He wasn’t cocky or disrespectful, but I soon judged that it best to dial back and treat him as an equal, which our Middle Eastern friends found peculiar in a charming, Western meritocracy kind of way.
We would still address each other by rank and last name, but there was a growing sense of all being the same in the trenches, fighting the same war, which was probably for the best.
The weeks flew by, with Christmas and spring break trips to West Point to spend time with Beth and the boys. The invention of free video calls on the Internet eased a major burden for military couples habituated to spending time away from each other. Now and again, I noticed Beth making pointed comments about making sure I was “behaving,” but I loved her and the boys as much as I had before I met Jewel, so there were no awkward moments.
As my last year was winding down and the coercive pitch of Captain Chen approached, we scheduled a meeting with our Middle Eastern friends to bid me farewell.
However, they cut the evening short, being recalled by their ambassador to address a terrorist attack back home, so Tom and I found ourselves alone in Club Ecstasy with time to burn.
As the glistening go-go dancers in lingerie and platform high heels strolled by to offer lap dances, Tom declined like a gentleman, but not without hesitation or an occasional blush.
Like most men, he would enjoy risk-free sex with any of them and could do so without loss of love for his wife. He probably had cousins or uncles in Puerto Rico who bragged about their sexual conquests without social censure, so he was performing a variety of mental calculations to rationalize his desires. And, as someone who had himself surrendered to temptation and was now seeking to manage the emotional fallout, who was I to pass judgment?
After saying no several times, he finally allowed a delicious Thai princess to get comfortable on his lap. He loosened up in a playful way, but after caresses and a kiss with a lick on the neck, he sipped his drink and looked at me with desperation in his eyes.
“You want this pussy,” she said, followed by silence.
Tom glanced at me with a smirk, and we both burst out laughing.
I felt myself smile and leaned closer to whisper, “She’s smoking hot, amigo.”
I would have preferred that he not go through with it, but I recognized, having been there myself, that nothing would stop his desire at this point. He would get it out of his system one way or another if he hadn’t already. And as much as it pained me to admit, the idea of Tom surrendering to temptation helped me rationalize my own misdeeds.
To my surprise, he looked over the hump and ready to dismiss her as she released his hand.
“Of course he wants that pussy,” I said to my own surprise and hit his arm in a teasing manner. It was a slow night, with no one else in the club to recognize us. “Get your ass back there…that’s an order.” I said it in a joking manner, but the boom of colonel authority slipped into my voice.
Taking my cue, the Thai princess held his hand with a playful tug.
Tom looked at me, then stood and followed her to the back.
I felt ashamed as I watched him walk away, but I made no effort to stop them.
◆◆◆
I failed to calculate that the brigadier general promotion decisions would be made after my return to America. I couldn’t take a general officer position at West Point even if I were offered one. Luckily, an opportunity surfaced that would allow me to have the best of both worlds.
Lieutenant General Lewis, under whom I had served in Iraq, was selected to be the Director of Operations (J3) for U.S. Cyber Command. Cybersecurity was becoming a cornerstone of U.S. national security, but the bureaucracy was struggling to keep pace.
Lewis knew my situation and selected me to oversee HUMINT collection management, which meant submitting requirements to the right collectors to ensure that Cyber Command had the latest and greatest intelligence to make all the right decisions. I would divide my time between Cyber Command in Ft. Meade, Maryland, and the Pentagon. The job would last for a few months—the offer was permanent if I wanted it—and Beth understood that it was the only way.
Saying goodbye to Jewel was more difficult than I imagined, but I never loved her the same way a husband loved a wife. She seemed pleased that I would be with my family again.
Her career as a nurse would begin soon and my career was in the final chapters.
I was her friend, mentor, and lover, and my only hope was that I had given her enough financial resources and adult advice to help her transition to living a more satisfying life.
I realize that this relationship might sound peculiar to many people but there was something natural about it that I find difficult to explain.
My arrival in D.C. was uneventful. I reserved a hotel room in Crystal City to have Metro access to the Pentagon, and a rental car for the commute to Cyber Command. The first stop was Cyber Command to check in with Lewis. For federal employees, military or civilian, who were accustomed to the financial benefits of living overseas, moving to D.C. was a shock to the wallet, but the per diem status paid the bills. The other shock most people faced was returning to the U.S. with some semblance of law and order, such as drivers obeying the traffic laws.
For people who had grown accustomed to having a few drinks before driving home or rolling through red lights and stop signs, this was more difficult than it sounds.
I opted to wear my Class A uniform on my first day, both for appearance’s sake and to allow my return home to sink in. As much as I enjoyed working overseas and wearing civilian clothes, there was something comforting about returning to the fold. In fact, knowing that I could always return to the Army gave me the courage to push the envelope whenever I was on the tip of the spear. After a few days of acclimating and taking care of administrative issues, I was surprised by how quickly Bangkok was becoming a distant memory.
I returned to a pre-Jewel mindset that future unfaithfulness was out of the question. I had hit the reset button—repentance light, without all the fuss.
