Locked On

35

The Sunday after the debate, Benton Thayer walked alone through the parking lot of the Chevy Chase Club, one of the oldest and finest country clubs in the greater D.C. area. Even though it was not yet noon and he was decked out for a day at the links in Hollas large plaid pants and knits and a purposefully clashing Ian Poulter tartan flat cap, Benton had just left the rest of his foursome after only nine holes. With the last debate out of the way, he’d taken the first half of his Sunday off for some time outside on this crisp fall day, but he needed to get back to the city and back to work. As President Edward Kealty’s campaign manager, he would have to wait until after November 6 for some R&R.

And as Benton headed for his white Lexus SUV he told himself he’d likely have a lot of free time after November 6. Not just because the election would be over, but because his man would lose, which meant his government-sector prospects in D.C. would be zilch, and his private-sector opportunities around here would be tinged by his failure to retain the Oval Office for his boss.

No self-respecting campaign manager throws in the towel publicly with three weeks until election day, and Thayer had five radio spots and nine television interviews planned for Monday, when he would confidently declare just the opposite of what he knew to be true, but the forty-three-year-old walking alone in the parking lot was no idiot. Short of Jack Ryan being caught with his pants around his ankles outside a day care, the writing was on the wall, and the election was over.

Still, he considered himself a good soldier, and there were the media appearances in the morning that he needed to prepare for, so he was off to work.

As he climbed into his Lexus, he noticed a small manila envelope tucked under his windshield wiper. He leaned out, grabbed the package, and sat back in the car. Thinking that someone who belonged to the club must have left this for him — the grounds were fenced and guarded, after all — he tore into the bag without a thought.

Inside there was no note, no indication of who had left the package. But what he did find was a small thumb drive.

If he had been anywhere else, at the mall, in his driveway, returning to his car from his office at campaign headquarters, Benton Thayer would have taken an unknown and unsolicited package like this and tossed it in the street.

But this was different. He decided to give it a look when he got to work.

Two hours later, Thayer had switched into khakis, an open-collared dress shirt, a wrinkle-free navy blue blazer, and loafers, no socks, and he sat at his desk in his office. The thumb drive had been forgotten for a bit, but he held it now, turned it back and forth, looking for any clue as to who had passed it. After another moment’s hesitation, he sat up and began to connect the drive to his laptop, but he stopped himself, hesitating again. He worried about the mysterious drive containing a virus that could either damage his machine or somehow steal the data from it.

Seconds later, Thayer stepped into the large open loft that served as the “war room” of the Washington campaign office. Around him, dozens of men and women manned computers, phones, printers, and fax machines. A buzz of activity fueled by a long row of coffee urns on cloth-covered tables against the wall to his left. There, at the closest table, a college-aged girl was filling her eco-friendly travel mug with hot coffee.

Thayer didn’t know the girl; he didn’t bother to learn the names of more than the top five percent of his staff. “You,” he said with a point of his finger.

The young lady jolted when she realized he was talking to her. Coffee splashed out of her mug. “Yes, sir?” she replied nervously.

“You have a laptop?”

She nodded. “At my desk.”

“Get it. Bring it in here.” He disappeared back into his office, and the college girl scurried to do as she was told. The third of the room that was in earshot of the exchange stopped working and stared, watched the woman grab her Mac and rush back toward Thayer’s office as if they were regarding a condemned criminal on the way to the gallows.

Benton Thayer did not ask the girl her name or what she did. Instead he instructed her to put the thumb drive into her MacBook Pro and open the folder. She did this with slightly quivering fingers that were still sticky with spilled sugary coffee. As the single folder opened, revealing several files, Thayer told her to wait outside.

The young lady was all too happy to oblige.

Satisfied now that his own machine would not be damaged by a corrupt thumb drive, Benton Thayer began going through the files that had been surreptitiously delivered to him.

There was no explanation, no electronic version of a cover sheet. But the file was titled “John Clark.” Thayer knew a couple of guys named John Clark, it was a common name, but when he opened the file and saw a series of photos, he realized he did not know this man.

Then he began clicking through pages and pages of data on the man. A dossier of sorts. A personal history. U.S. Navy. SEAL team. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam — Studies and Observations Group. Thayer had no idea what that was, but it sounded shady as hell to him.

Then CIA. Special Activities Division.

Targeted killings. Sanctioned denied operations.

Thayer shrugged. Okay, this guy is a spook, and a spooky spook, but why should I care?

Then specific operations were laid out. He thumbed through them quickly. He could tell these were not CIA documents, but they seemed to contain detailed information about Clark’s Agency career.

It was a complicated mess of information. Information that might be interesting to someone. Human Rights Watch? Amnesty International? But Benton Thayer? He was growing bored looking through it. He carried on an internal dialogue with the mysterious person who delivered him this thumb drive. Jesus. Like I give a shit. Get to the point.

Then he stopped. Huh? Is this the point?

Photos with Clark and a younger John Patrick Ryan. Details of their relationship, spanning a quarter-century.

So the guy is old, and he’s ex-CIA. Ryan is old and ex-CIA. They knew each other? That’s all you’ve got, mystery man?

And then, after a rundown of John Clark’s years in Rainbow, a single document that seemed to be out of place. An allegation of a murder Clark committed in Germany, thirty years ago.

Why isn’t this in its place in the timeline? Thayer read it carefully. From all the information present, he got the impression that this intel was coming from a source outside of the United States.

He flipped to the next page.

A document detailing a presidential pardon given in secret to Clark for assassinations carried out at CIA.

“So …” Thayer muttered to himself. “CIA chief Ryan orders Clark to kill people, then President Ryan papers over the crimes after the fact.”

“Holy shit!”

Thayer picked up the phone, pushed a pair of buttons. “It’s Thayer. I need to see him tonight, just as soon as he gets out of Marine One and back into the White House.”