Since Moran was teaching the Introductory Ops Course this month rather than the refresher course, Linder asked if he might ask him for some career advice.
“Frankly, I’ve been thinking of getting out,” he told his former mentor.
“Don’t expect me to be shocked,” Moran answered, scooping a handful of salted peanuts from the dish between them.
“Why, don’t you think I’ll make the cut?” Linder answered, suddenly stiffening.
“No, it’s not that,” the older man assured him, laying a hand on his arm. “I happen to think you’re a fine officer. In a normal world, there’s no limit to what you could achieve in this Agency. But these are not normal times, and the Agency isn’t what it was when you or I joined it. If there’s something you’d rather be doing with your life, I’d say now’s the time to go for it.”
Linder recalled how Moran had risked his career rather than to be drawn into the war on terror in the decade after 9-11. The older officer had once confided to Linder that he had become an intelligence officer to steal the kind of secrets that made America strong, not to build target files against whoever landed on the government’s enemies list. Back when Linder had just completed the Ops Course and was choosing a career specialty, Moran had cautioned Linder against becoming a targets officer, advice that Linder had promptly ignored.
“Look, Warren, the President has offered you a golden opportunity,” Moran went on “Your old career is over. But now, you have an opportunity to do something useful instead of marking time till retirement in an organization that’s lost its way. Don’t waste your best years clinging to a corpse.”
Linder was surprised by Moran’s uncharacteristic pessimism.
“Come on, Jack, the President isn’t so stupid that he would stop spying completely,” he protested. “He’s got to keep some of us out in the field.”
“You’ve missed my point, or maybe I’ve muddled it,” Moran began again. “It’s not that spying will stop. It’s that the Agency will be directed inward once we don’t have foreign enemies to kick around any more.”
Moran took a sip of his scotch and looked around to see if anyone could overhear him before continuing.
“Look, it’s not for me to say if the President was right or wrong to bring us all home. All I know is that Jack Moran, for one, no longer has to risk his immortal soul messing up other people’s lives for a living. Now that my country says it doesn’t need me out there any more, I’m more than happy to go on home. My wife is counting the days till she has me back, body and soul.”
“Oh, a wife? What’s that?” Linder joked to lighten the atmosphere.
While each man took a long pull at his whiskey glass, Linder noticed Neil Denniston enter through a side door. By now, the club had grown crowded and Linder spotted Denniston before being seen. Jack Moran’s eyes followed Linder’s line of sight to the door and noticed the newcomer, as well. Denniston returned Linder’s wave but signaled his intention to order a drink before joining them.
“Is Denniston a friend of yours?” Moran asked.
“Definitely,” Linder answered brightly. “We knew each other in college and joined the Agency within months of each other. He’s just back from Dubai and we’ve been plotting our next move.”
“At the risk of being out of line, I’d be careful not to hitch my star too closely to that one,” Moran advised.
“Oh?” Linder replied as if surprised.
““Let’s just say he’s been under a cloud lately,” Moran answered, swirling the ice idly in his empty glass.
“Actually, I did hear something, but I’ve been waiting for Neil to talk about it.”
“So he hasn’t told you what he’s charged with?” Moran questioned.
“Charges? All he told me was that he hadn’t been seeing eye to eye with his new COS. Something about the new chief wanting to bring in his own team. Clean sweep and all that…”
“I suppose that’s true to a point,” Moran said, “but it wouldn’t account for his being called before a disciplinary panel.”
“Wait, that doesn’t make sense,” Linder insisted. “Neil made three huge recruitments in Dubai and was promoted two years in a row. That kind of performance tends to excuse a multitude of sins.”
“Except that Denniston appears to have fabricated the new agents’ reporting. And I happen to know it’s not just a straw in the wind, because he worked for me on his first tour and I caught him fabricating then, too. At the time, it looked like minor gap filling and embellishment, so Headquarters gave him a second chance and let him off with a warning—against my recommendation. But this time, he’s accused of inventing intel reports out of whole cloth. In this outfit, that’s always been a firing offense. Only now, it seems, if you’re a member in good standing in the Unionist Party, the old rules don’t apply. Anyway, if I were you, I wouldn’t take my cues from the likes of Neil Denniston.”
Linder took another sip of bourbon and nearly choked on it, turning his head just fast enough to sputter onto the floor rather than at Moran.
The chief waited for Linder to recover, then offered him a wad of cocktail napkins.
“Shocked?” he asked with an amused glint in his eye.
“Not really, but I’d still like to hear Neil’s side of the story before I draw any conclusions,” Linder answered.
Indeed, the news that Denniston’s habitual cheating had finally caught up with him did not surprise Linder one bit. Denniston’s dishonesty had surfaced as early as the Introductory Ops Course, which he and Linder had taken at the same time, though Denniston had entered the Agency a year earlier. Both had done well in the course, but for entirely different reasons. Linder had excelled due to his innate talent and hard work. Denniston possessed a similar level of talent, but had substituted deception for effort wherever and whenever he could.
