End of Enemies (4 page)

After finding himself ousted from the Army just three months short of his twenty years, Stucky was hired by the CIA for paramilitary operations, but when they started steering away from “active field measures,” instead of finding himself terminated, Stucky was promoted. His superiors found he had a knack for controlling people in hairy situations.

Over the years Stucky made the conversion from knuckle dragger to case officer, to Near East (NE) operations deputy, then to NE division chief. He was a natural at office politics and had good instincts about how far and with whom he could push. Around superiors who held a more tolerant view of homosexuality, Stucky was careful to avoid using phrases such as
ass bandit
or
rump ranger.
In the company of women, especially since the introduction of stricter harassment rules, Stucky did not discuss their anatomy or in what fashion he wished to fondle it. It was all about knowing where—and how elastic—the line was.

As a soldier, the routine and regimen of army life suited Stucky. His lackluster people skills notwithstanding, he earned a reputation for ramrodding tough jobs. Subordinates followed him not out of respect but out of fear. They were simply too afraid to go against him.

Stucky knew he'd found his home when he stepped through the doors of the south Detroit army recruiting office at the age of eighteen. He'd been a bully in high school, and he was a bully in boot camp. Surrounded by young men frightened by the harshness of basic training, Stucky thrived. Even at that early age, he knew that when you're at your lowest, it feels good to belong to a group and to make others feel worse than you.

His first tour in the highlands of Vietnam proved two things: One, Stucky was cool under fire; and two, Stucky liked hurting people. The first quality made him a perfect sergeant, and the last quality was largely overlooked. In the middle of a firefight, when your biggest concern was being overrun, a creature like Stucky improved the odds dramatically.

Though Stucky's moderate success with the CIA would later have the Personnel Directorate scratching its collective head, he was in fact currently running SYMMETRY, one of the CIA's two most critical ongoing operations.

He plopped down in his chair, searched his drawer for a bottle of aspirin, and downed four of them dry. The secure phone rang. He snatched it up. “Stucky.”

“Uh, Peterson here, sir. He's called back—on protocol, this time. I'll hang up, there'll be a series of tone bursts, then—”

“Yeah, yeah. Put it through.”

As advertised, Stucky heard a tone burst as the call went through the electronic scrubbers. Then a voice: “Hello? Hello?”

Stucky checked his watch; duration for landline calls was ninety seconds. “Three, this is Limestone. You have a report?”

“Yes, yes. I—” There was the crackle of automatic weapons in the background. “Marcus is gone, Limestone. They took him.”

“Who took him? When?”

“It was last night—no, this morning, about three hours ago. He missed our meet, so I went to find him.”

“Goddamn it!”

“Yes, I know, but I was worried. I went to his apartment. They put him in a car and drove away.”

“Give me details.” The man did so. “Do you know this group?” asked Stucky.

“No. What should I do? I'm afraid. Should I—”

“Don't do anything, you understand? Nothing! If you have any meetings set, wave them off. Pretend none of it exists. You understand?”

“Yes, but what do I do?”

“You're not listening!” Stucky glanced at his watch: twenty seconds to go. “Go about your business. Whatever you normally do during the day, do that. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Where you're calling from … Is it safe?”

“In this city? It is as good a place as any.”

“Fine. Call back at this time two days from now. I'll be waiting.”

“Two days from now, this time. Understood.”

Stucky hung up, thought for a moment, then redialed. “Peterson, get me the DDO on the secure line.”

Washington,
D.C.

Director of Central Intelligence Dick Mason forced a smile on his face and waited for the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to finish his question.
Not much of a question,
Mason thought. Senator Herbert J. Smith did not ask questions; Senator Herbert J. Smith made speeches that just happened to have question marks tacked to their tails.

“And so, Mr. Director, my question to you is: What tangible progress in your so-called war on state-sponsored terrorism can you show this committee?”

Mason held his smile but didn't answer, knowing Smith—the master of “porcupine power” on the Hill—wasn't quite done. Smith didn't seem to realize this was a closed hearing; there were no media to impress.

“We all know about the supposed Tehran/Damascus/ Khartoum/Tripoli connection, and these governments' support of terrorism. What we don't know is what exactly the CIA, under your leadership, and at the direction of the president, has done about it. On behalf of the citizens of this country, I would like to know what we have gotten for the hundreds of millions of dollars you've spent.”

Mason cleared his throat. “That is your question, Senator?”

“Indeed it is.”

“In general terms—”

“I'm not interested in general terms, Mr. Mason. You—”

“As I understand it, sir, my deputy of operations is scheduled to appear here tomorrow. He'll be able to provide you with more specific details about the scope of our operations. That's not why I'm here today. My answer to your last question, then, is quite simple: money.”

“Money?”

“Yes, sir. We've a better grasp of how funds are transferred from sponsor governments to the command structures of terrorist groups. Money is the key. We can't dampen a terrorist's fervor; we can't cut off their source of training; and we can't hope diplomatic measures will curtail covert support of these groups.”

Mason paused to take a sip of water. God, he hated these things. He sounded like a goddamned sound bite from C-SPAN.

