The Cobra

by Frederick Forsyth

  “Released?”

  “Fired.”

  “Why?”

  “Too ruthless.”

  “Against colleagues?”

  “No, sir. I believe against our enemies.”

  “There’s no such thing. I want him back. What was his name?”

  “I forget, sir. Out at Langley, they just referred to him by his nickname. They called him the Cobra.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE MAN THE PRESIDENT SOUGHT WAS NAMED PAUL Devereaux, and when he was finally traced, he was at prayer. He regarded prayer as profoundly important.

  Devereaux was the scion of a long line of those families who come as near to being aristocracy as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has had since 1776. From his young manhood, he had always had private means, but what marked him out in those early days was his intellect.

  He attended Boston College High School, the main feeder unit for one of the leading Jesuit universities in the USA. There he was tagged as a very high flier indeed. He was as devout as he was scholarly and seriously thought of entering the priesthood as a Jesuit. Instead he accepted an invitation to join another exclusive community, the CIA.

  To the twenty-year-old who had swept through every exam his tutors could throw at him and was mastering foreign languages on a yearly basis, it was a question of serving his God and his country by fighting communism and atheism. He just chose the secular rather than the clerical road.

  Inside the Company, he rose fast because he was unstoppable, and if his detached intellectualism did not make him Langley’s most popular, he cared not a fig. He served in the three main divisions: Operations (Ops), Intelligence (Analysis) and Counterintelligence (Internal Security). He saw out the Cold War in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR, a goal to which he had devoted twenty hard years, and remained en poste until 1998, when Al Qaeda blew up two U.S. embassies, in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

  Devereaux had already become a skilled Arabist, holding that the Soviet division was too crowded and too obvious. Mastering Arabic in several different dialects, he was the right man for the job when the Company formed a Special Ops unit to concentrate on the new threat—Islamic fundamentalism and the global terrorism it would spawn.

  His departure into retirement in 2008 fell squarely into the category of the old puzzle: did he jump or was he pushed? He, naturally, would maintain the former. A charitable observer would call it mutual. Devereaux was old school. He could recite the Koran better than most Islamic scholars and had absorbed at least a thousand of the leading Commentaries. But he was surrounded by bright young things whose ears appeared seam-welded to their BlackBerrys, a device he despised.

  He loathed political correctness, preferring courtly good manners, which he practiced to all, save those who were clearly the enemies of the one true God and/or the United States. These he destroyed without qualm. His final departure from Langley was occasioned when the new director of Central Intelligence indicated most firmly that, in the modern world, qualms were a must-have.

  So he took his leave with a quiet and insincere cocktail party—another convention he could not stand—and retired to his exquisite town house in the historic town of Alexandria. There he could immerse himself in his formidable library and collection of rare Islamic artworks.

  He was neither gay nor married, a speculation that had once occupied much chatter around the watercoolers along the corridors of the Old Building at Langley—he had flatly refused to move into the new building. Eventually, the chatterers were forced to concede what was obvious. The Jesuit-trained intellectual and ascetic Boston Brahmin was not interested. That was when some clever fast-track boy had remarked that he had all the charm of a cobra. And the name stuck.

  The young staffer from the White House went first to the residence at the junction of South Lee and South Fairfax streets. The housekeeper, the beaming Maisie, told the lad her employer was at church and gave him directions. When the young man returned to the car by the curb, he looked around and thought he might have regressed two centuries.

  And well he might. Alexandria was founded by English merchants in 1749. It was “antebellum” not just in the sense of existing before the Civil War; it preceded the War of Independence. Once a river port on the Potomac, it had prospered from sugar and slaves. The sugar ships, creeping upriver from Chesapeake Bay and the wild Atlantic beyond, used old English building bricks for ballast, and it was of these the merchants built their fine houses. The effect was still more Old Europe than New World.

  The man from the White House climbed back beside the driver and gave directions for South Royal Street and to look for St. Mary’s Catholic Church. He eased open the door and left the hum of the streets for the silent calm of the nave, looked around and perceived a single figure kneeling up by the altar.

  His feet made no sound as he crept the length of the nave past the eight stained-glass windows that were the only illumination. A Baptist, he caught the faint odor of incense and the wax of the burning votive candles as he approached the kneeling silver-haired figure praying before the white-clothed altar surmounted by a simple gold cross.

  He thought he was quiet, but the figure raised a single hand to admonish him not to break the silence. When the praying man had finished his orisons, he rose, inclined his head, crossed himself and turned. The man from Pennsylvania Avenue tried to speak, but another hand was raised, and they proceeded calmly back down the nave to the vestibule by the door to the street. Only then did the older man turn and smile. He opened the main door and spotted the limo across the street.

  “I have come from the White House, sir,” said the staffer.

  “Many things change, my young friend, but not the haircuts or the cars,” said Devereaux. If the staffer thought “White House,” which he adored using, would have the usual effect, he was wrong.

  “And what does the White House wish to say to a retired old man?”

  The staffer was perplexed. In a society paranoid about youth, no one called themselves old, even at seventy. He did not know that in the Arabic world, age is revered.

  “Sir, the President of the United States wishes to see you.”

