by Bentley, Don
“It’s about Syria, Mr. President,” Beverly said, shifting in her chair so that she was facing Jorge.
The change in Beverly’s position was almost imperceptible, but Peter sensed it just the same. A moment ago, she had been singularly focused on him, but now, like a spotlight moving across a darkened stage from one actor to another, Beverly’s magnetism was directed at the President, leaving Peter in the cold shadows.
On more than one occasion over the last four years, Peter had found himself wondering what his relationship with Beverly might have been like had they not been political adversaries. But those thoughts never lasted long. He and Beverly were two sides of the same coin—both committed to their political causes with a true believer’s zeal. This soul-encompassing dedication left little room for anything else, least of all romantic relationships.
“What about Syria?” the President said.
“One of my paramilitary teams took down what they thought was a chemical weapons lab,” Beverly said. “What they discovered instead was a new chemical weapon. A weapon that didn’t register on the team’s detection equipment.”
“My goodness,” the President said, leaning back in his chair, “that is a startling development. But first things first—Peter, I didn’t know we’d authorized a covert operation in Syria.”
“We haven’t,” Peter said, savoring the pink spots that again bloomed on Beverly’s cheeks.
Fiercely Catholic, the President neither used foul language nor tolerated it from his staff. This quality, coupled with his famously upbeat demeanor, tended to give the uninformed the impression that Jorge Gonzales was nothing more than a Hispanic Mister Rogers.
In this assumption, the uninformed observer couldn’t have been more wrong.
Though Jorge’s mild manner wasn’t an act, his pleasantness masked a mind of startling agility. Peter had seen the President reduce more than one arrogant Republican lawmaker to tatters as he tore apart their arguments with a series of verbal ripostes, all the while maintaining his angelic smile.
Peter had a feeling this might just be one of those moments.
“Can you say that again?” the President said, looking from Beverly to Peter. “I must have misheard you. It sounded like you just said that the CIA launched a covert operation in Syria without my consent or knowledge.”
“That’s correct, sir,” Peter said. “Four men and a Black Hawk helicopter were lost.”
Peter delivered his answer with a straight face, but inside he was cheering.
The President didn’t abide vendettas between his staff, and anyone caught reveling in another’s misfortune received a stern talking-to. But Jorge Gonzales was also not naive enough to think that these high-pressure jobs, and the monstrous egos that accompanied them, didn’t generate friction. As such, he alone reserved the right to conduct course corrections in his devastatingly effective manner.
“Beverly,” the President said, fixing his CIA Director with his warm brown eyes, “is this true?”
“Like much of what Peter says, it’s partially true.”
Peter’s hands clenched, but he didn’t take the bait. Unlike Beverly, Peter understood how Jorge operated, and, for now, he was content to let the President guide the meeting.
For now.
“Please explain,” the President said.
“Certainly,” Beverly said, again opening the folder she’d offered Peter. She turned past the first few pages, selected a document bearing the Presidential seal, and slid the paper across the table.
“Sir,” Beverly said, “I assume you remember this? It’s the Presidential finding you authorized six months ago. The document states that your administration will not accept the development of a chemical weapon by any of the jihadi organizations currently operating in Syria.”
“I remember,” Jorge said, his forehead wrinkling as he read the document.
President Gonzales had been a youthful fifty-five when he was elected. He’d looked energetic in front of the camera, but still conveyed a seasoned politician’s steady hand. His quiet, even-keeled personality promised no soaring oratories that led to nothing more than shattered hopes and broken dreams. He’d also promised the nation that there would be no more ill-advised foreign adventures that morphed into never-ending wars.
Instead, he’d pledged to provide calm, competent leadership to a nation that had so desperately craved it.
But that wasn’t to say that the last four years had been without cost. The President’s thick black hair was now thinning and gray, while the fine lines that had once creased his forehead had deepened into furrows.
His congeniality aside, the President had spent a significant portion of his term in this exact position—poring over documents with a worried expression. In Peter’s opinion, much of that worry centered around the slipshod manner in which Beverly Castle ran the nation’s premier intelligence organization.
This snafu was just the latest example.
“Good,” Beverly said, her diction precise and clipped, that of a doctoral candidate defending her thesis. “Because the final paragraph of this finding directs my agency to make discovering and assessing rogue chemical weapon laboratories our top priority. With this in mind, I leveraged all of my assets, including agency paramilitary teams, to ascertain the state of WMD programs within Syria. According to the intelligence we received, a terrorist splinter cell, operating within Assad-controlled territory, was developing a chemical weapon. A weapon they intended to use in a spectacular attack, possibly against a Western target. The intelligence was passed to us by the Israelis.”
Beverly shot the President a look as she delivered the last statement, and Peter knew why. Unlike some of the Oval Office’s past occupants, the President had a healthy respect for Israel. Jorge Gonzales likened the Israelis to the region’s scrappy kid, unafraid to go toe-to-toe with the schoolyard bully. The President was even a fan of the Daniel Silva novels that featured a Mossad protagonist. If the Israelis really had provided Beverly’s intelligence, the President was bound to be more forgiving.