At the entrance of Cyber Command, I presented a copy of my orders and military ID—the Common Access Card aka CAC. The sergeant verified my name and security clearance in the computer and handed me a temporary badge, explaining that I could pick up a permanent one in the afternoon. The polished marble floors and modern architecture made me think for a fleeting moment that I was entering the lobby of some high-tech company.
I entered the 24-hour operations floor before my appointment with Lewis.
I had hoped to be blown away, but the exaggerated portrayal of such operations floors in the movies and television, with databases manipulated with dramatic hand gestures and live access to security camera feeds around the world, meant it failed to live up to expectations.
This room was filled with officers and enlisted soldiers from all the services, busily clicking away at their computers. The walls were covered with TVs showing the major cable news networks and diagrams of critical infrastructure nodes and networks.
All the lights were green—a good sign, no doubt. To my pleasant surprise, one of my West Point classmates, Brigadier General Schmidt, was talking on the phone and reviewing a document through a pair of black-rimmed reading glasses. The balding spot in his raven black hair had expanded noticeably, as had his gut, no doubt the result of spending the last few years maneuvering the halls of the Pentagon. He finished his call and waved me over.
My first inclination was to hug him with back slaps, like old times, but that would be inappropriate. A smile and a firm handshake would have to do.
“Brigadier General Schmidt, congratulations,” I said.
“If you knew how many asses I had to kiss and how many cups of coffee I had to pour to earn these stars, you’d lose all respect for me,” he said.
“I can’t believe they passed me over last year,” I said, hoping for some sympathy. After all, while he was busy shuffling papers in the Pentagon, I was overseas collecting intelligence. “Fingers crossed for this year.”
&nbs
p; He offered a smile. “Trust me, if I could work gigs like Bangkok or teaching at West Point, I’d happily give up these stars.”
If he knew about the teaching gig at West Point, he also knew I was being considered for promotion to brigadier general, which suggested he was skeptical of my chances, judging by his tone. The best officers I knew could at least fake it, and his comment about the teaching gig seemed to question my sanity. I gestured to my watch.
“Give my regards to Beth,” he said.
I knocked on Lewis’s door and peeked inside to see him on the phone.
He waved me in. We each had been promoted a couple of times since I’d served under him in Iraq. Yet he still looked the same, with his coiffed mane of white hair that pushed the limits of Army regulations. As I waited and half-ignored what was being discussed on the phone, I admired a sculpture of a man and his two sons being attacked by serpents. I had no idea what they had done to deserve such a fate, but the father’s look of horror was preserved for eternity in the marble.
I was captivated and hardly noticed when the call ended.
“The Laocoön,” he said. “Do you know the story?”
I stood. We shook hands. “No, General.”
“Laocoön was a priest during the Trojan War,” he said. “The gods sent serpents to kill him and his two sons, as the story goes, for acts of sexual impiety. He’s most famous for warning the Trojans about the famous wooden horse of the Greeks.”
He gestured to the couch and we sat. “As you can imagine,” he continued, “the idea of a Trojan horse has a new level of significance here at Cyber Command.”
“That’s a fascinating story, General,” I said to keep it professional. “I’m excited to hear about my duties here at Cyber Command.”
“You’re heading up HUMINT collection management, which brings me to the most important matter at hand.” He grabbed a remote control from the coffee table and turned on a wall-mounted television to reveal a photograph. “This is Lieutenant Colonel Li from the People’s Liberation Army. He was recently assigned to D.C. as the Assistant Army Attaché. As you know, he’s responsible for several cyberattacks on the Pentagon and is probably planning the next one now.”
I was surprised to hear that China would assign someone like Li to D.C.—their top cyber warrior, now in the belly of the beast.
“The Chinese military officer we recruited in Bangkok works for him,” I offered.
He nodded with a skeptical squint. “We’re eager to see if Captain Chen produces solid intelligence. Lord knows we can’t handle any more cyberattacks.”
He paused with a deep breath, then continued, “We generally defer to the man on the ground, but I’m told that you received clear guidance to stand down on Chen.”
“General, when Captain Chen provides us intelligence sufficient to stop the next cyberattack, then all the concerns will end.”
We made tense eye contact until I dropped my gaze as a gesture of respect.
My coercive approach had ruffled some feathers, perhaps a Pyrrhic victory, which meant the best plan was to stay below the radar until Chen’s intelligence reports started rolling in.
He returned to his desk, reached inside a safe, set a laptop computer on his desk, and drummed his fingers on it. “Lieutenant Colonel Li’s unit launched a series of cyberattacks on the Pentagon. Our computer systems—in particular, NIPRNet and SIPRNet—need to be replaced, so our programmers are writing security patches on this laptop to keep the Chinese at bay. We believe Li intends to finish the job.”
The anger boiling my blood was genuine, not histrionics.
“If that son of a bitch is here for a cyberattack, I’m taking the lead.”
He leaned back.
“FBI and CIA claimed primacy on this one. They’re not going to give this to…us,” he said.
I leaned forward. Time to ruffle some feathers. “General, if we want CIA, FBI, or others in the Intelligence Community to take us seriously, we have to insist on running our own operations. Who better than a military officer to pursue Li? I know him, for God’s sake.”
