Teeth of the Tiger

CHAPTER 3 GRAY FILES

One of Hendley's advantages was that most of his assets worked elsewhere. They didn't have to be paid, housed, or fed. The taxpayers paid all of the overhead without knowing it, and, indeed, the "overhead" itself didn't know exactly what it was. Recent evolution in the world of international terrorism had caused America's two principal intelligence agencies, CIA and NSA, to work even more closely than they had in the past, and since they were an inconvenient hour's drive apart — negotiating the northern part of the D.C. Beltway can be like driving through a shopping mall parking lot during Christmas week — they did most of their communication via secure microwave links, from the top of NSA's headquarters building to the top of CIA's. That this sight line transited the roof of Hendley Associates had gone unnoticed. And it ought not to have mattered anyway, since the microwave link was encrypted. It had to be, since microwaves leaked off their line of transmission due to all manner of technical reasons. The laws of physics could be exploited, but not changed to suit the needs of the moment.

The bandwidth on the microwave channel was immense, due to compression algorithms that were little different from those used on personal computer networks. The King James Version of the Holy Bible could have flown from one building to another in seconds. These links were always up and running, most of the time swapping nonsense and random characters in order to befuddle anyone who might try to crack the encryption — but since this system was TAPDANCE encrypted, it was totally secure. Or so the wizards at NSA claimed. The system depended on CD-ROMs stamped with totally random transpositions, and unless you could find a key to atmospheric RF noise, that was the end of that. But every week, one of the guard detail from Hendley, accompanied by two of his colleagues — all of them randomly chosen from the guard force — drove to Fort Meade and picked up the week's encryption disks. These were inserted in the jukebox attached to the cipher machine, and when each was ejected after use, it was hand-carried to a microwave oven to be destroyed, under the eyes of three guards, all of them trained by years of service not to ask questions.

This somewhat laborious procedure gave Hendley access to all of the activity of the two agencies, since they were government agencies and they wrote everything down, from the "take" from deep-cover agents to the cost of the mystery meat served in the cafeteria.

Much — even most — of the information was of no interest to Hendley's crew, but nearly all of it was stored on high-density media and cross-referenced on a Sun Microsystems mainframe computer that had enough power to administer the entire country, if need be. This enabled Hendley's staff to look in on the stuff the intelligence services were generating, along with the top-level analysis being done by experts in a multitude of areas and then cross-decked to others for comment and further analysis. NSA was getting better at this sort of work than CIA, or so Hendley's own top analyst thought, but many heads on a single problem often worked well — until the analysis became so convoluted as to paralyze action, a problem not unknown to the intelligence community. With the new Department of Homeland Security — for whose authorization Hendley thought he would have voted "Nay" — in the loop, CIA and NSA were both recipients of FBI analysis. That often just added a new layer of bureaucratic complexity, but the truth of the matter was the FBI agents took a slightly different take on raw intelligence. They thought in terms of building a criminal case to be put before a jury, and that was not at all a bad thing when you got down to it.

Each agency had its own way of thinking. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was composed of cops who had one slant. The Central Intelligence Agency had quite another, and it did have the power — occasionally exercised — to take some action, though that was quite rare. The National Security Agency, on the third hand, just got information, analyzed it, and passed it on to others — whether those individuals did anything with it was a question beyond Agency purview.

Hendley's chief of Analysis/Intelligence was Jerome Rounds. Jerry to his friends, he had a doctorate in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He'd worked in the State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research — I&R — before moving on to Kidder, Peabody as a different sort of analyst for a different sort of paycheck, before then-Senator Hendley had personally spotted him during lunch in New York. Rounds had made a name for himself in the trading house as the in-house mind reader, but though he'd made himself a goodly pile of money, he'd found that money faded in importance once your kids' education was fully guaranteed and your sailboat was paid off. He'd chafed on Wall Street, and he'd been ready for the offer Hendley had made four years earlier. His duties included reading the minds of other international traders, which was something he'd learned to do in New York. He worked very closely with Sam Granger, who was both the head of currency trading at The Campus and also chief of the Operations Department.

It was near closing time when Jerry Rounds came into Sam's office. It was the job of Jerry and his staff of thirty to go over all the downloads from NSA and CIA. They all had to be speed-readers with sensitive noses. Rounds was the local equivalent of a bloodhound.

"Check this out," he said, dropping a sheet of paper on Granger's desk and taking a seat.

"Mossad lost a — Station Chief? Hmmph. How did that happen?"

