Two Steps Forward

by Luana Ehrlich

  More than likely, Katherine had been the person responsible for putting together the briefing papers on our operation.

  The focal point of Conference Room A was the rectangular wooden conference table. It was large enough to accommodate at least twenty people. Seating was also available along the wall behind the table, but those chairs were reserved for personnel from Support Services, the Agency’s Legal Department, and administrative staff.

  Carlton was seated in the middle of the conference table on the left-hand side of the room, and just as I predicted, seated next to him was Robert Ira, the Deputy Director of Operations. The contrast between the two men was startling.

  Carlton was baldheaded, of average weight, and had on a perfectly fitted suit. Deputy Ira had long stringy gray hair, was grossly overweight, and had on an ill-fitting suit.

  The two men were deep in conversation, and I noticed neither of them glanced up as Veronica and I entered the room.

  According to my watch, it was exactly three o’clock, so I was surprised to see Carlton hadn’t started the briefing yet. Several support staff, who were seated along the outer perimeter, were whispering among themselves, and as I walked over to the refreshment cart where Mitchell was standing, I got the impression the occupants of the room were waiting for someone.

  I didn’t figure it was me, because no one showed any interest in me when I walked in, not even Katherine, who usually had a smile for me.

  Mitchell wasn’t alone at the refreshment cart.

  He was talking to a fortyish woman with short black hair who was dressed in a dark-blue pantsuit. I had the feeling I’d seen her before, but I couldn’t place her.

  Both of them stopped talking when I walked over and picked up a water bottle. “I thought I was late. Do you know why Douglas hasn’t started yet?”

  Mitchell said, “Just before you walked in, he announced we wouldn’t begin for another twenty minutes. He said one of our briefers was caught in traffic on the Beltway, and another one was in a meeting in the building but would be here shortly.”

  He reached over and tugged on my tie. “What’s up with this?”

  I shrugged. “I’m trying out a new look.”

  “What kind of look? The married man look?”

  I ignored him and gave my attention to the woman standing next to him. “Hi, I’m Titus Ray. I’m pretty sure I’ve met you before, but I can’t recall your name.”

  She offered me her hand and said, “Hi, Titus. I’m Liz Cummings. We met several years ago in Kuwait, but I was with the Secret Service then. I’m not surprised you don’t remember my name. We were only in the same room together for maybe twenty minutes.”

  I nodded. “I remember now. How long have you been with the Agency?”

  “Five years. This will be my first assignment in the Middle East, but I’m sure that’s because I don’t speak Arabic. My language skills are better suited to the Far East.”

  She motioned towards the conference table where Carlton had gotten to his feet and was looking in our direction. “I think we’re about to get started. We’ll talk later.”

  Mitchell gave me a knowing look as we walked over to the table. I was pretty sure he was thinking the same thing I was thinking.

  Evidently, Liz Cummings, a former Secret Service agent, was headed to Iraq with us on Operation Invisible Target, and her cover wouldn’t require her to speak Arabic.

  I had no idea what to make of that.

  * * * *

  As the three of us sat down next to each other across from Carlton, a man I didn’t recognize entered the room.

  Like both Carlton and the DDO, the man was wearing a dark suit and a solid-colored tie. When he apologized to the DDO for being late, it was obvious he worked at the Agency.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. I was in a budget meeting upstairs, and it was impossible for me to get away.”

  For some reason, I had the feeling his office was probably on the sixth floor, one floor below the DDO’s office. Perhaps it was because he took a seat on Carlton’s left, several chairs away from the DDO.

  The vibe I got from this scenario was that he shared certain aspirational characteristics with the suits on the seventh floor, but he hadn’t quite arrived there yet.

  When he sat down, he looked over at me and smiled.

  I gave him a brief nod and turned my attention to Carlton.

  “I’d like to welcome everyone to the briefing for Operation Invisible Target,” he said. “I’ve just received word our last briefer has entered the building and will be with us shortly.”

