Omega Sanction

Chapter Seven

Dublowski studied the list for a long time. Thorpe and he were in the sergeant major's house, just off post in Fayetteville. Marge was nowhere to be seen and since Dublowski hadn't offered, Thorpe hadn't asked. The large two-story home felt empty and lifeless.

"There's eight disappearances around Stuttgart," Dublowski noted. "This is a lot of missing young women. How come no one's ever seen this pattern?"

"No one's ever looked," Thorpe said. "Also, that covers a time period of two years and every U.S. military family that was stationed in Germany. A lot of people. And it might not be a pattern," Thorpe added, picking up his friend's mood.

"Fucking CID," Dublowski said. "They should have checked."

"CID is limited in what it can do overseas," Thorpe said. "After all, Germany is a foreign country."

"They still could have checked."

"We're not sure we have a pattern," Thorpe repeated. "Look, CID has the same problem in Germany that every unit has. Turnover. There's no institutional knowledge there like regular community police forces have."

"Then why did you bring me this?" Dublowski said testily.

"We can go to CID," Thorpe said, "and give them that. They can get hold of the families and check. Maybe some of these girls did run away and have shown up. Maybe some have been accounted for in other ways. Maybe the German authorities have found some."

Dublowski stood. "Let's go."

Thorpe looked at his watch. It was almost six in the evening. "Why don't we wait until tomorrow during normal duty hours?"

Dublowski didn't answer. The screen door was already slamming shut behind him. Thorpe followed. He knew he was probably going to get in trouble for having used the computer to get the list, but he wasn't too worried about that. He'd broken bigger rules than unauthorized use of a computer during his time in service and now that he was a reservist there wasn't too much they could do to him except screw with his retirement benefits, and the army had already done that.

He hopped in the passenger seat of Dublowski's truck. The ride to the Fort Bragg CID headquarters didn't take long. It was located in a new building across the street from the post school. Dublowski led the way in and they walked up to a man in civilian clothes manning a desk right inside the door. He eyed Dublowski, with his big gray mustache and civilian clothes, warily.

"Can I help you?"

Dublowski pulled out his ID card and laid it on the man's desk. "I'm Sergeant Major Dublowski and this is Major Thorpe."

"Agent Martinez," the man replied. "What can I do for you?"

Dublowski slapped the computer printout on top of his ID card. "This is a list of teenage dependent girls who have disappeared without a trace in Germany in the past two years. There's twenty-four names on the list. My daughter's is one of them."

Martinez picked up the list and looked at it warily.

"I was told that there was nothing CID could do about my daughter disappearing," Dublowski continued as the agent read. "I was told she ran away. I know she didn't and the list backs me up."

"How does this list back that up?" Martinez asked with a frown as he scanned the list.

"There's a pattern," Dublowski said. "Someone is kidnapping young dependent girls in Germany."

Martinez cautiously put the list down and looked at the angry sergeant major. "I'm not really sure what I can do with this."

"Then get someone who knows," Dublowski growled.

"Hold on while I get the shift commander," Martinez said.

In the next hour, Dublowski told his story and showed the list to three CID personnel of increasing rank. Thorpe stayed in the background. He felt that they were getting somewhere as the rank went up. At eight he found out exactly how far. The full colonel who was the regional CID commander finally came in. He listened to Dublowski's story, then took the list with him into his office and shut the door. Twenty minutes later he came back out.

"Where did you get these names?" he asked.

Thorpe stepped forward and explained his part.

"Do you know what you did is illegal?" the colonel asked.

"Not exactly illegal, sir," Thorpe hedged. "I was just—"

"Exactly illegal!" the colonel snapped. "You're lucky I don't bring you up on charges, Major."

He turned to Dublowski. "Sergeant Major, I am sorry about your daughter, but the official file on your case shows that CID-Germany investigated and ruled that there was no foul play involved. The case agent's notes suggest that your daughter most likely ran away. It happens all the time." He shook the list. "In fact, I'm amazed there are only twenty-four names on this list for a time period as long as two years, given the numbers of soldiers who rotate through Germany. I would have guessed the number to be much higher."

