by Mark Henshaw
On any given morning, he would have passed through entrance security and gone straight to his office—an emptied storage closet with a network connection and makeshift furniture. Space was nonexistent at headquarters these days. Twenty years of federal service deserved something better, he believed, but there was no arguing with the office chiefs of staff who doled out the seating assignments. They told him that he was fortunate to have a door and privacy. He could’ve been given a cubicle like all of the other analysts in his group. Hadfield had been amazed and disgusted at the fanciful arguments they could create to convince themselves of their own competence.
Another right turn, then another, and the vault was ahead on his left. He held his badge against the reader, but the door refused to open. He pressed the doorbell, waited for a response that didn’t come, then pressed it again. Finally, he heard the door buzz as some receptionist touched her desk switch, and he made his way inside. Hadfield asked the woman where the area security officer’s desk was located and she pointed him to the hallway on his left. He thanked her and made his way along the cubicles until he reached a set of real offices. He walked past four more doors, scanned the plastic nameplates until he found the man and the title he was looking for.
The door was open. The man was writing something and didn’t look up until the analyst knocked on the metal door frame. “What can I do for you?” the area security officer asked. He did not look up.
Hadfield frowned. “I was pitched last night.”
The man stopped writing and raised his head. “You’re sure about that?”
“She wasn’t very subtle.”
The man stopped writing and raised his head. “What’s your name?”
“Matthew Hadfield.”
“Who pitched you?”
“Israel. Mossad.”
The man’s eyes opened wide. He’d been asking for a name or a personal description, not a country and certainly not an organization. “How do you know that?”
“The woman who pitched me said so.”
The security officer set his pen down and pointed his hand toward the empty chair by his desk. “Let’s talk.”
The Red Cell Vault
Special Agent Jesse Rhodes was only medium height and not especially handsome, in Kyra’s opinion. He was dressed in a white button-down shirt, navy-blue pants, and matching jacket cut large to accommodate the Glock 22 that he carried in a belt holster. He looked to be in his late thirties, likely a decade older than Kyra, and wore an intelligence community blue badge and a mood she decided was only lightly suppressed condescension. He had entered the vault with a confident march that impressed neither of the analysts who met him inside.
Kyra made the appropriate introductions. Rhodes stated his name like he was under interrogation himself and didn’t offer his hand. “I’m the Bureau liaison to the Counterintelligence Mission Center. I run counterespionage over there. You were the ones who brought Alden Maines back from Russia last year,” he observed. Kyra nodded. “We were getting all geared up for a manhunt we figured was going to take years. Anyone who managed to get him out of Moscow and into a US courtroom was going to have their career made. Then you dragged him back in a couple of weeks. Disappointed a lot of glory hounds at the Bureau.”
“All her,” Jon said. He pulled a chair away from the table and let himself fall into it.
“You’re the one the Russians grabbed in Berlin,” Rhodes observed. “I thought you were a staff officer.”
“Was, past tense, and technically, they caught us both,” Jon corrected him. “They just got her later, when she decided it was time to let them.”
“Things worked out well. It wasn’t a given that they would,” Kyra said, choosing her words with care.
“I read the file,” Rhodes said. He shifted gears in mind, if not in attitude. “Let’s be clear right now. Traitors are not nice people, so playing nice is not how we catch them, not with you and not with anyone who might be connected to the case. You will cooperate as I require it, or I will cut you out.”
Kyra stared at him and read his face, looking to see whether he was truly arrogant or simply a man filled with more bluster than real confidence. Jon punctuated the seconds tapping his cane against his artificial knee. “You want this mole caught and we want this mole caught,” Kyra said, her tone cold. “You’re working out of the Counterintelligence Center, but you’re still in our house and the Bureau’s not in the same league with the GRU when it comes to intimidation. So let’s not play games comparing bits of anatomy I don’t even have. You’re welcome to the credit when it’s all done,” she assured the man. “We’re used to our successes being private. Just don’t think I’ll let you hang the Agency out to dry if you screw it all up.”
“We understand each other, then,” Rhodes said, cautious.
“Yes, I think we do.” Kyra offered a piece of paper to Rhodes, who eyed her with suspicion before taking it. “Last chance for a peace offering,” she announced.
Rhodes fell silent as he read the cable Jon and Kathy had written up days before. “Did Mossad get Salehi’s name from us?”
“We can’t rule out the possibility,” Jon told the man. “It was in one of our compartments.”
“Well, good for me,” Rhodes said. “The more Iranians they smoke, the more data points we get and the faster I get to arrest someone.”
“Never mind that shooting Iranians in the open like this tends to start wars,” Kyra said.
“Not my problem,” Rhodes argued. “The Israelis’ neighbors all want them dead. Scare the mullahs into backing off and the Israelis get to live a few more years without rockets coming down on their heads like Hitler’s V-2s came down on London. Israel doesn’t get invited to many state dinners, but if that’s the price of survival, I say it’s cheap.”
“Easy for Americans to say. We get invited to state dinners,” Kyra said. She sat down on the table behind her next to Jon and folded her arms. “Trying to kill your way to peace is self-defeating.”