“What we can do, however, is attack their pocketbook. As the U.S. and other Western nations strengthen their defenses against terrorism, terrorists have to work that much harder. They can't do this—not at sustained levels—without capital.

“While the four biggest sponsors are not necessarily dependent on foreign trade and inclusion in world economic communities, all are beginning to feel the pinch of living on the fringes. They may talk about neither wanting nor needing any part of Western progress and values, but the story on the street is quite different.”

Smith said, “Are you telling us, Mr. Director, these countries
care
what the rest of the world thinks, that their feelings are hurt because they don't get to play with the big kids?”

“No, sir, I'm not. I'll give you an example. In the past three years alone, while Syria has balked at the peace process and has continued to support terrorism—especially in Lebanon—the United States, along with Canada and the United Kingdom, have all but stopped buying Syrian products such as manganese, chrome, and phosphates. This alone has cost Syria hundreds of millions of dollars—money President Assad doesn't have to spend keeping his country militarized.

“So, I ask you, Senator: What's your guess as to what President Assad is feeling? The big kids have stopped playing with him, and his power base—his very ability to remain in power—is being eroded.”

Smith put his hand over the microphone and whispered to his vice chairman, Senator Dean. Smith was good at rhetoric, Mason knew, but rarely did his homework, and in this case he was so intent on punching holes in one of the president's pet projects, he didn't bother to find out what the hell he was talking about. Even so, Smith wielded power on the Hill. Though a confirmed womanizer and a borderline drunk, he won countless battles by simply wearing down his opponents. Victory by forfeiture was still victory.

“That's a start, Mr. Director. Now you've caught on to what I'm talking about:
tangible
progress. But is your example an isolated one, or is it representative?”

“It is becoming more the rule rather than exception, Senator.”
But we've got a long,
long,
way to go,
Mason didn't add. Destitute or flush, state-sponsored terrorist groups would never quit altogether.

Smith considered this and nodded. “Very well, Mr. Director, we appreciate your time. We may call on you again.”

“Of course.”

Mason nodded as the committee filed out of the hearing room. Once they were gone, he let out a long breath.

CIA Headquarters,
Langley,
Virginia

He was back in his office an hour later.

“Morning, Mr. Director,” said his secretary.

“Morning, Ginny.” Mason had stopped trying to get Ginny to call him anything but “Mr. Director.”

“The world still in one piece?”

“You tell me. You're the one who faced the beast this morning.”

“And got away only slightly scathed.”

“Mr. Coates and Ms. Albrecht are in your conference room.”

“Okay.” Mason walked into his office, checked his inbox and voice messages, then opened his door to the adjoining conference room. George Coates, his deputy director, Operations (DDO) and Sylvia Albrecht, his deputy director, Intelligence (DDI) were waiting. Coates and Albrect headed the two main directorates at the CIA, the “doers” and the “thinkers,” as Mason called them.

Dick Mason had been appointed by the previous administration and then asked to stay on by its successor. From day one, Mason dedicated himself to revamping the CIA and had never wavered in that pursuit. Among the many problems he tackled, the biggest had been rivalry: in-house rivalry between his directorates and outside rivalry between the CIA and other agencies such as the FBI and NSA. He handled the former by first doing some housecleaning that included cutting the position of DDCI, or deputy director of Central Intelligence, and becoming his own number-two man; and then by simply converting other agency heads through the sheer force of his personality.

Within a month of his appointment, Mason fired the incumbent DDO and DDI, both career bureaucrats. To their replacements he gave the simple warning, “Work together, or I'll fire you.” They didn't, so he did.

Mason then appointed George Coates and Sylvia Albrecht, gave them the same warning, and got very different results. For the first time in years, Operations and Intelligence began working hand in hand. The DI got quality raw product from the field, and in return the DO got unvarnished analysis. Most importantly, the agency's output was unslanted and immune to the vagaries of political winds. This, Mason felt, was the CIA's primary job.

“Why the long faces?” he asked as he took a seat.

In reply, Coates slid a buff-colored folder across the table. On the diagonal red stripe across the cover was the annotation, NOFORN/TS/EYES ONLY/SYMMETRY. Mason mentally translated the spookese to plain English: No Foreign Dissemination/Top Secret/No Unauthorized Electronic Reproduction or Conveyance. The last word, SYMMETRY, was the computer-generated name for their Beirut operation.

“We lost Marcus, Dick,” said Coates. “The report's on top.”

Mason opened the folder and scanned Art Stucky's message. He sighed. “Anybody claiming credit for it?”

Coates shook his head. “No. Too early anyway.” Like Mason, the DDO was hoping this was simply a random kidnapping. In Beirut, it was possible.

“What did Stucky do?”

“He told the agent to lay low and make contact again in two days. That should give us time to make decisions.”

“Okay, you and Sylvia put your heads together. I want all the SYMMETRY product sifted, and I want rough conclusions by tomorrow. Focus on whatever Marcus had going the last few weeks. Maybe he struck a nerve somewhere, and we missed it. Next, I want OpSec checked inside and out, and I want a plan to cauterize this thing if we have to. Questions?”

