“No, you know you didn’t. Don’t take it too hard; nobody else did, either. He saw things in war, Francisco. And they didn’t just bounce off him like linebackers. He saw things, did things in CIA that ate at him. No one knew. No one did so much as ask.” She tossed her hair back defiantly. “Not even his wife. He tried to talk to her, but he never got far. She ran from it. She didn’t want to see anything except the hero she had married. But I did ask, Francisco, because I could see in his eyes what no one else seemed to — pain. I was the only one who held his heart, even if only for a little while.”
Her face was pained, but her posture was erect and strong. “He would not have left his family for me. I knew that. He knew I knew that. He made that clear; he was fair. But I loved him, Francisco, and I’ve missed him terribly since he left the Agency.” She stared a moment at Lopez. He didn’t know what to say.
“Ah, fuck it.” She walked briskly over to the counter and picked up her mobile, punching in several numbers. There was a moment of stillness as she waited for someone to pick up.
“Counterproliferation Division? Yes, Fred Simon, please. Extension 3378.”
“What are you doing?” Lopez rasped out, hardly able to speak.
“Calling in a favor. A former division chief. He lives nearby.”
“Why are you calling him?”
“Because we’ve hit a wall. I know there’s something there, but they’ve buried it. We need help.” Her attention returned to the phone. “Yes, I’ll hold.”
Lopez approached her hesitantly. “You still want me around for this?”
Her shoulders slumped. “My God, Francisco, of course. Show some backbone!” She walked over and grabbed him by the hair of his beard. His eyes opened in shock. “You’d better not bail on me! You’re ivory tower material, damn ridiculous, but we share one thing: we both loved Miguel. I can see it in you. In your face when you talk about him, in your eyes.” She paused, a sad expression on her face as she stared at him. “It’s weird. You have his eyes — those dark, haunting Aztec eyes. And more of him inside you than you want to admit. Basically, that’s your main flaw.”
“What flaw?” Lopez felt disoriented.
Houston turned from him and spoke into the phone again. “All right, please take a message. No, I don’t want to use his voice mail. He never checks it. Tell him Sara Houston called. He knows my number. Tell him that it’s highest priority — urgent. Yes, that’s right. Thanks.” She hung up.
“Your problem, Francisco, is that you are trying too hard to be something you aren’t. Just like Miguel was.” She pursed her lips. “It doesn’t matter right now. If we’re going to get through this, you’ll have to figure that part of it out. Meanwhile, now that I have this confession off my chest, my head is cleared. I know what I have to do.”
She walked over to her bag and pulled out a large handgun. Lopez stood upright, a surge of anxiety running through his body at the site of the weapon. The agent pulled off the safety, checked the magazine, sighted the weapon through the window, and spoke coldly.
“We’ve got business to take care of. I want these killers. And we’re going to find them.”
20
Fred Simon walked into the IMO branch of his division. After the requisite ID checks, he was ushered to an office with a senior information management specialist. He didn’t fool himself that these bookkeepers had any special training that warranted such fancy bureaucratic titles. He mainly thought of them as a glorified records department with experienced librarians. But at least they still remembered who he was after many years and had not assigned him some rookie at a cubicle. The specialist extended his hand.
“I’m Robert Conway, Agent Simon. How can I be of service?”
Simon shook his hand, and they both sat down across from each other over Conway’s desk, the record agent’s face partially hidden behind his computer monitor.
“I need information on several agents from the Darst division over at the Counterterrorism Center.”
“Why not contact CTC directly?” asked Conway.
“It’d be out of my way, and all the databases are under the new system umbrella, anyway, so I thought I’d save myself the trouble.” He smiled innocently and hoped that would do it.
Sara Houston had sounded paranoid, talking about a cover-up in her division and the deaths of numerous agents. He usually trusted her judgment, but he had to admit that this sounded far-fetched. On the other hand, the CTC was one of the more shadowy divisions at the CIA, and rumors swirled around the place. The CTC had put into practice many extreme methods after 9/11, which had led to a near revolt in the CIA over agency ethics.
For Simon, the pain still felt fresh. The executive branch had spent eight years turning the CIA into a parody of itself. It takes so little time to destroy, and so long to build. They had dismantled the careful information vetting systems established over decades in favor of their “stove-piping” approach: where low-level information was no longer filtered through layers of analysis to ascertain its quality but could percolate straight to the top. It was part of that administration’s paranoia and distrust of the intelligence community. What it got them was egg all over their faces, phantom WMDs, and a decade-long war that had nothing to do with 9/11. Of course, the CIA was the scapegoat.
“Understandable,” smiled Conway right back. “Which agents?”
“Three in particular: Miguel Lopez, John Fuller, and Gerald Stone.”
Keys clacked as Conway entered data into the computer. Simon slipped back into his memories as the IMO searched the system records.
He fully blamed the former vice president for the disasters — the true force of personality over those eight long years. He had almost single-handedly hacked apart the US intelligence community and then rebuilt it toward the darker purposes he had in mind. Many of Simon’s colleagues had left the agency demoralized. High-level conflicts between national security administrators, even the secretary of state, had raged over the VP’s actions and the directions he was moving the US counterterrorism programs. The madman had created a CIA assassination program that reported only to him, that ran independent of any congressional or judicial oversight! He was the main architect, achieving the abandonment of the Geneva Conventions by the United States, strong-arming a vacillating president and CIA administration into the use of torture, by sheer force of personality overruling objections in the Cabinet.
What was left was a tattered and disorganized agency, one Simon and a few of the old guard were trying to piece together again — with the sole exception of the CTC. It was not disorganized. It was not in tatters. It seemed to function as an Agency unto itself, even now. Simon knew better than to go there directly.
“Just a second,” said Conway. “OK, here they are.” He looked over from his monitor at Simon. “These three are recently deceased?”
“Yes,” said Simon. “That’s partly why I’m here. I wanted to correlate their assignments with some data I have in order to determine if there’s a pattern in the deaths.”
“A pattern? You mean targeted kills?”
This one wasn’t an idiot. “Possibly with such a pattern.”
The records specialist looked troubled. He returned his attention to the screen. The clacking continued. Simon watched the man’s face transform from concern to a perplexed scowl.