Nature of the Game (57 page)

Jud heard the love in her words, wanted to weep; coveted her devotion. He finished his sandwich. Held out a potato chip.

“Here,” said Jud. Saul took it. “I'm the monkey man.”

THE INSIDER

W
es had called ahead after leaving Nick, so they were waiting for him at the main gate. An escort car led him along the road winding through the trees, around the massive building, down into the CIA's underground garage.

They drove slowly through that dank concrete cavern. By an elevator at the end of a row of cars stood Kramer, head of security. Two men with wary eyes and loose suits were with him. The escort driver motioned for Wes to park.

“Leave the keys in it!” Kramer yelled as Wes climbed out of his car. He carried his attaché case of money and documents.

“Give me your gun,” said Kramer.

“That's not in the deal,” answered Wes.

Kramer kept his eyes on the big man and angled his head toward his two aides. “You'll never even see Andy's hands move.”

“I won't be watching him.”

“We don't need his help to get it,” said one of the suits.

“Never mind,” said Kramer. “The major might be a fool, but he's not a fanatic.”

The four of them rode elevators to the top floor. The carpeted executive corridor was empty. Kramer led Wes to the unlabeled brown door. Knocked. They went inside.

Air Force general and Deputy Director of the CIA Billy Cochran sat behind his desk. He peered through his thick glasses.

“He reads clean on electronics scan,” said Kramer. “He's carrying a gun, but no wire and no recorder.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kramer,” said Billy. “You'll handle the rest?”

“Personally. And my men are just outside the door.”

Kramer left them alone.

“Where's Director Denton?” said Wes.

“Is answering that part of our deal?” said Billy.

“Just tell me.” Wes took a chair in front of the desk.

“He's attending a conference at the State Department, with his secretary. And Noah Hall got an urgent call from the White House just before you arrived. A political crisis that required him to leave the building.”

“You handled that nicely.”

“Those men are your superiors—not me. You spurned my help before. So why are you bringing me your ‘deal' now?”

“They're politicians, but they play minor league ball: all careers and no risks.”

“What does that make me? And who then are you?”

“I'm a soldier.”

Billy's voice dripped sarcasm. “Selfless in the service of your country.”

“You took the deal,” said Wes.

“I lifted the burn and alert notices so you could come in. Like a stay of execution, my intercession can be reversed. You are a man in a world of trouble.”

“You ought to know. It's your world,
sir
.”

“I don't kill people in the desert.”

“Really? Well, that's not important now. Denton and Noah didn't trust me. They screwed me up and deserted under fire. But I should have expected that when I took their job. Maybe I did, and maybe I didn't care. I can't remember, it doesn't matter. I needed a mission, they gave me one. Now it needs finishing, and they can't do it. Wouldn't if they could. I came to you because you're the insider, and that's where the answers are.”

“To what? Your wounded phantom, Jud Stuart?”

“This isn't about him. He's just the body in the bag.”

“Where is he?”

“The deal was you'd have Kramer run three names for me.”

“You've been given everything in the system about Jud Stuart.”

“We'll skip past that lie.”

“I do not lie.” A sentence as flat and hard as a saber.

“But you're a genius at structuring the truth:
in the system
. What does that mean?”

“Ask your names,” said Billy, picking up the phone to where Mike Kramer waited in front of a computer terminal plugged into the greatest network of information in history.

“Beth Doyle,” said Wes.

He gave Billy what other data he could remember, and the general relayed it to Kramer. Billy hung up.

“This will take time. Now—”

“We can wait.”

In silence, they did.

Wes tired of watching the thick glasses of the man behind the desk. On the walls hung Billy's collection of Japanese woodblock prints from the era of emperors. The prints were beautiful, the warriors bold with their drawn swords and wise as they knelt to work on their calligraphy, swords sheathed by their sides.

Twenty-two minutes later, the phone rang. A fax machine behind Billy's desk hummed. Billy answered his phone, listened. He hung up, tore a freshly transmitted sheet out of his fax machine, and passed it across the desk to Wes.

An old passport photo.

“Yes,” said Wes.

“There are legions of Beth Doyles,” said Billy. “But your data indicated her. No arrest record or warrants. A lot of foreign travel: visas for Asia, Europe.”

“Who does she belong to?”

Dryly, Billy said, “The records indicate she's single.”

“You know what I mean: is she one of you?”

For a heartbeat, Billy didn't answer.

“There is no indication,” he said, “that she has ever been employed by a government security, intelligence, or law enforcement agency. No indication of contact, no registry in an active file or a cross-reference in anything other than routine customs and State Department records for travelers.”

“What else?”

“What else could she be?” Billy's hands spread wide. “All that travel? She could be a recruit of a foreign agency.”

“That wouldn't matter for this.”

“But if there is any chance of that,” insisted Billy, “our CI people and the FBI should be notified.”

“No chance. Keep her out of their files.”

“Then you shouldn't have had us run a check on her.”

Wes shook his head, sighed. “Would it show if she worked for a private eye named Jack Berns?”

Billy polished his glasses with a tissue.

“Our files contain the license records for this area. Nothing showed up, but my understanding of that
profession
is that its regulation leaves something to be desired.”

“No,” said Wes, “she wouldn't work for him.”

A great weight floated from his heart; another one settled in its place.

“Give me your second name,” ordered Billy.

Wes handed him the driver's license of the man who'd followed Nick Kelley, the man Wes had ambushed at Union Station.