“Say that again after an Iranian dirty bomb has given cancer to your kid,” Rhodes retorted. He waved his hand dismissively in the air. He looked at Jon. “You like watching her fight the battles in here?”
“She needs no help from me to win a fight,” Jon said. “And I find it useful to observe how people respond while she takes them apart. In this case, I’ve learned that you’re one of those.”
“One of those what?”
“One of those people who mistakes cynicism for insight,” Jon told the man.
Kyra’s secure phone rang. She answered it. “Red Cell.” She listened to a voice that neither Jon nor Rhodes could make out, then replaced the handset. “The director’s office,” she explained. “They want us upstairs. Someone got pitched last night.”
Rhodes’s mouth stretched into a smile, as though he had to remember how it was done.
CIA Director’s Conference Room
Kyra had expected to be a backbencher, one person of dozens sitting along the wall, expected to listen and not talk, but it was apparent that she and Jon would be at the table. Barron was standing in the hall outside, reviewing a file. He stopped them at the door and offered them copies. Looking past the director, Kyra saw one other person was in the room, a man at the table who she’d never met.
The docket Barron had provided was an Agency personnel file, the first one she’d ever personally handled. Such files were usually stored encrypted on secured servers and often classified as highly as any information the Agency held. To see one printed out was surreal.
She looked at the photograph inside and recognized a man sitting across that table and down two chairs. Matthew Hadfield had been more than a decade younger when the picture had been taken, likely the same photo security had taken for his staff badge when he’d entered on duty.
The papers inside revealed far more.
Personal Information
Matthew Egan Hadfield
GS and Step:
14-8
; Time in grade:
5 years, 3 months, 14 days
Entry on Duty (EOD):
29 Oct 1999
Military Service:
none
Awards and Commendations
18 Exceptional Performance Awards
DNI Galileo Award
Current Employee Data
Assigned Office:
Operations Center
Career Service:
Directorate of Analysis (DA)
Occupational Title:
Military Analyst
Education
BA History, 1995, Duke University
MA History, 1999, Oxford University
Graduate, Advanced Analyst Program (AAP), 2006, Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, CIA University
MA National Security and Strategic Studies, 2009, US Naval War College
She scanned the training record, which was extensive but restricted to analytical course work except for the occasional personal security classes offered to anyone preparing for an overseas trip. The list of his past assignments was surprisingly short. Hadfield appeared to be the type of analyst who preferred to stay in one place, becoming a deep expert on one subject rather than jumping around every two or three years in the pattern of an ambitious climber. There was a two-year gap that had started seven years previous, which Kyra found curious—medical leave, with no further explanation given. That information would be in a separate file in the Office of Medical Services, releasable only by the order of the directors of the Agency and the Office of Medical Services itself, who must not have thought it critical for the present meeting.
The director waited until she’d had a moment to scan the front page before speaking. “Mr. Hadfield visited his area security officer this morning and reported that a Mossad officer pitched him last night,” Barron told them, his voice quiet.
“Mossad?” Kyra asked. It was not especially rare to hear that a foreign country had pitched a CIA operative to commit espionage. It was far more rare for such countries to be allies. “He’s certain?”
“Yes. We knew that Haifa gave Mossad a reason to toss out their usual playbook regarding Iran, but I didn’t think they’d toss out the one they use for dealing with us. They haven’t recruited an American since Pollard, so if they’re getting into that game again, we need to shut it down before the Washington Post finds out. Relations with Israel are knotty even when we’re trying to be friends.”
“Has he talked to anyone else about it?” Rhodes asked.
“A couple of our counterintelligence people who needed to open the file on this,” Barron assured him. “But Security kept him sequestered, so it’s still a small circle.”
“I want copies of the video of their interview,” Rhodes demanded.
“We’ll get them to you.”
Rhodes nodded. “Nobody else talks to him about it without clearing it with me first.” He walked past the analysts and took a seat next to Hadfield.
“Sir, why are we here?” Kyra asked, her voice very quiet. “A counterintelligence investigation isn’t in our usual lane.”
“I’ll explain after,” Barron replied. “For now, just listen.” He led his subordinates into the room.
Kyra looked at Hadfield. He was sitting forward, hunched over, his chest collapsed in a rounded slouch, his head sticking forward on his neck. His tension was too obvious to miss, and Kyra thought it justified. An interview with the Agency’s security services was never a relaxing experience. CIA Security projected an unsympathetic spirit toward any visitor. Pity the soul called here to answer questions. The message was clear though unspoken. And now the FBI was ready to pile on.
The CIA officers took their seats at the end of the table opposite Rhodes and his subject. Rhodes opened a leather portfolio and unscrewed a fountain pen, an expensive Visconti. He looked at his watch. “It is ten o’clock a.m. Thursday, October eight. I am Special Agent Jesse Rhodes, FBI liaison to the Counterintelligence Mission Center. You know Director Barron. This is Kyra Stryker and Jonathan Burke, both assigned to the Red Cell. Please state your name for the record.”
