He had been thinking a lot about his legacy lately, ever since announcing his plans to retire.
Although he would not formally leave his post until the end of the month, most of the day-to-day operations were already being overseen by his interim successor, Danielle Rudin, the woman who would hold the job of acting D/CIA until the Senate approved President Chambers’s pick for the job. Given the way Washington was functioning lately, that might be a long process. But politics were no longer Boucher’s concern. He was merely a figurehead now, a placeholder.
It was a rare thing indeed for someone to hold an appointed post for so many years. Most agency directors lasted a year or two at most. Some were brought down by scandal. A few had chosen to fall on their swords — figuratively speaking — taking the blame for bad decisions made higher up the food chain. Most, however, came and went as administrations changed. Boucher had been appointed by Tom Duncan shortly after his election. When Duncan had been forced to resign from office late in his second term, Boucher had been one of the few appointees from the previous administration to keep his job, owing in no small part to his perceived role as the whistle-blower who had brought Duncan down.
No one knew, no one could ever know, that the president’s fall from grace had been carefully orchestrated by Duncan himself, along with Boucher’s help, to save the country, and indeed the entire planet, from a much greater threat.
When the scandal had finally slipped from the headlines, Boucher had been prepared to leave office as well, but the newly sworn President Chambers had implored him to stay, at least through the next election cycle. Oddly enough, it had not been Chambers’s pleas that had prompted Boucher to stay, but rather the debt he owed Tom Duncan. For although Duncan had resigned from office in disgrace and slipped out of the public eye, he had not for one second forsaken his oath to protect and defend America from all enemies. Duncan needed a friend in the administration, and Boucher was that man.
Now, more than two years into Chambers’s first full term in office, Boucher felt the time was right to shuffle off the stage, but it was going to be a big change. It was as if there was a countdown clock running in the corner of his vision wherever he looked, ticking down the time remaining before he wouldn’t ride in the elevator, sit in his chair or visit with his secretary. He felt like a bright orange leaf on a tree branch in autumn, afraid to let go, but eager to see where the wind would take him.
The hum of an incoming phone call stirred him out of his musings. A picture of the person calling was displayed on the screen of his smart phone. It was a very familiar picture, as it was identical to the framed portrait hanging on the office wall. Boucher answered before it could ring a second time.
“Good morning, Mr. President.”
“Domenick, hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.” Chambers’s voice sounded weary, but that was a chronic condition for men who sat behind the Resolute Desk.
“Mr. President, for the rest of the month, there are no bad times for you to call me. Next month? Well now, that’s a different story.” Boucher tried to keep his tone light, though in fact the call had him worried. The president wasn’t the sort of person to call out of the blue and shoot the breeze. If he was calling the Director of the CIA, then it was because he needed something from the agency — needed it urgently. Also, Chambers knew that Boucher had handed over most of his duties to Rudin. That meant the president wanted something that the designated interim director could not provide.
“Glad to hear it.” It wasn’t a platitude. The president actually sounded reassured by the promise. “Do you think you could come by the office? Say, in an hour?”
It wasn’t really a question. “I’ll be there, sir.”
The president had left instructions with Stewart Hulce, his Chief of Staff, to have Boucher brought to his informal office in the study adjoining the Oval Office. Because he controlled access to the president, the White House Chief of Staff was one of the most powerful positions in the government, and Hulce took both his responsibilities and his privileges as gatekeeper very seriously. His expression indicated that he wasn’t at all pleased by this unscheduled meeting between his boss and the outgoing head of the CIA. He was even unhappier when Chambers asked him to leave them alone, but he slunk from the room without protest.
The president sank into his chair, gesturing for Boucher to sit as well. Then he skipped the customary exchange of pleasantries and got right to the point. “Have you been following this business in Africa?”
Despite having voluntarily side-lined himself, Boucher had not completely disengaged from day-to-day operations. He read and annotated the daily intelligence brief before it was forwarded to the White House, so he knew exactly what the president meant.
Approximately twenty-one hours earlier, Joseph Mulamba, the newly elected president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo — not to be confused, Boucher had pointed out in the margins of the paper, with the neighboring Republic of Congo — had been abducted off a London street while on a state visit. The police had no leads and no knowledge of whether Mulamba was even still alive. Within a few hours of the incident, General Patrice Velle, the chief of the Congolese Army, had marshaled his troops in the eastern city of Kisangani and declared himself the acting president. The cities of the DRC were on a knife’s edge and poised to slip into chaos. This was actually a better state of affairs than what was happening in the eastern provinces, where the smoldering coals of ancient tribal feuds were being fanned into a fresh wave of ethnic violence. Further complicating matters, several of the stateless guerilla armies that roamed the Congo rain forest — really nothing more than well-armed criminal gangs made up of legions of indoctrinated child soldiers — were swarming out of the jungle, attacking rural villages and outposts.
Boucher let out a soft sigh. This was the kind of stuff he wouldn’t miss at all. “I am, sir. I believe I added a footnote or two to the brief.”
“Is there anything we can do about it?”
The question caught Boucher off guard. “Sir?”
Chambers drew in a breath. “You were there, at CIA, during the Clinton administration, weren’t you Domenick?”
“Yes sir.” Back then, he’d been a senior operations officer. It was hard to believe he’d come so far in such a short time.
“Do you know what Clinton said was the biggest regret of his presidency? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t that business with the intern and the cigar.”
Even if he hadn’t known the answer, Boucher would have been able to guess from the context. “Rwanda.”
“We sat on our hands and kicked our heels, and a million people were slaughtered.”
Boucher didn’t respond. He understood, better than most, the sort of horrors that were loose in the world. He also understood how political realities could get in the way of the most honorable intentions.
Just six months before the events in Rwanda, an attempt by the US government to intervene in a similar humanitarian crisis in Somalia had led to a two-day long battle, in which two Blackhawk helicopters were shot down, eighteen American soldiers were killed and one was taken prisoner. The bodies of the slain were desecrated and dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. The images of these atrocities were dutifully recorded and broadcast by the news media, and many Americans began to publicly question why their sons were getting killed trying to save a bunch of ungrateful savages. With the bitter taste of that disaster still in its mouth, the administration had all but ignored the unfolding genocide in Rwanda, and innocent people had died.