Crozier had told Richmond to offer US citizenship not only to the chosen men themselves, but also to their families. Once the team had been assembled, Richmond was then to round the group up, sort out the relevant release paperwork with the authorities, and then book them into the Palace Hotel in Boston.
That was where Richmond’s responsibility ended; he ensconced the thirty men in the hotel, registering them as a trade delegation from South Korea, and then left, to return to his regular duties at headquarters. He reported directly to Crozier; even David Ellison, his official team leader, had not been allowed to debrief him.
The CIA investigation at this point indicated that the men had been shipped to a civilian facility known as Delta Training, which was apparently often used for mission-specific training for deniable ‘black’ CIA operations. Crozier apparently knew the owner of this facility personally, both men having served in the 82nd Airborne. Crozier had often sent people there for training it seemed, and the owner assumed it was for another CIA-approved mission.
The operation, it appeared, had been planned and executed by Crozier alone at every step of the way, and this was certainly what the ‘official’ CIA investigation was going to show. It declared him to be perhaps delusional, certainly mentally ill. But also highly intelligent, able to evade pick-up on routine psychological evaluations. After the death of his wife, he had dived headfirst into his work, became obsessed, paranoid by perceived threats which weren’t really there. He had apparently seen Russia and China as a major threat to the US, but his fears were ignored time and time again, until eventually he decided to go it alone and solve the problem by himself, without waiting for official authorization, which he had come to believe he would never get.
Interesting, thought Cole. But not as interesting as the fact that there were two CIA investigations into the US involvement in the attacks occurring simultaneously. The first was to make Crozier the scapegoat for the whole affair, in order to tie things up with as little fuss and with as little diplomatic damage as possible.
The second was to find out what really happened, and although this particular investigation was still ongoing, it gave Cole all the evidence he needed.
It seemed that before the attack in Sweden, Crozier had been having a number of secretive, covert meetings with an unknown group. Nothing particularly unusual in that for a man in Crozier’s position, but it was now CIA policy that a record should be made of all such meetings — even Crozier would have to alert the Director at least. But no such record was kept, and Crozier’s bodyguard Sam Hitchens remembered that his boss was always very upset by the meetings, drinking more than normal both before and after.
Hitchens had also been instructed to erase the journey to and from these particular meetings from the car’s black box recorder. He had not been allowed to be present at such meetings, but at one stage had caught a glimpse of two other people, and had worked with the CIA’s team of identification experts to come up with artist’s impressions, which they were now running through their computers for a match.
So although the official line was that William Crozier was acting alone out of some paranoid need to protect American interests, there were fears that Crozier was actually being controlled — perhaps blackmailed — into running the operation by an outside source. The investigative team had no idea who it might be — elements within the government, the military, big business, even a foreign power, they just didn’t know.
But Cole had recognized the artist’s impressions instantly. To a certain extent, the two men were nobodies — just executive protectors like Hitchens himself. James Garrett and Glen Doring were bodyguards trained by the Defence Intelligence Agency, Cole’s own home agency when he was with the SRG, which was why he recognized them.
What was more interesting was who they were protecting, and a quick search came back with two names that left Cole pausing at the computer screen in disbelief.
Garrett was the bodyguard of Clyde Rutherford, the Secretary for Defence, whilst Doring was the bodyguard of Tim Collins, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Cole looked up from the computer screen, blinking his eyes as he looked around the café. Finally his eyes caught the tattooed proprietor’s, and Cole held up his coffee mug with a questioning smile. The man nodded, and went to the kitchen.
Cole stretched his neck and shoulders, hearing the stiffness creaking out of his bones. His ribs still hurt like hell from his fall from the roof in London, and the car crash outside Paris seemed to have left him with a permanent headache. But at least he was still alive.
The owner of the café — six feet six inches of tattoo-covered muscle with hair halfway down his back and a trail of studs running up one side of his nose — brought Cole another mug of steaming hot, super-strength coffee.
Cole thanked the man in fluent German, took a sip of the hearty brew, and then turned back to his computer.
The meetings could of course have had an innocent explanation — it wasn’t unheard of for the Director of the NCS to meet with the SecDef and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs — but why erase the car’s black box? The inference was that Crozier didn’t want the Director of Central Intelligence to know about the meetings. Why?
It also concerned Cole that Hitchens was sure there were many more people at the meeting; it was only that he had caught sight of two, and they had turned out to be only bodyguards. Cole wondered who else would have been at the meetings, and what their connection was.
To get some background, Cole did a brief search of his own home computer files and brought up a wealth of information on Rutherford and Collins. He traced their biographies and professional resumes, then re-read them. An interesting coincidence seemed to have cropped up that aroused Cole’s instincts immediately.
Joint Military Intelligence College. Both men had attended the college from 1999 to 2000, taking their Masters in Science of Strategic Intelligence.
Working quickly, he called up the information on Crozier he had read before travelling to Washington to kill him.
There it was. Master of Science of Strategic Intelligence, Joint Military Intelligence College, 2000.
Shit. Cole took a deep breath, a slug of the thick black coffee, and began to interrogate the files of the National Defence Intelligence College, the name the JMIC was now operating under.
Who else had graduated from the class that year?
Before long, Cole had the entire class list for the JMIC’s Masters programme for 1999 to 2000.
His breathing was shallow as he read from the computer screen in front of him.
JMIC MASTER OF SCIENCE OF STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE 2000 ALUMNI:
JERRY ADAMS
TIM COLLINS
WILLIAM CROZIER
ALBERT FRASIER
ELIZABETH HARDEN
RICHARD JENSEN
DONALD NORLAND
DENNIS PITTMAN
FRANKLIN RICHARDS
CLYDE RUTHERFORD
DIANA WESTLAKE
He knew many of the names, and Google searched the ones he didn’t. The repercussions hit him instantly. The list was like a who’s who of Washington power brokers.
Although back in 2000 they had yet to hit the heady heights they now enjoyed, they had all been vibrant, go-getting up-and-comers, and it seemed they must have been mutually supporting each other ever since.