Call to Treason

THIRTY-SEVEN

Short, stocky Eric Stone had always been ambivalent about history. He could not affect it, and whatever impact it was going to have had already occurred. Moreover, he did not believe people could learn from it or, failing that, were doomed to repeat it. There were always nuances that made events different. Caesar was not Napoleon who was not Hitler who was not Stalin. Anyway, what was important in one era did not matter now. How many people, old and young, could name one thing Calvin Coolidge had done? Or who he was, for that matter.

While tourists and visitors to the convention center gathered around the time line of San Diego, Stone went about his business. He checked booths where attendees received their badges, made sure the media was present and able to set up their gear, determined that there would be a sufficient number of buses to run delegates to and from the nearby hotels. He did not care that hunting peoples of northeast Asia had crossed the Bering Ice Bridge and migrated to the south to hunt caribou, bison, and mammoth some twenty thousand years ago. It did not matter to him that Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European to visit the region, sailing from Mexico into San Diego Bay in 1542 and claiming the region for Spain. It was unimportant that sixty years later, Sebastian Vizcaino sailed from Mexico and named the region after the Spanish saint San Diego de Alcalá. The natives could have been hunting dodos, the Spanish men could have been French women, none of it mattered. The thirty-year-old was unapologetic about his interest in the present. That grew from spending time with his father, Phil, back in Indianapolis, when the fifty-year-old was dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Lou Gehrig’s disease. Not just dying from it but being disintegrated by it. His limbs folding in on themselves as his muscles atrophied, his organs failing. In a lucid moment before he succumbed entirely to living decomposition, the elder Stone told his only son that he regretted so much in his life. Becoming a mechanical engineer instead of a painter. Not spending more time with Eric instead of bowling and drinking with the guys.

“I had a guy,” the older man whispered. “The best guy.” He touched the top of eighteen-year-old Eric’s head with a hand whose fingers would not fully uncurl. “I could have had a better life.”

That was the last thing Phil Stone had to say before the muscles of his face stopped working. He spent the last month of his life with his jaw hanging slack and his eyes staring at an aluminum bed rail and whatever memories he could find in his drug-hazed brain. Eric Stone resolved, then, to regret nothing. To live in the moment. That meant having power.

The elder Stone’s illness devoured their savings and kept the young boy from graduating with any distinction. The only way he could get an education was by enlisting in the military. Having spent his life landlocked in the agricultural belly of the nation, he joined the navy, where he caught the eye of then-Rear Admiral Link. It was in San Diego, after the Persian Gulf War. There was a reception for the vice president of the United States at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems facility. SPAWAR provided more than half of the tactical and nontactical information management technology the navy used to complete its operational missions during the war.

To help pay the bills at home, Eric had worked as a waiter for a catering company. He was ordered to work the windy al fresco party. Something about his manner captured Link’s attention. His intensity, perhaps. He handled a tray as carefully as he would nitroglycerin. The wind stirred the fabric of his dress blues, but he did not lose a single drop of champagne.

Eric Stone lived in the moment.

Link had Stone transferred to his own Department of Focused Sensing and Data Acquisition. This embraced intelligence-gathering operations through photographic, electromagnetic, acoustic, seismic, olfactory, visual, or other means. It relied on everything from satellites to aircraft to sensor fields arrayed on the ground in the form of probes and microtechnology. Stone went to work in the accounting division. At Link’s request, he found ways to get better deals from suppliers so there was more money to spend on other things. There was no kickback, no padded invoices, no black-ops funding, no dishonesty. It was all about making FSDA/SPAWAR run more effectively. Link made sure that Stone got the schooling he needed. There was strong mentoring throughout the three years they were together.

SPAWAR was Link’s jumping-off point to the Company. Before accepting their offer to run Far Eastern Intelligence from CIA headquarters, Link told Stone to get in touch with him when his hitch was up. Stone did that and went to work in the inspector general’s office. There was an opening for an information system auditor, conducting efficiency analyses of CIA programs and activities. While Stone worked there, he attended classes in accounting at the University of Northern Virginia. He had his master’s degree within three years. He transferred to Link’s personal staff that same year, with GS-15 pay status and top-level security clearance. Stone’s first job was making sure money reached field agents in Asia, which was Link’s area of command. Within two years, Stone had become the admiral’s executive assistant. The men did not socialize outside the office. On the job, however, they were as close as father and son, watching each other’s backs in the shadow of a ruthless and complex bureaucracy and making sure the department ran smoothly.

