Conspiracy

13

“Old warriors. Ancient grudges,” declared Simon Dauber solemnly, summarizing the brief in the CIA secure conference room. Though most of his experience was in China, Dauber had been on the Southeast Asia desk long enough for Rubens to know and respect him. Those two things did not usually go hand in hand where the CIA was concerned.

“Old warriors can be quite potent,” remarked Hernes Jackson. “They shouldn’t be discounted.” Rubens had taken Jackson and Gallo along for the briefing. Unleashing Johnny Bib on the CIA would have been considered cruel and unusual punishment.

While Jackson’s point was valid, there was a lot to back up Dauber’s assessment of Infinite Burn. The CIA had developed information about the assassination plot from an agent code-named Red Diamond three years before. Diamond was a smuggler with ties to the government, a border-line undesirable whose status, naturally, made him a very interesting “catch.” He had given the CIA a number of tidbits over the two years that he had been on the payroll.

Most of the information had to do with drugs that were being transported, probably by rivals, in and out of Thailand and Cambodia as well as Vietnam. That information had been extremely reliable. He’d also given up details about different military matters. In those cases, his track record wasn’t quite so impeccable. He had a tendency to exaggerate, even when reporting on things like purchases of spare parts for aircraft.

Nor did the information about Infinite Burn fit in with what might be termed his usual reporting patterns. Even the CIA officer who had been running Red Diamond at the time felt it came out of left field. The officer had tried to sniff around among other sources, without finding anything.

Yet here they were, three years later, with an assassination attempt on a prominent U.S. senator — exactly as Red Diamond had predicted.

“So let’s say they have all these guys go deep undercover into America, right?” said Robert Gallo, repeating one of Dauber’s hypotheses. “How do they communicate with them?”

Dauber shook his head. “Don’t know.”

“How do they pick targets?”

“You have to remember, we didn’t find much evidence beyond Red Diamond’s original information. And he died a short time later. Or disappeared.”

Red Diamond had fallen from a boat in Saigon Harbor and was never heard from again. The case officer believed Red Diamond had probably been shot before falling, but that was not part of the police report.

“Your source implicated Thieu Gao,” said Jackson. “He’s now their ambassador to the U.S.”

“It’s important to note that we didn’t develop anything more tangible at the time than rumors,” interrupted Debra Collins, who had said very little during the entire session.

“We developed no other information from the government.

And a program like this — one would assume it had to have approval at the very highest levels to proceed.”

“Not necessarily,” said Jackson. “It could be simply, as Mr. Dauber said, old soldiers working together on their own.”

“That would not be the Vietnamese way,” said Jack Li, another Vietnam/Asian expert.

“But it is possible.”

“Whatever the assessment at the time,” said Rubens, “clearly this needs to be pursued.”

“I agree,” said Collins.

A half hour later, Rubens and Collins sat across from each other in her office, waiting for a call back from the President’s National Security Advisor, Donna Bing. Rubens didn’t particularly relish talking to Bing and he sensed that Collins didn’t, either.

Ironically, Bing’s appointment had drawn Collins and Rubens closer together, encouraged to ally in the face of a common enemy. Briefly lovers, they had become rivals after the creation of the NSA’s Desk Three — also known as Deep Black — because as a covert action unit it encroached on the CIA’s traditional bailiwick. They’d also both been considered for Bing’s job — Rubens, in fact, had turned it down, a decision he now deeply regretted.

Rubens hated Bing for several reasons. It wasn’t just that she had cut off his access to the President, or that she tended to question everything Rubens proposed. It wasn’t just that she presumed she knew the background of every possible international situation and had considered nuances no one else had, or even the fact that her assessments of the international situation tended to be about ten years out-of-date.

The thing that most annoyed Rubens was the tone of her voice, a nasal singsong tottering on the edge of becoming a sneer.

The voice greeted them with a perfunctory, “What is it?”

“Donna, Bill Rubens and his people have developed some information concerning Vietnam that we thought important to bring to the President’s attention,” said Collins.

“There is an intersection with intelligence we developed about three years ago. Bill is here now.” Rubens detailed what they had found. To his great surprise, Bing’s voice seemed bright, even cheery, when he finished.

“Good work. We must pursue this.”

“That’s why Ms. Collins and I are calling,” said Rubens.

“This is a Deep Black project?”

“We hadn’t quite gotten that far,” said Rubens. “I don’t know that there is a role for Desk Three.”

“What you’re talking about here is a covert attack on the American government,” said Bing. “I want the best involved.” Rubens glanced over at Collins, whose agency had just been indirectly insulted.

“Take the lead,” added Bing. “I’ll inform the President.” And then she clicked off.

“You really should have taken the job, Bill,” said Collins.

“You made a big mistake. For all of us.”