The Agency’s intelligence operations courses were the only professional training Linder knew where guile and deceit, in the guise of “G2-ing the problem,” was not only condoned but rewarded. The verb, “to G2”, referred to the historical military designation for a unit’s intelligence and security staff. To “G2 a problem” meant to pass an exercise or an exam by means of intelligence techniques entirely outside conventional course rules, that is, not by practice and study, but by stealing test answers, suborning an instructor, or bribing a clerical worker. Denniston had rapidly become a master of G2-ing techniques at the Farm and had employed them so boldly and so often that, before long, he forfeited the benefits of stealth. No matter what game he played, everyone suspected him of cheating.
Across the room, Linder saw Neil Denniston weave his way through the crowd with a drink in each hand. Moran, too, could see that Denniston was only a minute or two from joining them.
“Tell me, Warren, are you a poker player?” he asked.
Linder shook his head. “Not my game. I played a bit in college but gave it up. Why?”
“I used to play quite a bit,” Moran continued. “But one day I picked up a book called Poker: A Guaranteed Income for Life. At the book’s end, after the author has revealed his secrets about how to manipulate other players’ weaknesses to take their money, he writes that a good player ends up being the biggest loser at poker. Because to win, the good poker player has to surround himself with people who regularly default on the use of their minds instead of people he might come to respect and enjoy. So, the true cost of winning at poker is that you sacrifice irreplaceable chunks of your life catering to the self-destructive needs of neurotic losers. Now, doesn’t that sound just a bit like what a case officer does?”
A moment after Moran left his question hanging in the air, Neil Denniston arrived at the booth and laid two identical drinks on the table.
“Jim Beam on the rocks, right?”
“That’ll do just fine,” Linder answered with an awkward laugh.
Denniston and Moran exchanged quick glances but did not speak to one other. Moran slid out from his seat and rose to leave.
“See you around the quad,” he said to Linder in parting while acknowledging Denniston with a curt nod.
“What did that old fart want?” Denniston asked the moment Moran was out of earshot.
“He didn’t want anything,” Linder replied. “He was just trying to cheer me up by telling it’s no big loss if I lose my job. Except, of course, that we’re facing the worst depression in a hundred years and suddenly zillions of ex-military and intel guys like us are all hitting the streets at the same time...”
“You know, I was about to tell you what an idiot Moran is, but for once the idiot may be right. The President’s speech is only the beginning. Let’s face it: there’s no future for us in the Agency. None at all. But when one door closes, as they say, another one opens. The good news is, I know some people in the DSS. And they’ve told me about some opportunities over there. I’m pretty sure we’re among the first with our particular background to home in on this. So if you’re game to check it out with me, you and I could be the first counterterrorist officers from the Agency to slot into the DSS’s new intelligence arm, just as our own organization starts handing out the pink slips.”
Linder nodded without speaking. Denniston went on.
“To be perfectly frank, Warren, I’ve already decided to sign on with the DSS, but I wanted to stick around long enough to come down here and talk to you about coming with me. What do you think?”
“You mean you won’t be completing the refresher course?”
“Hell no,” Denniston snorted, “and neither should you, if you still want to be on the government payroll after the course is over.”
“And what makes you so sure of that?” Linder challenged.
“Here’s the deal,” Denniston explained. “The new Department of State Security wants desperately to create its own intelligence arm to focus on the threats it sees to the Unionist administration and the party leadership. Right now, most DSS officers are police types. They know from arrests and busts but don’t have a clue about intel gathering. But the top-level DSS leaders go bonkers over spy gear and tradecraft and the whole James Bond thing. They desperately want to recruit a core cadre of intelligence case officers, preferably with Agency training and experience, who can help them build a new intel service that answers only to them.”
“So are these new jobs open right now, or do we have to wait for approval or funding or an executive order that may not ever come?” Linder challenged.
Denniston leaned back and looked his colleague in the eye while finishing his drink.
“The funding is there and they have HR people standing by to handle the paperwork. What they want from the likes of us is two things: first, an Agency training pedigree, with advanced tradecraft skills and a record of performance in the field; and, second, you have to kowtow to the Unionist Party and its style of politics. If you qualify, you’ll get hired at your current pay grade or higher, you’ll get your pick of assignments and you’ll be put on a fast track toward promotion. What’s not to like about that?”
“Where would the assignments be?” Linder probed. “Are all their field locations stateside, or will they operate overseas despite the pullback?”
“That’s the best part of it, dude,” Denniston replied with a grin. “Foreign assignments are definitely in play. Believe it or not, overseas is actually where the DSS has its greatest need right now. So, get this, you and I have a shot at going back overseas with the DSS at a time when the Agency is losing its overseas slots. All you have to do is belly up to the bar and drink some of that Unionist Kool-Aid. I realize it may be tough to swallow, but what an opportunity, eh?”
A welter of confused and conflicting thoughts raced through Linder’s mind as he pondered the proposal. Loyalties, friendships, principles, pride, and probabilities: how could he weigh one against the other and make a rational decision? His gut said to wait, to be cautious. But if he waited too long, he risked losing everything he had worked to achieve.
Denniston interrupted to force the issue.
