by Tom Clancy
“Nancy.” Jack keyed his intercom. “When is Mr. Ritter going to be back?”
“Tomorrow morning. He had to meet with somebody down at The Farm.”
“Okay, thanks. Could you call my wife and leave a message that I’m going to be pretty late tonight?”
“Surely, Doctor.”
“Thanks. I need the file on INF verification, the OSWR preliminary report.”
“Dr. Molina is out at Sunnyvale with the Judge,” Nancy said. Tom Molina was the head of the Office of Strategic Weapons Research, which was back-checking two other departments on the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty verification procedures.
“I know. I just want to look the report over so I can discuss it with him when he gets back.”
“Take about fifteen minutes to get it.”
“No rush,” Jack replied and killed the intercom. That document could tie up King Solomon himself for three days, and it gave him a wholly plausible excuse for staying late. Congress had gotten antsy about some technical issues as both sides worked to destroy the last of their launchers. Ryan and Molina would have to testify there in the next week. Jack pulled the writing panel out from the side of his desk, knowing what he’d do after Nancy and the other clerical people left.
Cortez was a very sophisticated political observer. That was one reason he’d made colonel so young in an organization as bureaucratized as the DGI. Based on the Soviet KGB model, it had already grown a collection of clerks and inspectors and security officers to make the American CIA look like a mom-and-pop operation—which made the relative efficiencies of the agencies all the more surprising. For all their advantages, the Americans lacked political will, always fighting over issues that ought to have been quite clear. At the KGB Academy, one instructor had compared them to the Polish parliament of old, a collection of over five hundred barons, all of whom had had to agree before anything happened—and because of which nothing ever happened, allowing Poland to be raped by anyone with the ability to make a simple decision.
The Americans had acted in this case, however, acted decisively and well. What had changed?
What had changed—what had to have changed in this case—was that the Americans were breaking their own laws. They had responded emotionally ... no, that wasn’t fair, Félix told himself. They had responded forcefully to a direct and arrogant challenge, just as the Soviets would have reacted, though with minor tactical differences. The emotional aspect to the reaction was that they had done the proper thing only by violating their incredible intelligence-oversight laws. And it was an election year in America....
“Ah,” Cortez said aloud. It really was that simple, wasn’t it? The Americans, who had already helped him, would do so again. He just had to identify the proper target. That took only ten minutes more. So fitting, he thought, that his military rank had been that of colonel. For a century of Latin American history, it was always the colonels who did this sort of thing.
What would Fidel say? Cortez nearly laughed out loud at the thought. For as long as that bearded ideologue had breathed, he’d hated the norteamericanos as an evangelist hated sin, enjoyed every small sting he’d been able to inflict on them, dumped his criminals and lunatics on the unsuspecting Carter—Anyone could have taken advantage of that fool, Cortez thought with amusement—played every possible gambit of guerrilla diplomacy against them. He really would have enjoyed this one. Now Félix just had to figure a way to pass the message along. It was a high-risk play on his part, but he’d won every toss to this point, and the dice were hot in his hand.
Perhaps it had been a mistake, Chavez reflected. Perhaps leaving the head on the man’s chest had merely enraged them. Whatever the cause, the Colombians were prowling the woods with gusto now. They hadn’t caught Team KNIFE’S trail, and the soldiers were working very hard not to leave one, but one thing was clear to him: there would be a knock-down, drag-out firefight, and it wouldn’t be long in coming.
But that wasn’t clear to Captain Ramirez. His orders were still to evade and avoid, and he was following them. Most of the men didn’t question that, but Chavez did—or more precisely, wanted to. But sergeants don’t question captains, at least not very often, and then only if you were a first sergeant and had the opportunity to take the man aside. If there was going to be a fight, and it sure as hell looked that way, why not set it up on favorable terms? Ten good men, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, plus two SAWs, made for one hell of an ambush. Give them a trail to follow, lead them right into the killzone. They were still carrying a couple of claymores. With luck, they’d drop ten or fifteen men in the first three seconds. Then the other side—those few who ran away fast enough—wouldn’t be pissed. They’d be pissing in their pants. Nobody would be crazy about hot pursuit then. Why didn’t Ramirez see that? Instead he was keeping everyone on the move, wearing them out, not looking for a good place to rest up, prepare a major ambush, duke it out, and then take off again. There was a time for caution. There was a time to fight. What that most favored word in any military lexicon, “initiative,” meant was who did the deciding on which time was which. Chavez knew it on instinct. Ramirez, he suspected, was thinking too much. About what, Chavez didn’t know, but the captain’s thinking was starting to worry the sergeant.
