WASHINGTON, D.C.
WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF Staff Bobby Patterson felt like he was juggling live hand grenades. Everything involved in the mess in Pakistan seemed to trail right back to his desk. President Russell, his friend of many years, had just chewed him out and threatened to fire him for using poor judgment and overstepping his authority. “Put a lid on this thing, Bobby,” the president had ordered.
Patterson summoned a Town Car to go out to the CIA and talk it over with Director Bart Geneen, whom he counted as an ally in the political battle. On the way there, Patterson remained silent, ignoring the monuments and lines of trees beyond the tinted windows as he considered options and political risks. If he did not exert strong control, things could spin even further out of hand, and that would mean his job. The black car wound smoothly off the Beltway and into the woods outside Langley, and once he was through the extraordinary security apparatus at the front gate, a sense of privacy and secrecy seemed to drift upon him like a silent blanket of snow. It felt good. The car proceeded along a shaded lane, past the parking lots and right up to the front entrance of shining glass and polished marble. He was met by an escort who gave him a VIP visitor’s clip-on tag, then led the way through the inner courtyard. Patterson, lost in his own puzzles, ignored the statue to the code-breakers of World War II, the famed Kryptos sculptured fountain that contained its own enigmatic 865-character cipher. The two men entered the holiest of holy places for secrecy; imbedded along one wall was a galaxy of bright stars, each representing a fallen operative. The stars bore no names, for the anonymity of the agents lived on beyond their lives, truly unsung heroes. If one’s name became known, enemy intelligence services would pounce on everyone who ever had anything to do with the exposed agent. These men and women carried their secrets beyond their graves.
Patterson’s confidence grew with every step. With all of the professionals on this big campus and the billions of dollars of support, he felt fresh wind pushing his sails. He had given the job to the right people. All things would be set right. His decision to let the CIA be the lead dog in investigating the devastating terrorist attack in Pakistan was a good one. The Agency could not afford to fail any more than Patterson.
Then, instead of going to the office of Director Geneen, the escort veered into a basement conference room, a drab place in which pastel colors did nothing to dispel its blandness. Underground at the CIA: How about this for security? Waiting for him was Mel Langdon, the director of operations, who motioned the chief of staff to a chair beside a worn oblong wood table that bore circular stains left by coffee cups and water glasses. A bulletin board and a white grease board were filled with documents and writing, and scraps of loose paper littered the dreary carpet. Work is done in this place, Patterson thought, and Langdon is the officer who handles the hard decisions.
“I hope you brought along your thinking cap, Mr. Patterson. We have a few problems.”
Bobby Patterson closed his eyes and sighed. Now what? “Where’s the director?”
“Unavailable.” Langdon’s response was curt and to the point. “Our principals should not be directly involved with this so they can maintain deniability. That’s why you and I are relegated to this room in the basement, a couple of high-level flunkies doing the devil’s deeds, far out of sight.”
Not meeting with the director came as a direct slap in the face for Patterson. Has word already leaked that I’m in trouble? Bobby Patterson shrugged his shoulders, adjusted his suit coat, and covered his embarrassment at the impolite response. “Let’s go from the top. What’s up?”
“Do you remember our shooter who was killed in the Pakistan strike? Jim Hall?”
Patterson did. “FBI identified the corpse, right?”
“No. They never actually saw the body. They worked from a print from a severed finger and DNA from bloodstains, all supplied by the Pakis, and came up with the positive identity.”
“Well? He’s dead. So what?”
“He’s not dead, and he’s gone rogue.” Patterson worked a panel of buttons, and a viewing screen unrolled from a hidden reel in the ceiling, the room lights dimmed, and a series of PowerPoint slides began. The butchered body of a woman in a pool of blood. The words CIA SPY! scrawled on a white wall above her.
“My God! Who is that?
“Her name is Margaret Dunston, and she was one of ours. She worked in Dubai for Baker Harris and Associates, a company that we set up to maintain surveillance and exert some control in the oil industry, and a pretty expensive piece of work with a lot of years of development invested. This is Jim Hall’s way of telling us that he has blown the entire Baker Harris show, a whole network.”
The pictures now changed to a dirt courtyard in some unidentified, barren place. Close-ups of the bruised and broken faces of two men standing against a wall, then the camera pulling back to show a line of other men facing them, holding AK-47s at the ready. The next picture was of the rifles being fired, and the last, the victims slumped over dead. “Two more of our agents, local talent this time, who had infiltrated the Taliban in the Northwest Frontier. Hall claims to have sold them out to an old friend of his, Muhammed Waleed.”
