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  “I’m going to need more than this,” McGarvey said.

  Rencke laid the thick file on the desk. “I made hard copies. I got the names of the four Russian officers under investigation, their contacts, the how and when they got it out of the depot three months ago, the thirty million U.S. they were paid for it, and where it crossed the border at Nizhny Pyandzh into Afghanistan.” Otto shrugged. “After that it disappears.” His eyes were wild. “But bin Laden has the number, so we know where it showed up.”

  “Okay, who are these friends of yours in Amsterdam?” It was the news he’d been expecting, and yet it was none the less frightening.

  “Just kids,” Rencke said. “Their parents were the ones who hacked the system over at Lawrence Livermore in the eighties. Only way we found out about it was because they’d screwed up the payroll section. Wouldn’t balance.”

  “Think they can get back into the FSB system?”

  “The Russians aren’t spending much on security, but their encryption programs are still pretty good. What do you want them to look for?”

  “I want to know what the FSB is doing about this. They sure as hell wouldn’t tell me if I picked up the phone and called Kuznetsov.” Anatoli Kuznetsov was the director of the Federal Security Service, which was the new KGB.

  “They got in that far, they could take the next step.” Otto grinned again, which he did whenever he was contemplating doing something illegal. “I can give them a little incentive.”

  McGarvey gave him a hard look. “I brought you back to help out, not to give away the store.”

  “Mac, this is worth it, if we can stop the bastard. The next time out ain’t gonna be so pretty. All I’m giving them is an encryption buster. An old one we don’t use anymore.”

  “Okay, so what about the guy with bin Laden that Alien told us about?”

  “I came up with a dozen possibilities, but I’ve gone as far with them as I can without more hard information. A description from another source, something in his handwriting, maybe a strand of hair, or a recording of his voice. Anything.”

  “Maybe I can help with that.”

  Otto’s eyes went wide. “Come on, Mac, you’re not telling me what I think you’re telling me now, are you? Bzz, wrong answer, recruit. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  McGarvey smiled sadly for his friend. Candide once said that optimism is a mania for maintaining that all is well when things are going badly. He’d never been guilty of that frame of mind, or of its opposite, though both were common maladies in Washington. He was going to drop a bombshell in the President’s lap, and he hoped the man was up to the decisions he was going to have to start making. A lot of lives depended on it. But Otto was as naive as he was brilliant. One of his failings was trying to keep his friends out of harm’s way. Maybe it was a failing they all should have.

  The DDO’s conference room was a long, windowless space that was mechanically and electronically isolated from the rest of the building, and from the outside world. Anything said or done in the room was completely safe from any kind of eavesdropping. The weakest links were the people who gathered here, and McGarvey knew and trusted all of them. It was all he’d ever had, all he’d ever wanted and worked for — trust. Now that he had it he was afraid of letting his friends down.

  When he arrived at 1:25 a.m. all nine of his staff members were seated and waiting for him. They included Dick Adkins, his assistant deputy director of operations; Randy

  Bock, chief of Foreign Intelligence which was in charge of espionage activities; Jared Kraus, Technical Services; Scott Graves, Counterintelligence; Arthur Hendrickson, in charge of the Covert Action section, which was responsible for propaganda and disinformation; Raife Melloch, Missions and Programs; David Whittaker, the area divisions chief in charge of the CIA’s bases, stations and missions worldwide; Brenda Jordan, Operational Services, which came up with cover stories and legends for field agents; and Otto Rencke.

  “Good morning,” McGarvey said, taking his place at the head of the long table. “Thanks for coming in, but it’s going to be a long night, so take your coffee strong and black.”

  Everyone around the table was angry and pumped up. One of their own had been murdered. But worse than that, his family had been killed too. They would have no trouble staying awake this night.

  “As you know by now, our Riyadh chief of station Alien Trumble, his wife and two children, and two other innocent bystanders were shot to death seven and a half hours ago in the parking lot of Disney’s EPCOT in Orlando. This was not a simple drive-by shooting, it was a carefully planned operation carried out by professionals. Our first tasks are to find out who ordered the hit and why.”

  “I don’t think there’s any question about that,” Adkins said. His eyes were on fire, he looked like an angry pit bull ready to attack.

  “I don’t agree,” McGarvey replied sharply. “So I want all of you to go into this with open minds. There are no foregone conclusions. Clear?”

  Heads nodded, but he could see their skepticism and reluctance.

  “We’re going to generate a SNIE this morning, which I want on my desk no later than 0800.” National Intelligence Estimates, which listed targets for the entire U.S. intelligence community, estimates of future international events and enemy strengths, a technical intelligence review, and decisions on which product was to be shared with which

  U.S. allies, were usually generated once a week. They came from the U.S. Intelligence Board made up of the director of Central Intelligence, the heads of the military intelligence branches, the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, FBI, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Treasury Department. Special National Intelligence Estimates were done by any of the agencies on an incident basis. The purpose of the documents was to brief the President and the nation’s top policy makers on whatever crisis the U.S. was faced with. “If it’s a fact, state it. But if it’s a wild-ass guess, make that clear too.”

