by Mark Henshaw
“If you can get it past Congress, I’ll go for it.” Cooke finished the coffee in a single swallow and traded the empty mug for the black binder of intelligence traffic Barron carried under his arm. She opened the book. “Tell me the story.”
The first page was a map. “NSA caught most of it from the raid teams’ radios and some phone calls made after the fact by federal officers. Some of our people filled in the blanks afterward using our own data about officers the MSS has in country. The raids went down at two different locations in Taipei,” Barron said. “There were also raids in Taoyuan to the north and Kaohsiung in the south. Federal officers were present at all four scenes and reported to their superiors by cell phone, which gave us the intel identifying the targets at the first site. Eight Chinese nationals and four Taiwanese detained. One of the Taiwanese is an expatriate, now a naturalized US citizen employed by Lockheed Martin. James Hu. He entered Taiwan on his US passport the day before the raid.”
“The raid teams’ radios weren’t encrypted?” Cooke asked.
“They were, in fact,” Barron said.
“Kudos to NSA,” Cooke said. “Hu was working for the MSS?”
“Looks that way.”
“Have FBI contact Lockheed. Find out what he was working on,” Cooke directed.
“I assume the Bureau is already working on that,” Barron assured her.
“I try not to assume anything when it comes to the Bureau,” Cooke said. “What do we have on the Chinese taken down at that site?”
“Names and bios. They caught a big fish,” Barron said. The second page featured photographs of the arrested suspects. Several of the slots were blank, black silhouettes with white question marks inside. Barron pointed at one of the photos. “Li Juangong. We pegged him a year ago as the MSS station chief in Taipei. We think the other two are members of his senior staff.”
“He’s a piece of work,” Cooke noted, skimming the bio.
Barron grunted. “The mean ones always are.”
“You would know,” Cooke said, smiling.
“You try herding a few thousand case officers,” Barron said.
“I’ll call your bet and raise you two congressional oversight committees,” Cooke joked. “How long can the Chinese keep the story contained on their side?”
“Good odds, not very long,” Barron said. “The MSS has a very poor record of keeping state secrets. In Chinese society, family relations are valued so highly that officials don’t consider sharing classified information with close relatives a breach of security. State secrets can end up on the streets relatively quickly. And Tian Kai is already trying to get ahead of it.” He pointed Cooke toward page three. “Tian convened a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee within an hour of the arrests. We don’t know what was said.”
“They were talking damage control most likely,” Cooke said. She set her binder on the table. “If you told me that the MSS had rolled up twelve of our assets in China, I’d run you out of town on a rail.”
“If the MSS rolled up twelve of our assets, I’d deserve it,” Barron agreed. “My guess is that Liang pulled this stunt because of the presidential election next month. He’s too far down in the polls to come back without rigging the election or creating a crisis. Nixon had better approval numbers when he resigned in seventy-four. And Liang will face a corruption indictment if the opposition wins, so he’s motivated. He could be setting this up to turn the public’s attention to an external threat.”
“I’m worried about the Chinese reaction,” Cooke said with a frown.
“You think Tian wants to get rowdy?”
“APLAA says no, but I’m not sure I believe it,” Cooke said. “Have somebody connect with Pioneer. I want to make sure we’ve got some advance notice if they’re wrong.”
Barron bit his lip at the mention of the “Pioneer” crypt, which itself was classified Top Secret NOFORN. NO FOReigNers, not even the friendly ones, had access to it. Some sources and methods were too sensitive to tell even allies that they existed, much less share the information they yielded. “I’ll talk to Carl Mitchell,” he conceded. “He’s the station chief out there.”
Cooke saw the hesitation in his face. “You haven’t run this by anyone in the Directorate of Intelligence,” she realized. The DI was the CIA analytic division.
“No,” he admitted.
“Not even Jim Welling?” Cooked asked. Welling was the director of the DI and Barron’s equal. The two men even worked out of the same vault on the seventh floor, just down the hall from Cooke’s own.
