Jack in the Box

by John Weisman

  Alan Martin, CIA’s Assistant Deputy Director for Collection, couldn’t get an appointment with Deutch or his deputy George Tenet. So he finally corralled one of Tenet’s growing army of special assistants in the cafeteria. He explained that the bases could be used to keep an eye on the growing number of Islamist radicals living in Germany, Spain, France, and Italy.

  Martin was greeted with a blank stare. Islamist radicals? Who the hell cared about Islamist radicals living in Düsseldorf? We are into saving money here. Get with the program, Al, he was told, or get lost.

  But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the tectonic shift taking place in the quality of the DO’s people. The situation wasn’t new: under previous directors William Webster and Robert M. Gates, DO had been forced to accept within its ranks analysts, reports officers, and secretaries, few of whom had either the inclination or the ability to spot, assess, and recruit agents to spy for America. The prissy Gates even had a politically correct term for it: “cross-fertilization.”

  Now, under Deutch, Slatkin, Tenet, and Cohen, the vacuum left by the loss of experienced case officers was being filled by a growing torrent of unskilled, naïve, risk-averse individuals who had no field experience. None whatsoever. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Analysts had already been appointed as chiefs of station in Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Nairobi, and Lisbon. A reports officer was running Warsaw. A former secretary with only six months of training had been made station chief in Kiev. Kiev, with Ukraine’s vast store of Soviet-era nuclear weapons. Geezus, it was like appointing a hospital’s chief file clerk to head its neurosurgical team.

  12:26 PM. The five men in 4D-627A had more than 100 years of combined intelligence work under their belts. Between them there wasn’t a region anywhere on the globe that they weren’t familiar with.

  Until Deutch had replaced him with a reports officer, Bronco—for Bronislaw—Panitz had been CIA’s Assistant Deputy Director for Operations. Panitz had served in Eastern Europe. He’d been chief in Budapest and Singapore, come back to run Agency operations in Western Europe, then gone out again, this time to Madrid. At 55, Bronco still had the imposing build of an NFL fullback. He worked out in Langley’s gym four days a week, pumping iron and playing the same kind of full-contact, half-court basketball he’d first learned on the streets of Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood as a teenager.

  Antony Wyman currently ran CIA’s much-reduced Counterterrorism Center. But the corridor gossip said he was about to be eased out, replaced by someone who’d be more compliant to the new director’s wishes. Wyman was known as tony Tony because he was a complete and devoted Anglophile. His MA (History, honors) was from Cambridge. He wore bespoke chalk-striped London-tailored suits, loud Turnbull & Asser shirts, even louder T&A ties, and bench-made brown suede shoes from John Lobb. A gold-rimmed monocle customarily hung on a black silk ribbon around his neck, and a silk foulard square perpetually drooped from his breast pocket.

  But Tony Wyman was no more a foppish dandy than the Scarlet Pimpernel. He’d served as chief in London, where he’d helped MI5 and MI6 put a dent in IRA terrorism, and in Rome, where he’d pressed SISMI, the Italian military intelligence service, to dismember the Red Brigades piece by piece. After Rome, tony Tony had been assigned by DCI William Casey to destroy the Abu Nidal Organization. The ANO had just killed five Americans during simultaneous December 27, 1985, attacks on TWA and El Al passengers at international airports in Rome and Vienna, and Casey wanted to put them out of business.

  “You do what you have to, Tony,” Casey bellowed, spewing tuna salad as he spoke. He dropped the half-eaten sandwich onto its plate and slapped his cluttered desk for emphasis. “I want that rotten son of a bitch’s head on a pike right next to our front gate. So don’t you let me down.”

  Tony Tony had brushed the director’s food from his strié velvet vest and gone to work. By the middle of 1987, a series of Wyman-devised covert action programs had turned Abu Nidal into a paranoid psychotic. That November, he machine-gunned 160 of his own people. Two weeks later, the terrorist chief ordered 170 of ANO’s Libyan-based operatives killed. By the end of the year, he’d tortured and murdered more than 400 of his closest associates because Wyman’s covert action program had convinced Abu Nidal they might be leaking information to CIA. By 1988, the ANO ceased to be a serious threat.

