The Art of War: A Novel (7 page)

Jake walked across the grass toward his own car, a five-year-old Honda. When he got the call from Merritt this morning, he had been at his weekend house in Rehoboth Beach. He pulled out his cell phone and called his wife.

“It’s already on the news, Jake,” Callie Grafton said when he told her the director was dead. “I was watching the story on TV. How very sad.”

“Yeah. Going fishing, then drowning right there by the pier.”

“So when will you get back to the beach?”

“Monday night, maybe. I’m going back to Washington. Gotta go to the office.”

“I have a class on Tuesday I have to be back for.” Callie was a linguist. This semester she was teaching a few classes of Chinese at Georgetown University, just to keep her hand in.

“Monday night. I’ll come get you then. We’ll eat dinner on the way back to Washington.”

Traffic on the Bay Bridge wasn’t bad Saturday afternoon. Most people were still trying to get out of the Washington metro area, not return to it.

As he drove, Jake Grafton thought about the vicissitudes of life. His career had given him an intimate acquaintance with violent death. He had seen a lot of it, combat, operational accidents, murders …

Was Mario Tomazic murdered? He didn’t have an opinion because he had no facts to base one on. The general was a good man. His family and colleagues were going to miss him. That’s more than many of us get.

*   *   *

That evening at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Jake Grafton turned over the director’s PC and laptop to the IT department, along with the registered access codes. Maybe they could get something out of those two devices; Jake certainly couldn’t, and he wasn’t going to waste time trying.

When he was again alone in the director’s office he opened the desk and filing cabinets. All were locked, of course, but he had the codes. The desk contained mostly office supplies: some pencils, paper clips, a stapler and a half-dozen pens with the general’s favorite color of ink: green. Some pocket change. A laundry receipt. A staple puller. And a pocketknife, a two-blade Schrade, old but sharp, made in the USA. That was the crop.

On the desk were pictures of the general’s deceased wife and his grown children with their families. Jake took the photos out of the frames, made sure there was nothing else there, no notes or telephone numbers or access codes, then put the frames and photos back together.

He tackled the file cabinets last. Got them open and started on the left-hand cabinet, reading every file, from the left side of the top drawer to the right. The files were all in red folders marked prominently
TOP SECRET
. Was there any other kind? When he finished with the top drawer, he moved down. At three in the morning he’d had all he could stand, so he crashed on the couch in his office. He got back to it about noon on Sunday, after he ate a sandwich at the cafeteria.

The files contained mostly political summaries. Problems in Egypt, South America, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria … the list went on and on. Europe was there, summaries and guesses and analysts’ notes. Current CIA operational files and notes were not in the director’s drawers. Conference notes and synopses of meetings with other federal agencies were. Tomazic had half a drawer devoted to the agency’s contacts with the Department of Homeland Security and another half drawer full of National Security Agency proposals, meeting minutes, notes and so on. Jake Grafton signed his name on the access sheet of every file he opened.

Jake was still reading files and Tomazic’s green-ink notes when the sun came up Monday morning. Harley Merritt came in at seven. Rumor had it he owned a couple of late-1960s muscle cars that he liked to work on in his garage and take to weekend car shows, where you’d sit around in a parking lot in front of your car on a folding chair and visit with fellow car nuts. Merritt was married, of course, for the second time, as Jake recalled, and had the two kids by his first marriage in college somewhere. His family was something Harley Merritt rarely talked about. With him, it was usually all business.

“Well?” Merritt said. He was a no-holds-barred bureaucrat brawler. There was no forgive-and-forget in Harley Merritt. If you went against him, you had better know your ground. Jake had gone head to head with Harley twice and won; the third time he had lost. Still, apparently, the deputy director respected him.

Jake sighed and stretched. “If there is something nefarious here, I haven’t found it.” They discussed some of the agency’s most sensitive operations, those that seemed most likely to cause a foreign response if uncovered. Three of these covert operations Jake knew nothing about until Merritt briefed him; he didn’t have a need to know. Now he did. He supposed.