Larson returned the car and drove Clark to the airport in his own BMW. He’d miss the car, he realized, as they walked to his aircraft. Clark was carrying all of his classified or sensitive equipment out with him, and nothing else. He hadn’t stopped to pack, not even his razor, though his Beretta 92-F, with silencer, was again tucked into the small of his back. He walked coolly and normally, but Larson now knew what tension looked like in Mr. Clark. He appeared even more relaxed than usual, even more offhand, even more absentminded, all the more to appear harmless to the people around him. This, Larson told himself, was one very dangerous cat. The pilot played back the shooting at the truck, the way he’d put the two gunmen at ease, confused them, asked for their help. He’d never known that the Agency had people like this, not after the Church Committee hearings.
Clark climbed up into the aircraft, tossing his gear in the back, and managed to look a little impatient as Larson ran through his preflight procedures. He didn’t return to normal until the wheels were retracted.
“How long to Panama?”
“Two hours.”
“Take us out over the water as soon as you can.”
“You’re nervous?”
“Now—only about your flying,” Clark said over his headset. He looked over and smiled. “What I’m worried about is thirty or so kids who may just be hung out to dry.”
Forty minutes later they left Colombian airspace. Once over the Bay of Panama, Clark reached back for his gear, then forced open the door and dumped it into the sea.
“You mind if I ask ... ?”
“Let’s assume for the moment that this whole operation is coming apart. Just how much evidence do you want to be carrying into the Senate hearing room?” Clark paused. “Not much danger of that, of course, but what if people see us carrying stuff and wonder what it is and why we’re carrying it?”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Keep thinking, Larson. Henry Kissinger said it: Even paranoids have enemies. If they’re willing to hang those soldiers out, what about us?”
“But ... Mr. Ritter—”
“I’ve known Bob Ritter for quite a while. I have a few questions for him. I want to see if he has good enough answers. It’s for goddamned sure he didn’t keep us informed of things we needed to know. Maybe that’s just another example of D.C. perspective. Then again, maybe it’s not.”
“You don’t really think—”
“I don’t know what to think. Call in,” Clark ordered. There was no sense getting Larson thinking about it. He hadn’t been in the Agency long enough to understand the issues.
The pilot nodded and did what he was told. He switched his radio over to a seldom-used frequency and began transmitting. “Howard Approach, this is spec
ial flight X-Ray Golf Whiskey Delta, requesting permission to land, over.”
“Whiskey Delta, this is Howard Approach, stand by,” replied some faceless tower controller, who then checked his radio codes. He didn’t know who XGWD was, but those letters were on his “hot” list. CIA, he thought, or some other agency that put people where they didn’t belong, which was all he needed to know. “Whiskey Delta, squawk one-three-one-seven. You are cleared for a direct visual approach. Winds are one-nine-five at ten knots.”
“Roger, thank you. Out.” At least one thing had gone well today, Larson thought. Ten minutes later he put the Beech on the ground and followed a jeep to a parking place on the ramp. Air Force Security Police were waiting for them there, and whisked both officers over to Base Operations. The base was on security-alert drill; everyone was wearing green and most had sidearms. This included the operations staff, most of whom were in flight suits to look militant.
“Next flight stateside?” Clark asked a young female captain. Her uniform “poopy suit” bore the silver wings of a pilot, and Clark wondered what she flew.
“We have a -141 inbound to Charleston,” she replied. “But if you want to get on it—”
“Young lady, check your ops orders for this.” Clark handed over his “J. T. Williams” passport. “In the SI section,” he added helpfully.
The captain rose from her seat and pulled open the top drawer of her classified file cabinet, the one with the double combination lock. She extracted a red-bordered ring binder and flipped to the last divider. This was the “Special Intelligence” section, which identified certain things and people that were more closely guarded than mere “top” secrets. It took only a couple of seconds before she returned.
“Thank you, Colonel Williams. The flight leaves in twenty minutes. Is there anything that you and your aide require, sir?”
“Have Charleston arrange to have a puddle-jumper standing by to take us to D.C., if you would, please, Captain. Sorry to have to drop in on you so unexpectedly. Thank you for your assistance.”
“Any time, sir,” she replied, smiling at this polite colonel.
“Colonel?” Larson asked on the way out the door.
“Special Ops, no less. Pretty good for a beat-up old chief bosun’s mate, isn’t it?” A jeep had them to the Lockheed Starlifter in five minutes. The tunnel-like cargo compartment was empty. This was an Air Force Reserve flight, the loadmaster explained. They dropped some cargo off but were deadheading back home. That was fine with Clark, who stretched out as soon as the bird lifted off. It was amazing, he thought as he dozed off, all the things his countrymen did well. You could transition from being in mortal danger to being totally safe in a matter of hours. The same country that put people into the field and failed to support them properly treated them like VIPs—so long as they had the right ID notification in the right book, as though that could make it all better. It was crazy, the things we could do, and the things we couldn’t. A moment later he was snoring next to an amazed Carlos Larson. He didn’t wake until just before the landing, five hours later.