  Charles Hoskinson, the oldest officer at the meeting, was a lifelong Arabist. Short and round-faced, with longish, wispy white hair and neutral gray eyes set off by old-fashioned, tortoise shell round-framed spectacles, Hoskinson presented a lot more of Bob Cratchit than he did James Bond. But his string of achievements was nothing short of remarkable.

  In 1972, as Damascus chief of station—Hoskinson’s first COS posting—he managed to recruit the brother of the Syrian compromising poses Henry Kissinger during the 1973 October War. Then he

  As chief in Beirut during the bloody Lebanese Civil War, Hoskinson maintained a clandestine backchannel relationship with the PLO that had included chaperoning Ali Hassan Salameh, Black September’s chief of operations, the architect of the Munich Olympics massacre, and a CIA developmental, on a 1977 honeymoon vacation to Hawaii with his new Lebanese wife, the former Miss Universe Georgina Rizak. Hoskinson even tried to teach Salameh how to scuba dive, but discovered that the man who’d cold-bloodedly ordered the deaths of so many hundreds got claustrophobic and panicked underwater.

  In Cairo, where he’d served from 1978 through 1981, Hoskinson was not only responsible for helping to guide Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat through the negotiations that had resulted in the Camp David peace treaty, but he also convinced Sadat that it was in Egypt’s long-term interests to throw the Soviets out—something Sadat did mere weeks before his October 13, 1981, assassination.

  Hoskinson, however, had been sidelined. It happened after the 32-year veteran had refused to terminate MJPLUMBER, a Palestinian agent who’d been involved in the 1987 attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to Spain. Sure, PLUMBER had murdered Israelis in the past, and he’d probably do so again if given the chance. But these days he was the one of the PA’s highest-ranking West Bank security officials. PLUMBER, however, always had a weakness, a predilection for little boys. It was a vulnerability that had made him an ideal (and successful) candidate for recruitment by Giles T. PRENDERGAST, one of Hoskinson’s case officers in the mid-1980s.

  Hoskinson was convinced Arafat was going to cheat on Oslo. And PLUMBER, who didn’t like the way Arafat was skimming millions without sharing the loot, would divulge how the Chairman planned to do it, since he was now a trusted member of Arafat’s inner circle.

  But Deutch’s troika wanted no part of MJPLUMBER. “I get everything I need from the Israelis,” Deutch had reportedly growled. “I don’t want some senator complaining that we hire buggering pedophile assassins as agents.”

  Hoskinson wasn’t about to tell the DCI that you don’t hire an agent, you recruit him, because the distinction would have been lost. Despite his entreaties, PLUMBER was cut loose, and CIA was denied its only unilateral access to Arafat’s clique. When Charlie went to CIA’s Inspector General and filed a formal protest, Deutch’s people went ballistic. The DCI summoned Hoskinson to his office and flat-out ordered him to retire. When Hoskinson refused, Deutch loosed his attack dogs to hasten the decision.

  Ten days ago, Hoskinson had been forced to become a hall-walker after Tora-Tora Nora had him evicted from his office. Undeterred, he’d set up shop in the cafeteria and used the extension of a friendly NE desk officer to receive messages. But one of the troika’s spies had ratted him out.

  This very morning, Tenet’s toad of an assistant had appeared in the cafeteria with a note instructing Hoskinson to appear forthwith for a psychological exam. Obviously, since Hoskinson hadn’t obeyed Deutch’s every command he was mentally unstable. An old friend who had access to Deutch’s office suite warned Charlie the DCI was going to terminate him with cause.

  Hoskinson had spent thirty-four years and three months at CIA.
He loved the place and what it stood for, and he was damned if he was going to let Deutch and his people destroy it. Stan Turner, Bobby Gates and Bill Webster had been bad enough. But Deutch, Geezus H. Keerist. Hoskinson looked at Tony Wyman. “Goddamnit, Tony—it’s time to get off our asses.”

  P,2 the case officer who’d been tasked to write the majority of the Ames report, blinked. “I agree, Charlie. But what course do we take? I think we should sleep on it. Reconvene tomorrow with some ideas.”

