Jack Ryan 6 - Clear and Present Danger (79 page)

Shaw and Murray just stared at him when he said that.  Then at each other.  The President's head national-security guy shook hands with somebody who works for the drug Cartel . . . ?

“Dan,” Shaw said, “what the hell is going on?  Has the whole world just gone crazy?”

“Sure looks that way, doesn't it?”

“Put a call in to your friend Ryan.  Tell him . . . Tell his secretary that there's a terrorism thing—no, we can't risk that.  Pick him up on the way home?”

“He's got a driver.”

“That's a big help.”

“I got it.”
Murray
lifted his phone and dialed a
Baltimore
number. “Cathy?  Dan Murray.  Yeah, we're fine, thanks.  What time does Jack's driver usually get him home?  Oh, he didn't?  Okay, I need you to do something, and it's important, Cathy.  Tell Jack to stop off at Danny's on the way home to, uh, to pick the books up.  Just like that, Cathy.  This isn't a joke.  Can you do that?  Thanks, doc.” He replaced the phone. “Isn't that conspiratorial?”

“Who's Ryan—isn't he CIA?”

“That's right,” Shaw answered. “He's also the guy who dumped this case in our laps.  Unfortunately, Mark, you are not cleared for it.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Why don't you see how quick you can fly home and find out how much that new baby's grown.  Damned nice work you did here.  I won't forget,” the acting Director promised him.

Pat O'Day, a newly promoted inspector working out of FBI Headquarters, watched from the parking lot as a subordinate stood on the flight line in the soiled uniform of an Air Force technical sergeant.  It was a clear, hot day at Andrews Air Force Base, and a D.C.  Air National Guard F-4C landed right ahead of the VC-20A.  The converted executive jet taxied to the 89th's terminal on the west side of the complex.  The stairs dropped and Cutter walked out wearing civilian clothes.  By this time—through Air Force intelligence personnel—the Bureau knew that he'd visited a helicopter crew and a communications van in the morning.  So far no one had approached either of them to find out why, because headquarters was still trying to figure things out, and, O'Day thought, failing miserably—but that was headquarters for you.  He wanted to go back out to the field where the real cops were, though this case did have its special charm.  Cutter walked across to where his personal car was parked, tossed his bag in the back seat, and drove off, with O'Day and his driver in visual pursuit.  The National Security Adviser got onto
Suitland Parkway
heading toward D.C., then, after entering the city, onto I-395.  They expected him to get off at the
Maine Avenue
exit, possibly heading toward the White House, but instead the man just kept going to his official residence at
Fort Myer
,
Virginia
.  A discreet surveillance didn't get more routine than that.

“Cortez?  I know that name.  Cutter met with a former DGI guy?” Ryan asked.

“Here's the photo.”
Murray
handed it over.  The lab troops had run it through their computerized enhancement process.  One of the blackest of the Bureau's many forensic arts, it had converted a grainy photographic frame to glossy perfection.  Moira Wolfe had again verified Cortez's identity, just to make everyone sure. “Here's another.” The second one showed them shaking hands.

“This'll look good in court,” Ryan observed as he handed the frames back.

“It's not evidence,”
Murray
replied.

“Huh?”

Shaw explained. “High government officials meet with . . . with strange people all the time.  Remember the time when Kissinger made the secret flight to
China
?”

“But that was—” Ryan stopped when he realized how dumb his objection sounded.  He remembered a clandestine meeting with the Soviet Party chairman that he couldn't tell the FBI about.  How would that look to some people?

“It isn't evidence of a crime, or even a conspiracy, unless we know that what they talked about was illegal,”
Murray
told Jack. “His lawyer will argue, probably successfully, that his meeting with Cortez, while appearing to be irregular, was aimed at the execution of sensitive but proper government policy.”

“Bullshit,” Jack observed.

“The attorney would object to your choice of words, and the judge would have it stricken from the record, instruct the jury to disregard it, and admonish you about your language in court, Dr. Ryan,” Shaw pointed out. “What we have here is a piece of interesting information, but it is not evidence of a crime until we know that a crime is being committed.  Of course, it is bullshit.”

“Well, I met with the guy who guided the 'car bombs' into the targets.”

“Where is he?”
Murray
asked at once.

“Probably back in
Colombia
by now.” Ryan explained on for a few minutes.

“Christ, who is this guy?”
Murray
asked.

“Let's leave his name out of it for a while, okay?”

“I really think we should talk to him,” Shaw said.

“He's not interested in talking to you.  He doesn't want to go to jail.”

