by Keith Yocum
He typed his password in.
The password failed.
“Damn,” he said. He tried to judge whether he mistyped the password, or in fact made a more egregious error in miscopying the new password in the first place.
“Come on, Cunningham,” he muttered. “Get it right this time.” In times of stress Dennis had developed the habit of referring to himself in the third person.
With painful deliberation he typed in the username and password, double-checking every click of the keyboard.
The computer unlocked, and he found the file he was looking for.
GOVERNMENT FORM D-10
TOP SECRET
FOR USE BY THE INSPECTOR GENERAL’S OFFICE OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR ANY UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL TO READ THE CONTENTS OF THIS FORM. PLEASE CONTACT THE INSPECTOR GENERAL’S OFFICE IF YOU COME INTO POSSESSION OF THIS DOCUMENT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DATE: OCT. 10, 2007
INSPECTOR: DENNIS CUNNINGHAM
ASSIGNMENT: REVIEW THE PRIOR INVESTIGATION OF THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AGENT GEOFFREY GARDER, UNDERCOVER AT US CONSULATE IN PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA. AGENT GARDER FAILED TO REPORT TO WORK ON SEPT. 3, 2007, AND WAS REPORTED MISSING ON SEPT. 5 WHEN CONSULATE EMPLOYEES ENTERED HIS APARTMENT. WEST AUSTRALIAN POLICE WERE NOTIFIED OF HIS DISAPPEARANCE AND HIS LEASED AUTOMOBILE.
BACKGROUND: AGENT GARDER, AGE 29, HAS BEEN EMPLOYED BY THE AGENCY FOR SIX YEARS IN THE DIRECTORATE OF OPERATIONS. PLEASE SEE GARDER’S ATTACHED PERSONNEL FILE. THIS WAS HIS SECOND OVERSEAS ASSIGNMENT.
GARDER’S ASSIGNMENT AT THE CONSULATE WAS “HUMINT” ON AUSTRALIAN MINING AND MINERAL INDUSTRY. AGENCY SOURCES HAD RELIABLE INFORMATION THAT SEVERAL NON-FRIENDLY COUNTRIES HAD SET UP SHELL COMPANIES IN ASIA, AFRICA, AND AUSTRALIA TO FRONT ILLEGAL PURCHASE OF VALUABLE MINERALS FOR DEFENSE-RELATED PROJECTS.
AGENT GARDER’S ALIAS WAS: GEOFFREY JANSEN. HIS COVER WAS DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE CONSULATE GENERAL IN PERTH. HIS IDENTITY AS AN AGENCY EMPLOYEE WAS KNOWN ONLY TO THE CONSULATE GENERAL, AS IS SOP FOR AGENCY-STATE DEPT. COOPERATION.
AGENT GARDER HAD BEEN ON SITE FOR ELEVEN MONTHS PRIOR TO HIS DISAPPEARANCE. INTEL FROM HIM HAD BEEN ORDINARY AND GENERATED NO COMMENT FROM LANGLEY ANALYSTS. HE WAS SCHEDULED FOR REASSIGNMENT IN DECEMBER. HE WAS NOT AWARE OF THE REASSIGNMENT PLANS.
AGENT GARDER WAS FULLY VETTED DURING HIS TRAINING AT CAMP PEARY. ALL PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENTS WERE NORMAL. HE HAS NEVER BEEN DISCIPLINED.
MARITAL STATUS: HE IS SINGLE, BUT POSTDISAPPEARANCE INVESTIGATION SHOWS HE HAD BEEN DATING AN AGENCY EMPLOYEE IN LANGLEY (SEE PERSONNEL ATTACHMENT, ALSO DEBRIEF FROM RHONDA SAMPSON). SAMPSON REPORTS NO CONTACT WITH AGENT GARDER AFTER SEPT. 1. EMAILS BETWEEN AGENT GARDER AND SAMPSON END ON SEPT. 1. SAMPSON REPORTS THE RELATIONSHIP WAS INTIMATE THOUGH STRAINED BY LONG DISTANCE. SURVEILLANCE OF SAMPSON WAS INITIATED ON OCT. 4 AT THE DIRECTION OF THE DEPUTY IG. TO DATE THIS SURVEILLANCE HAS PRODUCED NEGATIVE RESULTS.
