“I don’t need to remind you about security, Bud,” the DCI began, signaling for Drummond to hand the file to the newcomer, “so we’ll just get to it. There are only two copies of this: I have one and Greg the other. They have never left either of our offices except in our own possession, and when they have it’s only been between our offices. When we aren’t in our offices they are kept in our personal safes. We know each other’s combinations, as does the Deputy Director of Operations Mike Healy, but he is not privileged to this information. Bud, the president is not privileged to it.”
Something was up, Bud thought. The president was cleared for everything. Or maybe…
Landau continued, “Now, to my point. First, you better read what’s in the file.”
Bud opened the folder, looking to both men before he began reading. There were only four double-spaced pages, which he finished in less than three minutes. He spent another two minutes reading over the second page.
His eyes came up from the paper, though not to meet the others’. “Did Jeremy know about this?”
The DCI nodded.
“Jesus… This was dated to last December, and this last part just a month ago. Was the president informed?”
“He was, yes, about the last part, but he vetoed any measures that would have compromised the source,” Landau answered. He knew Bud wouldn’t ask about the source. “Jeremy didn’t even want him informed because it would take away presidential deniability. We convinced him to at least inform him of the risk to himself.”
Bud was incensed. “Who the hell authorized this operation?”
“We don’t know,” Drummond replied. “There was no finding or authorization; no hard copy other than the Eyes Only brief that you’re looking at. Somehow it missed the shredder and ended up in a case file. The officer who the file belonged to—he was stationed in Sicily—left the Agency after the inauguration.” He carefully avoided letting on to the officer’s role in Italy. “There’s no way to tie him to this since it was a stateside report, probably dictated. It ended up in his file…” Drummond shrugged. “…mistake, maybe. A stupid oversight. It’s even conceivable that it was intentionally left unshredded for future purposes, but that’s a paranoid’s view. It’s among the possibilities.
“The best we’ve been able to do is run the trail back here, to this office.” Drummond saw Bud’s lips part slightly as the enormity of the situation continued to sink in. “The typewriter used for the first three pages is right there.” The DDI pointed to the DCI’s machine on the oak rollaway behind and to the right of the desk.
“That’s a photocopy you’re looking at,” Landau informed him. “The original is in my copy of the file.”
“So, what you’re saying, and what this information describes, is that the former director—”
“Correction, Bud,” the DCI interrupted, “the former upper apparatus of the Agency, probably including the DDI at least, and probably the DDO.”
Many had been surprised when the entire executive structure of the Agency had left after the new administration won the election. Now Bud knew why. “Okay. So they initiated a covert operation upon their own authority, without presidential approval or congressional knowledge. And this! Christ, were they totally oblivious to the possible ramifications?”
“Not anymore,” Landau responded. “Unfortunately they’re no longer with the Agency and even if they were, the trail they left is nonexistent, except for my predecessor.”
“Doing anything now would be counterproductive,” Drummond said, shifting in his seat. The whole damn thing made him uncomfortable.
“Counterproductive?” Bud raised his voice. “The action initiated by that…that man more than likely was the direct cause of the president’s death, not to mention the others.”
“Whoa there”—the DCI raised his hand to his front—“as much as you and I and Greg here find this distasteful, we can no more bring this into the open than the president could have taken precautions to safeguard his own life. If we do, a very important asset of ours would likely be compromised, and
that
would be counterproductive. This asset has given us a hell of a lot of vital intelligence on terrorist movements and intentions, including what just happened. But that is not confirmed—officially.”
“Unofficially?” Bud asked.
The DCI thought for a second before answering. “My predecessor apparently didn’t buy the colonel’s feigned humanism. Neither did I, for that matter, but the solution proved to be more of a catalyst than an end-all. Hell, he got us back. Grammar school-style revenge. Tit for tat. We wagged his tail and he pulled ours clean off.”
“And we take it. Has there been any confirmation on the success of our…” Bud hated to even imply ownership in the rogue operation. “… endeavor?”
