First Team (38 page)

“A bomb built from waste,” said the Chechen.

“Who?”

“The Russians call him Kiro. He’s not the one you have to worry about,” added Daruyev.

“Who’s worried?” said Ferguson.

“Allah’s Fist is building a weapon. They’re taking hospital waste and storing it.”

“Yeah?” said Ferguson skeptically. “Where?”

The Chechen said nothing.

“How come you’re ratting on your friends?” said Conners.

“They’re not my friends.”

“Fair enough,” said Ferg. He waved at Conners, trying to make him shut up.

“Allah’s Fist is not part of the freedom movement,” said Daruyev. “And I do not think that Kiro is. He is slime.”

“Unlike you,” said Conners.

“Eyes on the road, Dad,” said Ferguson, exasperated.

Daruyev remained silent as they drove northward. There was a small town about four miles ahead; there were bound to be Russian troops there, and Ferg didn’t want to chance being stopped. Instead, they headed toward what looked on the sat photo to be an abandoned farm to the west, figuring they could sit in the ruins until nightfall. By then, he’d have hooked up with Van on an exfiltration plan; no way he was driving all the way to Georgia again.

“My war is against the Russians,” said Daruyev. “There was a time when Americans helped me, and because of that, I will help you now.”

Ferguson sighed wearily and slid sideways in the seat. “Well, fire away then,” he told the Chechen. “We’re all ears.”

~ * ~

11

BUILDING 24-442, SUBURBAN VIRGINIA—

SEVERAL HOURS LATER

 Though he had been with the CIA for more than two decades, Thomas Ciello had never been in the Cube, otherwise known as Building 24-442. In fact, he had never physically been to the “campus” where it was located—campus being a somewhat overblown term for the collection of warehouse buildings on the cul-de-sac just off the Beltway.

While the warehouses and the small administrative building called 24-442 behind them looked like typical industrial architecture, they were anything but. Beneath the outer metal were thick concrete bunkers extending deep into the ground. Each held several floors of disk arrays organized according to an arcane system that even Ciello, an experienced Agency analyst, only partly understood.

Ciello had not been told why he was to report to Building 24-442. He hoped, however, that it had something to do with a memo he had sent to the director three weeks before. The memo detailed his findings on an unofficial research project he had been conducting practically since his first day in the Company’s employ: Ciello believed he had found definitive proof in the CIA records that extraterrestrial explorers had visited the earth.

Thomas knew, of course, that the CIA had purposely promulgated UFO reports over the years as part of a disinformation campaign to draw attention from various “black” programs ranging from overflights of the Soviet Union in the 1950s to the development of stealth aircraft and UAVs in the Nevada desert during the 1970s and ‘80s. But he had meticulously separated chaff from fact, lie from radar contact. His memo had been distilled from a six-hundred-page, single-spaced report; he planned on forwarding the entire report as soon as his memo was officially acknowledged. At that point, he reasoned, the hierarchy would establish a “committee” to investigate, along the lines of the British Ministry of Defense’s UFO Team.

Oddly, this had not yet occurred, and in fact he had started to believe the e-mail had somehow been misdirected before the request to appear at Building 24-442 arrived.

He showed his creds at the gate and drove quickly to the assigned parking slot behind the thick berm separating the buildings from the roadway. His pulse started to rise as soon as he locked his car, and by the time he cleared through the elaborate security at the entrance to 24-442, his hands were trembling uncontrollably.

A half hour later, Jack Corrigan entered the room Ciello had been sequestered in on the second subbasement level. Thomas was sweating so profusely that his white shirt was stained front and back. He nodded as Corrigan introduced himself, and unwisely agreed to the offer of coffee.

Corrigan pulled a small radio from his pocket—he used the short-distance device while in the building—and called for an assistant to bring some. Realizing Thomas was nervous, he tried to put him at ease by smiling and making some small talk about baseball. To Corrigan, Thomas’s jitters were a good sign; he’d be eager to please, at least at first. While this would have been a horrible trait in a case officer or someone out in the field, for a research dweeb it was just the thing.

“So, I guess you’re wondering exactly what the job is,” said Corrigan.

“Oh yes,” said Thomas, taking a sip of his coffee. The liquid promptly dribbled down his chin.

“We’re in great need of someone of your abilities,” said Corrigan. “Someone who works for us, but can interface with, you know, the other side.”

“Oh yes,” said Thomas. “My UFO theory.”