The number two man at the CIA frowned. He telephoned the data on the Virginia driver's permit to Kramer.

During the ten-minute wait, Wes closed his eyes. He imagined Beth, her hair, her mouth, her smoky taste. Her look as she held his gun, as she walked out the door. He heard her laugh and remembered how it filled his heart.

The phone rang.

“Yes?” Billy listened to the voice from another room. His eyes withdrew behind the thick glasses. “I see … Thank you.”

After he hung up, Billy frowned, then pushed away from his desk, turned his back on Wes, and walked to the windows. Today his limp was noticeable. He stared out the glass at the rain-gray sky and the tops of the trees in the Virginia forest.

“Aren't you going to ask me for the next name?” said Wes. He waited like a fielder, eyes on the man at the plate.

“How far gone is this?” Billy finally said.

“Too far to stop.”

“You've done a good job, Major. You should be proud.”

“Fuck you,
sir
,” said Wes.

The expletive turned Billy from the window.

“If we were in uniform,” he said evenly, “I could throw you into hell for that.”

“Yes sir,” Wes told the man silhouetted against the sky.

“I respect uniforms,” said Billy. “As, I suspect, do you. For their precision. Their sense of purpose. They represent an extension of our institutions, and our institutions are us at our best. They are our salvation.”

“Don't you want to know the third name?” said Wes.

“I did not intend to make intelligence my career,” said America's most respected spy. “The military, yes. But here …”

His gesture swept beyond his office.

“I dislike HUMINT,” he said. “Agents in place, legends instead of identities, floaters, contracts … covert operatives. Covert operations. They breed a culture and a mind-set that dulls the precision of institutions. Means can become ends. Men can be seduced by that, lost in it. Perhaps like Jud Stuart.”

“Forget about him. You know the third name.”

“Varon,” said Billy. “General Byron Varon. Retired.”

“What do you know about him and Jud Stuart?” said Wes.

“Knowledge is a precise term, Major.”

“Don't bullshit me,
General
. I'm a lawyer. I know all about exactitude and fine lines and how only God can't hide behind ignorance. We're not talking about the law here. We're talking about truth.”

“The truth is that our job is to preserve this country,” said Billy. “Democracy stands or falls on its institutions.”

“It stands or falls on its people,” answered Wes. “I told you this was gone too far to stop.”

“But not too far to avoid more damage. Not so far gone as to start witch-hunts.”

“I don't know about that,” said Wes.

“I do.” Billy shook his head. “This business is secrecy and secrecy breeds fantasy, even among the most brilliant of minds. The things I've heard! That people believe!
Grand conspiracies
. There is no grand conspiracy. Just small whirlpools.”

He walked back to his desk, took an unmarked file folder from the top drawer, and handed it to Wes.

“How long have you had this?” whispered Wes.

“It's not an Agency file,” said Billy. “It's mine. I worked for the Joint Chiefs with General Varon. He served there when he got back from the Middle East and before he went to the Pentagon. His Special Forces experience made him useful in low-intensity-conflict projects like the aborted second rescue mission to get the hostages out of Iran, certain aid programs.

“Varon excelled at doing what people wanted done but were too cautious to do themselves. And he was
politically correct
—vocally anticommunist with just enough foam in his mouth. In addition to his stated duties, he ran a few operatives, a team he kept isolated after Vietnam. An off-the-books apparatus. Never admitted or logged into the system—wiped out of it, in fact.

“I learned about it quite by accident. My prejudices against such things were well-known, so some of them were isolated from my purview. Various projects skimmed back funds for him—he didn't need much. He relied on patriots who trusted that whatever irregular service they performed helped the country. Maybe he paid bribes. Here, there, instances I couldn't be sure of, he'd help. Provide product to selected allies in agencies like DEA and the FBI as well as CIA, DOD.”

“So you started a file on him.”

“He was in the cracks of the institutional process,” said Billy. “A man with an independent agenda and personal power base. That seemed prudent.”

“And Jud Stuart?”

“He's been calling in since the mid-1970s. Burned-out, lost. But obviously somebody. When I saw those reports, checked his files … He seemed likely to have been one of Varon's men.”

“How many more are there?”

“I have no idea. The man on that driver's license is linked to one of Varon's businesses. He's been a contract agent for various official entities in the past. That company was involved in Irancontra. As was Varon, in several ways.”

Cochran shook his head. “In the early 1980s, Varon retired from the Army under a cloud. A surplus-weapons sales scandal. A prosecutor looked into it, but couldn't find enough evidence to bring charges.”

“Damn!”

“Yes. Whatever he's done since then has definitely been off the reservation. You ask about Varon's associates? Ours is a deep but small sea. The same fish keep swimming by. You learn to wait. Watch. Listen. I'd heard once that Varon hired a private eye to help him with a business deal.”

“Jack Berns,” said Wes. “Did Noah Hall know that?”

“Noah works the electoral back rooms. He knows less than he thinks he does.” Billy shrugged. “You harness the horse you know. Berns makes a point of being known.”

“Would Berns have known about Varon's network?”

“I doubt it. But Berns is in the information business. He knew Noah and Denton were interested in Jud Stuart—and that their interest was not protected by normal channels. He might have offered the trust bestowed in him to other old customers.”

“Berns is crazy to double-deal them.”

“Only if he gets caught. And only if they succeed in making him pay for his betrayal.”