Stone had never thought of the admiral as a political activist. Like the younger man, Link seemed to be absolutely focused on the moment, on whatever job needed to be done. It came as a shock when, six months ago, Link called him into his office and shut the door.

“Senator Donald Orr of Texas is going to be starting a new political party and making a serious run for the presidency,” Link had said. “I’m going to find a way to work with him.”

“Why?” Stone had asked.

The answer surprised him. “To stop him.”

Link had met the senator at a Congressional Intelligence Planning Committee briefing several months before. The Texan was impressed with Link’s grasp of the threat represented by terrorist cells relocating from the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia to China. Implicit in the presentation was the notion that if Beijing could control international terrorism, it would give the Chinese a powerful tool to use against Western aggression. Paul Hood of Op-Center was also at that meeting, reporting on the recent efforts of the NCMC to try to contain Chinese expansion into the diamond market in southern Africa. Link had proposed a comprehensive “Quiet War” against Beijing, stirring student dissatisfaction from within, encouraging fringe provinces to move toward independence. Keeping the Chinese busy with domestic unrest would give them less time to worry about the United States and Europe.

The Quiet War was approved and funded. After the meeting, Orr took Link aside. He said he actually wanted to go further. He wanted to train CIA operatives to execute acts of terror in foreign capitals in what he called an “anti-civilian strike option.” These ACSO units would attack the societal infrastructure with more devastating efficiency than terrorist attacks had been executed anywhere in the world. In a subsequent meeting, Link learned that half of the twelve-person CIP Committee was appalled at the notion of attacking civilian targets such as banks, communications centers, and landmarks. The other half thought there was merit to the idea and named a subcommittee of six congressional representatives to study it.

Link was horrified. It was one thing to monitor terrorists and take preemptive action against them. It was another thing to use that security apparatus to foster what Orr was calling “aggressive isolationism.” But Link was too good an intelligence officer and too seasoned a bureaucrat to let Orr know what he was thinking. To the contrary. He encouraged Orr to talk. It was important to know what a potential opponent was thinking. Link resolved to take no steps against the top secret ACSO program until it moved from subcommittee to recommendation.

That never happened. The subcommittee decided the downside of ACSO made it too risky: the chance that a slip up could lead to the discovery that Congress had authorized strikes against civilian targets. Link was bothered that they did not react on moral grounds. It was all about personal preservation.

Orr accepted the setback with his courtly Texas grace, but he did not abandon the goal. ACSO and aggressive isolationism became obsessions with him. He privately enlisted Admiral Link in his crusade, assuming that a military man and intelligence director would see the wisdom of his goal.

Link confided in Stone that he did not. The admiral stayed close to Donald Orr because he wanted to know what the senator was planning. He believed Orr to be a dangerous man: a man with bad ideas and the charm to sell them.

It was a typically brisk morning on San Diego Bay. Stone’s curly blond hair danced against his forehead. The salty sea wind was ribboned with the faint smell of diesel fuel. The unique gas-and-steel tang, the odor of latent warfare, was coming from the naval station just southeast of the convention center. The sounds of traffic moving along Harbor Drive mingled with the cries of sea birds and the roar of jets that landed every few minutes at the airport a few miles to the north. It was sensory chaos, but none of it bothered Stone. He was a source of calm in the midst of political and environmental anarchy. He had to be. What they did here would alter the course of world history.

An ironic destiny for someone who did not care to be a part of that stream, Stone thought. All the young man cared about was securing the goals Kenneth Link had set for them both. They were unusual ends, and it would take extraordinary means to get there. But they would succeed.

They had to.

Stone showed the security guard his pass and entered the convention center. A huge American flag hung on the south side of the room; the banner of the USF was suspended from the north side. Both were being steam-ironed to remove the wrinkles. Then they would be rolled and dropped when the convention got under way. Below them, rows of chairs were still being set up, their backs draped with gold and blue covers. Those were the colors of the convention. They signified a new dawn in a clear sky. The slogan of the convention was, “A New Day for America.”

That it would be. But not in the way that Don Orr imagined.

Stone went to the podium to see how work on the sound system was progressing. Texas Congresswoman Nicolet Murat was there, waiting to run a sound check. Nicolet would be giving the keynote address the next day. She came from oil money and was in line to become Treasury secretary in an Orr administration. Stone smiled a crooked smile as he greeted Congresswoman Murat and her executive assistant. It was exciting to be part of a big machine with its parts and pieces nearly ready to engage. And not in the way its designer imagined.

The lopsided smile broadened.

How could dead history compare to rich, explosive life?