Corrigan had not heard of the UFO theory; by “other side” he meant the Directorate of Intelligence, the analytical side of the Agency. He in fact knew little of Thomas except that he was one of only a handful of people with the proper background available to do the work he needed. Thomas had worked with DO as well as DI; he’d been on the Collections Requirements and Evaluation Staff and done some work for the associate director of Central Intelligence for Military Support, who’d been briefly Corrigan’s boss. His folder was thick with commendations, and while the occasional supervisor remarked that he could be “eccentric,” this was hardly a disqualifier. Filtering information called for a certain amount of creativity, which noncreative supervisor types—Corrigan admitted freely he was one himself—naturally interpreted as eccentricity.

Besides, the other person available had filed a sexual harassment suit against her last two bosses.

“This is a unique job, a unique opportunity,” said Corrigan, deciding to sell the slot. “You’ll run your own show, providing real-time intelligence for people in the field. Important stuff.”

Corrigan described the duties of the position, which functioned like the military support division and could draw on resources from MS as well as DI as needed. They were supposed to have two other staff assistants available to help out soon, but in the meantime Corrigan would lend his own aides as needed. The person handling the position needed a wide range of clearances, which Thomas already had.

“I need someone who can really burrow in and put a picture together from disparate details,” added Corrigan. “Our missions are high-profile; everything very, very critical. This is the big leagues. We had someone running the mission support, but then she got pregnant, and you know how that goes.”

Thomas nodded, though he hadn’t considered pregnancy as a job hazard before.

“We’ve had nothing but problems ever since. My boss is on my ass about it,” said Corrigan. He didn’t want to diss the agency’s research departments, just the red tape, but it was impossible not to imply at least a small bit of criticism. “What I’m looking for is someone who can interface, who talks their language and can get into the nitty-gritty if they have to. You have that kind of reputation. You know, ferret out information.”

“Ferret?”

“Figure things out. I don’t mean gather it yourself. Well, if you do gather it, I mean, that’s all right. As long as you’re feeding us what we need.” Corrigan sensed the interview had taken a bad turn. He tried to remember Thomas’s resume. “You were trained as an historian, right?”

Thomas nodded. He was in fact an historian; his Ph.D. dissertation, completed on the day before he officially started work at the Agency, was on the East German Secret Police. He was, for all intents and purposes, the Western world’s expert on the East German police. Unfortunately, the day he went to work was the day the Berlin Wall was taken down and the East German police ceased to exist.

“You worked on the Mexico City plot in 2002, right?” prompted Corrigan. A plot to blow up the U.S. embassy had been foiled thanks largely to work by the analysts; it was a major coup.

“I headed the team,” said Thomas.

“The Olympics,” said Corrigan, mentioning another major accomplishment— Thomas had helped identify an Arab group that had tried to poison the drinking water at the 1996 games. The plot itself had been rather lame, but the work sorting through intercepts to identify the perpetrators was not.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”

Corrigan smiled. Eccentric and humble and brilliant: Thomas would be perfect.

“Good,” said Corrigan, rising. “I’m going to put you right to work. We’re involved in a bit of a ticklish situation—actually, we have two ticklish situations. But I want you to concentrate on Chechnya right now. You’ve done work on dirty bombs.”

“Well of course. But as far—”

“Great,” said Corrigan. His radio beeped—they needed him back downstairs. “Debra will be in with you in a second. She’ll show to your office, make sure all the

clearance work is taken care of—you’ll have to take a new lie detector test, but in the meantime we’re going to put you right on this.”

“What about my UFOs?” asked Thomas.

“UFOs?” Corrigan stopped at the door, looking back at the researcher.

“I, uh, had done a memo. It went to the director.”

“Oh, right, right, right,” said Corrigan, who had no clue what he was talking about. “Focus on this right now, OK? Jenny’ll get you all the backups and the files— don’t forget to break for lunch.”

~ * ~

12

CHECHNYA, NORTH OF GROZNYY

 In 1996, a group of Chechen rebels—or “freedom fighters” in Daruyev’s phrase—planned to blow up a dirty bomb in central Moscow. The operation was doomed from the start—Russian intelligence had infiltrated the guerrilla network. But the project had proceeded to the point of moving approximately one thousand pounds of material into the city. The material had a relatively low alpha value—in other words, it wasn’t very radioactive. But no one exposed to the material itself was expected to die immediately; its primary value was as a weapon of terror. And while the bomb itself was never set off, the simple fact that the Chechens were willing to go to such lengths might have played a role in the Russian government’s decision to halt the offensive there and begin negotiations, even though the takeover of a hospital in Kizlyar in the province of Dagestan was generally credited with forcing their hands.