He didn’t disagree with me, and was evidently thinking about ways to keep it civil, but he understood that the FBI or CIA claiming primacy wasn’t always based on what was best for U.S. national security. Agencies didn’t call dibs on potential sources when a better way forward existed. Then again, a general at his level didn’t have time for action officer interagency squabbles.
“I know you’re meeting FBI and CIA later today to discuss the Bangkok operation,” he said pensively. “It will take some convincing on your part, but tell them, in a nice way, that you’re taking the lead.”
I nodded smartly and stood, resisting the urge to smile.
Decisive leadership always made my day.
He rounded the desk and shook my hand. “I hear Beth is doing a great job at West Point. I look forward to attending her book-signing event. Will you be there?”
“Of course,” I said, curious as to why he thought I might not attend.
FIVE
Before meeting with CIA and FBI, I wanted to know who specifically had objected to our coercive pitch proposal and why, as if other countries didn’t do the same thing to us.
One of the secrets of being a successful Intelligence Officer was having a network of colleagues to give you the scoop on what was happening behind the scenes.
In a world of lone wolves, you never knew whom to trust.
The primary job of the Intelligence Officer was recruiting sources and stealing secrets, but half the battle was maneuvering the bureaucracy, both to take primacy on individual leads and to convince everyone that the intelligence was righteous. I can’t tell you how many times would-be sources walked, talked, and quacked like ducks but the bureaucracy refused to call them ducks.
In this case, I was surprised to learn that the man pulling the strings behind the scenes was none other than my CIA brother from another mother, Brett Phelps, which was a strange coincidence.
We had served together in Islamabad ten years before.
There, we had both attempted to cultivate then-Captain Li.
On the surface, Brett and I couldn’t be more different.
I was a Southern gentleman from a military family, with some black sheep who could pass for rednecks—fine people that I wouldn’t invite to cocktail parties but would clench my fists to protect. Our family reunions could turn loud and violent as the beer and bourbon flowed.
We were oddly proud of these quirks.
Before all the media hype, we were proud of southern rock and the Confederate flag. Who didn’t like Dukes of Hazzard? We also believed that traditional gender roles and social propriety still had something to offer a world in search of meaning. We scoffed at secular, urban culture and viewed it as a threat to the Republic. Brett, on the other hand, was a prototypical New England liberal with an Ivy League education, smart as a whip, and regularly drank to excess.
With Brett, you always had the sense that he must have joined the CIA as a fraternity dare and could quit at any time for a plum position within the family business or tap into the family fortune.
I never confirmed his blue-blood pedigree, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if that son of a bitch had grown up blue collar in Detroit. In any case, he wasn’t burdened by a 40-hour workweek ethic; he apparently came and went as he pleased, yet still clocked more hours than most, with a network of contacts and sources at all levels of Pakistani society that left you breathless. Even the ambassador wasn’t on a first-name basis with the power echelon of Pakistani society in Brett’s world.
Despite our obvious differences, we had two things in common: a love of the bottle, and a passion for the fairer sex. Brett could sustain lucid discussions into the wee hours of the evening, downing drink after drink, and then chat about the big cricket match with the cafeteria cooks the next morning over a glass of mango lassi. His wife Claire could handle the drinking, but Brett’s dalliance with a prominent Pakistani socialite was the s
traw that broke the camel’s back and resulted in a messy divorce. We enjoyed admiring the beautiful women on the diplomatic circuit, but cheating on Beth wasn’t yet in my repertoire.
One thing I found intriguing and troubling about Brett was the way Beth and other women responded to him. One moment, alone with me, Beth would roll her eyes and groan in disgust about how she thought Brett was such a pig, and the next moment she was beside herself with laughter or making intellectual chitchat with him. She was never disrespectful to me and never flirty with Brett, but there were times when I had to act as though it didn’t bother me when I observed it while I mingled. Brett had planted the seed in her mind that she was destined for academic greatness; he had also called in a few favors with professors and universities over the years, to provide her the branding she needed and deserved for her papers and articles.
Brett was never slimy enough to make passes at other wives, as far as I knew, but many secretly wondered why their husbands couldn’t make them laugh quite the same way he did, unaware that this same magic made possible what they found so offensive—the bad boy paradox. I shared many of his gifts but was foolish enough at the time to think nothing darker was ever lurking within me.
It was Brett who explained to me the difference between the art and the science of intelligence operations. We both aspired to run at least one operation that rose to the level of art, no matter what the cost, and recognized that getting approval for such a play might grind the bureaucracy to a halt. The most creative and talented Intelligence Officers eschewed the bureaucratic promotion ladder, which is not to say they avoided it altogether.
Brett and I crossed paths a few times during the next ten years. Although he never lost his charm, he packed on a few pounds and his drinking got worse. I heard he had a second failed marriage, but we never discussed it.
Brett was always a purist in terms of building rapport to advance the relationship with a would-be source over time, which probably explained why he was opposed to our coercive pitch for Chen, even though it conveniently fell right into our laps.
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