True Faith and Allegiance

5

In the Oval Office, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency looked across the oaken desk into the worried eyes of the President of the United States and said, “His name is Stuart Collier. He’s CIA.”

Director Jay Canfield did not mask his frustration as he told President Jack Ryan about the arrest of a CIA officer in Tehran. “We have no clear answer on how he was blown.”

“He’s a NOC?” Ryan asked. Non-official cover operatives were the most secret of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. They operated as private citizens abroad while serving as spies, and received none of the diplomatic immunity offered to “covered” diplomats.

Canfield nodded. “Yep. A damn fine one, too. He was operating under the name Ronald Brooks, a Canadian. He’d been working this cover for nearly four years. Been traipsing around inside Iranian tech firms for over three.”

The rain outside the thick windows of the Oval Office beat down in sheets, and the midafternoon skies were as dark as dusk. Ryan noted the bad weather matched the news from the CIA director.

The President took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “How long ago?”

“Eight to ten hours. We just heard from the Canadians, who heard directly from the Iranians.”

“The Canadians knew we were running a NOC using a Canadian alias?”

“They did. They issued him a real passport, so there was no chance at all that the Iranians found forged documents on him and discovered his alias.”

“The work Brooks — I mean Collier — was doing. What kind of access did he have?”

“Not going to say he was the tip of the spear on what we know about Iran. His role to the Iranians was that of a procurer of dual-use equipment that was legal under current sanctions. Their military procurement people would give him a shopping list of tech items, and he’d go out into the West and secure suppliers, negotiate terms, arrange transport and paperwork. Nothing illegal, but we were expecting the Iranians to ask him to help them with more nefarious equipment sooner rather than later.”

Ryan reacted with surprise. “So the Agency was helping Iran’s military get what it needed from the West?”

“They were going to get it anyway and, like I said, it wasn’t equipment subject to sanctions. We put Collier in the mix because this way we’d know what they had, where they were procuring it, and how it was getting into the nation, in case we managed to get tougher sanctions in place. And when they started asking him to get sanctioned items, we’d know about it first, we’d be in a position to stop it, and we’d be able to provide evidence to the UN.”

Canfield rubbed his own face now. “But none of that matters anymore. That op is dead. The only issue is…”

“The only issue is,” President Jack Ryan said, “how the hell was Collier compromised?”

“Exactly, Mr. President. The total number of people who know about his operation is fewer than two dozen, myself included, and we are as vetted as anyone can be in the intelligence community. Electronic systems are stable, no compromise there. So far, this is a complete mystery. Obviously we are shaking the trees, trying to find out what happened.”

“What will they do to him?”

“He’s a NOC, so they can do whatever the hell they want. Still… With your permission we can quietly go to a third-party nation, the Swedes, for example, and let it be known Canadian businessman Ronald Brooks has value to us. Humanitarian concerns, something like that. They’ll know that’s a bunch of baloney, but they’ll keep him secure, something to trade down the road. Obviously it’s tacit admission by us that he’s Agency, but otherwise they might hang him from a construction crane.”

Ryan nodded. “Approved. I want him out of there.”

“Yes, sir. But you know how this works. They’ll hold on to him for a while and turn the screws, on him and on us. The more precarious and miserable his situation is, the more the Iranians will get from us to let him out. If they agreed to go light on Collier at the outset, he’d become a weaker bargaining chip.

“Mr. President, be under no illusions. Stu Collier is going through hell right now, and he will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Not a damn thing we can do about it.”

Ryan leaned back in his chair, looked off at the wall across the room with a gaze that made it appear as though he were searching a point a thousand yards distant. After a moment he turned back to Canfield. “Use back channels to test the waters. See what getting Collier back is going to cost us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do we expect the Iranians to bring him in front of the media?”

“You can bet on it, sir.”

Ryan sniffed. “Disavow publicly. We’ll get him home as quietly as we can.”

“Of course, sir.”

Ryan asked, “Why isn’t Mary Pat here?”

Mary Pat Foley, director of national intelligence, made a point of coming to the Oval whenever an intelligence community crisis anything like the magnitude of this had to be delivered to the President. Ryan and Foley had a long, tight bond, both professionally and personally.

Canfield said, “She’s on her way to Iraq, actually. She’s personally involved with an operation.”

“Personally? Why?”

“Apparently she didn’t want to lose touch with the HUMINT side of things. Said she was spending too many years in conference rooms and too much time staring at computer monitors.”

Ryan wasn’t happy about this. While he understood and appreciated the sentiment behind Mary Pat’s actions, the fact she wasn’t here during a debacle like the arrest of a CIA NOC in Tehran meant Ryan missed out on the immediate input of the most senior member of the U.S. intelligence community.

“When is she due back?”

