Mission Compromised (29 page)

Newman nodded again. The CIA man gave him a CD. “There are some more up-to-date after-action reports, and stuff like that on here. I'm supposed to let you copy it onto your laptop and take it back with me.” He handed it to Newman, who slid it into the CD slot on his portable computer and transferred the information to his hard drive. After Sergeant Major Gabbard did the same thing, the CIA man took the silver-colored disk back.

He then said, “When you're finished with the material, erase it right away. And remember, you won't be able to copy this to any other computer or e-mail it to another source. It's encrypted, but your EL-3 will open the file. Just remember, the computer files have a built-in destruct sequence that will do some nasty things to your computer if you forget and try to copy or even print out stuff. Then it destroys all the information that you imported from the CD, and after that it attacks your hard drive, just in case you tried to translate the material in some other form to disguise it.”

“Yeah,” Newman replied, “I've worked with these CDs when I was
in Ops and Plans at HQMC. I know the drill … I forgot once—it only takes once,” he smiled, “but thanks for the reminder.”

“Uh-huh.” The CIA man nodded. “By the way, speaking of the Marines, what's the deal on this mission? My call to come and brief you came from the NSC and not the Marines.”

Newman looked at him with a blank expression on his face. “How long have you been with the agency?” Without waiting for an answer, he added quickly, “You ought to know the drill by now. You don't ask questions. If you weren't told what we're doing, it's because of a ‘need to know' protocol. Sorry, but that's all you need to know.”

“Yeah, I know. But this seemed kinda out of the usual SOP for these kinds of things. I mean … you're a Marine, and the CIA and the Marines work together a lot. But I noticed that some of the guys on your team are from all branches of the services. Sounds important—like something I'd like to be in on.”

Newman didn't tell him that he had seen only the tip of the iceberg—in addition to people from all branches of the U.S. military, the British and the United Nations were also involved. When the CIA man left, Newman once again had an uneasy feeling. Because of the way the NSC had contacted the CIA for the intelligence they needed, they had sparked more speculation—and a potential leak—than if they had simply stuck to the normal way of doing things.

He called in Sergeant Major Gabbard and asked him to take care of several of the details relating to the team training and to send a vehicle to pick them up at noon for another daily briefing/planning session to be conducted after lunch.

Newman then shut his door and began to review the CIA intelligence reports, committing important facts and secret information to
memory so he could relate them to troops and then delete the files on his computer. Ordinarily, with the EncryptionLok-3, he'd feel secure, but for the past couple of weeks Newman had sensed that he was being watched. At first he dismissed the feeling as just a normal case of nerves before a mission—or perhaps the kind of paranoia that General Komulakov had said comes with a history of cynicism and suspicion. Yet, since the days following his trip to the UN, he sensed that he was being followed. He had even “made” one of those who had shadowed him—a young man in his twenties tailing him in Georgetown when he stopped into a restaurant and checked on the wait for a table. Looking at his watch, Newman had felt that the forty-five-minute wait was too much and decided to try another place up the street. As soon as he left the restaurant and strode across Wisconsin Avenue, the man, who had been sitting on a park bench outside the restaurant, looked surprised and jumped up much too quickly. Tail suspected.

When Newman noticed his “shadow,” he decided to cross M Street to a different restaurant to see if the man still followed. At first he kept walking on the same side of the street in the direction the two of them had been walking. But when Newman crossed back over to the north side of M Street, the shadow also turned and headed back in the direction from which he'd come. Tail confirmed.
No doubt one of Harrod's stupid tests
, he told himself.
Well, I won't give him the benefit of keeping me off balance
—
I'll keep this to myself.

But the surveillance hadn't stopped after Newman confronted Harrod. When he drove to and from home, he was sure he was being tailed, alternating between a bronze Odyssey van and a white Olds Aurora. His travels were unscheduled and at various hours. The odds of their mutual commute being coincidental were too astronomical to consider. He concluded that it was not a coincidence.

He never got a good look at any of the drivers, but he recognized the cars when they appeared regularly. He wrote down the license number of the van when he saw it on the way home from the White House one night. Using the computer and data access system in his office, he traced the tag and found that it was an “unissued” number—it didn't exist. The next time he saw the van, he was leaving home to run an errand to the hardware store about two miles from his house. The van had pulled out after he passed it, and he slowed to let it creep closer. Then when he got to the main intersection, he sped up and did a 180-degree turn and raced back toward the bronze van. It turned right at the next corner before Newman could get to it. He stopped to write down the license—this time it had New Jersey plates—but he got only the first two letters.

By the time he flew from Andrews Air Force Base to Fort Bragg, Newman felt justified for his paranoia. There
were
people following him, watching him, and somehow they knew his schedule. If he left early, they were there. If he was late, they still appeared. It's likely that a less experienced person would not have noticed as many of the incidents as Newman did. The tails were good, but not good enough for Newman, who had spent most of his military career as a reconnaissance officer, trained to look for things that could get you killed. He knew the drill better than his hunters.

It has to be someone from the White House
, he thought as he sat in his temporary office at Fort Bragg.
Or maybe somebody who has White House links
—
like Komulakov.
He had begun to make notes of who, where, and when during these incidents when he discovered he'd been followed.

He didn't know whether to confront Harrod. Newman reasoned that if he were wrong, then the National Security Advisor might take
him off the mission, fearing that its leader had already been identified by unfriendly entities. If, on the other hand, it was Harrod or Komulakov, then the people who were shadowing him were likely countersurveillance or counterintelligence spooks—there to either protect Newman or finger him if he was disloyal.

After weighing it all for several days, he decided to say nothing and simply keep his eyes open. But he also made a mental note to check for bugs at both his home and his office when he returned.