  He gestured over at Veronica. “Let’s go ahead and bring Henry Garrison online so he can hear the introductions.”

  Veronica nodded and entered some keystrokes on the computer in front of her. A few seconds later, the video monitor at the other end of the room came to life and Garrison’s face appeared on the screen.

  Henry Garrison was in The Bubble, a specially designed secure communications room in the American Embassy in Baghdad. I’d only been there a few times in my career, but I remembered it as a small cramped place with room for only a few people. As I watched Garrison adjusting his tie while staring up at the camera, I could see the room hadn’t changed that much.

  Since I knew a separate Communications Center had been built on the grounds of our embassy complex a couple of years ago, I was actually a little surprised to see Garrison using The Bubble. Maybe he was one of those station chiefs who refused to try anything new.

  “You caught me trying to make myself presentable,” Garrison said, reaching over and slipping his sports jacket on. “I thought I had a few minutes to get ready before my feed went live. You can see I’m here in The Bubble in the embassy. We had too much going on in the Comms Center, so I came over here.”

  “Hi, Henry,” Carlton said. “You look perfectly respectable, even without your jacket. I asked Veronica to go ahead and get you online so you’d be here for the introductions.”

  “Well, I’m not really there, but it’s almost the same thing, isn’t it?”

  Henry Garrison, the CIA’s station chief in Iraq, was completely gray-headed and wore his hair in a crewcut, which I suspected he may have done all his life. His square-shaped face was weather-beaten, and he had a neatly trimmed beard. The pair of rimless glasses he wore kept slipping down on his nose, and they looked too large for his face.

  Although Mitchell said he didn’t think Henry Garrison looked anything like Toby Bledsoe, I definitely thought Garrison had Bledsoe’s crooked smile.

  “Yes, indeed it is,” Carlton said. “We’ve had a bit of a delay because one of our—”

  At that moment, the door to the conference room opened, and Sasha Gail Pack entered the briefing room.

  I was blown away when I saw her.

  One of the President’s Senior Advisors was the last person I expected to see at my briefing on Operation Invisible Target.

  * * * *

  Sasha Gail Pack’s official title at the White House was Assistant to the President and Senior Policy Advisor.

  I suspected that meant she did whatever the President told her to do, but I’d heard rumors she wasn’t averse to giving him orders as well.

  Even though she’d been living in Washington for a number of years, she’d managed to retain her soft Georgian accent, along with her Southern charm.

  “I’m sorry, y’all. Please forgive me for being late. The traffic in Washington was horrendous today. It was downright impossible for me to get out here on time. I do apologize.”

  It was Deputy Ira, and not Carlton, who got out of his chair and walked over to Sasha Gail to welcome her to the briefing.

  Since Ira was the Agency’s highest-ranking person in the room, I supposed social etiquette demanded this. However, I was fairly certain Carlton was much better acquainted with Sasha Gail than the DDO was, although I’d be surprised if the DDO knew that.

  Last year, I’d been in the same room with Ms. Pack during an interagency intelligence briefing o
n Operation Rebel Merchant, but I hadn’t been officially introduced to her at that meeting.

  I hadn’t been officially introduced to anyone at that meeting.

  On that occasion, I’d been relegated to support staff by the DDO, and like most support staff in bureaucratic meetings, I’d simply taken a seat on the back row and kept my mouth shut.

  Now, as the DDO escorted Ms. Pack over to the conference table, he suggested she take the seat next to him on Carlton’s right. Instead, she declined his offer and took the seat on Carlton’s left.

  After Carlton greeted Ms. Pack and offered to get her something to drink—which she declined—he began introducing everyone.

  He started with Ms. Pack, moved on to the DDO, and then he gestured at the man in the suit who occupied a chair two places farther down the table from where Ms. Pack was seated.