"The local cops are thinking robbery. Killed with a knife, wallet missing, no sign of a protracted struggle. Evidently, he wasn't carrying heat with him at the time."

"Civilized place like Rome, why bother?" Granger observed. But they would now, for a while at least. "How did we find out?"

"Made the local papers that an official at the Israeli Embassy got whacked while taking a leak. The Agency Chief of Station fingered him for a spook. Some people at Langley are running around in circles trying to figure what it all means, but they'll probably fall back on Occam's razor and buy what the local cops think. Dead man. No wallet. Robbery where the crook got a little carried away."

"You think the Israelis will buy that?" Granger wondered.

"About as soon as they serve roast pork at an embassy dinner. He was knifed between the first and second vertebrae. A street hood is more likely to slash the throat, but a pro knows that's messy and noisy. The Carabinieri are working the case — but it sounds as though they don't have dick to work with, unless somebody at the restaurant has a hell of a good memory. I wouldn't want to wager much on that one."

"So, what's it all mean?"

Rounds settled back in the chair. "When's the last time a Station Chief of any service got killed?"

"It's been a while. The Agency lost one in Greece — that local terrorist group. The COS was fingered by some prick… one of their own, defector, skipped over the wall, drinking vodka now and feeling lonely, I imagine. The Brits lost a guy a few years ago in Yemen…" He paused. "You're right. You don't gain much by killing a Station Chief. Once you know who he is, you watch him, find out who his contacts and sub-officers are. If you whack one, you lose assets instead of gaining any. So, you're thinking a terrorist, maybe sending a message to Israel?"

"Or maybe eliminating a threat they especially disliked. What the hell, the poor bastard was Israeli, wasn't he? Embassy official. Maybe just that was enough, but when a spook — especially a senior spook — goes down, you don't assume it's an accident, do you?"

"Any chance Mossad will ask for our help?" But Granger knew better. The Mossad was like the kid in the sandbox who never, ever, shared toys. They'd ask for help only if they were, A, desperate, and, B, convinced someone else could give them something they'd never get on their own. Then they'd act like the returning prodigal son.

"They won't confirm that this guy — named Greengold — was Mossad. That might be a little helpful to the Italian cops, might even get their counter-spook agency involved, but if it's been said, there is no evidence of it that Langley knows about."

But Langley would not think in such terms, Granger realized. So did Jerry. He could see it in his eyes. CIA didn't think in those terms because the intelligence business had become very civilized. You didn't kill off the other guy's assets, because that was bad for business. Then he might do something to your assets, and if you were fighting a guerrilla war on the streets of some foreign city, you were not getting the actual job done. The actual job was to get information back to your government, not to carve notches on your pistol grips. So, the Carabinieri would think in terms of a street crime because any diplomat's person was inviolable to the forces of any other country, protected by international treaty and by a tradition that went all the way back to the Persian Empire under Xerxes.

"Okay, Jerry, you're the man with the trained nose," Sam observed. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking there's a nasty ghost out on the street, maybe. This Mossad guy is at a gilt-edged restaurant in Rome, having lunch and a glass of nice wine. Maybe he's making a pickup at a dead drop — I checked the map, the restaurant is a brisk walk from the embassy building, a little too far for a regular lunch place, unless this Greengold guy was a jogging type, and it was the wrong time of day for that. So, unless he was really hot for the chef at Giovanni's, even money it's a dead drop or a meet of some sort. If so, he was set up. Not set up to be ID'd by his opposition, whoever that may be, but ID'd to be whacked. To the local cops, it may look like a robbery. To me, it looks like a deliberate assassination, and expertly done. The victim was instantly incapacitated. No chance to resist in any way. That's how you'd want to take a spook down — you never know how good he might be at self-defense, but if I were an Arab, I'd figure a Mossad guy for the bogeyman. I would not take many chances. No pistol, so he left nothing behind in the form of physical evidence, no bullet, no cartridge case. He takes the wallet to make it look like a robbery, but he killed a Mossad rezident, and he delivered a message, probably. Not that he dislikes Mossad, but that he can kill their people as easy as zipping his pants."

"You planning a book on the subject, Jerry?" Sam asked lightly. The chief analyst was taking a single factoid of hard information and spinning it into a complete soap opera.

Rounds just tapped his nose and smiled. "Since when do you believe in coincidences? Something smells about this one."

"What's Langley think?"

