October's Ghost Read online

  “Greg, hurry up,” one of the minuses said as he saw the DDI step off the elevator.

  “One minute, Anthony.” Drummond walked past Director of Central Intelligence Anthony Merriweather’s office, which, unfortunately, was but one from his, and checked the night dispatches on his desk. There was no reason to rush, despite the DCI’s urging. The DDI slid out of his overcoat and laid his soft leather case on the desk, which, to his chagrin, hadn’t magically swallowed the ponderous “to do” list, courtesy of his micromanager boss, that would pop up on his computer screen when he coded in for the day.

  He let out a breath and tried to convince himself that this day would pass quickly and productively, then picked up the Significant Events summary prepared by the night desk and felt his hopes of a second earlier fade away.

  “Damn,” he said softly, folding the single sheet in half and pulling the corresponding detail report that explained in depth the event of concern. He has to listen to this, Drummond thought, knowing that “has to” was a term that rarely applied to Merriweather. He was in the DCI’s office a minute later.

  “We have SNAPSHOT stuff coming in,” Merriweather reported.

  “Oh? This soon?” the DDI asked, only half-interested.

  “Healy’s guy gave me an eyeball description of what he saw. Very impressive,” the DCI commented, tearing the sheet of his notes on the conversation from the legal pad and sliding it into the shredder atop his wastebasket.

  “Christ, Anthony!” Drummond’s jaw would have dropped if he didn’t know the added emphasis would be wasted. “You should not be in direct contact with field officers when they are engaged in a mission. Especially this mission.”

  Merriweather made his disagreement clear with a look. There was a fine line between security and paranoia. “It is a secure communication link, Greg.”

  “Secure is a fantasy we all hope is true,” the DDI said. “We do not take risks with it when they are not necessary. Mike could have gotten the information.” Mike Healy, Drummond’s counterpart in Operations, ran the spooks in the field.

  “Hmm.” The DCI wasn’t sure he wanted Healy being the point of contact on something as big as SNAPSHOT. Like Drummond, the DDO had a tendency to filter too much, Merriweather believed. “Well, it’s done now. We’ll have another KH-12 pass in an hour. After that we go to the President. He’ll want to see that everything is going as planned.” And won’t DiContino be surprised that his Russia operation isn’t quite the most important thing going on, he added to himself, knowing that the man sitting across from him would neither appreciate nor understand his opinion of the NSA. It was clear enough without words, he figured.

  “Now that Cuba is free,” Drummond began, the sarcasm mild but undeniable, “we have to talk about CANDLE.”

  “What about it?” Merriweather was impatient with his deputy’s seemingly endless search for a leak that he believed existed somewhere in the Intelligence Directorate. The days of James Jesus Angleton were long past, he reasoned, making the present search for a supposed leak reminiscent of the famed hunt for “K” by the former agency official. CANDLE was Drummond’s internal operation to locate the supposed exfiltration of information and plug it.

  Drummond handed over the night summary and the detail report supporting the first item on it. Merriweather scanned it quickly, jotting down his own observations and giving it about as much attention as he had to his deputy’s suspicions from day one. It was his directorate, after all, and if there was a leak, which Merriweather doubted anyway, then it was his responsibility. He almost wished it were true so he could convince those diehards on the Hill that he needed new people for new times, not holdovers who were there just because of longevity in the position.

  “So? The president of the Panamanian legislature changed his schedule for the day after tomorrow.” The DCI looked up. “Do we have a problem with that?”

  Drummond told himself that all nightmares came to an end, and that he would soon wake from this one. “We had a damn complex surveillance set up on him, Anthony! He was supposed to meet with reps from the Peruvian drug cartels at location X. Now he suddenly changes to location Y, and we have no idea where that is.” The DDI let it hang there, wondering why his boss couldn’t see the seriousness of the implications.

  “And?”