“The Taliban warlord in Waziristan?”
“The same,” said Langdon. “He left a letter at the scene of the murder of the woman in Dubai, confessing everything. He wants a deal.”
“We can’t deal with a man like that,” Patterson said. “He’s a terrorist himself!”
Langdon turned the lights back up and the gruesome pictures vanished, but the screen stayed down. “Like I said earlier, Bobby. We’re doing the devil’s deeds here today. We are backed into a corner and pretty much have to give him what he wants. The man is a walking encyclopedia of Agency secrets. He could cripple us.”
“Then what does he want? A pardon?”
Langdon replied. “He wants very little. He has stolen a few million dollars from a covert account and plans to go find somewhere quiet to retire in leisure. We wipe that from the books. He instructs that we pay him off with another million dollars a year for the next ten years through covert channels. Petty cash. Mostly, he does not want to be looking over his shoulder for a CIA-paid hit squad. In return, Jim Hall proposes that if we leave him alone-just keep pretending that he really is dead-then he will leave us alone, and our other networks and agents remain operational and safe.”
Patterson rubbed his hands together. “Are you willing to do that?”
“It actually is a small price. Yes, we can send somebody out to get him in a few years, but it might be better just to cut him loose rather than take the chance of failure. My recommendation would be to back off and let him go. After all, as he mentions, he also supplied us with two patsies to take the fall for Pakistan. Jim Hall was a very thorough agent.”
Bobby Patterson was absorbing the troubling information and admitted that it made a weird kind of sense. A rogue agent silenced and two people to blame for the Pakistan troubles. “What about those others?”
“First, we have Agent Lauren Carson, who was Jim Hall’s assistant.” Mel Langdon worked his slide show again and a series of photos of a beautiful young woman walked across the screen. “She was under suspicion almost from the start, primarily for helping him steal the money, and now she has cut and run. We found evidence of her apparent guilt, so our top investigator is running a search for her and is confident that she will be in custody within a few hours. Once we have Carson, we take our own sweet time to convict her in a secret court, and send her to a secure prison within our private system. We impose a total press blackout on Carson, because the news vultures would love to run stories of the beauty queen spymistress. Unfortunately, she is also CIA, and we don’t want that connection known.” A final picture of the smiling woman lingered on the screen, then disappeared in a shower of pixels, just as the real Lauren Carson was about to do.
Patterson realized that he was sweating, despite the air-conditioning. He had been in many negotiations in his life, but this was literally life-and-death material. Sending an attractive young woman to a prison cell for the rest of her life while letting a real killer go free was hard to swallow. “What about the other person that Hall claims to have set up for Pakistan? I assume that would be the Marine sniper?”
“Yes.” A few photos of Kyle Swanson came onto the screen, and he was never smiling. His eyes, in each picture, no matter how informal, carried a flash of predator. “That one is a done deal. We got the Paki government to agree to turn him over if we filed a pack of murder charges against him. We pick him up from prison tomorrow and fly him back to the States. Gunny Swanson will be secured in Fort Leavenworth. Once in, he won’t be coming out. He will suffer a fatal mishap before he ever faces a military tribunal.”
Bobby Patterson saw the symmetry as the noose was pulled tight on Kyle Swanson. President Russell had sided with the generals and come down hard on Patterson for overstepping his bounds in the flap about Task Force Trident. “So this renegade Marine sniper from Task Force Trident will become the face of this disaster in Pakistan, murdering innocent people and all?”
Mel Langdon brought the lights back up for a final time and found Patterson looking more comfortable than he did when he had first entered the room. Sold him. “Yes. An out-of-control covert operative goes nuts, takes the fall, and the little secret military group that runs him will be abolished. The White House and the CIA cannot be held responsible that he was not trained and handled properly.”
Patterson thought quietly as he mulled the situation. A photograph of Kyle Swanson lingered on the screen, as if staring at him with that icy and unrelenting glare. The man is afraid of nothing, thought Patterson. “How do we wrap it up?”
“Lauren Carson is as good as caught,” Langdon replied with confidence. “The sniper is already in custody. All we have to do is post a coded answer on a phony Facebook account that Jim Hall can access from any Wi-Fi computer or PDA, anywhere in the world, and he goes away.”
“What could go wrong?” Bobby Patterson asked. It was more hope than question. The end is in sight! Put a lid on this thing, the president had said. The White House chief of staff breathed a sigh of relief.
“Nothing,” said the CIA director of operations.
“Okay,” said Patterson. “Send the Facebook message and we’re done.”