“I can’t, John,” Alexandra said quietly, taking a step backward.
John dropped his hand to his side. “You won’t.”
“I’ve got a job to do.”
John stood still, watching Alexandra walk toward the hotel entrance where Peters and Constantina waited. Peters was staring at him. From where John was standing, the short, blond man’s eyes looked even larger than usual, burning with pale fire, triumphant, malevolent, and mocking.
“Good-bye, Alexandra,” John whispered.
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA; CIA HEADQUARTERS
Thursday, January 24; 12:15 P.M.
Harley Shue
Harley Shue finished typing the letter ten minutes before his scheduled appointment with the Director of the CIA. He noted three mistakes, considered correcting them in pen, then decided not to bother. Few people would see the letter anyway, he thought. If things worked out as he hoped, the letter would be destroyed.
He took a handful of his prized Cuban cigars from a desk drawer and stuffed them into the inside breast pocket of his gray suit jacket. In the event that he had to leave the intelligence service he loved so much, he’d decided that the cigars would be the only things he would take with him. There would be no mementoes. The cigars would go up in smoke, like his past and the record of his victories and defeats. Perhaps, he thought, like the CIA itself.
He allowed himself one last glance around his office, then hurried into the corridor to begin the seven-minute elevator ride and walk that would take him to the CIA Director’s office.
He was absolutely convinced that America’s future as a superpower would hinge on the results of his upcoming meeting with Geoffrey M. Whistle. He knew that it would not be so if he had handled the San Sierra matter in a different way, but he did not regret the maneuvers he had made. He’d believed at the time, and he still believed, that it had been in the best interests of the country and the CIA to deny Manuel Salva options, to play for time and information by using Alexandra Finway as a stalking horse in Rick Peters’ assassination plot. At the time, Harley Shue thought, he had been in a position to manipulate the decision-making process; his present situation was much more difficult.
If he lost this last great battle, Shue thought, he would immedately go into retirement. At seventy-four, he considered it arguable whether he would live to see the precipitous decline, the accelerated meltdown, of the nation, a condition he considered inevitable if the United States did not make one crushing, irresistible move to reconsolidate its power and check the Soviets. But he knew that decision was the President’s. The only thing he could do now was to bear witness to his convictions and try to convince his superior of the necessity for taking the first step, quickly. It was a burden from which the CIA Director would not be able to walk away.
He would do his best, Shue thought, and he would privately dedicate that effort to a fine, courageous young man he had looked upon as a son and who had died in the service of his country.
Harley Shue thought of himself as an exceptionally tough-minded man, and so he was faintly surprised to find memory, not plans, playing in the theater of his mind as he walked through the empty corridors of the labyrinthine CIA complex.
Born in Belgium to American parents in the diplomatic service, he’d shown an enormous facility for languages at an early age, and had picked up one language after another throughout his childhood. By the time he had finished his training as a dentist, he had spoken eleven languages fluently.
He’d enlisted in the U.S. Army at the outbreak of World War II and been assigned to a medical unit. He’d been with the unit for slightly more than a week when a general with an impacted tooth discovered his talent for languages; the next day Harley Shue had reported for duty in a rusted, leaky Quonset hut that was then the headquarters for the embryonic American intelligence service.
He had played a key role in the postwar organization of the Central Intelligence Agency, and he had moved up rapidly, all the while maneuvering for the post of Director of Operations, an office he had helped to design and that he knew was best suited to his penchant for secrecy and hidden, real power.
He’d had a full life, Harley Shue thought. He knew there had been times during the past four decades when he had been one of the ten or fifteen most powerful men on the face of the planet. Yet perhaps less than a busload of people knew who he was, and even less knew exactly what he did. His picture was never published, his biography never released. Now, at the end of his life and career, he knew he faced his most difficult battle, one that had to be fought with words and nuances, by proxy. But then, he considered that only fitting; except for his time in the army, Harley Shue had never carried a gun.
As was the custom when they met in the CIA Director’s office, all clerical personnel, with the exception of a lone secretary cloistered down the hall, had been sent away. The suite of offices had been electronically swept a half hour before.
General Geoffrey M. Whistle was sitting behind his massive, oak desk looking very uncomfortable as Harley Shue walked in. He was a man who had quickly learned that an emergency meeting called by his Director of Operations was never for the purpose of bringing him good news.
“Good afternoon, Harley,” Whistle said tersely, rising and extending his hand.
Shue gripped the other man’s hand firmly. “Good afternoon, sir.”
“Shall I have some lunch sent in?”
“Not for me, Geoffrey. Thank you. I’m hoping this matter won’t take up much of your time.”
Whistle laughed without humor. “You’re making me nervous, Harley. I take it something important has come up since our regular meeting this morning?”
To say the least, Shue thought. He took the letter out of his pocket and placed it on the desk in front of the CIA Director. “I’m afraid so, sir. The dragon situation has changed. This is my letter of resignation, in which I take full responsibility for what’s happened. You’ll need it when you see the President.”
Geoffrey Whistle stared down at the paper on his desk as though it were an onerous piece of foreign matter that had suddenly, inexplicably, materialized before his eyes. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Harley. What’s happened?”
