The Skorpion Directive (12 page)

Nikki, whose father and mother had moved back to Friuli a year ago, was surprised to find that she was actually enjoying the company of this legendary old spy.

“Not at all. I’m quite happy to sit with you, sir.”

He gave her a look with some warning in it.

“Don’t misjudge me, Nikki . . . May I call you Nikki?”

“Please.”

“Don’t mistake me for a kindly old uncle. I’ve sent many young people every bit as bright and beautiful as you off to die ugly and ultimately futile deaths in terrible places, often in the service of policies that turned out to be either venal or idiotic. I may be doing that again right now.”

A pause while he gathered his thoughts. The second Crown Victoria had taken up a position on the far side of the street, and two squared-off crew cuts in baggy suits were walking under the trees a few yards away, the crackle of their radios a tinny insectile chittering in the pollen-thick haze of late afternoon.

“So I come, by my usual roundabout way, to the crux of the matter, Nikki. At this point, it is only fair to caution you that I am about to reveal some classified matters to you and that your continued attention from this point on will imply an acceptance of the consequences of privileged information.”

Here he fixed her with his pale blue eyes.

“Shall I go on?”

Stop now,
she was thinking to herself.
He is not a kindly old uncle. Say thanks so much, but I think not, and slowly back away.

For reasons she was never able to explain to herself afterward, she did not say or do this. Cather waited another beat, took her silence for assent, and went on.

“I’ve spoken of how America seems to
lurch
. We are in the midst of such a period now. We, the intelligence community, have become the object of scorn on the part of the new powers. This has happened before—the Church commission, the Clinton years. I need not retail all this for you since you know the history as well as I do. But this
scorn
, this taste for . . . I believe the phrase in vogue is
truth commissions . . .
as if the average senator would not recoil from the truth as a vampire recoils from the crucifix. And now we have another of these pestilential ‘Special Prosecutors.’ My lawyer informs me that I can expect to be subpoenaed later this year for acts carried out by members of Clandestine Services under my watch. All of this is having a terrible effect on our rank-and-file officers. I refer here to my department, but I’m sure these threats of retroactive prosecution for acts carried out on the instructions of previous Presidents must be having the same effect at the NSA.”

“Not to the same extent, since we’re not an operational arm. I do think this is partly the reason why my boss has taken a leave. He found the idea of retroactive prosecutions . . .”

Here she searched for a phrase that would tactfully convey the force of Hank Brocius’s fury at the idea, which was literally volcanic and involved the use of phrases such as ‘gutless peacenik scumbags’ and ‘hippy-dippy, draft-dodging Bolsheviks.’ ”

Finally she settled on this: “He found them a bit . . . galling, sir.”

“ ‘Galling,’ ” said Cather, who knew the man better than she did. “Yes, Hank would find this
galling
, as do I. In the name of self-righteousness and moral preening, the new powers seem ready to destroy the morale—the operational
fire
—of the intelligence community, and they may succeed. I’m using up most of what little power that remains to me in various attempts to protect my most vulnerable men and women, which includes all seventeen people in my Cleaners Unit. Well, now we come to it.”

Cather stopped again, giving Nikki a searching look as if to reaffirm the trust he was about to place in her and her acceptance of the consequences.

Nikki remained silent. He went on.

“Nikki, I believe you’re familiar with one of my Cleaners, a young man, an ex-Special Forces captain, named Micah Dalton?”

“Yes, sir. He was active in Chicago. And it was in connection with an inquiry of his that I went to Santorini and Istanbul last winter.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that. This is partly why I am here tugging on your sleeve this afternoon. And what is your professional opinion of this young man?”

“I think,” she said, stiffening, “that he’s one of the best field operators America has. He’s intelligent, he has courage—”

Cather held up a hand.

“I concur, although he can also be . . . spectacular. His methods lack a sense of proportion. He’s given to vendetta—”

“So’s my whole family, sir. We’re Italians.”

