“NCIX reports to you,” Stuart observed.
“Yes, sir,” Rhead said, “and they are working a number of Chinese espionage cases with the FBI—”
“None of which are inside the Pentagon,” Stuart said.
“That was a hypothetical—”
“I’m not going to be paralyzed by hypotheticals,” Stuart said. He put a hand on the OPLAN binder and pushed it back. He was tempted to scrounge a cigarette. He’d kicked that habit years ago rather than face cancer, but like all true addictions, the nicotine craving never truly went away. It helped his resolve that the White House was a US federal building, wherein smoking was illegal, the Oval Office included. “Kathy, do you have any assets in Beijing who can tell us whether the Chinese have a copy?”
“One,” Cooke conceded. Technically it was still true. Pioneer was physically in Beijing, even if he could no longer pass information in a timely fashion.
“Who?” Stuart asked.
“A senior systems administrator inside the Ministry of State Security,” she told him. “His code name is Pioneer.”
“Have you tasked him specifically on that point?”
“Harry, this isn’t a courtroom.” Showalter usually avoided such informality, but he saw the prosecutor in the president coming out.
“It is if I want it to be,” Stuart said. “Answer the question, Kathy.”
“His standing requirements are to report any MSS acquisition of sensitive military information,” Cooke said. “Getting a copy of the OPLAN would certainly qualify.”
“And he hasn’t flagged this”—Stuart lifted the OPLAN—“as showing up stolen.” It wasn’t a question. His line of reasoning had been carried to its logical conclusion, or at least as far as the lawyer in Stuart wanted it to go.
Cooke would have preferred that he had asked the logical next question, but she knew he would not, leaving her to give him the answer to it anyway. “That is true, sir. However, I regret to inform you that operational conditions on the ground in Beijing have left us unable to maintain secure communication with Pioneer. In fact, we have reason to believe that the MSS has identified him as a CIA asset and has him under direct surveillance. Given that, the director of the National Clandestine Service has determined that it’s necessary to terminate Pioneer as a CIA asset and exfiltrate him as soon as possible.”
Rhead jerked in his chair toward Cooke. “Who screwed up?”
“Sir?”
“How did the Chinese figure out that he was ours?” Rhead said, his voice rising.
“We don’t know,” Cooke said.
“When was he compromised?” Showalter asked.
“Again, we don’t know,” Cooke said. She despised not having the answers. “But recently, we believe.” We hope.
“How long has he been in service?” Stuart asked.
“Since 1991,” Cooke told him. She could have told them the exact date when Pioneer walked into the US embassy in Tokyo and offered himself up, but that was a level of detail the president didn’t need.
“And we lost him on your watch,” Rhead said.
“It’s your watch too, Mike,” Showalter said.
“We’re not going to lose him,” Cooke answered. “Yes, he’ll no longer be in service as an asset, but we’re going to get him out. He’ll still be of use to us here. He knows more than he’s—”
“You lost our best asset in Beijing and you just don’t want to—,” Rhead started.
“There’s no time for that,” Stuart said, cutting everyone off. “It’s possible to do everything right and still lose the game. So put the knives away and save them for the PLA.”
“Kathy, your people are sure about this?” Showalter asked.
“That’s he’s been compromised? He’s sure and that’s what matters.”
“Hardly,” Rhead said. “He’s just an asset.”
“He’s as close to a professional intelligence officer as you can get in this business without having gone through the Farm,” Cooke answered.
“You want to burn him, Mike?” Stuart asked.
“There are times when burning an asset is worth the gain,” Rhead answered. “Stopping a war with the Chinese would be one of them if this man can feed us the details on the PLA’s current operations.”
“If he’s really been compromised, he couldn’t give us that,” Cooke noted. “Best case, the Chinese would just roll him up. Worst case, they’d feed him misinformation and then we’d confirm he’s one of ours by acting on it.” She didn’t have to mention that the best case would still be an epic disaster.
“We’ve got two carrier battle groups sitting less than two hundred miles from the Chinese coast,” Rhead said. “We should get someone in the room with him, calm him down, send him back in to see what he can deliver for us. If we weren’t sending carriers in to protect twenty million people, I’d say pull him out. But we’re facing a war with our ability to maintain alliances in the Pacific for the next few decades on the line. Bad enough to lose our best asset in Beijing, but we stand to lose a lot more if we botch an exfiltration, which could be real easy to do if he’s under surveillance. We should cut our losses.”
“We owe this man—,” Cooke said.
“We owe him nothing,” Rhead cut her off. “Traitors don’t work for charity. They have their own agendas and we paid this one. He got what he wanted.”
“That’s cold, Mike,” Stuart observed.
“That’s pragmatic, Harry,” Rhead said, speaking informally to the president for the first time in Cooke’s presence. “Kathy’s people make deals with devils and I wouldn’t put this country’s long-term interests at risk for someone like that.”
“He’s a dead man if we abandon him,” Cooke replied. “Done deal. He gets a bullet in the back of the head.”
“If we try to save him, we’re risking our long-term relationship with the Chinese,” Rhead said.
“We’re risking that right now anyway,” Stuart said. The president leaned forward, put his hands together, and pressed them against his chin.
Stuart said nothing. Cooke held his gaze, refusing to look over at Rhead, whose stare she could feel on her skin. “The only way out is through, eh?”
“Mr. President—,” Rhead started.
Stuart cut him off with his hand. “Kathy, proceed at your discretion, but if your people get caught, getting them out won’t be your job. It’ll be Aidan Dunne’s. No ops to save them from jail. Mike has a point. Anyone who gets arrested will be spending a few years in jail. Understood?”
Cooke nodded slowly. “Yes, sir.”
As a rule — and it was a rule that was given no exceptions — the Farm did not graduate case officers if there was any doubt about their skills. There was a wall in the Old Headquarters Building main entrance with one hundred two chiseled gray stars, each marking a dead CIA officer. Beneath them sat a black book under glass, bound in Moroccan goatskin leather, the pages handmade of parchment paper, with the names of the deceased each handwritten in calligraphic style next to a gold star. The Book of Honor had only fifty-four names. Forty-eight dead officers remained anonymous, some more than fifty years after having made their final sacrifice for their agency and their country. They died not because their training hadn’t been equal to the game. It was simply a fact that the game had rigid rules and, at times, no rules at all. Sometimes luck just ran bad and sometimes no training was enough.
So the exercises at the Farm were constantly revised, trainees were graded by unforgiving instructors, and there was no curve given. Trainees were either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.” Those who couldn’t achieve the former rating received desk jobs. Those who did went to the field and ran operations. It was that simple.