The Case Officer (12 page)

“So you became friends.” Rothmann
stretched his back and neck and twirled his glasses.

“Good friends. Because Huang was
under NCNA cover at the time, he had a lot more freedom than the rest of the
Chinese officials assigned there. He didn’t have to take all of his meals at
the embassy, for example, and he had his own car to run around in. He spent a
lot of time over at my house. He was good company. Very good company...”

“Did he display any
vulnerabilities? Any recruitment handles?”

“None, sir, and believe me, I
assessed the hell out of him.” MacMurphy’s tone was both emphatic and
regretful. “We also had a thick file on him from the time he was posted in the
U.S.. He was a very successful case officer. Deeply involved in setting up
dozens of hi-tech front companies, staffed mostly with Chinese Americans he
recruited to assist him. The front companies were used to collect proprietary
information on U.S. technology.”   

Rothmann put a size-fourteen foot
up on the coffee table and continued to massage a wrecked and aching knee. “I
believe you did your homework well. You’ve always had a knack for recruitment
operations. A dying art, I might add. So then, with no vulnerabilities, quite
the opposite I would say, why did you pitch him?”

MacMurphy hesitated before
responding. “I shouldn’t have. I mean...there was a lot of pressure from
Headquarters...I didn’t want to, but.... You’re right. It was stupid. Really
fucked the poor guy up in the end, too.”

“Don’t blame yourself. I
certainly don’t. Pressure from Headquarters is hard to fight. Tell me about
it.”

MacMurphy slid forward to the
edge of his chair. “Well, as I said, we became good friends. He began breaking
the rules; you know, nothing big, basically just not telling his superiors he
was spending so much time with me.”

MacMurphy thought back. “He used
to hide his car behind a little Coptic church near my house and sneak in
through the alleyway. Of course I reported the details of all of our meetings
back to Headquarters. The geniuses back here really glommed on to that one.
They put ‘breaking the rules’ together with ‘meeting clandestinely’ and came up
with ‘recruitable.’ I tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn’t budge. So
I saluted and pitched him.”

Rothmann shook his head in
disgust. “And he reported it and was immediately recalled to Beijing, where he
spent the next ten years under close supervision working on covert action
programs from behind a desk in Beijing.”

“That’s about the size of it,”
said MacMurphy with a short, humorless laugh. “I warned Huang not to report
it...pleaded with him. I knew they’d pull him out if he said anything. That’s
always been Beijing’s M.O. They figure if one of their guys gets pitched there
must be a reason for it—the guy must have exhibited vulnerabilities of one sort
or another. So they yanked him and screwed up his career. The poor guy didn’t
deserve that.” Mac shook his head sadly.

Rothmann stood and worked the
stiffness out of his back. He stepped over to the window and gazed out over the
green woodlands that surrounded the Headquarters building. After a time he turned
and said, “And you’re still pissed off at the organization for making you do
something you didn’t want to do.”

MacMurphy adjusted his position
to follow Rothmann. “Sir, do you remember Bert Armstrong?”

“Good old Bert! Sure I do. Big,
powerful, soft-spoken guy. Fought professionally before joining the outfit way
back when. Was pretty good too. A heavyweight contender. Then he taught
survival down at The Farm. What about him?”

“That’s him. Bert was one of my
Special Ops instructors back when I was going through the career training
program. Terrific guy. He was a horticulturist, loved plants—did you know
that?”

“Seems like I recall something
like that. Wouldn’t surprise me, anyway. He was a gentle giant. Kind of like
me.” He chuckled at his own joke. “So?”

“Well, Bert Armstrong taught me
the single most important thing I learned during my entire twenty-six weeks
down there on The Farm.”

“And what was that?”

“We were down in Panama, going
through the jungle survival phase of the training. Bert said you had to be
careful what you ate because some things could poison you. He said if a plant
didn’t look edible then it probably wasn’t, but the real test was in the tasting.”

Rothmann returned to his chair
with a knowing smile on his face.

“Have you heard this story
before?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. There are a
lot of stories about old Bert. Go on.” Rothmann leaned back and studied his
large hands and fingers.

“So he said if you were hungry in
the jungle, you should find something that looks edible and taste it. And if it
tastes good you should go ahead and eat all you want. But if it tastes really
bad, you should immediately spit it out because it will probably kill you.

“He said, ‘God put a tongue in
your mouth to stop nasty-tasting poisons from going into your stomach. So for
Christ’s sake, if it doesn’t taste good, don’t swallow it. Spit it out!’
There’s a clear lesson there for life.”

“And pitching Huang didn’t taste
good, right?”

“You got it. I should have fought
it harder.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good…”

Chapter Thirty

R
othmann rose and limped over to
his desk. He shuffled through a pile of cables and dispatches until he found
what he was looking for. He picked up a white envelope with a bold red stripe
and the words TOP SECRET running diagonally across it. He put on his reading
glasses and extracted a neatly typed one-page memo and returned to his seat.

“This is from the Director,” he
said, tossing it to Mac. “He wants you to try it again.”

“You’re joking!” exclaimed Mac.
He read the short memo with mounting incredulity. “This is the dumbest thing I
have ever heard, boss! Huang is not, was not, will never be recruitable.
Pitching him again will only further screw up his life and get us nowhere. I
can’t do that to him again.”

Mac tossed the memo on the coffee
table disdainfully. His face looked as if he’d just smelled a huge bag of
week-old garbage that had been sitting out in the sun.

The DDO sat impassively across
from him, allowing him to vent while peering over his glasses. When Mac was
finished, he removed his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and
forefinger, and spoke. “Calm down, son. I agree with you – totally. However,
this is a direct order from the Director. In his defense, he’s reacting to
pressure from the White House, Pentagon, and Foggy Bottom to find out what the
hell the Chinese are up to with Iran. There’s a lot at stake here, and you’ve
opened a Pandora’s Box with that report of yours, Mac.”

