Unmanned

CHAPTER SEVEN

OWEN BICKELL PULLED BACK the curtain and watched the visitor approach through the trees. Even if he hadn’t recognized the face, the walk would have told him it was a pilot. More swagger than stroll, like they were God’s gift to the heavens. Bickell had seen them strut their stuff on landing strips from Vietnam to Iraq, a high priesthood of arrogance and physicality. And now the defrocked Captain Cole of Nevada was heading up his gravel driveway as assertively as a cop serving a warrant.

Bickell’s security alarm had signaled the arrival. Cole must have tripped the motion sensor at the head of the drive. If he’d parked a car out there, Bickell would be able to get a tag number from the digitally archived images captured by the surveillance camera that he’d installed in a tall pine. Maybe Cole was smarter than that, but Bickell had his doubts. He’d given a great deal of thought to the various approaches an intruder might take to reach his house, and he’d concluded that the best one involved beaching a boat at the end of the peninsula and working your way down the shoreline on foot. But only someone with good tradecraft would try that. Cole looked like an amateur.

Whatever the case, score one for Bickell’s former employers, who had predicted this event only two days earlier. Expect a possible visitation from out of the blue, they said, by that pilot who trained you at Creech. He’ll have lots of questions. Stall him, stonewall him, feed him a line if you want. But follow our instructions to the letter.

The glitch was that Bickell didn’t know what to make of his old employers anymore. They were barely on speaking terms. Not at all like the mutual trust that prevailed when he joined the Agency, way back in ’68. Arriving in Saigon for his first posting only a month after the Tet offensive, Bickell believed everything the old hands told him down at the Duc Hotel, and the wartime routines suited him. Poker and bourbon after dark, maybe a hooker and a toke at bedtime, then a Bloody Mary with your scrambled eggs. Everyone talked a good game, same as now, but it turned out that none of them knew shit, and he had never forgotten the lesson.

In those days management had been a cabal of aging Ivy Leaguers. Tweeds and weekend duck hunts. Pack-a-day smokers who drank themselves silly at each other’s town houses in Georgetown—not that Bickell was ever invited. Card-carrying liberals, to hear the way they trashed the ghost of Joe McCarthy. Yet whenever they cast their eyes abroad, they, too, saw a commie behind every bush. And why not? Back then, the enemy was everywhere.

Later Bickell was posted to other wars, other countries. His operations often stalled, throttled by Agency lawyers or, later, by congressional busybodies, nobody wanting another Vietnam, or another leak in the press. The bureaucratic death spiral continued right up to 9/11, when suddenly it was back to bags of cash and anything goes, except by then the ideology of the crowd upstairs had shifted rightward. No longer so big on tweeds or Ivies, but the same preponderance as ever of blowhards and careerist know-it-alls.

These were the people Bickell had eventually run afoul of in a far corner of Pakistan, his final posting. He went to help run the Agency’s new Predator program, three of its very own birds parked at the Shamsi airstrip, deep in the desert of Baluchistan, the dark side of a lost planet. At first he enjoyed it. The novelty was appealing. So was the spic-and-span way of killing bogeys without bloodying your hands. Ops that the Soviets would once have called “wet jobs” had turned into something dry and tidy, at least for those watching on a video screen. Gradually he grew uneasy, disillusioned by doubt before he could even say why. Make your living from a technological shortcut and pretty soon other shortcuts looked equally tempting, no matter how reckless. Bickell had spotted their mistakes coming from a mile away. Unfortunately he said so, meaning that once things began to go wrong he was automatically part of the problem, another messy element that needed sweeping aside. So they rewarded him with a medal for distinguished service—pinned in secret, of course, in some windowless room at Langley. Then they cut him loose a year ahead of his scheduled retirement.

Now, judging by this flyboy headed up his driveway, they were still in cleanup mode. Two days ago they had telephoned to prep him, giving him a role, a script, and detailed instructions for afterward. He was ambivalent about the whole business. For one thing, his old employer no longer seemed to be speaking with one voice. Inquiries to his old boss had gone unanswered. When they contacted him, they no longer seemed to use the usual channels. This suggested a rift, an ongoing competition between rival factions, and with Agency rivalries you inevitably got crossfire. Once that started, even outsiders like him needed to take cover. For all Bickell knew, Cole and he might even be on the same side. Or maybe the pilot was yet another bumbler with a gas can and a lighted match and should be left to burn on his own.

The first knock at the door came as Bickell reached the hallway closet where the new equipment was installed. Agency techs had turned up yesterday morning in a Verizon van with forms to sign and promises to keep. Easy to operate, they said. All digital, so pay attention. Like he was some sort of relic who could only work a reel-to-reel. He pressed the button for Record just as Cole knocked again.