"Nothing yet. They've assigned it to the Southern Europe Desk for evaluation. I expect we'll see something in a week or so, and it won't say much. I know the guy who runs that shop."

"Dumb?"

Rounds shook his head. "No, that's not fair. He's smart enough, but he doesn't stick his neck out. Nor is he especially creative. I bet this doesn't even go as far as the Seventh Floor."

A new CIA Director had replaced Ed Foley, who was now retired and reportedly doing his own "I Was There" book, along with his wife, Mary Pat. In their day, they'd been pretty good, but the new DCI was a politically attractive judge beloved of President Kealty. He didn't do anything without Presidential approval, which meant it had to be run through the mini-bureaucracy of the National Security Council team in the White House, which was about as leaky as RMS Titanic, and hence beloved of the press. The Directorate of Operations was still growing, still training new field officers at The Farm in Tidewater, Virginia, and the new DDO wasn't a bad man at all — Congress had insisted on someone who knew how to work the field, somewhat to Kealty's dismay, but he knew how to play the game with Congress. The Directorate of Operations might be growing back into proper shape, but it would never do anything overtly bad under the current administration. Nothing to make Congress unhappy. Nothing to make the freelance haters of the intelligence community get loud about anything other than their routine complaints about historical wives' tales and grand conspiracy theories, and how CIA had caused Pearl Harbor and the San Francisco Earthquake.

"So, nothing will come of this, you figure?" Granger asked, knowing the answer.

"Mossad will look around, tell its troops to stay awake, and that'll work for a month or two, and then most of them will settle down to their normal routines. Same with other services. Mainly, the Israelis will try to figure how their guy got fingered. Hard to speculate on that with the information at hand. Probably something simple. Usually is. Maybe he recruited the wrong guy and it bit him, maybe their ciphers got cracked — a bribed cipher clerk at the embassy, for example — maybe somebody talked to the wrong guy at the wrong cocktail party. The possibilities are pretty wide, Sam. It only takes one little slip to get a guy killed out there, and the best of us can make that sort of error."

"Something to put in the manual about what to do on the street, and what not to do." He'd done his own street time, of course, but mainly in libraries and banks, rooting around for information so dry as to make dust look moist, and finding the occasional diamond in a pile of it. He'd always maintained a cover and stuck to it until it had become as real to him as his birthday.

"Unless some other spook craps out on the street somewhere," Rounds observed. "Then we'll know if there really is a ghost out there."

The Avianca flight from Mexico touched down at Cartagena five minutes early. He'd flown Austrian Air to London Heathrow, and then a British Airways flight to Mexico City before taking Colombia's flag carrier to the South American country. It was an old American Boeing, but he was not one to worry about the safety of air travel. The world had far greater dangers. At the hotel, he opened his bag to retrieve his day planner, took a walk outside, and spotted a public phone to make his call.

"Please tell Pablo that Miguel is here… Gracias." And with that he walked to a cantina for a drink. The local beer wasn't all that bad, Mohammed found. Though it was contrary to his religious beliefs, he had to fit in to this environment, and here everybody drank alcohol. After sitting for fifteen minutes, he walked back to his hotel, scanning twice for a tail, which he did not see. So, if he was being shadowed, it was by experts, and there was little defense against that, not in a foreign city where everyone spoke Spanish and no one knew the direction to Mecca. He was traveling on a British passport that said his name was Nigel Hawkins of London. There was indeed a flat at the indicated address. That would protect him even from a routine police stop, but no cover legend went forever, and if it came to that… then it came to that. You could not live your life in fear of the unknown. You made your plans, took the necessary precautions, and then you played the game.

It was interesting. The Spanish were ancient enemies of Islam, and this country was composed mostly of the children of Spain. But there were people in this country who loathed America almost as much as he did — only almost, because America was to them a source of vast income for their cocaine… as America was a source of vast income for the oil of his homeland. His own personal net worth was in the hundreds of millions of American dollars, stored in various banks around the world, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and most recently, the Bahamas. He could afford his own private plane, of course, but that would be too easy to identify, and, he was sure, too easy to shoot down over water. Mohammed was contemptuous of America, but he was not blind to her power. Too many good men had gone unexpectedly to Paradise for forgetting that. It was hardly a bad destiny, but his work was among the living, not the dead.

"Hey, Captain."

