“Finish.” D/CIA said it softly, a statement, not a question, weighing the import of that word.
Denny nodded slowly. He had expected some shock from the man, but the older man showed nothing to indicate this was unexpected.
“You are asking for armed drones, then?” the director asked.
Denny replied defensively. “There are weaponized platforms that are extremely discreet. Virtually undetectable, and fundamentally no chance for collateral damage considering all the fail-safes and controls we have in place to prevent accidents and overkill.”
The silence in the room hung over both men. Unticlass="underline" “Just one perfunctory question, Denny.”
“What’s that?”
D/CIA leaned forward. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Carmichael sighed. Clearly, he would not be getting his armed drones.
“I’m not putting fucking remote-controlled killing machines in the airspace over Washington, D.C.!”
“I understand, sir. We’ll proceed without them. I just thought you understood how dangerous a situation we have here, from a political perspective, if nothing else.”
D/CIA snorted out a laugh. “There is one thing you are not taking into consideration, Carmichael. One thing that makes me very different from you.”
“And what’s that?”
“I don’t really give a damn about your Gray Man. I hope you get him before he murders more of our good people, but this really isn’t my fight. And I don’t care about politics. Not anymore. CIA won’t be my last job, but it sure as hell will be my last government job. I’ll be a college president three weeks after walking out the door here, and no one at UCLA or Duke is going to give a rat’s ass that a rogue assassin rampaged around in D.C. for a few days shooting fascist spymasters before he was shot dead.”
Neither Ohlhauser nor Babbitt were fascists, nor were they spymasters. But Denny got the point.
“I understand, sir,” Denny said, but it wasn’t true. He was tired of kissing this man’s ass. It hadn’t won him what he wanted. So he changed gears. “You don’t want to be involved, I get it. But understand this. I will get what I need. Even if I am forced to pursue other avenues.”
“You mean you’re going to go to POTUS.”
“I haven’t ruled it out.”
The director said, “I’m the goddamned director of the CIA. You report to me.”
“And I have reported.”
The seventy-three-year-old fumed. “You see yourself as the king here, Carmichael. The master of all you survey. You don’t think you can be stopped, do you?”
A small snicker from Denny now. “Not by you, sir. No.”
D/CIA rose to this challenge. “I might not be a killer like you, but by virtue of my title and rank, you know I have access to people who can stop people like you.”
Carmichael just smiled. “You have direct access, of course. You just call me up, and I arrange it. Which means, I have access to the same assets as you.”
“That a threat?”
Carmichael shook his head. “Nothing of the sort. I am just reminding you that I serve as a buffer between you and the elements out there that could be harmful to you.” He paused. “Politically. I am speaking in purely political terms. Don’t get dramatic.”
“Get out of my office.”
Denny stood and turned for the door. Then, just as Denny knew he would, the director blinked.
“Carmichael?”
Denny turned. “Sir?”
“Go back to your cave. Kill this man who’s causing so much trouble. I’ll give you a lot of latitude, just like you were going after some high-value target overseas. But I’m not giving you killer robots.”
“Very well, sir.”
He turned to leave again, but once more the director called out. “They tell me you have been sleeping in your office for the last week.”
“Well… I’ve been working.”
“I’ll abide a lot of your extreme actions, Denny, but not that one. Not even considering your situation. Sets a bad tone for the younger generation when we old folks don’t behave with the proper decorum. You’re a divisional director, for God’s sake. Start acting like one. This isn’t a boardinghouse.”
Carmichael blew out a hidden sigh of frustration. “Sir.”
Carmichael stuck his head in Suzanne Brewer’s TOC just five minutes later. Brewer had been leaning over one of her analysts while he checked a possible Gentry sighting in Foggy Bottom. It wasn’t Gentry, the two of them decided almost immediately, so Suzanne was just about to head back to her office when she looked up to find herself facing the director of her division.
“Sir?”
She’d grown accustomed to Denny’s clipped voice.
“I need a safe house, stat. You keep the TOC running here, but I need to get away from the Langley Campus to work without the director’s interference. I want to be linked to you with a dedicated umbilical, not out in the boonies, but close by.”
Brewer thought a moment. “Springfield Twelve has all the coms you’ll need.”
Carmichael shook his head. “Alexandria Eight has better security, I’ll go there.”
“We haven’t used Alexandria Eight in years.”
“It’s a fortress. I want a fortress.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get a team there stat to sweep and clean, and pull tech staff to get everything online. I’ll oversee it personally. Give me a little time to prep and we’ll schedule a movement to your new facility by the end of the day.”
“Good,” Denny said, then he disappeared from the doorway.
“Sir?” she called after him, and he returned. He looked annoyed. “Zack Hightower isn’t answering his phone.”
“Don’t worry about it. He’s doing something for Mayes. You might or might not get him back.”
“But—”
Carmichael interrupted. “Alexandria Eight, Suzanne.”
“Yes, sir.”
57
Catherine King pushed right through the closed door to the office of the executive editor of the Washington Post. She got away with doing this sort of thing because she’d known the man since the late seventies when he had been her professor. The two had worked together at the Post since soon after, they’d become close friends, and they had developed an informal rapport that stunned some of the younger reporters.
But the other five men and women who came in behind Catherine all felt a sense of panic and dread when she ordered them to follow her in with assurances that all would be forgiven once she told the executive editor what had just occurred. While Catherine took a seat, her four-person investigative team, as well as metro reporter Andy Shoal, all lined up against the wall, most looking at their shoes or at books on a bookshelf, because no one wanted to make eye contact with the man behind the desk.
No one else in the room knew the subject of this impromptu confab except Catherine herself, but her excitement put everyone on notice that something big was about to be revealed.
Ten minutes later everyone, including the executive editor, knew what they had to do. The dramatic but simple narrative the paper had advanced in the past few days — that a psycho with a gun was terrorizing intelligence officials — had suddenly transformed into a multilayered story of international intrigue and government cover-up. No one knew what was true, but these were journalists; so the knowledge that they had to find the answers quickly meant everyone crammed into the office felt like a sprinter in the starting blocks, ready for the gun to go off.
And the executive editor pulled the trigger.