by Tom Clancy
“We understand that. Ideally, we would want our people to survive, but sadly we know that some will be lost. They understand the risk.” He didn’t talk about Paradise. These people would not understand. The God they worshipped folded into their wallets.
What sort of fanatic throws his people away like that? Pablo asked himself. His men freely took their risks, measuring the money to be gained against the consequences of failure, and made decisions out of their own free will. Not these people. Well, one couldn’t always choose one’s business associates.
“Very well. We have a number of blank American passports. It is your job to be certain that the people you send us can speak proper English or Spanish, and can present themselves properly. I trust none of them will partake in flying lessons?” Ernesto meant it as a joke.
Mohammed did not take it as one.
“The time for that is past. Success rarely succeeds twice in my field of endeavor.”
“Fortunately, we have a different field,” Ernesto responded. And it was true. He could send shipments in cargo container boxes via commercial vessels and trucks all over America. If one of them was lost, and the programmed destination discovered, America had many legal protections for his downstream employees. Only the foolish ones went to prison. Over the years, they’d learned to defeat sniffer dogs and all the other means of discovery. The most important thing was that they used people who were willing to take risks, and most of them survived to retire back to Colombia and join the upper middle class, their prosperity the result of something in the distant, fading past, never to be repeated or spoken of.
“So,” Mohammed said. “When can we commence operations?”
This man is anxious, Ernesto noted. But he would accommodate him. Whatever he managed to accomplish would draw manpower away from America’s counter-smuggling operations, and that was good. The relatively minor cross-border losses he had learned to endure would shrink to even more trivial levels. The street price of cocaine would drop, but demand would increase somewhat, and so there would be no net loss in sales revenue. That would be the tactical profit. More to the point, America would become less interested in Colombia, and shift her focus of intelligence operations elsewhere. That would be his strategic advantage from this endeavor . . .
. . . and he always had the option of sending information to the CIA. Terrorists had appeared unexpectedly in his backyard, he could say, and their operations would be understood to be beyond the pale even for the Cartel. While that would not gain him the affection of America, it would not hurt him, either. And any of his own people who’d provided assistance to the terrorists could be dealt with internally, as it were. The Americans would actually respect that.
So, there was a real upside, and a controllable downside. On the whole, he decided, this had the makings of a valuable and profitable operation.
“Señor Miguel, I will propose this alliance to my colleagues, with my recommendation that we undertake it. You can expect a final decision by the end of this week. Will you remain in Cartagena, or will you be traveling?”
“I prefer not to remain in one place too long. I fly out tomorrow. Pablo can reach me via the Internet with your decision. For the moment, I thank you for a cordial business meeting.”
Ernesto stood and took his guest’s hand. He decided then and there to consider Miguel as a businessman in a similar but not competitive field of endeavor. Not a friend, certainly, but an ally of convenience.
“HOW THE hell did you manage this?” Jack asked.
“Ever hear of a company called INFOSEC?” Rick Bell asked in return.
“Encryption stuff, right?”
“Correct. Information Systems Security Company. The company’s domiciled outside of Seattle. They have the best information-security program there is. Headed by a former deputy head of the Z-Division over at Fort Meade. He and three colleagues set the company up about nine years ago. I’m not sure NSA can crack it, short of brute-forcing it with their new Sun Workstations. Just about every bank in the world uses it, especially the ones in Liechtenstein and the rest of Europe. But there’s a trapdoor in the program.”
“And nobody’s found it?” Buyers of computer programs had learned over the years to have outside experts go over such programs line by line, as a defense against playful software engineers, of which there were far too many.
“Those NSA guys do good code,” Bell responded. “I have no idea what’s in there, but these guys still have their old NSA school ties hanging in the closet, y’know?”
“And Fort Meade listens in, and we get what they dig up when they fax it to Langley,” Jack said. “Anybody at CIA good at tracking money?”
“Not as good as our people.”
“Takes a thief to catch a thief, eh?”
“Helps to know the mind-set of the adversary,” Bell confirmed. “It’s not a large community we’re dealing with here. Hell, we know most of them—we’re in the same business, right?”
“And that makes me an additional asset?” Jack asked. He was not a prince under American law, but Europeans still thought in such terms. They’d bow and scrape just to shake his hand, regard him as a promising young man however thick his head might turn out to be, and seek his favor, first because of the possibility he might speak a kind word into the right ear. It was called corruption, of course, or at least the atmosphere for it.
“What did you learn in the White House?” Bell asked.
“A little, I suppose,” Jack responded. Mostly, he’d learned things from Mike Brennan, who’d cordially detested all the diplomatic folderol, to say nothing of the political stuff that happened there every day. Brennan had talked it over with his foreign colleagues often enough, who saw the same things in their own capitals, and who thought much the same of it, from behind the same blank faces when they stood post. It was probably a better way to learn all this stuff than his father had, Jack thought. He hadn’t been forced to learn to swim while struggling not to drown. It was something his father had never spoken about, except when angry at the whole corrupting process.
“Be careful talking to Gerry about it,” said Bell. “He likes to say how clean and upright the trading business is by comparison.”