Brian Caruso turned to see James Hardesty. It wasn't even seven in the morning. He'd just finished leading his short company of Marines through their morning routine of exercise and the three-mile run, and like all his men he'd worked up a good sweat in the process. He'd dismissed his people to their showers, and was on his way back to his quarters when he'd encountered Hardesty. But before he could say anything, a more familiar voice called.

"Skipper?" the captain turned to see Gunnery Sergeant Sullivan, his senior NCO.

"Yeah, Gunny. The people looked pretty sharp this morning."

"Yes, sir. You didn't work us too hard. Good of you, sir," the E-7 observed.

"How did Corporal Ward do?" Which was why Brian hadn't worked them too hard. Ward had said he was ready to get back into the swing, but he was still coming off some nasty wounds.

"He's puffing some, but he didn't cave on us. Corpsman Randall is keeping an eye on the lad for us. You know, for a squid, he isn't too bad," the gunny allowed. Marines are typically fairly solicitous to their Navy corpsmen, especially the ones tough enough to play in the weeds with Force Recon.

"Sooner or later the SEALs are going to invite him out to Coronado."

"True enough, Skipper, and then we're gonna have to break in a new squid."

"What you need, Gunny?" Caruso asked.

"Sir — oh, he's here. Hey, Mr. Hardesty. Just heard you were down to see the boss. Beg pardon, Captain."

"No problem. See you in an hour, Gunny."

"Aye, aye, sir." Sullivan saluted smartly and headed back to the barracks.

"He's a pretty good NCO," Hardesty thought aloud.

"Big time," Caruso agreed. "Guys like him run the Corps. They just tolerate people like me."

"How's about some breakfast, Cap'n?"

"Need a shower first, but sure."

"What's on the agenda?"

"Today's class work is on comms, to make sure we can all call in air and artillery support."

"Don't they know that?" Hardesty asked in surprise.

"You know how a baseball team does batting practice before every game, with the batting coach around? They all know how to swing a bat, right?"

"Gotcha." The reason they were called fundamentals was because they really were fundamental. And these Marines, like ballplayers, wouldn't object to the day's lesson. One trip into the tall weeds had taught them all how important the fundamentals were.

It was a short walk to Caruso's quarters. Hardesty helped himself to some coffee and a newspaper, while the young officer showered. The coffee was pretty good for a single man's making. The paper, as usual, didn't tell him much he didn't already know, except for late sports scores, but the comics were always good for a laugh.

"Ready for breakfast?" the youngster asked, all cleaned up.

"How's the food here?" Hardesty stood.

"Well, kinda hard to screw up breakfast, isn't it?"

"True enough. Lead on, Captain." Together they drove the mile or so to the Consolidated Mess in Caruso's C-class Mercedes. The car marked him as a single man, to Hardesty's relief.

"I didn't expect to see you again for a while," Caruso said, from behind the wheel.

"Or at all?" the former Special Forces officer asked lightly.

"That, too, yes, sir."

"You passed the exam."

It was enough to turn his head. "What exam was that, sir?"

"I didn't think you'd notice," Hardesty observed with a chuckle.

"Well, sir, you have succeeded in confusing me this morning." Which, Captain Caruso was sure, was part of today's plan.

"There's an old saying: 'If you're not confused, you're misinformed.'"

"That sounds a little ominous," Captain Caruso said, turning right into the parking lot.

"It can be." He got out and followed the officer toward the building.

It was a large single-story building full of hungry Marines. The cafeteria line had racks and trays of the usual American breakfast foods, Frosted Flakes to bacon and eggs. And even some—

"You can try the bagels, but they aren't all that good, sir," Caruso warned as he got two English muffins and real butter. He was clearly too young to worry about cholesterol and the other difficulties that came with increasing years. Hardesty got himself a box of Cheerios, because he had gotten that old, rather to his annoyance, along with low-fat milk and non-sugar sweetener. The coffee mugs were large, and the seating permitted a surprising amount of anonymity, though there had to be four hundred people in here, of various ranks from corporal to full-bull colonel. His host steered him to a table in a crowd of young sergeants.

"Okay, Mr. Hardesty, what can I do for you?"

"Number one, I know you have security clearances, up to TS, right?"

"Yes, sir. Some compartmented stuff, but that doesn't concern you at all."

"Probably," Hardesty conceded. "Okay, what we're about to discuss goes a little higher than that. You cannot repeat this to anyone at all. Are we clear on that?"

"Yes, sir. This is code-word stuff. I understand." In fact, he didn't, thought Hardesty. This was actually beyond code word, but that explanation would have to wait for another venue. "Please go on, sir."