Hadfield shifted in his seat and rested his arms on the table. “Matthew Egan Hadfield.”
“And what is your current assignment?”
“CIA Operations Center.”
“That’s the watch office?”
“Yes.”
“Please tell me what you told your area security officer this morning,” Rhodes ordered.
Hadfield shifted in his seat again. “I, uh . . . I was eating out last night, at a restaurant, the Blue Ridge Grill in Leesburg. I was by myself. A woman joined me in my booth. She said her name was Sarah—”
“And you’d never met this woman?” Rhodes interrupted.
Hadfield shook his head. “I don’t get out much. I’m divorced and I’ve never been much of a draw to women. They don’t just start flirting with me in public,” he explained. “So I figured she wasn’t there to hit on me. I was hoping, I guess . . . maybe I’d get lucky once in my life. But someone who looks like that coming on to me would’ve been a triumph of hope over experience.”
“Describe her, please?” Rhodes asked. The man’s questions were really orders and Hadfield saw it.
“She was really pretty, tall, maybe five ten? Black hair past her shoulders, skinny . . . like model skinny. She spoke with an accent. I couldn’t place it, so I couldn’t figure out where she was from until she told me.”
“Which was where?” Rhodes asked.
“Well . . . she tried to make some small talk for a minute, like she was coming on to me, but I think she saw it wasn’t working. Then she said, ‘I’ve come to convey an offer from the State of Israel.’ ”
• • •
“A straight-up cold pitch?” Kyra asked, her voice quiet.
“Not usually Mossad’s style,” Jon agreed.
“No kidding,” Barron muttered. “Straight up and ham-fisted doesn’t work unless you already know your mark. So they were gambling.”
“Also not Mossad’s style,” Jon said.
• • •
“She said, ‘We know who you work for,’ ” Hadfield continued. “And she said they knew I was having financial problems and they would help me if I would help them in return.”
“Are you having financial troubles, Mr. Hadfield?” Rhodes asked.
Hadfield looked away from the man toward his fellow officers, then to the floor. “Yes. My son, Aric, developed cancer a few years ago when he was eighteen months old . . . acute myelogenous leukemia. Six months of chemo put him in remission, but he relapsed the next year. He went through two more rounds of chemo, but during the third he, um . . . his liver failed. That was it. He died a week later.”
He was not lying. Kyra could see it. There was very real pain behind his words and his face, the kind of wound that healed only very slowly if at all.
“My wife developed depression—”
“And your wife’s name?” Rhodes asked, cutting him off.
“Elizabeth.”
“Thank you. Continue.”
“She developed depression. I was afraid she was going to kill herself, but she wouldn’t see a counselor. I kept trying to help her, but she divorced me instead. So now I’ve got alimony and debt from Aric’s medical bills. Cancer is really expensive even when you’ve got decent insurance. So, yeah. I’ve got some financial issues.”
Rhodes scribbled in silence, then looked up. “Did the woman at the restaurant give any details about her offer?” he asked. His voice was devoid of sympathy, his tone unchanged.
“Just that they would give me money to pay the medical bills, and a stipend, in return for information.”
“Did she say specifically what information they wanted?”
“No.” Hadfield shook his head. “It took me a minute to realize she was trying to pitch me . . . I locked up. It was unreal, you know? It was like I couldn’t process what she was saying. I couldn’t even think, to be honest. I should
’ve told her no, but I told her that I’d have to think about it.”
“How did she respond?” Rhodes’s fountain pen was earning its keep now, the man writing as fast as he could move his hand.
“She said, ‘That’s all we can ask’ and that she’d get in touch with me in a few days.”
“She didn’t say how or where?”
“No,” Hadfield said. “But if she knew I was Agency, she must know where I live. I don’t know how. Maybe she was watching my house. She knew I was at the restaurant and I didn’t decide to go out until an hour before.”
“Could you identify this woman from a photograph?” Rhodes asked.
“Yes. I’d know her if I saw her.”
“Good.” Rhodes nodded, continued scribbling for almost a minute. “Are you happy with your career?”
“What does that matter?”
“Disgruntled employees are prime targets for recruitment, and we need to explore all of the possible reasons why this woman might have targeted you. Now please answer the question,” Rhodes urged. “Are you happy with your career?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“I was doing really well before Aric got sick,” Hadfield said. “But I had to leave for two years. When I came back to work, I knew something was wrong with me, inside. I couldn’t focus on anything. I couldn’t control my temper. I couldn’t sleep. I checked myself into the Employee Assistance Program. They said I had depression and PTSD.” He gritted his teeth, his face twisting as painful memories entered his mind. “When you’re living in a hospital, trying to save your child, there’s this fear that digs into you, all the time. You stop thinking about the future. Your whole life becomes about surviving one more day, one more hour. Just make it until nighttime and maybe you can escape everything for a little bit while you sleep. After we got out, I couldn’t think a day ahead, much less a week or a month. I was paralyzed. I still am, to be honest. I don’t know how to shake it off.”