"Do you know how many people disappear every day? And they aren't all victims of foul play. In fact, relatively few are. Even in our modern society, people can hide if they want."

"Wouldn't it be rather hard to do that overseas?" Thorpe asked, sensing the brewing volcano next to him and trying to avert an eruption.

"Not necessarily," the colonel said.

"My daughter didn't run away," Dublowski said.

"Sergeant Major, your friend here" — he pointed at Thorpe—"committed an illegal act when he used the computer at SOCOM to get these names. Those personnel files are restricted and can be looked at only on an official need-to-know basis. How would you like it if someone was looking through your personnel record for some reason of their own whenever they felt like it?"

"Sir," Thorpe began, "I understand what I did was—"

A female voice cut him off. "No, Major Thorpe, I don't think you do." Lieutenant Colonel Kinsley was standing by the door. She looked very unhappy to be at CID headquarters at nine-thirty in the evening. Her battle-dress uniform wasn't as crisply starched as when Thorpe had seen it earlier in the day. She turned to the CID colonel. "Are you done with them, sir?"

The colonel walked over and handed the printout to Kinsley. "Yes, I am." He looked at Dublowski. "I'm sorry, Sergeant Major, but the case is closed."

Dublowski didn't budge. "What about all those missing girls?"

"Every one of those cases was investigated and closed," the colonel said. "Linking them together is not sufficient to cause us to reopen them. It's like saying every crime committed in North Carolina is linked. There's just no evidence. I hate to say it" — the colonel lowered his voice—"but the biggest problem with all of this is that of these twenty-four, not a single one has been recovered as a body. If your theory of a serial killer was true, then surely some bodies would have been found."

The colonel was warming to the subject. "The fact is that most serial killers want the bodies to be found. They want the world to know what they're doing. CID-Germany did as much as they could, given what was there in the case file and the limits of operating overseas in another government's jurisdiction."

"I'm sorry, but the case is closed. I will contact the CID office in Germany and check to see if anything new has turned up, but unless there is further evidence, there is nothing we can do here." With that, the colonel turned his back on them.

Thorpe put a hand across Dublowski's chest, restraining him. "Let's go, Dan. We've done all we can here." He kept the physical pressure on Dublowski, herding him out of the CID building.

Lieutenant Colonel Kinsley walked with them to the parking lot. Her last words to Thorpe weren't very encouraging. "Major Thorpe, I will see you in front of my desk at exactly 0900 hours tomorrow morning." She was in her car driving away before Thorpe and Dublowski reached the older man's truck.

"I'm sorry I got you into this, Mike." Dublowski had calmed down.

"It's all right. I've had my butt chewed by experts. What's she going to do, send me to a team and make me carry a rucksack?"

Dublowski started the truck and they headed back toward the BOQ.

"What do you think of CID's reaction?" Dublowski asked.

"I hate to say it, Dan, but it's pretty reasonable," Thorpe said. "When I first saw the list, I thought twenty-four was a lot, but if you divide it by two years and the vast number of U.S. personnel going through Germany, then it's really a very low percentage. And the CID colonel was right: Most of those probably are runaways."

Thorpe could see the muscle on the side of Dublowski jaw clenched, but the sergeant major didn't say anything. Thorpe knew he was treading on thin ice, but he also knew what Dublowski was capable of and he felt he needed to defuse the situation right now.

"There was no evidence, no connection between the names," Thorpe continued. "Until we get that, we don't have anything. It was something I went off half cocked on, and we got caught on it."

"Yeah," Dublowski reluctantly said, "I guess so."

The truck pulled up to the front of Moon Hall and Thorpe got out. "Thanks anyway," Dublowski said.

"I'm not going to give up on this," Thorpe said.

"What can you do? That colonel you work for sounds like she'd love to have your ass for breakfast tomorrow."

