The Coldest Warrior Read online

  The Washington Post was open before him to coverage of the Senate hearings from three days before. He had looked at the photo of Dr. Wilson’s widow with trepidation. He’d gone out socially with the Wilsons several times, but over the years he had confined those memories to his mind’s chamber of the willfully forgotten. His surprise had come when he read the caption, which identified the man at her side with his hand shielding his face from the cameras as Jack Gabriel, his old college classmate.

  Treacher could still not wholly justify to himself his role in Wilson’s death. Perhaps, he thought, it was nothing more complicated than supreme irritation that he’d been ordered to clean up a problem not of his making and then denied the truth. He’d carried that grudge with him when he walked away from the Agency a few years later. It was so long ago—a different world—but now it was alive again and in the headlines.

  Treacher’s hour sculling on the river had helped him calm the worry that came with the surprise.

  Michael Casey had joined him at the café table, but Casey had waved off the waiter’s offer of a menu. He wasn’t there to eat or socialize. Now, these two fiftyish men—strangers but for their brief encounter in the Hotel Harrington when they were in their late twenties—stared at each other across the table and across the gulf of time. Streaking rays breaking over the trees washed them in harsh light.

  Treacher had no trouble tracking down Casey. Washington was a small town for ambitious men at the peaks of their careers. Successful men knew of, or were acquainted with, other men who enjoyed status and power. Treacher and Casey had kept their distance, but through word of mouth and happenstance, Treacher knew Casey had stayed on in the Office of Security and was now its deputy head. That the CIA secretary knew Treacher’s name when he asked to speak with her boss had initially surprised Treacher. It always surprised him when people he didn’t know knew his name—and she’d put his call through.

  “It’s the White House. The deputy chief of staff, Mr. Treacher,” he’d heard her say.

  Treacher put down his coffee cup and watched Casey across the table. His fingers tapped the table in a nervous tic. “You know why I called?”

  Casey was rigid in his chair. He was dressed immaculately in a summer suit, garroting tie, and polished black leather shoes. His clothes, his demeanor, and his expression were those of a man of personal discipline. He was tall and a little gray, and heavier than Treacher remembered, but still with the masculine good looks of an aspiring Hollywood extra. Treacher’s mind reached back a quarter century to the young man he’d only briefly met, and that distant rookie’s face reshaped itself to become the aging man sitting opposite.

  Casey looked across the table and met Treacher’s eyes. “I do.”

  “Your secretary knew my name.”

  “Very sweet. Very punctual. Very charming, when she wants to be.” Casey pointed to the newspaper. “Didn’t take you long to call.”

  Both men let the subtext of the meeting linger. Laughter of rowers returning from early-morning exercise drifted up from the boat ramp below and mixed with the first sounds of traffic crossing Key Bridge.

  Casey’s eyes came off the river. “Weisenthal coming? Ainsley?”

  “I thought we should talk first. Their names have been publicly associated with Wilson. Ours have not. What happened to Kelly?”

  “He cleans powerboats docked in the marina. Too many bar fights.” Casey pointed to Gabriel’s photograph in the newspaper. “He’s asking questions.”

  Treacher nodded. “He called me. Left a message. Wants to meet.”

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  Treacher resisted the temptation to agree. He had been sporadically in touch with his old CIA colleague, and he didn’t want any awkwardness between them. He looked off to the river and was morbidly amused by how circumstance anchored him to the past. His fingers tapped again. “Where are you on this?” he asked.

  Both men waited for the waiter to remove Treacher’s coffee cup, gauging each other. They were men of stature, successful men who knew the power of innuendo to bring down careers. Treacher had already gone around and around on the danger. Opprobrium, censure, vilification. Whose career could survive that? Jail, in the unlikely event that evidence was assembled and a case brought to trial, was the least of his concerns. A man’s reputation was a fragile thing—years in the making but lost in a moment. Slanderous whispers were the death of a high-ranking public servant.

  “Where am I on this?” Casey echoed. “Where the hell are you?” