The desk was a sinuous affair, hand-crafted, of Swedish design, with a large kidney-shaped top made of maple. Far too large for this office, thought Decker. But, as Hellard had confided to him at the Christmas party two years earlier, after several glasses of cognac, it had been acquired with the next office in mind.
Decker was sitting in an uncomfortable metal seat immediately in front of the desk. He stared at the desktop, at the reading lamp with the smoky green glass, at the stapler and Scotch tape dispenser, the chrome calculator, trying to figure out if he should answer or not.
“I’ve tried everything with you, Decker,” Hellard continued. “I’ve tried teaming you up with different agents. McCullough seems to be the only one who can stand you. I’ve tried giving you room, letting you pursue some of your crazy experiments, but you only seem to become more isolated and—”
“My last crazy experiment helped us uncover the Westlake Defense Systems breach,” Decker said.
“And stop interrupting me. Jesus Christ, Decker. Don’t you ever learn? Can’t you just sit there and be quiet for five minutes? Do you know how to do that?”
Decker continued to stare at the calculator.
“And then I find out that you’re not going to therapy, as ordered. Worse, you’re falsifying reports from the therapist and inserting them into your own personnel files.” He rolled his basset-hound eyes. “And don’t think I don’t know who helped you with that one. I’ve already called NSA to make sure that crazy Russian is censured.”
“Ivanov had nothing to do with it,” Decker said.
“So, you admit it! Do you have any idea what kind of shit storm you’ve started over at State? They’ve been trying to pressure Pyongyang to come back to six-party talks for years now. Relations between the North and the South were already going to hell since the sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong? Do you think your little stunt helped? Kim Johng-un is furious. Folks are saying this never would have happened under his father’s regime. And now, thanks to you, the Chinese are threatening to back out of the Administration’s new trade deal. Of course, we’re disavowing any involvement. But they’re livid, making all kinds of allegations and threats. If you’d been caught—”
“Which I wasn’t.”
Hellard raised his right hand. “I said, if you’d been caught. You were lucky. Do you know what they do to prisoners in Sinuiju prison?” Hellard sighed. “I’ve just gotten off the phone with CIA Deputy Director Haggerty and, believe you me, he makes me look like I’m only slightly perturbed. In fact,” he added, looking down at his feet, around the base of his desk. “Have you seen it?”
“Seen what, sir?”
“My head. I know I had it here somewhere. It was just handed to me but I seemed to have lost it.” He looked back at Decker. “If you weren’t so fucking notorious, and if I had my druthers, you’d already be chilling your ass in some cell at Fort Bragg.”
“I’m not looking for any special treatment.”
“Good. Because you won’t be getting any from me. This is a PR disaster. The White House is involved now. How do you think it’ll look if we just lock you up? You’re an idiot, Decker. This is the real world we’re talking about, not some crypto-fantasy land. You’re a fucking celebrity, God help us.”
“I never asked to—”
“Oh, shut up.” Hellard climbed to his feet. He leaned over his desk. “Your friend Seiden’s in a world of hurt too, thanks to you. You don’t care who you use, or how many careers you destroy, do you? As long as you get what you want. How do you think this reflects on the Center, on all the people you work with each day? You blow up four floors of a Chinese hotel—”
“I didn’t blow up any hotel. I keep telling you. It was somebody else. A blond man with a scar. If you’d let me get back to my desk, I could run his face through the databases.”
“Oh, right. The mysterious stranger that neither Seiden nor anyone else happened to see. Wait. Don’t tell me! He beamed in via transporter and then died when the hotel exploded, is that it? I can’t keep up. Doctor Foster says that you may be suffering from paranoid delusions brought on by your PTSD. That you’re desperate to generate attention again, to be at the center of things by reigniting the media frenzy which followed the mega-tsunami affair.”
“With all due respect, sir, Doctor Foster’s an idiot. Do you really think I wanted all this, that I went to Dandong so I could get blown up again? The Crimson Scimitar cell was set up. By Unit 110 cyber forces.”
“Yes, so you keep saying. If you had reasonable suspicions, you should have reported them. Up the line, Decker. That’s how it works. The nation’s security isn’t protected by individuals. It’s protected by teams of people, Decker, all working together up and down the chain of command. Why did you feel you had to act on your own? Worse, why did you feel you had to drag our allies into this mess?”
“Because the Center’s own security protocols have been compromised, sir. Like I told you. Someone’s been communicating with the North Koreans from here. I… I didn’t know who to trust, sir. I still don’t. But the evidence is clear.”
“Clear to you, Decker. Not to anyone else. Yeah, we checked out those hard drives from Tehran and Brooklyn. NSA examined your conspiracy theory. When you raised the red flag, the Director had no choice but to authorize a thorough investigation. I know what Xin Liu may have told you but nobody else has yet to corroborate her hypothesis. Not one single NSA analyst believes the instructions from Iran to the Crimson Scimitar cell in New York originated with Unit 110. You say a workstation at the Center was compromised. Interestingly, Liu made no mention of this. Well, which one? Whose workstation, Decker? Do you know? No, you don’t, do you? The Hotel Shanghai exploded before your transponder could pick anything up. Whatever you were trying to prove, Decker, you failed to bring anything back that might substantiate these wild allegations. A mole! At the Center! It’s preposterous. In fact, it’s insulting. There’ll be no beach time this time, Decker. No, sir. You’re going four-bagger. I want your creds and your gun, and I want them right now. Do you hear me? Immediately.”
Decker was stunned. Beach time was Bureau slang for suspension. A four-bagger was censure, transfer, suspension and probation. The works. In the end, given what Decker still had to do, it wasn’t much better than a cell at Fort Bragg.
“If I really were paranoid, Associate Director, I’d be wondering why you’re so anxious to shut this thing down,” Decker said. He regretted it as soon as the words had left his mouth.
“I’ll let that one slide, Special Agent Decker, because I know you’ve been going through a hard time of it lately, what with your daughter and all. But if you ever say anything like that again, if you ever imply that I’m part of one of your hair-brained conspiracies, your next duty will be busting Eskimos for digging clams out of season on the Kenai Peninsula. Is that clear? I said now.” He held out his hand.
Decker stood up, pulled out his ID, and dropped it on the desk by the stapler. Then he unfastened his Safariland holster and Glock, and gave them to Hellard. “Anything else?”
“No, Decker. And don’t bother to clean out your desk. Sergeant Crosley is waiting outside to escort you from the Center. We’ve already issued a press release. Something low-key. It doesn’t specify any particular reason for your sudden departure except to imply that you’re looking to spend more time with your daughter when she gets home from the hospital, and entertaining other professional opportunities. That sort of thing. Drafted by some former White House speechwriter, I think. Very nice. Expertly worded. So, unless you can’t keep your big mouth shut about what happened in Dandong, it’s unlikely anyone else will be hearing about it. The Chinese are calling it a gas leak and fire caused by someone using unauthorized cooking equipment in the hotel. But what else are they going to say? It would be embarrassing to admit they let a single rogue agent penetrate one of their KPA sanctuaries. And they’ve muzzled the North Koreans for once for exactly the same reason. Everyone, from the President and Secretary of State to the Bureau Director wants to forget about this whole thing, to make it just go away. Let’s face it, Decker. They want you to just go away.”