  “Where are you taking this, Mac?” Adkins asked. “Because from where we’re sitting it looks pretty clear. Alien met with bin Laden and a week later he was assassinated. At least one of the shooters had a connection.”

  “Okay, that goes in the SNIE as your guess, or as a consensus estimate. The Bureau thinks there’s a strong possibility that the other three shooters took a commercial flight out of Orlando to Havana. I want our resources there to see what they can come up with. But I don’t want anyone burned trying to get to the air crews in Havana this morning. They’ll be back in Miami or Orlando later this morning.

  “Fred Rudolph is handling the Bureau’s investigation, so it’ll be a good one. But I’m telling you now that he thinks the Jersey City trucking company where Yousef was apparently employed hasn’t been a bin Laden operation for five years. I want you to keep that in mind.

  “I want you to keep a number of other things in mind too. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack yet, something bin Laden’s followers always do, even if he doesn’t take any of the blame personally. Alien met with him in Khartoum, so why’d they wait for him to come home to kill him? And bin Laden told Alien that he wanted to meet with someone else. Someone with more authority, which means he might have something on his mind that he wants to talk about.”

  “Maybe he just wants to burn a bigger fish,” Whittaker said. Trumble’s murder had devastated him. His chiefs of stations were family.

  “That’s a possibility too,” McGarvey said. “And I want it in the SNIE. But we’ve been waiting for bin Laden to pull off something big. I believe he’s made his plans, and now he’s having second thoughts. He really does want to talk to someone.”

  “Bullshit, Mac,” Adkins exploded, “He’s setting up a trap and someone’s supposed to walk into it?”

  McGarvey didn’t mind the outburst. He expected nothing less than complete honesty from his staff, and they gave it to him. “Maybe, maybe not. But if he wanted to lure someone else close enough to take the shot, why kill Alien and
his family?” McGarvey shook his head. “Doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well then, who did it?” Adkins asked, frustrated.

  “One of bin Laden’s people who might be afraid that his boss is getting cold feet.”

  “It’s a warning?” Whittaker asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “It could be that they don’t want bin Laden talking to us.”

  “If we lay that on his doorstep, whoever’s behind this has to know he’d be risking another missile attack on their camps,” Jared Kraus said. “Makes him either very stupid, or a man who knows something that we don’t.”

  “Or thinks he does,” McGarvey said. “Bin Laden gave Alien a serial number that Otto has found a match for.”

  Rencke had loaded his briefing into the large-screen rear projection television monitor built into the wall at one end of the room. He dimmed the lights and the same 3-D diagram that he showed McGarvey came up. It got everyone’s attention, and for the next ten minutes he explained what he’d come up with and what he thought it meant. When he was finished the room was so quiet that they could hear the gentle rush of air through the AC vents. The only thing left showing on the screen now was the engineering diagram of the device.

  “I can see why he wants to talk to somebody,” Adkins said, subdued. “This might be too big even for him.” He tore his eyes away from the monitor. “Who are we going to send…?”

  Whittaker interrupted. “That could be a moot point unless we can find him first. Our contacts in Kabul say he’s dropped out of sight again. The Taliban aren’t saying anything, as usual, but it’s possible he’s no longer in Afghanistan.”

  “He’s done that before,” McGarvey said. “If he wants to talk to us, he’ll get the word out when he’s ready.”

  The telephone console at McGarvey’s position burred softly. He picked it up. “Yes.”

  “I’m here.” It was the CIA director, Roland Murphy.

  “We’re just finishing, General. I’ll come over in a few minutes.”

  “Very well.”

  McGarvey hung up and checked his watch. It was coming up on two. “Okay, we have six hours to put this together. In the meantime I want our assets and people hunkering down for the moment.”

  “While trying to find out where bin Laden is hiding out, and who ordered the hit,” Adkins said dryly.

  “Right,” McGarvey said.

  “You still haven’t told us who you’re going to send to meet with him if we can arrange it.”

  “No, I haven’t,” McGarvey replied softly. There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times. Voltaire wrote that to Cardinal de Berms. He was talking about the Catholic Church, which he despised, but the idea was no different here and now, McGarvey thought, because he was even wondering about admitting the whole truth to himself just yet, except that he had let Tremble and his family down.

  It was one of the worse times in McGarvey’s life, because in his heart of hearts he knew that he was to blame for the deaths of Alien Trumble and his family. And he knew that he was going to have to drop a bombshell in the lap of the new President. When he walked into the DCI’s palatial office with its view of the river valley, Murphy was on the phone. He poured a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette and took a seat in front of the desk.

  Anger would come, he knew, but for the moment it was his job to keep his head on straight so that they could pick up the pieces and avert a much larger, more terrible, even unimaginable disaster from befalling them. He also knew that he would forever look back at this time as a watershed in his own life; a new chapter in his long career in the Company beyond anything he’d ever imagined in his most violent nightmares. The same insistent voice in his head that had told him on countless occasions to get out while he could, to put as much distance as possible between himself and the people he loved and respected so that when the bad guys came looking they would find only him and not his friends, was hammering at the back of his head now. And he had run, more than once; from Lausanne, from Paris, and even from Milford, Delaware where he’d once taught eighteenth-century literature. But it had done no good, because each time the call to action had come he had responded. And each time someone he had cared for had lost their lives. Marta Fredricks, Jacqueline Belleau, even his ex-wife and daughter had almost been killed because of him. Now it was Alien and his family. McGarvey tried to see the good in what he had done, especially in the year since he had been called back to take over the DO, but he was having a hard time focusing.