But that was a big if.
“In my opinion,” Beverly said, apparently taking the President’s silence as an invitation to continue, “conducting a covert raid on a suspected weapons lab was part of the mandate granted to my agency by your finding.”
“Your opinion?” Peter said, doing his best not to come across the table at the smug woman. “Did you happen to share this opinion with anyone else?”
“Of course not,” Beverly said, attempting to wave away the question with her slender fingers. “I am the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The scope and responsibilities of this organization are not insignificant. I will not, nor should I be expected to, trouble the President with every operational detail.”
On its surface, her answer was plausible. The President went out of his way to recruit capable people, and he believed in giving them the latitude to do their jobs. Even so, Beverly’s actions stretched this philosophy to the breaking point.
While Peter knew that Beverly was interested in the threat posed by the chemical weapons laboratory, her reason for authorizing the operation without Presidential say-so had not been to answer a critical national question or provide the West Wing with deniability.
Beverly wanted an operational feather in her cap.
Her prearranged term as Director was ending shortly after the President’s reelection, at which time she would undoubtedly devote herself to laying the groundwork for her own Presidential campaign. If the operation had been successful, she would have been able to claim credit through a series of unattributed leaks to a friendly reporter at the Washington Post or New York Times.
If it hadn’t, the operational details would have been locked away in the iron vault of national security, never to see the light of day. Beverly was a politician through and through, and this botched mission was nothing but a
n exercise in the sort of backroom maneuvering President Gonzales had pledged to end.
Even worse, the operation hadn’t been successful. American servicemen were dead, and with early voting already in full swing and a national media intent on making the race’s conclusion as captivating as possible, it would fall to Peter to quietly clean up Beverly’s mess.
Just like always.
“Your incompetence is stunning,” Peter said, clenching his hands into fists as he leaned across the table. “I have half a mind to—”
“Peter—stop.”
Peter flinched at the unexpected interruption, and turned to look in disbelief at the President. Though he hadn’t yelled, President Gonzales’s words still cracked with a whip’s intensity. The steel behind his tone was unmistakable.
“Sir?” Peter said.
“As much as I dislike Ms. Castle’s chosen course of action, we will not denigrate each other. Not while I’m still President. Besides, official sanction or not, I believe that, in this case, Beverly acted correctly.”
“Mr. President,” Peter said, still not trusting that his brain was accurately rendering his old friend’s words, “with all due respect, what are you talking about? The polls are essentially tied. What Beverly did—”
“Was what had to be done,” the President interrupted.
“The election—” Peter said.
“If voters wake up Tuesday to news that terrorists released a chemical weapon in Times Square, my election will be relegated to an afterthought and rightly so.”
The President handed the finding back to Beverly before turning to Peter, his kindly eyes reflecting a rarely seen hardness.
“In normal times, I would agree with you about Ms. Castle’s convenient disregard for the chain of command,” Jorge said. “But these aren’t normal times. However, I do expect to be informed before further covert operations are initiated. If that isn’t clear enough for you, Ms. Castle, let me know now, and we will announce your resignation within the hour.”
The triumphant smile that had stretched across Beverly’s face vanished. Unfortunately, Peter didn’t have time to relish his adversary’s dressing down, because the President had once again turned in his direction.
“Peter, I know that you have my best interests at heart, but we can’t afford to play it safe. Not now. I’m going to authorize a new finding this morning.”
“Stating what?” Peter said.
“Stating that all members of the intelligence community are hereby directed to make ascertaining the nature of this new chemical weapon their number one priority. I expect to see plans of action from the Director of each applicable agency on my desk by close of business. That includes you, Director Castle.”
“Certainly, sir,” Beverly said, her tone respectful, but her lips twitching into a smile as she stole a glance at Peter. “My best are already on it.”
“I’m sure they are,” the President said, allowing a hint of sarcasm to color his words. “Plans only, Ms. Castle. If another operation is launched without my approval, it will be your last.”
“Sir,” Peter said, desperate to stop the train the President had set into motion, “I need to bring you up to speed on the initiative I’ve been working on with Senator Kime. If you’d just give me a minute—”
“Peter, I know without a shadow of a doubt I wouldn’t be here without you. You promised that if I listened to you, I’d end up in the Oval Office, and you were right, but this is not the time for politics. One way or another, I will be leaving the Presidency—hopefully in four years, but perhaps in four days. Either way, I intend to ensure there’s still a nation to return to once it’s my time to become a private citizen again. Beverly, do what you need to do. Peter will handle the consequences. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a press conference to give.”
Without waiting for a reply, President Gonzales got to his feet and exited the room as abruptly as he’d entered. For once, Peter didn’t stand as his friend of twenty years strode through the door.
Perhaps because he wasn’t certain his legs would support him.