  “Anthony, this is the third time we’ve had a meeting scheduled weeks in advance between Coseros and unsavories that was suddenly changed at the last minute. Not a week or two ahead, but days before the meet. That doesn’t give us enough time to find the new site and shift our assets. Someone is tipping him off.”

  “I thought you checked your Latin-American section,” the DCI said.

  “I have, but apparently not close enough,” Drummond admitted. “But beyond the fact that we have a leak—”

  “Possibly,” Merriweather interjected, allowing it just for the sake of argument.

  “All right, possibly have a leak. The important thing is to recognize who is benefiting from what is getting out.”

  “Come on, Greg. Don’t beat that old horse anymore.”

  Christ, is he blind? “Coseros is a government official in Panama, and his ass has been saved from indictment because of these leaks, and he has been tunneling money to your CFS guys down in Miami. Their bank account is busting, Anthony!”

  “Funneling? That is not what the Bureau found in its three separate investigations before this one.” The Agency, as it sometimes did, was assisting the FBI in an investigation that required some of its special abilities. “I believe the term they settled on was ‘contributions.’ As for your narco-corruption theory, you know damn well that money Coseros has given them doesn’t even begin to amount to what is in their accounts. The CFS has other supporters, Greg. Big ones.” Merriweather seemed suddenly disinterested in any further correction of his deputy’s off-the-mark position. “Besides all that, the Justice Department has found no compelling evidence to support an indictment of Coseros,” he pointed out correctly, ignoring the other connection his deputy was implying.

  “Because every time we get close, someone tips him!” Drummond sat back, letting the frustration subside a bit. “And he is supporting the people you want to put into power in Cuba.”

  “I do?” The DCI chuckled. “So you consider yourself not a part of this?”

  Bad choice of words, Greg. He’d learned that his boss was a master at catching misspeaks and using them to the fullest advantage. “Look, I want Castro out as bad as anyone. He’s one of the last of a dead breed. But we can’t overlook the connection between the Peruvian cartels and Coseros, and between Coseros and the Cuban Freedom Society.”

  The DCI’s face went instantly red at the direct link the DDI was suggesting. “You are not to repeat that assertion outside of this room. Never! I will not tolerate even the hint of such linkage without irrefutable evidence to warrant it. Is that clear?”

  “Have I yet?” Drummond responded with a challenge.

  Merriweather ignored the question. “I will not jeopardize SNAPSHOT simply because you have doubts about the integrity of your directorate, and because you place fiction above fact in forming your opinions.”

  “Anthony, I—”

  “You will keep your unsubstantiated ideas to yourself until the time that you have something concrete to back them up. Is that very clear? A yes or no, please.”

  What the hell was concrete? Drummond wondered. His job was supposed to involve speculation, and now his boss was telling him to reign in his brain? “Very clear.”

  Merriweather was still flushed. He was not a man to calm from provocation or questioning easily. “Good.” He checked the time on the small desk clock left by his predecessor. “We have to be at the White House in a few hours. Be ready.”

  And with that it was over. The DDI walked into the hallway, closing the door himself. It was still too early for the majority of Langley’s workers to have arrived, so he felt comfortable just standing in the hall. A better man had occupied the o
ffice he’d just left, until a microscopic, indiscriminate bug had taken its toll. Herb Landau just wouldn’t have run things this way, Drummond knew. He was sure of it, as sure as he was that the director’s cause célèbre was inherently flawed. Yet he could do nothing. The President had given it the nod, without even letting his closest advisers in on SNAPSHOT. That was an entirely different problem, but one the DDI saw as potentially more dangerous than having an autocrat at the helm of the Agency. His eyes searched the ceiling for a solution that was not there. He was certain where the problem was, however, and equally confident in his belief that things were going to get worse before they got better.

  He would have been surprised, however, at just how much of an understatement his last thought had been.

