McCaskey had parked on C Street. He walked back with Maria. His wife was scowling and complained that this was what Spain was like under Franco.
“If everyone El Caudillo arrested had actually been guilty of crimes, Spain would have been a nation of felons,” she said.
“The situations are not the same,” McCaskey said. “Franco was a tyrant. Ed is a good officer trying to protect American lives.”
“This is how good officers become tyrants,” she replied.
“Not always,” he said with more hope than conviction.
The American system was not perfect, but as they drove to Op-Center, McCaskey took comfort in a slogan that had been written on the blackboard of a Community Outreach Theory class he once took at the FBI Academy in Quantico. It was a reassuring quote from Jefferson: “The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.”
SIX
Mike Rodgers pulled into the Op-Center parking lot moments after Darrell McCaskey arrived. Their reserved parking spots were side by side, and McCaskey waited while Rodgers got out. The spots were numbered rather than named. If security were ever compromised and someone rigged a car to explode, the assassin would have to know which vehicle he wanted. That was why Rodgers had started leasing cars every six months instead of buying them. He had made a number of powerful enemies abroad with his Striker assaults. The general was not paranoid, but Bob Herbert once told him that Washington, D.C., had over five hundred freelance “street potatoes,” as they were called. Individuals who watched the comings and goings of government officials and reported the information to foreign governments. That data could be used for everything from blackmail to murder. Changing cars, like alternating the routes Rodgers took to work, was just good sense. Of course, the general half-expected to open the newspaper one morning and read about some poor joker with his last car getting blown up in a driveway or sniped at in a shopping mall. Then again, Rodgers always checked the provenance of his vehicle. He did not want to end up with a car that had been rented by an embassy employee or drug dealer who was someone else’s target.
“Did we both sleep in?” Rodgers asked.
“Nah,” McCaskey said. “Maria and I were on a stakeout for a friend with the postal service.”
“Some careless spy using the same drop box more than once?” Rodgers asked.
“Sort of. He was passing material to the carrier to bypass security inspections,” McCaskey said.
Our own people betraying us, Rodgers thought. Whenever he heard something like that, the general felt every civilized inhibition slide away. He would have no trouble executing someone to whom a payday mattered more than his country. “Did you get them?”
McCaskey nodded. “Maria had the spook spotted from the start. That lady’s intuition is amazing.”
“Jealous?” Rodgers joked.
“No. Proud. I went after a guy who was web camming the Lincoln Memorial. He turned out to be undercover with Homeland Security. I swear, we’ve got more cops here than gangsters.”
“There are still plenty of bad guys to round up,” Rodgers said as they entered the building.
“I know,” McCaskey said. “But when counter espionage units start taking friendly fire, it’s time to rethink our overall policy. We should be doing more of what you’re doing, training personnel to operate abroad and targeting ETs.”
ETs were not just aliens, they were exported terrorists. When Striker had been replaced by a human intelligence unit, the mandate was to infiltrate and undermine foreign operations before they became a real threat.
Rodgers did not disagree. But the intelligence community had spent decades relying on increasingly sophisticated ELINT — electronic intelligence — such as intercepted phone and E-mail messages, spy satellites, and unmanned drones. Human intelligence was deemed too risky and unreliable. Foreign nationals who could not be hired outright had to be blackmailed into cooperating. That was costly and time consuming and required a sizable support system. Even then, the nationals could not always be trusted. Ramping up HUMINT operations also took time and ingenuity. In the interim, United States intelligence operations had assumed a posture similar to the Soviet approach of defending the homeland during World War II. They threw every available body at the problem in the hope of stopping it.
The men emerged from the elevator and went in separate directions along the oval corridor. As deputy director, Rodgers’s office was located next to that of Paul Hood in the so-called executive wing. The only other office in that section was that of attorney Lowell Coffey III. McCaskey, intelligence chief Bob Herbert, computer expert Matt Stoll, psychologist Liz Gordon, and political liaison Ron Plummer were in the operations corridor. That was where all the real work was done, according to Herbert.
When Rodgers passed Hood’s office, Bugs Benet asked the general if he had a minute.
“Sure,” Rodgers said. “What’s up?”
“The chief wanted to talk to you,” Bugs replied.
“All right. When?” Rodgers asked. Hood’s door was rarely closed. It was closed now.
“He said you should go in when you got here,” Bugs told him.
“Thanks,” Rodgers said. He walked past Bugs’s cubicle and knocked on Hood’s door.
“It’s open,” Hood said.
Rodgers went in.
“Good morning,” Hood said.
“Morning,” Rodgers said.
Hood rose from behind his desk and gestured toward a leather sofa set against the inside wall. Rodgers walked over and sat. Hood shut the door, then joined Rodgers. His expression was curiously neutral. Hood was a diplomat, but he was usually open and empathetic. That helped people trust him, and that made him effective.
“Mind if I help myself to coffee?” Rodgers asked.
“No, of course not, Mike,” Hood said. “Sorry I didn’t offer. I’ve been preoccupied.”
“I can tell,” Rodgers said. He went to the coffeemaker on a small, triangular, teakwood corner table. “Want any?”
“No thanks. I’ve already had enough to float a horseshoe,” Hood told him.
“What’s going on?” Rodgers asked as he poured.
“I spoke with Senator Debenport this morning,” Hood said. “He wants me to make deep cuts.”
“More than the four percent we just gave him?”
“Much more,” Hood told him. “Five times more.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rodgers said. He returned with his mug and took a sip. “You don’t trim that kind of money. You amputate.”
“I know,” Hood said.
“How far from that figure can you move him?”
“He’s not going to yield a dime,” Hood said.
“Balls. Everything is negotiable.”
“Not when you’re a politician in the public eye,” Hood said.
“I guess you would know.”
“I do,” Hood said. “People want to feel secure, and CIOC wants to give that to them in as showy a way as possible. That is where the money is needed.”
Rodgers was starting to get a very uneasy feeling about the direction of this conversation. Hood was not asking questions; he was making statements, as though he were building a case.
“Anything that has a redundancy somewhere else in the intelligence system has to go,” Hood went on.
“My field unit,” Rodgers said.
“Yes, Mike.”
There was something in Hood’s voice that said he was not finished.
“And me?” Rodgers asked.
“They want me to merge the political office and deputy director’s post,” Hood told him.