"You've been noticed by some fairly important people as a prime recruit prospect for a rather… a rather special organization that does not exist. You've heard this sort of thing before in movies or read it in books. But this is quite real, son. I am here to offer you a place in that organization."

"Sir, I am a Marine officer, and I like that."

"It will not prejudice your career in the Marines. As a matter of fact, you've been deep-dipped for promotion to major. You'll be getting that letter next week. So, you'll have to leave your current billet anyway. If you stay in the Marine Corps, you'll be sent to Headquarters Marine Corps next month, to work in the intelligence/special-operations shop. You're also going to get a Silver Star for your action in Afghanistan."

"What about my people? I put them in for decorations, too." It was the mark of this kid that he'd worry about that, Hardesty thought.

"Everyone's been approved. Now, you'll be able to return to the Corps whenever you wish. Your commission and routine advancement will not suffer from this at all."

"How did you manage that?"

"We have friends in high places," his guest explained. "So do you, as a matter of fact. You will continue to be paid through the Corps. You may have to set up new banking arrangements, but that's routine stuff."

"What will this new posting entail?" Caruso asked.

"It will mean serving your country. Doing things that are necessary to our national security, but doing them in a somewhat irregular manner."

"Doing what, exactly?"

"Not here, not now."

"Can you be any more mysterious, Mr. Hardesty? I might start understanding what you're talking about and spoil the surprise."

"I don't make the rules," he replied.

"Agency, eh?"

"Not exactly, but you'll find out in due course. What I need now is a yes or a no. You can leave this organization at any time if you find it not to your liking," he promised. "But this isn't the proper venue for a fuller explanation."

"When would I have to decide?"

"Before you finish your bacon and eggs."

The reply caused Captain Caruso to set his muffin down. "This isn't some sort of joke, right?" He'd taken his share of razzing due to his family connections.

"No, Captain, it isn't a joke."

The pitch was deliberately designed to be nonthreatening. People like Caruso, however courageous they might be, often regarded the unknown — more properly, the not-understood unknown — with some degree of trepidation. His profession was dangerous enough already, and the intelligent among us do not blissfully go seeking after danger. Theirs is usually a reasoned approach to hazard, after first making sure their training and experience are adequate to the task. And so Hardesty had made sure to tell Caruso that the womb of the United States Marine Corps would always be available to take him back. It was almost true, and that was close enough for his purposes, if not, perhaps, to the young officer's.

"What's your love life like, Captain?"

The question surprised him, but he answered it truthfully. "No attachments. There's a few girls I date, but nothing very serious yet. Is that a concern?" Just how dangerous might this be? he wondered.

"Only from a security point of view. Most men cannot keep secrets from their wives." But girlfriends were a different question altogether.

"Okay, how dangerous will this job be?"

"Not very," Hardesty lied, not skillfully enough to be entirely successful.

"You know, I've been planning to stay in the Corps at least long enough to be a light colonel."

"Your evaluator at Headquarters Marine Corps thinks you're good enough to make full-bull someday, unless you step on your crank along the way. Nobody thinks that's likely, but it has happened to a lot of good men." Hardesty finished his Cheerios and returned his attention to the coffee.

"Nice to know I have a guardian angel up there somewhere," Caruso observed dryly.

"As I say, you've been noticed. The Marine Corps is pretty good at spotting talent and helping it along."

"And so have some other people — spotted me, I mean."

"That's correct, Captain. But all I am offering you is a chance. You'll have to prove yourself along the way." The challenge was well considered. Capable young men had trouble turning away from one. Hardesty knew he had him.

It had been a long drive from Birmingham to Washington. Dominic Caruso did it in one long day because he didn't much like cheap motels, but even starting at five in the morning didn't make it any shorter. He drove a white Mercedes C-class four-door much like his brother's, with lots of luggage piled in the back. He had been stopped twice, but on both occasions the state police cars had responded favorably to his FBI credentials — called "creedos" by the Bureau — and pulled away with nothing more than a friendly wave. There was a brotherhood among law-enforcement officers that extended at least as far as ignoring speeding violations. He arrived at Arlington, Virginia, just at ten that night, where he let a bellman unpack his car for him and took the elevator to his room on the third floor. The in-room bar had a split of a decent white wine, which he downed after the needed shower. The wine and boring TV helped him sleep. He left notice for a seven o'clock wake-up call, and faded out with the help of HBO.