FIVE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
A little over four hours later, I stood in front of a slate gray building that perfectly epitomized the Defense Intelligence Agency. Even though the afternoon sun shone brightly from an October sky blue enough to star in a Disney movie, the multistory headquarters building had all the charm of a German bunker overlooking the Normandy coast.
While our CIA cousins had an iconic structure surrounded by acres of prime Langley property, the DIA had a pillbox next to a fishpond.
Everything you needed to know about the perpetual rivalry between the nation’s foremost intelligence organizations could be gleaned from an examination of their respective real estate. The tree-lined CIA headquarters in stately old Virginia was like the sophisticated, easily recognizable older sibling, while the DIA’s footprint on the Potomac River’s eastern side was the often-ignored kid brother, forever trying to win parental approval.
My former boss might have been able to strong-arm a couple of FBI Agents into tossing me onto the private plane he’d had waiting, but even the venerable James Glass fell short when it came to this steel-and-glass monstrosity.
Still, if the innocent-sounding message James had passed to me via Agent Rawlings’s phone meant what I thought it did, he might now have the leverage to raze this place to the ground and try again.
Einstein is active.
Those three words held within them unfathomable potential.
Einstein was the code name we’d given to a Pakistani weapons scientist who’d been selling his services to the highest bidder for the past five years. Analogous to the infamous Khan labs, where Pakistan’s state-sponsored nuclear program was born and then exported to customers around the globe, Einstein got his start in his nation’s fledgling chemical weapons program. When that ill-advised initiative was shelved, due to substantial U.S. pressure, Einstein took his show on the road.
About eighteen months ago, he’d popped up on our radar after a DIA asset within the Pakistani government reported that Einstein was looking to shop his expertise to someone in the ongoing Syrian crisis. Though a Sunni Muslim by birth, Einstein was more capitalist than religious ideologue. He was willing to lend his technical acumen to whichever party paid his substantial retainer, whether that was the Shias running Assad’s government, the Sunni rebels fighting against them, or even the Wahhabi-inspired ISIS caliphate.
I’d voted for killing him outright, before he opened Pandora’s box in a civil war that had already consumed an estimated half million lives. James had backed my recommendation, but General Hartwright, the DIA Director, had had other ideas. In Hartwright’s estimation, Einstein represented a once-in-a-lifetime recruitment opportunity. Turning him into an asset would provide the DIA a window into a number of the world’s most virulent terrorist organizations and repressive regimes.
Rather than kill him, we would recruit him, and I was slotted to be the pitchman.
On its surface, the Director’s reasoning made sense, but the cynical side of me wondered if there was more to his decision than met the eye. The CIA and the DIA perpetually battled for funding. A recruit of Einstein’s stature would be a huge feather in General Hartwright’s cap when he went to war with Congress for next year’s budget.
Not to mention Hartwright’s murky personal motivations. His tenure as Director was timed to end with this Presidential election. Though he was an Army general officer who’d earned three stars, Hartwright was already on the prowl for his next gig. Needless to say, the successful recruitment of a notorious weapons scientist would look pretty damn good on Hartwright’s post-military resume.
Whatever the Director’s logic, the end result was the same—I was to make a pass at Einstein. I’d saluted the flag and followed orders, but for the first time in my five-year career as a DIA case offi
cer, a recruitment target had turned me down flat. But now, if I was interpreting James’s message correctly, Einstein had experienced a change of heart. He’d established contact. This meant that as his potential handler, I needed to come in from the cold and run my newest asset.
Or did it?
A stream of government employees passed through the set of turnstiles in front of me, heading for the parking lot to my left. At a little after five on a Friday, their shift spent keeping the world safe for democracy was over. Now it was time to brave the D.C. traffic.
Those young enough to be willing to live in a shoebox with three roommates probably had a thirty-minute commute to a flat in the District. The more senior employees with families who favored the roomier, and more affordable, suburbs of northern Virginia or southern Maryland had a good hour-to-hour-and-a-half angst-filled slog.
Laila and I had fallen somewhere in between. Housing in Old Town, Alexandria, was prohibitively expensive to own, but affordable to rent. With the combined salaries of a government employee and a forensic accountant on the path to partnership, we’d been able to find a town house on the water.
The commute wasn’t bad. Twenty minutes to DIA headquarters for me and less than ten to Laila’s de facto office—Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. In fact, by now, Laila should have been back at our condo, curled up with a glass of wine, paging through the latest John Dixon novel.
I hadn’t been home for six weeks. Not since the night I’d stumbled from our bedroom in a cold sweat, convinced my Syria demons had finally come to claim me. Up until then, the tremors had been a mere annoyance—a random twitch here or there that I’d explained away as a muscle spasm. I was, after all, recovering from a gunshot wound to the leg. But that night, things had been different.
After a particularly bad dream, I’d woken to see a figure standing next to the nightstand.
Abir.
I’d sat up and turned to Laila, but it wasn’t my wife lying next to me. Instead, I was sharing my bed with Abir’s mother.