“Listen, Warren, if I can get you an interview with a State Security recruiter, are you game?” he probed.
Linder would not give a direct answer.
“I just don’t know,” he said, taking a stiff hit of bourbon. “Who’s going to be in charge over there? And what kind of work would they have us do? If all they want is hit men and snatch artists, count me out. It’s one thing to drop the dime on some Jihadist with blood on his hands while he swills espresso in a West Beirut cafe, but it’s quite another to target Americans. I didn’t join the government to help the Unionist Party settle scores against their political opponents.”
Denniston leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table, and addressed Linder with a mocking smile.
“I understand your concerns, Warren, and I respect your fine sensibilities. But the Germans have a saying for that: “Wer A sagt, muss auch B sagen.” He who says A must also say B. For Christ’s sake, Warren,” he added, raising his voice, “what do you think you’ve been doing for the past six years? You’re a targets officer, man! The government picks the target, you find him and set him up, and other people go in to whack or snatch him. Isn’t it a bit late in the game to be turning up your nose at the government’s choice of targets? That call is beyond our pay grade.”
“Sorry, but I don’t see it that way,” Linder answered quietly, shaking his head. “Killing unlawful enemy combatants is war. Killing political dissidents is murder. Big difference.”
Denniston rolled his eyes and downed the last of his bourbon.
“Please,” he began with exaggerated irony as he pushed the empty glass toward the center of the table. “Don’t try to tell me you got into this line of work because you wanted to protect people. That’s not what we do. Never has been. We attack people.”
“Speak for yourself, Neil,” Linder replied with a scowl, leaning back in his chair even as his friend inclined toward him. Though he had learned to discount Denniston’s frequent hyperbole, what he was hearing now disturbed him more than he expected.
“Come on, let’s be practical about this, Warren. A person can go forward in this life but he can’t go back. I say we stop arguing and go talk to the DSS recruiter this weekend. She’ll be coming to work on Saturday morning just for us. Think about it.”
“Sure,” Linder answered grudgingly as he rose to his feet. “In the meantime, let’s get some dinner and talk about something else, okay?”
* * *
On leaving the Officer’s Club, Linder and Denniston drove out the front gate in a battered Ford pickup that Denniston had borrowed from a friend. They bypassed Williamsburg and its usual tourist watering holes, now off-limits to Agency employees owing to recent insurgent attacks targeting military and intelligence personnel. Instead they headed down the Colonial Parkway to Yorktown to a place Denniston had visited on a recent TDY to the Farm.
For decades, Nick’s Seafood Pavilion on the York River had been a popular seafood restaurant known for its crab cakes, oysters, and garish décor. Like many upscale eateries around the country, Nick’s faced bankruptcy with the onset of food shortages, rationing, sky-high alcohol taxes, plummeting consumer spending and cutbacks in business entertainment.
So it happened that Nick’s, being located within a short ride of several major military installations and a thriving service depot for offshore oil drilling, was reborn as Nick’s Pavilion Club, an equally garish gentlemen’s fantasy club with dancing, gambling, and live adult entertainment as well as an expensive cover charge, stiff drink prices, and a flock of alluring waitresses and B-girls trained to encourage heavy spending. The club’s typical patrons included military officers and senior enlisted men, civilian defense contractors, local businessmen, and oil drillers rotating in from offshore rigs in Chesapeake Bay and further out to sea.
As Linder and Denniston entered the club’s dimly lit foyer, the owner, a portly but immaculately suited Filipino in his mid-thirties, welcomed Denniston with theatrical deference an
d noted in a discreet aside that “Sheila was delighted” that he was coming tonight.
“May I show her to your table, Mr. Denniston?” the man asked.
“Certainly, José, but let’s wait until after dinner. My friend and I have some catching up to do and I’m afraid it might bore Sheila. Why not send her, and perhaps a friend, if you could arrange it, to our table for an after-dinner drink once the dance floor opens?”
“But of course,” José responded with an obsequious bow before ushering them past the enormous bar, designed to evoke fantasies of an 1890’s saloon, with faux wood paneling, tufted red-leather cushions and a brass foot rail. Along the walls, attractive and demurely dressed young women shared curtained booths with rough-looking oil drillers and clean-shaven military types. Linder was startled to see how remarkably good-looking the hostesses were, definitely a cut above the bar girls and hookers he had encountered at his favorite dives in Beirut, Dubai, Cairo, and Bangkok. Far from hard-bitten professionals, these young women looked like every man’s fantasy of the girl next door or a college sorority girl. Perhaps, he thought, some of them actually were students by day. Certainly, financing a college education had never been more difficult. Nor, after a decade of economic depression and civil unrest, had the hopes and self-respect of young Americans ever sunk so low.
When the two men reached the table Denniston had reserved, José left them in the care of their waiter. Denniston ordered a vodka martini on the rocks, garnished with a blue-cheese stuffed olive, while Linder ordered a Manhattan made with rye whiskey and extra bitters, straight up. When the drinks arrived and the rosy glow of alcohol swept over them, their conversation turned to old times in college and their early days in the Agency. Both men downed their first drinks in a few gulps and ordered another round.
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