“Yes, I understand. Personally, I think the unreasoned pursuit of vendetta can be detrimental to the overarching mission of the intelligence branch . . . But your point is well taken. You’d be sorry, then, to hear that he has been thrown to the Mossad?”

“ ‘ Thrown’?”

“Yes. Quite literally. Here, I have something for you.”

He opened his palm. Resting in it was a small Sony Micro Vault. He offered it to her. She took it, looking into his eyes and seeing something there beside disease and disillusionment.

Cather was burning with anger.

“This device contains a highly classified document. In it, a woman named Mariah Vale . . . Perhaps you know of her?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, keeping her expression blank. “Hank Brocius speaks of her often.”

Cather showed his teeth.

“I would imagine he does. Miss Vale is now effectively in the position of Grand Inquisitor for the CIA, with the de facto support of the new administration. I know she acts in what she believes to be the best interests of the nation, but she is quite unsuited to sit in judgment upon operational issues. She is far too . . . fastidious. In her soul, she is convinced that if America really were a kinder, gentler place, the nation would have no enemies abroad and no dissent at home. In her view, we invite, through our aggression and arrogance, the hiss and enmity of the world. So she has set out to scour the CIA, to rid it—by any means available—of ‘rogue agents’ and ‘opportunistic sadists,’ thereby saving the Agency and the nation’s honor. As an illustration of her tactics, the document contained in this flash drive is Miss Vale’s summary of events that took place in Vienna over the last few hours. It will not surprise you that the events were . . . spectacular . . . and that our Mr. Dalton was right in the middle of it.”

“Vienna? There was a terrorist bombing in Vienna, wasn’t there? I saw something about it on Intelinet.”

“It’s being described as such, yes. The reality is rather less clear. A brown Saab blew up close to Leopoldsberg. The narrative in the device will lay out Miss Vale’s official view for you. I will simply sketch in the outlines. As I understand it, Dalton was on an assignment in Bonn and that he had been contacted by—or had initiated a contact with—an Israeli named Issadore Galan, retired Mossad, now in the employ of the Carabinieri in Venice. We believe, but do not
know
, that a meeting was arranged, to take place in the city of Vienna. Dalton arrived in Vienna two days ago. Our inference is that the meeting with Galan was to be conducted on what we have all come to describe as Moscow Rules, a term of art for which we may thank Mr. Le Carré. You are familiar with this sort of defensive tradecraft, I’m sure?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, going on to describe, in a general way, the events of the evening: Dalton’s realization that he was being watched, his isolation of Veronika Miklas. Nikki listened with a tightening throat, sensing that something irrevocable had happened and that perhaps this time Dalton had simply gone too far. Cather rolled onward, his voice gathering power as the narrative developed, his frustration clear.

“At this point, the story becomes rather murky. According to the preliminary report prepared by Mariah Vale—you have a complete version in this device—there was some sort of confrontation at Miss Miklas’s flat in the suburbs of Vienna. The body of a man named Yusef Akhmediar, a Hungarian Muslim who was known to the OSE—I gather he was some sort of freelance footpad who did a variety of unclean things for whatever agency wished to keep its shirt cuffs tidy . . . In any case, his body was discovered—I’m told it declared itself in the heat of the morning—dumped in a large bin at the back of Miss Miklas’s apartment building. You will not be squeamish if I tell you that he had been killed by the rather innovative method of having an electric curling iron thrust through his left eye and deep into his brain. There is some forensic evidence that he did not die at once, and that his passing was facilitated to a degree by having the electric current turned on, which quite literally cooked his brains.”

“Spectacular,” she said, with a grimace.

Cather nodded.

“Quite in the Dalton style, yes. Setting that aside, the pair—for we are now to consider Miss Miklas to be a willing accomplice—were next seen the following morning at Leopoldsberg, a hilltop cathedral-fortress close by the curve of the Danube in the northern suburbs of Vienna. Here the picture becomes even cloudier. From what I have been able to gather, the main camera was out of commission that morning, perhaps intentionally disabled, but other cameras mounted on a nearby retaining wall show a series of images: Dalton’s vehicle, a large black Benz, driven by Miss Miklas with Dalton in the passenger seat, cruises slowly past an old brown Saab and parks in a slot a few rows away.”

