by Dale Amidei
“Yes, well … alliances need allies, Doctor. The woman has today lost one of her most significant … one you, conversely, have gained.” The financier drew himself up to his full height. “Should you have a need in your contest, madam, I do hope you will let me know of it. I trust you will be able to make contact when the time comes.”
“Perhaps,” Boone allowed him. She offered her hand, which he took gracefully. “It has been more of a pleasure than expected, Benedek.”
“The pleasure is mine, Doctor.”
“Call me Boone,” she said with a smile.
She returned just as the responding paramedics were loading Sir Chauncey’s men into their respective ambulances, and Ritter along with the MI5 man were cleaning blood from their hands with large antiseptic wipes. The former USAF officer shot a look toward the old man standing at the shattered limo, now attended by additional first responders.
“Looks like you two had quite a conversation,” her InterLynk colleague observed.
“A contrite man, really,” she said, observing the surprised reaction on Ritter's face. “And no longer our problem.”
“So glad to hear it, Doctor Hildebrandt. I assume this means you and the good Colonel intend to leave these shores in favor of the healthy Alpine air from whence you came, post haste,” Stewart huffed.
“Washington for myself, I’m afraid,” she admitted, looking at Ritter. “Though the Colonel will be returning to update General McAllen.” Message received. Good boy.
“I approve completely. As I said, Colonel, and Doctor … let us see if your next trip to the Queen’s Realm might be conducted within the bounds of proper protocol. Such would be a visit to which I could look forward.”
“We as well, Sir Chauncey,” she affirmed with a smile as the MI5 senior officer sighed. She watched him walk away shaking his head. Professional courtesy, Boone thought. It makes the world go ‘round and ‘round.
Liberty Crossing
McLean, Virginia
Friday morning
Boone breezed into ODNI fashionably late for once, her reappearance an apparent surprise to the alpacas. Edna Reese’s greeting consisted mostly of an incredulous expression projected over the top of her morning coffee although she did manage to verbalize something appropriate. “Doctor Hildebrandt … good morning?”
“Morning, Ed,” Boone tossed out in a nonchalant tone on the way by. Her office, she noticed as she shed her coat, was untouched. Even the paper clip with which she had been playing before she was called into Bradley’s office lay where she dropped it. This is the power of believing, Terry. And so, here I am.
She heard him stirring in his office, but she reached his door first. I hope your morning is clear. There is no higher priority of a conversation than the one you and I are about to have. Stopping in his doorway, Boone saw he had made it halfway there already. “Might I have a moment, Mister Bradley, sir?”
His expression was one of surprise and seriousness, possibly mixed with relief, she sensed. Is there something more? Is it the same emotion I feel, or is it the straw I grasp at, just a hope from an essentially hopeless soul?
“Come in, Doctor,” he encouraged.
She did so, kicking up the stop to close his door behind her. He pivoted and returned to his desk … back to his comfort zone. This is where we are right now. Boone played within his subconscious rules, taking her place in the less intimate space of his visitor’s chair.
“You’ve had quite a busy week, Agent Hildebrandt,” the DNI observed.
“Quite, Terrence. Busy and disturbing,” she added.
Bradley nodded, retrieving his coffee mug from his desk. “It’s the nature of intelligence, Boone. We are paid to cast aside our comforting delusions and see the world just as it is.” He sipped his elixir of awareness, perhaps to recover from his bout of early morning philosophy. “So what did your trip to Europe add to our panorama of actuality?”
Sighing, she slumped back into his chair and folded her hands in front of her, staring out his windows. “My diagnosis is our government has a cancer.”
Bradley said nothing. He seemed content to let her get the words out.
She continued. “Over the course of the last few days I’ve watched it metastasize into conspiracy to affect escape from a Swiss penitentiary … to commit a murder … and to attempt four more. These people are unbridled, Terry. They operate on the assumption there is no one able to tell them ‘no.’ No voice within themselves, and certainly not from above. They have the resources of government, and private funding which equals or exceeds the same. They feel entitled to impose their will on the existence of others, to the point they lack any constraint of humanity holding civilized men and women back from the brink of savagery.”
At her pause Bradley nodded. It appeared he had heard nothing with which he could disagree.
Drawing a breath, Boone took her premise farther. “It starts with schemes … and the schemes lead to empowerment … and empowerment leads to authority, and authority delegated to the wrong personality type kills inhibition. My God, what a dangerous progression it all is.”
“You’ve hit on a hazard of the democratic process,” Bradley concurred. “It can lead to the elevation of sociopaths.”
Boone sighed again and drew herself back up in his visitor’s chair. She steeled herself to face the realities of her nation’s situation. Terry is right. Awareness is our duty. “What can we do?”
“I can do any number of things,” Bradley smiled. “I could go to the President, who is the man who empowered Valka Gerard in the first place and has benefitted immensely from her guidance and her advice ever since.” He sipped again, luxuriating in the contemplative silence found between his many futile options before continuing.
