Nature of the Game (5 page)

“He's got some beers in the fridge,” said Noah.

“Enough for me to share?” asked Denton.

“Noah knows,” said Wes. “They're yours.”

Noah fetched them each an unopened brew, then poured himself a Scotch while Denton and his guest popped the cans.

“
Semper ft
,” said Denton, who'd been seventeen years old in Marine boot camp on VJ Day. Wes joined him in the toast. The beer was cold and tangy. Noah slumped in the empty chair.

“What do you know about my job?” Denton asked Wes.

“You're the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency,” answered Wes. “And as such, the Director of Central Intelligence, overseeing the rest of the Intelligence community.”

“That's good,” said Denton. “Most people only realize one of my four jobs. You named two. I'm also the President's chief confidant on intelligence matters. But we're here about you.

“A Marine major,” said Denton. “A lawyer. Never married. Why'd you go to the Naval Academy?”

“You appointed me.”

The three of them laughed.

“I haven't forgotten. You were a midlist graduate.”

“My passions ran less to math than I'd thought.”

“What do they run to?” said Noah.

“I'm more human oriented,” Wes told Denton.

“Why'd you opt for the jarheads instead of sailor white?” asked Noah.

Wes smiled at him, slow and cold. “That seemed like where the action was in 1968.”

“Do you enjoy being where the action is?” asked Denton.

“I enjoy doing a job worth doing well.”

“Yes,” said the DCI. “Vietnam, platoon leader, volunteered to Force Recon, which meant an extended tour. Two Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart. One negative evaluation.”

“File says you weren't good at delegating authority,” interjected Noah.

“Recon Command didn't like captains going out on long-range patrols,” said Wes. “I didn't like sending men where I wasn't willing to go.”

Denton said, “That attitude cost you a promotion.”

Wes shrugged.

“You took the Excess Leave Program,” said Denton. “Went to law school—which slowed you on the ladder even more. You're currently assigned to the Naval Investigative Service.”

“A gumshoe,” interjected Noah.

“Leaving aside the Laird Commission for the moment, you've never had any intelligence assignments—correct?”

“NIS handles counterintelligence, but I've been working criminal issues. Recon was tactical. Practical.”

“Ah,” said the political czar of America's spies. “Practical. Do you have anything against intelligence work?”

Wes took a long pull on his beer before he answered.

“I like knowing things,” he said. “I prefer doing things. Intelligence work, the technical stuff, ELINT, satellites, SIGINT—it's passive. Analysis is fascinating, but takes years to get good at, years that deepen you, but narrow you. HUMINT, spooking, well, that's not something Marines do much of.”

“Didn't you deal with intelligence when you worked for the Laird Commission in 1986?” asked Denton.

“My assignment with the Commission was to find out what went wrong with Marine security procedures at the Moscow embassy and in our Leningrad consulate, and examine whether the Corps had systemic problems that helped the KGB recruit and operate Sergeant Lonetree. I didn't concern myself with intelligence issues.”

“But you rubbed elbows with spooks there, didn't you?” said Noah.

“Soviets or ours?” asked Wes.

“Either,” said Noah.

“Both,” answered Wes. “I stayed at the American embassy compound in Moscow. The third day, when I went for my morning run, the KGB uniformed guard at the gate greeted me in English, ‘Good morning, Major Wesley Burke Chandler from New Mexico. How are things in the Marine Corps today?' Our spooks were the ones who left the room whenever I came in.”

“But you never worked with them?” said Noah.

“No one but Marines and Commission members.”

“The records reflect you did a fine job,” said Denton. “Wes, do you have any friends in the Intelligence community?”

“Should I count either of you?”

They all laughed.

“Let me rephrase that,” said the former congressman. “Do you have anyone in this business who you owe?”

“Should I count either of you?”

“You damn well better, son.” Denton smiled.

“I pay my debts,” said Wes. “I know FBI and NIS spy catchers, some Navy Intelligence. More Marine Intelligence. A few men over at the Joint Special Operations Agency—CIA uses them, you tell me if they count. Guys I met in jump school who kept changing their uniforms. I don't
owe
any of them.”