“That’s one source I don’t want burned,” Barron admitted. “It’s personal. I don’t even want Jim to know about him, much less some DI analyst. They’re all a bunch of glorified journalists, just looking for the next big thing to write about in an intel assessment for some politician who can’t keep his mouth shut.”
“Same team, Clark,” Cooke said.
“Mistakes get made,” Barron said.
“They do, but your people have blown more ops than DI analysts ever have.” She knew that would offend the NCS director’s pride, but he knew it was the truth. “I want your people to cooperate,” Cooke told him. “If an analyst asks about sources and methods, the one answer your people aren’t allowed to give is no. If they don’t like that, they’ve got my phone number.”
“I won’t let it come to that,” Barron promised.
“You know, this clash of civilizations between the DI and the NCS needs to stop,” Cooke said. “Analysts and case officers need to be working together, not sitting around in little cliques like kids at the prom.”
“If you can manage that, the president should nominate you for secretary of state,” Barron replied. “By the way, I saw Stryker sitting out in your waiting room. I’ve told my people to play dumb if anyone from the DNI’s staff asks about her. Have you decided where to stash her?”
“Oh yes.” Cooke sounded very satisfied with herself. “A nice safe harbor where nobody will go looking.”
“Want to let me in on the secret?” Barron asked.
“You sure you want to know? Mistakes get made, after all,” she said.
“Touché.”
Cooke told him. All Barron could do was shake his head before leaving for his office.
Kyra knew Clark Barron on sight. He’d addressed her class during the graduation ceremony at the Farm the year before. Many of the men who had held his post—there had never yet been a woman chosen for it—had been disliked by the rank and file. Some of his predecessors considered that to be a job qualification. Barron argued in the speech that if charisma was a valuable trait for a case officer, a manager who didn’t have enough to connect with his own troops must not have been very good in the field. He left unspoken, though not unnoticed, the insinuation that those unlikables must have climbed to the top using other, less respectable skills. Kyra had liked him instantly.
Barron moved past the door into the hallway without a word. A minute later, Cooke stood in the doorway to the waiting room. “You’re Stryker?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kyra answered. She rose and fought the urge to stand at attention.
“Let’s take a walk,” Cooke said without preamble.
Kyra followed Cooke out to the hallway. The director steered Kyra to the right. The corridor was empty, leaving their conversation as private as if they had been sitting behind the door of Cooke’s office. “Have you found a place to live?”
“Yes, ma’am, a condo in Leesburg just off Route Seven.”
“Long commute,” Cooke remarked. “General George Marshall’s house is out there in Leesburg. Dodona Manor. Interesting place if you like military history.”
“I was a history major at the University of Virginia,” Kyra said. “I prefer the Civil War, though. Shelby Foote and Michael Shaara.”
“The Killer Angels. A great book, that one,” Cooke said with approval. “You couldn’t find anything closer to headquarters?”
“Not on a GS-twelve salary, ma’am,”
Kyra said. “And I don’t think a promotion is coming anytime soon.”
Cooke cocked her head, nonplussed, and looked at the younger woman. Bold honesty? she thought. Or no sense of self-preservation? Cooke had read the girl’s file. Stryker’s sense of self-preservation was just fine, so the former, Cooke decided, probably with a healthy dose of anger and resentment in the mix. “You deserve one, but no,” she admitted. “I know it feels like you’re getting hostile treatment—”
“Yes, ma’am, it does,” Kyra admitted. “I just expected it to come from the enemy and not our own people.”
Cooke repressed a sigh. “Have you called the Employee Assistance Program yet?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Any reason why?”
Kyra kept walking but said nothing for a few paces, long enough that Cooke looked over. The younger woman finally spoke. “I don’t walk to talk to a counselor, ma’am. I’m fine.”
