The crowd went wild, ten thousand voices cheering as one, caps flying into the air and scarves waving in the breeze. To Nochenko, the cacophony was a symphony, a perfect blending of frustration and hope. They’re turning, Nochenko thought. They’re almost there.
To Bousikaris’s surprise, it hadn’t taken much to bring his boss around to his way of thinking. For all his flaws, President Phillip Martin had a well-honed sense of survival.
Despite the pleasant mask Martin had donned while listening to the ambassador’s “proposal,” Bousikaris had seen the signs: the pulsing jaw, the tapping finger on the chair’s armrest …
The explosion had come the instant the door closed: “Those sons-of-bitches! Who do they think they’re dealing with? Terrorists, my ass. They’re up to something, Howard! They’re trying to screw me! Well, they’re in for a surprise …”
Bousikaris let him rant for a few minutes, then said. “Phil, we don’t know anything.”
“They’re blackmailing—”
“They’re leveraging. There’s a difference.” Is there! Bousikaris thought. In this case, not really, but the sooner he could get Martin on track, the sooner they could start thinking of a way out. “They’re looking for help. They’re worried we’ll be less than enthusiastic about it.”
“Bullshit,” growled Martin.
“Look, it happens in Congress every day. You know that. This is the same thing, just on a larger scale.” Bousikaris stepped forward, placed his fists on the desk, and stared hard at Martin. “Phil.”
“What!”
“Listen to me: This is a game you know how to play. This is what you do best. Don’t let anger put you off your game.”
Martin stared back, then took a deep breath, and nodded. “Okay, right. What do we do?”
4
With a nod from their escort, Leland Dutcher and his deputy at Holystone, Walter Oaken, stepped off the elevator into Dick Mason’s outer office. As Dutcher had expected, Mason’s secretary, Ginny, was waiting. Ginny had been Dutcher’s assistant when he’d served as DDI years before.
“Leland!” She gave him a hug. “I heard you were coming. ”
“Ginny, I doubt there’s much you don’t hear. Here’s hoping you’re never kidnapped.”
“Oh, lord, who would want me? I’m a glorified typist.”
“Sure you are. You remember Walt.”
“Of course. Nice to see you again, Mr. Oaken.”
“You, too, Ginny.”
Tall and gangly and stoop-shouldered, Oaken was not only Holystone’s second-in-command, but also its “chief scrounger and cobbler,” as Dutcher was fond of saying. Whether it was information, equipment, or documentation, if somebody needed it, Oaken either had it or knew where to find it. A former division head at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence Research, Oaken had been Dutcher’s first recruitment for Holystone.
Dutcher nodded toward Mason’s door. “Who’s waiting for us in there?”
Ginny said, “Mr. Mason, Mr. Coates, and Ms. Albrecht.”
“Ah, the big three.”
George Coates and Sylvia Albrecht were Mason’s Deputy Directors of Operations, and Intelligence, respectively. When Mason first came aboard as DCI, he’d done some house-cleaning, which included the hiring and firing of two sets of DDs until he’d found a pair that could set aside the intra-departmental infighting that had become endemic at Langley. Coates and Albrecht were a rare breed, content to let hard work and merit, rather than political acumen, decide their careers. It helped that Mason set a good example; the DCI had little stomach for politics and worked tirelessly to keep it out of Langley. Gruff and grizzled but always fair, Mason was the epitome of a CIA cold warrior: A good man to have on your side, a terrible man to have against you.
Mason’s door swung open. “Dutch, Walt. Thought I heard your voices. Not trying to steal Ginny away, are you?”
“It’s crossed my mind.”
“Forget it. She’s a company woman to the bone.”
Ginny waved a dismissive hand. “Go, both of you. I’ve got work to do.”
Dutcher and Oaken took their seats in a pair of chairs around the coffee table. Sunlight streamed through the window, casting shadows on the burgundy carpet. After greetings were exchanged and coffee poured, Mason came to the point. “Leland, how much do you remember about Ledger?”
“The defection of Chinese PLA General Han Soong. I was DDI then. We put together the assessment and background, but after it went to Operations, I lost track of it. Rumor was it was handed to ISAG for execution. I later learned Briggs was involved, but that was before Holystone.”
ISAG, or Intelligence Support Activity Group, was a multiservice hybrid experiment that had gathered together SpecWar experts from the navy, army, air force, marines, and FBI, and put them through a course designed by the CIA. The goal was to create operators armed with superior military and intelligence training, a combination that had thus far been shunned by the military and the intelligence communities.
The training lasted two years and covered an astonishing range of skills: languages, agent handling, weapons, improvised demolitions, evasion and escape, communications, deep cover, surveillance and countersurveillance … If there was even a remote chance of it coming up in the field, it was taught.
“As I understand it, the defection fell through,” Dutcher continued. “Soong was arrested the day he was going into the pipeline. What I’d always wondered was why IS AG got the job.”
“Soong requested a controller with military background; Tanner fit the profile. As it turned out, it was a good call. The Guoanbu and PSB were waiting at the meeting site. You and Briggs never talked about Ledger?”
“No. I don’t think it’s his favorite topic.”
“Understandable,” said Mason. “He was Soong’s controller for three months. They got close.”
And Briggs has been playing the what-if game ever since, Dutcher thought.
Dutcher knew and loved Tanner like a son. The same reasons that made Tanner good at what he did were the same reasons that got him in trouble. He was tenacious — occasionally to a fault — and in this business, the ability to detach yourself was often a necessity of survival. Tanner’s “detachment instinct” was flawed — not dangerously so, but just enough to cause him heartache from time to time. Of course, Dutcher thought, there was no formula. In the end, pragmatism was perhaps the best measure. If it works, leave it alone.
And Tanner worked. He not only got the job done, but he could also sit alone in a room with himself afterward without going crazy. The best ones could. The ones who couldn’t, or the ones that didn’t let themselves, weren’t long for the business — or this world, for that matter.
Dutcher said, “Why the history lesson, Dick?”
“Three days ago our station chief in Beijing was contacted by someone in China’s Ministry of Agriculture — a mid-level bureaucrat named Bian. The pitch was subtle, ambiguous.”
“Or so Brown thought,” Coates added and slid the report across the table.
Dutcher picked it up and read it, then said, “Interesting trick with the pen. Very old school.”
“Probably picked it up from a LeCarre novel,” said Sylvia Albrecht. “Cliché or not, it works.”