“Keep your shirt on,” Bickell called out, watching the needles jump. “I’m coming.”

Act like you know what you’re doing. That was the thought Cole had clung to all morning as Steve Merritt and he crossed into New Hampshire toward Lake Winnipesaukee with the driving directions spread on the seat between them. They drove a new Toyota Corolla, a rental Steve had picked up at Boston Logan the day before Cole’s arrival at the Trailways terminal on Atlantic Avenue. Cole’s journey east had been a nonstop blur of rest stops and fast food joints, filled by a thousand nervous glances out the bus window as big rigs rumbled past on empty stretches of highway. Nothing in the sky but commercial jets, as far as he could tell. He’d nursed a fifth of Jeremiah Weed most of the way, then picked up a new bottle on the last stop before Boston. He’d already cut his consumption to half a bottle a day. Still too much, and he was feeling a little shaky, but it was a start. Strength, patience, vigilance. The watchwords for making good with the journalists. Not that they seemed very disciplined themselves, except about making sure they stayed caffeinated throughout the day.

Steve was proving to be an unexpectedly agreeable traveling companion, generous with his encouragement, not to mention his dollars, and minimally intrusive with questions about Cole’s personal life, and his ordeal of the past fourteen months. He prepped Cole for the Bickell interview by going over a list of possible questions, and offered a few reporter’s tips on how to break the ice. The success or failure of the encounter would come down to a single conversation, perhaps a single turn of phrase, and Cole figured he had better arrive looking confident, even if he didn’t feel that way.

A few miles before reaching their destination they stopped in Moultonborough to pick up a local map. Then they double-checked the directions and plotted their approach. Bickell lived on a small cove on a remote neck, way up a dirt road. As a precaution they parked well short of the driveway to let Cole cover the final stretch on foot, a decision he was grateful for as soon as he spotted the security camera peering down from a tree by the mailbox.

Just like an old spy to guard the perimeter, Cole supposed. It creeped him out the way these intrusive little eyes kept watching him at every step along the way. He had noticed surveillance cameras at virtually every stop along the bus route—at service stations, convenience stores, fast food joints, even inside the men’s room. Grounded little Predators, from sea to shining sea.

He knocked, paused, then knocked again until a voice called out impatiently from inside. When Bickell opened the door, Cole was reminded of why the man had once struck him as a perfect choice for a posting to the Muslim world. Olive skin, brushy mustache, brown eyes. With the right clothes he could have passed for a falafel vendor in a Middle Eastern souk, or a hack in Kabul. Cole cleared his throat and began his pitch.

“Mr. Bickell? I’m Captain Darwin Cole. I’m not sure if you remember me, but—”

“Sure I do. From Creech. You’re a long way from home.”

“I was hoping for a few minutes of your time, and maybe some advice.”

“I didn’t figure you’d come for a cup of sugar. Is this official?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m not either. Not anymore. Come on in, I guess. Coffee? An hour old but still hot.”

“Sure. I’ve been traveling pretty hard.” Then wishing he hadn’t said it, because Bickell seized on it right away.

“You drove the whole way?”

“The last leg, anyway.” He didn’t want to mention Boston, and certainly not Steve.

Bickell nodded, face unreadable. From the threshold Cole saw a sun porch at the back of the house—louvered windows, a panoramic view of the lake, the eaves dripped melting snow. Bickell steered him instead to a darkened living room up front, then motioned him toward a brown couch by a cold and empty hearth. The coffee had yet to materialize, which didn’t bode well.

“Still flying Preds?” Bickell continued to stand.

“I’m out of that now. Out of the Air Force. Maybe you heard.”

“Maybe. Fascinating machines. Amazing what they’ve been able to accomplish.”

“Hope we were able to help you. Have any luck with them?”

Bickell shrugged. “What’s this advice you’re after?”

“About one of your colleagues. Wade Castle.”

“Last I heard, he’s still employed by the Agency. You’ll have to ask them.”

“Well, this is kind of delicate.”

“It usually is when it’s unofficial. All the more reason for you to go through channels. I’ve got a number in Langley that will put you straight through to his desk officer. Fellow named Bishop.”

Cole shifted in his seat, beginning to feel he had come a long way for nothing.

“You said something about coffee?”

That at least drew a smile. Bickell grunted and headed for the kitchen. By the time he returned—full mug, no steam—Cole had retooled his approach.

“What happened to you over there? You retire on schedule, or did they send you home early?”

Bickell’s eyes flared, but he didn’t answer right away.

“You don’t exactly seem gainfully employed yourself, Captain.”

Cole shrugged.

“This and that. So you’re out for good?”

“You see me complaining?” Bickell spread his arms to encompass the room. Vintage fly rods were mounted on the knotty pine paneling behind him. On the opposite wall was a crossed set of varnished wooden skis. No sign of a feminine touch. No household noises that a wife might make. Cole was guessing he lived alone. He prodded again.