 

CHAPTER TEN

Office of the Special Projects Officer

________________________________________

Washington, D.C.

Monday, 16 January 1995

0900 Hours, Local

 

N
ewman entered his office on the third floor of the Old Executive Office Building with a headache and hoped it was just a lack of caffeine to help him start the day. He had returned late the night before on an Air Force jet from Pope Air Force Base, which is adjacent to Fort Bragg. He had gone home to an empty house—Rachel was on a flight somewhere—done his laundry caught a few hours of sleep, and headed back into Washington. On the way to his office, he had stopped in the GSA cafeteria on the first floor of the OEOB and picked up a cup of coffee. He pulled the plastic tab off the
lid to the Styrofoam cup and took a long sip of the hot, black liquid. He sighed audibly. The coffee made him feel better.

He took off his coat and hung it on the coatrack. As he did so a bright, cheery female voice said, “Good morning, Colonel Newman. There's a fax that you'll have to authorize decryption for.” The voice belonged to First Lieutenant Sonia Duvall, U.S. Army, Simon Harrod's handpicked choice for admin officer in the Special Projects Office. She had arrived while Newman was at Fort Bragg with the ISEG, and though Newman had talked to her on the phone, this was the first time he had met her in person.

“Thanks, Lieutenant. What else is happening?” he asked.

“Nothing much, sir,” said the bright-eyed, dark-haired, very attractive young officer. “The fax is for your eyes only. I'm going to the Pentagon to get those maps you requested. Anything you need before I leave?”

Newman said, “No, but I'd like the maps before I leave today. And Lieutenant, I know that it's a nice view out there,” Newman pointed out the window, “but I want to make sure that the blinds on these windows are always kept closed—and the drapes as well—day and night so that someone outside doesn't know when we're here. It's just good OPSEC.”

Lieutenant Duvall nodded, closed the blinds, pulled the drapes, and then put on her coat. She smiled, waved, and he heard her punching in the exit code to leave the offices. The security door closed with a quiet
thud
behind her, and he heard the lock snap closed with a loud
click.
After she was gone, Newman went to the fax machine and attached his EncryptionLok-3 and got the message to print out from the machine's buffer. It was from General Komulakov, asking him to fly to New York on Wednesday for another briefing at the UN command center. This was the second in ten days, and it was clear to Newman
that things were beginning to heat up now that the ISEG was completing its training in Fort Bragg.

He wondered why Komulakov just didn't call him—he could use the EL-3 for the phone as well as the fax. As far as Newman was concerned, flying to New York was a waste of time and money.
What's with this guy?
he thought.
What's so all-fired important that it requires ‘eyeball to eyeball' contact?
But he faxed back his agreement and shredded the general's message.

Newman returned to his desk and sat down with his coffee. But instead of picking up another revision to the ISEG training schedule that Coombs had placed there for approval, he leaned back and reflected on his nagging sense that something was wrong. He knew that this feeling was normal in combat, but in all his years in the Corps, he'd never experienced it on garrison duty.
But then again, this isn't really garrison duty, is it? Nope. It's duty in the snake pit. Maybe even my office is bugged
, Newman thought.

He made a mental note to give the office a thorough going-over after Lieutenant Duvall left for lunch. Then he edited that thought.
Maybe I'd better think about video and audio surveillance
, he mused. Taking another sip of coffee, he thought,
If I go rummaging around looking for a microphone, the cameras might see me and if there are any cameras, they will probably be wise to me.

Newman looked around for where a camera might be hidden. He knew from the clandestine work he'd done in Panama when the U.S. military went after Noriega that the CIA had tiny fiber-optic lenses that were as small as a pinhole and could be installed virtually anywhere, but he intuitively decided that if such work was being done at the White House, it would have to be done by people with less field experience, and that they would perhaps be more obvious.

He looked at the cold air return in the other room.
Maybe it's in the register.
In his own office, there was not a register high enough where a camera would do any good. But there was such a register in the adjoining office. Then he saw the smoke alarm.
It could be there too. Or maybe in both places.

There was a picture of George Washington on the far wall that he had inherited with the office—
It could be built into the frame
, he thought. As he drank his coffee, he saw three other spots that might have a camera hidden.

Even the fireplace
, he thought. Then Newman remembered the discovery of the safe weeks earlier. He had not gone back into it since he first found the mysterious files. A sense of dread suddenly swept over him. Those files! They were marked
TOP SECRET
, and some of them were intended only for the former president. Even though he had the top security clearances, he could still get in trouble for having these files. It occurred to him that they had his fingerprints all over them. And if he
were
under surveillance, they'd be sure to question why he had looked at the files and done nothing to resolve the matter of their ultimate possession, control, and disposition.

It was truly a dilemma. As one Marine to another, Newman would like to have Oliver North's take on what the files in his old office safe meant and what he should do with them. If the National Security Advisor or the administration took possession of them, there was no telling what might be done with and to them.

Newman went about his business and waited awhile before doing anything. Then he surreptitiously took a paper clip and a new number-two wooden pencil from his desk. He held the items in his left hand under the desk while he used his right hand to pick up a copy of
Newsweek
, pretending to browse through it. He spread the magazine
open on the desktop and slowly dropped his right hand underneath by the other one. Under the desk, his hands worked quickly and skillfully. First he spread the paper clip apart and jammed one end of it through the eraser on the pencil. When he could feel equal lengths of the paper clip on either side of the eraser, he bent the wire in half, into a V shape, so that it looked almost like a divining rod, with the pencil eraser holding the two prongs of the paper clip. As he bent over the magazine, he slipped the strange item into his shirtsleeve.