“That would surprise me very much,” Cooke told her. “Don’t make me turn it into an order.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It will help. So will getting a little satisfaction. Sam Rigdon might be a station chief, but he’s not one of our people,” Cooke said. “Your exposure was his fault and we’re not going to let the DNI sacrifice you to save him. But I want you to understand how bad this might get. Washington Post headlines and Sunday morning talk shows if it leaks,” Cooke advised her.
“Are you trying to scare me, ma’am?”
“No. I just don’t want you to drop out on me when the shooting starts,” Cooke said. “You’ve got a chance to do something for the Agency now. Lose the attitude and be patient. I’ll get you back into the field. I can’t tell you when or where, but I can tell you that Clark will remember that you took the bullet.” In more ways than one, she thought. “We’ll get you right again. You understand me?” Cooke opened a stairwell door and the two women began their descent to the lower floors. The stairs were grubby and dark, and red pipes erupted from the walls, clashing with the yellow cinderblock.
“I think so, ma’am,” Kyra answered.
“Either you do or you don’t. If you fold on me when the moment comes, then we’re both done here. Clark Barron too, and probably a few others.”
“I won’t resign,” Kyra assured her. “But if you’re not sending me to the field, where are you sending me?”
“You’re going to the Directorate of Intelligence,” Cooke said.
“You’re hiding me?”
“That’s one way of putting it. You have a problem with it?” Cooke asked.
“I’m not an analyst,” Kyra replied, dismayed. “I don’t know how to do that job. And I’ve never heard much good about analysts anyway.”
“Have you heard of the Red Cell?” Cooke asked.
“No, ma’am, I haven’t,” Kyra admitted.
“It’s an alternative analysis unit . . . not your usual DI shop,” Cooke said. “George Tenet created the Red Cell on September thirteenth to make sure the Agency didn’t suffer another September eleventh. Their job is to ‘think outside the box’—to find the possibilities that other analysts might overlook or dismiss.”
“Devil’s advocate? War-gaming?” Kyra asked. That, at least, could be interesting.
Cooke steered Kyra to the left. The second floor hallways were claustrophobic and dark, the combination of government-standard yellow paint and fluorescent bulbs that always looked like they were dying. The ceiling was low; Kyra could have touched it with her fingertips. There was no carpet, just dirty tiles that, permanently soiled from over a half century of footsteps, soaked up what little light escaped the ceiling. “They do those occasionally, but it’s not their sole mission. And to be honest, the rest of the analysts don’t like them. Or I should say ‘him.’ The Cell is running low on manpower,” Cooke said.
“How many?”
“Right now, one.” Cooke admitted. “It’s not field work, but you’ll stay connected with what’s going on around, you’ll draw a paycheck, and we can pull you back in a hurry.”
They turned right down another hallway. Kyra found herself reading wall placards that announced room titles and numbers cut in small white letters on black plastic as she went. Cooke stopped in front of a door on the hallway’s left side near a dead end. The vault sign was distinct, not government standard but white letters in sans serif type on a globe bathed in red, all of which was hard to see in the dim light.
CIA RED CELL
THE MOST DANGEROUS IDEAS IN THE WORLD
“Questions?” Cooke asked.
“Why are you walking me down in person?” Kyra asked.
“To make sure he doesn’t kick you back out,” Cooke told her. She pressed the buzzer set in the wall next to room 2G31 OHB. No one answered. Cooked swiped her badge against the reader and the door opened with a click.
Every government office Kyra had ever seen looked the same. They were all nests of shoulder-high, beige dividers set up to cram as many public servants as possible like cattle into the available space. It was a miracle, she thought, that anyone with claustrophobia could be a bureaucrat, and she had assumed that DI offices would adhere to the norm. Analysts and case officers were different animals, but government-approved floor plans were the same everywhere.