“Dad really likes the guy. I guess maybe they’re a little alike.”
“No,” Bell corrected, “they’re a lot alike.”
“Hendley got out of politics because of the accident, right?”
Bell nodded. “That’s it. Wait until you have a wife and kids. It’s about the biggest hit a man can take. Even worse than you might think. He had to go and identify the bodies. It wasn’t pretty. Some people would eat a gun after that. But he didn’t. He’d been thinking about a run for the White House himself, thought maybe Wendy would make a good First Lady. Maybe so, but his lust for that job died along with his wife and kids.” He didn’t go further. The senior people at The Campus protected the boss, in reputation at least. They thought him a man who deserved loyalty. There was no considered line of succession at The Campus. Nobody had thought that far forward, and the subject never came up in board meetings. Those were mainly concerned with non-business matters anyway. He wondered if John Patrick Ryan, Jr., would take note of that one blank spot in the makeup of The Campus. “So,” Bell went on, “what do you think so far?”
“I read the transcripts they gave me of what the central bank heads say back and forth to each other. It’s surprising how venal some of that stuff is.” Jack paused. “Oh, yeah, shouldn’t be surprised, should I?”
“Any time you give people control of that much money or power, some corruption is bound to happen. What surprises me is the way their friendships cross national lines. A lot of these guys profit personally when their own currencies are hurt, even if it means a little inconvenience for their fellow citizens. Back in the old-old days, the nobility frequently felt more at ease with foreign nobility than with the people on their own estates who bowed down to the same king. That characteristic hasn’t died yet—at least not o
ver there. Here the big industrialists might work together to lobby Congress, but they don’t often hand freebies to them, and they don’t trade secrets. Conspiracy at that level isn’t impossible, but concealing it for a long time is pretty tough. Too many people, and every one has a mouth. Europe’s getting the same way. There’s nothing the media likes better than a scandal, here or there, and they’d rather clobber a rich crook than a cabinet minister. The latter is often a good source, after all. The former is just a crook.”
“So, how do you keep your people honest?”
It was a good question, Bell thought, and one they worried about all the time, though it wasn’t spoken about much.
“We pay our people pretty well, and everyone here is part of a group investment plan that makes them feel comfortable. The annualized return is about nineteen percent over the last few years.”
“That’s not bad,” Junior understated. “All within the law?”
“That depends on the lawyer you talk to, but no U.S. Attorney is going to make a big deal about it, and we’re very careful how we manage it. We don’t like greed here. We could turn this place into the biggest thing since Ponzi, but then people would notice. So, we don’t flaunt anything. We make enough to cover our operations and to make sure the troops are well provided for.” They also kept track of the employees’ money, and the trades they made, if any. Most didn’t, though some worked accounts through the office, which, again, was profitable but not greedy. “You’ll give us account numbers and codes to all of your personal finances, and the computers will keep track of them.”
“I have a trust account through Dad, but it’s managed through an accounting firm in New York. I get a nice allowance, but no access to the principal. What I make on my own is mine alone, however, unless I send it into the CPAs. Then they build it up and send me a statement every quarter. When I turn thirty, I’m allowed to play with it on my own.” Turning thirty was a little distant for young Jack to concern himself about at the moment, however.
“We know,” Bell assured him, “it’s not a question of lack of trust. It’s just that we want to make sure nobody’s developed a gambling habit.”
Probably the best mathematicians of all time were the ones who’d made up the rules for gambling games, Bell thought. They’d provided just enough illusion that you had a chance to sucker you in. Born inside the human mind was the most dangerous of drugs. That was called “ego,” too.
“So, I start out on the ‘white’ side of the house? Watching currency fluctuations and stuff?” said Jack.
Bell nodded. “Correct. You need to learn the language first.”
“Fair enough.” His father had started off a lot more humbly than this, as a junior accounting manager at Merrill Lynch who’d had to cold-call people. Paying one’s dues was probably bad for the ego but good for the soul. His father had often lectured him on the Virtue of Patience. He’d said that it was a pain in the ass to acquire, even after acquiring it. But the game had rules, even in this place. Especially in this place, Jack realized on reflection. He wondered what happened to people on The Campus who crossed over the line. Probably nothing good.
“BUON VINO. ” Dominic observed. “For a government installation, the wine cellar isn’t half bad.” The year on the bottle read 1962, long before he and his brother had been born . . . for that matter, so long ago their mom had just been thinking about Mercy High School, a few blocks from their grandparents’ place on Loch Raven Boulevard in Baltimore . . . toward the end of the last Ice Age, probably. But Baltimore was a hell of a long way from the Seattle they’d grown up in. “How old is this place?” he asked Alexander.
“The property? It goes back to before the Civil War. The house was started in seventeen-something. Burned down and rebuilt in 1882. Government got hold of it just before Nixon was elected. The owner was an old OSS guy, J. Donald Hamilton, worked with Donovan and his crowd. He got a fair price when he sold it, moved out to New Mexico and died there in 1986, I think, aged ninety-four. They say he was a mover and shaker in his day, stuck it out pretty far in World War One, and helped Wild Bill work against the Nazis. There’s a painting of him in the library. Looks like a guy to step aside for. And, yeah, he did know his wines. This one’s from Tuscany.”
