Clark took it and folded it into his pocket. Jimmy Hardesty was still here? How the hell did he evade the attention of people like this Alden prick? “Okay, thanks. I’ll catch him on the way out.”
“They need me in there?” Ding asked when Clark came out the door.
“No, he just wanted me this time.” Clark adjusted his neck-tie in a prearranged signal, to which Chavez did not react. And with that, they took the elevator down to the fourth floor. They walked past the kiosk staffed by blind vendors who sold such things as candy bars and Cokes-it always struck visitors as creepy and sinister, but for the CIA it was a laudable way to provide employment to the handicapped. If they were really blind. One could never be sure of anything in this building, but that was just part of the mystique.
They found Hardesty’s office and knocked on the cipher-locked door. It opened in a few seconds.
“Big John,” Hardesty said in greeting.
“Hey, Jimmy. What’re you doing in this rat hole?”
“Writing the history of operations that nobody will ever read, at least not while we’re alive. You’re Chavez?” he asked Ding.
“Yes, sir.”
“Come on in.” Hardesty waved them into his cubbyhole, which did have two spare chairs and almost enough room for the extra legs, plus a worktable that acted as an ersatz desk.
“What year are you in?” John asked.
“Would you believe 1953? I spent all last week on Hans Tofte and the Norwegian freighter job. That job had a real body count, and they were not all bad guys. Cost of doing business back then, I guess, and the sailors on the ship should have thought twice before signing on.”
“Before our time, Jimmy. Did you talk to Judge Moore about it? I think he had a piece of that operation.”
Hardesty nodded. “He was in last Friday. The judge must have been a handful in his younger days, before he took that seat behind the bench. Him and Ritter both.”
“What’s Bob Ritter doing now?”
“You didn’t hear? Shit. Died three months ago down in Texas, liver cancer.”
“How old was he?” Chavez asked.
“Seventy-five. He was at MD Anderson Cancer Center, down in Texas, so he had the best treatment available, but it didn’t work.”
“Everybody dies of something,” Clark observed. “Sooner or later. Nobody told us about Ritter over in England. I wonder why.”
“The current administration didn’t like him much.”
That made sense, John thought. He was a warrior from the worst of the bad old days who’d worked in Redland against the main enemy of the time, and cold warriors died hard. “I’ll have to hoist a drink to his memory. We butted heads occasionally, but he never back-shot me. I wonder about that Alden guy.”
“Not our kind of people, John. I’m supposed to do a full report on people we whacked along the way, what laws might have been violated, that sort of thing.”
“So what can I do for you?” Clark asked his host.
“Alden pitched retirement to you?”
“Twenty-nine years. And I’m still alive. Kinda miraculous when you think about it,” John observed with a moment’s sober reflection.
“Well, if you need something to do, I have a number for you to call. Your knowledge is an asset; you can make money off it. Buy Sandy a new car, maybe.”
“What sort of work?”
“Something you will find interesting. Don’t know if it’ll be your kind of thing, but what the hell. Worst case, they’ll buy lunch.”
“Who is it?”
Hardesty didn’t answer the question. Instead he handed over another slip of paper with a phone number on it. “Give ’em a call, John. Unless you want to write your memoirs and get it through the people on the seventh floor.”
Clark had himself a laugh. “No way.”
Hardesty stood up, extended his hand. “Sorry to cut this short, but I have a ton of work to do. Give ’em a call-or don’t, if you don’t feel like it. Up to you. Maybe retirement will agree with you.”
Clark stood. “Fair enough. Thanks.”
With that, it was one more elevator ride and out the front door. For their part, John and Ding did stop and look at the wall. For some of the people at the CIA, those stars did represent the Honored Dead, no less than Arlington National Cemetery, though tourists were allowed to go there.
“What number, John?” Chavez asked.
“Some place in Maryland, judging by the area code.” He checked his watch and pulled out his new cell phone. “Let’s find out where…”
Jack’s daily electronic traffic scan took up the first ninety minutes of his day and provided nothing of substance, so he grabbed his third cup of coffee, picked through the bagels, then returned to his office and began what he’d come to call his “morning troll” of the myriad intercepts the campus received from the U.S. intelligence community. Forty minutes into what was amounting to an exercise in frustration, a Homeland Security intercept caught his eye. Now, that was interesting, he thought, then picked up the phone.
He was in Jerry Rounds’s office five minutes later. “Whatcha got?” Rounds asked.
“DHS/FBI/ATF intercept. They’re looking for a missing plane.”
This got Rounds’s attention. The Department of Homeland Security had something of an event threshold system in place that generally did a good job of keeping trivial inquiries off its intelligence plate. The fact that such an inquiry had climbed this high on the food chain suggested that another agency had already done the routine legwork and confirmed that the plane in question hadn’t simply been misplaced by a sloppy charter company in an administrative shuffle.
“ATF, huh?” Rounds muttered. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms also specialized in explosive-related investigations. Combine that with a missing plane… Jack thought.
“What kind?” Rounds asked.
“Didn’t say. Has to be small, noncommercial, or the news would have it.” Missing 757s tended to generate buzz.
“How long ago?”
“Three days.”
“We know the source?”
“The routing looked internal, so FAA or NTSB, maybe. I checked yesterday and today; not a peep from anyone.” Which meant somebody had clamped a lid on the subject. “Might be another way to go about this, though.”
“Tell me.”
“Follow the money,” Jack said.
Rounds smiled at this. “Insurance.”
32
IT WAS 10:47 when his phone rang. Tom Davis had just finished a fairly large bond trade, one that would earn The Campus $1,350,000, which was not bad for three days’ work. He grabbed the phone on the second ring. “Tom Davis.”
“Mr. Davis, my name is John Clark. I was told to give you a call. Maybe do lunch.”
“Told by whom?”
“Jimmy Hardesty,” Clark replied. “I’ll have a friend with me. His name is Domingo Chavez.”
Davis thought for a moment, immediately cautious, but it was more an instinctive reaction than a necessity. Hardesty didn’t hand out these introductions to hacks. “Sure, let’s talk,” Davis replied. He gave Clark directions and said, “I’ll look for you about noon.”
Hey, Gerry,” Davis said on entering the top-floor office. “Just got a call.”
“Anybody we know?” the boss asked.
“Hardesty at Langley sent two guys to see us. Both slotted for retirement from the Agency. John Clark and Domingo Chavez.”
Hendley’s eyes went a little wide. “The John Clark?”
“So it would appear. He’ll be here around noon.”
“Do we want him?” the former senator asked, already half-knowing the answer.