Thorpe laughed, indicating what he thought of that fate.

"I'm going to call someone I know," Thorpe said, leaning back in the truck seat.

"What for?"

"We might not be able to do anything, but she might. She's got access to a lot of information and she's probably smarter than the two of us combined."

"Some smarts would help," Dublowski acknowledged.

The original CIA headquarters building was built in the mid-1950s by the same firm that had designed the UN building in New York. The then-director of Central Intelligence who oversaw the design directed that it be built like a college campus, perhaps a subconscious attempt to camouflage the mission of the organization even to those who worked there. The original building contained over 1.4 million square feet and was the hub of the nation's foreign intelligence gathering for the bulk of the Cold War.

A new addition of 1.1 million square feet was built in 1984, and consisted of two six-story modern office buildings attached to the original headquarters. Despite being less than eight miles from the center of Washington, CIA headquarters was set on 258 acres of rolling countryside in northern Virginia that made Washington seem much farther away.

The CIA was formerly founded by the National Security Act of 1947, which also established the National Security Council. Before that time, the organization traced its lineage through the Central Intelligence Group founded in 1946, and before that to the OSS, Office of Strategic Services, of World War II fame. The OSS had been led by Colonel "Wild" Bill Donovan, who had been awarded the medal of honor in World War I.

During the Second World War the OSS had been a bastard stepchild to the British's SOE, Special Operation Executive, which had far more experience at the nefarious art of espionage, but by the end of the war, under Donovan's guidance, the American OSS had earned its spurs. Not only did it give birth to the CIA, but it was also the same unit that army Special Forces traced its lineage to.

Despite being birthed from the same organization, over the years the CIA and Special Forces had more often been at each other's throats than allied in a common cause. This came to a head during the Vietnam War, when Special Forces felt it was being used by the Agency to fight its own dirty war. Many of the Agency's most controversial programs, such as Phoenix, were staffed by Green Berets. But when it came time for the Agency to support several Special Forces men accused of murdering a double agent at Nha Trang in 1969, the Agency refused to back up the military men, leaving them to dangle.

The CIA had many ups and downs in the first fifty years of its existence. On the darker side lay early events like the Bay of Pigs. Of more noteworthy mention during that time period was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Abuses during the Cold War led to the formation of the Select Committee on Intelligence, which was at first supposed to be temporary, but was changed into a permanent organization in 1976, allowing Congress oversight on intelligence matters.

In 1982, President Reagan signed a bill exempting the CIA from the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, reversing a decade-long trend of more openness.

On the grounds at Langley, a piece of the Berlin Wall was set up as a memorial to what the CIA considered its greatest victory — the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A solitary figure was now passing that memorial, the lights highlighting the cracked concrete piece of wall casting his long shadow along the walkway heading toward one of the new office towers.

The man noted the piece of the wall every time he passed it because it represented several things to him. One was indeed the fall of the Soviet Union, but Karl Hancock wasn't too sure how much the CIA had had to do with that; in fact, having worked in covert operations for over thirty years, he knew how much CIA distortion of Russian military capabilities had added to American paranoia for decades and maintained the Western side of the Cold War at a footing far beyond what was truly necessary.

The reality of the unreality of covert operations was what the wall memorial represented to Hancock. And that reality could be manipulated by those who understand it to fit their own purposes.

Hancock pulled his ID out for the rent-a-cop security guards who manned the entrance to the building. The first layer of security. He again pulled it out as he passed through the second layer, this time showing it to guards who were actually CIA personnel. He boarded an elevator and descended below the surface to sublevel three. He exited into a small lobby, where he was required to get his retinas scanned before the steel door on the other side would open. A guard sitting in a booth enclosed in bulletproof glass watched him without expression as he performed the maneuver. Hancock walked down a black-marble-floored hallway, passing framed placards with the Agency's vision, mission and values engraved on them. He didn't waste any of his time reading them. Public relations devices to appease a country that wanted to be safe and free but didn't want to be dirtied by the processes necessary to ensure that in a world full of dirty players.