"Good morning," Gerry Hendley said at 8:45 the next morning. "Coffee?"

"Thank you, sir." Jack availed himself of a cup and took his seat. "Thanks for calling back."

"Well, we looked at your academic records. You did okay at Georgetown."

"For what it costs, you might as well pay attention — and, besides, it wasn't all that hard." John Patrick Ryan, Jr., sipped at his coffee and wondered what would be coming next.

"We're prepared to discuss an entry-level job," the former senator told him right away. He'd never been one for beating about the bush, which was one of the reasons he and his visitor's father had gotten along so well.

"Doing what, exactly?" Jack asked, with his eyes perked up.

"What do you know about Hendley Associates?"

"Only what I've already told you."

"Okay, nothing of what I'm about to tell you can be repeated anywhere. Not anywhere. Are you clear on that?"

"Yes, sir." And just that fast, everything was clear as hell. He'd guessed right, Jack told himself. Damn.

"Your father was one of my closest friends. I say 'was' because we can't see each other anymore, and we talk very rarely. Usually because he calls here. People like your dad never retire — never all the way, anyway. Your father was one of the best spooks who ever lived. He did some things that were never written down — at least not on government paper — and probably never will be written down. In this case, 'never' means fifty years or so. Your father is doing his memoirs. He's doing two versions, one for publication in a few years, and another that won't see the light of day for a couple of generations. It will not be published until after his death. That's his order."

It stuck hard at Jack that his father was making plans for after his own death. His dad — dead? It was a lot to grasp except in a distant, intellectual sense. "Okay," he managed to say. "Does Mom know this stuff?"

"Probably — no, almost certainly not. Some of it may not exist even at Langley. The government occasionally does things that are not committed to paper. Your father had a gift for stumbling into the middle of stuff like that."

"And what about you?" Junior asked.

Hendley leaned back and took a philosophical tone. "The problem is that no matter what you do, there's somebody who won't like it much. Like a joke. No matter how funny it is, somebody will be offended by it. But at a high level, when somebody is offended, instead of calling you on it to your face, he goes off and cries his eyes out to a member of the press, and it goes public, usually with a great big disapproving tone attached to it. Most often that's careerism raising its ugly head — getting ahead by back-stabbing somebody senior to you. But it's also because people in senior positions like to make policy in accordance with their own version of right and wrong. That's called ego. Problem is, everyone has a different version of right and wrong. Some of them can be downright crazy.

"Now, take our current President. In the Senate Cloakroom, once Ed told me he was so opposed to capital punishment that he couldn't even have abided executing Adolf Hitler. That was after a few drinks — he tends to be verbose when he's been drinking, and the sad fact is that he drinks a little too much on occasion. When he said that to me, I joked about it. I told him not to say it in a speech — the Jewish vote is big and powerful and they might see it less as a deeply held principle than as a high-order insult. In the abstract a lot of people oppose capital punishment. Okay, I can respect that, though I do not agree with it. But the drawback to that position is that you cannot then deal decisively with people who do harm to others — sometimes serious harm — without violating your principles, and to some people, their consciences or political sensibilities will not let them do it. Even though the sad fact of the matter is that due process of law is not always effective, frequently outside our borders, and, on rare occasions, inside them.

"Okay, how does this affect America? CIA doesn't kill people — ever. At least not since the 1950s. Eisenhower was very skillful at using CIA. He was, in fact, so brilliant at exercising power that people never knew anything was happening and thought him a dullard because he didn't do the old war dance in front of cameras. More to the point, it was a different world back then. World War Two was recent history, and the idea of killing a lot of people — even innocent civilians — was a familiar one, mainly from the bombing campaigns," Hendley clarified. "It was just a cost of doing business."

"And Castro?"

"That was President John Kennedy and his brother Robert. They had a hard-on for doing Castro. Most people think it was embarrassment over the Bay of Pigs fiasco. I personally think it might have come more from reading too many James Bond novels. There was a glamour in murdering people back then. Today we call it sociopathy," Hendley noted sourly. "Problem was, first, that it's a lot more fun to read about than actually to do it, and, second, it's not an easy thing to accomplish without highly trained and highly motivated personnel. Well, I guess they found out. Then, when it became public, somehow the involvement of the Kennedy family was glossed over, and CIA paid the price for doing — badly — what the sitting President had told them to do. President Ford's Executive Order put an end to it all. And so, CIA doesn't deliberately kill people anymore."