“He won't.” Shaw rose and paced around the room. “In case I never told you, I'm a lawyer, too.  In fact, I have a J.D.  If we were to attempt to try him, his lawyer would throw Martinez-Barker at us.  You know what that is?  A little-known result of the Watergate case. 
Martinez
and Barker were Watergate conspirators, right?  Their defense, probably an honest one, was that they thought the burglary was sanctioned by properly constituted authority as part of a national-security investigation.  In a rather wordy majority opinion, the appeals court ruled that there had been no criminal intent, the defendants had acted in good faith throughout, and therefore no actual crime had been committed.  Your friend will say on the stand that once he'd heard the 'clear and present danger' pronouncement from his superiors, and been told that authorization came from way up the chain of command, he was merely following orders given by people who had sufficient constitutional authority to do so.  I suppose Dan already told you, there really isn't any law in a case like this.  Hell, the majority of my agents would probably like to buy your guy a beer for avenging Emil's death.”

“What I can tell you about this guy is that he's a serious combat vet, and as far as I could tell, he's a very straight guy.”

“I don't doubt it.  As far as the killing is concerned—we've had lawyers say that the actions of police snipers come awfully close to cold-blooded murder.  Drawing a distinction between police work and combat action isn't always as easy as we would like.  In this case, how do you draw the line between murder and a legitimate counterterrorist operation?  What it'll come down to—hell, it will mainly reflect the political beliefs of the judges who try the case, and the appeal, and every other part of the proceeding.  Politics.  You know,” Shaw said, “it was a hell of a lot easier chasing bank robbers.  At least then you knew what the score was.”

“There's the key to it right there,” Ryan said. “How much you want to bet that this whole thing started because it was an election year?”

Murray
's phone rang. “Yeah?  Okay, thanks.” He hung up. “Cutter just got in his car.  He's heading up the G.W.  Parkway.  Anybody want to guess where he's going?”

Instruments of State

I
NSPECTOR
O'D
AY THANKED
his lucky stars—he was an Irishman and believed in such things—that Cutter was such an idiot.  Like previous National Security Advisers he'd opted against having a Secret Service detail, and the man clearly didn't know the first thing about countersurveillance techniques.  The subject drove right onto the
George Washington Parkway
and headed north in the firm belief that nobody would notice.  No doubling back, no diversion into a one-way street, nothing that one could learn from watching a TV cop show or better yet, reading a Philip Marlowe mystery, which was how Patrick O'Day amused himself.  Even on surveillances, he'd play
Chandler
tapes.  He had more problems figuring those cases out than the real ones, but that was merely proof that Marlowe would have made one hell of a G-Man.  This sort of case didn't require that much talent.  Cutter might have been a Navy three-star, but he was a babe in the woods as far as conspiracy went.  His personal car didn't even change lanes, and took the exit for CIA unless, O'Day thought, he had an unusual interest in the Federal Highway Administration's Fairbanks Highway Research Station, which was probably closed in any case.  About the only bad news was that picking Cutter up when he left would be tough to do.  There wasn't a good place to hide a car here—CIA security was pretty good.  O'Day dropped his companion off to keep watch in the woods by the side of the road and whistled up another car to assist.  He fully expected that Cutter would reappear shortly and drive right home.

*     *     *

The National Security Adviser never noticed the tail and parked in a VIP slot.  As usual, someone held open the door and escorted him to Ritter's office on the seventh floor.  The Admiral took his seat without a friendly word.

“Your operation is really coming apart,” he told the DDO harshly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I met with Félix Cortez last night.  He knows about the troops.  He knows about the recon on the airfields.  He knows about the bombs, and he knows about the helicopter we've been using to support S
HOWBOAT
.  I'm shutting everything down.  I've already had the helicopter fly back to Eglin, and I ordered the communications people at V
ARIABLE
to terminate operations.”

“The hell you have!” Ritter shouted.

“The hell I haven't.  You're taking your orders from me, Ritter.  Is that clear?”

“What about our people?” the DDO demanded.

“I've taken care of that.  You don't need to know how.  It's all going to quiet down,” Cutter said. “You got your wish.  There is a gang war underway.  Drug exports are going to be cut by half.  We can let the press report that the drug war is being won.”

“And Cortez takes over, right?  Has it occurred to you that as soon as he's settled in, things change back?”

“Has it occurred to you that he can blow the operation wide open?  What do you suppose will happen to you and the Judge if he does that?”

“The same thing that'll happen to you,” Ritter snarled back.

“Not to me.  I was there, so was the Attorney General.  The President never authorized you to kill anybody.  He never said anything about invading a foreign country.”

