The Art of War

CHAPTER FOUR

CIA Director Mario Tomazic liked to spend his free weekends at a cottage on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, on a waterfront lot beside the wide mouth of a river estuary. He didn’t have many free weekends; he was lucky to get one or two a month, but when he could arrange to get away this was where he came. He found fishing relaxing, and with his little runabout he could motor out and fish and drink beer and sit in the sun and look at the sky and clouds and recharge his batteries for the week ahead. He needed those weekends. Badly. They were especially sweet when his daughter and her kids came; he got a chance to play grandfather and teach the kids how to fish.

On the downside, there was the Friday afternoon traffic eastbound across the Bay Bridge, and Sunday evening it was a very slow go westbound. The Bay Bridge funnel was just something he had to live with, one of those things you can’t do anything about.

If he hadn’t bought this place years ago for a very modest sum when he was a colonel, he wouldn’t buy it now. It was too difficult to get to on those rare free weekends and would be too expensive. His wife had loved the cottage by the water. Loved to birdwatch and do her watercolors, many of which decorated his office at Langley and his condo in town. She had died of cancer some years back. Still, he saw her presence everywhere at the cottage on the shore, the little house with a lawn that ran down to the water’s edge and a small pier where water lapped nervously.

Tomazic was a retired army four-star, a “terrorism” expert according to the press, and that so-called credential and his record in Iraq had gotten him nominated for the CIA job by the president. He hadn’t wanted the job, but when the powers that be wanted him for something important that needed to be done, he didn’t have it in him to refuse. The military does that to you. Regardless of your personal desires, when the boss gives you a task you say “Yes, sir” and do it to the very best of your ability. That attitude becomes ingrained.

He was up at dawn this October Saturday morning. His daughter and the kids were still asleep, and would be for several hours. He’d had had a nice visit with them last night when they arrived, and now they were sleeping late. Tomazic couldn’t have slept past 5 A.M. if his life depended upon it. Hadn’t done so in forty years.

He drank a cup of coffee and watched the dawn peep through high clouds. A little wind, but not much. He ate a protein bar for breakfast, got his fishing rod and tackle box, then slipped out of the house and pulled the door shut behind him. Walked across the lawn the seventy-five feet to the pier.

God, it was a beautiful morning!

His boat was a sixteen-foot aluminum thing with a tiny outboard motor, one he wouldn’t use this morning. He would just row out into the river a bit and drift down to where it emptied into the bay. That lightly churning water was a good place to find hungry fish.

Mario Tomazic checked the boat out, saw that it had ridden well since he put it in the water and got it ready to go yesterday evening. He loosened up the lines, put his gear on the dock where he could reach it and started to step aboard.

He never made it. The boat shot sideways away from the dock about a foot, to the limits of the ropes holding it. Something grabbed an ankle and he was pulled into the water between the boat and the pier. Tomazic whacked his head on the side of the boat as he fell in.

Woozy, shocked and confused, he found himself being dragged under the water by two strong hands.

Tomazic immediately began struggling. The hands shifted. One was on an arm and the other was on his back, pushing him down. Tomazic twisted, saw a faceplate in the murky water. A scuba diver! His free fist shot out and hit the plate, shattering it.

The hands were ruthless. They spun him and pushed him face-first deeper into the water, almost to the muddy bottom.

He couldn’t breathe! Couldn’t get a grip — couldn’t get free. He struggled with all the strength of a drowning man, which he was, as the panic and terror swept through him … to no avail.

It was all over in less than half a minute. Involuntarily Mario Tomazic tried to breathe, which filled his lungs with water.

When he stopped struggling, the diver held him under another minute, just to make sure, then released the body. He checked his wrist compass, then swam away underwater.

It was four in the afternoon when Jake Grafton joined the deputy director of the CIA, Harley Merritt, two very senior FBI agents, and the chief of the county police on Tomazic’s pier. The driveway was jammed with police and FBI cars, plus a mobile crime lab in a panel truck.

Tomazic’s body was long gone.

“It looks as if he was trying to get into the boat and slipped,” the senior FBI agent said. “Whacked his head on the gunnel there — you can see the blood — and then drowned right between the boat and the pier.”

