He was trying to sound incredulous because he wanted to weaken his opponent’s position, Morgan knew. And so he parried.
“It looks like the idea is getting through your thick skull.”
“What it looks like,” said Kline, on the offense again, “is that you don’t know a goddamn thing, and you’re bullshitting me for some reason. What it looks like is that you want to pretend you’re still a spook. You get a nice little tour of headquarters, and you think you’re working for us again?”
“I think you want something from me, and you want it bad enough that you sent Plante right to my doorstep to fetch me.” Plante looked at him, increasingly uncomfortable with the verbal sparring that was unfolding in the room. Morgan kept a firm stare on Kline. “So are you going to fill me in, or aren’t you?”
“You have my answer,” said Kline curtly.
“Then we’re done here.” Morgan got up.
“I suppose we are,” said Kline, getting up as well. “Mr. Plante, please escort Cobra out of the secure area.”
Kline walked out, and Plante held the door open for Morgan. When they were walking side by side, Plante spoke.
“I know he can be a prick. But decoding this message could be far more important than your spat with Kline.” Morgan continued to walk, half ignoring Plante. “I know I have no right to. But I’m asking you to be the bigger man here.”
“So you’re playing good cop to Kline’s anal-retentive, shit-for-brains cop?” said Morgan.
“I’m playing the handler who doesn’t want to see Cougar’s work fall to pieces,” said Plante, frustrated. He exhaled, and his voice became unusually earnest. “There’s no strategy here, Cobra. I’m not trying to manipulate you. He was your friend, and my friend, too. He died for this assignment. And you know he didn’t take assignments unless he knew they were good and worthwhile.” Plante looked at him. “He was like you that way.”
“Well,” said Morgan, feeling a twinge of guilt, “there’s nothing I can say. I can’t tell you what it means unless I know what I’m looking for. And if Kline wants to deny me that in order to prove his own superiority, then there’s nothing I can do.”
They walked into the elevator in silence. Plante’s phone rang, and he flipped it open. Morgan heard the voice on the other end but too faintly for him to understand the words. Plante responded, “Still in the building, sir. Yes, sir. Right now? Understood.” He flipped his phone shut and said to Morgan, “Looks like Kline had a change of heart.”
“Is he going to give me what I want?”
“No. Not himself, at least. He wants me to send you up to see Boyle.”
C
HAPTER
8
T
he office of the Director of the National Clandestine Service was decorated with the austerity of a military man. It was not large, and it was sparsely furnished. There was a desk, sturdy and plain, which had Boyle sit with his back to a wall rather than the windows—an arrangement born, Morgan knew, of the die-hard instinct never to turn your back on anything. The wood-paneled walls were unadorned except for one dominating artifact: an American flag, frayed and singed, whose thirty-four stars, set in a circle, revealed that it had been flown in the Civil War.
Jeffrey Boyle himself had started his career as a Marine, and Morgan liked to joke that he had never really gotten over it. Boyle’s discipline was legendary. He was known to be up every day at 4:00
A.M.
for a five-mile run. He worked tirelessly, pausing only for a single, sparse daily meal. On the days that he left the office at all, it was usually after midnight.
His character showed through in his figure, and age, Morgan noticed as the man rose to greet him, had done little to diminish him in any way. Even though he was nearing sixty, he was still a remarkably powerful man. He wore a crisp black suit, matching his stern, focused expression, that did nothing to hide his broad shoulders and the muscles underneath.
“Dan Morgan,” he said, with practiced levity. “Or should I say, Cobra? I had to see it to believe it.” He was a serious man, and even though he had none of Kline’s stiff fussiness, joking still seemed unnatural on him.
“I could say the same about you, sitting behind that desk,” Morgan said, as he shook Boyle’s hand. “Who did you have to sleep with to get this job?”
Boyle laughed heartily. “I like to think that it’s a different set of talents that brought me here.”
They sat.
“And you’ve definitely come a long way, haven’t you?” said Morgan. “I’m surprised you ever got out of the field. They used to say that you’d still be nailing bad guys even if you had to do it from a wheelchair, hooked to a respirator.”
Boyle smiled. “I did love the work. But I’ve discovered that there’s a lot of good to be done from behind a desk. If you stick with this work long enough, you start to realize that leading and managing isn’t a privilege. It’s a duty. Because if you don’t, somebody else will. And what I also realized is that you can’t trust anyone else to do the right thing.”
Morgan had to agree. At the same time, he saw a grim ruthlessness in the man that put him off. But it was gone as suddenly as it had come.
“Can I offer you a drink?” Boyle said. “I have some whiskey in the cabinet.”
“I don’t drink,” he replied.
“Of course, how could I forget? I don’t, either, of course. Sound body, sound mind, and all that. But the politicians who frequent this office don’t usually share my philosophy about alcohol.”
“Not much else, either, I would think,” said Morgan.
Boyle thought for a moment, then said, “Yes, that’s true, much of the time.”
“It makes me wonder how you manage to put up with it, Boyle. Politicians. That whole world of backstabbing and double-crossing, all done with a perfect smile plastered across their faces. At least spies are up front about being liars.”
“You have to play the game,” said Boyle, matter-of-factly. “That’s the price you pay for influence, Morgan.”
“You mean
power
.”
“Someone needs to have it. Who would you rather it be?”
Morgan didn’t respond. The two men stared at each other for a few interminable seconds.
“In any case,” said Boyle, breaking the silence, “we should discuss the reason you’re here in the first place. Kline tells me you’ve been making trouble for him.”
“If you’d asked me, I would have said it’s the other way around.”