  Devereaux remained silent, as though thinking it over.

  “Now, sir.”

  “Then I think a dark suit and a tie is in order, if we can pause by my house. And as I do not drive, I have no car. I trust you can bring me there and home again?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  “Then let us go. Your driver knows where I live. You must have been there to see Maisie.”

  At the West Wing, the meeting was brief and took place in the office of the chief of staff, a hard-nosed Illinois congressman who had been with the President for years.

  The President shook hands and introduced his most trusted ally in all Washington.

  “I have a proposition to put to you, Mr. Devereaux,” said the Chief Executive. “In a way, a request. No, in every way a request. Right now I have a meeting I cannot butt out of. But no matter. Jonathan Silver will explain everything. I would be grateful for your reply when you feel able to give it.”

  And with a smile and another handshake, he was gone. Mr. Silver did not smile. It was not a habit of his except rarely, and then only when he heard an opponent of the President was in deep trouble. He took a file off his desk and proffered it.

  “The President would be grateful if you would first read this. Here. Now.” He gestured to one of the leather armchairs at the back of the room. Paul Devereaux took the file, sat, crossed his elegantly suited legs and read the Berrigan Report. When he was done, ten minutes later, he looked up.

  Jonathan Silver had been working on papers. He caught the old secret agent’s gaze and put down his pen.

  “What do you think?”

  “Interesting, but hardly innovative. What do you want of me?”

  “The President wishes to know this. Would it be possible, with all our technology and Special Forces, to destroy the cocaine industry?”

 
Devereaux gazed at the ceiling.

  “A five-second answer would be valueless. We both know that. I will need time to conduct what the French call a projet d’étude.”

  “I don’t give jackshit what the French call it” was the reply. Jonathan Silver rarely left the USA except for his beloved Israel, and when he was away, he loathed every minute of it, especially Europe, and even more especially France.

  “You need study time, right? How long?”

  “Two weeks, minimum. And I will need a letter of empowerment requiring every authority in the state to answer my questions frankly and truthfully. Otherwise the answer will still be valueless. I presume neither you nor the President wish to waste time and money on a project doomed to failure?”

  The chief of staff stared back for several seconds, then rose and strode from the room. He returned five minutes later with a letter. Devereaux glanced at it. He nodded slowly. What he held was enough to overcome any bureaucratic barrier in the country. The chief of staff also held out a card.

  “My private numbers. Home, office and cell. All encrypted. Totally secure. Call me anytime, but only for a serious reason. From now on, the President is out of this. Do you need to keep the Berrigan Report?”

  “No,” said Devereaux mildly. “I have memorized it. Ditto your three numbers.”

  He handed the card back. Privately, he mocked the “totally secure” boast. A few years earlier, a British computer geek with mild autism had gone through all the firewalls of NASA and the Pentagon databases like a hot knife through marshmallow. And that was from a cheap gizmo in his bedroom in North London. The Cobra knew about real secrecy; that you can keep a secret between three men only if two are dead; that the only trick is to be in and out before the bad guys have woken up.

  A WEEK AFTER the Devereaux-Silver conference, the President was in London. It was not a state visit but the next level down, an official one. Still, he and the First Lady were welcomed by the Queen at Windsor Castle, and an earlier and genuine friendship was refreshed.

  That apart, there were several working discussions with a stress on the ongoing problems of Afghanistan, two economies, the EU, global warming/climate change and trade. On the weekend, the President and his wife had agreed to spend two relaxing days with the new British Prime Minister at the official country retreat, a magnificent Tudor mansion called simply Chequers. Saturday evening found the two couples taking coffee after dinner in the Long Gallery. As there was a chill in the air, a roaring log fire sent the light of its flames flickering off the walls of hand-tooled, morocco-bound antique books.

  Whether two heads of government will ever get on as people, or develop the empathy of true friendship, is completely unforeseeable. Some do, others do not. History records that Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, while never entirely without their differences, liked each other. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were genuine friends despite the gulf between the Englishwoman’s steely convictions and the Californian’s folksy humor.

  Between the British and the Europeans at that level, there has rarely if ever been more than formal courtesy, and often not even that. On one occasion the German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, brought over a wife so formidable that Harold Wilson, descending for dinner, gave vent to one of his rare barbs of humor, remarking to the assembled staff, “Well, wife-swapping’s out.”

  Harold Macmillan could not abide Charles de Gaulle (mutual) while having affection for the much younger John F. Kennedy. It may have to do with the common language, but not necessarily.

  Considering the gulf between the backgrounds of the two men sharing the warmth of the log fire that autumn evening, as the shadows deepened and the Secret Service patrolled with the British SAS outside, it was perhaps surprising that in three meetings—one in Washington, one at the UN and now at Chequers—they had developed a friendship on a personal level.

  The American had the disadvantaged background: Kenyan father, Kansas-born mother, Hawaii and Indonesia raising, the early struggles against bigotry. The Englishman came from a stockbroker married to a county magistrate, a nanny as a baby, private education at two of the most expensive and prestigious junior and senior schools in the country. That kind of background can endow with the sort of easy charm that may or may not mask inner steel. With some it does, with others it does not.

