The Kill Zone

by David Hagberg

  “Mr. Paterson will be sufficient to keep me out of serious trouble, Senator,” McGarvey said.

  There were a few chuckles around the room, and a slight smile played at the edges of Hammond’s mouth. He had been waiting for just this sort of opportunity ever since Lawrence Haynes had become president when the former President had resigned because of health problems. Haynes and Hammond had been rivals and then bitter enemies in the House and in the Senate, their careers nearly paralleling each other’s. Haynes was a tough-talking, no-nonsense conservative Republican, while Hammond was what the New York Times called a “touchy-feely New Democract with teeth.” Haynes wanted a strong military and a national missile defense shield. Hammond wanted billions diverted from defense and plowed into social welfare and health care reform programs. Haynes promised to take back the fear of terrorism on American soil and against Americans anywhere in the world. Hammond wanted to close ninety percent of our overseas military installations and start bringing Americans home, where they belonged. Haynes was a president of the people. Hammond was a ranking senator for the people.

  McGarvey was the president’s fair-haired boy at the moment because of an incident last year in San Francisco when diplomacy would have worked much better than guns blazing. Showing the American people, and especially his fellow senators what sort of a monster McGarvey was, and why he should not be allowed to run the CIA, would be striking a blow at the President. One that would not go unnoticed by his party. Hammond wanted to be president. But for the moment Haynes’s numbers were too high.

  “Very well,” Hammond said. He fiddled with some notes. “We’ll have a light session today. I’ll make a brief opening statement, and I would ask that Mr. McGarvey or his counsel do the same. Afterward I will allow the general, nonclassified questions concerning Mr. McGarvey’s background.” He looked at his calendar. “If we can cover enough ground today to everyone’s satisfaction, the next few days will be in camera.”

  Most of the operations that McGarvey had been involved with during his twenty-five years with the CIA were still classified. When the committee began delving into those areas the hearings would have to be held in executive session, closed to anyone without the proper security clearances and the need-to-know.

  “I wouldn’t give so much as a confidential security clearance to any of them,” McGarvey had told Paterson. “If they could get a political boost, they’d leak anything that they could get their hands on. The Bureau’s helpless to stop them.”

  “Their privilege,” Paterson replied laconically.

  “They could get people killed.”

  “That’s the fine line you’ll need to walk,” Paterson warned. “You have to make them think that they’re getting what they want while protecting our current assets. In the process you’ll take the heat.”

  McGarvey watched Hammond posturing for the TV cameras. It came down to the question of how much he really wanted the job, and why he wanted it. They were questions he’d been asking himself every day since the President had asked him to serve. Questions for which he still didn’t know if he had all the answers.

  A little over three months ago he and Roland Murphy, then the DCI, had been called over to the White House. They met the President, his chief of staff and adviser on national security affairs in the Oval Office.

  The meeting was Murphy’s call. He’d announced that he was retiring as DCI because of his health, and that he wanted McGarvey to succeed him.

  Murphy’s retirement had been hinted at in the media, and just about everybody at Langley knew it was coming, and yet it came as something of a surprise to McGarvey that morning. Probably because he’d been too involved in running the Directorate of Operations to see the larger picture.

  “I’d like you to take the job,” President Haynes had said. “Or at least give it some serious consideration.”

  “I’m not the right man,” McGarvey replied, shaking his head. “I’m just a field officer—”

  “You’re a hell of a lot more than that, and you know it,” Murphy interjected. He turned to the President. “Everybody in the Company would be shocked if Mac wasn’t appointed. Right now the DO is functioning with a greater efficiency than it ever has, because of him. He’s a born leader. His people practically fall over themselves to do what he wants, because they know that if they didn’t or couldn’t do the job, he’d step in and do it for them.”

  “I’d probably be impeached if I didn’t hire you,” the President said.

  McGarvey had to chuckle. “You’ll probably be impeached if you do, if Hammond has anything to say about it.”

  “You’ll have to face him and his crowd, but you leave handling him to me,” the President said sternly. “The CIA has been run by politicians, or by military men who’ve turned politician, entirely too long,” He glanced at Murphy. “No offense, Roland.”

  “None taken, Mr. President.”

  “I need a career intelligence officer at the helm. A man who knows the Agency, what it can and can’t do from the ground floor up.”

  “I was a shooter,” McGarvey said, no apology in his voice.

  “Did you ever shoot at anybody in your military career?” the President asked Murphy.

  “Yes, as a tank commander.”

  “With the intent to kill?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re in trouble right now and you know it.” The President turned back to McGarvey. “Besides fighting terrorists, Pakistan has gone back to its old tricks. They’re on the verge of developing a thermonuclear device that could be strapped atop one of their missiles. The PRC is on the verge of a Pearl Harbor attack on Taiwan. Russia is falling apart faster than we thought would happen. All of Lebanon is on fire again. And half of the African continent is slaughtering the other half. I need information. I need it fast. And I need it unvarnished. You’re the only man I know who can do the job the way I want it done, because you’re not afraid to tell the truth no matter how much it hurts.” The President sat back. He’d taken his shot. “I need you to run the CIA. Will you do it?”