“Who do you owe?” asked Noah.

“I owe rent, the monthly balance on my credit cards. A hardware salesman who was a good lance corporal. Several women I was less than gracious to. My folks are dead.”

“We don't expect you to be a virgin,” said Noah. “Hell, better if you're not. We don't need details we don't want to know. But we gotta be sure you ain't
infected
.”

“You know who I am.”

“Wes,” said Denton, “we're not targeting you, we're doing what you would do in our shoes. We're doing our job.”

“What you say in this room stays in this room,” said Noah. “What you hear stays in here, too.”

“I might not get to heaven,” said Wes, “but my tombstone will be clean.”

“Heaven isn't where I have in mind to send you,” said Denton.

“What do you have in mind?” asked Wes; added, “Sir.”

“My fourth job,” said DCI Ralph Denton. “Working for me in my fourth job.

“I'm the lightning rod for everything that goes wrong in intelligence,” said Denton. “That's the job, and I accept it. But that doesn't mean being stupid. That doesn't mean working blind.

“Something's happened.”

Three days earlier, Tuesday, at eleven
A.M.
, Ralph Denton opened the door from his new office on the seventh floor of the “old” building at Langley and led Noah Hall and Mary Patterson into the carpeted corridor. Ralph crossed to the unmarked conference room door, winked at his longtime aides, then turned the handle.

“Good morning,” he called out to the people milling around the conference table.

From the crowd stepped William Cochran, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.
Number two on the charts, but number one in their hearts
, thought Denton. His deputy was the only man Denton ever met who could carry the name Billy with dignity. On a day like today, when he wasn't wearing his three-star Air Force general's uniform, Billy could walk through a crowd of strangers and they'd never remember his trim build or average height. He wore thick glasses with black metal frames.

“Sir,” said Billy, “should I make the introductions?”

“Sure,” said Ralph, letting Billy play it big.

The Executive Director. Five Deputy Directors. The only one Ralph knew was August Reed III, Deputy Director of Operations, who'd cut his teeth on the 1953 CIA plot that created the Shah of Iran and signaled the independence of the CIA from British intelligence. Reed had a waiver to stay on past retirement age.

Denton abruptly realized that he and Reed were the only people in the room who'd been adults during World War II—if Denton's teenage days in the Marines counted as adulthood. In the 1960's, Ralph's oldest boy harassed the father he never dared confront by walking around the house singing “the times, they are a'changin'.” Ralph remembered the song that morning as he saw faces unlined by the days that shaped his vision.

“You remember the Comptroller, the Inspector General and the General Counsel,” said Billy, ticking off their names.

The house eunuchs, Noah had called them, in charge of keeping the Agency honest. The Comptroller was the only black in this pool of white faces. The only two women were the flack from Public Affairs and the Director of Science and Technology.

“This is the Chief of the Covert Action Staff,” said Billy. Denton wanted his own man in charge of covert operations, so it was just a question of how quickly this current chief of dirty tricks could be eased out.

“Good to be working with you,” said Denton.

“Hope you don't mind,” said August Reed III, “I dragged along Timothy Jones. Tim runs our Counter-Intelligence Center.”

Denton beamed as he shook Jones's clammy hand. Denton and Noah had carefully drawn up the meeting list. Jones hadn't been on it.

“Glad you're here,” said Denton. He caught Noah's eye, then focused on the CIA's number two: “Aren't we, Billy?”

“Of course, Mr. Director,” said Billy.

“This is General Prentice, from the National Intelligence Council,” said Billy. The NIC was composed of representatives from the rest of the Intelligence community—the National Security Agency, the military intelligence groups, agencies that were sometimes larger in size and clout than the CIA.

“Prentice will be the eyes and ears for the big boys,” Denton told Noah. “Make sure he sees and hears what we want.”

Denton shook more hands. At Noah's suggestion, Denton had invited the heads of Finance and Security.

“Guns and money,” Noah had argued. “Can never have enough and you can't ever tell.”