“A half hour ago I received word from one of our men in DMI that Harry Beeler has been killed.” He paused to allow his superior time to absorb the information and its implications, but also to consider whether or not he should tell the other man about John Finway’s unexplained presence in the tour group. He decided to keep the information about Finway to himself, at least for the time being. That curious development was irrelevant to the immediate crisis.
“Jesus,” Whistle said in a flat, dry voice. “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know, Geoffrey. I hope to have more details later, but I thought I should come to you with this at once. Agent Beeler’s death is confirmed. It means, of course, that Peters has a free run at Manuel Salva. The President will have to be told, and I assume he’ll want to warn Salva immediately.”
Whistle shook his head, then poured himself a glass of water from a silver pitcher. His hand trembled slightly. “I may as well prepare my own resignation.”
“Not necessarily, sir. I believe mine will be sufficient.”
Geoffrey Whistle stiffened, and the timbre of his voice changed slightly, vibrating with annoyance and indignation. “I don’t want to hear that shit, Harley. I can take heat. Whatever you did, you acted on my authority, or should have. Frankly, I’d rather resign or get fired than wind up looking like an asshole who doesn’t know a subordinate is cooking up a potential major confrontation right under his nose. Besides, there’s a hell of a lot more at stake here than our careers. With what Alexandra Finway knows, or thinks she knows, our organization is going to be blown out of the water. Shit! The Russians are buttoned up and on the move, and the CIA could end up gutted.”
It was the reaction Harley Shue had been hoping to see: the leader and man of character behind the equivocator; th
e seasoned, hard warrior beneath the soft, plastic carapace of the politician. And Geoffrey Whistle’s words were what Shue had wanted to hear. It was time for his first, small maneuver.
“I’m afraid you may be right, Geoffrey,” Shue said evenly. “It’s always possible that Salva will give us a little room on this dragon thing out of gratitude for saving his life. Maybe he’ll just send Peters and the Finway woman back to us.”
“The fuck he will,” Whistle said, pounding a fist on his desk. “I have to assume the DMI will eventually make Beeler, and then Salva will know we’ve been gambling with his life. He’ll have the CIA by the balls, and we both know he’ll twist them right off.”
“Yes,” Harley Shue said mildly. “That’s probably exactly what he’ll do.”
Whistle crumpled up Shue’s letter of resignation and hurled it across the office. “I don’t want your resignation, Harley. I want options. Are there any?”
Harley Shue felt a gentle, warm swell of satisfaction rise from his stomach into his chest. “May I smoke?”
“Of course you can smoke,” Whistle replied impatiently.
Shue removed one of the cigars from his inside breast pocket, lit it. He drew himself up very straight, put one hand behind his back, and used the cigar in his other hand to check off points on an imaginary board in front of him.
“First, sir, let us review the world situation vis-à-vis the Russians. We know, as you so aptly put it, that they’re ‘buttoned up’ and ready to move through their part of the world like a battleship at any time. The Russians care nothing for world opinion. They’ve put their own house in order, and they could be getting ready to put on some additions. They have never given up their dream of world domination, and my guess is that they’ve made firm plans to push harder and harder throughout the rest of this century. With good reason. Our house is in disarray. The actions of our allies are limited to words because they no longer have confidence in us. It’s up to the United States to check the Russians, and to check them hard and deliberately now to force their long-range planners back to their drawing boards. The questions is, where?”
“San Sierra,” Geoffrey Whistle said tightly. He paused for a few seconds, as though listening to the words echo inside his mind, then softly repeated them: “San Sierra.”
“Yes, sir,” Shue said, squinting as he waved away a wisp of blue-black smoke that had curled up into his eyes. “At the moment, we’re in a no-win situation. If we warn Salva, he picks up Peters and Alexandra Finway and we’re lost. He’ll stage a circus with them, and Congress will go out of its mind. The CIA could well he emasculated precisely at a time when an efficient covert capacity is most desperately needed.
“If we do nothing, Salva will almost certainly he assassinated and it will be blamed on us anyway. The Russians, considering the present mood of their leadership, could seek to punish us by making countermoves, perhaps even in Western Europe. They’ll probably move combat troops into San Sierra and dare us to do something about it; they’re still smarting over their defeat in the missile crisis. The point is that the CIA will be blamed in either event, and we could be permanently damaged. We’ll absolutely lose whatever credibility we gained in the Third World after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and events in Poland. It will be extremely difficult for us to maneuver, either diplomatically or militarily, after the fact. I don’t feel it’s an exaggeration, sir, to state that the defensive posture of this nation, the pride of our citizens and, perhaps most important, how we are perceived by the rest of the world for the remainder of this century may be dependent upon what the United States does in the next few hours.