“I could present our inadmissible evidence to the Justice Department, also staffed by political allies of the administration and empowered to ignore altogether any potentially damaging issue. I could go to Congress, who could initiate investigations which could consume years with the Executive Branch impeding progress at every slogging step.”
“With the result at any turn being exactly the same,” Boone projected.
The DNI nodded. “Valka Gerard, continuing her homicidal rampage unhindered.”
“This is what a Level Zero case file is all about, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Exactly,” he confirmed. “The people who conceived the classification anticipated a breakdown of character in the chain of command. Our government depends on the integrity of those empowered to sustain the constitutional processes. Level Zero action was instituted as the ultimate check on the power of an embedded malefactor to continue to threaten national security or commit additional capital crimes.”
“But is it legal?”
Bradley smiled again. “Once a Level Zero case is closed, Boone, it ceases to exist. The legal system is only concerned with the actual.”
Boone’s head hit the back of his visitor chair, and her gaze went to the ceiling. He seemed willing to accommodate her internal conflict.
“If you can come up with an alternate plan of action to curb a runaway sense of entitlement in the Executive Branch, Doctor, I’d love to hear it.” He sipped again. “My suspicion is the only two people able to meaningfully affect Valka Gerard’s agenda are sitting in this room, pondering the ethics of pragmatic intervention.”
“I need time, Terry. This is a tough one.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, “it is for me as well.” His coffee hovered in front of his face. “We need a course of action we can both accommodate. I wonder, though, how much time we have before someone else dies, and how much the responsibility would weigh.”
“Bad choices, and worse choices,” Boone mused. “The worst of which might be to do nothing.”
There was a long pause. “Sins of omission, the nuns used to call it,” he then agreed.
Boone stood, needing space now to weigh action and inaction. “Thanks for the talk, boss.” She exhaled. “I could be in and
out today.”
“Welcome back, Agent Hildebrandt,” he replied.
Boone turned and walked to his door, seeing he was once more deep in thought, eyes fixed on his monitors as the man returned immediately to his many tasks. I love him. I know it best when I’ve been away.
She slipped through the door, letting it close again behind her. For now, she knew he had more than enough of the troubles of the world flowing in through his computer screens.
Chapter 21 - Insights
He appreciated her closing his office door on her way out. For a time, the DNI needed nothing more than the opportunity to cloister.
The proper handling of intelligence involved not only its collection but verification of the resultant data set. Among the many sorts of human beings, Terry Bradley was in the category of those who understood this best of all. I trust Boone explicitly, respect her immensely, and admire her intellect intensely … but I will not act on her observations until I document a concrete chain of evidence. He had no choice but to pursue corroboration even, he knew, within the structure of a Level Zero case file: one which had all the historical permanence of flash paper.
His position occupied the top of the organizational chart delineating the hierarchy of the United States Intelligence Community. Necessarily, Bradley's status entailed command-level access to the systems used by the organizations under his umbrella of management responsibility. One of those child entities was the National Security Agency. There, his wizards of technology concerned themselves with not only the collection and transcription of foreign communication and signals intelligence, but also the protection of U.S. government communications and associated information systems.
In the course of the last few weeks, Bradley had made the documentation of secure communications within the Executive Branch a priority. Logging quietly increased, and the record of conversations and the routes thereof established. It was only an incremental step to add voice-analysis capability to the mix, a process which necessarily resulted in a temporary copy of the conversation in NSA storage. A portion of those recordings, particularly ones which emanated from the official and private devices of the Office of the Senior Advisor, had received an extension of their purge dates via his intervention. The end product was a searchable pool of conversations, records which could be filtered by query just as in any other database.
He began his substantiation of Boone's statements by constructing a timeline of the incidents to which she had been a witness. Each of them had been well reported even if the implications and interconnections were details shared only by the top levels of ODNI and InterLynk. The attempted assassination of Benedek Novak followed that of InterLynk’s Vice President. Working backward, he added the likely elimination of Delmar Givens, which itself came after what must have been collusion with the financier to attempt the espionage targeting the DARIUS missile defense system.
For each date in his chronology, he extracted another set of communications from the thousands of recordings available. Each grouping was further narrowed by international scope, reducing their number substantially. Telephone calls from Valka Gerard which specifically terminated in the United Kingdom were few indeed. The resulting chart correlated well, he could see in an overlay with each tick mark on his event timeline. There she is … running it all.
Drilling down into the item occurring on the day prior to the last trip by Givens to Fort Marcy Park, Bradley saw the origin was determined if not the participants. Electronic filtering to defeat voiceprint analysis was noted in the report. Not good enough. I need to be sure.
He isolated reasonably short segments of two call records, and plugged both into one of the NSA’s analytical engines. It was coded in synchronization to the most common algorithms in use by commercial voice-alteration units. One after another, the compensating sweeps cycled through, comparing the filtered voice patterns with Valka Gerard’s unguarded communications. As he waited, more of his morning coffee disappeared from his mug.
Finally, the scans ceased, and the flashing screen confirmed his intuition as well as the match in voice pattern. There she is, arranging the murder of a White House Senior Advisor, and a man with whom she worked for more than four blessed years.