“A freak accident,” the county mountie said hopefully.

Jake Grafton stood surveying the estuary, the other piers along the shores with their boats, and the houses he could see between the trees. Not even a trace of traffic noise. Some people stood in their yards across the placid brown river looking at the commotion over here. Still, this was a calm, peaceful place this Saturday afternoon. Where death had just visited.

“We’ve interviewed people in all the houses on both sides of this waterway,” one of the FBI men said. “No one saw anything. Had to have happened early, like a little after dawn. The director was obviously going fishing. His pole and tackle box are still here on the pier.”

“Any other boats anchored around here this morning?” Jake asked, still scanning the shorelines.

“Some out in the bay, but they left early. Long before we got here.”

“An accident,” the police chief said, almost like a prayer. He was about seventy pounds overweight and cinched his gunbelt tightly under his gut. The marvel was that the gunbelt stayed in place.

“I want to be damn sure,” Harley Merritt said. “I want any satellite imagery of this place we can find for study. And I want a lockdown on all these houses on both sides of the river until we can interview everyone in each and every house — everyone. The police can help with that. Then I want complete bios done on each and every one of these people. Anyone who has left the area is to be tracked down and interviewed. I want to know who all these people are, why they are here, the whole enchilada. And FBI—”

“We know how to do an investigation, Mr. Merritt.” The FBI senior man was a bit testy.

“I know you do. But this is a national security investigation, not a bank robbery. I want you to seal off this area right here and send down divers. I want them to sift the mud. I want anything and everything there is to be had around here.”

“Jesus Christ!” the police chief said. “I know this guy was a big spook dude, but … Hell, people drown somewhere on the edge of this bay nearly every weekend, some weekends two or three of them. Get tight as ticks and—”

“And I want to keep this out of the press until Monday,” Merritt said. “We’ll make an announcement then.”

“You gotta be shittin’ me!” the local cop said disgustedly. “The ambulance crew has already put the guy’s name on the air. It’s out there, man.”

Merritt seemed to take that with good grace. He did glance at Grafton, who was deadpan.

“Thanks, Chief, for all your help. We’ll need more of it the next few days.”

“If the county has to pay overtime, we’ll send you a bill.”

Even as the chief spoke, a helicopter came in from the west and began slowly orbiting the area where they stood. It had a television station’s call letters on the side of it, and a big human eye.

The junior FBI man put his hand above the police chief’s right elbow and escorted him away.

“What have I forgotten, Jake?” Harley Merritt asked. He was a former college basketball player, about six feet five inches tall, and had hands like dinner plates. He had thought he wanted to be a lawyer, but the agency had recruited him because of his language skills. His management skills and bureaucratic smarts had taken him up the ladder.

“Who found him?” Jake asked.

“His daughter. About nine this morning. She was still in her robe. Saw the boat was still there, came down to the pier and saw his fishing gear, then saw the body floating.”

“Tough.”

Merritt sighed. “The FBI took her and the kids home. They sealed the house and are searching it now.”

He turned to the FBI special agent and spoke with a hint of apology in his voice. “I know you and your agency know how to investigate. I’m merely asking you to pull out all the stops. Do everything you can think of. I know you can’t prove a negative, but if there is anything … anything at all that doesn’t look right, that even hints that the director might have been assassinated, call me. Day or night.” He passed him a card. “My private cell is on there.”

“We should have preliminary results from the autopsy by Monday.”

“Call me, and have a courier deliver a hard copy to me at Langley.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harley Merritt stuck out his hand and the FBI agent shook it. Jake did likewise. Then the two CIA officers strolled away, up the lawn, passing a team of people carrying lights and scuba gear.

“If it wasn’t an accident,” Merritt mused, “and of course it probably was, then it was an inside or an outside job. What foreign power stands to gain something by Tomazic’s demise?”

“Damn if I know.” Jake Grafton was a retired two-star admiral, the current head of Middle Eastern ops for the agency. He was a lean six feet, with a nose a bit too large for his face, a square jaw and gray eyes. His thinning, graying hair was combed straight back. No one had ever called him handsome. Still, he had a presence. His wife thought it was a mix of competence and self-confidence. Whatever, he radiated a calm demeanor that seemingly couldn’t be shaken. That Harley Merritt had called and asked Grafton to come to meet him and the FBI here was testimony to the professional regard Merritt held for him, and Jake knew that.