ON SEPT. 23 TWO AGENTS FROM DIRECTORATE OF OPERATIONS WERE DISPATCHED TO INVESTIGATE AGENT GARDER’S DISAPPEARANCE. (SEE ATTACHED REPORT.) CONCLUSION: CRIMINAL (NOT CLANDESTINE) FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED. AGENT GARDER IS FEARED TO HAVE BEEN VICTIM OF RANDOM CRIMINAL ACT. AT THE TIME OF THE REPORT, AGENT’S AUTOMOBILE HAS NOT BEEN RECOVERED. INVESTIGATORS EXPECT ADDITIONAL DETAILS RELATING TO HIS DISAPPEARANCE ONCE HIS VEHICLE IS RECOVERED.
AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE INVOLVED IN INVESTIGATION; SECURITY PACT REQUIRES OVERSIGHT BY AUSTRALIAN INVESTIGATOR ON NONDIPLOMATIC PROPERTY. COMPLIANCE REQUESTED.
ASSIGNMENT FOR INSPECTOR CUNNINGHAM: FULL REVIEW OF PRIOR REPORT ON DISAPPEARANCE OF AGENT GARDER. PRESS LOCAL AUTHORITIES ON LIKELY SCENARIOS REGARDING CRIMINAL ACTIONS AGAINST AGENT. FINAL REPORT EXPECTED WITHIN THIRTY DAYS.
He reread the assignment form and painstakingly reviewed the accompanying reports. Dennis tried to remain excited about the assignment, but he knew it was what he and the other investigators referred to as a “Grade D” assignment—pure, bureaucratic dog shit.
Chapter 3
A life has a trajectory, much like an artillery round, Dennis believed. It starts with an explosion out of the womb—OK, not a great metaphor, but stick with the idea—and follows a parabolic arc across time with varying gravitational influences on the projectile exerted by objects like marriage, sickness, war, idiotic families, and crap like that. The other end of the arc was another womb, of sorts—a coffin that held a body in the ground.
It wasn’t the most original concept about existence, but he didn’t care. It suited Dennis just right; it was blunt, cynical, and approximately accurate.
Here was his conundrum, sitting in a hotel room on the west coast of Australia—was he near the end of the arc, or somewhere near the middle? Lately he was consumed with an overarching sensation that his life was about to end. He had even experienced panic attacks, which he found more disturbing than his fear of turbulence—at least in an airplane he knew the cause and effect of his hyperventilation. The free-floating anxiety attacks, on the other hand, were unpredictable and upsetting.
And of course there was the enervating sadness that seemed to follow him when he wasn’t anxious. So much had occurred over the past half-year that his psyche was exhausted, regardless of Dr. Forrester’s spirited pep talks.
With his wife gone, he was now alone: really alone. He was, by his own reckoning, a workaholic widowed father who lived by himself in a small house in Arlington, Virginia. He knew vaguely that it would not stay this way forever, but his appetite for change had been lost.
His friends were all grizzled agents and analysts of assorted intelligence services spread throughout the Washington, DC, area. It was a small community consisting almost entirely of men that worked for an alphabet soup of obscure and not-so-obscure organizations like the CIA, the FBI, Naval Intelligence Service, the Army Intelligence branch, the National Security Agency, the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and many others. Men often switched jobs just to fight boredom or to get away from the personality conflicts that seemed to be a backdrop for this kind of work.
For the past six months Dennis had rarely hung with this crowd, hunkering down instead in his house watching TV and reading books that he never quite seemed to finish. He found himself in an alternating flux of lethargy and anxiety.
“It’s entirely normal to feel sad in these circumstances,” Dr. Forrester said in their first session. But in a later session she had gone further than Dennis expected one afternoon by pointing out, almost as an afterthought, that Dennis had likely been depressed for years in reaction to his childhood.
Dennis expended a great deal of energy avoiding the past and was a reluctant patient for Dr. Forrester. He just wanted to get well enough to go back to work. Forget the past; move ahead. More than anything he needed to get out of his little Cape Cod–style house in Arlington and get back to work. He needed to prove his worth to the inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency. The fact that he could not remember who the current IG was didn’t matter. Work equaled survival, he reckoned.
***
Dennis had rented a Holden Barina, a small car made by General Motors’ Australian subsidiary. The US Consulate was on St. George’s Terrace, not far from the hotel. He reminded himself that Australians drove on the left side of the street, which meant that the steering wheel was on the right side of the car. If that was not complicated enough for a jet-lagged American investigator, he inadvertently turned on his windshield wipers instead of his blinker when he pulled out of the hotel.
“Goddamnit, Cunningham,” he groaned as he lurched down Mill Street with the wipers screeching across his barren windshield. “Stay on your side of the road.”
