Dead or Alive (50 page)

“We’re too small a shop to be running it like a bureaucracy,” Jerry Rounds added. “The three of us will be rotating through here regularly to make sure we’re still on the rails, but the bottom line is this: The Emir is an extraordinary character, and we have to change our tactics accordingly.”

“What does this mean for the operational side of things?” Chavez asked.

Sam Granger answered, “More business, we hope. A lot of the new stuff we’ll be generating won’t be verifiable in the hypothetical. That means beating the bushes and running down leads. A lot of it might be scut work, but it adds up. Don’t get me wrong, we’d all love a home run, but you don’t stumble ass-backward into them. You’ve got to work for them.”

“When do we start?” Jack asked.

“Right now,” Hendley replied. “First order of business is making sure we’re all on the same page. Let’s lay out what we know, what we suspect, and what we still have to find out.” He checked his watch. “We’ll break for lunch, then meet back here.”

 

 

Jack popped his head into Clark’s office. “Whatever you did, John, you sure as hell got Hendley’s attention.”

Clark shook his head. “I didn’t do anything but nudge him where he was already headed. He’s sharp. He would’ve gotten there eventually. Come on in. Got a minute to sit?”

“Sure.” Jack took a seat across the desk.

“Heard you want to get your hands dirty.”

“What? Oh, yeah. He told you, huh?”

“Asked me to train you.”

“Well, that’d be fine with me. More than fine, really.”

“Why do you want to do this, Jack?”

“Didn’t Hendley tell—”

“I want to hear it from you.”

Jack shifted in his chair. “John, I sit here every day, reading traffic, trying to make sense of information that could be something, or nothing, and sure, I know it’s important and it’s got to be done, but I want to do something, y’know?”

Clark nodded. “Like MoHa.”

“Yeah, like that.”

“It’s not always clean like that.”

“I know.”

“Do you? I’ve done it, Jack—face-to-face and hand to hand. Most of the time it’s ugly and messy, and you never forget. The faces fade, so do the places and circumstances, but the act—the deed itself—sticks with you. If you’re not ready to deal with that, it can eat you up.”

Jack took a deep breath, eyes on the floor. Was he ready? He could sense the truth of what Clark was saying, but at this point it was an abstract. He knew none of it was like the movies, or in novels, but knowing what something was not like was useless, kind of like describing the color red by saying it didn’t look like blue.
No point of reference—or almost no point of reference,
he reminded himself. There’d been MoHa.

As if reading his mind, Clark said, “And make no mistake: MoHa was an aberration, Jack. You fell into that, didn’t have a chance to think about it, and you were sure the guy was bad. It’s not always that cut-and-dried. In fact, it’s rarely that way. You have to get comfortable with uncertainty. Can you do that?”

“To tell you the truth, John, I don’t know. I can’t give you an answer. I know that’s not the right answer, but—”

“Actually, that’s exactly the right answer.”

“Huh?”

“When I was going through the entry process into BUD/s—Basic Underwater Demolition School—everybody had to meet with a psychologist. I was in the lobby waiting, and a buddy of mine came out. I asked him what it was like. He said the doctor had asked him if he thought he could kill a man. My buddy, anxious to kick ass, said, ‘Hell, yes.’ When my turn came and the doctor asked me the same question, I told him I thought so but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. One of us made it in; the other didn’t.”

I’ll be damned,
Jack thought. Thinking of John Clark as some fresh-faced raw recruit rather than a godlike special operator was a hard concept to wrap your head around. Everyone started somewhere.

Clark continued, “You show me a guy who answers ‘Hell, yes’ to those kinds of questions and I’ll show you a nutcase, a liar, or someone who hasn’t given it enough thought.

“Tell you what: Ask Ding sometime. First time he had to put someone down, it’d been a near thing right up until the moment he’d pulled the trigger. He knew he could do it, and he was ninety-nine percent sure he was going to do it, but until he dropped the hammer there was still a little voice in his head.”

“And what about you?”

“The same.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Jack replied.

“Believe it.”

“So what’re you saying? I should stick to my keyboard and computer monitor?”

“That’s your choice. I just want to make sure you’re straight in your head about it. If not, you’re a danger to yourself and to everyone else.”

“Okay.”

“One more thing: I want you to think about telling your dad.”

“Jesus, are you kidding—”

“No, I’m not. I’ll keep the secret, Jack, because you’re an adult and the choice is yours, but it might be time to step out on your own, and you can’t do that while you’re still afraid to stand in front of him. Until then, you’re not your own man.”

“You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

Clark smiled at this. “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.” He checked his watch. “Almost time to get back. Give it another day’s thought—both things. If you still want to go out, I’ll teach you what I can.”

 

 

 

M
ary Pat’s contact at Legoland—Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service headquarters at Vauxhall Cross on the River Thames was colloquially known as either Legoland or Babylon because of its chunky, ziggurat-like architecture—had offered only one name in response to her query. Nigel Embling, she was told, was a retired old hand in the Stans and had forgotten more than most people knew about the region. Mary Pat assumed the Brits had active assets there, but whether or not Embling was one of these, she couldn’t be sure. Probably not. Her back-channel inquiry had likely made clear to her contact that she was slightly off the reservation, in which case the Brahmins at SIS wouldn’t look kindly at him handing over a genuine agent.

Of course, being armed with a contact was only half the battle. Embling was an older man and well past his fieldwork days, which meant they’d need to put someone else on the ground to do the legwork. Mary Pat didn’t have to think very hard about that one. Two names immediately came to mind, and if the scuttlebutt was true, these particular individuals might be interested in a little contract work. The NCTC had some discretionary funds, and both she and Ben Margolin agreed this might be a worthy expenditure.