"What about John Clark?" Jack asked, remembering the look in that guy's eyes.

"He's an aberration of sorts. Yes, he has killed people more than once, but he was always careful enough to do it only when it was tactically necessary at the moment. Langley does allow people to defend themselves in the field, and he had a gift for making it tactically necessary. I've met Clark a couple of times. Mainly, I know him by reputation. But he's an aberration. Now that he's retired, maybe he'll write a book. But even if he does, it'll never have the full story in it. Clark plays by the rules, like your dad. Sometimes he bends those rules, but to my knowledge he's never once broken them — well, not as a federal employee," Hendley corrected himself. He and the elder Jack Ryan had once had a long talk about John Clark, and they were the only two people in all the world who knew the whole story.

"Once I told Dad that I wouldn't want to be on Clark's bad side."

Hendley smiled. "That's true enough, but you could also trust John Clark with the lives of your children. When we met last, you asked me a question about Clark. I can answer now: If he were younger, he'd be here," Hendley said revealingly.

"You just told me something," Jack said at once.

"I know. Can you live with it?"

"Killing people?"

"I didn't say that, exactly, did I?"

Jack Jr. put his coffee cup down. "Now I know why Dad says you're smart."

"Can you live with the fact that your father has taken a few lives in his time?"

"I know about that. Happened the night I was born. It's practically a family legend. The newsies made a lot of it while Dad was President. They kept bringing it up like it was leprosy or something. Except there's a cure for leprosy."

"I know. In a movie it's downright cool, but in real life people get the heebie-jeebies about it. The problem with the real world is that sometimes — not often, but sometimes — it's necessary to do that sort of thing, as your father discovered… on more than one occasion, Jack. He never flinched. I think he even had bad dreams about it. But when he had to do it, he did it. That's why you're alive. That's why a lot of other people are alive."

"I know about the submarine thing. That's pretty much in the open, but—"

"More than just that. Your father never went out looking for trouble, but when it found him — as I said, he did what was necessary."

"I sorta remember when the people who attacked Mom and Dad — the night I was born, that is — were executed. I asked Mom about it. She's not real big on executing people, you see. In that case, she didn't mind very much. She was uncomfortable with it, but I suppose you'd say she saw the logic of the situation. Dad — you know, he didn't really like it either, but he didn't cry any tears over it."

"Your father had a gun to that guy's — the leader, I mean — his head, but he didn't squeeze off the round. It wasn't necessary, and so he held back. Had I been in his position, well, I don't know. It was a hard call, but your father made the right choice when he had ample reason not to."

"That's what Mr. Clark said. I asked him about it once. He said the cops were right there, so why bother? But I never really believed him. That's one hardcase mother. I asked Mike Brennan, too. He said it was impressive for a civilian to hold off. But he would not have killed the guy. Training, I guess."

"I'm not sure about Clark. He's not really a murderer. He doesn't kill people for fun or for money. Maybe he would have spared the guy's life. But no, a trained cop is not supposed to do anything like that. What do you think you would have done?"

"You can't know until you're there," Jack answered. "I thought it through once or twice. I decided Dad handled it okay."

Hendley nodded. "You're right. He handled the other part right, too. The guy in the boat he drilled in the head, he had to do it to survive, and when you have that choice, there's only one way to go."

"So, Hendley Associates does what, exactly?"

"We gather and act upon intelligence information."

"But you're not part of the government," Jack objected.

"Technically, no, we're not. We do things that have to be done, when the agencies of the government are unable to handle them."

"How often does that happen?"

"Not very," Hendley replied offhandedly. "But that may change — or it might not. Hard to tell right now."

"How many times—"

"You do not need to know," Hendley replied, with raised eyebrows.

"Okay. What does Dad know about this place?"

"He's the guy who persuaded me to set it up."

"Oh…" And just that fast it was all clear. Hendley had kissed off his political career in order to serve his country in a way that would never be recognized, never be rewarded. Damn. Did his own father have the stones to try this one? "And if you get into trouble somehow…?"

"In a safety-deposit box belonging to my personal attorney are a hundred presidential pardons, covering any and all illegal acts that might have been committed between the dates that my secretary will fill in when she types up the blanks, and signed by your father, a week before he left office."

"Is that legal?"

"It's legal enough," Hendley replied. "Your dad's Attorney General, Pat Martin, said it would pass muster, though it would be pure dynamite if it ever became public."

"Dynamite, hell, it would be a nuke on Capitol Hill," Jack thought aloud. It was, in fact, something of an understatement.