  “I’d also like to introduce our new Director of Field Operations, Teddy Davenport. When he asked to attend today’s briefing, he told me he was trying to become better acquainted with all aspects of our operational procedures, and he was only here as an observer.”

  The DDO immediately leaned over and looked down the table at Davenport. “Don’t let that hold you back, Teddy,” he said. “You’re invited to jump in anytime and give us your opinion. I’m sure we’d all welcome your input.”

  When I saw Carlton purse his lips, I felt sure he would definitely not welcome Teddy Davenport’s input.

  I also got the feeling Carlton was none too pleased with Davenport’s presence.

  Personally, I had mixed feelings about it.

  If Davenport was at the briefing to access my qualifications for becoming the chief of station in Iraq, then I didn’t mind him dropping in. However, if he was using the operational briefing to decide whether Henry Garrison should be given his retirement options, then I had a problem with it. An operational briefing shouldn’t be used to decide to give someone their walking papers.

  “Thank you, Deputy Ira,” Davenport said, as he removed a laptop from his briefcase, “but I’m just here to observe and take a few notes.”

  After Carlton introduced Katherine and Veronica, he turned his attention to the other side of the table.

  “Now, I’d like to introduce our operational team. Titus Ray will be leading the mission as the primary officer. His secondary officers will be Ben Mitchell and Liz Cummings.”

  He paused and then added, “All three of our people on this run are Level 1 covert intelligence officers.”

  When Carlton had called out our names, we’d each lifted a hand so we could be identified. However, the only person who’d given us a wave of acknowledgement in return was Henry Garrison.

  Carlton introduced him last.

  “The operating theater for this mission will be Baghdad, Iraq, and our very capable station chief there is Henry Garrison.” Carlton gestured at the video screen. “Henry will be responsible for providing the operational team with surveillance and logistical support.”

  “Also coffee,” Garrison said with a smile. “Don’t forget the coffee.”

  “Well, bless your heart, Hank,” Sasha Gail said. “I’m with you there. I’d hate to think what I’d be like without my coffee. I doubt if I could even carry on a decent conversation.”

  Although I wasn’t sure Henry had ever been called Hank, he didn’t correct Sasha Gail. Instead, he lifted his coffee mug toward the camera and said, “I’ve just made you an official member of the Java Joe Jabbers. Our motto is ‘keep us supplied with coffee and we’ll keep on talking.’”

  While everyone seemed to find this amusing, I noticed Teddy Davenport wasn’t smiling, and he was the only person in the room typing on his laptop. I suppose he could have been writing a book on folksy sayings and wanted to remember Garrison’s verbal nugget, but I didn’t think so.

  When I heard Carlton clear his throat, I knew what was coming next. For some reason, Carlton always felt the need to clarify how he conducted his briefings. Although I found it slightly irritating, I’d learned to live with it, and truth be told, I might have gotten worried if he hadn’t said it.

  “For those of you who’ve never attended one of my briefing sessions, I consider myself an organized person, and that’s how I prefer to conduct a briefing.”

  He cleared his throat again. “To that end, I’ve organized the topics we’ll cover in the following manner. First, there’ll be some background information; second, I’ll outline the protocols of the operation, and third, our operational team will be assigned their cover stories.”

  Veronica spoke up. “Aren’t you forgetting to announce the name of this operation along with the objectives?”

  Carlton looked over at Veronica and shook his head. “No, I’ll be covering all of that in the background material.”

  Although Carlton didn’t seem to be bothered by her question, I couldn’t say the same.

  It wasn’t her question that bothered me, it was her tone of voice when she’d asked the question, a tone implying a lack of respect for Carlton, a tone questioning his competency.

  A tone I found extremely troubling.

  Chapter 25

  Carlton introduced the operational background material by having Katherine Broward discuss some very disturbing chatter picked up by intelligence sources in Tehran three months ago.

  Although chatter could mean any kind of electronic surveillance, Katherine said what she was about to describe were intercepts from cell phones used by members of the Quds Force in Iran.

