Scorpion: A Covert Ops Novel (Second Edition) (2 page)

Robert Cramer’s office occupied the
corner of a five room office suite on the third floor of the American embassy
building on Rudaki Avenue in Dushanbe’s American Corner. Low and squat, the
embassy was a yellow and gray compound made of marble and cement, with dark, reflective
glass windows. Its modern trappings and fortress-like design stood out amongst
the surrounding Islamic and Central Asian-style architecture and Soviet-era
structures of the Tajik capital.

Cramer’s official
position was public affairs assistant. Only eight people on the embassy
staff—including the ambassador, deputy chief of mission, regional security
officer, and the staff of the small CIA section—were officially cleared and
aware of his true position as the Central Intelligence Agency’s Dushanbe chief
of station, although speculation naturally ran rampant in such a small
building.

Outside the
embassy walls, GKNB was also probably aware of Cramer’s position. In friendly
countries, like Britain, France, or Germany, the local CIA station chief was
declared to the host government, and the host government was likewise informed
of intelligence operations launched on their soil. While Tajikistan wasn’t
hostile, it also wasn’t exactly friendly, and Dushanbe maintained much closer
ties with Moscow than it did with Washington, so Cramer’s real position became
a poorly kept a secret.

Currently a
GS-12 on the US Government’s civilian pay-scale, Cramer had spent twenty-six of
his fifty-five years in the service of the Central Intelligence Agency, and
seven years before that in the air force. He’d attended Dartmouth College on an
ROTC scholarship, graduating with degrees in Economics and International Relations.
He was quickly assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency as a specialist in
Soviet weapons systems.

Not wanting to
spend his life behind a desk studying satellite photos, counting tanks and
missiles, he left DIA and, now fluent in Russian thanks to the Defense Language
Institute, was welcomed at the Farm, as Camp Peary was known, where new
recruits underwent training in tradecraft, self-defense, and spotting,
recruiting, and handling agents.

His first
overseas tour was in Pakistan, toward the end of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, providing aid to the Afghan mujahedeen. He did so well there that,
after the Cold War, Langley kept him in the region. He was in Nagorno-Karabakh
with non-official cover during the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He
helped rig elections and buy politicians in Georgia. He’d made covert forays
into Afghanistan to spy on bin Laden and provide weapons and cash to the
Northern Alliance, and futilely warned his superiors back home about the threat
posed by a group called al-Qaeda. After 9/11, he spent the better part of eight
years on the front lines of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

During this time,
Cramer made a number of close contacts amongst diplomats, military and
intelligence officers, and assorted community and tribal leaders, who had
become close personal friends. That was the way to acquire first-rate
intelligence, the kind you couldn’t get from reading people’s e-mail and
looking at satellite photos.

Once, he’d
convinced a Kazakh army colonel to hand over a brand-new T-91, Russia’s latest
tank model, and it cost CIA’s bean-counters nothing more than a few cheap
dinners and several bottles of vodka. Langley was grateful for the tank, but
they reprimanded Cramer for buying alcohol on the Agency’s expense account and
expected him to save every receipt.

Cramer understood
Dushanbe was his last field assignment before retirement.

After this tour,
once he was recalled to Langley, there would be nowhere to go from here, other
than perhaps a job as an instructor at the Farm. He had no interest in ending
an otherwise productive and rewarding career by recounting everything he knew
to some young, naïve recruits, most of whom would never even serve overseas or
recruit agents or have to utilize anything they’d been taught. Most would
digitally push papers and drink coffee and work a nine-to-five shift, and then
return to their middle-class homes in the surrounding suburbs around Langley
and DC.

The only alternative
was likely some menial position, like special adviser to the deputy director on
Central Asian affairs, and an office where he would be kept out-of-sight and
out-of-trouble, forgotten. They’d never make him a division or desk chief.
Those lofty positions went to professional careerists who wrote the right
reports and provided favorable analysis that towed the Company line and who sported
Ivy League class rings.

Cramer’s predecessor
had been recalled to Langley following a small sex scandal involving himself
and a secretary on the ambassador’s staff and reports of alcohol and substance abuse.
If the story hadn’t made the papers and cable news, where the word “rape” had
been thrown around rather flagrantly in the interests of sensationalism, then
Langley probably would have ignored the problem and allowed things to continue
as they were. Dushanbe station hadn’t produced any worthwhile intelligence, but
it was quiet and didn’t create any ripples in the water, which was a job well
done, as far as the Seventh Floor was concerned.

And Cramer
probably would have already been forced back to Virginia had this backwater
post not suddenly become available and presented the director of the National
Clandestine Service (D/NCS) a suitable post to dump him and keep him out of the
way for a couple years, while also turning around this little station in a vital
region.

Tajikistan, and
Central Asia as a whole, was becoming increasingly important to American
interests. The well-intentioned but often short sighted D/NCS wanted to take
the opportunity to put an experienced and veteran intelligence officer at the
helm of Dushanbe station. D/NCS pulled rank and gone over the head of Cramer’s
immediate superior, the Central Eurasia Division chief, to give him the job.

Truth was, D/NCS
did Cramer a favor by putting him in Dushanbe, keeping him in the field a
little while longer and convincing the Seventh Floor that they needed an old
pro like Cramer to turn-around one of the Agency’s smallest stations that
continuously offered piss-poor performance and intelligence product. 

And Cramer had
so far been immensely successful, exceeding all of Langley’s low expectations
over the past three years. Regardless of personal animosities and burnt-out
cynicism, when Cramer was presented with a job, he did it well and went all
out, giving it everything he had.