  * * *

  The dacha of Gennadiy Konovalenko, president of the Russian Federation, was a hundred miles from the Russian capital, nestled along a river among a stand of firs that kept the expansive deck at the rear in a perpetual shade. The sunlight that did penetrate the canopy from the yellow globe low in the southern sky lit the rippling water below with sparkles and flashes, and cast a harsh, pale coloring upon the birds that flitted through the beams. The scene was in stark contrast to the dirty, dull pallor that was pervasive in the great cities of Mother Russia. All the brightly colored spires and fine statuary could not reverse a course of decay initiated almost eighty years earlier. It would take much longer to right the wrongs done the Russian people. Much longer to make the nation a reflection of its inherent beauty.

  “We should have such a place in Red Square, eh?” the president suggested from his reclining wooden chair on the deck. It was reminiscent of the Adirondack style favored by the leisure-loving Americans and had actually been built with those in mind after the president’s return from a particularly enjoyable trip to the United States.

  “Then what reason would we have to journey here?” Foreign Minister Igor Yakovlev responded with his own musing. He walked along the deck, sliding a gloved hand on the rough railing as he moved. The chill of the autumn afternoon caused a cloud of whitish mist to spurt from his mouth with each word and each breath. “And where would we hold court?”

  The president laughed, his paunch shaking beneath the fur coat that took the bite out of the air but left his reddening nose unprotected. A man of only middle age, he was perhaps the most crucial leader his country—in whatever incarnation or by whatever name—had ever had. And “holding court,” as his trusted adviser called it, was but one tool he had developed to placate his critics. Bring them out here, to the dacha his father, a onetime member of the old Soviet Politburo, had built using prison labor imported from the east. Get them away from that dreadful place called Moscow, where power was the goal of all the players. Even he fell into that trap when the days in the Kremlin stretched to weeks, and weeks to months. But always there was his dacha, as modest as it was by Western standards. His escape. His domain.

  A servant stepped onto the deck from the main building and announced the arrival of those who had come to do battle with the president. Court was in session.

  “Igor Yureivich,” Interior Minister Georgiy Bogdanov said, greeting the man who should have been his equal in government, but the president’s favor had placed the foreign minister in an elevated state of importance. He turned to the leader of his nation, who was rising from his seat. “Gennadiy Timofeyevich, your dacha looks lovely as always.”

  The president welcomed Bogdanov with the accepted firm kiss on each cheek. “Georgiy Ivanovich, you are welcome here always.” A polite smile masked the hollowness of the offer. “And you bring the good general with you.”

  General Aleksandr Shergin, commander of Voyska PVO, the Russian air-defense forces that had changed little from the days of allegiance to the Soviet Union, nodded crisply to the man he grudgingly accepted as his commander in chief. “President Konovalenko.”

  The president expected no more informal a greeting than that from a military man, and would offer none in return to General Aleksandr Dmitreivich Shergin. “Come, sit.”

  Yakovlev took the seat beside the president, across the small drinks table from the men who were their adversaries. A platter of omul, a smoked fish imported from the eastern expanses of the country, appeared from the hands of a servant, as did a bottle of vodka and four glasses. The small talk that followed lasted several minutes, until its purpose as a prelude to more serious discussions had been exhausted.

  “And now to the less enjoyable matters at hand,” the president said. “Your choice of a traveling companion leaves little for me to guess at, Georgiy Ivanovich.”

  The interior minister smiled obligingly at the friendliness of the comment. “General Shergin is an expert in these matters.”

  “As is his superior—Marshal Kurchatov,” Yakovlev offered. “And Colonel Belyayev.”

  “Yes. Yes.” The interior minister laid a strip of the pinkish fish on his tongue and chewed it quickly to a swallow. “But they do not represent the opinion of all in the military.”

  The president bristled at the veiled meaning. “You do not suggest that the military would try to hinder our efforts, do you, Comrade Bogdanov?”