  After briefly explaining the origination point of the chatter, she said, “Within a period of several days, we picked up ten phone conversations from Quds Force members about an assassination.”

  Katherine always preferred to back up her presentations with lots of documentation, so she opened up her laptop and projected page after page of transcribed conversations on a video screen mounted on the opposite wall from the monitor showing Garrison’s video call.

  “Although there’s no name mentioned in conjunction with an assassination, Baghdad shows up several times in the discussions. No matter who the target is, it’s not in our interests to have Iran meddling in Iraq, so I brought these findings to Douglas’s attention.”

  When Katherine closed the lid on her computer, Carlton thanked her, and then he said, “Once I received this information from our analysts, I discussed it with Henry because he was running an asset in the Iranian embassy in Baghdad who I thought might be able to find out what was going on in the Quds Force back in Tehran.”

  Carlton looked up at the video monitor. “Henry, why don’t you tell us what occurred when you got in touch with your asset?”

  When Garrison realized Carlton was asking him to speak, he sat up a little straighter in his chair and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

  “From the time I arrived in Iraq ten years ago, I’ve been developing assets in the Iranian Embassy. It’s been a slow process, but a young woman I recruited several years ago was recently promoted to a secretarial position in their Foreign Affairs office. When I asked Narmeen—that’s my asset’s name—if she’d heard any rumors about a possible assassination involving an official in Baghdad, she said the only thing she’d heard was that a member of the Iranian Quds Force had just been appointed to the Iraqi Prime Minister’s security detail.”

  Carlton said, “Naturally, when I received this intel from Henry, I realized it could be connected to the chatter we’d been hearing from Tehran, so I told him to see what other information Narmeen could dig up on the man and get back to me as soon as possible. In the—”

  “Forgive the interruption, Douglas,” the DDO said, “but I’d like to point out that when you brought this information to me, I instructed you to make sure you had Henry query his other assets as well.”

  After making this statement, Deputy Ira immediately cut his eyes over to Sasha Gail, leading me to believe this unnecessary reminder of his involvement in ferreting out the intel of the assassination plot was intended for her and her alone.<
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  “Of course,” Carlton said, “and I passed that information along to Henry as well. In the meantime, our American Embassy in Baghdad was contacted by a low-level diplomat who worked in the same Iranian Foreign Affairs office where Narmeen worked. This man, who turned out to be a diplomat by the name of Abbas Alviri, left a message saying he wanted to speak with someone in the CIA. This was very worrisome because I’m not a big fan of coincidences.”

  “There are no coincidences,” Garrison said.

  Mitchell and I both chuckled, and Carlton also seemed amused.

  He said, “I was concerned the Iranians had discovered some connection between Henry and Narmeen, so instead of having Henry follow up on this, I sent Ben Mitchell over to Baghdad to meet with Abbas Alviri.”

  I found this sequence of events particularly interesting because when I’d seen Mitchell that day at the El Badi Palace, and he’d told me he’d been sent to Baghdad to initiate contact with Alviri, I’d questioned why Carlton hadn’t given Garrison that assignment.

  Perhaps unwisely, I’d immediately jumped to the conclusion Carlton didn’t have any confidence in Garrison. I thought he felt Garrison was too old or too incompetent to perform his duties as the chief of station in Iraq any longer.

  I’d also wondered if Carlton’s lack of confidence in Garrison was the reason he hadn’t voiced any real opposition to Teddy Davenport’s plans to restructure the field offices, even though those plans included getting rid of older station chiefs like Garrison and replacing them with veteran covert officers like myself.

  Now though, as I observed the interaction between Carlton and Garrison, I saw a different picture emerging. In the days ahead, I had a feeling that picture would become a whole lot clearer. In fact, I expected that picture to become so clear I’d be able to see why Carlton had encouraged me to consider taking Garrison’s place as the chief of station in Iraq in the first place.