“This whole operation was your idea, Cutter.”

“Says who?  Do you have my signature on a single memo?” the Admiral asked. “If this gets blown, the best thing you can hope for is that we'll be on the same cellblock.  If that Fowler guy wins, we're both fucked.  That means we can't let it get blown, can we?”

“I do have your name on a memo.”

“That operation is already terminated, and there's no evidence left behind, either.  So what can you do to expose me without exposing yourself and the Agency to far worse accusations?” Cutter was rather proud of himself.  On the flight back from
Panama
he'd figured the whole thing out. “In any case, I'm the guy giving the orders.  The CIA's involvement in this thing is over.  You're the only guy with records.  I suggest that you do away with them.  All the traffic from S
HOWBOAT
, V
ARIABLE
, R
ECIPROCITY
, and E
AGLE
E
YE
gets destroyed.  We can hold on to C
APER
.  That's one part of the op that the other side hasn't cottoned to.  Convert that into a straight covert operation and we can still use it.  You have your orders.  Carry them out.”

“There will be loose ends.”

“Where?  You think people are going to volunteer for a stretch in federal prison?  Will your Mr. Clark announce the fact that he killed over thirty people?  Will that Navy flight crew write a book about dropping two smart-bombs on private homes in a friendly country?  Your radio people at V
ARIABLE
never actually saw anything.  The fighter pilot splashed some airplanes, but who's he going to tell?  The radar plane that guided him in never saw him do it, because they always switched off first.  The special-ops people who handled the land side of the operation at
Pensacola
won't talk.  And there are only a few people from the flight crews we captured.  I'm sure we can work something out with them.”

“You forgot the kids we have in the mountains,” Ritter said quietly.  He knew that part of the story already.

“I need information on where they are so that I can arrange for a pickup.  I'm going to handle that through my own channels, if you don't mind.  Give me the information.”

“No.”

“That wasn't a request.  You know, I just could be the guy who exposes you.  Then your attempts to tie me in with all this would merely look like a feeble effort at exculpating yourself.”

“It would still wreck the election.”

“And guarantee your imprisonment.  Hell, Fowler doesn't even believe in putting serial killers in the chair.  How do you think he'll react to dropping bombs on people who haven't even been indicted—and what about that 'collateral damage' you were so cavalier about?  This is the only way, Ritter.”

“
Clark
is back in
Colombia
.  I'm sending him after Cortez.  That would also tie things up.” It was Ritter's last play, and it wasn't good enough.

Cutter jerked in his chair. “And what if he blows it?  It is not worth the risk.  Call off your dog.  That, too, is an order.  Now give me that information—and shred your files.”

Ritter didn't want to.  But he didn't see an alternative.  The DDO walked to his wall safe—the panel was open at the moment—and pulled out the files.  In S
HOWBOAT
-II was a tactical map showing the programmed exfiltration sites.  He gave it to Cutter.

“I want it all done tonight.”

Ritter let out a breath. “It will be.”

“Fine.” Cutter folded the map into his coat pocket.  He left the office without another word.

It all came down to this
, Ritter told himself.  Thirty years of government service, running agents all over the world, doing things that his country needed to have done, and now he had to follow an outrageous order or face Congress, and courts, and prison.  And the best alternative would be to take others there with him.  It wasn't worth it.  Bob Ritter worried about those kids in the mountains, but Cutter said that he'd take care of it.  The Deputy Director (Operations) of the Central Intelligence Agency told himself that he could trust the man to keep his word, knowing that he wouldn't, knowing that it was cowardice to pretend that he would.

He lifted the files off the steel shelves himself, taking them to his desk.  Against the wall was a paper shredder, one of the more important instruments of contemporary government.  These were the only copies of the documents in question.  The communications people on that hilltop in
Panama
shredded everything as soon as they uplinked copies to Ritter's office.  C
APER
went through NSA, but there was no operational traffic there, and those files would be lost in the mass of data in the basement of the
Fort
Meade
complex.

The machine was a big one, with a self-feeding hopper.  It was entirely normal for senior government officials to destroy records.  Extra copies of sensitive files were liabilities, not assets.  No notice would be taken of the fact that the clear plastic bag that had been empty was now filled with paper pasta that had once been important intelligence documents.  CIA burned tons of the stuff every day, and used some of the heat that was generated to make hot water for the washrooms.  Ritter set the papers in the hopper in half-inch lots, watching the entire history of his field operations turn to rubbish.

“There he is,” the junior agent said into his portable radio. “Southbound.”