A handsome man in his thirties shook Ralph's hand. “Legislative Liaison. I handle the White House, too.”

“That makes two of us, son,” said Denton. He grinned so the men standing nearby knew it was just a joke. They laughed.

Billy asked, “Do you have a preference for seating, sir?”

The room was a windowless box. A lectern stood at one end of the table. Ralph strolled through the crowd toward the other end. “Hell, Billy, doesn't really matter today.”

Ralph kept the enjoyment off his face as the high and mighty jockeyed for chairs, mindful of the mysteries of rank. Only Billy seemed unruffled. He sat at the middle of the table. Noah and Mary sat along the wall. Ralph glanced at his watch.

“Sixty-three minutes ago,” said Ralph, “the President helicoptered back to the White House.”

In his mind, he heard the chopping beat of the two Presidential helicopters, one for the official Ralph was beginning to worry he would never be, plus a decoy for the terrorists Ralph hoped would keep quiet during his reign as America's chief spy.

“He left me sworn in as DCI,” continued Ralph. All CIA personnel whose clearance and duties allowed them to had attended the ceremony in the “bubble” amphitheater. “I scheduled you senior executives here today to ask for your help in making my tenure as smooth as possible.

“Maintenance is moving my desk so that instead of facing the forest out my window, my chair looks in, to where you will be sitting. You'll be facing out to the world, and I'll ask you to tell me about it. That's the way I intend to run this agency.”

“That also means, Billy, that you're now truly my right-hand man.” The Deputy Director's office lay that direction from Ralph's new office arrangement.

“I'll do my best,” said Billy.

I'll bet
, thought Ralph. He continued:

“Let's start straight: crucial issues will not be hidden from me in a forest of daily problems. You are to tell me what I need to know and what I want to know. The burden of that task is on your shoulders. If I don't want to know for security or deniability reasons, fine. But don't protect me against what I will read on the front page of the
New York Times
.”

Denton's swearing in speech had been warm, open.

“I look around these halls and I see good people, worried that any moment history and Congress are going to come along and break their rice bowls.”

Only Billy smiled.

“Well, I didn't take this chair to watch it get whittled down because some people wonder how valuable intelligence agencies are now that the Berlin Wall is rubble.”

“Hear, hear,” chimed in Gus Reed.

“Before I even got this chair, our friends on Capitol Hill and in the press warmed it up for me. The next time we spend a million dollars to buy a tinhorn Panamanian dictator like General Noriega, I want a warranty that makes sure he stays bought.”

Chuckles warmed the room. But was that a flick of a gaze from August Reed to the twerp he'd dragged along? wondered Ralph. He looked at Billy: the general's glasses were impenetrable.

“We've got to trust each other,” continued Ralph. “Work with each other. But I'm the man in charge. I walk in my own shoes—not Andy Sawyer's, God rest his soul. Not anybody else's.”

The room was silent.

“The only thing left on my agenda today is a question,” said Denton. “Not counting routine matters, is there anything that I should be aware of? Any issue or problem that because of the transition between Sawyer and me fell through the cracks?”

A perfect out for them, thought Ralph, if there's anything. But none of them should rise to the bait, being fully aware that this was a time and place of his choosing.

“Ah, well …” The timid voice from the end of the table.

The twerp, thought Denton. Timothy something. Counter-Intelligence something. Whose voice spoke through his mouth?

“Yes, Tim?” Ralph smiled.

“Something's happened,” said Jones. He sighed as the weight of the words left him.

Ralph was watching Billy, not Timothy Jones. Slowly, Billy's Coke-bottle-bottomed glasses turned toward the nonentity who had dared to speak.

“It's not
really
my territory,” babbled Jones. “I suppose this is more up Mike's alley”—Jones nodded to the head of Security—“but it's a CIC oversee, too, so—”

“Timothy.” Denton spoke like an ice ax. “What happened?”

“We got a phone call,” said Jones. “Yesterday morning. The Watch Office. On the Agent-In-Distress number.”