Both deputies shook their heads.

“This is not good news,” Mason said. “Aside from the fact we've lost a good agent and maybe a whole network, there's a political side. I just got done with Smith over at the IOC—by the way, George, you best put on your hip waders before you go over tomorrow.”

“That, bad?”

“He's got an agenda, that's for certain.”

“What about SYMMETRY?”

“Not a word. Right now, there's nothing to tell. My call—I'll take the flak.

“Bottom line: SYMMETRY is our flagship on our ‘war on terrorism' as Smith put it. The president is dedicated to making a dent in terrorism, and everybody knows it—especially on the Hill. Plenty of people are looking for anything they can use to sink him. Being able to label a major policy a failure would be just the kind of ammunition they need. And as much as I'd like to think we're above politics, that's just not the case.”

Mason leaned forward to make sure he had their attention. “This is what they call a career decider, people. Whatever it takes, we fix SYMMETRY, and if it can't be fixed, we find a way to turn it into a win. Understood?”

What Mason had essentially told Coates and Albrect was,
I
think it stinks,
but if we don't make this thing right,
we're all out of jobs.

Quantico,
Virginia

When Charlie Latham's boss first approached him with the idea of teaching a few seminars at the FBI academy, Latham balked. He wasn't a teacher, he argued. As usual, his wife Bonnie had simplified it for him: “Crap.” Whether he was in the field teaching by example or in a classroom teaching by lecture, it was the same thing. Now, two years later, Latham had to admit he enjoyed it.

Today's topic was the fall of the Soviet Union and its effect on espionage operations in Europe and Asia. Though a decade had passed, the U.S.S.R.'s dissolution was still an idea backdrop for the kind of lessons fledgling agents needed to learn.

To the trainees Latham was something of a legend, perhaps the greatest CE/I (counterespionage and intelligence) and spy hunter in FBI history. Now he was working counterterrorism.

“… it's important we don't get tunnel vision when assessing threats,” he said. “The former Soviet intelligence community hasn't vanished. And there are other organizations out there that deserve our attention. Think about the old Cold War term the Soviets used for its bloc countries:
satellites.
Initially, they were designed to insulate the U.S.S.R. against invasion, but it didn't take long for the Kremlin to see the opportunity. These satellites could be molded in Russia's image, could carry out its clandestine dictates. In other words, surrogate covert warfare. Why do the dirty work when you can get someone else to do it for you?

“So, when you get into the field—and if you are so blessed as to find yourself in CE and I—” Latham paused as there was general laughter. “—ask yourself this: All that infrastructure, all those agents, all those controllers … Where did they go and what are they doing now?”

A young trainee raised his hand. “Hold on a second, sir. Can anybody today mount operations with the same sophistication of the Soviets?”

“The French, the Germans—”

“But those are our—”

“Allies? No such thing, not when it comes to espionage. It goes on everywhere, all the time. Allies simply aren't as likely to act as vigorously against one another, that's all. Sophistication is nothing more than training, creativity, and resources. Those things don't go away. There'll always be someone with a need, and someone willing to supply it.”

“You're talking about freelance espionage, aren't you?”

“Could be. Look at all the weapons scientists that found themselves out of work after the Soviet Union collapsed. We were—still are, in fact—trying to figure what they're doing. Same deal with all those KGB boys and their Czech and Bulgarian counterparts. Some are working in factories making shoelaces. Some aren't.”

Another trainee raised his hand. “Sir, I know this is off the subject, but I was wondering if you might … I mean, we'd be interested to hear about the Vorsalov case.”

That caught Latham by surprise. He hadn't thought about that for … How long? A whole week? He paused, took a sip of water. “Maybe next time. You're right, though, it's a good, uh … case study.”
On just how quick a rookie agent can die,
right,
Charlie
?

Suddenly he felt like a hypocrite, standing there as a supposed expert when just a decade ago an agent not much older than these kids died in his arms. And it had been his fault. What could he tell them?
Even if you run a flawless op,
track down and corner Russia's most dangerous KGB illegal,
you can still lose.

He hadn't expected the Russian to bolt, and he certainly hadn't expected him to kill to get away. It just wasn't done—or so the rules went.
That was crap then,
and it's crap now,
thought Latham. He should have known better.

He glanced at his watch. “I want you to think about something for next time. On the robbery side, banks can be held up only a certain number of ways; serial killers usually stick to predicted profiles. But CE and I is a fluid business. The threat never goes away. It might mutate—tactics or allegiances or goals might change—but it's always there. Where there are secrets, there'll be people who want them and will do anything to get them. Okay, see you next time.”

Latham watched the students file out, then walked to the window and looked out. “Demons, Charlie,” he muttered.

Kingston,
Jamaica

In a bungalow overlooking the island's Southern shore, the man resealed the false bottom of the suitcase and carefully repacked the clothes. He could hear her in the bathroom, humming as she finished putting on her makeup. Once satisfied the case was ready, he returned it to the bed and sat down beside it. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.