“I want you to go back to the office,” Merritt told Grafton, “and get all the security codes to Tomazic’s office, desk, files and computer. The computer will have to be examined by the IT guys. You dig into the rest of it.”

Jake knew what Merritt wanted. If Tomazic had been murdered by someone in the CIA, Merritt wanted a trail. A trace. A sniff. Something.

“He was only with the Company about eighteen months,” Jake said.

“I know that. But maybe someone got scared. Frightened people do really stupid things.”

“Anything else?”

“Monday we’ll do a full-blown staff review of everything on our plate. I’ll alert the other department heads and the staff. Have them come in tomorrow and get after it.”

“If someone inside the Company murdered him, then everyone is suspect,” Grafton pointed out. “Did you check where I was at dawn this morning?”

Harley Merritt gave him his frozen stare. “We have to trust people, even in this business. Especially in this business. I trust two, you and me. If it turns out that you’re bent and I’m still above ground, I’ll kill you.”

A trace of a smile played on Jake Grafton’s features. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

In front of the dead man’s house, Harley Merritt got into a bulletproof executive sedan, one trailed by a car containing a driver and two armed guards. Jake Grafton watched the two vehicles thread their way around all the police and FBI vehicles and turn left on the street.

Mario Tomazic normally rode around Washington in a guarded limo, too. But not on his getaway weekends. On those precious escapes he left the guards in Washington and drove his old pickup to the Eastern Shore. And there it sat, right in front of the garage door, getting a preliminary look from two FBI agents. A tow truck was backing down the driveway to hook it up. In Washington the pickup would get the full treatment and give up any secrets it had. If it had any.

Jake walked across the grass toward his own car, a five-year-old Honda. When he got the call from Merritt this morning, he had been at his weekend house in Rehoboth Beach. He pulled out his cell phone and called his wife.

“It’s already on the news, Jake,” Callie Grafton said when he told her the director was dead. “I was watching the story on TV. How very sad.”

“Yeah. Going fishing, then drowning right there by the pier.”

“So when will you get back to the beach?”

“Monday night, maybe. I’m going back to Washington. Gotta go to the office.”

“I have a class on Tuesday I have to be back for.” Callie was a linguist. This semester she was teaching a few classes of Chinese at Georgetown University, just to keep her hand in.

“Monday night. I’ll come get you then. We’ll eat dinner on the way back to Washington.”

Traffic on the Bay Bridge wasn’t bad Saturday afternoon. Most people were still trying to get out of the Washington metro area, not return to it.

As he drove, Jake Grafton thought about the vicissitudes of life. His career had given him an intimate acquaintance with violent death. He had seen a lot of it, combat, operational accidents, murders …

Was Mario Tomazic murdered? He didn’t have an opinion because he had no facts to base one on. The general was a good man. His family and colleagues were going to miss him. That’s more than many of us get.

That evening at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Jake Grafton turned over the director’s PC and laptop to the IT department, along with the registered access codes. Maybe they could get something out of those two devices; Jake certainly couldn’t, and he wasn’t going to waste time trying.

When he was again alone in the director’s office he opened the desk and filing cabinets. All were locked, of course, but he had the codes. The desk contained mostly office supplies: some pencils, paper clips, a stapler and a half-dozen pens with the general’s favorite color of ink: green. Some pocket change. A laundry receipt. A staple puller. And a pocketknife, a two-blade Schrade, old but sharp, made in the USA. That was the crop.

On the desk were pictures of the general’s deceased wife and his grown children with their families. Jake took the photos out of the frames, made sure there was nothing else there, no notes or telephone numbers or access codes, then put the frames and photos back together.

He tackled the file cabinets last. Got them open and started on the left-hand cabinet, reading every file, from the left side of the top drawer to the right. The files were all in red folders marked prominently TOP SECRET. Was there any other kind? When he finished with the top drawer, he moved down. At three in the morning he’d had all he could stand, so he crashed on the couch in his office. He got back to it about noon on Sunday, after he ate a sandwich at the cafeteria.

