Cold Shot: A Novel

by Henshaw, Mark

  “I’m sure,” Marshall said.

  “Or I could fire you for coming in here and talking to me like this . . . replace you both.”

  “You could,” Marshall conceded. “Though I’m sure the press would want to know why both the new director of national intelligence and the CIA director lost their jobs on the same day, especially after they helped the president of the United States score what will unquestionably be one of the biggest foreign-policy successes of his tenure.”

  Rostow considered the argument, the debate raging in his mind apparent to the man standing on the other side of the desk. “If I agree, I don’t want to deal with her again. I don’t want to see her in this office again.”

  “I can’t promise that. The world might not cooperate. But I’ll do my best to keep her separated from you.”

  Rostow nodded after a few moments, still unhappy. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “You can leave now.”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. President.” Marshall turned, walked to the door, and let himself out. Rostow stared at him until the door closed, then fought down the urge to throw his portfolio across the room.

  CIA Director’s Office

  7th Floor, Old Headquarters Building

  CIA Headquarters

  There were almost no boxes, surprisingly little for her to pack away. A few of the curios on the walls had simply come with the office and never had been hers. Most of the other objects sitting on the shelves she had chosen to give up, all gifts from foreign dignitaries that were expensive enough that they had become government property the moment she’d accepted them. If congressmen couldn’t take a bushel of apples from a constituent, they certainly weren’t going to let an intelligence chief take a scimitar from a Saudi prince without making her pay for it. She could have bought them back for their market price, which in most cases would have been a sizable fraction of her salary, so she opted to let the Agency keep them. Now the museum staff had taken most of them away for storage, to languish in some wooden crates in a warehouse at the Farm or wherever the Directorate of Support kept such things. She’d never thought to ask. Eventually, some future curator would pull the best pieces and put them under glass down in the hallways for future masses to ignore as they walked past.

  One object had never been put on the books. Kathy picked up the broken aircraft gauge. It was a piece of the heads-up display from that Chinese stealth plane that Jonathan had brought back the year before. He had guessed it was the altitude indicator. She pulled it out of the Plexiglass cube he had put it in, turned it over in her hands, then put the open box on the coffee table. That one was coming home.

  Her cigar humidor sat on the table beside the cardboard storage box. Kathy hefted the small cherrywood box and opened it. Five tubes rested inside, still sealed, with words written on the sides in permanent ink. She set the box on her desk, the top still open, and picked up the cigar tube lying there—a gift from Drescher. The man was a Mormon and therefore didn’t smoke, but he apparently had no moral objection to giving her a cigar. He knew she would never smoke this one, so perhaps in his mind there would be no harm done. She just hoped the man’s religious leaders hadn’t seen him browsing through a cigar shop for the Cohiba. She scrounged for a Sharpie, found one, uncapped it, and scrawled Caracas 2018 on the side of the tube. Kathy examined her handiwork, then dropped the tube into the humidor. Six. Not bad for two years. There had been others, lesser operations that might have merited the ritual, but she was a woman of high standards.

  The packing done, there was almost nothing left but a few meetings and farewells. Tomorrow, around noon, she would deliver a farewell address to the workforce in the auditorium, which would be broadcast to the outbuildings over the internal television network. Then, at the end of the business day, Kathy would walk out of the building and a security escort would take her home. In two years or three the new CIA director would invite her back to attend the unveiling of her official portrait, which would hang down in the main-floor hallway. He would give her a warm if perfunctory introduction and she would say a few words about her two years holding the post. There would be polite applause, some happy and brief reunions, perhaps a luncheon on the seventh floor in Agency Dining Room 1, and then she would leave again, reminded in the most painful way possible of the adage that no one is indispensable. If and when she might ever be invited back after that, she had no idea.

  Kathy put her cigar humidor into one of the packing boxes and finally saw Jon standing by the door. Her secretary saw him at the same moment and chose to excuse herself from the room for official reasons that Kathy was sure were entirely contrived.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  Kathy stood there, rooted to the spot, unsure what she could say. “I’m sorry,” is what finally came out.

  Jon shook his head slowly. “You have nothing to apologize for. You were right.”

  “Right? Every decision I made was wrong. The mission wasn’t low risk—”

  “You were right,” he interrupted. “You were . . . you are the CIA director. You made a decision based on the best information you had. It was information I gave you, so I can hardly complain. Things went south. That wasn’t your fault. But this—” He waved a hand around the office. “This is wrong.”

  “This was inevitable,” Kathy told him. “Rostow never kept me on because he believed in me. He kept me on for—well, it doesn’t matter why he kept me on. He was always going to replace me once there was no more political gain in keeping me around.” Kathy watched him as he looked around the room. She doubted that either of them would ever see the inside of it again after tomorrow. “You never told me about you and Marisa,” she chided him quietly.

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “You two were serious,” she observed.

  “I was,” Jonathan said. “Her, not so much.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Kathy told him.

  “She left.”

