Secrets of State (36 page)

CUMBERLAND, VIRGINIA

MAY 4

I
t was raining and the roads were slippery. Spears was glad that he had taken the Mercedes rather than the Porsche. The 911 was a beautiful piece of machinery, but it didn't handle well in the rain. An unobtrusive brown sign with gold lettering marked the entrance to the
OAKHURST
CONFERENCE
CENTER
. Spears turned off the rural highway and followed the narrow road to the main building.

The Oakhurst was one of several conference centers and sylvan retreats of indeterminate ownership scattered across central Virginia and Maryland's tobacco country. The especially curious would find in the county records that the Oakhurst was the property of a holding company registered in Richmond that was itself a subsidiary of a Singapore-based shell corporation that had a history of association with the Central Intelligence Agency. Among the Oakhurst's less public features was a safe house where more than a few Eastern Bloc defectors had spent their first six or so months under guard in the land of liberty.

It was unusual for the Governing Council to meet outside the Beltway, but these were unusual times. The failure of Cold Harbor had left the Stoics more exposed than they had ever been in their history. They were suddenly vulnerable. The klieg lights of a government investigation were probing the shadows that they had made their home.

Spears drove up to the front of the main building and parked. Like the other buildings on the Oakhurst's expansive and well-manicured grounds, it was built in a faux Tudor style with a steeply pitched slate roof. It looked expensive, and since the ultimate source of financing was the CIA's black budget, it almost certainly was. The Oakhurst was a little twee for Spears's taste, but they would not be here long.

The staff had made themselves scarce. Even the cleaning crew at the Oakhurst was cleared Top Secret/UMBRA, but there was no point in taking chances. The members of the Council could pour their own damn coffee.

The expressions around the table in the main conference room were grim. All of the Governors appreciated how much danger they were in. Commander Weeder was already there, sitting with the other backbenchers in the outer row right next to the door. Spears nodded at him as he entered the room, and Weeder acknowledged his existence with the slightest movement of his head. His scarred face was otherwise immobile and all but impossible to read.

Legal and Vice were the last to arrive, just a few minutes behind Spears. The Chairman quickly gaveled the meeting to order.

“This may be our last session for some time,” he began. “The Lord administration has rediscovered its spine after the fiasco in Mumbai and is trying to walk the cat back on our operation. The odds that they will succeed in following the trail back to this group are not negligible.”

“What happened in India was absolutely unacceptable,” Plans said indignantly. “Moreover, it was amateur. We need to do our own internal assessment to establish accountability.”

About half of those at the table looked over at Spears expectantly. He was Operations and it was on him to defend his actions. For the Stoics, “amateur” was among the most vicious epithets.

“Mumbai was a setback,” Spears agreed. “At first we thought the problem was with Ashoka, that the Indians had been penetrated. That frankly wouldn't have been a huge shock. Their OPSEC was always a weak link. But it looks like the problem was with our instrument rather than our partners. Somehow, Braithwaite got an agent inside the Hand of the Prophet. That agent insinuated himself into the operation and disrupted it from the inside. After the fact, it appears that this same agent was able to connect the Indian services with the Ashoka leadership. Our Indian counterparts were picked up in sequence. Ashoka has, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist.

“There was no way we could have foreseen that, and we could not vet individual members of the HeM team. The whole idea was to do this through cutouts so we would have distance and deniability, but we paid a price in terms of control and visibility. It's something we should factor into future planning.”

“There will be no future planning,” Plans said vehemently. “Your fuckup has left us bare-assed in the wind and the president's people are crawling all over this. We'll be lucky if we don't all end up sharing a maximum-security wing in Leavenworth. If we're unlucky and they're ballsy enough, they'll just kill us and feed us to Lord's fucking labradoodle.”

“One thing at a time,” Legal interjected. “We can still benefit from a more complete understanding of what happened before we write our own obituaries. For example, how did Braithwaite get control of his own stable of operatives? He was the White House chief of staff, not the head of CIA.”

“We're still trying to piece this all together,” Spears replied, “but it looks like Braithwaite was not only aware of our existence he had also picked up enough data to realize that a major operation was under way. He didn't trust the established intelligence agencies and had good reasons for that.” Spears nodded in Reports's direction.

“Braithwaite's been around D.C. for a long time. He knows how things work. Our understanding is that he managed to carve off a piece of the black budget to set up his own in-house intelligence agency and recruited operatives who reported directly and exclusively to him. One of his agents was assigned to penetrate the HeM, which was one of the prime suspects as a subcontractor in our operation. He wasn't the only one. Braithwaite had other agents in other likely organizations. Not all succeeded. Not a few are dead. Our misfortune was that the agent in HeM seems to have been especially resourceful and was able to continue his mission even after the line back to Braithwaite was . . . cut.”

“Clearly, then, none of this can be laid at your doorstep,” the Vice Chair said sarcastically. “What about your own little renegade? Trainor. You deny all culpability for him as well?”

“Trainor was a nuisance,” Spears acknowledged, “and a threat. But he was a containable threat. If it hadn't been for Braithwaite's agent inside the Hand, the ghost in the machine, Trainor would not have been a problem.”

“But he was, wasn't he?” Vice continued, evidently unmollified by Spears's cavalier dismissal. “He was more than a fly in the ointment. He brought armed men to ground zero and started a firefight with the jihadis, killing our liaison to Ashoka in the process. Do I have that about right? And this was your man. You hired him. You gave him access to the Panoptes material. Do I have that about right as well?”