  “Some of us already know what we have to do, STIGGINS,” Hoskinson growled. Even in the bubble room he used the undercover officer’s Agency pseudonym, Edward C. STIGGINS. “Ed, you made the perfect suggestion yourself an hour and a half ago. Sleeping on it won’t change anything. There’s only one element that has to be changed.”

  “Which is,” Wyman continued, “that instead of building a new DO on the inside, we do it on the outside—and we make a lot of money in the process.”

  Alan Martin’s knuckles rapped the table. “Take the DO private. Brilliant.”

  “A two-level organization.” Wyman polished his monocle. “Level one: overt. A privately held corporation. Commercial and industrial risk and threat assessment, crisis management, and security counseling. Big market. Believe me, I’ve been approached.” He looked at Panitz. “We’re talking revenue in the mid-seven figures our first year.”

  Bronco Panitz caught the look between Hoskinson and tony Tony. They’d been plotting this for some time now.

  Wyman shot his French cuffs to display antique $5 gold piece cufflinks. “Level two: covert. We target the areas where the DO is blind—Middle East, Southwest Asia, Africa, etcetera, and then we sell our product—24-karat stuff—back to Langley. For a stiff fee, of course.”

  “And Langley will pay,” Hoskinson said. “Because it’s a Potemkin Village these days.”

  “He’s right,” Alan Martin grumbled. “There’s virtually no human product coming in. It’s all liaison and technical.”

  “Recruiting won’t be a problem, believe me,” Tony Wyman said. “Deutch is pushing the best people out. I’ve got commitments from more than a dozen of our colleagues.”

  Alan Martin had to admit it was brilliant. In order to save the Directorate of Operations from self-destructing, Hoskinson and Tony were suggesting they run the same sort of covert action they’d used successfully in the past against the Soviet Union, China, Iran, and dozens of other nations, political parties, and terrorist groups. But instead of providing information that would destabilize, they’d pass on the intelligence CIA was currently incapable of gathering for itself.

  STIGGINS frowned. “Deutch won’t like it.”

  “Deutch won’t ever know.” When STIGGINS started to object, Bronco Panitz said, “Christ, David Cohen’s always contracting annuitants for odd jobs. As well as farming out work to half a dozen consultants.”

  It was true. Retirees currently ran one-man CIA stations in five sub-Saharan African nations on a contract basis. In the NE bureau, there were two acting branch chiefs who were actually employees of private risk-assessment firms. One had resigned from CIA in 1994, the other in 1995. But because they had current clearances and polygraphs, they’d been hired back—in their old slots no less—because CIA had so few experienced case-officers available with real street experience in the region. The two, who’d retired at the GS-14 level and earned roughly $86,000 a year, were now costing the American taxpayer $1250 per day each, plus benefits: $325,000 a year.

  “You’ll need a network at headquarters, Tony.” Alan Martin’s expression grew intense. “Access agents, penetration agents, agents of influence, and most important, moles. You know how it is on the seventh floor. It’s all about job security. If you don’t have a handle on what the seventh floor is thinking, sooner or later they’ll scapegoat you.”

  Tony Wyman fixed the monocle into his right eye and stared first at STIGGINS, then swiveled oh … so … slowly toward Martin, then panned back again to STIGGINS. He released his facial muscles. The monocle fell. “And your point is …”

  Alan Martin got the message. “STIGGINS and Martin. It sounds like a Vaudeville act.”

  Tony Wyman grinned. “It sounds more like the 4D-627 Network to me.”

  BY 2:30 PM they’d reached a consensus. An hour and a half later, Antony Wyman, Bronco Panitz, and Charles Hoskinson had started the paperwork for their retirements. When Tony’s secretary asked what he planned to do, he said he and a couple of friends were going to open a private security firm.

  “What are you going to call it? Wyman and Associates?”

  “Wyman and Associates. Has a nice ring to it, m’dear, but perish the thought. Far too … égoïste pour moi. We are calling ourselves … the 4627 Company.”

  Praise

  “John Weisman redefines high-impact, action-adventure suspense novels for the decade.”