“Nothing definitive,” Drummond replied. “But the colonel has been lying low. Very low.”
“There has been a resurgence of activity at the old training camps,” Landau noted.
That figures
, Bud thought. “It appears we convinced the colonel that change was futile.”
There was a quiet in the room as Bud again looked down at the open file on his lap. He flipped the pages quickly, wondering who exactly had thought of the plan, and beyond that, what genius had decided to carry it out. This was precisely the reason for controls on covert operations, the process of which was supposed to begin with the president and move quickly to Congress, or at least to the small number of congressional leaders known as the ‘gang of eight.’ It was required by law as spelled out in the Intelligence Oversight Act. Sometimes Congress wanted too much control over executive actions, Bud believed, but this would have been a perfect time for some knowledge of the operation.
“So,” Bud began, “you want me to decide whether the president is to be informed of this. Am I correct?”
The DCI’s answer was silent, but obvious. He detested having to be the custodian for his predecessor’s dirty work.
Damn them!
“Your recommendation, Herb?”
“If you inform him there is no deniability. His lack of action against a former government official who has violated several federal statutes can be construed as obstruction of justice. If he does decide to take action then we open up a new can of worms.”
“It’d make Iran-Contra look like
The Peoples’ Court
” Drummond added.
Bud was angry. “Is it just because I spent twenty- five years of my life as an honorable military officer that that word—
deniability
—has a decidedly sinister ring to it? Or has it become a concept, something our political leaders must have? A fallback tool instead of that old standby: responsibility? I tell you, gentlemen, this kind of garbage … I don’t know.” There was a long pause. “I imagine we’ll be dealing with this for a period of time to come.”
“Who knows,” the DCI said, lifting his hands in a gesture of wonder or futility. Bud couldn’t tell which.
Bud closed the folder and ran the long edge between his thumb and forefinger. It felt slick, almost wet, and the rough edge, neat and straight from its limited handling, was sharp enough to cut skin. He handed it to the DDI, who looked to the director before returning it to his case.
There was a curse that came with knowledge. If Bud were to let it stop here, with him, it might be over, and any crucifixion for nondisclosure could be absorbed by him. But that held as much appeal as his old days in Wild Weasels. Soaking up the heat for someone else went against his grain, and that was what would be truly counterproductive. The truth was that it was just too risky to inform the president. Bud could take the rap if it ever did come out, but suspicion would always lead to the president. The damage would be done—and severe. But then it might just bury itself.
“It’s a no-win situation,” Bud observed. “A shitty no-win situation. All in all I’m glad you filled me in, but I didn’t expect it to start like this.”
“D.C. is no Disneyland,” the DDI pointed out. “This is not a fairy tale.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Bud’s sarcasm was directed to no one. “I guess I should have expected less from the brochures.” He rubbed his smooth upper lip while thinking, but the decision was already made. He was just trying to reconcile it with his conscience. “Okay…this stays in this room. If it ever becomes necessary I will inform the president myself. My gut tells me otherwise, but this seems like the best course.” Bud stood, as did the DDI. “I just hope it is.
“Well, I’ve got to get going.” He didn’t but he had to get out of that room. Out of that building.
“Bud, thanks for coming over.” The DCI offered his hand. Bud accepted it, shaking the DDI’s next.
“Thank you, Herb…Greg. Maybe next time it’ll be something mild, like an increase in Chinese SSBN deployment.”
The DCI laughed. “Okay. We’ll see if we can arrange that for you.”
The acting NSA left and was airborne a few minutes later, heading back to the White House through an early-autumn storm. Drummond returned to his office, leaving the director of Central Intelligence alone at his desk. He turned again toward the window and thought for some time of the topic at hand. It made him mad as hell that someone with his authority could go off like a loose cannon and leave the mess for others to clean up. But that was the reality of government. That drew a private smile. His predecessor was enjoying a lucrative slot on the lecture circuit, reportedly pulling down twenty grand a speech.
A couple of engagements would buy a lot of coffins.