Once, at the early stage of his career before he had discovered that his real talent for combat lay in the bureaucratic and political battles of Washington, Spears had been deployed in an anonymous war zone in some steamy tropical hell when a sniper had zeroed in on his unit. For Spears, it was like a red X had been painted on the back of his head, and no matter which way he turned, the invisible sniper was sighting in on the target. He had not enjoyed that sensation, and he had never forgotten it. For the first time in a long time, he felt the stirrings of that same feeling again. A little tickle of fear, an unscratchable itch at the base of his skull.

“Argus Systems hired Trainor because he was the best South Asia specialist available on the market and we needed credible product to provide cover for our extracurriculars. At the time, we were unaware of his relationship with Vanalika Chandra, as was Ashoka. It was unfortunate, but it was not foreseeable.”

“Unforeseen and unforeseeable are not synonyms,” Finance chimed in, and Spears could feel the loop tightening. “It seems to me that you were in a position early on to identify Trainor as a problem and nip that problem in the bud. You failed and the debacle in Mumbai was a direct result of that failure.”

“It was the Commander and the operations group who failed in that respect,” Spears insisted, and he hated himself for the whiny note that he could not quite keep out of his voice. He was a SEAL, dammit, not some grade-schooler. “The Council ordered the ops group to take care of Trainor. Experienced black-ops professionals went up against a middle-aged academic and failed. That was most definitely unforeseeable as well as unforeseen.”

“That failure has been recognized,” the Chairman observed. “Those responsible have been separated from the organization.”

“Separated?” Spears asked.

“Separated,” the Chairman confirmed.

“There is clearly a rich vein of self-criticism to mine here,” the Vice Chair said, “but this is not an accountability review board. We need to consider our course of action over the short and medium term, and address the clear and present threat posed by the Lord administration's aggressive investigation. The floor is open for suggestions.”

There was a pause. The only sound was the scratching of the Librarian's pen as his note taking caught up with the conversation.

“I think we should begin with a formal decision to terminate Cold Harbor,” Legal said, breaking the silence. “The operation has become a liability. It was ambitious. It was in the finest tradition of our organization, but we need to cut the cord and make sure that Lord's people can't follow it back to us.”

There was a murmur of assent around the table.

“Legal is correct,” Plans offered. “The organization comes first. Cold Harbor should be canceled.”

“Let's vote on it for the record,” the Chairman said.

Spears voted yes.

It was unanimous.

“I don't think that's enough,” Legal continued. “Throughout the history of the Republic, our contributions to our nation's health and well-being have been anonymous. It is that very anonymity that has enabled us to play the role we have at critical junctures. Now that anonymity is in danger of being stripped away. The public that benefits from our guidance and oversight would not understand what we do . . . nor would they welcome it. I am proposing an operational pause in all of our activities. No operations, no meetings, no recruitment, no communications of any kind, nothing that the investigation can lock in on. That is the only way to preserve the capability we represent for the future. If we are ever exposed, I doubt very much that anything similar could again be assembled. New safeguards would be put in place in the policy process specifically to prevent that.”

“I agree with that,” Reports said. “There's the question not only of institutional and organizational vulnerability, but also of personal risk. It's better that we go to ground and wait for an operating environment more conducive to our activities.”

“How much time are we talking about here?” Finance asked. “Months? Years?”

“Years, for certain,” Reports replied. “Decades, if necessary. The logic of the situation mandates patience and fortitude. At a minimum, we should be prepared to outwait Emily Lord and her left-wing administration.”

“Lord is only two years into her first term,” the Vice Chair observed. “If she wins a second, and her poll numbers look pretty good right now, that's a minimum six-year hiatus. Can we afford that?”

“We've been around for more than two centuries,” Legal replied. “If we aren't greedy, we'll make it through the next two in a position to make a difference. But only if we aren't greedy.”

“What about the Indians?” Vice asked. “Can the Ashoka people finger any of us when they crack under questioning?”

“No,” Reports insisted. “The link between us and Ashoka was Chandra and she's unlikely to break. Being dead and all.”

It was gallows humor. No one bothered to fake a smile.

“What about Argus Systems?” Finance asked, looking pointedly at Spears. “That would seem to be the most obvious point of entry for the investigators.”

“That's a reasonable concern,” Spears acknowledged. Unconsciously, he ran one hand across the back of his head, trying to brush off the imaginary target.

“What have you done about the computer systems?”

“Scrubbed clean and wiped down to the bare operating systems. There's nothing there.”

“There's no such thing,” Reports said contemptuously. “Not for people who know what they're doing.” It was clear from her tone that this group did not encompass Garret Spears.

“Argus needs to be removed from the equation, including the physical plant,” the Vice Chair suggested. “I know someone who can take care of that at a reasonable rate.”

“I propose we vote on that,” Legal said.

“Seconded.”

It was unanimous.

“What about personnel?” Legal asked. “What connections are there from Argus that could lead back to us?”

“Just the Commander and Ops,” the Vice Chair replied. “No one else was looped in on Cold Harbor or the organization.”

“The Commander can disappear,” the Chairman suggested. “A new face. A new identity. We have done it before, and the Commander has a unique skill set that we will almost certainly want to draw on in the future once we resume a normal operational tempo. Would someone care to make a motion?”