The Case Officer (27 page)

Mac had always been a man of
action, back in his days as a Marine in Somalia and even before. And he was no
less so now. But…

The kernel of an idea began to
form and grow in his mind. And the more he thought about it, the clearer it
became. It still needed a lot of refining, but it seemed – it  just might be
doable… He decided to think about it some more, and when he had everything
together in his mind, he would bounce it off Culler and Wei-wei, the only two
allies left.

He could not permit this disaster
to occur – not to Huang – not to his country.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

O
ther than this germ of an idea
forming in Mac’s mind, the only bright spot in the entire afternoon was the news
that the DCOS, Bob Little, was out of there. He was accused of fabricating a
source – SKITTISH – and recalled permanently to Langley.

Fabricating a source was as bad
as fabricating information. In the CIA, fabrication of any sort was
the
most egregious sin any case officer could commit.

As they say in East Asia Division
, thought MacMurphy,
Little
Bob is in deep kimchee.
The system had finally caught up with him. Rothmann
would eat Little Bob alive this time, and this made MacMurphy very happy. 

Chapter Sixty-Nine

A
fter work, Culler and Mac joined
Wei-wei in the embassy lounge for cocktails. They settled into plush black
leather chairs around a polished rosewood coffee table and ordered drinks. The
embassy lounge was a comfortable place to unwind, and Mac especially really
needed a stiff drink after the hammering he took in Berger’s office.

Mac was subdued, thoughtful, and
Wei-wei and Culler gave him space to think and ponder. They didn’t know what
was wrong, but figured it had something to do with his meeting with Berger.           

Wei-wei shot him a sympathetic
smile.

“Don’t worry about it, whatever
it is. He’s an asshole,” said Santos matter-of-factly, clearly referring to the
COS.

“A man of few words,” Wei-wei
said, pointing a thumb in Culler’s direction. “So what’s up? What happened in
there?”

Mac concentrated on the glass he
slowly turned on the coaster in front of him, but the wheels of his mind were
spinning.

The idea for a follow-up
operational plan had been germinating ever since his meeting with Berger, and
now all of the pieces seemed to be coming together. He wanted to articulate his
thoughts to his friends, but couldn’t decide whether it was time. He began
cautiously.

“How much longer do you plan to
be in Paris, Culler?”

“A few more days. I want to make
sure the LP continues running smoothly and there are no further problems…you
know, to keep you off my back. And I have a few things to do for one of the
other branches while I’m here. But I can stay, well, you know, for as long as
you need me. I’ll take a few days of leave if necessary. Why? What have you got
in mind?”

“So you can be here through the
weekend…”

Santos shrugged his large shoulders.
“Sure. There’s always plenty to do in a station of this size.”

“Good. Why don’t you just plan on
that…”

Wei-wei looked at him
expectantly, waiting for him to reveal what was on his mind. Santos raised a
questioning eyebrow. But MacMurphy didn’t elaborate on his plans. Not here. Not
in the Embassy lounge. He remained thoughtful, distant...

Finally Wei-wei spoke up. “Look,
Mac. Why don’t you just tell us what’s on your mind? What happened in there
with Berger? We’re your friends, you know, as well as colleagues.” She laid a
hand gently on Mac’s.

Wei-wei could read Mac’s
introspective mood progressions. And she usually knew how to handle them. First
he had to be left to think things out for himself. Then he had to be coaxed
into articulating his thoughts. He was in the midst of the latter process. He
had already given whatever it was that was bothering him a great deal of
thought. Now he needed a sounding board.

Mac didn’t immediately answer
her. He was still deep in thought. Finally he said, “You’re right, but not
here. This is not the place to talk. Let’s go get something to eat at Charlie’s
and discuss it there.”

Chapter Seventy

C
harlie’s was a small grill on Rue
St. Ferdinand in the 17
^th
arrondissement
. The restaurant
actually had no name. The small lit sign above the door simply said “Bar &
Grill” in English. It was a neighborhood place, run by the bartender, a
friendly gay fellow named Charlie, and the cook, an elderly, cherubic, round
little elf named Denise. So everyone called the place “Charlie’s.”

The taxi let them out on the
narrow one-way street in front of the restaurant. They entered, and Charlie
waved at them from behind the bar, still half filled with boisterous
working-class locals finishing their aperitifs before heading to the Metro and
RUR trains that would get them home to dinner.

Mac demurred when Charlie offered
to make room for them at the bar, where he usually liked to sit, and they went
directly to one of the tables in the corner of the small dining section
instead. Only one other table was occupied, and it was at the other end of the
room. Mac asked Charlie to send Denise over to take their orders.

The four-foot-square
grandmotherly woman waddled out of the tiny kitchen in the rear and greeted Mac
and Wei-wei like family, planting a kiss on each cheek and then adding a third.
“
Trois fois à la campagne
,” she exclaimed gleefully.

They introduced Culler, and she
shook his hand and patted him on the shoulder warmly. She announced the menu
for the evening (the specials changed every night according to her whim and
what was fresh at the market): Couscous (her specialty), pot-au-feu, and the
old standby, filet au poivre. Wei-wei ordered the couscous, and both men took
the filets served with
pomme frites
. Mac also chose a bottle of the
house wine to accompany the meal.

It was warm in the restaurant,
and Mac announced that he was going to get comfortable. Standing up, he removed
his jacket and tie and tossed them casually over a chair at the next table. This
would also serve to dissuade any new diners from choosing the table next to
them.

Culler, who was feeling oppressed
by the summer heat too, followed suit, tossing his jacket and tie on another
chair at the adjacent table on the other side of them. He proceeded to roll up
his sleeves as well.