Maybe, though, it would be over now. Who could pay? No one, he believed, so what was the point in looking back. It was over. Done.
He could not have been more wrong.
Two
ABOVE AND BELOW
East of Athens
The deep shadows of the coming summer evening stretched out from the Greek coast to cover the Aegean Sea in an eerie blue incandescence as the light danced rapidly from the earth below. Andros, a larger island in the chain of many smaller ones, was directly beneath the
Clipper Atlantic Maiden
as she descended gracefully toward Athens, her stop for the night. She floated downward, the sun low on the horizon but still gleaming brightly off her shiny surfaces. Her sister ship, the
Clipper Angelic Pride
, was some forty nautical miles behind on a flight from New Delhi, though she would be doing a quick turnaround and flying on to the States overnight, New York being her final destination. The
Atlantic Maiden
, inbound from Beijing, would continue on across her namesake ocean the next morning on her somewhat special flight.
Captain Bart Hendrickson, the picture of a sturdy Nordic American, loved his job and especially the
Maiden
, as he called his plane. It was not just his plane. Other pilots flew her, as was the norm in the scheduling of flight crews in the operations of the larger carriers, but he had been very fortunate to rotate into the
Maiden
two times out of every three over the last nine months.
She was a new—in aircraft life—Boeing 747-400, one of the more recent generation of jet airliners that relied on new technologies to enhance their performance and extend their useful life. The bulk of the advancements were on the flight deck, the cockpit, which now required a crew of just two: the pilot and a first officer. Use of video display-type screens for nearly all of the instrumentation and the condensation and restructuring of information presentation had allowed for a reduction in the crew size from the old four. The move was fought tooth and nail by the pilots’ unions, who claimed that it would be a safety risk. Captain Hendrickson knew that claim for what it was: a complaint that jobs would be sacrificed and the ladder to reach the pinnacle of flying, a captaincy, would have a discouragingly large number of rungs added to it. In the major airlines a pilot could wait up to thirty years to command a jumbo jet. Elimination of the flight engineer position on the flight deck would reduce the number of entry slots and the need for pilots. It was a wise economic move for the carriers to appropriate planes such as the 747-400 and its newer and smaller cousins. Profit margins were shrinking in the industry, making every penny count. Bart Hendrickson, fifty-eight, blond with no hint of gray, and a wearer of the coveted bird wings for thirty-two years didn’t care much for the financial or economic reasons for the changes. The main thing was that he felt flying was safer and, as important, more fun.
“Bart, number three is showing that four percent drop in compression again,” First Officer Adam ‘Buzz’ Elkins announced. He was an old Marine—one was never an ex-Marine—as his taut upper body and the now graying crewcut attested. There hadn’t been a day since his first at Parris Island twenty-two years before that he had let his hair grow beyond the half-inch needles that they were. His brown eyes, set into a tanned face, were passionless, but read like a novel when emotion spurred them.
The captain looked at the engine performance indicator. In earlier days he might have thumped the glass-covered gauge with a finger, but now the needle was represented by a slim video image on the display, and that was merely for quick reference; the digital readout above each engine’s indicator rendered an exact measurement. “It’s probably the compressor.”
“Again. Oh well.” Buzz was not surprised with the problem. The
Maiden
had needed the primary compressor replaced twice before in the number three engine, the last time less than five months earlier. “Athens doesn’t have the facilities for us.”
“Yeah.” That was one problem, the captain thought. Not every airport could service some of the newer jets. “What was the max flux in compression?”
“Just four percent,” Buzz answered. “Passing one-two- thousand.”
“Roger.” Hendrickson pressed the mike switch, opting for manual operation instead of ‘hot mike,’ which continuously transmitted everything said. Most crews did the same, except in busy times. The ground didn’t need to hear all that was said upstairs. “Athens approach—Four-Two-Two heavy passing one-two-thousand.”
“
Roger, Four-Two-Two heavy. Maintain descent to four thousand. Enter pattern on eastern leg at six thousand. Maintain heading until coastal VOR intersect.
”