It took only two phone calls to confirm the rumors, and another two to nail down a current phone number.

 

 

 

C
lark’s cell phone, tucked into the top drawer of his desk, trilled once, then again. He grabbed it on the third ring. “Hello.”

“John, Mary Pat Foley here.”

“Hey, Mary Pat, you were on my to-do list.”

“That so?”

“Me and Ding just rotated out of Rainbow. Wanted to touch base and say hi.”

“How about we do that in person? I’ve got something I want to run by you.”

Clark’s internal radar chirped. “Sure. When and where?”

“As soon as possible.”

Clark checked his watch. “I can shake loose for lunch right now.”

“Good. You know Huck’s in Gainesville?”

“Yeah, just off Linton Hall Road.”

“Yep. Meet you there.”

 

 

 

C
lark shut down his computer, then headed up to Sam Granger’s office. He recounted the phone call for The Campus’s ops chief. “I’m guessing this isn’t a social lunch,” Granger said.

“Doubt it. She had her game voice on.”

“She know you’re cycling out of the Agency?”

“Not much escapes Mary Pat.”

Granger considered this. “Okay, check in when you get back.”

 

 

 

C
lark had passed by Huck’s but had never gone inside. Best pies in Virginia, he’d been told.
Not that you could tell from the outside,
he thought, as he pulled into the diagonal parking space in front. Two large glass windows flanked a single door shaded by a faded red-and-white canvas awning. A neon light in the window advertised “ucks.”
Bad omen?
Clark wondered.
Probably not.

Truth was, he had nothing but good memories of Gainesville, having spent many hours walking its streets, teaching CIA case officers surveillance/countersurveillance techniques. There was only so much you could learn in the classrooms of Camp Perry. Unbeknownst to the fine citizens of Gainesville and a dozen other cities in Maryland and Virginia, at any given time their streets were being strolled by spooks playing at staying alive before they had to do it in the real world.

He pushed through the door and found Mary Pat sitting on a stool at the counter. They embraced, and Clark sat down. A portly man with thinning red hair and flour-dusted hands walked down to them. “What can I get you?”

“Apple,” Mary Pat said without hesitation. “To go.”

Clark shrugged and ordered the same. “How’s Ed?”

“Okay. Got a little cabin fever, I think. He’s writing a book.”

“Good for him.”

When the pies came, she said, “Feel like a walk?”

“Sure.”

Once outside, they strolled down the sidewalk, chitchatting until they reached an acre-sized park covered in green grass and neat box hedges. They found a bench and sat down.

“I’ve got a problem, John,” Mary Pat said after they’d both had a few bites of pie. “Thought you and Ding might be able to help.”

“If we can. First things first, though: You know we’re—”

“Yeah, I heard. Sorry. I know the honorable Charles Sumner Alden. He’s a jackass.”

“Seems to be a lot of that going around Langley these days.”

“Sadly, yes. Starting to feel like the Dark Ages over there. Tell me: How do you feel about Pakistan?”

“Nice place to visit ...” Clark offered with a smile.

Mary Pat laughed. “It’s a pretty simple op, five or six days, maybe. We’ve got a few things that need chasing down, but nobody on the ground there—at least nobody that we can use. The new administration’s stripping the ops directorate like they’re having a fire sale. We’ve got a guy—a Brit—who knows the area, but he’s a little past his prime.”

“Define ‘things that need chasing down.’”

“Should be straight intel gathering. Legwork.”

“I assume we’re talking about something peripheral to the big fish?” This got a nod from Mary Pat. “And you’ve already tried to source this through Langley?” Another nod. Clark took a breath, let it out. “You’re getting pretty far out on the limb with this.”

“That’s where the fruit is.”

“What’s your timeline?”

“Sooner the better.”

“Give me the afternoon.”

 

 

 

H
e was back at The Campus an hour later. He found Granger in Hendley’s office. He knocked on the doorjamb, got a come-in wave from Hendley, and took a seat. “Sam told me,” Hendley said. “You try the pie?”

“Apple. Might not be the best, but it’s damned close. She pitched me a contract job. Pakistan.” He outlined their conversation.

“Well, hell,” Granger said. “She’s NCTC, so it’s not too tough to figure out what’s on their radar. What’d you tell her?”

“That’d I’d call her later with an answer. It’s a no-brainer, really, but here’s the rub: If we take it, I’m not inclined to keep her in the dark.”

“About The Campus?” Granger said. “I don’t—”

“Sorry,” Clark said. “Mary Pat and I go back a long way, and she’s risking a lot on this. I’m not going to play her. Look, you guys know her reputation; you know what Jack Ryan thinks of her. If that’s not bona fides enough, I don’t know what is.”

Hendley mulled this over for half a minute, then nodded. “Okay. Tread carefully, though. When would she need you?”

“Yesterday, I suspect,” Clark replied.

W
HAT WE know for sure about the Emir and the URC is limited,” Jerry Rounds said, restarting the meeting.

“Let’s talk about what we’re
pretty
sure about.”

“Up until recently, the URC’s relied heavily on the Net for communication, but we can’t track them down to an ISP because it’s always something different, and we depend on NSA to pick it up from the encryption method, and even then we can’t always identify the ISP, but they know they skip from one country to another.”

Dominic picked up the thread. “Unless we’re missing a whole bunch of e-traffic—which is always possible—it’s a safe bet he’s having important stuff physically transmitted from one place to another, which means couriers. Maybe carrying CD-ROMs or some other portable media they can use on a laptop, or can hand to somebody else in their outfit who has a desktop machine that’s hooked into a phone or cable line. Or a Wi-Fi hot spot.”