  “I’ll think about it,” McGarvey said.

  “Fair enough. When Roland steps down you’ll take over as interim director until you’re confirmed or until you step down.”

  Once an intelligence officer, always an intelligence officer. God help him, but the past couple of months had been interesting.

  “The matter before us today is whether this committee should recommend to the full Senate that it consent to or reject the President’s nomination of Kirk Cullough McGarvey as Director of Central Intelligence.”

  McGarvey took a look at his opening statement, which Paterson had completely rewritten this morning, as Hammond droned on about the procedures for the witnesses, the questions and evidence that could be presented, and the documents that the CIA might be required to turn over. Paterson’s theme was that since the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon, it was more important than ever for the United States to be well informed about what was going on in the world. There would almost certainly be more attacks on our military installations and ships, and on civilian targets. It proved that we needed a strong intelligence agency. In order to maintain superiority we needed an experienced man at the helm of the CIA. Not the CEO of a major corporation, but a person well versed in the business. Someone who had worked at every level; from field officer in Germany, France, Russia, Hong Kong, Japan and France to deputy director of Operations at headquarters. A loyal American. A man who obviously and repeatedly had placed his own safety and that of his family second to the security of his country. A man young enough to understand the new millennium with all of its technical means to lead the Agency to the next level of excellence.

  Hammond had started on his opening statement, but McGarvey wasn’t really listening. He laid Paterson’s document back on the table. This was not going to be so polite, so neat and tidy as the Agency’s general counsel wanted it to be. The hearings would mirror the real world; they woul
d be down and dirty, contentious, and filled with bullshit because Hammond would tell a version of the truth as he saw it, and McGarvey would tell the committee a sanitized version of the way things really were. It would be like two women at an expensive cocktail party telling each other how good they looked while actually despising one another.

  The other senators on the committee paid no attention to Hammond. They shuffled through their files and notes. The opening hours of these kinds of hearings were usually mild and polite. The real fireworks wouldn’t start until later, perhaps in the second or third day, when the pressure would build. These were seasoned politicians who well understood that public perception and reality were often two separate things.

  One of the C-SPAN cameras was trained on McGarvey, looking for his reaction to what Hammond was saying. He kept his face neutral. Every DCI before him had gone through this process. He suspected that none of them had enjoyed the experience any more than he did. And if he was confirmed, he would be back up here on the Hill testifying before Congress several times a year.

  Paterson held a hand over the microphone and leaned toward McGarvey. “He’s being too polite. He knows something, so you’re going to have to stick with the script, at least today.”

  “It won’t matter what I say. They’re going to hear what they want to hear and nothing more.” McGarvey glanced over his shoulder toward the back of the room.

  “Who are you looking for?”

  “Nobody important,” McGarvey said.

  Senator Hammond wound up his remarks and looked up from his notes. “Mr. McGarvey, do you wish to make an opening statement at this time?”

  McGarvey glanced at the script that Paterson had prepared for him. He’d read it on the way over from Langley, and he more or less agreed with everything the CIA’s general counsel had written. More than ever before, the United States needed the presence of a strong and capable spy agency to protect her interests in a world gone mad. The CIA needed a strong director; someone with experience and decisiveness; someone who not only understood America’s enemies, but who perfectly understood the exact nature of the country.

  That had been McGarvey’s personal philosophy from the beginning of his career; you could not protect a flag that you didn’t understand.

  He’d always thought that he understood what it was to be an American. But suddenly he wasn’t so sure any longer. Perhaps people like Hammond and Madden were correct after all; perhaps he was unfit for the job.

  That was a question that had plagued him ever since the President asked him to take the job. Maybe he didn’t have the moral or philosophical equipment.

  He was, or at least he had been, an assassin. Such acts were against the law. Yet the law had never stopped him.

  A few years ago someone had asked him who the hell he thought he was. “What gives you the right to be judge, jury and executioner?”

  And now someone or something was coming after him; stalking him and his family; some dark, malevolent beast out of his past. Something. It was something whispering at his shoulder. He couldn’t shake the growing feeling of dread.

  He looked again over his shoulder for the Russian SVR rezident, but the man wasn’t there. His absence meant something.

  “Mr. McGarvey,” Senator Hammond prompted.

  “I’ll reserve my opening remarks until later, Senator Hammond. But I’d like a written version to be entered into the record at this time.”

  “Very well,” Hammond said.

  A clerk came over, and Paterson handed him a copy of McGarvey’s opening statement, a puzzled but resigned expression on his face.

  Senator Madden sat forward, an almost radiant expression on her round face. “Excuse me, Senator Hammond, I would like to ask Mr. McGarvey a question before we proceed.”

  Hammond motioned for her to go ahead.

  “It has come to my attention that you might not even want this job,” she said. “Is that true?”

  “Frankly no, I never wanted the job,” McGarvey replied before Paterson could stop him.

