“Isn’t the CIA forgetting something?” Weiss wanted to know. “Captains and crews don’t mean much if they don’t have a boat. Or are you saying they managed to snatch someone’s submarine.”
“We’re working on it.”
“I’ll bet you are. In the meantime, the prisoners belong to me.”
McGarvey held his silence. If Weiss was on someone’s payroll, he was either very dull, or bright enough to hide behind what was almost too obvious a show of stupidity.
Weiss again looked to Higgins for support, but again the colonel said nothing. “Give me your names, and I’ll check them against our database,” he told McGarvey. “If I come up with something, I’ll arrange for the interviews. Supervised interviews.”
McGarvey nodded. “We’ll need a translator who speaks Farsi as well as Arabic.”
“We have them,” Weiss said. “And I’ll be looking over your shoulder.”
Otto had come up with the four names, out of the three-hundred-plus prisoners being held here. But he had no solid evidence linking any of them with the Iranian navy, only speculation derived from the transcripts of the interviews of more than two thousand detainees since the start of the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The only real information he’d come up with was on the five prisoners who had been broken out last week. McGarvey didn’t think they would learn much from these four, but he wanted to see what Weiss’s reaction would be. If the navy spook was the conduit, breaking him could give them a path that might stretch all the way back to Pakistan.
“I have no objections to that, provided you promise not to interfere, and that you’ll give us a decent translator,” McGarvey said.
“We can have one of ours flown down by this afternoon,” Gloria suggested on cue.
“I have some good people on staff,” Weiss said, not asking the obvious: Why hadn’t they brought their own translator in the first place?
But Higgins got it, and he managed to hide a slight smile behind his hand.
“Very well,” McGarvey said.
Gloria took four thin files from her attaché case and handed them across the conference table to Weiss. “Assa al-Haq, Yohanan Qurayza, Zia Warrag, and Ali bin Ramdi,” she said. “We know that they’re here, but not much else.”
Weiss briefly glanced at the material, then nodded smugly. He’d managed to push his weight around. “Go over to the BOQ, get settled, and grab a late lunch over at the O Club. As soon as I come up with something, I’ll send a runner for you.”
“Make this happen, Commander,” General Maddox said. “Without trouble, so our guests will get what they came for, and leave on schedule.”
“You can count on it, sir,” Weiss said. He got to his feet, nodded to Higgins, and left.
“We’re in a delicate situation here, Ms. Ibenez,” Maddox said. “Is there any chance that Cuban intelligence knows that you’ve returned?”
“I honestly don’t know, General,” she said. “It might depend on if there’s a leak here on base.”
The general’s expression darkened. “Do your job and get out of here.” He gave McGarvey a bleak look, then got up and left the conference room.
Colonel Higgins stayed behind. “Do you need transportation?”
“Just get us a vehicle, we won’t need a driver,” McGarvey said. “What’s the problem with Weiss?”
Higgins managed a slight grin. “Tom takes some getting used to. His friends love him, but everyone else has trouble with him. But he’s got a tough job to do, and he’s under a microscope that stretches all the way back to Washington. Your being here doesn’t help.”
“Does he have any friends?” Gloria asked.
Higgins shook his head. “None that I know of.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Adkins and the others stood up as his secretary, Dhalia Swanson, ushered Bob Talarico’s widow, Toni, and her two children, Robert Jr. and Hillary, into the DCI’s office.
It was nearly two o’clock and he’d not had the time to have lunch, for which he was grateful now, because his stomach did a slow roll. Toni Talarico was a small woman, scarcely five feet tall — Bob had called her his pocket Tintoretto — but this afternoon it seemed as if she had sunk inside herself. Her ten-year-old son was as tall as she, and her eight-year-old daughter came to her mother’s shoulders.
She wore a black dress and a small pillbox hat, and the children, one on each hand, were dressed in black as well.
They looked shell-shocked. It was the first impression that came into Adkins’s mind. They weren’t so much sad as they were dazed, especially Toni. It was as if they’d been in a fierce battle, but that they expected Bob to be here in the DCI’s office waiting for them. They wanted someone to tell them that everything would be okay.
But it wouldn’t be. Because Bob was dead, and Adkins thought back to when his wife had died. He hadn’t really accepted that fact as reality until six months later when he woke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. He’d turned on every light in the house and had gone searching for her, convinced that she had been hiding from him. That morning, he’d finally come to terms with his loss, and had finally begun the process of grieving and healing.
He sincerely hoped that Toni would recover faster than he had; for her children’s sake, if not for her own.
Her husband’s boss, Howard McCann, gave her and the girl a hug, and shook Robert Jr.’s hand. “I’m sorry, Toni,” he said, choking on the words.
She smiled up at him and patted his arm. “He knew the risks when he took the oath. I just want to know that what he gave his life for was worth it.”
“Every bit,” Adkins said. “What he and his partner did might have saved us from another 9/11, or at least pointed us in that direction.”
Toni looked at the others — the DDCI David Whittaker and the Company General Counsel Carleton Patterson. “Where is she?”
“We can’t tell—” McCann started.
“She’s back in Cuba following up,” Adkins said. “She has Kirk McGarvey with her. But that can’t leave this room.”
Toni actually smiled, which nearly tore Adkins’s heart out. “Bob always said that he was the best man to ever work here. And don’t worry, Mr. Director, we’re a CIA family. We know how to keep a secret.”
“Dad taught us,” Robert Jr. said, trying very hard to be brave.
Adkins caught his secretary’s eye. She was at the door, tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. She started to leave, but he motioned her back. “You may stay,” he said.
She closed the door and came to stand just behind Toni and the children.
Whittaker handed Adkins a long narrow hinged box, and a leather-bound citation folder. “You must also understand that this cannot be made public.”
Toni’s lips compressed, and she nodded. “But the children and I will know. That would have been enough for Bob. He wasn’t looking for hero status.”
“But he was just that, Mrs. Talarico,” Patterson told her. “An American hero.”
Adkins opened the silk-lined box that contained an impressive-looking medal attached to a ribbon and brass clasp, and he and everyone else in the room straightened up.
“The United States of America, the Central Intelligence Agency, and a grateful nation, bestow posthumously the Distinguished Service medal to Senior Field Officer Robert Benjamin Talarico, for service far beyond the call of duty,” Adkins began solemnly. “Although the details of the mission in which Robert gave his life cannot be disclosed at this time, be assured that the operation was of extreme importance and absolutely vital to U.S. interests here and abroad, as well as the safety of all Americans everywhere.