“I’m not sure he would have told you. He plays his cards pretty close to the vest sometimes.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“It might make you feel better to know it was Douglas who recommended me to be the Director of the RTM Centers after the DDO wanted to fire me.”
“I know Douglas trusts you, if that’s what you’re implying.”
She waited a beat, and then she asked, “Aren’t you curious about why the DDO wanted to fire me?”
“Not really. He wants to fire anyone who crosses him, and I can’t imagine you didn’t cross him a time or two. What I’m curious about is Ben. What role did he play in the DDO designating you as the handler for this mission?”
“He didn’t play any role, at least not directly. It was his father, Senator Mitchell. I guess you know Elijah Mitchell is Ben’s father?”
“Of course.”
“Last Friday morning, I was told to report to the DDO’s office to brief some senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee. When I arrived in his office, aside from the DDO, Senator Mitchell was the only person there.”
“That was a couple of days after Toby’s death. I think I know where this is headed.”
“Don’t be so sure. Just when you think you’ve got the Senator figured out, he does something to blow your mind. I worked with him a few years ago when I was the DDO’s congressional liaison.”
“I had heard that.”
“Believe me, working with the Senator was never easy. On the other hand, I know I’m not the easiest person to work with either. Later, I realized my personality might have been the reason he wanted me to be Ben’s handler. The bottom line is, I believe the Senator hates the idea of his son being a covert officer, and he’s hoping this operation will discourage him so much he’ll get out of the CIA, or, at the very least, accept an administrative desk job somewhere.”
“Wait a minute. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. The Senator went to the DDO and asked for you to be assigned to this operation because he thought the sheer force of your personality would make his son want to quit the Agency?”
“No, you’re over simplifying it. That’s not what happened.”
“So complicate things for me. What happened?”
“The DDO called me up to his office to brief the Senator on the operations running inside the RTM Centers. This wasn’t the first time he’d done this, but all the other times, there were several other senators in attendance. When I explained the status of Operation Clear Signal to the Senator and told him we were tracking El Mano Fierro, he asked me if I knew his son had recently been assigned to that operation.”
“Did you?”
“No, not until he told me. And, until I saw you yesterday in the Ops Center, I had no idea you were one of the principals of Operation Clear Signal either. Working with the principals of an operation is not my responsibility. I work on the logistics of an operation. That’s the part I love. Handling personalities is not my thing.”
I was tempted to make a sarcastic observation regarding the truth of her statement.
However, because I wanted to move the story along and not precipitate an argument with her, I said, “Was he asking you to give him the operation’s risk assessment, or was there some other reason he wanted to make sure you knew of his son’s involvement?”
“At first, I thought it was only because he was worried about Ben, and he thought if I knew his son was one of the principals, I might give him more details about the operation. But then, he went into a rant about his son’s weaknesses. To sum it up, he said Ben would be better off as an analyst sitting at a desk, rather than an operative trying to catch the bad guys.”
“That’s absolutely not true. Ben’s a good operative, and he has the potential to become an even better one.”
“I’m going to take your word for that, because I haven’t seen any evidence of it so far, at least not from my end.”
“What about his performance this afternoon? He got us out to the yacht and back, didn’t he?”
“Anybody can steer a boat.”
In my case, that wasn’t necessarily true, but I didn’t contradict her.
“Okay, go ahead with your story. So the Senator made it clear he wasn’t happy about his son’s career choice. What happened next?”
“He thanked me for my time, and the DDO dismissed me. Then, yesterday morning, the DDO called me back up to his office and informed me I would be the FO for Operation Clear Signal. He hinted my appointment was at the Senator’s request, and that I should keep the conversation about his son in mind as I planned the mission.”
I picked up our plates. “Let’s go inside. It’s getting dark, and I can’t see beyond the tree line anymore.”
She turned around and looked out toward the ocean. Then she nodded, “You’ve always been nervous around the water.”
“I’m nervous because these grounds aren’t secure. They weren’t secure in the daytime, and they’re even more insecure now that it’s getting dark.”
“If you say so.”
“I say so.”
* * * *
While I rinsed off our plates, Olivia went in the den and made herself comfortable.
When I joined her a few minutes later, I noticed she had taken her shoes off and was rubbing her feet. I sat down at the opposite end of the sofa from her.
“Frankly, Olivia, I’m just not buying your story.”
She bristled at my statement. “You think I’m lying?”
“It’s just hard for me to believe you would go along with the Senator’s conspiracy against his son without putting up a fight with the DDO. You’ll fight with anyone. Why wouldn’t you fight the DDO on this, especially since you don’t enjoy managing people in the field?”
“I love my job in the Ops Center, and I want to keep it. Ira almost got me fired once, and I knew if I gave him any excuse at all, he’d get it done this time. Besides, if Ben Mitchell is such a pushover that he can’t put up with me, then maybe his father is right, and he shouldn’t be in this business in the first place.”