By the time he arrived for his appointment, he was running late. He was met by Casolano, the public relations officer.
“I’m so sorry I woke you up, Mr. Cunningham,” he said, holding out his hand. “Please forgive me.”
“Really not a problem,” Dennis said.
“Well, I hope you got some sleep nevertheless,” Casolano said.
“The CG is just finishing up a meeting with the West Australian Farmers Federation and will meet with you in about fifteen minutes. Can I get you something to drink while you’re waiting?”
“No, thank you.” Dennis flopped onto a large faux leather couch in the waiting room, picked up a copy of the consulate’s newsletter, and leafed through the fourteen pages of US propaganda: the consul general opening the WA Prime Lamb Sire Sale in the town of Moora, the consul general welcoming a Fulbright Scholar from the University of Wisconsin, the consul general commemorating Remembrance Day at the State War Memorial in King’s Park, the consul general blah, blah, blah. While he knew that someone had to wave the flag out here in the farthest reaches of the globe, he still could not fathom why anyone would choose to do that for a career.
Dennis did not have much respect for the State Department and their employees, which he and his Agency cohorts derisively called “staties” in mixed company and “pussies” in private. He was sure that State Department employees were equally disapproving of Agency employees and had charming nicknames for them as well.
After twenty minutes, a door opened, and a group of men left the CG’s office. There were parting handshakes and cordial salutations delivered.
A tall, angular man stayed in the doorway after the group left and said finally, “Mr. Cunningham, please come in.”
At five feet ten inches, Dennis always felt disadvantaged by taller men. Dennis was a rugged, handsome man by most standards. His square jaw was complemented by short-cropped, brown hair at the top, a slightly dimpled chin at the bottom and penetrating ice-blue eyes in the middle. Dennis’s eyes were his single defining physical attribute; they were deeper and bluer than most. Some women found them mesmerizing and attractive; others found them penetrating and unnerving. A naturally muscular 175 pounds, with a short, thick neck, Dennis was not easily physically cowed. Still, the patrician bearing of someone like the consul general made Dennis feel inferior.
Dennis settled into a wooden chair in front of a huge mahogany desk. A name plate, angled severely, reported the desk belonged to “Wilson St. Regis.” The room was huge; several large windows looked down on parkland and a river a quarter-mile away.
“So, Mr. Cunningham,” the consul general said, “you’re here on official business. I see you’ve been sent to follow up on the disappearance of Geoffrey Jansen.” He stopped, adjusted his half-height reading glasses and looked down at a folder. “Ah, but that was probably not his real name, was it?
“Well,” he continued, “this is quite an unfortunate incident. To my knowledge we’ve never encountered something like this here. I mean, we’ve had an occasional AWOL, and you expect that, especially from the younger folk who might have partied a little too hard and got distracted, but never a tragedy like this.”
Dennis studied St. Regis closely. His file said he was sixty-one years old, but he looked older. He was tall and thin, with a remarkably sharp chin. His thinning gray hair was combed straight back, leaving a tuft at the center of his forehead between two expanding bald areas at the temples. His nose was long and hooked downward slightly, giving him a hawkish appearance.
As was Dennis’s custom at this stage, he said nothing. A little birdy—perhaps the tiniest bird known to mankind—tried desperately to get Dennis’s attention to remind him of his boss’s entreaty to play nice, but it was a very small bird fighting against a powerful headwind of old habits and a brooding anger.
“So, Mr. Cunningham, how may we help you?”
Dennis stared blankly at St. Regis.
“Mr. Cunningham?” St. Regis repeated.
“Are you the only one in the consulate who knew—his real name was Geoffrey Garder—worked for the CIA?” Dennis said.
“Yes,” St. Regis replied. “I believe so.”
“What do you mean by that?” Dennis asked.
“I mean that as far as I know, no one else was aware that Geoff’s employer was the CIA. No one ever raised the issue with me, nor did I have occasion to raise it with anyone else.”
“You were the only person in this office authorized to know Garder’s employment situation?” Dennis said.
“That is correct, but as I said, no one here questioned me about him so it was not an issue,” St. Regis said.
“Did you know what his assignment was? His Agency assignment, that is?”
“No, of course not,” St. Regis said. “You know I wasn’t authorized to know that. I’ve been in this business a long time, Mr. Cunningham. You grow accustomed to the secrecy. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“So what happened to Garder?” Dennis said.