At the end of the hall a large CIA seal was bolted to the wall; double doors beckoned to either side. A fork in the road. To the left was the operations center. To the right, the Center for Direct Action.

The Operations Center had a large sign identifying it. CDA simply had a black falcon painted on the steel, one claw of the falcon holding a lightning bolt, the other the American flag. Hancock had had it put there when he took over CDA and he always paused to appreciate the art before pushing the doors open.

Hancock went down to the end of the hallway beyond the falcon painting to another steel door. He put his palm on the panel to the left of the door. It swung open with a hiss. He walked into his office, putting his coat on a hook just inside the armored door.

His desk was large and flat, without anything on it. To the left of the desk, eight chessboards were set on a marble pedestal. Each board had different motifs for the pieces, ranging from the traditional, through a Napoleonic motif, Civil War motif, and a World War II one. Seven of the eight had games in progress on them, the pieces frozen in the midst of their combat. Hancock stopped and stared at the Civil War board for several moments. The game was in the early stages, only a few pieces moved.

With a sigh, Hancock turned. Just before he left his office he paused and looked at the cluster of framed pictures on the wall to the right of his door. There were several of him in the White House War Room with Presidents from Nixon through the current administration. Never the Oval Office, where publicity shots were taken — that was for the director and the chief of Operations. The chief of Direct Action only went to the White House through the underground tunnel from the Vice President's office building and only met with the administration officials in the secure War Room, three hundred feet under the White House. And the CDA only went to the White House when dirty work needed to be done.

Hancock's eyes paused on a particular photo — he was seated at the War Room conference table; standing behind him with a hand on Hancock's shoulder was former National Security Adviser Hill, now currently awaiting trial for his role in the Red Flyer teams and other purported abuses of power.

Hancock's gaze continued to another photo. A much younger Hancock was on a deep-sea fishing boat with another man. A muscle on the left side of Hancock's face jerked. The other man had the same angular face as Hancock, the major difference being the other man's hair wasn't yet burned white — nor would it ever be.

Hancock left his office, retracing his steps to the main corridor, the sounds of the taps on his highly polished shoes echoing off the walls. He crossed the main hallway and entered the other department that took up the third sublevel of the basement.

Night or day, the Operations Center at Langley functioned at the same level of intensity and manning. That was because the section was responsible for the entire globe, and while it was night over Washington it was daylight over half the world.

Also, despite all the advances in technology, night was still the preferred time for covert operations. Hancock kept walking while he took in the massive status board — an eighty-foot- long-by-thirty-high electronic map of the world. Anything of significance to the intelligence community was highlighted on the board with a briefly noted box.

Right now, the largest box, indicating its relative importance, and backed in red — indicating it was vital to U.S. interests — was hovering over Bosnia-Herzegovina. Hancock walked over to one of the terminals. He brought up a smaller image of the one on the screen, then clicked over the box. He read the summary, then closed the box.

Hancock pushed open the door to one of the sound-and bug-proofed conference rooms off the main action center. A younger man was seated at the end of the conference table.

"What do you have?" Hancock asked. He was in his late forties and he looked trim and fit in his three-piece suit. His voice held a tint of finishing school or perhaps a lot of practice in front of a mirror. As chief of Direct Action, CDA, a classified section answerable only to the director and the President, Hancock held the greatest non-visible power inside the CIA. The CDA did what Operations used to do before Operations became subject to public scrutiny and congressional censure. The Oversight Committee didn't even know the CDA existed.

Welwood worked in Operations, the strongest visible part of the CIA. As such he was answerable to the chief of Operations. But the C/O was a new appointee, the first woman ever to hold such a high rank in the old-boy Agency, and there were many in operations who feared for their careers working for a woman who was going to be scrutinized for every decision she made or failed to make. If she went down, they'd all take a hit, and Hancock knew Welwood was smart enough to know he needed to cultivate friends elsewhere in the Agency's bureaucracy.

