Joe flipped pages and read. The material he expected on OUTLOOK’s role in the Bay of Pigs was there, though it suggested that OUTLOOK had been more significant in the CIA’s decision-making process than the file had shown. But the interesting part began where the file had stopped.
OUTLOOK Group’s life didn’t end with the death of Dr. Strater. Although there was no indication of CIA complicity in Strater’s death, the CIA did purchase OUTLOOK from Strater’s bereaved wife through a front company. At that point, OUTLOOK had only a dozen employees, and was subsisting on dribs and drabs of analysis assignments from the DIA and the NSA. The CIA’s front company immediately sold a controlling interest in OUTLOOK to Valentine Krogen, who had recently been “let go due to budget restraints.” This was a ruse, allowing Krogen to run OUTLOOK full-time and distance him from his masters.
The CIA’s ownership of OUTLOOK was a secret—a big one. OUTLOOK’s role in the Bay of Pigs ensured that no one else in the intelligence community would suspect that the CIA had anything to do with OUTLOOK anymore. But it did. The CIA supplied selected data to OUTLOOK that made their analysis assignments quite accurate and revealing. Under Krogen’s charismatic stewardship and with his secret pipeline of solid-gold CIA data, OUTLOOK expanded dramatically. Its clients included numerous U.S. and allied-nation intelligence agencies as well as corporations with global interests, all of whom drank deep at the OUTLOOK well through the latter half of the 1960s.
In return, the CIA got a very good picture of what its colleagues in both the public and private sectors were doing. The nature of their analysis requests and the raw data they supplied to OUTLOOK for processing were of great interest to the CIA, giving it vast quantities of new information the agency did not otherwise have access to, in exchange for releasing a few careful tidbits to make OUTLOOK’s analysis the gold standard of the day.
At the time of the Schlesinger report in 1973, OUTLOOK was a successful corporate double agent, teasing information out of its clients (including numerous groups within the State Department, the Defense Department, and the White House, as well as corporations ranging from McDonnell-Douglas to Coca-Cola) and handing it over to the CIA. Schlesinger and his successor, William Colby, clearly considered OUTLOOK an embarrassment.
Unfortunately, that was as far as the Family Jewels went. Albert Yrjo was not mentioned, and indeed OUTLOOK’s public records showed that he didn’t get involved until 1978, when Krogen sold him a large portion of his stock. Joe was fairly confident that OUTLOOK’s double dealings hadn’t lasted long past the drafting of the Family Jewels and the housecleaning that followed, so what had they been up to for all the years since then?
Joe tapped his fingers on the desk. He’d taken his research about as far as he could for the day. There were other sources he could consult, but not without risking attention he didn’t want.
He stood up and stretched. It was four o’clock, and he felt like knocking off early today. He’d head for home, get some dinner, and prepare to brief his agents later in the evening. It was time for them to do some good old-fashioned legwork.
Vic, Abe, and Stephanie had spent the day bored out of their skulls. None of them dared leave the motel for more than half an hour or so in case Alphonse called, ready for action. So they moped around the room, eventually settling into an afternoon of pay-per-view movies; Vic and Abe had a lively debate over whether to watch How Stella Got Her Groove Back (Vic) or Blade (Abe), which Stephanie settled in Abe’s favor. Vic sulked unconvincingly; when the movie ended and Alphonse still hadn’t called, she got her Stella.
Alphonse didn’t call. Instead, he just showed up at the door around eight o’clock that night, announcing his arrival with the shave-and-a-haircut knock. Abe checked the peephole and then let the old man in.
“It’s about time!” Vic complained. “We’ve been sitting on our thumbs all damn day.”
Alphonse glanced at the television and sighed. “These things don’t happen swiftly, agent.”
“So what’s the deal?” Stephanie asked. “Is Susan back? Do we hit them tonight?”
“No, we don’t hit them tonight. And no, Agent Susan is not back. She phoned in sick this morning, presumably from the facility.” Alphonse took off his coat and took a chair. Abe sat down on the edge of one of the beds next to Vic, while Stephanie sat cross-legged against the headboard of the other. The room was quiet for a moment as Alphonse sat there and regarded them.
“Well, we’re all ears,” Abe said helpfully.
Alphonse stared at them a few moments longer before he spoke. “The facility where Agent Susan was taken is a private corporation known as OUTLOOK Group. They were a CIA think-tank until the mid-1970s. I haven’t found out what they’ve been up to since then.”