  “She regretted it. At least, Kyra thinks she did.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Yes, it does.” Kathy walked over to him, reached up, put a hand on his cheek, and turned his face toward her. “You might not think so, but there are people who care about you. Even if they aren’t very good at saying it . . . or always free to show it. I didn’t know Marisa very well . . . I just met her once, when I assigned her to take over Caracas station. But something tells me that she really cared for you.”

  Jon nodded, not agreeing, but, maybe for the first time she’d ever seen, trying to understand her feelings. “I did come on official business,” he told her. “You are still the director for another day.”

  “I suppose. What is it?”

  Jon held out a briefing binder. Kathy sat on the couch and Jon took his seat beside her. She opened the book. The first page was a cutaway diagram of the Iranian nuclear warhead. “The Department of Energy reverse-engineered the warhead, with an assist from some of our people and a few other agencies. They sent over the blueprints this morning.”

  “And?”

  “The Counterproliferation Center compared them to every nuclear weapon design that every known proliferator has peddled for the last thirty years. The layout doesn’t match any of them. Those were all older designs, uranium fission with an implosion setup usually. Ahmadi’s was a two-stage fusion-boosted design with a secondary. Polonium-beryllium trigger, tritium initiator, the whole smash. And it’s got a plutonium core, so someone is reprocessing nuclear waste.”

  “Do you think the Iranians developed the design?”

  “Not likely. This design is a serious jump from anything that’s been for sale and the Iranian nuclear program has had Mossad’s full attention for a long time now.”

  “Stolen? From the Russians or the Chinese?”

  “The Iranian intelligence services are good, but I doubt they’re that good,�
�� he replied.

  She looked at him suspiciously. “You always have a theory.”

  “Not one that I can prove at the moment. I need more time to do some research.”

  “But what do you think?” she persisted. “Your guesses are usually pretty good. Another nuclear proliferator?”

  “Not just a nuclear proliferator . . . a weapons technology proliferator,” he corrected her. “That Chinese plane the Lincoln shot down last year was a better design than the Chinese should have been able to field at the time, even with technology they stole from us. The engines alone were more efficient than anything the PLA has ever managed to put into the air. And now someone helps the Iranians manufacture a nuclear warhead with a design far too complex for any first-time proliferator to develop on their own. I think you can count on one hand the number of countries with advanced warhead designs who also design and build jet engines.”

  It didn’t take long for Kathy to run through the mental list. “Not many candidates, and most of them are friendlies. I don’t like that at all.”

  “Neither do I. But someone is helping countries make generational leaps in technological advances, trying to get them up to par with us and our allies.”

  Kathy nodded, then flipped through the pages in the binder. “I’ll call the DNI and arrange a meeting so you can brief him. He’s a good man. He’ll take it seriously.” She closed the book and looked up at Jon, staring straight into his eyes. “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’ve already signed up to speak with a counselor in case there’s any PTSD—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she corrected him, shaking her head. “Jon, the Red Cell isn’t terribly popular around here . . . never has been. I always gave you cover, but now that I’ll be gone? You and Kyra have scored some big wins lately that’ve left some office directors a little jealous. There will be a lot of people moving to close you down and I doubt Rostow’s man will do anything to stop them. I don’t know where you or Kyra will end up and I don’t want to see you wasted.”

  “More than I’ve already wasted my career?”

  Kathy winced a bit. “I always thought you could do more than you were doing,” she admitted. “But if you’re happy, I have no reason to complain.”

  “I don’t know if ‘happy’ is the word, but I don’t have to stay here,” he told her. “There are other places I can work. Kyra’s got nothing to prove by staying and I expect two Intelligence Stars will score her a decent job. She deserves a third for what she just did down south.”

  “So do you and I’ve filed the paperwork for it. But don’t be surprised if Rostow’s man kills it.”

  “I was never in this for the awards,” he told her.

  “I know,” Kathy said. That’s one thing I’ve always loved about you. “Jon, would you like to come to dinner?”

  He sat back, surprised. “A date?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We’ve lost enough time and there’s no reason to lose any more now. I’ll be a private citizen, out of your chain of command. I think we should pick up where we left off . . . if you still want to.”

  “I would like that,” he said. Jon finally smiled, not much, but enough.

  Kathy leaned over and put her arms around him. He did the same to her and they held each other until the phone rang. “Sorry,” Kathy said. “I am still the director for another day.” She pulled away from him, stood, and walked to her desk. She hit the intercom button. “Yes?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” the secretary said. “Call for you. It’s the director of national intelligence.”

  “Put him through,” Kathy said. She turned back to Jon. “I guess I have to take this.”

  “I guess you do. I’ll let myself out . . . but I do have one favor to ask.”

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  The calligrapher fumbled with the keys, then finally managed to get the right piece of metal into the lock and he pulled the creaky drawer open. The tools were all there, just as he had left them six months before. Too soon, he thought. He wished that the pen case, the ink bottles, and the rest of his instruments were getting more time to gather a little dust. But the director had called him again this morning, before his computer had finished booting up and his coffee had cooled down, and like that his happy morning had come apart.