  “Well then—”

  “I have a great deal of respect for President Haynes. He asked me if I would take the job. I couldn’t say no. If I’m confirmed, it’s my intention to remake the Agency completely.”

  Madden smiled warmly. “Maybe you and I are in agreement after all. I’ve been campaigning for quite a while to revamp the CIA. It’s long overdue.”

  “I agree,” McGarvey said. “But probably not along the same lines you’ve been talking about. I firmly believe that there remains a very strong need for the CIA. But for an agency that’s leaner, meaner, better funded and equipped, and without three-quarters of the bureaucracy that has hamstrung almost every operation before it ever got off the ground.”

  “There’s a great deal of inertia in an organization as vast as the CIA, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Too much.”

  “So it would take a very capable administrator to accomplish such a reorganization as you envision. Isn’t that correct?”

  “I might say yes, Senator, if we were talking about almost any other organization than the CIA.”

  “I expect so,” Senator Madden responded smugly. “But isn’t it a fact you have admitted that you are no administrator?”

  “An officer in the field, whose life may very well be jeopardized by the kinds of policies being put in place at headquarters, respects professional competence over administrative expertise.”

  “Spies managing spies?”

  “Yes, Senator. Just like the old days, when spies like Dulles and Donovan grew the Agency from nothing.”

  “But they were gentlemen.”

  Paterson reached for the microphone, but McGarvey responded to Madden’s thinly veiled insult.

  “Yes, they were, Senator. They came from the old school, when people believed in building institutions to help make this country strong, not tear them apart with no clear idea what should replace them.”

  The Washington Post had quoted Madden on more than one occasion calling for the dismantling of the CIA. The Agency, in her estimation, had cost the United States far more money and far more embarrassment than it was ever worth even on its best day. “A den of thugs,” she had said.

  She caught his insult, but if it bothered her, she didn’t let it show. “You are going to tell us how you mean to bring the CIA back to the good old days?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it, yes, I will.” McGarvey returned her smile. “I think it’s time that we stop apologizing to the rest of the world for who and what we are.” He looked at the other senators. “I’m here this morning to answer your questions, but not to make excuses.”

  “That’s all well and good,” Senator Hammond said. “But today has been reserved for opening statements. Are we to understand that you are passing on that opportunity?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Why?”

  “As I said, Senator, I’m here to answer your questions, not to make any kind of a political statement that would in any event be misunderstood.”

  Hammond laughed, and glanced at the others on the committee. “Very well, we’ll leave it at that for today.”

  On the drive back to Langley Paterson was in an odd, buoyant mood, as if he was happy the way things had gone.

  “They’re either going to hire me, or they’re not, Carleton. But I’m not going to screw around. I’ll tell it like it is.”

  “When haven’t you?” Paterson asked. “I’m surprised that the President hasn’t phoned already to tell you to cooperate.”

  “We had the discussion two weeks ago. He told me to call them as I saw them.” McGarvey had to smile. “He did ask me to promise not to shoot any of them.”

  Paterson laughed. “There’s at least that.”

  It was around four when McGarvey got back to his office. His desk was stacked with memos, letters and files. In the couple of hours before he left for home he fended off a dozen phone calls congratulating him on his performance
at the hearing. The calls were mostly from old friends, but not from the President.

  One of the files on his desk was the Nikolayev dossier. There wasn’t much to it, only one grainy black-and-white photograph showing him in a group at the Frunze Military Academy, and a few pages of dry facts. He had been an experimental psychologist in Baranov’s old Department Viktor, though there was almost nothing on what his duties were. He was an old man now; his wife dead, no children or any other relatives alive. It was a wonder the SVR was still interested in him. McGarvey couldn’t fathom why Otto was also interested.

  Adkins had the NIE and Watch Report in good shape for Thursday’s meeting of the U.S. Intelligence Board. By throwing himself into work Adkins was in much better shape than he had been this morning. He was going back to the hospital around six, and he asked McGarvey to thank Kathleen for stopping by.

  “It cheered her up having another woman to talk to.”

  “How’d she know that Ruth was in the hospital?” McGarvey asked.

  “I assumed that you told her.”

  McGarvey shook his head. “I didn’t have a chance. But she knows more people in this town than I do. Somebody must have told her. Anyway, I’m glad she got up there.”

  Kathleen’s ability to find out things apparently without working at it, was another trait he found attractive. She was bright, intuitive and seemed to know when and where someone needed her. She would have made a great spy. Like the good ones she was able to see connections between seemingly unrelated bits and pieces. And it was just this sort of activity, helping other people, that would bring her out of the blue funk she’d gotten herself into.

  He got word from Security that their Bethesda detail would have to be extended through the night because Rencke had not yet been released. Louise Horn was still not back at the NRO, nor was there any answer at the apartment. She was staying at Otto’s bedside around the clock. She was like a lioness with her cub; no one would get near him without answering to her.

  It took several minutes for Dr. Daishong to answer his page at the hospital. He sounded cheerful but all out of breath as if he had just run up a flight of stairs. He’d been on duty a straight twenty-four hours, and he was finally on his way home, he explained.