“Ben isn’t a pushover, and I know firsthand he has some of his old man’s temperament. Right now, though, he seems intimidated by you. If you tried, Olivia, you could change that.”
She studied me a moment. “Your eating habits may not have changed, but something has definitely changed about you. What’s happened to you? People in our line of work usually get more calloused as the years go by. Not you, though. You seem to be a kinder, gentler version of the old you. Where’s all that anger I used to see? Why won’t you fight with me anymore?”
“You really see a difference in me?”
She hesitated before answering. “Well, not a lot, but some. It’s mainly that anger thing.”
At that moment, I realized I was seeing an answer to prayer. I’d prayed for an opportunity to tell Olivia about my newfound faith, and she’d just opened the door for me to do so.
Now, though, all I could think about were all the ways she could take my words and twist them around. To make matters worse, I wasn’t sure I had enough confidence in my beliefs to counter her inevitable barbs.
Since I didn’t feel comfortable telling her about my conversion experience, I said, “That anger thing is exactly what I wanted to discuss with you. I need to apologize for what happened in Kuwait at Camp Beuhring. I never should have called you those names or said the things I said.”
“After all this time, you want—”
“No, let me finish. I’m asking for your forgiveness, Olivia. Will you forgive me?”
She shifted her weight around on the sofa as if she couldn’t get comfortable.
“Oh, sure, Titus. I forgive you. It wasn’t a big deal to me.”
“I also wanted to say I’m sorry I didn’t stay in touch with you. When I heard about Saddam killing the general ... well, to be truthful, I blamed you for that.”
She nodded. “It was partly my fault. I can’t deny that.”
“Still, I should have been willing to talk with you about it.”
She used her fingernail to pick at a soiled spot on the sofa. Then, she looked up and said, “We used to be able to talk about anything.”
“That’s true.”
After a few seconds of awkward silence passed between us, I started to get up and leave. As I did so, Olivia reached out and grabbed my arm.
“Wait a minute.”
I sat back down.
“I have breast cancer.”
Her words didn’t register with me immediately.
But when they did, I found myself searching for the correct way to respond to her.
“Ah ... I’m so sorry, Olivia.”
“I don’t want your pity. I just wanted to tell someone.”
“Okay, I get that.”
“Both my mother and sister died of breast cancer.”
“I remember.”
She turned away from me and stared out the window at the ocean view.
I’d never seen her look more vulnerable.
She finally said, “All my life, I’ve done everything the doctors told me to do—eat healthy, get regular checkups, have mammograms, but—”
“When were you diagnosed?”
“Five years ago. That was when I had a lumpectomy and some chemo. After that, I was pronounced cancer free. A few weeks ago, though, I was told the cancer was back, and now, the doctors want to schedule me for a mastectomy.”
“Want to schedule you? They haven’t done it yet?”
“I’m not sure I’m going to have a mastectomy. This cancer is eventually going to kill me, and I just don’t want to put myself through that kind of surgery.”
“You can’t give up, Olivia. You’re still young. Women beat this stuff all the time.”
“To be truthful, I don’t have much to live for these days.” She shook her head. “I guess I never did.”
Hearing her say that, I found it impossible to keep quiet about my faith. I told her what had happened to me in Tehran, and how I’d made a decision to commit my life to Christ.
Afterward, I sat back and waited for her reaction.
She slipped her shoes back on and stood to her feet.
“See?” she said. “I knew something had happened to you. You’ve found religion.”
“No, Olivia, I haven’t found religion, I’ve begun a relationship.”
She brushed my explanation aside. “Semantics.”
“That’s not it. It’s a way—”
“I will say this, Titus. If you hadn’t asked me to forgive you, I wouldn’t have listened to what you had to say. Now, though, I may have to give this faith thing a little more thought.”
“Here’s something else for you to think about. Consider letting me contact the DDO and tell him I can’t work with you anymore; that I want another handler. If I were to protest loudly enough, he might assign someone as your replacement. That way, you’ll be able to get back to the States and have your surgery immediately.”
She shook her head. “Are you serious? Who do you think he’d send down here as the FO?”
“Probably C. J. Salazar, but that doesn’t matter.”
“I’m not about to turn this operation over to Cartel Carlos, not when we’re this close to grabbing Ahmed.”
“What if I—”
Olivia’s phone rang.
After she took the call, she said, “That was Sam. We may not need the drone now. His surveillance team spotted Roberto at the Los Jardines residence a few minutes ago.”
“That’s good news.”
“Time for you to go do your thing now.”
“You mean work my incredible powers of persuasion on Roberto the way I’ve done on you?”
Chapter 38
Monday, June 11
I couldn’t get the coffeepot to work. It was the old-fashioned kind, a percolator, where you put the coffee grounds in a basket on the top, fill it up with water, and plug it in.
Right now, I needed coffee.
The whole team—Olivia, Wylie, Mitchell and I—had arrived in Caracas around midnight, and an embassy driver had taken everyone, except Wylie, directly to the American Embassy. Wylie had gone off with a member of his security team to supervise the wiring of Zaidi’s apartment before Ahmed showed up.