Rothmann pondered, rubbing his
chin and twirling his glasses. “But…while we can’t ignore his order, we may be
able to work out some sort of a compromise, a
modus vivendi
, that will
give us a bit more breathing room.”

“What have you got in mind?”

Rothmann shot Mac a
conspiratorial grin—he had obviously given this idea a great deal of thought.

“The Director knows just enough
about operations to make him dangerous. He’s familiar with terminology and that
sort of crap, but he hasn’t got the foggiest about how to plan and actually run
an op. All he knows is that he’s under extraordinary pressure from the White
House to find out what the hell China and Iran are cooking up, and that Huang,
who is accessible through you, could supply most, if not all, of the answers.
He put those things together and came up with this piece of crap.” Rothmann
lifted and shook the memo for emphasis.

Revolted by the prospect, Mac
impatiently broke in. “I understand what he wants to do, boss, and why, but
doesn’t he realize that this kind of approach simply won’t work? In the first
place, Huang wouldn’t be stupid enough to reestablish contact with me. He knows
they’d jerk him out of there again so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him.
There’s no way he’d let me get close to him anymore.”

“I told him exactly that,” said
Rothmann. “His answer was, and I quote, ‘You figure it out—just do it.’

“So we have a little leeway
there. I’m pretty sure I can convince him to let us hold off on the actual
pitch until we are able to take a new look at Huang—do a reassessment, figure
out how and where to hit him again, you know.... As long as it doesn’t take too
long, that is… The sonofabitch won’t stand for any long delays…of that much I’m
certain. Too much political pressure, and as you know he’s a political hack.”

“How’re we going to do that? Do
we have anyone close to Huang now? Any good access agents?”

“Of course not,” growled
Rothmann. “How could we get anyone close to him when he’s been under wraps in
Beijing for the past ten years?”

“That’s what I thought.” Mac sat
back, glanced down at the memo, then back to the DDO. “So you’re thinking about
a technical operation—an audio op.” It was not a question.

“Exactly. A successful technical
penetration of his office could give us an updated operational assessment of
the man and time to plan a decent follow-on operation—or provide something
concrete to justify backing off the guy. Maybe it’ll even give us some good
hard intel we can use… Also, it’s something even the Director would understand.”

“Sounds good to me...reasonable. Do
we have an asset out there we could use to carry something into Huang’s office,
or at least into the embassy?”  He was gaining enthusiasm for the project.

Rothmann guffawed. “You’ve got to
be kidding. We don’t even know which office in the embassy he occupies. In
fact, I don’t think our station in Paris has any information at all about what
goes on above the ground floor of the embassy, not to mention their COS’s
office.

“I’ve tried to get the station to
do more general casing of target installations across the board, but all I get
is foot-dragging. There’s not much to start with. Maybe a few photos of the
outside of the building, sketches and descriptions of reception rooms on the
ground floor…things like that.”

MacMurphy shook his head in
disbelief. “So the station has basically got to start from scratch.”

“Not the station…you!
You’re
the guy who earned the reputation as the case officer who ‘wired Paris’ when
you were posted there a few years back. You know the target embassy, and you’re
the only case officer who knows Huang. I want you out there to bug the fucking
Chinese embassy, and I want it done
tout de suite
so the Director will
get off my ass.
Ça va
?”

Mac stared blankly at the DDO. He
had mixed emotions about returning to Paris as well as about the timing. He had
served there after his Addis Ababa and Thailand tours and had gotten his fill
of audio operations at that time. On top of that, he’d been looking forward to
a few weeks of well-earned rest and recuperation after three stressful years in
Hong Kong.

In short, he did not want to go
anywhere
right away…except for some R&R. He’d been very much looking forward to
spending time with his recently widowed mother and friends back on Long Island
where he grew up. He hadn’t made one high school reunion since his graduation
from Central High in Valley Stream, and now he was going to miss another one.     

But he knew he could not and
would not argue or whine or complain. It was simply not the way case officers
responded to things. It was not in their nature—the good ones, at least. So he
would salute and go where he was needed…especially when asked by someone like
Edwin Rothmann.

The world—and the Agency—were
filled with bureaucratic bunglers, chuckleheaded nincompoops…and then there
were the Edwin Rothmanns. There weren’t many of his kind, and Mac was devoted
to the man.

“So that’s why I’m here. You
didn’t just want to socialize after all,” Mac smiled, eliciting a responding
grin from the big man. “And what are you going to do with Burton B. Berger?
Shoot him?”

With heavy sarcasm, Rothmann said,
“I’m counting on you to win over the Paris station chief and make him love
every moment of the time he spends supporting your operation.”

“Seriously, boss, he’s not going
to take too kindly to someone traipsing around on his turf. He’s going to want
to run things himself. And frankly....”

“I know, I know,” said the DDO,
nodding his head heavily. “That sonofabitch is a real problem. The pompous ass
wouldn’t know an operation if it bit him on the butt. And even if he did
recognize one, he couldn’t run it properly because he’d be too afraid of a
flap. He got where he is by talking a good line of bullshit and playing it
safe, and he’s not about to quit now.” He shook his great head back and forth
slowly.

Rothmann continued in a
philosophical tone: “How bastards like him ever rise to the level of a station
chief, I’ll never understand. There’s a whole new breed of do-nothing
leadership that’s taking over the Agency these days. And the bastards have a
strong union, too! They protect one another. Pisses me off…”  He fell silent
and looked squarely at MacMurphy.