  He lifted the tray out, carried it to the worktable, and set everything out in its place. The ink bottles each got a quick shake to make sure the contents hadn’t congealed, and then he pulled out the Gillott number 303 nib, fitted it into the pen handle, and set it on the marble rest. The ink was French, powdered gold mixed with gum arabic according to a recipe that was a century old. The pen held the Gillott nib, which was used for only one task. It sat unused for months at a time, sometimes years, in a small locked cabinet. The longer the better, he thought. But the director had called him this morning and asked for his services, so the calligrapher had set aside his other job, extracted his tools, and waited for the Book.

  The Book of Honor was large, twenty inches by thirty-two when open, and bound in a brown, pebbled Moroccan leather cover. There were two pages inside with deckled edges, both made at a French mill that had first opened, by pure coincidence, in 1492. The handmade Arches paper was the best on which he had ever practiced his craft. Inscribing letters using ancient techniques with fine ink on these excellent sheets should have been pure joy for him, but he couldn’t take pleasure in it. By definition, he did this job at the worst of times and it was a lonely burden. The calligrapher was the only person who wrote in the Book and he used this pen and this ink only when he had to do so.

  He idly wondered how many stars he would be asked to draw today. The suicide bombing at Khost in late 2009, almost a decade ago now, had forced the calligrapher’s predecessor to inscribe seven stars in one day. Over a hundred stars had been added to the Book since 1947, better than one per year on average. Nearly a quarter of those had been added in the last two decades and the world wasn’t becoming a safer place.

  He prayed that the number today would be small. The left page of the Book had two columns, both full to the bottom with stars, years, and names. The right page also had two columns. The first was full. The second now had only a few inches of space left to spare. The Agency would need a new book soon.

  But regardless of the number, the process for each was precise to the point of being mechanical. After using a pencil to sketch out the star, the year, and possibly the name, if that was allowed, he would dip his pen in the small black bottle far enough to cover the tip, then remove the excess on a rag. He would trace the star and fill it in, then remove the nib, clean it, and set it aside. Then he would fit the pen handle with a different nib, a Mitchell round-hand square, size three and a half, set it on a small marble rest, and uncap a second small inkwell, this one half filled with Japanese sumi ink as black as space itself. The ink would flow smoothly over the pencil lines he had laid down earlier. He would hold his hand by force of will. A single misplaced stroke would render the Book unfit for display. As he finished each entry, he would repeat the process for the next.

  A quick turn of the pencil in the sharpener and everything was ready. The calligrapher double-checked his equipment and then sat back. Nothing to do but wait for the director to show up with the Book.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The door creaked open behind him after five minutes, maybe less. He wasn’t watching the clock. The calligrapher closed his eyes for a quick second, then turned to face the senior officer. “Ma’am, I—”

  He stopped short. Who are you? “Forgive me,” he said after an awkward pause. “You’re not the people who usually bring up the Book.”

  “No, I guess not,” Jon said. Kyra stood next to him, holding the Book of Honor. “We asked to do it this time and Director Cooke agreed. I hope you don’t mind.”

  You two must really be something. Co
oke considered that duty to be almost a religious matter. To give it up to someone else . . . there was a story there and he wondered how much he could ask. “It’s not my book, so it’s not my place to mind.” He extended his hand. “Charlie Stanton.”

  Kyra shifted the Book so she could hold it in her left hand while she reached out with her right. “Kyra Stryker. This is Jonathan Burke.”

  “A pleasure.” Stanton looked at the pair. Burke was keeping a neutral face but Stryker looked fairly somber, which was unfortunate for such a pretty girl. The reason for it was obvious. “You can lay it down here.”

  “You want me to open it? Sorry, I’m not sure how you usually do this.”

  “That’s okay.” Stanton gave Kyra a reassuring smile. “A little care and respect is good enough, and we’ll forgive anything else.”

  Kyra set the Book of Honor on the table and gently opened it, holding her breath while laying both sides flat. She was scared to death that she’d tear the pages and didn’t relax until she could back away from the tome. “How did you get this job?”

  “Learned from my mother,” Stanton said as he sat down. He reached for the pencil. “I figured I could make a little money on the side doing wedding invitations, stuff like that. Then I did one for a group chief of mine after I started working here. He got promoted to the seventh floor, then the previous calligrapher retired and my old boss floated my name. I guess I was the only candidate. Not too many people know how to do this by hand anymore. That was all ten years ago. I promise, I never asked for it.”

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would,” Kyra said. “Do you enjoy it?”

  “Worst job I ever had. But maybe the most important,” Stanton admitted. “Are we doing the name or just the star?” He already knew the answer in his gut. He hadn’t heard of any deaths, either on the cable news networks, in the Post, or through the rumor mill that was, by far, the most efficient system of the three. That meant a covert operation had gone wrong and there would be no names in the Book again, just the year and a star. Maybe more than one.