Wei-wei looked cool and
comfortable in a bright yellow summer dress with green flowers, cut low in the
back – attire that complemented her golden skin and had not escaped the notice
of the bar patrons as the trio passed the long bar on the way to the table.

Denise returned with crisp garden
salads (Mac always insisted on having his salad first, contrary to the French
custom of having it at the end of the meal), a basket of sliced baguettes, and
the house wine, which she opened with a pop and set in front of them like a
café waiter.

Mac poured, and they toasted each
other and the success of their mission, and “whatever else that feverish brain
of yours is cooking up,” Santos added. There was a pause, while he and Wei-wei
waited to see if Mac would finally tell them what was on his mind.

When the silence persisted,
Wei-wei gave his leg a gentle kick under the table and said, “Share your
thoughts, Mac. We’re your friends. And we have a
need
to know. Tell us…”

Mac began slowly and thoughtfully.
He took them through his entire meeting with the COS, from beginning to end.
They listened, eyes wide and aghast. When he had finished he added, “And I
can’t let that happen. So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. And…what would you
think if I told you I had a plan that would on the one hand satisfy the
intelligence requirements levied on us by Rothmann and the DCI, while at the
same time give Huang some choice in his future and avert the extraordinary
rendition?”

He tossed back the rest of his
wine and sat back, obviously very pleased with himself.

The question was rhetorical, and
he did not wait for an answer before continuing. Now his speech was more
engaged, more rapid, more vehement. “I mean the complete picture. The whole
enchilada. The relationship between China and Iran; precisely what groups,
terrorist and otherwise, will be the recipients of the Iranian money in that
safe of Huang’s; the full extent of the funding; the goals of the covert
operation; everything. All that and more…much more…

“I’m talking about a complete
re-write of our National Intelligence Estimate on China. Political, economic,
diplomatic, military, the whole nine yards. And don’t forget the MSS. We could
re-write the book on the plans, structure, organization, liaison relationships
and capabilities of the Chinese Ministry of State Security.” He paused, filled
his glass, took a large swallow of wine, and it down. Glancing from one to the
other he asked, “What would you think about that?”

Culler answered first, “You’d
have to do better than an audio op for that kind of intelligence. You might get
some of that from the audio op, but never all of it. No way... you’d, you know,
need a source for that…”

“He’s right,” said Wei-wei. “Only
a very high-level source would be able to provide us with that kind of
intelligence information.” She laughed, “You’d have to recruit someone like
Huang for that kind of stuff, and you’ve already admitted you can’t get Huang
that way and the rendition idea is too far out.”

“Yes, we can,” said MacMurphy. He
leaned forward closer to them and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Maybe we
can’t recruit him in place, but we can induce his defection. We can give him
some choice in the matter. We can reel him in and debrief him on everything he
knows about this covert action operation with Iran, his knowledge of the MSS,
and everything else he knows about China. It would be the next best thing to a
recruitment in place.”

“How are you...?” Both Wei-wei
and Santos spoke in unison. Culler nodded to Wei-wei to continue. “How are you
going to induce the defection of a man like Huang Tsung-yao? Why would he want
to jump ship?”

MacMurphy leaned back in his
chair, stretched out his long legs, tasted his wine and savored the moment. He
studied his glass a moment before looking up at his two friends. Then he spoke
softly, with a gleam in his eye. “Simple. We’re going to steal his money…”

Chapter Seventy-One

C
uller Santos and MacMurphy sat in
the café across the street from the Chinese Embassy. They fortified themselves
with coffee and croissants for the work that lay ahead. “Ah, you can’t beat the
French at their own game,” Mac said, appreciatively savoring the rich, buttery
croissant. “American bakers shouldn’t even bother trying.”

“We’re nothing if we stop
trying,” Santos observed sagely. “We haven’t stopped, you know, trying to get
the information we’re after.”

“And we’re about to take a giant
step forward in that pursuit, my friend,” said Mac, bobbing his head to the
left to indicate that Santos should look in that direction. When Culler looked
out across the street, he saw François assisting Collette and her mother into
the rented Mercedes Benz. The Benz that Mac did not object to this time.

Mac had arranged with François to
take Collette and her mother back to the Normandy coast for another fun
weekend, a task to which François hadn’t objected in the least.

Santos’s drills and equipment
were packed in the same suitcases and parked, as before, in a rented car in the
garage below Avenue Georges V. The only thing different this time was the
absence of the station surveillance team.

That and the fact that neither
Burton B. Berger,  Headquarters, nor the DDO, who was effectively out of the
picture for now, had signed off on it, or in fact was even aware of it. This
operation was going to be a unilateral act on the part of MacMurphy and Culler
Santos. And that was a frightening thought.

Chapter Seventy-Two

N
ormally, the CIA’s Directorate of
Operations maintains the integrity of its operations by demanding level upon
level of approvals for operations involving even the slightest amount of risk.
Audio operations like this would normally require no fewer than eleven
signatures of approval.

The approvals begin with the case
officer’s branch chief in the field, run up through the station bureaucracy to
the Chief of Station, and then on to Headquarters, where the proposal works its
way from the area desk through the branch and division and finally up to the
DDO.

This case, however, was
different, and the departure from normal procedures meant that MacMurphy was
acting independently, like the proverbial rogue elephant the CIA was constantly
accused of being. If he failed, his career would end, despite having Rothmann
on his side—if indeed he would or could remain there after this—and he could
face criminal charges as well. Were the personal risks worth the possible
rewards for the U.S. government?