The files contained mostly political summaries. Problems in Egypt, South America, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria … the list went on and on. Europe was there, summaries and guesses and analysts’ notes. Current CIA operational files and notes were not in the director’s drawers. Conference notes and synopses of meetings with other federal agencies were. Tomazic had half a drawer devoted to the agency’s contacts with the Department of Homeland Security and another half drawer full of National Security Agency proposals, meeting minutes, notes and so on. Jake Grafton signed his name on the access sheet of every file he opened.

Jake was still reading files and Tomazic’s green-ink notes when the sun came up Monday morning. Harley Merritt came in at seven. Rumor had it he owned a couple of late-1960s muscle cars that he liked to work on in his garage and take to weekend car shows, where you’d sit around in a parking lot in front of your car on a folding chair and visit with fellow car nuts. Merritt was married, of course, for the second time, as Jake recalled, and had the two kids by his first marriage in college somewhere. His family was something Harley Merritt rarely talked about. With him, it was usually all business.

“Well?” Merritt said. He was a no-holds-barred bureaucrat brawler. There was no forgive-and-forget in Harley Merritt. If you went against him, you had better know your ground. Jake had gone head to head with Harley twice and won; the third time he had lost. Still, apparently, the deputy director respected him.

Jake sighed and stretched. “If there is something nefarious here, I haven’t found it.” They discussed some of the agency’s most sensitive operations, those that seemed most likely to cause a foreign response if uncovered. Three of these covert operations Jake knew nothing about until Merritt briefed him; he didn’t have a need to know. Now he did. He supposed.

“The FBI says they should have that autopsy report later today,” Merritt said, tossing it off as if he had other things on his mind. “They’re still working on the crime scene and neighbor interviews. We’ll also get satellite imagery, what there is of it, later today.”

“Won’t be much,” Jake muttered.

They both knew that all they would see would be images from satellites sweeping over in low earth orbit, on their way to photograph something interesting. Or perhaps some imagery from a geosynchronous satellite that would be nearly useless due to the distance and the fact the satellite wasn’t really focused on the area of interest.

They spent another thirty minutes discussing ongoing operations; then Merritt shot a glance at his watch and charged off.

Jake Grafton locked the director’s desk and cabinets and office, then walked the corridors to his own office. His executive assistant, Robin, handed him a cup of coffee. She was a nice lady with a head of huge hair. The coffee was hot, black and delicious. He told Robin about his visit to Tomazic’s weekend retreat on Saturday afternoon, and the bare facts as he knew them about Tomazic’s death, then went into his office and lay down on the couch for a nap. He was asleep in less than a minute.

The ringing phone woke him up at 11 A.M. He got off the couch and answered it. Robin. “Sal Molina to see you.”

“Send him in.”

Jake was putting on his shoes when Molina came in and closed the door. A Hispanic lawyer in his fifties, Molina carried an ample spare tire and wore comfortable clothes. He didn’t have to dress up for cameras since he was strictly a behind-the-scenes operator at the White House. No one knew what his exact duties were, including, probably, Molina. He had been with the president ever since the big dog got into politics.

Molina dropped onto the couch beside an unshaven Grafton and watched him tie his shoes. “Bad weekend, huh?” he said.

Grafton grunted.

“Too bad about Tomazic. Hell of a guy.”

“Yeah.”

“So where are we?”

“Damned if I know. The FBI is investigating … we’re looking at stuff. I spent the weekend in Tomazic’s filing cabinets in his office. Seen about three-quarters of it. A lot of it’s new to me. Need to know, and all that.”

“Want some coffee?”

“Sure.”

Jake opened the door and asked Robin for two cups, black.

He sat down behind his desk and yawned.

Molina dropped the bomb. “The president has decided to appoint you interim director.”

Slightly stunned, Jake stared. “Merritt’s the deputy director. He can handle it.”

“He’s career CIA. Congress and the public are in a sweat over NSA snooping. He’s signed off on a lot of those decisions.”