“Frankly, I haven’t the faintest idea. You know he traveled a fair amount around the state. It was not unlike him to be absent from the office for two or three weeks at a time. I’m mystified. I met with two of your fellow CIA agents already and told them everything I know about the young fellow.”
“I’m not an agent,” Dennis said.
“You’re not? Well, what are you then?”
“I’m an investigator.”
“An investigator for whom?”
“For the inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency. You talked to two agents in a different department at the Agency. I’m an investigator in the OIG.”
“Well, the distinction is all yours,” St. Regis sat back stiffly in his chair, “because I seem to be answering the same questions.”
“So, was he a drug addict?” Dennis distractedly panned the room.
“Excuse me?” St. Regis rocked forward, turning his left ear toward Dennis.
“Which one of your gracious consulate employees was supplying him with drugs?” Dennis said.
“Good lord, Mr. Cunningham.” St. Regis stiffened. “We don’t have ‘suppliers’ here at the consulate. Who told you that? That’s preposterous.”
“So?” Dennis said.
“So what?” St. Regis’s cheeks displayed flushed red circles the size of silver dollars.
“Who was selling him drugs?”
St. Regis put both elbows on the mahogany table and leaned even farther toward Dennis, his face pinching tightly at the edges.
“I know about you, Cunningham,” he sneered in a near whisper. “I checked up on you. At first I couldn’t get anything, and then a very old friend at Foggy Bottom helped me out. Told me all about your reputation. Even your nicknames. About how foul it was to deal with you.”
“My nicknames?” Dennis said. “Really?”
“Yes. ‘Dennis the Menace’ was one.”
“Oh, I’ve heard that one before. That’s all? Just one?” Dennis said.
“I can’t repeat the other ones,” St. Regis said.
Dennis stood up. “I’m glad you checked up on me. You would have discovered that if I catch you hiding information from me, you’ll be in serious trouble. I apologize for my brashness, but I’m afraid over the years I’ve found that an inordinate amount of time in investigations is wasted on niceties and politeness. I think we understand each other well, and I hope to have my investigation completed as soon as possible.”
Chapter 4
The drive back to the hotel was more challenging than he expected, as some of the streets were one-way. Twice he accidentally turned on the windshield wipers to signal a turn.
He valeted the car, went inside, and asked the concierge to point him in the direction of a bar.
“Wine bar or steakhouse bar?”
“Steakhouse.” He found the dark-paneled restaurant downstairs and grabbed a seat. On assignment he typically remained in his hotel and ventured out only to do interviews. Once he spent four weeks in Hong Kong with two Agency forensic accountants and only left the hotel twice for brief trips, one of them to a McDonald’s. Dennis did not like visiting other countries, experiencing their culture and cuisine. He was there to hunt, not sightsee.
“What’ll it be, mate?” the young bartender as
ked.
“Macallan 12?”
“Water?” the bartender asked.
“No. Just a little ice.” Dennis liked bartenders and tipped them lavishly based upon their degree of attentiveness.
Hunched over his drink, swirling the cheap plastic swizzle stick, he bit the inside of his lip nervously. Why did he have to go after St. Regis like that? Jeeze, Cunningham, he berated himself, what is wrong with you? Didn’t Marty warn you about that stuff? Why do you let guys like that bother you?
Dennis made a storied career out of his successes on tough investigations for the IG. He had been thrown into some of the most complicated situations, and he nearly always returned with the prize: a cocaine-addicted station chief, an undercover agent stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for his sources, even a station chief in Bangkok who had strangled a male prostitute. Dennis was convinced this last guy was a serial killer but could never prove it.
His success was based on an idiosyncratic investigative approach that, well, carried some risk. He had discovered years ago that he could get much more important information from an interviewee if he verbally shocked them. Dennis accomplished this by blatantly offending his subjects and sometimes even threatening them with charges he could not possibly bring against them. The shock treatment often disoriented his subjects, pried out character weaknesses and most interestingly, tended to betray a liar. It also helped him cut through all the clever manipulation by resourceful, bright, and motivated people.
One of Dennis’s friends in the IG’s office once termed his investigative approach “The Socrapic Method”—half Socratic inquiry, half total crap. Even Dennis thought that was pretty funny.
Each trophy Dennis brought back to the IG’s office emboldened him in this approach, but eventually there had been problems. Like London, and of course, Nicaragua.
His wife’s death and his meltdown had changed everything. Even Dr. Forrester’s observations about his behavior made him self-conscious and unsettled. It’s not that he took glee in baiting St. Regis, but he literally did not know any other way to extract as much information in as short a period.