“You would, of course, say that,” said Boyle. “Well, he wants me to lock you up until you cooperate.”
Morgan laughed. “I’d like to see him try to do it himself.”
“I’m sure you understand,” said Boyle, ignoring Morgan’s interjection, “we’re not in the habit of sharing the kind of information you want with just anyone. And I’ll be honest. I don’t like the idea of bringing you in on this. It’s unusual and exposes things that are strictly confidential. But I’m going to do something that’s not often done in this business.” He pulled out a pen and laid out a printed form on his desk, which he began filling in. “I am going to trust you. You’re an honorable man, and I know that you have the best interest of this country in mind.” He signed the form and held it out for Morgan. “Are you going to make me regret this, Morgan?”
“My country has always come first,” said Morgan, with heartfelt conviction. “That’s as true today as it was when I first joined up.”
“I’m going out on a limb for you here,” said Boyle.
“And I’m grateful for that,” Morgan said. “You’re doing the right thing.”
Back in the conference room where they had met earlier, Kline sat down across from Morgan for the second time that day, but this time he looked like he was ruminating on something mildly bitter. “Evidently, Director Boyle disagrees with my assessment of this situation. Eric, please brief Cobra on Operation Pashtun Sickle.”
“Did you come up with that one all by yourself?” said Morgan.
Plante began, ignoring him and turning on the screen at the far end of the conference room. “The purpose of this operation was to take out this man.” On the wall-size screen he brought up a picture of a fat, middle-aged, bearded man in fancy-looking traditional Afghan garb, sporting a smug, vicious smile. “Afghan warlord Bacha Marwat. He controls a sizeable portion of the drug trade in the Kandahar region. He produces countless tons of poppy seeds. He has ties to the local government and commands a good deal of corruption. A significant amount of his revenue goes toward maintaining local militia, many of whom are in league with the Taliban and who are giving our soldiers hell over there.”
“Cougar was embedded as an aid worker,” Plante continued. “His primary mission was to get close enough to terminate Marwat. But there were difficulties. Marwat is a well-guarded man. Cougar had an asset, someone in Marwat’s organization who might have been able to get him inside the operation.”
“Who’s this asset?” asked Morgan.
“All we know is his name,” said Plante. “Zalmay Siddiqi.”
“Spell it for me.” Plante did. “And how were you communicating with him?”
“Dead drop,” said Plante. “The mail slot in a house in Kandahar City. We had a communications officer check it twice every day.”
Morgan nodded. It might be inefficient, but when working deep undercover, paper communication was harder for someone to detect or stumble upon. Paper could be destroyed. Electronics always left traces. “Were these messages in your own code?”
Plante nodded. “Except, of course, for the one you have in front of you.”
“Pen,” Morgan said. Plante handed him one from his shirt pocket. Morgan pored over the paper, making illegible annotations.
“Well?” said Kline impatiently.
“The asset’s dead,” said Morgan, leaning back in his chair.
“Dead? Are you certain?” asked Plante nervously. Kline looked at Morgan with suspicious eyes.
“That’s what it says here.”
“That’s an awful lot of text for that to be the whole message,” said Kline dubiously.
“It’s not all,” said Morgan. “The rest says he’s been found out and requests immediate extraction. Although that’s moot at this point, isn’t it?” he said witheringly.
“What else?” insisted Kline. “There has to be more.”
“That’s all there is.”
Kline leaned forward and looked Morgan in the eye. He looked like he was trying his best to appear intimidating. “It had better be. Because if I find out you’re lying to us . . .”
“Are you accusing me of something, Kline? Because I think you’d better come out and say it.”
“I just think it’s strange,” said Kline, with mock perplexity, “that Cougar would encode this in a way that only you could read it. Don’t you think that’s strange, Eric?”
Plante held his uncomfortable silence.
“I can think of a few reasons why,” said Morgan. “But it all boils down to the fact that, for some reason, he didn’t trust you.”
“Now you’re the one who apparently has something to say,” said Kline.
“Cougar was compromised, and he must have wondered whether the issue might be here at home.”
“Are you suggesting,” said Kline, in disbelief, “that Marwat has a mole in the CIA?”
“I’m suggesting maybe Cougar thought this ship wasn’t run as tightly as he liked. Maybe he only wanted someone he could trust to be able to understand his message.”
“I see,” said Kline, through his small teeth. “Well, as you said, the point is moot. Mr. Plante, kindly escort Cobra out of the building.”
“We’ve arranged for a car to take you to the airport,” Plante told Morgan as they walked out of the building. He handed Morgan a piece of paper, folded in thirds. “Here’s a copy of your itinerary. Your flight to Boston leaves at five. I’m sorry we wasted your time.”
“You know I’d do anything for Cougar. There was a time, Plante, that I would’ve done anything for you, too.”
“There are things I wish I could tell you, Cobra. Things that would convince that you I was always on Cougar’s side. And that I’m your side now, too.”
“But you can’t,” Morgan said, with deadpan sarcasm. “Because it’s classified.”
“I really wish I could. There’s a lot that you don’t know.”
“And that you can’t tell me. How convenient.”
“Maybe one day we can put our differences behind us,” said Plante sincerely. “Maybe one day, when you have the full picture of what went on.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Morgan turned and walked toward the town car that was waiting for him, leaving Plante standing on the curb next to the Headquarters building.
Morgan had an uneventful ride to the airport. Once there, out of the driver’s sight, he picked up a pay phone and dialed Information. His call connected, and after a few minutes, he hung up and called Jenny, telling her that he would have to stay in DC overnight. Then he hopped into a cab and took off, away from the airport, to see an old friend.