Rules of Deception

60

It’s none of your business. Leave it. It can only go badly for you.

Philip Palumbo mulled over the words, then leaned across the front seat of his car and removed his service sidearm from the glove compartment. It was because nobody took a stand that the world was in such sorry shape.

The pistol was a Beretta 9mm, left over from his days as an officer with the 82nd Airborne. He’d given fourteen years to the military, including his time as a cadet at West Point, and advanced as high as major before getting out. There were plenty of opportunities in private enterprise for a man with his background, but he’d never had much of an interest in making money. Seven weeks after signing his separation papers, he put his name on a contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. And despite all that he’d seen and all that he’d done, he still considered it the best decision he’d ever made. He did not relish giving it all up.

He checked that the magazine was full, chambered a round, and clicked down the safety.

The house was a two-story colonial with forest-green shutters and a shake roof. He took the stairs two at a time and rang the bell. A slim, unprepossessing man wearing a gray cardigan, bifocals hanging from a chain around his neck, opened the door. “There you are, Phil,” said Admiral James Lafever, Deputy Director of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. “A matter of some urgency, I take it.”

Palumbo entered the home. “I appreciate you seeing me at such short notice.”

“No problem at all.” Lafever led the way into a spacious foyer. He was a workaholic and lived alone. “Can I get you some coffee?”

Palumbo declined.

Lafever walked into the kitchen and poured himself a mug of steaming coffee. “I understand that you got solid information out of Walid Gassan that helped prevent an attack.”

He knows, thought Palumbo. Someone’s tipped him off.

“Actually, that’s why I’ve come.”

Lafever added some sugar to his coffee, then signaled for Palumbo to go ahead.

“On my way back from Syria, I got a call from Marcus von Daniken, who heads up the Swiss counterintelligence service. He was investigating the murder in Zurich of a man named Theo Lammers, a Dutch national who was shot outside his house. It was a professional job. Clean. No witnesses. Lammers owned a business that designed and manufactured sophisticated guidance systems. On the side, he built drones. Unmanned aerial vehicles. Small ones, big ones, you name it. Von Daniken was looking into it when a colleague of Lammers also got killed: an Iranian by the name of Mahmoud Quitab who was residing in Switzerland under the work name of Gottfried Blitz. Any of this sound familiar?”

“Should it?”

“With all due respect, sir, I think it might ring a few bells.”

Lafever added some milk to his coffee. When he returned his attention to Palumbo, his expression had changed. The social portion of the visit had officially concluded. “Go on, Phil. Let’s save my part for the end.”

Palumbo knew an order when he heard it. “I called Marcus to fill him in on the details of Gassan’s interrogation.”

“You mean regarding Gassan’s involvement in a plot to shoot down an airliner?”

“That’s correct. Von Daniken was surprised, to say the least. It turns out that the two deceased gentlemen he was looking into were Gassan’s co-conspirators.”

“Quite a coincidence.” Lafever’s voice made clear that he knew it was anything but.

Palumbo went on. “The next day, von Daniken received a report from the coroner that both victims were killed by someone who liked to dip his bullets in poison. This coroner had asked around if anyone had ever come across a similar case. One of his colleagues at Scotland Yard knew exactly what he was talking about. The man was a former British Marine, and had seen that same poison used in El Salvador back in the early eighties. I guess it was a common practice among the Indians down there. Some kind of local voodoo to ward off evil spirits. The Englishman shared his belief that it was us that trained them. According to him, whoever killed Lammers and his partner had at one time or another been working with the CIA. Von Daniken wants to know if we have an op running on his turf. Sir, if we have credible information about a cell looking to take down an airliner in Swiss airspace, it’s our duty to keep them in the loop.”

“And what did you tell him?” asked Lafever.

“I said I’d look into it.”

“So you haven’t spoken to him since?”

Palumbo shook his head. “You were running the station in San Salvador back then. Wasn’t Mourning Dove one of your operations?”

“That’s classified information.”

“I have classified clearance. One of the locals was recommended for recruitment. His name was Ricardo Reyes. His mother was half Indian. He did some training up at the Farm, then was sent overseas. He’s still on payroll.”

“Been digging, eh?”

“I’m guessing he’s the one who pulled the trigger.”

Admiral Lafever stepped closer and Palumbo could smell the coffee on his breath. “What concern of yours is one of my ops?”

Palumbo shifted his weight and felt the pistol digging into his back. “None. I’m out of my depth here. It’s just that I was able to track down some info on Lammers, the man who was shot and killed in Zurich.”

“And so?”

“Sir, we’ve got a file ten inches thick on the man. He was on our payroll for ten years. He worked in industrial espionage and was run out of our London substation. He fell off the books in 2003. I asked myself why in the world was Walid Gassan delivering explosives to men even remotely affiliated with the U.S. government. Something didn’t feel right to me about the whole thing. I made some calls around town to ask if Lammers had gone over to the other side.”

“What did you find out?”

“Oh, he’d gone over to the other side, alright. Lammers was picked up by the Defense Department two years back. At the time of his death, he was working as a consultant to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Admiral, can you tell me what in God’s name we’re doing taking out American agents?”

“I thought you’d be more concerned about why the Pentagon is trying to take down an airliner.”

“That’s my next question.”

Palumbo had been expecting a tirade. Instead, Lafever put down his coffee cup and smiled bleakly. “Are you familiar with a unit called Division?”

“Division? No, sir, I’m not.”

“Didn’t think so.” Lafever led him by the elbow toward a sliding door in the kitchen. “Let’s go outside. I need a smoke.”

