Today, he fired up a cigar, opened the sack, purged it of its contents, and lit up a half-dozen documents without reading anything past the heading of the cover page. Toward the bottom of the pouch, Cooper came across a DI memorandum which, as with the others, he nearly burned without reading. It was a standard memo, sent to all stations, not much different from the documents he’d already torched. Cigar butt held beside the corner of the page, Cooper took a closer look, almost out of coincidence, and saw that after a few meaningless introductory sentences, the memo said:
Unauthorized international or extranational transport of substantial military weaponry, including but not limited to large handgun shipments, antiaircraft guns, armored vehicles, missiles, warheads, or lethal substances with possible military use, even by nation-states, may have special significance. Please report on a priority basis.
Cooper wondered about a couple of things. First, he wondered whether “lethal substances with possible military use” could include U-238/U-235 uranium. Second, while an oceanic voyage of uranium molecules aboard a supposed menial laborer’s body didn’t necessarily qualify as “transport of substantial military weaponry,” there was something that Cooper understood about memorandums like this. What you had to ask yourself was the reason some deputy director or other, most of whom were highly educated, would authorize the distribution of such a ludicrous letter. Come across an inane memo like this and it was a safe bet something serious was afoot. You just had to translate, maybe ask around-make a couple phone calls, for instance.
Cooper figured he’d be able to discover who’d written the memo with no more than a single call.
Once he’d identified the author, he could ask a question or two of him, or her, in hopes of finding additional reasons to ignore the plea for help from the ghost of Marcel S. Maybe he could even bolster his case against digging out those business cards he’d lifted from the witch doctor’s desk. He knew Barry the fucking bokor had killed Marcel the first time around, that much was obvious-but once that fat fuck had resurrected the boy, the odds were he’d passed the kid onto someone else. Someone who’d gone on to kill the kid again.
Wi, Cooper-mon, ce n’est pas fini.
He also knew the longer he put off avenging the second murder of Marcel S., the greater the chance his natural laziness would overcome him. That laziness would tend to keep him sequestered along the quarter mile of white sand, in the snorkeling holes, among the reefs, at the bar, in his bungalow, or on the chaise lounge under the palm tree.
And calling around Langley to unearth the nasty little secret behind the plain vanilla memo, he thought, was as good a form of procrastination as any.
You know something, Marcel, he thought-wondering whether he was talking aloud as he thought it-if I’m all you got, then you, mon ami, are fucked.
21
Peter M. Gates hadn’t joined the Agency to fool around. His first exposure to CIA had come from political science textbooks as an undergrad, when he was bitten by the bug-the feeling, reading about the great spy-masters, that he’d found his calling. Dulles. McCone. Schlesinger-men who’d hashed out deep-cover operations, pondered war strategy, run intelligence webs over fine tobacco and brandy. Gates could see it happening to him, knowing it was his destiny to become a spymaster, a strategy guru, a sophisticated gentleman spending his evenings in the richly furnished surroundings of a men’s club-Gates thinking, even then, that Cleo’s, the club in Dupont Circle, might just do.
The moment he obtained a position in government-a low-level slot at State-Gates sought out people at other agencies, and on the Hill. He made these people his friends, and he did it by finding what they aspired to and helping them get there. In a few years he had his loyal set, and he was soon able to persuade those who could afford it to join him at Cleo’s. They developed a rhythm-play a few sets of squash, shower up, get together in the lounge for dinner, smoke a cigar, maybe a pipe, sip an after-dinner drink. Probe issues of foreign policy-define foreign policy. Make some quiet vows to run it.
When an acquaintance and casual member of his power network received a political appointment as director of central intelligence, Gates spent a cool four hundred dollars on a steak dinner with the man and gleaned a deputy directorship in CIA’s Directorate of Operations. Because of his influence he was given two Central American countries, and just like that-fewer than five years in-Gates was running operatives from the shadowy corners of a men’s club, just as he’d envisioned it.
He took pains to ensure that the job security, and, where appropriate, physical well-being of the people reporting to him were directly tied to his own supremacy within the Agency. All significant information originating from his unit reached the top of the food chain only through his office; he controlled every management decision down to the secretary and intern level with a maniacal, vengeful supervision. Slash, burn, and rule: make the eagles feel rewarded yet never allow them to take more than forty percent of the credit for any particular accomplishment, while you punted the turkeys, or, as was necessary in government, buried them with a transfer or lateral promotion. Final maxim: exert total control over the release of all information so as always to apply the appropriate spin.
He’d risen to second in command in six years.
Given his seniority level, Gates was required to take a car service everywhere; the black Lincoln assigned to him this morning came equipped with both driver and bodyguard. The driver got the door for him as Gates exited the building through the executive tunnel. He settled into the leather seat in back.
The driver climbed behind the wheel and turned to face him.
“The Hill this morning, correct, sir?”
Gates nodded and opened a folder. Unlabeled, it contained a two-page surveillance summary written entirely in code. He was accustomed to the encryption, and knew the file to be an eight-day summary of the activities of Julie Laramie as gathered by a man named Sperling Rhone. Rhone possessed the clearance to snoop just about anywhere; outside of these essentials, the security man understood he was on his own, that there existed no record of any relationship between himself and Gates, and that Gates would deny any assertiontothecontrary.Rhonefollowed,bugged,monitored,andoccasionally intimidated any Agency employee-or non-Agency person-Gates chose to keep an eye on. The reports he generated from these activities were hand delivered, and backup records were not kept.
The report indicated that Laramie’s daily routine consisted of a morning visit to a local Starbucks; a three-mile run; until recently, a fairly typical workday that included on-campus meals and commissary coffee breaks; after, she’d go directly home, sip from a glass of Chardonnay, and inevitably fall asleep in the same oversize L.A. Lakers T-shirt on her couch with some twenty-four-hour cable news channel blaring on the television. She had deviated from this routine four times-twice, she skipped the morning run; once, she met a female friend for dinner near her home; and on another night she’d driven to an Annapolis coffee house that sold Internet time by the hour.
Gates would have to instruct Rhone to watch for another visit to the cyber café, and if she went there again, Gates would have his security man employ some reverse-keystroke software. Most of the time, suspected moles conducting such activity turned out to be nothing more than serial Internet daters or porn-surfing junkies. Gates didn’t peg Laramie for a mole, but he didn’t see her as a cyber-sex junkie either.