“You said interim. Merritt can handle the job until the new director gets Senate confirmation. Find a squeaky-clean retired four-star admiral or general, or a washed-up senator that the voters can’t stand anymore, and appoint him, or her, to the job on a permanent basis.”

“Oh, we’re going to do that. But until then, the boss wants you.”

“What does Reinicke say about this?” Paul Reinicke ruled his own fiefdom, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. With his staff, he was supposed to coordinate and evaluate the intelligence product of all of the United States’ intelligence agencies, sixteen in total, including the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force and Coast Guard intelligence arms, and the stuff put out by a variety of other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, Treasury, State, and some others. The office was created by Congress in 2004 in response to the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Tomazic had thought the new layer of bureaucracy was a typical political response: Appear to be doing something, even if it is only a reorganization.

“No one asked Reinicke,” Molina replied.

“Terrific,” Grafton muttered.

Robin knocked. Jake shouted, and she brought in two cups of coffee and scooted back out, pulling the door shut behind her.

Jake sipped at his cup.

“Don’t you want to know why the president wants you?” Molina asked.

Jake waved it away. “I’ve listened to you blow smoke before.”

“It’s because you’re old Mr. Smooth.”

“Right.”

“You have a lot of friends on the Hill.”

“And a lot of enemies,” Jake shot back. “In the administration, too, as a matter of fact. Like Jurgen Schulz.” Schulz was the national security adviser. “Why don’t you name him interim director?”

“He’d be out of his depth, and you know it. And he can’t stand Reinicke.”

“For once, he and I agree on something,” Jake said.

Sal Molina sighed and slurped.

“I don’t want the job.”

“You’re refusing a request from the president of the United States?” Molina said that as if Jake were Jonah refusing a commission from God.

“Yep.”

“How about saluting and saying ‘Yes, sir’? You military types are all supposed to do that.”

“Bullshit,” Jake Grafton said.

The telephone rang again. Robin said it was Merritt. Jake took the call.

“The preliminary autopsy results are in. Tomazic drowned, all right, but he has some bruises on his left wrist and back. Plus the gash on his head where he probably hit the boat. Funny thing is, the ‘lividities’ occurred just seconds before death. Just enough time for some local capillaries to pop, then his heart stopped.”

“What do they make of that?”

“Well … it’s suggestive, they say. Suggestive of what they didn’t say. But the interesting thing is that divers found a piece of plastic under the boat. Clear plastic. They say it might have come from a scuba diver’s mask faceplate. Got to do some research on that to be sure, though.”

“How long was that piece of plastic in the water?”

“No guesses yet, but not long. No algae on it.”

Jake sat digesting the information. Finally he said, “Thank you, Harley.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Jake cradled the instrument and sat staring at the wall. After a bit he let his gaze wander.

Sal Molina sipped on his coffee, now getting cold, and watched the man behind the desk. The skin on Grafton’s face showed the marks of too much sun through the years. Then there were those gray eyes. Everyone meeting Jake Grafton for the first time noticed the eyes. If he was angry, those eyes were cold as a North Atlantic breaker.

Grafton had been a navy attack pilot in his youth. He had absorbed the lessons well. For years he was the Pentagon’s go-to guy when crises erupted here and there.

Grafton was correct about one thing: National Security Adviser Jurgen Schulz had argued vociferously this morning against giving Grafton a jot more power. “He’s a loose cannon,” Schulz said, “who can’t be trusted. One of these days one of his little plots is going to blow up in his face, and this administration is going to be the party that gets badly burned.”

The secretary of Homeland Security thought someone with more political savvy should be installed immediately as interim director, then senior leaders of the president’s party in Congress should be sounded out about possible permanent replacements.

The president heard them all out, thanked everyone and shooed them off. When they were alone, he asked Molina what he thought.

“Grafton,” the president’s man said. “I’d pick him for my team for anything from softball to hand grenades to nuclear war. That said, frankly, sometimes Grafton gives me the willies. He plays his cards close to his vest, doesn’t keep his superiors informed, and he’s perfectly willing to ignore all the rules. Yet he always gets results. Not the results we thought we wanted, but usually the best possible outcome.”

