“It’s all horse puckey.”
“Of course it is. The DO’s in a heap of trouble.” Wyman’s eyes flashed. “Christ, Tom, Ali Atwa, Mugniyah’s number two on the TWA 847 hijacking, is wandering around Beirut these days, under real name, and free as a bird. And what has CIA done about it? CIA has done nothing. What has Colin Powell’s State Department done? They’ve done nothing.” Wyman paused. “I took a snatch plan to Langley three weeks ago and they turned me down cold. ‘State will never agree. The Syrians might get upset.’ TheSyrians? The frigging Syrians are getting paid to ship foreign fighters into Iraq. We should have bombed Damascus the same night we did Baghdad.” Wyman played with the monocle hanging around his neck. “Christ, how I wish Casey were still alive.”
“You’re not the only one.” Tom scratched his chin. “Isn’t there any way-”
“I spoke to the goddamn ADDO25himself on this. He assured me the materials you sent forward were brought to the highest levels.”
“So they could be round-filed.”
“We have a problem here, Tom. We’re dealing with a dysfunctional organism. The WMD groups in Iraq are incapable of handling their jobs and yet they’re getting performance bonuses. The chief in Riyadh doesn’t speak Arabic, there are no Saudi recruitments, and he got a performance bonus, too. We hired Jim McGee because Langley hadn’t recruited a single PA officer in years-but TA got station performance bonuses. A system that pays people bonuses to reward them for failing is entirely broke. But it’s the only system we’ve got right now. Until someone gets rid of Tenet, nothing’s going to change.”
Tom curled his lower lip. “Thanks, Tony, I needed that.”
Wyman’s eyes narrowed and his tone grew frosty. “Sarcasm isn’t going to help. Bottom line, Tom: Langley insists on handling things their way.”
“Which is?”
“To hunker down, stay quiet, and hope all the problems will go away. They won’t pay us to uncover Ben Said. And you know as well as I do that these ops are both complicated and costly, and without Langley’s funding…” He looked at the younger man apologetically. “We’re not the government, Tom. There are limits to what we can do unless someone’s willing to pay.”
“This sucks.”
“Agreed. But unless we can find ourselves a wedge…”
Tom crossed his arms. “What about the bombs? The detonators? Ben Said’s new explosives? If that isn’t a call to action, I don’t know what is.”
“Action?” Wyman snorted derisively. “The system, Tom, detests action. Trying to get the system to react is like trying to turn a supertanker around.”
“What do they want? Another World Trade Center?”
“I think it would take about that much.”
Tony was right, of course. Between organizational timidity, political correctness, risk aversion, and lack of strong leadership on the operational level, it was virtually impossible to defeat the jihad Islamists were waging against America and the West. The USG was spending buckets o’ cash to-as the State Department’s public diplomacy panjandrums kept saying-“win the hearts and minds” of all those hundreds of millions of Muslims living under various forms of dictatorship. “You can’t act without listening to the Arab Street,” State kept insisting. What crap. Bill Casey said it best: “When you’ve got ’em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
Tom said, “The Israelis seemed worried enough when I laid it out for them. Maybe they can convince Langley we’re on the right track.”
“Not these days. There’s a problem with Israel these days.”
“There seem to be a lot of problems, Tony.”
“Thereare a lot of problems, son.”
“What’s up with Israel?”
Wyman adjusted his right shirt cuff. “We’re about to experience a huge hiccup with our Israeli friends. Something to do with Iran policy, classified documents making their way to Mossad via a leak somewhere in the Pentagon. The FBI’s gotten into it within the past couple of weeks and Langley is keeping Gelilot26at arm’s length these days.”
“Christ.”
“I took some heat over our Israeli associate.”
“Reuven?”
“They said they don’t like the fact that we have foreign nationals working for us.”
Tom was incredulous. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m serious.”
“I love it. Most of our embassies are run by foreign nationals. CIA depends on foreign nationals-liaison relationships. And Langley’s upset because we have a retired Mossad officer working for us?”
Tony Wyman played with his monocle. “There are those who insist retirement’s just another form of cover when it comes to Mossad combatants.”
Tom cocked his head toward the window, which was covered with three layers of antisurveillance drapery. “Sam Waterman used to say that all the time about everybody.” He paused. “You don’t happen to know what Sam’s up to?”
“No idea. Saw him about a month ago at the club. He was having lunch with Ed Kane.” Wyman shifted in the big leather swivel chair. “Anyway, the seventh floor is unhappy about Reuven Ayalon.” He looked at Tom reassuringly. “But they’ll get over it.”
“Hope so. Because we’ve made progress because of Reuven, Tony. You saw the messages from Israel. Reuven and I know who, and we know where. We just don’t know when, or what the targets are. That’s why I wanted to get inside the safe house.”
“Understood.” Wyman shifted himself in the chair. “Still…”
Tom looked at his boss’s face. “What?”
“There’s something else. I haven’t mentioned it because neither Bronco, Charlie, nor I is sure how to handle things.”
The remark was uncharacteristic, and Tom said so.
“We’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that our contacts at Langley are lying to us. The reluctant conclusion is that they’re trying to push us away.”
“But why?”
“Ah,” Wyman said, “there’s the rub. It doesn’t make any sense. We’ve produced incredible product for them over the past twenty months. Charlie’s work in Libya helped result in Qaddafi’s decision to end his WMD programs and allow inspections. Bronco’s done a lot to repair the rift between the U.S. and Russia. And so far as al-Qa’ida goes, 4627’s been responsible for developing the intelligence instrumental in the capture of sixteen top-level AQN27operatives. Sure, we butted heads over Iraq-the WMD material. But…” His voice trailed off. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Tom started to speak, but Wyman cut him off. “Look, this isn’t your concern. What does affect both you and Reuven is that Langley won’t pay 4627 to follow up on the Gaza murders, even if they were to track to Imad Mugniyah and Ben Said.”
“It makes no sense.”
“When has absurdity ever been eliminated as a factor when we’re talking about the seventh floor?”
Tom looked at his boss. “You think it’s coming from the seventh floor?”
“I think the whole seventh floor is running scared. There are four separate reports due out next year from Congress, from the 9/11 Commission, and from CIA’s inspector general. Each one will be more devastating to CIA than the last. So how bad do you think it will look when it’s revealed that CIA leadership has had to outsource the war on terror because they didn’t have the internal resources to develop adequate human-based intelligence to be able to satisfy the administration’s demands for answers and results?”
“That’swhy they’re shutting me down? Goddamn seventh-floor egos? Frigging executives worried about job security?” Tom was furious. “People are dead, Tony. And there’ll be more corpses soon. We know that.”