“The FBI says they should have that autopsy report later today,” Merritt said, tossing it off as if he had other things on his mind. “They’re still working on the crime scene and neighbor interviews. We’ll also get satellite imagery, what there is of it, later today.”

“Won’t be much,” Jake muttered.

They both knew that all they would see would be images from satellites sweeping over in low earth orbit, on their way to photograph something interesting. Or perhaps some imagery from a geosynchronous satellite that would be nearly useless due to the distance and the fact the satellite wasn’t really focused on the area of interest.

They spent another thirty minutes discussing ongoing operations; then Merritt shot a glance at his watch and charged off.

Jake Grafton locked the director’s desk and cabinets and office, then walked the corridors to his own office. His executive assistant, Robin, handed him a cup of coffee. She was a nice lady with a head of huge hair. The coffee was hot, black and delicious. He told Robin about his visit to Tomazic’s weekend retreat on Saturday afternoon, and the bare facts as he knew them about Tomazic’s death, then went into his office and lay down on the couch for a nap. He was asleep in less than a minute.

*   *   *

The ringing phone woke him up at 11
A.M.
He got off the couch and answered it. Robin. “Sal Molina to see you.”

“Send him in.”

Jake was putting on his shoes when Molina came in and closed the door. A Hispanic lawyer in his fifties, Molina carried an ample spare tire and wore comfortable clothes. He didn’t have to dress up for cameras since he was strictly a behind-the-scenes operator at the White House. No one knew what his exact duties were, including, probably, Molina. He had been with the president ever since the big dog got into politics.

Molina dropped onto the couch beside an unshaven Grafton and watched him tie his shoes. “Bad weekend, huh?” he said.

Grafton grunted.

“Too bad about Tomazic. Hell of a guy.”

“Yeah.”

“So where are we?”

“Damned if I know. The FBI is investigating … we’re looking at stuff. I spent the weekend in Tomazic’s filing cabinets in his office. Seen about three-quarters of it. A lot of it’s new to me. Need to know, and all that.”

“Want some coffee?”

“Sure.”

Jake opened the door and asked Robin for two cups, black.

He sat down behind his desk and yawned.

Molina dropped the bomb. “The president has decided to appoint you interim director.”

Slightly stunned, Jake stared. “Merritt’s the deputy director. He can handle it.”

“He’s career CIA. Congress and the public are in a sweat over NSA snooping. He’s signed off on a lot of those decisions.”

“You said interim. Merritt can handle the job until the new director gets Senate confirmation. Find a squeaky-clean retired four-star admiral or general, or a washed-up senator that the voters can’t stand anymore, and appoint him, or her, to the job on a permanent basis.”

“Oh, we’re going to do that. But until then, the boss wants you.”

“What does Reinicke say about this?” Paul Reinicke ruled his own fiefdom, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. With his staff, he was supposed to coordinate and evaluate the intelligence product of all of the United States’ intelligence agencies, sixteen in total, including the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force and Coast Guard intelligence arms, and the stuff put out by a variety of other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, Treasury, State, and some others. The office was created by Congress in 2004 in response to the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Tomazic had thought the new layer of bureaucracy was a typical political response: Appear to be doing something, even if it is only a reorganization.

“No one asked Reinicke,” Molina replied.

“Terrific,” Grafton muttered.

Robin knocked. Jake shouted, and she brought in two cups of coffee and scooted back out, pulling the door shut behind her.

Jake sipped at his cup.

“Don’t you want to know why the president wants you?” Molina asked.

Jake waved it away. “I’ve listened to you blow smoke before.”

“It’s because you’re old Mr. Smooth.”

“Right.”

“You have a lot of friends on the Hill.”

“And a lot of enemies,” Jake shot back. “In the administration, too, as a matter of fact. Like Jurgen Schulz.” Schulz was the national security adviser. “Why don’t you name him interim director?”

“He’d be out of his depth, and you know it. And he can’t stand Reinicke.”

“For once, he and I agree on something,” Jake said.

Sal Molina sighed and slurped.

“I don’t want the job.”

“You’re refusing a request from the president of the United States?” Molina said that as if Jake were Jonah refusing a commission from God.