“The third option is the one I believe we must exercise. After all, we didn’t plan to kill Salva. Quite the contrary. But if he is going to be killed, as seems likely, then we should begin to make contingency plans immediately. The heart of those plans, in my opinion, should be to seize San Sierra when and if Salva is assassinated. Then there will be a number of factors working in our favor. The Russians will certainly be bellicose, but they’ll most definitely be impressed by this single, bold stroke; action and decisiveness are things they understand. In my opinion, they will decide that they have enough things to keep them busy in their own sphere of influence. State counters accusations against us by releasing its notes on the secret negotiations with Salva, and we claim Salva was assassinated by Russian agents because the Soviet Union had found out about his dealings with us. Naturally, there’ll be flak, but we’ll be in a much better position to deflect it. Indeed, the flak will be irrelevant. The important thing is that we’ll have San Sierra back. We’ll have reestablished the Monroe Doctrine, and our sphere of influence will be intact once again. We’ll claim we were forced to invade in order to keep the Russians from taking over, and we’ll use what happened in Afghanistan as a case in point.
“Finally, although this point is insignificant compared with the others, it should be noted that no one need ever know about the agency’s involvement with the dragons, past or present. As far as the President, State, and the National Security Council are concerned, we’ve only just now received the information we’re asking them to act upon. Hughes-Ryan makes it impossible for us to act effectively by tomorrow night. A Presidential Directive, based on national emergency, is required.”
“Christ, Harley. We’re staring down the barrel of World War Three.”
“Yes, sir. However, I believe, firmly, that we’ve been looking in that direction since long before this Salva business came up. I believe it’s imperative that we finally stop blinking. I strongly recommend the third course of action.”
General Geoffrey M. Whistle tapped his index finger three times on the surface of his desk, then reached into a drawer and took out a dark blue telephone that had no dial. He stared at Harley Shue for a few moments, then picked up the receiver with a quick, decisive motion. He waited a few seconds, then braced slightly as he spoke.
“Good afternoon, Mr. President. We have a potential Condition Red here, sir. I would like to meet with you at once, and I request that you convene the National Security Council.”
Harley Shue knew that the words of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, delivered over the direct line linking Langley with the Oval Office, would be sufficient cause for the President of the United States to immediately cancel all other business and summon the members of the National Security Council. Shue had not expected to hear any extended conversation over the telephone, and there wasn’t any. After less than a minute, Geoffrey Whistle replaced the receiver in its cradle. His eyes were cold, his mouth set in a firm line.
“I agree with you, Harley. Now let’s see if I can convince the only man whose opinion counts.”
“We’ll need a gunner, sir.”
“I don’t want to talk tactics now, Harley,” Whistle snapped impatiently. “I’m on my way to try to convince the President of the United States that we should organize a strike force for the purpose of invading another country within thirty-six hours.”
“Yes, sir,” Shue replied evenly. “But we must anticipate that it will take some time for the President to reach a decision. By then, every minute may count. I’d like your permission to arrange for a gunner to be part of the ABC television crew that will be going there. It’s going to be difficult, but I think I can make the necessary arrangements, if I have the time. Then, if the President decides to go ahead, we’ll be ready.”
Whistle thought for a few minutes, finally nodded. “All right, Harley. Proceed as if we have a go-ahead.”
Harley Shue nodded curtly. He walked to the door, paused, and said, “I’ll be waiting in my office. Good luck, Geoffrey.”
Shue waited. When there was no reply from the other man, the CIA’s Director of Operations stepped out into the corridor and closed the door quietly behind him.
THE BEACH OF FIRE
Thursday, January 24; 5:37 P.M.
John
“Things here aren’t what some people say they are.”
/> John stood on the beach and stared out over the water. There was a wind rising from the northwest and the surface of the bay was choppy. In the distance a three-stack freighter plowed slowly along the line of the horizon, racing an approaching storm, painting ribbons of black smoke into a blood sky.
The real world was out there somewhere beyond the freighter, John thought. The other side of the looking glass.
To his right, a long wooden pier jutted out into the water from its base in a deep field of glass-smooth, pearl-colored stone pebbles. At the end of the dock a lone fisherman sat on a milk crate, resting his back against a wood piling while he tended his three lines.
Why the hell would Swarzwalder have said a thing like that? John thought. It seemed obvious that the man had been play acting all along, establishing a cover, but John could not understand why a professional killer in such a high-pressure situation should not only have gone to the trouble of saving his life, but then so dramatically stepped out of character to issue what now, replayed and examined in the echo chamber of his memory, sounded so clearly like a warning.
Unless, John thought, his mind was playing tricks on him. The electric shock had blotted out pieces of memory from the tapestry of time that had unrolled before the accident, causing shards of thought to bleed together and shift in and out of focus; now it occurred to him that he might not yet be able to focus clearly on events that had happened after the accident. Yet he was sure he remembered Swarzwalder’s words accurately.
“You have any enemies, John?”
John shook his head in frustration, shoved his hands into the pockets of his light jacket, and walked slowly down the beach.
He’d been through an emotional and physical holocaust, he thought: his brief but transcendent embrace with death as the electricity had coursed through his body; watching Swarzwalder’s life being beaten, stabbed, and squeezed out of him; the entire situation with Alexandra. He knew that the deadly, unending pressure had to have taken its toll on him, and perhaps nothing he was thinking could be taken too seriously. Certainly, he must still be in a state of shock.
Turn Loose the Dragons Page 22