"That's why we're careful here. I cannot encourage my people to do things that might end them up in prison."

"Just lose their credit rating forever."

"You have your father's sense of humor, I see."

"Well, sir, he is my dad, you know? Comes along with the blue eyes and black hair."

The academic records said that he had the brains. Hendley could see that he had the same inquisitive nature, and the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff. Did he have his father's guts…? Better never to have to find out. But even his best people couldn't predict the future, except in currency fluctuations — and on that they cheated. That was the one illegal thing he could get prosecuted for, but, no, that would never happen, would it?

"Okay, time for you to meet Rick Bell. He and Jerry Rounds do the analysis here."

"Have I met them before?"

"Nope. Neither has your father. That's one of the problems with the intelligence community. It's gotten too damned big. Too many people — the organizations are always tripping over themselves. If you have the best hundred people in pro football on the same team, the team will self-destruct from internal dissension. Every man was born with an ego, and they're like the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Nobody objects too much because the government isn't supposed to function too efficiently. It would scare people if it did. That's why we're here. Come on. Jerry's office is right down the hall."

"Charlottesville?" Dominic asked. "I thought—"

"Since the time of Director Hoover, the Bureau has had a safe house facility down there. Technically, it doesn't belong to the FBI. It's where we keep the Gray Files."

"Oh." He'd heard about that from a senior instructor at the Academy. The Gray Files — outsiders never even knew the term — were supposed to be Hoover's files on political figures, all manner of personal irregularities, which politicians collected as other men collected stamps and coins. Supposedly destroyed at Hoover's death in 1972, in fact they'd been sequestered in Charlottesville, Virginia, in a large safe house on a hilltop across the gentle valley from Tom Jefferson's Monticello and overlooking the University of Virginia. The old plantation house had been built with a capacious wine cellar, which for more than fifty years had held rather more precious contents. It was the blackest of Bureau secrets, known only to a handful of people, which did not necessarily include the sitting FBI Director, but rather controlled by only the most trusted of career agents. The files were never opened, at least not the political ones. That junior senator during the Truman administration, for example, did not need to have his penchant for underage females revealed to the public. He was long dead in any case, as was the abortionist. But the fear of these records, whose continuation was widely believed to be carried on, explained why Congress rarely attacked the FBI on matters of appropriations. A really good archivist with a computerized memory might have inferred their existence from subtle holes in the Bureau's voluminous records, but that would have been a task worthy of Heracles. Besides, there were much juicier secrets than that to be found in the White Files squirreled off in a former West Virginia coal mine — or so an historian might think.

"We're going to detach you from the Bureau," Werner said next.

"What?" Dominic Caruso asked. "Why?" The shock of that pronouncement nearly ejected him from his chair.

"Dominic, there's a special unit that wants to talk to you. Your employment will continue there. They will fill you in. I said 'detach,' not 'terminate,' remember. Your pay will continue. You'll be kept on the books as a Special Agent on special assignment to counterterrorism investigations directly under my office. You'll continue to get normal promotions and pay raises. This information is secret, Agent Caruso," Werner went on. "You cannot discuss it with anyone but me. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir, but I cannot say I understand."

"You will in due course. You will continue to investigate criminal activity, and probably to act upon it. If your new assignment turns out to be not to your liking, you can tell me, and we'll reassign you to a new field division for more conventional duties. But, I repeat, you cannot discuss your new assignment with anyone but me. If anyone asks, you're still a Special Agent of the FBI, but you are unable to discuss your work with anyone. You will not be vulnerable to any adverse action of any kind as long as you do your job properly. You will find that the oversight is looser than you're used to. But you will be accountable to someone at all times."

"Sir, this is still not very clear," Special Agent Caruso observed.

"You will be doing work of the highest national importance, mainly counterterrorism. There will be danger attached to it. The terrorist community is not a civilized one."

"This is an undercover assignment, then?"

Werner nodded. "Correct."

"And it's run out of this office?"

"More or less," Werner dodged with a nod.

"And I can bail out whenever I want?"

"Correct."

"Okay, sir, I'll give it a look. What do I do now?"

Werner wrote on a small pad of paper and handed it across. "Go to that address. Tell them you want to see Gerry."

"Right now, sir?"

"Unless you have something else to do."

"Yes, sir." Caruso stood, shook hands, and took his leave. At least it would be a pleasant drive into the Virginia horse country.