“I sent word through her second-in-command. I assume this news out of Iran will cut her trip short. I can get her on the phone for you.”

“No, I’ll let her do what she needs to do. She can call me if she has anything on this. I sure as hell hope whatever she’s got going on over there is worth it.” Ryan waved the thought away. “Just keep me posted, especially on your investigation into how his legend was burned.”

The intercom on Ryan’s desk beeped, and his secretary came over the speaker. “Mr. President. Attorney General Murray is here, he would like five minutes of your time.”

Ryan looked to Canfield, and Canfield stood.

“Send him on in.”

Canfield greeted Dan Murray as he entered, and started passing him for the door.

Murray said, “This might prove interesting for you, too, Jay. I’d like you to stick around, if it’s okay with the President.”

Ryan motioned both men to the sofa across from him, and he sat back down himself.

Murray said, “That thing in New Jersey last weekend. It was definitely not a random act.”

Ryan raised his eyebrows. “The fact you are bringing this to my attention, and Jay’s attention, tells me there is some sort of a national-security implication in a shooting at a Mexican restaurant in New Jersey.”

“Afraid so. This will hit the news in an hour or two, but you need to know about it first. It turns out the shooter was a twenty-three-year-old Russian named Vadim Rechkov. He was in the U.S. on a student visa. He’d been studying computer science at a tech school in Oregon, but dropped out. Local cops picked him up for drunk and disorderly several months ago, and he was given an order to appear. He would have been deported after his hearing, but he didn’t show up.”

Ryan just said, “Do criminals facing deportation ever show up?”

“Not very often, so that’s not a surprise. But here comes the real surprise. The shooter had a brother who was a machinist’s mate on the Kazan, one of the Russian subs sunk by the USS James Greer. And they’ve kept it quiet until now, but one of the victims in the Mexican restaurant was Commander Scott Hagen, captain of the James Greer.”

“Oh my God,” Ryan said. He’d gone to meet Hagen and his crew personally when they returned to Virginia with his damaged Arleigh Burke — class destroyer.

Murray hastened to add, “Hagen is going to survive. Shot twice with an AK-47. But his brother-in-law took a round to the back of the head. Dead, along with a waiter and another patron. Six injured, including the commander.”

Neither Canfield nor Ryan asked if there was any chance this was a coincidence. Both men had been around too long to even wonder.

Murray added, “Scott Hagen told the police after the fact that he’d caught the shooter eyeing him before the incident. Got so creepy that he and his family were just leaving when the guy came back in with guns blazing.”

“Didn’t Hagen have security?”

“When he got back to the States, DoD arranged to keep a car with a couple agents in front of his house for a few weeks. Local police upped patrols in his neighborhood, and of course there is a lot of security at the shipyard where the James Greer was in dry dock. But no threats materialized, and this trip to New Jersey Hagen took wasn’t anything official, so he wasn’t looked after. Honestly, since there’d been zero direct threats on the commander, DoD went above and beyond the call of duty giving him any security at all.”

Ryan said, “The assumption is that this Russian just read the newspaper and saw that Commander Hagen was captain of the James Greer, he blamed him for his brother’s death, so he tracked him down and tried to kill him?”

“Seems like what happened. It’s weird, honestly. FBI investigators haven’t discovered how Rechkov knew Hagen was going to be at that restaurant at that time. The Russian rented a car in Portland six days earlier, drove cross-country, bought the AK and ammo just outside of Salt Lake City, then bought more ammo and a knife in Lincoln, Nebraska. If he ever shot the weapon at all it would have been by the side of the road somewhere. We can’t find any evidence he even visited a gun range.”

Canfield said, “So this probably wasn’t a terribly sophisticated plan if this clown just got a tip about Hagen from the far side of the country, and then acted spontaneously.”

Murray nodded. “We have a lot to learn about this, but that is what we think happened.”

Jay Canfield thought a moment. “I don’t see any chance in hell Moscow had anything to do with this. Not because they’re above it, but because this would-be assassin sounds like such a screw-up.”

“Right,” agreed Ryan.

Murray said, “DoD is ordering up personal protection for all the Marine and Navy commanders involved in the Baltic, on the off chance this is part of a wider scheme.”

The President then told the attorney general about the arrest of the CIA’s officer in Iran.

Murray looked to Canfield. “No idea how your guy was compromised?”

Canfield shook his head. “None.”

Ryan said, “The same week a NOC in Iran is exposed through unclear means, a military officer is exposed through unclear means. Does that seem weird to anybody but me?”

Canfield said, “Hagen wasn’t in a covert position like my NOC was. Still… I take your meaning. Somehow his travel plans made their way to some flunky with a grudge.”

Ryan blew out a sigh. “What a damn mess.”