O'Day picked the man up three minutes later.  The backup car was already on Cutter, and by the time O'Day had caught up, it was clear that he was merely returning to
Fort
Myer
, the VIP section off
Sherman Road, east
of the officers' club.  Cutter lived in a red brick house with a screen porch overlooking
Arlington
National
Cemetery
, the garden of heroes.  To Inspector O'Day, who'd served in
Vietnam
, what little he knew of the man and the case made it seem blasphemous that he should live here.  The FBI agent told himself that he might be jumping to an inaccurate conclusion, but his instincts told him otherwise as he watched the man lock his car and walk into the house.

One benefit of being part of the President's staff was that he had excellent personal security when he wanted it, and the best technical security services as a matter of course.  The Secret Service and other government agencies worked very hard and very regularly to make sure that his phone lines were secure.  The FBI would have to clear any tap with them, and would also have to get a court order first, neither of which had been done.  Cutter called a WATS line number-with a toll-free 800 prefix—and spoke a few words.  Had anyone recorded the conversation he would have had a problem explaining it, but then so would the listener.  Each word he spoke was the first word on a dictionary page, and the number of each page had three digits.  The old paperback dictionary had been given him before he left the house in
Panama
, and he would soon discard it.  The code was as simple and easy to use as it was effective, and the few words he spoke indicated pages whose numbers combined to indicate map coordinates for a few locations in
Colombia
.  The man on the other end of the line repeated them back and hung up.  The WATS-line call would not show up on Cutter's phone bill as a longdistance call.  The WATS account would be terminated the next day.  His final move was to take the small computer disk from his pocket.  Like many people he had magnets holding messages to his refrigerator door.  Now he waved one of them over the disk a few times to destroy the data on it.  The disk itself was the last existing record of the soldiers of Operation S
HOWBOAT
.  It was also the last means of reopening the satellite radio link to them.  It went into the trash.  S
HOWBOAT
had never happened.

Or that's what Vice Admiral James A.  Cutter, USN, told himself.  He mixed himself a drink and walked out onto his porch, looking down across the green carpet to the countless headstones.  Many times he'd walked over to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, watching the soldiers of the President's Guard go through their mechanistic routine before the resting places of men who had served their country to the utmost.  It occurred to him now that there would be more unknown soldiers, fallen on some nameless field.  The original unknown soldier had died in
France
in World War I, and had known what he fought for—or thought he did, Cutter corrected himself.  Most often they never really understood what it was all about.  What they were told wasn't always the truth, but their country called, and off they went to do their duty.  But you really needed a perspective to understand what it was all about, how the game was played.  And that didn't always—ever?—jibe with what the soldiers were told.  He remembered his own service off the coast of
Vietnam
, a junior officer on a destroyer, watching five-inch-gun rounds pound the beach, and wondering what it was like to be a soldier, living in the mud.  But still they went to serve their country, not knowing that the country herself didn't know what service she needed or wanted.  An army was composed of young kids who did their job without understanding, serving with their lives, and in this case, with their deaths.

“Poor bastards,” he whispered to himself.  It really was too bad, wasn't it?  But it couldn't be helped.

It surprised everyone that they couldn't get the radio link working.  The communications sergeant said that his transmitter was working just fine, but there was no answer from V
ARIABLE
at
six o'clock
local time.  Captain Ramirez didn't like it, but decided to press on to the extraction point.  There had been no fallout from Chavez's little adventure with the would-be rapist, and the young sergeant led off for what he expected would be the last time.  The enemy forces had swept this area, stupidly and oafishly, and wouldn't be back soon.  The night went easily.  They moved south in one-hour segments, stopping off at rally points, looping their path of advance to check for trailers, and detecting none.  By four the following morning, they were at the extraction site.  It was a clearing just downhill from a peak of eight thousand feet, lower than the really big crests, and conducive to a covert approach.  The chopper could have picked them up nearly anywhere, of course, but their main consideration was still stealth.  They'd be picked up, and no one would ever be the wiser.  It was a shame about the men they'd lost, but no one would ever really know what they'd been here for, and the mission, though a costly one, had been a success.  Captain Ramirez had said so.  He set his men in a wide perimeter to cover all approaches, with fallback defensive positions in case something untoward and unexpected happened.  When that task was completed, he again set up his satellite radio and started transmitting.  But again, there was no reply from V
ARIABLE
.  He didn't know what the problem was, but to this point there had been no hint of trouble, and communications foul-ups were hardly unknown to any infantry officer.  He wasn't very worried about this one.  Not yet, anyway.