Palumbo followed Lafever onto the back patio and down a flight of stairs into his backyard. It was a cold evening, the sky grim and forlorn. Their feet crunched in the snow as they ambled through a thicket of barren trees.

“It’s that Austen. He’s the problem,” said Lafever, shaking loose a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros. “Crazy Christian sonuvabitch will have me yet. Between all his prayer meetings and fundamentalist mojo, he can’t keep his fingers out of the other guy’s pie.”

“Do you mean Major General John Austen of the Air Force?”

“The one and only. It started eight years back, even before 9/11. The boys at the Pentagon wanted to start mounting clandestine operations on foreign soil. They were pissed off at how terrorists were nailing our overseas installations and had taken to going around town saying that we at CIA couldn’t do squat to stop them. The Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the numerous attacks against U.S. multinationals operating abroad. Austen went to the president and asked if he could put together a team of operators and give it a shot. The president didn’t need much convincing. He’d been riding us hard to find out who was behind the attack on the USS Cole and we weren’t able to help him. Austen’s team found the culprits lickety-split. Thirty days later, the president signed a National Security Presidential Directive authorizing the Defense Department to run units overseas.

“They called it Division. Austen ran it out of a little-known office called the Defense Human Intelligence Service, whose official job is to manage military attachés assigned to our foreign embassies. He moved fast. Within a year, he had five teams in the field. We’re talking the blackest of black ops. Clandestine. Deniable. Operating without any oversight from Congress, or even the president. The kind of blanket authorization any intelligence officer would kill for. Me included. They did some good work. I won’t deny it. Took out that murderous lunatic in Bosnia, Drako, and a couple of warlords in the Sudan. The successes went to Austen’s head. He started overstepping his bounds. Got his fingers dirty in that affair with the Lebanese prime minister. Got mixed up in the insurgency in Iraq. We are intelligence officers. It’s our job to gather information and pass it on. It’s not our job to be judge, jury, and executioner. That’s policy, and the last I looked, it was run out of the White House. Anyway, by God, Phil, after a while I’d had enough.”

“But, sir, they’re American agents.”

“They’re not American. Quitab’s an Iranian. Lammers is Dutch. Foreign born and foreign bred.”

“Even so, sir, why didn’t you go to the president?”

“And say what? I’d only look like a jealous suitor. It was the president who authorized all this. Only he can pull the plug.”

“I don’t think he would authorize U.S. agents working in concert with an Iranian illegal to take down an airliner.”

“I agree, but he wouldn’t authorize me running a mole in Austen’s network either. What with his beliefs pinned on his sleeve and all those shiny medals on his chest, John Austen is what passes for a saint on Pennsylvania Avenue. He was in the fight since the beginning. By that I mean our holy war against Jihad, Incorporated. Austen set up the plan to rescue our hostages in Iran back in 1980. He organized the first Special Ops teams. And like our commander-in-chief, he burns for Christ. What’s a whiskey-drinking pagan like me to do?”

“But that rescue attempt in Iran was a fiasco,” said Palumbo. “We crashed and burned. We lost eight men.”

“It doesn’t matter, Phil. John Austen is a hero. Like being on the hill at Calvary way back when. Whatever he says, goes…until proven otherwise.”

“With due respect, Admiral, I can’t just stand by and let him take down a plane.”

“There’s no other way, Phil. This country can’t have two separate espionage services conducting operations without one talking to the other. For too long now, the boys at Defense have been out of control. Once this thing blows up in their face, it will be over. John Austen will never be allowed to put a team in the field again. The Pentagon will be permanently out of the espionage business.”

“So you sent over Reyes to put a stop to it?”

“I sent Ricardo Reyes to show that we weren’t just sitting around with a thumb up our ass while this was going down. If we get caught flatfooted on something this big, it will just go to prove that everything Austen’s been saying to the president about the CIA is true. But if we can get within a hair’s breadth of knocking down that drone…if we can take out members of the plot…we will look like the heroes.” Lafever crushed his cigarette beneath his shoe. “Mr. Reyes won’t be able to stop the attack, and frankly, I don’t want him to. Once that plane goes down, I can go to the president with proof of who did this and show him just how badly things got out of hand. I can also show that I tried to stop it. The president will have no choice but to back me to the hilt. Division will be shut down in a second. At the end of the day, those pricks at Defense will have their asses handed to them, and the Agency will be back on top.”

Palumbo had nothing to say. He stood rooted to the spot, stunned and saddened.

Lafever stepped closer. “I can’t have any flag-waving officer of mine running off at the mouth about what he thinks he’s discovered. I need your word that you’re going to keep quiet.”

“But, sir, the plane…all the passengers…”

“I need your word.”

“But, Admiral…”

“But nothing!” said Lafever. “It’s a small price to pay to make sure that Austen doesn’t do anything else even more foolish.”

Palumbo sighed. He knew then how it was going to turn out. “I’m sorry. I just can’t allow it.”

Lafever looked at him like he was a poor, dumb rube just off the farm. “Neither can I.”

When he raised his hand again, he was pointing a compact, nickel-plated revolver at Palumbo’s heart. It was a throwaway piece with its registration filed off, loaded with standard ammo he’d probably gotten from the armory. The old man’s tradecraft was strictly by the book.

The gun fired twice. The bullets struck Palumbo in the chest and knocked him to the ground. He lay there a moment, eyes wide, the wind knocked out of him. Lafever advanced a step and stood over him, shaking his head. Then Palumbo coughed and Lafever realized that he was wearing a vest. Hurriedly, the deputy director of operations of the Central Intelligence Agency brought his gun to bear. This time, he was too slow.

Palumbo’s shot struck him in the forehead.

Admiral James Lafever was dead before he hit the ground.