  It was “Comrade Bogdanov” now. Soon it would deteriorate to “Comrade Interior Minister.” Beyond that, just invectives. Bogdanov hoped to avoid that, but, with the president’s well-known temper and his fervency on this point, doing so would be difficult. He had to try, however. His duty to the Motherland demanded such.

  “Hinder?” Bogdanov answered the question adequately with a non response. “It is simply a matter of advisement. To place so much trust in the Americans is, well, presumptuous, would you not say?”

  “No, I would not say that.” The president pulled his collar up against the breeze that was picking up. “They have given Marshal Kurchatov unprecedented access to their strategic systems. Their raket submarines are being recalled for the duration of the operation. In a few hours he will observe the process by which a launch of their strategic missiles is ordered, something that is such a closely held secret the KGB was never able to determine the exact process.” His head shook emphatically. “No, Comrade Bogdanov, I would not say that our trust of the Americans is presumptuous.”

  “I would,” the interior minister countered, drawing the philosophical line between himself and the president. “And so do many others...in all areas of our government.”

  The president saw the general straighten at the minister’s words. What was being implied was clear enough. He had already survived one coup and had squashed two others before they ever got past the planning stages, mostly because they lacked any sort of catalyst to spark and inspire the plotters. The dismantling of his nation’s missile-warning system about to begin with American assistance could be just such a catalyst. Warnings of such a situation had been given since the plan’s inception. There was deep, vitriolic disagreement within the government over the plan. To trust the Americans or not. There were only two answers, with no gray area in between, and these men had been dispatched to be convinced that the president’s decision was correct. Anything less could lead to something the country neither wanted nor needed.

  “Igor Yureivich,” the president said, signaling his foreign minister to do that which he had hoped would not be necessary. As a smart political maverick, though, he had prepared for the eventuality that it would.

  “We have proof that the Americans are sincere in this effort,” Yakovlev began. “From inside the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  The revelation caught both Bogdanov and Shergin off guard, and each looked to the other for some bearing as to what should be done now. The interior minister went on with the obvious. “We have an agent in the CIA?”

  “Not exactly,” Yakovlev said with a smile, explaining the full story for the visitors after a sip of vodka. “As you can see, it is an unusual arrangement. But we have validated the information. The spy that State Security caught earlier this year—the damned Lithuanian in the shipyar
d—was foretold by the information we received from our source. And several other pieces of information have proven very helpful, and very truthful.”

  Bogdanov thought over what he’d just been told. It was quite out of the ordinary but very elegant indeed. State Security, the leftovers of the former KGB, still held domain over the gathering of intelligence, but not in this, it was apparent. “And the reason for having the Foreign Ministry handle this...source, instead of State Security?”

  The president laughed. “Even you, Georgiy Ivanovich, cannot believe that our vaunted intelligence agency is free of all the powers that corrupted it in the past. This arrangement is more secure, if somewhat more cumbersome. The chain consists of two persons in America. One of them is an American who has given us advance word of media reports for more than a decade now—their press is often more adept at information gathering than the KGB was—and can be trusted completely. Now his use is mostly as a courier. The other is a liaison at the embassy. Reports are delivered to the American by means that are not important, then to our man at the embassy. They are then brought directly to Moscow and hand-delivered to Igor Yureivich. He then brings them to me for review. And now the both of you are blessed with the knowledge.” He said the latter with a warning glare. “Where this information comes from is beyond compare, especially because it is given...how would you say?...unwittingly. Without embellishment or filtering. To let on that we have access to this information would surely end its availability. Hence the extreme precautions. I alone make the decision as to how the information is to be used.”

  “This could be trickery,” Bogdanov suggested.

  “Not with what has been allowed to slip out,” Yakovlev responded. “We have learned such secrets that you would not believe.”

  “And those may be useful in the future,” the president said, knowing the value of inside knowledge during negotiations in the international arena. “I tell you all this only to stave off any foolish moves by ‘other parties.’ You must convince them that such would be a grave mistake, and you must do so without revealing what you have been told.”