  At a more superficial level, there was much more in common. Both men were still under fifty, married to beautiful women, fathers of two children still school-aged, both men with top college degrees and an adult lifetime spent in politics. And both with the same almost obsessional concerns for climate change, Third World poverty, national security and the plight, even at home, of those whom Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth.”

  While the Prime Minister’s wife showed the First Lady some of the earliest books in the collection, the President murmured to his British opposite:

  “Did you have time to glance at that report I gave you?”

  “Certainly. Impressive . . . and worrying. We have a massive problem over here. This country is the biggest user of cocaine in Europe. I had a briefing two months ago from SOCA, our own Serious Crime people, about the spin-off crime that derives from it. Why?”

  The President stared into the fire and chose his words.

  “I have a man at the moment looking into the sheer feasibility of an idea. Would it be possible, with all our technology and the skill of our Special Forces, to destroy that industry?”

  The Prime Minister was taken aback. He stared at the American.

  “Your man, has he reported yet?”

  “Nope. I expect his verdict momentarily.”

  “And his advice. Will you take it?”

  “I guess I will.”

  “And if he advises it is feasible?”

  “Then I think the USA may go with that.”

  “We both spend huge amounts of treasure trying to combat narcotic drugs. All my experts say complete destruction cannot be done. We intercept cargoes, we catch the smugglers and the gangsters, we send them to jail, long-term. Nothing changes. The drugs keep flooding in. New volunteers replace the jailbirds. The public appetite continues to increase.”

  “But if my man says it can be done—would Great Britain come in with us?”

  No politician likes to be hit way below the belt, even by a friend. Even by the President of the USA. He played for time.

  “There would have to be a real plan. It would have to be funded.”

  “If we go ahead, there will be a plan. And funds. What I would like are your Special Forces. Your anti-crime agencies. Your secret intelligence skills.”

  “I would have to consult my people,” said the Prime Minister.

  “You do that,” said the President. “I’ll let you know when my man says what he says, and whether we are going ahead.”

  The four prepared for bed. In the morning they would attend matins at the local Norman church. Through the night the guards would patrol, watch, check, survey and check again. They would be armed and armored, with night-vision goggles, infrared scanners, movement sensors and body-heat detectors. It would be extremely unwise to be a patrolling fox. Even the specially imported U.S. limousines would be under guard all night so that they could not be approached.

  The American couple, as always with heads of state, had the Lee Room, named after the philanthropist who had donated Chequers to the nation after total restoration in 1917. The room still contained its huge four-poster bed, dating, perhaps not very diplomatically, from the time of George III. During the Second World War, the Soviet Foreign Minister, Molotov, had slept in that bed with a pistol under his pillow. That night in the fall of 2010, there was no pistol.

  TWENTY MILES down the coast south of the Colombian port and city of Cartagena is the Gulf of Urabá, a shore of impenetrable and malarial mangrove swamps. As Air Force One was lining up for its final approach bringing the presidential couple back from London, two strange crafts slipped out of an invisible creek and turned south
west.

  They were of aluminum, pencil-slim, up to sixty feet long, like needles in the water, but at the stern of each were four Yamaha 200 outboard engines side by side. The cocaine community called them “go-fasts,” and both their shape and power were designed to enable them to outstrip anything else on water.

  Despite their length, there was little room on board. Huge extra fuel tanks took up most of the space. Each also carried 600 kilograms of cocaine in ten large white plastic drums, which were themselves hermetically sealed against damage by seawater. To enable them to be handled, each drum was encased in nets of blue polyethylene cord.

  Between the drums and the fuel tanks, the crew of four crouched uncomfortably. But they were not there to be comfortable. One was the helmsman, a highly skilled operator who could handle the go-fast easily at its forty-knot cruise speed and take her up to sixty knots, sea permitting, if she was pursued. The other three were muscle, and all were going to be paid a fortune by their standards for seventy-two hours of discomfort and risk. In fact, their combined rewards were a tiny fraction of one percent of the value in those twenty drums.

  Clearing the shallows, the captains opened up to forty knots over a flat sea to begin their long cruise. Their target was a point on the ocean seventy nautical miles off Colón, Republic of Panama. There they would make sea rendezvous with the freighter Virgen de Valme, who would be coming west out of the Caribbean heading for the Panama Canal.

  The go-fasts had three hundred nautical miles to make rendezvous, and even at forty knots they could not make it by sunrise. So they would spend the next day hove to, bobbing in the sweltering heat under a blue tarpaulin, until darkness enabled them to continue. Then they could accomplish the transshipment of cargo at midnight. That was their deadline.

  The freighter was there as the go-fasts approached, showing the right sequence of lights in the right pattern. Identification was confirmed with preagreed but meaningless sentences shouted across the darkness. The go-fasts came alongside. Willing hands hauled the twenty drums upward onto the decks. These were followed by empty fuel tanks which were soon lowered back down, brimful. With a few Spanish salutations, the Virgen de Valme proceeded toward Colón, and the go-fasts turned for home. After another day bobbing invisibly on the ocean, they would be back in their mangrove swamps before dawn of the third day, sixty hours after they left them.