“Castle fucked up big-time, but I guess you knew that. He was my J-TAC on a flyover at Sandar Khosh. Called in a dart that killed thirteen civvies. The whole thing felt wrong from the get-go. From what I hear, it wasn’t the only time.”

“What does any of this have to do with me?”

Why had he come? What could have made them think this visit would be worth the trouble? He pictured Steve’s disappointed reaction when Cole delivered the news that he’d struck out—a big fat zero on his first mission, the long journey wasted. At this rate he wouldn’t last a week. They might not even bother to pick him up at the bus station in Baltimore.

“Well, I thought you guys trained together because you were going to serve together. Am I wrong?”

Bickell shrugged and shifted his weight to his other foot.

“Look, if you really have nothing to say—”

“After you came all this way, you mean?” Bickell frowned. “I’m sure it wasn’t that hard to tell that I’m not exactly fond of Castle. Nobody likes the prick, if you really want to know, so I don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to him. But he’s not a fuckup. He’s one of the few people over there who knew his ass from a hole in the ground.”

“That’s a start, I guess.”

“It’s also an end.”

Bickell gestured toward the door. Just like that, without even a scrap of useful information. Cole’s desperation surged toward anger. He stood, face flushed, and stepped within inches of Bickell, who didn’t budge.

“So you’re good with all this, then? The fuckups and the mistakes? All those dead kids, that’s okay by you?”

Bickell came right back at him, and for a moment it felt like being back in basic, or his first year at the Academy, getting reamed out nose to nose by some screaming asshole on a parade ground.

“Did I say I’m good with it? Fuck, no! But I’m not risking my ass for some weak vessel who’s going to leak secrets all the way back to Vegas. And please tell me you didn’t fly commercial, with a ticket on plastic and two forms of ID. Please tell me you’re not that much of a fuckup.”

“None of your business.”

“It’s completely my business. I might be more pissed off than you are about the state of play, but I’ll be damned if I sweep any dirt toward some stupid bastard who might as well be posting this conversation on Facebook. So, to repeat, how did you get here? By what means?”

“Not by plane.”

Bickell backed off an inch.

“Using any plastic?”

Cole shook his head.

“Cash only, and a fake ID.”

“Cover name?”

“None of your business.”

“Good answer. Next time don’t volunteer all that other shit, even if somebody asks.” Cole reddened in embarrassment. “And you can consider this a favor, Captain Cole, like a free security evaluation. But maybe I underestimated you. Or maybe I just wanted to. Always hated all you cocky bastards on the flight line.” This finally coaxed a smile out of Cole. “Before you say another word I want to show you something. Then we’re going to start over, beginning with your knock at the door.”

Cole followed him to a hall closet, which Bickell opened onto a recorder, red light on, needles jumping with every sound. Cole blanched, then looked around, as if expecting a team of operatives to emerge from behind the furniture. When nothing happened he drew a deep breath.

“You tape all your guests?”

“Only when some Agency geek drops by to set up the equipment. This is their stuff. They were here yesterday.” He let that sink in.

“You were expecting me?”

“Everybody was, apparently, to hear my people tell it. Tell me something…” The needles kept jumping. Bickell paused, annoyed, then punched the Off switch. “If you were to find out what actually went wrong, and why—which I don’t know myself, by the way—what would you do with that kind of information? Who’s your client?”

“Client?”

“Who’s paying the freight?”

“Nobody.” He didn’t dare mention the journalists.

“For the sake of argument, let’s say I believe that. Where do you go next, then? Where do you take this kind of material?”

“I guess that depends on who I thought would be in the best position to make sure these things don’t keep happening. At least not with our birds.”

Bickell shook his head.

“Don’t duck the question. This isn’t Amnesty International and you’re not working for some war crimes tribunal. Where do you see yourself going with this? To a desk jockey in the Pentagon? To goddamn CNN, even? Or maybe back up the chain of command, to whoever the hell didn’t officially send you here and didn’t officially give you any marching orders? I know about your court-martial. Was this part of your plea agreement, maybe? Some sort of undercover arrangement?”

It was an odd but appealing theory, which made Cole wonder what other forces might be in play. It also offered an easy way out.

“Something like that.”

“And this superior of yours, who’s he reporting to?”

“I don’t know.”

Bickell smiled.

“Well, if my people knew you might be coming, that tells me your sugar daddy is compromised, no matter how high up the chain of command. So act accordingly. And wherever you go next, it better not be Creech. Once you’ve started something like this there’s no reset button, no reboot. It’s shop till you drop, understand?”

“Then where should I go next?”

“I’ve got a few ideas. But first, a little housekeeping.”