  James Grady, author of Six Days of the Condor and River of Darkness

  Former CIA Moscow station chief Sam Waterman left his post in disgrace, damned for a deadly foul-up not of his doing. But now the return of a legendary traitor to America’s shores is pulling Waterman back into the lethal shadow world he left behind—because his nation’s very survival depends upon it.

  Despised defector Edward Lee Howard has come home bearing dangerous secrets and a stunning allegation: the U.S. intelligence community has been infiltrated by moles at the highest levels, their influence spreading into the White House itself. Their secret agendas already helped to bring about the most horrific terrorist attack the world has ever seen. And their treachery is paving the way for more.

  “The kind of truth you can only tell in fiction, otherwise lives would be lost. John Weisman takes the reader into the very heart of the CIA and its special operations.”

  Robert Baer, author of Sleeping with the Devil

  More resounding acclaim for John Weisman and JACK IN THE BOX

  “There are only a few authors who are able to climb inside the culture, mindset, and passions of the people who conduct covert and special operations … John Weisman is the best in the business at writing about it.”

  William S. Cohen, former U.S. Secretary of Defense

  “One of the best in the thriller business … It is refreshing to spend an afternoon with an author who writes intelligently about the new focus of intelligence—counterterrorism … A mole chase made all the more interesting by Mr. Weisman’s wide use of spy lore, references to actual cases, and detailed tradecraft.”

  Washington Times

  “Engrossing … Lavishly sprinkled with scenes and details of state-of-the-art tradecraft.”

  Alan Cheuse, NPR “All Things Considered”

  “Hearkens back to the best of the Cold War’s covert special operations and will keep readers on the edge of their easy chairs.”

  Library Journal

  “A pro who knows his stuff.”

  Oliver North, former White House aide and New York Times best-selling author of Mission Compromised and The Jericho Sanction

  “Spycraft master John Weisman lures the reader into a tale of tradecraft, grit, and death as counterintelligence operators struggle to uncover terrorist cells.”

  Bing West, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and co-author of The March Up

  “A particularly robust example of the post-détente spook hunt … Jack in the Box takes the reader along for a breakneck-speed investigation into whether the men in charge of America actually answer to other masters … A thousand threads of fact tie Weisman’s fictional world to actual history … It’s an engaging spy story with a heart of newsprint.”

  Buffalo News

  “Better than Clancy at his best.”

  Lt. Gen. Sam Wilson, USA (Ret.), former director of DIA and a godfather of Delta Force

  Books by John Weisman

  SOAR: A BLACK OPS MISSION

  BLOOD CRIES

  WATCHDOGS

  EVIDENCE

  The Rogue Warrior series

&nbs
p; (with Richard Marcinko)

  DETACHMENT BRAVO • ECHO PLATOON

  SEAL FORCE ALPHA • OPTION DELTA

  DESIGNATION GOLD • TASK FORCE BLUE

  GREEN TEAM • RED CELL

  NONFICTION

  ROGUE WARRIOR (with Richard Marcinko)

  SHADOW WARRIOR (with Felix Rodriguez)

  ANTHOLOGIES

  THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES OF 1997

  (edited by Robert B. Parker)

  UNUSUAL SUSPECTS

  (edited by James Grady)

  To LtCdr. Roy Henry Boehm, USN (Ret.) man-o-warsman on his eightieth birthday

  And in memory of David Meredith Evans cold warrior

  JACK-IN-THE-BOX

  Jac-in-the-Box (JIB): CIA-devised automobile pop-up dummy used to deceive, mislead, and foil hostile surveillance during denied area operations.

  14.0 JIP Technique (from the Central Intelligence Agency’s DENIED AREA OPERATIONS TRAINING COURSE SYLLABUS, REV 3/10/02)

  14.01 The case officer/driver creates a GAP (a distance sufficient enough so that his vehicle is out of direct sight of the surveillance vehicles) between himself and the opposition.

  14.02 Once within the GAP, the CIA vehicle slows at a prearranged spot. The case officer/passenger quickly exits the car and seeks concealment. As the CIA vehicle accelerates away, the case officer/driver releases a JIB pop-up dummy.