The evidence was at the same time incontrovertible and inadmissible as its development had resulted from intuition and opportunity, not court-ordered action. He clicked his mouse, and the data items and resulting analysis all ceased to exist in the NSA mainframe. Instantly they transferred into a Level Zero folder so restricted the administrators of his document-management system had not the privileges to see it, much less access the contents.
Bradley closed his terminal session to Fort Meade. Boone was right about everything, and his morning efforts had confirmed her reports. The Level Zero protocol had been satisfied, and he and his Senior Case Officer could proceed on their own initiative … as long as our involvement remains equally untraceable as the case file itself. Deniability, the DNI knew, would remain the overwhelming challenge.
Elements in my chain of command are themselves now documented to be national security risks, and it doesn’t matter to me whether the citizens of this country voted these people in willingly or blindly. My oath is to the Constitution, not the political process. The full implication of his prioritizing settled in, and Bradley knew he had only to wait for Boone to come to the same conclusions. Then we will act, because we are the only two people in this government who can.
Federal Security Service Command
Moscow, Russian Federation
Nine hours ahead of Virginia
Dmitry Gennadyevich Lyubov, no less harried an administrator than Terrence Bradley, was prone to keeping hours every bit as irregular. Unlike Bradley, however, it was highly unusual for him to receive calls direct to his desk phone from international numbers, much less one he recognized as American and from an area code he knew was in Virginia. Curiosity and duty trumped both his desire to end an already-extended workweek and his husband’s desire to return to his home and wife of thirty-one years. He picked up the call. Considering the source, he answered in English. “Federal Security Service—Lyubov,” he enunciated officiously.
“Dmitry Gennadyevich, what a pleasure it is to speak with you again,” came the response in Muscovite-accented Russian. “The last time was when you kissed my hand at the door of the conference room in Lubyanka.”
Bradley’s vixen, the Hildebrandt woman. “Doctor …. this is an unexpected surprise,” the Director admitted. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“You owe me nothing, tovarisch. I seek a professional courtesy. Perhaps one which will benefit us both.”
Lyubov admired her salesmanship. “And what, Madam Hildebrandt, do you offer?”
“Through the course of my duties I have again encountered the Saudi, Yameen Amjad al-Khobar. You remember him from incidents in Vladimirskaya and Germany. I believe InterLynk’s General McAllen has been keeping the Federation apprised as to the Saudi’s whereabouts.”
“Of course,” the Russian acknowledged. The woman’s hook is set.
“I have business with a person who might well be his current patron. It occurred to me you could be able to deepen my background information.”
“And who might this person be?”
The redhead’s voice took on a less casual tone. “Dmitry, what can you tell me of Valka Gerard?”
Lyubov felt his blood pressure rise. “Doctor, I dearly hope you have done me the courtesy of using a secured line.”
“Of course, Dmitry. Do you forget who it is calling you?”
I might never forget this one if I am not careful now. He cleared his throat. “You pose a more difficult question than you know, Doctor. What specific question can I answer?”
“Oh, Dmitry, my phrasing was overly broad,” she apologized as one professional to another. She paused. “There are rumors of ties to her homeland which endure.”
“I can confirm those. Madam Gerard’s heart has not strayed far from Es
tonia … nor has it ever from her most dominant philosophies.”
“Do the two intertwine, do you think?”
Here I must be careful. “There are rumors, perhaps, particularly among those in Estonia who do not favor realignment with the Federation. It was her leftist tendencies which made her such an attractive asset to your present administration, did they not?”
“I don’t dispute your analysis, tovarisch.” the voice on the phone conceded. “Regardless, Dmitry, from what you are saying, the woman still thinks of her homeland as home.”
“Ties in my culture bind, Doctor, but I hardly need remind someone whose command of my language flows so elegantly.”
“Dmitry, you silver-tongued devil,” she teased. “Back on task with you.”
Lyubov sighed. “Your President’s Senior Advisor retains her ties to Estonia, Doctor, and has buttressed them with continuing favors to her equivalents in Tallinn. Some in the government there consider her a Russian agent. She is a power there as well, though one well removed from casual scrutiny.”
“Just the reason I did not call a casual observer,” the dangerous redhead admitted. “You make an intriguing observation, as to Valka’s reputation in Tallinn. May I ask you to elaborate?”
He cleared his throat once more. “I can say I know of no official arrangement.” True enough. “Although, given the level of duplicity in your government’s current administration, should one come to light I would not find myself flabbergasted.”
She seemed for a long moment to be gauging his words. “Spasiba, tovarisch, for your candor.”
“The Saudi al-Khobar, you say, is now associated with her?” Lyubov inquired.
“Almost certainly. I can foresee the possibilities of us developing a mutually beneficial arrangement in this regard.”
“One in which everyone here would be most interested to participate, madam.”
She chuckled, sounding delightfully satisfied. “Mind your Inboxes, Director. The details could come through the channels of mutual friends.”