“A think tank?” Stephanie asked. “Are they some kind of CIA front?”
“They were. My suspicion is that they aren’t anymore. They may still have some old ties, but I’ll wager that they’re up to something else these days.”
“Any ideas?” Vic said.
Alphonse shook his head. “Not really. That’s where you come in. You’re going to set up a stakeout on OUTLOOK Group. Tomorrow you’ll drive to Bountin and visit that office park you stopped in, Agent Tonya. See if they’ve got some space to lease, and if not there, find some other useful location. You’re looking for an office, preferably on an upper floor, with a view of OUTLOOK Group—or at least of Marginal Way. I’ll handle the lease. You just find a place. Once we’re in, your first priority is photographic. Get shots of every license plate of every vehicle that enters the facility. Draw up a chart of those vehicles. Description, license plate, times of entry and exit, and anything you can tell about the occupants. Feed me that data and I’ll run it through the appropriate DMV so we can identify who works there. Pay special attention to service vehicles. Janitors, office supplies, anything. I want you on surveillance for at least a full week, so we can try and establish as much of their routine as possible. You’ll get a motel in Bountin so you can work in shifts. Besides the employees, I want photographs of the facility from your office; you may need to get roof access in your building or another one for the best vantage point. Blanket the lot, zoomed in tight. We need to study those photos for outbuildings, wires, service tunnels, satellite dishes, incinerators, anything. I’ll get you a thermal video camera that you’ll use on a staggered burst schedule, day and night, to see if they’re giving off any unusual heat patterns that might indicate heavy machinery; it also might help spot any exterior features that are visually camouflaged. This all make sense to you?”
Abe and Vic glanced at each other. Stephanie sat quietly.
“Well?”
Abe spoke up first. “I’ve done a bit of this stuff, Alphonse, but not tons.”
“It’s Greek to me,” Vic said sheepishly.
“Ditto,” Stephanie chimed in.
Alphonse shook his head. “Yes, I know. You people are good with witnesses and smash & grabs. It’s time for you to learn some patience and some tradecraft.”
“Can we get some help?” Vic asked. “What about Cell N?”
“Cell N is off this op for the moment. They don’t need to spend the next week pulling shifts with you on surveillance detail. I’ll bring them back in when the time is right.”
Cell T sat quietly, a little sullen. Vic glanced at Alphonse out of the corners of her eyes.
Finally he relented. “But yes, I will get you some help. We have a friendly in Chicago who’s a surveillance expert. I’ll get him out here fo
r the first couple days, and hopefully you three will pick up the basics pretty quick. Just don’t tell him a damn thing about this op.”
“Great!” Vic exclaimed. “You won’t regret it. We’ll dope this out in no time.” Abe and Stephanie looked relieved, but said nothing.
Alphonse nodded. “See that you do. There’s no room in this organization for cowboys, not anymore. I expect you to master a variety of skills to do the work effectively.” He eyed Stephanie and winked at her. “And try not to shoot anyone.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied deferentially.
He stood up gingerly and slapped his thighs. “Well. That should do it for tonight. First thing in the morning, go find an office. When you’ve got something good, PGP me and I’ll get right on it.” He picked up his coat and glanced at the television set again, which was still on—Abe had muted the sound when the knock at the door came. Angela Bassett frolicked on a beach. Alphonse smiled and arched his eyebrows. “Reminds me of a lady friend of mine. Good night, agents.”
By the following afternoon, they were set. Vic had found an upstairs office for lease in a building at the entrance to Marginal Way—not the closest building, but the closest with space available. She PGP’d Alphonse immediately, and he wrote back a few hours later that the office was theirs for three months, under the Memphis Private Investigations front they’d gotten started in Tennessee. Alphonse had been busy. As soon as they’d told him about the front last Sunday, he’d filed for a Delaware corporation under that name and got the paperwork fast-tracked. By the time rush-hour traffic was jamming the Capitol Beltway, Cell T had moved to a motel in Bountin and purchased a cheap desk, some chairs, sleeping bags, a small cube fridge, snacks, and other odds and ends for the office. Abe put the desk together while Stephanie got the door keys duped. The office didn’t have an active phone line, but they didn’t need one—their encrypted cell phones were safer, anyway.
They also didn’t have surveillance gear. Greg Mason took care of that.
Delta Green: Strange Authorities Page 18