As with any other government agency, CIA had regular business hours. By 3:30, those who came in early on “flex-time” were already filing out to beat the traffic, and by 5:30 even the seventh floor was quiet. Outside Jack’s office, Nancy Cummings put the cover over her IBM typewriter—she used a word processor, too, but Nancy still liked typewriters—and hit a button on her intercom.
“Anything else you need me for, Dr. Ryan?”
“No, thank you. See you in the morning.”
“Okay. Good night, Dr. Ryan.”
Jack turned in his chair, back to staring out at the trees that walled the complex off from outside view. He was trying to think, but his mind was a blank void. He didn’t know what he’d find. Part of him hoped that he’d find nothing. He knew that what he would do was going to cost him his career at the Agency, but he didn’t really give much of a damn anymore. If this was what his job required, then the job wasn’t really worth having, was it?
But what would the Admiral say about that?
Jack didn’t have that answer. He pulled a paperback out of his desk drawer and started reading. A few hundred pages later it was seven o’clock.
Time. Ryan lifted his phone and called the floor security desk. When the secretaries were gone home, it was the security guys who ran errands.
“This is Dr. Ryan. I need some documents from central files.” He read off three numbers. “They’re big ones,” he warned the desk man. “Better take somebody else to help.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll head down in a minute.”
“Not that much of a hurry,” Ryan said as he hung up. He already had a reputation as an easygoing boss. As soon as the phone was back in its cradle, he jumped to his feet and switched on his personal Xerox machine. Then he walked out his door to Nancy’s outer office space, listening for the diminishing sound of the two security officers walking out to the main corridor.
They didn’t lock office doors up here. There was no point. You had to pass through about ten security zones to get here, each guarded by armed officers, each supervised by a separate central security office on the first floor. There were also roving patrols. Security at CIA was tighter than at a federal prison, and about as oppressive. But it didn’t really apply to the senior executives, and all Jack had to do was walk across the corridor and open the door to Bob Ritter’s office.
The DDO’s office safe—vault was a better term—was set up the same way as Ryan’s, behind a false panel in the wall. It was less for secrecy—any competent burglar would find it in under a minute—than for aesthetics. Jack opened the panel and dialed the combination for the safe. He wondered if Ritter knew that Greer had the combination. Perhaps he did, but certainly he didn’t know that the Admiral had written it down. It was so odd a thing for the Agency, so odd that no one had ever considered the possibility. The smartest people in the world still had blind spots.
The safe doors were all alarmed, of course. The alarm systems were foolproof, and worked the same way as the safety locks on nuclear weapons—and they were the best kind available, weren’t they? You dialed in the right combination or the alarm went off. If you goofed doing it the first time, a light would go on above the dial, indicating that you had ten seconds to get it right or another light would go on at two separate security desks. A second goof would set off more alarms. A third would put the safe in lock-down for two hours. Several CIA executives had learned to curse the system and become the subject of jokes in the security department. But not Ryan, who was not intimidated by combination locks. The computer that kept track of such things decided that, well, it must be Mr. Ritter, and that was that.
Jack’s heart beat faster now. There were over twenty files in here, and his time was measured in minutes. But again Agency procedures came to his rescue. Inside the front cover of each file was a summary sheet telling what “Operation WHATEVER” was all about. He didn’t really pay attention to what they said, but used the summary sheets only to identify items of interest. In less than two minutes, Jack had files labeled EAGLE EYE, SHOWBOAT-I and SHOWBOAT-II, CAPER, and RECIPROCITY. The total stack was nearly eighteen inches high. Jack made careful note of where the folders went, then closed the safe door without locking it. Next he returned to his office, setting the papers on the floor behind his desk. He started reading EAGLE EYE first of all.
“Holy Christ!” “Detection and interdiction of incoming drug flight,” he saw, meant ... shooting them down. Someone knocked on his door.
“Come on in.” It was the security guys with the files he’d requested. Ryan had them set the files on a chair and dismissed them.
Jack figured he had an hour, two at most, to do what he had to do. That meant he had time to scan, not to read. Each operation had a more detailed summary of objectives and methods plus an event log and daily progress report. Jack’s personal Xerox machine was a big, sophisticated one that organized and collated sheets, and most importantly
, zipped them through very rapidly. He started feeding sheets into the hopper. The automatic feed allowed him to read and copy at the same time. Ninety minutes later he had copied over six hundred sheets, maybe a quarter of what he’d taken. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do. He summoned the security guards to return the files they’d brought up—he took the time to ruffle them up first. As soon as they were gone, he assembled the files he’d... ... stolen? Jack asked himself. It suddenly dawned on him that he’d just violated the law. He hadn’t thought of that. He really hadn’t. As he loaded the files back in the safe, Ryan told himself that really he hadn’t violated anything. As a senior executive, he was entitled to know these things, and the rules didn’t really apply to him ... but that, he remembered, was a dangerous way to think. He was serving a higher cause. He was doing What Was Right. He was—