“One being that old identities disappeared and new ones were created. “
“Or that there be no identity at all, you see,” Johnson said. “That could be even more useful, depending on what the individual was being recruited to do. Or become.”
Train sampled his beer. “Were the people who might have been recruited in this fashion being considered for particularly dangerous work?” he asked.
Johnson pursed his lips as he thought about the question.
“More often, they were being recruited to place other individuals in danger, rather than themselves. Remember, the operations in question may have involved the heroin business. Disputes in that business tend even to this day to invoke fairly rigorous sanctions from time to time.”
“I love it when you talk double. What was that lovely expression back in the sixties? Terminate with extreme prejudice?”
“Something like that. Or so I’m told. This may all be apocryphal.
The waitress appeared again with their lunch. Johnson waited until she was gone before resuming his little homily.
The place was noisy enough now that they both had to lean in across the table even to hear each other.
“That’s an interesting concept,” Train said around a bite of his BLT.
“But if you recruit and train a guy like that and then employ him in that or in related lines of work, how do you keep control of him? In the event that he gets out of control, I mean. Especially if he doesn’t exist in the first place? And given that the United States government has publicly and frequently disavowed the use of such individuals? I mean, what if he goes freelancing: What sanctions do you use on him?”
Johnson looked up and mimed clapping his hands in silent applause. “Very good, Doctor,” he said. Then he addressed his soup for a moment. “That, of course, is the heart of the operational problem with the individuals I’ve been describing,” he continued. “What the Roman emperor was always wanting to know: Who guards the guards?” Then he paused, staring at Train, a spoonful of soup in midair. The light from the main chandelier reflected off his glasses, obscuring his eyes. “That particular control problem requires a very special individual indeed. And that requirement has some relevance to your initial question, if you follow.”
Train sat back in his chair, a chill washing over him. So Qalantz wasn’t just a wet-work mechanic. He was a sweeper, a very special operative whose job it was to go after a mechanic who was no longer under effective operational control.
“Oh,” he said.
“Yes, indeed, oh,” Johnson replied.
And then the full import hit him-why Johnson of the FBI had agreed to meet with him on an hour’s notice. There must be a serious flap on within the operational arms of the intelligence community, serious enough for the FBI to have gotten wind of it. If Galantz was indeed behind two murders out in the civilian community, then his employers had a genuine crisis on their hands. It was one thing for an agency hit man to jump the traces; it was quite another if a sweeper did it. He thought momentarily of Karen and the whispering voice.
He looked back up at Johnson, who was watching him work it out. Johnson arched his eyebrows, nodded at him meaningfully, and then went back to his soup. Train had suddenly lost his appetite.
“I’m a little confused about one thing,” Train said finally.
“Only one thing. How felicitous for you.”
Train ignored that. “I should think,” he said, “that warnings would have been passed along by now, from their graybeards to our graybeards. As in, ‘butt out.’ “
“Quite so. Although your own personal graybeards at MS aren’t involved.
This is well above NIS’s pay grade.”
“I’m not at NIS. I’m on loan.”
“On loan? To whom, precisely?” Johnson had the beginnings of a worried look on his face, as if he might have said too much, depending on where Train was parking his car these days.. “I’m seconded to the Navy headquarters staff. I’m working for an Admiral Carpenter. He’s the Navy JAG. The bad guy we’re talking all around may have iced two civilians connected to one of the admirals on the Navy headquarters staff. The cops came to see the JAG.”
“Now this really begins to tie together,” Johnson said, relief evident in his voice.
“Why so?”
“Because it’s my understanding that the Navy has indeed been told to butt out,” Johnson said. “Most emphatically, they have been. Via the Director of Naval Intelligence.”
Damn, Train thought. The DNI. Had he alerted Carpenter? And,. if so, why hadn’t Carpenter told him this? Johnson sensed his vexation. “Somebody holding back on you, Doctor?” Johnson said gently. “You might want to think about why they’d do that. “
Train went back to his sandwich, chewing mechanically while thinking about what Johnson had just told him. “Can I assume that interested parties in the other organization are not just sitting around on this problem?” he asked.
“You most certainly can. VVWCH is how we lesser relatione in the FBI came to know about the problem-especially since your bad guy is operating domestically. The with the problem are not supposed to operate do mestically, a rule we both know they don’t always observe so scrupulously.”
Train snorted. “Yeah, right. Look, these homicides have brought in the Fairfax cops. What about them?”
“I give up. What about them?”
“They’re investigating two homicides.
Their boss is starting to talk about a serial killer. Maybe bringing in you guys even. “
Bringing us in,” Johnson murmured. “Now that would be “a lovely twist.”
“Anyone told them who or what they might be up against?”
Johnson smiled. “Probably not. But my information is that they’re up against one Rear Admiral W. T. Sherman,” he said. Train put his sandwich down and looked across the table at Johnson. He’d known all along about the murders and their own so-called investigation. Which meant that the FBI was already in the game. What the hell was going on here? He thought back to the meeting with the police the night before, and the way that homicide lieutenant had been looking at Sherman. Their request for him to open his personal accounts-that was a standard FBI tactic.
“I guess that’s my problem, then,” Train said. “I’m supposedly tasked to determine if Sherman is clean or not. Actually, I’m supposed to help another JAG - division investigator do that-one who has no idea of what she’s really getting involved in.”
“Then conform to your tasking,” Johnson said. “Like you said, Sherman is your problem. Sherman is not their problem. “
“But finding their problem is the best way to clear Sherman,” Train pointed out, half-knowing what Johnson would say next.
“Let me tell you something, Train,” Johnson said. “You stumble across their problem, you or your partner-Commander Lawrence, is it? You pull the bushes aside and come face-to-face with this particular Gorgon, you may find yourself dead, understand? He’s the kind of predator who can tear your throat out with one swipe of his paw before you realize you’re looking at a tiger. These guys, and there are very few of them, have layer upon layer of cover and resources all prepositioned against the day they are called into action. You have a reputation for being a stand-up guy. But you’re way out of your league if you’re thinking of trying to track down a sweeper.”
“I can’t just sit around. He’s already made a move against my partner.”
I Johnson shook his head. “Consider Sherman from the IRS perspective.
Right now, he’s suspected of being guilty.
Prove him otherwise. Let the people who conjure up monsters like this in a basement cauldron somewhere deal with their problem. You definitely don’t want to encounter their problem.”