  He could almost hear the distant sound of trumpets; the battle horns; the sounds of men shouting and screaming, bullets flying; people dying because he knew that this one was going to be bad. A call to arms again, like he’d heard for twenty-five years? Or just now this morning an overwrought imagination caused by tiredness and guilt.

  He looked at his hands and he could see Alien Trumble’s blood on them.

  Roland Murphy finished his conversation and put the encrypted telephone down. He stared speculatively at McGarvey for a few beats, then the expression on his craggy, bulldog face softened, “I know how you feel,” he said gently. “We’re all feeling the same thing. But this was not your fault. Do you read me?”

  “Ultimately everything that happens in the DO is my responsibility,” McGarvey replied softly. It wasn’t a matter of whose fault anything was, that was Washington bureaucratic bullshit. The only thing that mattered right now was making the right response. Already his black mood was being replaced by a quiet anger and determination, but he knew that he would have to be careful not to lash out at everyone around him. It was one of his least endearing character flaws.

  “You’re right,” Murphy conceded. “But don’t beat yourself to death over it, because we have work to do. That was Dennis Berndt. We’re briefing the National Security Council at nine o’clock.” Berndt was the President’s national security adviser, and he was no friend of the CIA’s, though no one knew why. “They’re going to ask some tough questions, and we’re going to have to give them some tough answers.”

  “The SNIE will be ready by eight,” McGarvey said. “But attacking bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan again is not one of the answers I’m going to give them.” He kept his anger in check and his tone reasonable. “There was no reason for him to kill Alien, and especially not his wife and children. Not now.”

  “Speculation, Kirk, nothing more.”

  “Maybe. But there’s no hard proof that bin Laden ordered them murdered.”

  “Slaughtered, you mean,” Murphy replied sharply. His anger was bubbling to the surface. Like everyone else at headquarters he wanted to strike back right now at whoever was responsible. Which was a good thing, and something that the President was going to demand, providing they didn’t hit the wrong target for the wrong reason.

  At sixty-two. Murphy was twelve years McGarvey’s senior, although this morning he looked twenty years older than that. In his day he had commanded a tank battalion, and he had earned the nickname Bull Murphy, after the navy’s Admiral Bill Halsey, because despite his size he could move quickly and decisively, and like Halsey he had no trouble making straight-ahead decisions. It was quite a combination, an old friend of Murphy’s had told McGarvey a few years ago. Watching Roland climbing in and out of tanks was like watching an angry bull that had taken ballet lessons. It was nothing short of awesome. You got out of the way when the man was on the move. But nearly two decades behind a desk had softened his lines, blurred the edges, slowed his body, though not his mind.

  “It wasn’t his style, you know that. You read Alien’s report.”

  “The bastard thinks he can kill our people and get away with it,” Murphy countered strongly. “Well, he’s dead wrong, and we’re going to show it to him.” Murphy had directed the CIA through three White House administrations, and he had never been responsible for the loss of an employee’s family. Do the job, but get it done safely, was his watchword. The old cowboy days of shoot ‘em outs in Czechoslovakia, parachute dro
ps into Hungary, clandestine jungle training camps in Honduras and arms deals with the Contras were things of the past. Intelligence-gathering in the twenty-first century had become primarily a matter of technical means; electronic eavesdropping, satellites, computers. Shooters like McGarvey had become anachronisms, and Murphy, who had directed many such black operations, had always despised the endeavors with everything in his soul, while at the same time understanding that sometimes violent means were necessary. But he counted this tragic business with Trumble a personal failure. He was ready to turn the clock back. Strike the bastard responsible where he lived.

  He glanced at the clock on his desk. “I want you ready at eight-thirty, that’ll give us plenty of time to get over to the White House. Since it’s your operation you’ll give the briefing.” He gave McGarvey another speculative look. “Killing one of our chiefs of station is one thing, but his family? That’s nothing but terrorism, and bin Laden is the master of it. We’re going to teach him a lesson. It’s something that the President wants, and it’s something I’m going to go along with.” “There’s another consideration, General.”

  “Then you’ll have to offer the man an alternative, Kirk. Otherwise we’re going to war.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The White House

  The DCI’s limousine pulled up at the White House west gate a few minutes before 9:00 a.m.” and the guard waved them through. Both Murphy and McGarvey were well known to the Secret Service. They proceeded up the driveway to the portico where Ken Chapin, the DCI’s bodyguard jumped out and opened the car door for his boss.

  McGarvey let himself out and stood for a moment looking up at the marine guard at the door. Forty-two presidents before this one had made a lot of tough decisions from this building. Just one year into an administration that was thrust upon him, Lawrence Haynes was going to be faced with a very tough call. McGarvey had the feeling that the man was up to it. At least he hoped for all of their sakes that he was.