Except here, she thought. The Red Cell had more in common with a newsroom than a government office. The cramped vault was divided into a large bullpen, a smallish conference room, and a manager’s office. The far wall was glass, floor to ceiling, giving Kyra a wide view of New Headquarters. The other walls were covered with marker boards, maps of Middle Eastern nations, calendars, political cartoons, and newspaper articles. Stacks of The Economist, New Republic, Foreign Affairs, and intelligence reports covered the tables. The east wall was home to a life-sized full-body portrait of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin that some case officer might well have stolen from some abandoned Soviet building. Facing the Russian across the room was a near shrine of smaller black-and-white photographs of a young Ronald Reagan, dressed as a cowboy with six-shooters drawn, and a framed Economist cover billing the dead president as “The Man Who Destroyed Communism.”
A man stood at the far side of the room, his back to the door, his full attention given to a whiteboard. He held a red marker in one hand and an eraser in the other. He didn’t turn to see who had just invaded the room.
“Mr. Burke,” Cooke announced. It wasn’t a question.
The man turned his head slightly, barely enough to look back over his shoulder for a second before turning back to the board. “Director Cooke.” Jonathan Burke was tall, only slightly more so than Cooke, with an average build for his height. His hair had no observable gray and his eyes were an intense green. He wore the standard analyst uniform of brown khakis and a blue oxford shirt.
“What’s on the board today?” Cooke asked.
Burke said nothing for a second while he drew connections on a wire diagram with labels so sloppy that Kyra couldn’t read them. “I’m trying to develop a structured analytic technique to counter confirmation bias in finished intelligence products.”
“Ambitious,” Cooke warned him.
“I was bored,” Burke said. “I don’t handle boredom well.”
“I’m aware. Does it work?” Cooke asked.
Burke sighed, capped the marker, and dropped it on the whiteboard tray. He stared at the board for several more seconds before turning around. “Given how much confirmation bias goes on around here, you would think that developing a test for it would be trivial. Not so.”
“So that’s a ‘no,’” Cooke said, smiling.
“A ‘not yet,’” Burke corrected her. “I have no shortage of case studies to work with. But I assume you’re here to send me on a detour.”
“You’ve always said that you don’t have enough warm bodies,” Cooke said.
“I have plenty,” he said.
“You have one,” Cooke observed.
“As I said.”
Cranky bugger, Kyra thought. An
d the man was putting on no airs for a CIA director. That was interesting. How do you get away with that?
“Now you have two. Kyra Stryker, meet Jonathan Burke, analytic methodologist.”
Jonathan looked at the younger woman only briefly. “What have you heard about the Red Cell?”
“Only that you’re not very popular,” Kyra said. Two can play the cranky game, she thought, and she wasn’t in the mood to put on airs herself.
Jonathan lifted his head and studied the younger woman. “True. And irrelevant. Occasional hostility is the acceptable price of doing this business. And you’re keeping company with the director, so a lack of likability hasn’t slowed you down,” he observed.
“At the moment, being liked is not my problem,” Kyra said.
“How charming.” Jonathan looked to Cooke. “She shows promise. But I assume that you didn’t come just to escort this young lady down?”
“You heard about Taipei?” Cooke asked.
“Of course,” Jonathan said. “The hazmat unit was the interesting bit.”
“‘Interesting’ is not the word I would choose, but I agree. That’s why everything else on the Red Cell’s plate is now on hold.”
“You disagree with the China analysts on the situation?” Jonathan asked.
“You don’t?” Cooke answered.
“Of course I do,” Jonathan said. “But I’m disagreeable, so here I sit. What’s your issue?”
“My issue is that we’ve suffered a major intelligence failure every seven years since Pearl Harbor on average,” Cooke said. “So when APLAA tells me this is just going to be a little tiff, I want some insurance in case they’re wrong. The Red Cell is it. So tell me what you think.”
“I think the president should send in the aircraft carriers,” Jonathan said.
“You’re serious?” Kyra asked. “The Taiwanese arrest a few Chinese and you—”