“Are people allowed to park overnight? In that lot?”

“A good question. I do not know the answer to that.”

“Is there any video of the Saab arriving? The time?”

“As I understand it, we have all the
available
video, with the exception of the central camera, which, as I mentioned, has somehow ‘malfunctioned. ’ To continue, Dalton gets out, approaches the Saab, seems to examine it, and then goes around to the rear, where he opens the trunk. The camera does not allow us a view of what he saw there, but it occupied him for over two minutes. He pulls something from the trunk—a thin white tube—examines it, and now events move rather quickly. He slams the trunk, runs around to the driver’s door, and then to the front, where he opens the hood. He makes a call on his cell phone. He then manages to get the engine running. He breaks a window, jumps behind the wheel, maneuvers the Saab through the crowds, drives it for some distance down the lane, and now he is out of sight of the security cameras. A police car sets off in pursuit of what they viewed as a car theft. They reach a curve in the road, and their vehicle is enveloped in a large explosion, originating from the Saab, which Dalton had parked in a ditch by the side of the road.”

Nikki began to speak, but Cather lifted a palm.

“Allow me to tell the tale, my dear, and then I would greatly value your analysis. The blast radius is very large. The driver is killed, and two others are severely burned. The brown Saab is totally engulfed in flames. Subsequent inquiries establish that the Benz is also missing, having left the parking area shortly after Dalton drove the Saab through the gates. Firefighters arrive. The fires are quelled. The Saab is examined. A body is found in the trunk, which dental records establish as being the charred remains of Issadore Galan. Issadore Galan was the registered owner of the Saab. How would you address this scenario?”

Nikki gave it some thought.

“First of all, who was watching Dalton and why?”

“Excellent question. He was being observed by a unit of the OSE known as the Overwatch Service. They state that the request to have Dalton monitored came from Interpol and was authorized by the OSE as part of a reciprocal intelligence-gathering agreement the Austrians signed several years ago.”

“Has anyone asked Interpol why they wanted Dalton monitored?”

“Our Bureau of Diplomatic Security agents formally requested an explanation from Interpol. The people at Interpol declined to provide any details, citing a confidential agreement with a ‘third party.’ The suggestion was made that the surveillance was merely a routine training drill and that Dalton was selected merely because he was a known foreign agent and would provide a challenging target. This entirely unsatisfactory reply seems to have ended the matter, as far as Miss Vale is concerned.”

“You need to know who the third party was, don’t you? Can’t you insist, make a fuss? Go over her head?”

“Please recall that I am an operational nullity, my dear. I don’t have that power. Do you have any other thoughts?”

“He made a cell-phone call?”

Cather nodded like an Easter Island statue, inclining slowly forward and then returning heavily to its base.

“The security camera shows it clearly.”

“He has an Agency phone?”

“Yes,” he said simply, offering no information.

“We would have picked up his calls. Incoming and outgoing. We always do that for CIA agents in the field. It’s a security issue, a standing request from your agency. We’d have the voice packet. And his GPS. If we knew what he said on the phone, that would help us.”

“It would if such a voice packet were available. Actually, to speed your plow a bit, none of Dalton’s BlackBerry usage over the last twenty-four hours is now available to us. Miss Vale’s report refers to the timing of Dalton’s BlackBerry calls, but as to the
content
there seems to be no trace.”

“But it’s
automatic
. The Monitors
never
. . . We
must
have it.”

“One would think. Sadly, no. Your Monitors have been commendably vigorous, but no trace of that call can be found.”

“Then there’d be a log notation of the intercept—”

Cather shook his head, a thin smile playing on his lips.

Nikki stared at him for a while.

“It’s been redacted?”

“A logical inference.”

“By whom?”

“At this point, Miss Vale’s name logically arises, but it is bootless to speculate. Naturally, the range of people in a position to effect such a thing is rather limited.”