“Goes nicely with veal,” Brian said. He’d done the cooking.
“This veal goes well with anything. You didn’t learn that in the Marine Corps,” Alexander observed.
“From Pop. He is a better cook than Mom,” Dominic explained. “You know, it’s an old-country thing. And Grandpop, that son of a bitch, can still do it, too. He’s what, Aldo, eighty-two?”
“Last month,” Brian confirmed. “Funny old guy, travels the whole world to get to Seattle, and then he never leaves the city for sixty years.”
“Same house for the last forty,” Dominic added, “a block from the restaurant.”
“This his recipe for the veal?”
“Bet your bippy, Pete. The family goes back to Florence. Went up there two years when the Med FMF was making a port call in Naples. His cousin has a restaurant just upriver from the Ponte Vecchio. When they found out who I was, they went nuts feeding me. You know, Italians love the Marines.”
“Must be the green suit, Aldo,” Dominic said.
“Maybe I just cut a manly figure, Enzo. Ever think of that?” Captain Caruso demanded.
“Oh, sure,” Special Agent Caruso replied, taking another bite of the Veal Francese. “The next Rocky sits before us.”
“You boys always like this?” Alexander asked.
“Just when we drink,” Dominic replied, and his brother laughed.
“Enzo can’t hold his liquor worth a damn. Now, we Marines, we can do anything.”
“I have to take this from somebody who thinks Miller Lite is really beer?” the FBI Caruso asked the air.
“You know,” Alexander said, “twins are supposed to be alike.”
“Only identical twins. Mom punched out two eggs that month. It had Mom and Dad fooled until we were a year old or so. We’re not at all alike, Pete.” Dominic delivered this pronouncement with a smile shared by his brother.
But Alexander knew better. They only dressed differently—and that would soon be changing.
CHAPTER 5
ALLIANCES
MOHAMMED TOOK the first Avianca flight to Mexico City and there he waited for British Airways Flight 242 to London. He felt safe in airports, where everything was anonymous. He had to be careful of the food, since Mexico was a nation of unbelievers, but the first-class lounge protected him from their cultural barbarism, and the many armed police officers ensured that people rather like himself did not crash the party, such as it was. So, he picked a corner seat away from windows and read a book he’d picked up in one of the shops and managed not to be bored to death. He never read the Koran in such a place, of course, nor anything about the Middle East, lest someone ask him a question. No, he had to live his cover “legend” as well as any professional intelligence officer, so that he did not come to an end as abrupt as the Jew Greengold in Rome. Mohammed even used the bathroom facilities carefully, in case someone tried the same trick on him.
He didn’t even make use of his laptop computer, though there was ample opportunity to do so. Better, he judged, to sit still like a lump. In twenty-four hours he’d be back on the European mainland. It hit him that he lived in the air more than anywhere else. He had no home, just a series of safe houses, which were places of dubious reliability. Saudi Arabia was closed to him, and had been for nearly five years. Afghanistan was similarly out-of-bounds. How strange that the only lands where he could feel something close to safe were the Christian countries of Europe, which Muslims had struggled and failed to conquer on more than one occasion. Those nations had a nearly suicidal openness to strangers, and one could disappear in their vastness with only modest skills—hardly any, in fact, if you had money. These people were so self-destructively open, so afraid to offend those who would just as soon see them and the
ir children dead and their entire cultures destroyed. It was a pleasing vision, Mohammed thought, but he didn’t live within dreams. Instead, he worked for them. This struggle would last longer than his lifetime. Sad, perhaps, but true. But it was better to serve a cause than one’s own interests. There were enough of those in the world.
He wondered what his supposed allies from yesterday’s meeting were saying and thinking. They were certainly not true allies. Oh, yes, they shared enemies, but that was not the summation of an alliance. They would—might—facilitate matters, but no more than that. Their men would not assist his men in any real endeavor. Throughout history, mercenaries had never been really effective soldiers. To fight effectively, you had to believe. Only a believer would risk his life, because only a believer had nothing to fear. Not with Allah Himself on his side. What was there to fear, then? Only one thing, he admitted to himself. Failure. Failure was not an option. The obstacles between him and success were things to be dealt with in any way that was convenient. Just things. Not people. Not souls. Mohammed fished a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. In this sense, at least, Mexico was a civilized country, though he refused to speculate on what the Prophet would have said about tobacco.
“EASIER IN a car, isn’t it, Enzo?” Brian teased his brother as they crossed the finish line. The three-mile run wasn’t a big deal for the Marine, but for Dominic, who had just maxed out his PT test for the FBI, it had been a bit of a stretch.
“Look, turkey,” Dominic gasped out, “I just have to run faster than my subjects.”
“Afghanistan would’ve killed your ass.” Brian was running backward now, the better to observe his struggling brother.
“Probably,” Dominic admitted. “But Afghans don’t rob banks in Alabama and New Jersey.” Dominic had never in his life traded toughness to his brother, but clearly the Marines had made him maintain greater fitness than the FBI did. But how good was he with a pistol? At last it was over, and he walked back toward the plantation house.