At the embassy, Olivia had immediately gone into The Bubble to conduct a video conference call with the Ops Center back at Langley. Afterward, she’d briefed Mitchell and me on the logistics of questioning Roberto Montilla.
The interrogation was to take place away from Roberto’s hideout, because—according to Olivia—Carlton agreed with me that there were too many risk factors involved in conducting it there. Although snatching Roberto from the house—essentially kidnapping him—also carried risks, those risks were far less dangerous than having a neighbor show up in the middle of the chat Roberto and I were going to have.
Ideally, the kidnapping of Roberto Montilla should take place when he was alone in the house, and shortly after Olivia’s video call, she received confirmation there would be a window of opportunity at one o’clock in the afternoon, just a few hours from now.
She’d received this information from the National Security Agency, after they’d been authorized to record all cell phone communications coming from the residence on Avenida Los Jardines.
In order to get this authorization, the Agency had been required to show a FISA court judge that Roberto Montilla had been in contact with a known terrorist, one who’d recently murdered an American intelligence officer. I was guessing it was Carlton who’d insisted on going before the FISA courts to get the authorization, because he was always adamant about observing the Foreign Intelligence Services Agreement right down to the letter of the law.
The phone conversations had revealed Roberto’s sister-in-law, Roxanna Palacio, had made an appointment with a hair and nail salon for three individuals. It was assumed the other two ladies were Marianna and Emma Montilla. Their appointment was scheduled for one o’clock.
It was now six-thirty in the morning, and since Mitchell and I had been up all night, I desperately needed a caffeine fix.
Although it took me a few minutes to figure it out, I finally realized I didn’t have the electrical cord from the percolator to the wall socket plugged in correctly. Once I’d remedied that small detail, the machine immediately began to gurgle.
Along with Mitchell, I was inside a safe house about five miles from Roberto’s location.
It wasn’t an Agency-owned safe house. It was a residence the Agency had reserved for special occasions, occasions when a homey atmosphere might be more conducive to getting an asset to talk than would a sterile environment, like an office or warehouse setting.
The house itself was owned by a religious organization, which was headquartered in the States. It was usually occupied by one of their missionary families. However, every two years, the family returned to the States for a six-month furlough. Whenever that happened, the embassy paid a rental fee to have full use of the house—identified by Wylie as The Missy Hacienda—and this was done with the understanding that temporary embassy personnel would be staying in the missionaries’ residence while they were away.
Today, Mitchell and I were the temporary personnel in residence.
If things went as planned, around two o’clock, there would be one additional occupant—Roberto Montilla.
The Ops Center had decided a four-person team of Level 2 operatives would do a snatch and grab of Roberto from the Los Jardines residence and bring him to the safe house.
I wasn’t sure whether the person responsible for coming up with the plan was Carlton or Salazar, but when Olivia told Mitchell and me about it, I’d tried to convince her to change it.
“This is all wrong, Olivia. Ben and I should be the ones initiating this action. Those guys won’t know how to finesse this. They’ll traumatize Roberto, and it may take me hours to gain back his confidence.”
“Even though Sam Wylie calls them his boys, on
e member of the team doing the snatch and grab today is a woman.”
“It doesn’t matter. The end result will be the same.”
“That could be,” she said, “but most likely, when they put Roberto in that van, he’ll think some of Ahmed’s men have taken him. Then, when they bring him to the safe house and he finds sweet, lovable you there, he’ll be so grateful it wasn’t Ahmed who kidnapped him, he’ll start jabbering away.”
I quickly realized there was no dissuading her from the plan, and in the end, I admitted the psychology behind the decision to traumatize him might prove beneficial.
Unfortunately, it didn’t.
* * * *
Earlier, when Mitchell and I had arrived at the safe house, I’d suggested he get some sleep. He hadn’t protested too much, and now he was snoring away in a back bedroom. I noticed the bedroom was decorated in posters depicting male rock stars, so I was guessing it belonged to the missionaries’ teenage daughter.
The room also contained an assortment of musical instruments, including a guitar. Oddly enough, I’d heard Mitchell strumming on the guitar when he’d first gone back to the room to take a snooze.
After drinking several cups of coffee, I walked down the hallway and checked out the electronic equipment Wylie’s specialists had set up in the master bedroom. The equipment would be used to record my upcoming conversation with Roberto and to keep in touch with Olivia, who was back at the embassy monitoring the situation at Roberto’s hideout and Zaidi’s apartment.
For a few brief seconds, I was tempted to check in with Olivia, but then I decided not to bother her.
Or be bothered by her.
On the charter flight from the island to Caracas, she’d kept her distance from me, and I had the distinct feeling she was embarrassed she’d been so open with me about her cancer. I wasn’t sure how that might affect our future relationship, but I doubted it would change it much.
Once I’d checked out the communications equipment, I went back to the living room and made some changes to the layout of the room in preparation for Roberto’s visit.
Two Days in Caracas Page 28