Welwood's voice was rich, developed in boarding schools and the Ivy League. "My desk received an electronic flag from the NSA referencing an unauthorized computer search that was conducted into the Department of Defense personnel database yesterday," Welwood said. "Normally, such a matter is no big deal. Some clerk checking something for a buddy. However, this one was a little different. This search triggered a flag instigated by our Agency."

Hancock had not taken a seat and was still standing, his posture indicating his impatience. "Why did you notify me?"

"A second, please, sir," Welwood said. He knew that information had to be presented in a certain order and he also knew Hancock's reputation. He had to impress Hancock the first time because there would be no second time. "The computer inquiry was a search for young women, military family members, who had disappeared in Germany over the past two years."

Hancock's face was an inscrutable mask. "And?"

"And," Welwood said, "the person making the inquiry was an army major named Mike Thorpe."

Hancock pulled out a leather chair and sat down, steepling his fingers together under his chin. "Mike Thorpe?"

Second hit, Welwood thought. "Yes. He's in the army reserves now, working an active duty tour for the Special Operations command at Fort Bragg."

"Why should that or this search interest me?" Hancock asked.

Welwood continued with the rehearsed presentation. "I checked on this Thorpe fellow. He was involved in both the Omega Missile incident and a covert operation off the coast of Lebanon involving nuclear materials."

Hancock leaned back in the seat and crossed his ankles. He was looking at Welwood with what might be described as mild interest. "So?"

Welwood knew Hancock's reputation too well to expect more than that on the surface.

"I checked the logs for the Lebanon operation. I believe it was called Operation Delilah. Something to do with keeping the balance of power in the Middle East by providing the Israelis with raw materials for nuclear weapons. An under-the-table deal that was an outgrowth of the original classified rider appended to the Camp David Accord. Updated when the Palestinians were given autonomy in the West Bank."

"According to what I could find, Operation Delilah was an operation run by Direct Action." Welwood was on thin ice now. He had guessed the objective of Delilah from the little information the computer had yielded and some discrete inquiries on his part from other personnel in the building.

"Seems our man Major Thorpe was working with a Special Operation Nuclear Emergency Search Team that picked up word of a transfer of fissionable material from Russia to an unknown group in southern Lebanon. Naturally it was assumed this transfer was to a terrorist organization. When he went in to check it out, turns out it was, shall we say, unsupported elements, giving material to Israeli forces. Sounds like it was a bloody mess."

For the first time, Hancock showed emotion. "A bloody mess? Three of my men were killed by Thorpe. Killed while doing their duty to our country."

"Well, Thorpe thought he was also—" Welwood cut off what he was going to say when he saw the flash in Hancock's eyes. "Subsequently," Welwood continued, "another aspect of the classified rider became, shall we say, active? I believe it was called the Samson option?"

Hancock's mask was back on. He crossed his legs at the ankles and leaned back in the chair. "Do you know what the Samson option was?"

Welwood nodded. "A nuclear weapon emplaced by the Israelis in a house in Washington, D.C. With one of their agents babysitting the bomb with a direct Sat-link back to Tel Aviv. One call from Tel Aviv and he would fire the bomb."

Hancock nodded. "You know the what. Do you know why that was allowed?"

"A contingency to the classified rider to the Camp David Accord subsequently acted out during the Gulf War to keep the Israelis from responding to the SCUD attacks out of Iraq."

"Balance of power," Hancock said. "Everything is power. And it has to be balanced or else extreme action is taken. That is why my office exists. To take direct action if a balance is threatened. To maintain the balance. Do you understand that?"

Welwood nodded. "Yes, sir. But the Omega Missile terrorist strike upset many balances," Welwood concluded with more confidence than he felt. He had never been in the field and although he tried to appear casual about it, talking about such operations made his stomach churn, especially talking with someone like Hancock.

Hancock tapped a finger on the tabletop. "What was the result of the Omega Missile incident?"