“Yep.”

“How about saluting and saying ‘Yes, sir’? You military types are all supposed to do that.”

“Bullshit,” Jake Grafton said.

The telephone rang again. Robin said it was Merritt. Jake took the call.

“The preliminary autopsy results are in. Tomazic drowned, all right, but he has some bruises on his left wrist and back. Plus the gash on his head where he probably hit the boat. Funny thing is, the ‘lividities’ occurred just seconds before death. Just enough time for some local capillaries to pop, then his heart stopped.”

“What do they make of that?”

“Well … it’s suggestive, they say. Suggestive of what they didn’t say. But the interesting thing is that divers found a piece of plastic under the boat. Clear plastic. They say it might have come from a scuba diver’s mask faceplate. Got to do some research on that to be sure, though.”

“How long was that piece of plastic in the water?”

“No guesses yet, but not long. No algae on it.”

Jake sat digesting the information. Finally he said, “Thank you, Harley.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Jake cradled the instrument and sat staring at the wall. After a bit he let his gaze wander.

Sal Molina sipped on his coffee, now getting cold, and watched the man behind the desk. The skin on Grafton’s face showed the marks of too much sun through the years. Then there were those gray eyes. Everyone meeting Jake Grafton for the first time noticed the eyes. If he was angry, those eyes were cold as a North Atlantic breaker.

Grafton had been a navy attack pilot in his youth. He had absorbed the lessons well. For years he was the Pentagon’s go-to guy when crises erupted here and there.

Grafton was correct about one thing: National Security Adviser Jurgen Schulz had argued vociferously this morning against giving Grafton a jot more power. “He’s a loose cannon,” Schulz said, “who can’t be trusted. One of these days one of his little plots is going to blow up in his face, and this administration is going to be the party that gets badly burned.”

The secretary of Homeland Security thought someone with more political savvy should be installed immediately as interim director, then senior leaders of the president’s party in Congress should be sounded out about possible permanent replacements.

The president heard them all out, thanked everyone and shooed them off. When they were alone, he asked Molina what he thought.

“Grafton,” the president’s man said. “I’d pick him for my team for anything from softball to hand grenades to nuclear war. That said, frankly, sometimes Grafton gives me the willies. He plays his cards close to his vest, doesn’t keep his superiors informed, and he’s perfectly willing to ignore all the rules. Yet he always gets results. Not the results we thought we wanted, but usually the best possible outcome.”

The president mulled it while he twirled a pencil in his fingers. He instinctively distrusted the intelligence bureaucracy. And the military bureaucracy. Too damned many secrets and hidden agendas. On the other hand, Grafton got things done, he hadn’t stepped on any politicians’ toes lately, and this appointment was only an interim, “acting” deal, until the president could get a loyal man appointed and confirmed.

“Okay,” the elected one said. “Grafton it is. Go tell him.” The president made a dozen or two decisions a day, and he wasn’t going to waste more time on this one.

“Sometimes I get the feeling with Jake Grafton that I’m up on the back of an infuriated tiger,” Molina told the big boss, “and I’m about to fall off.”

“As long as he’s our tiger.”

“He’s America’s tiger, not ours. You can bet your tiny little political soul that no one owns him. Appointing him acting director won’t get you any points with him. With some of those people in Congress, maybe.”

“What the hell could happen in three or four months?” the big banana asked rhetorically. “He’ll do until we get someone else. Go tell him.”

That was this morning. Molina was jerked back to the here and now when Grafton cleared his throat. He had the president’s man skewered with his gaze.

“I’ll take the job,” he said.

“What made you change your mind?”

“Mario Tomazic was probably murdered.”

Molina rubbed his eyes.
Oooh man! Here we go again.
“Okay,” he said.

“You go tell Merritt that the president wants me. Better make it good. He knows this agency inside and out, and I am going to need him just as much as Tomazic did.”

“Sure.”

Jake stood and walked Molina to the door. “I should be thanking you, I suppose, but I won’t. I will tell you this. If Tomazic was murdered, we’ll get the people that did it. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.”