The president mulled it while he twirled a pencil in his fingers. He instinctively distrusted the intelligence bureaucracy. And the military bureaucracy. Too damned many secrets and hidden agendas. On the other hand, Grafton got things done, he hadn’t stepped on any politicians’ toes lately, and this appointment was only an interim, “acting” deal, until the president could get a loyal man appointed and confirmed.

“Okay,” the elected one said. “Grafton it is. Go tell him.” The president made a dozen or two decisions a day, and he wasn’t going to waste more time on this one.

“Sometimes I get the feeling with Jake Grafton that I’m up on the back of an infuriated tiger,” Molina told the big boss, “and I’m about to fall off.”

“As long as he’s our tiger.”

“He’s America’s tiger, not ours. You can bet your tiny little political soul that no one owns him. Appointing him acting director won’t get you any points with him. With some of those people in Congress, maybe.”

“What the hell could happen in three or four months?” the big banana asked rhetorically. “He’ll do until we get someone else. Go tell him.”

That was this morning. Molina was jerked back to the here and now when Grafton cleared his throat. He had the president’s man skewered with his gaze.

“I’ll take the job,” he said.

“What made you change your mind?”

“Mario Tomazic was probably murdered.”

Molina rubbed his eyes. Oooh man! Here we go again. “Okay,” he said.

“You go tell Merritt that the president wants me. Better make it good. He knows this agency inside and out, and I am going to need him just as much as Tomazic did.”

“Sure.”

Jake stood and walked Molina to the door. “I should be thanking you, I suppose, but I won’t. I will tell you this. If Tomazic was murdered, we’ll get the people that did it. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.”

“Umm.”

“Better tell the president that before he signs the interim appointment letter. If I’m in, I’m all in.”

“Jake, this administration can’t afford another intelligence scandal.”

“I understand. But I didn’t kill Tomazic. If someone did, it’s a problem that will have to be faced … regardless of where the trail leads or who over at the White House doesn’t want to hear about it. You can tell Reinicke and Schulz I said that.”

Molina took a last good look at those cold gray eyes, grunted, then left.

Jake Grafton went out to the coffeepot and poured himself another cup.

On Willoughby Spit, Zhang Ping and Choy Lee watched a thunderstorm roll out in the estuary. Dark, malevolent, flashing lightning and vomiting an opaque cloud of rain, it was impressive.

Zhang wondered what would happen if a bolt of lightning struck near the warhead, but after a few seconds’ thought he stopped thinking about it. If the warhead exploded, he and everyone within fifteen miles would be instantly, totally dead. He wouldn’t even feel the transition from this life to the next. Actually, that would probably be a pretty good death. No debilitating old age, no loss of dignity, no shameful last-second thoughts. Click. And he would be gone to the next adventure, if there was one, which he doubted. But he would be beyond earthly concerns. That was an absolute fact.

Zhang and Choy had just loaded the boat onto its trailer after a reconnaissance down the river to look over the naval piers and generally snoop around. Everything normal. Absolutely normal.

Now they were in the SUV watching the storm.

“Want to go get a beer?” Choy Lee asked.

“Why not?”

Choy started the engine and pulled the transmission lever into drive.

That evening he took Sally to a movie, a soapy love story. Sally snuggled up against him in her theater seat and held his hand. Just like the American girls up and down the rows near them.

She was an American, of course, third generation. She spoke not a word of Chinese and merely giggled when he spouted some occasionally. Unlike Chinese girls, she didn’t cover her mouth with her hand when she smiled or giggled. She showed off perfect white teeth that her father had paid a whopping orthodontist bill to provide. Choy thought she was very charming. And her hand was warm and firm, supple, sensuous.

He felt very, very good. Maybe he should marry this woman. Maybe he should ask her. But there was Zhang. If it weren’t for him, Choy could just cease his activities for his controller, get a job, probably move, and Chinese intelligence would be out of his life and a part of his past. They would never find him among three hundred million Americans.

He would need a job, of course, because without the controller the money would stop. But jobs were plentiful in America if you were willing to work hard and had a little bit of intelligence.

Choy Lee thought about all this and held Sally’s hand and let the sensations of life and love warm him gently.