"The terrorists who took over Omega Missile used it to launch two nuclear strikes. One against the Pentagon, one against Tel Aviv. Both were stopped. But before they could be stopped, the Israelis gave the go-ahead to their man in Washington to implement the Samson option."

"The Man Who Waits," Hancock said.

"Excuse me?"

"That's what we called him. The Man Who Waits. He was locked in a basement with that bomb for a year — no way out. His only mission in life was to activate it. My section had a team who waited on him."

"Yes, sir, and they stopped him before he could complete activation."

"Continue with the results," Hancock prodded.

"The head of the CDA, your predecessor, was retired early."

"Fired," Hancock corrected.

"Fired. Operation Delilah was exposed along with the Red Flyer teams, which were Special Operations teams designed to covertly insert a nuclear weapon overseas. Such an insertion was designed not to be traced back to the United States. Sort of our own Samson option. The National Security Adviser, Mr. Hill, was fired and is currently under indictment on an array of charges including attempted murder."

Welwood turned a page in his folder. "I also found it most interesting that the CIA liaison to the Special Operations NEST at the time this happened was a female agent. An agent named Kim Gereg. Who also happens to now be my boss, chief of Operations. It appears initially her career was damaged by the incidents, but it turns out she was never informed of any of this."

"So she got promoted for being ignorant," Hancock said.

"It appears so, sir. Actually I would say she was promoted for not being involved."

Hancock nodded. "Very astute. The best damage control sometimes is ignorance."

"You should have been the next chief of Operations." Welwood threw his cards on the table.

"But I wasn't ignorant," Hancock replied.

"Yes, sir. And now Ms. Gereg has a shot at becoming the director." Welwood also knew that Hill had been Hancock's mentor.

"And I don't?" Hancock asked.

"To go from CDA to director would require a review before a congressional panel. Since Congress is not aware of CDA's existence, they would wonder what you've been doing. Not getting the C/O's job cost you that."

"You have a good grasp of the politics of our organization," Hancock said. "Back to the computer search?" he asked. "Why's Major Thorpe doing it?"

Welwood had spent some time on that one. "Apparently one of the young women who has disappeared in Germany is named Dublowski. Terri Dublowski. She disappeared two months ago. Thorpe must be checking on it for his friend, now Sergeant Major Dublowski assigned to Delta Force at Bragg."

"Why was that search flagged for our attention?" Hancock asked.

"I don't know."

"What in the search specifically was flagged?"

Welwood looked at the file in Hancock's hand, then met the CDA man's eyes. "I don't know."

"Then—" Hancock began, but Welwood cut him off, playing his cards aggressively now.

"I don't know, but you should, sir. The flag was under a code name. Rather strange one, if you ask me: Romulus? Someone a Star Trek fan? I looked in the directory. There was no propagator listed, so that means the code name was propagated either by Direct Action, your office, or by Operations, my office."

"What makes you think it wasn't your office?"

"I've never heard of a file called Romulus," Welwood said, "and I have clearance for all files in Operations."

Hancock raised an eyebrow. "Have you considered the possibility your boss may be keeping things from you? That you don't know everything in your department?"

Welwood looked worried. "Well, it was filed PF1. There's only one paper copy of the file under the title Romulus in existence. That means it's possible someone in Operations has the only copy and I don't know about it."

"If there's only one paper file, how could this have been tagged in the computer?" Hancock asked.

"I assumed someone tagged all file names and pertinent information."

"You assume a lot." Hancock leaned back in the chair and steepled his fingers. He considered the other man in silence for so long, Welwood began fidgeting. Finally he spoke. "What do you think is going on?"

"I don't know, sir."

"There's much you don't know," Hancock agreed, "but with the information you have, what is your best guess?"

"This Major Thorpe is digging into something connected with whatever is in the Romulus file," Welwood said.

"And you came to me with it, when it might well have originated here." Hancock abruptly stood, tucking the file under his arm. "Thank you. You are very thorough. I'll remember it."