He wasn’t some
chief of station who left his office only to attend diplomatic cocktail
receptions and barred his officers from recruiting locals as agents, so as not
to offend the host government. It often put him at odds with the ambassador,
but Cramer was one of those rare station chiefs who expected his officers to
actively engage in the business of espionage and take risks, and he led by
example.

In Dushanbe,
Cramer immediately brought in veteran case officers, with whom he had
previously worked in Europe and Central Asia. He re-organized the small station
from the bottom up, expanding the staff from three case officers to five. Under
Cramer’s stewardship, they established a small but valuable network of highly
placed agents, including a couple rare and oh-so valuable Russians and even a
high ranking Chinese trade official.

Under Cramer’s
predecessor, most of Dushanbe station’s intelligence came from official
meetings and briefings with the Tajik Defense and Interior Ministries or GKNB,
or even local newspapers, nothing of any relevance or usefulness that told the
White House what was really happening inside the country. Now the station
regularly provided the White House with first-rate product on the workings of
the Tajik government and economic and political conditions within the country.

But nothing ever
stays the same.

In three months,
Cramer’s stint was up, and he’d sit down before D/NCS’s desk, where he’d get a
pat on the back and be sent unceremoniously out the door.

Shortly after
1:00PM, the flip phone sitting on Cramer’s desk vibrated. It was a cheap,
pay-as-you-go cell purchased locally. Tajikistan had surprisingly vibrant cell
phone coverage, supported by a Kazakhstan-launched satellite and supplemented
by European satellites. The phone was undeclared to the Agency and the embassy.
His possession of it violated numerous security protocols.

Cramer grabbed
the phone and looked at the number. It was the call he’d been expecting since
early morning, when he’d sent Wilkes to meet CERTITUDE in Khorugh. He flipped
the phone open, thumbed the “send” button, and said, “Yes?”

He listened for
several seconds before ending the call.

Then, he
selected and dialed another number from his contacts. The phone rang three
times before being picked up. “I’m leaving now,” Cramer announced in flawless
Russian and hit “end.”

Other than the
clothes on his back, he carried only $10,000 cash in $100 dollar bills in two
sealed envelopes stuffed in his pockets and a Beretta 92FS in a holster
concealed beneath his suede jacket. It would have been nice to bring along a
couple changes of clothes and other items, but being seen leaving the embassy
with a case, or bag or having items missing from his office or personal
apartment, would raise questions.

There was little
for him to leave behind anyway, just some clothes, books, and files. He was
never one to accumulate useless possessions and was not prone to placing
sentimental value on material objects, so he owned nothing that was not necessary
and could not be easily replaced. There was nothing that could compromise him. He’d
already carefully destroyed those few relevant files or notes. He excelled at
discretion and covering his tracks.

Cramer headed
out the door of his office, through the CIA section’s cipher lock door, down
the empty hallway, and to the staircase. He descended the stairs to the ground
floor and went down another hallway. He passed a young woman he recognized from
the ambassador’s staff and nodded his head politely and said hello as he passed
her. Half a minute later, he was through a set of heavy double doors and across
the main lobby.

He proceeded
through Post One, the security checkpoint at the front of the building, manned by
the local Marine Security Group detachment. One of the uniformed marines on
duty recognized him and wished him a pleasant afternoon. Cramer nodded his
thanks and smiled curtly, but said nothing, as he walked past the marine and
stepped outside into the dry, warm air.

Although
appearing rushed and unsociable, this was not at all unusual for Cramer. He was
known to be brusque and rarely, if ever, stopped to make idle small-talk with
the other embassy staff. Some station chiefs were social butterflies, in part
to help maintain their cover and remove any mystery about what it was they did
at the embassy, since secrecy invariably resulted in water cooler and urinal
gossip. Others, like Cramer, maintained their privacy and cared little for what
others in the building speculated or said.

Outside, on
Rudaki Avenue, Cramer hailed a cab and gave the driver his destination.

It didn’t matter
if any of the marines saw him enter the cab or in what direction it then
proceeded to travel. Some point soon, there would invariably be an
investigation into the day’s events, and the marines would be questioned and
would report that they saw Cramer leave the embassy at 2:34PM. It would be
noted in the marine security detachment’s log, and the surveillance cameras
would confirm this. And when the investigators searched his office and personal
residence, going through his safe, file cabinets, and hard drive, they would
learn he had been on his way to meet CK/SCINIPH—the CK digraph denoted that the
agent was Russian.

Invariably, GKNB
would be brought into the fold and put on his trail, but he was confident it
would be too, little too late. He’d likely be out of the country soon enough.
He was taking an enormous risk, operating unilaterally, but at this point he
couldn’t trust any of his colleagues from Dushanbe station or any of the agents
in his network. Not after what had happened with Wilkes. He didn’t know how far
this went.

Except SCINIPH.
He was the only one Cramer trusted.

Cramer
questioned, not for the first time, how it came to this and at what point
everything went wrong. He didn’t follow the train of thought, though. He’d
already made his decision, and there was no going back now.  

At least the
tension of waiting all afternoon for the phone call had subsided, replaced with
the confidence that it was done and he was on his way out of here. He turned
his mind toward more pleasant thoughts, such as where he would retire to when
this mess was all over. He considered the south of France or perhaps the Costa
del Sol of Spain as likely spots.

For the last
four years, home had been a cheap apartment outside Alexandria, for the brief
periods of time he found himself grounded, between overseas assignments or tours.
His ex-wife had taken his Alexandria townhouse following the divorce settlement.
He was still paying the mortgage on it, plus the college tuition costs of a
spoiled, self-absorbed twenty year old daughter he had not spoken to in over a
year.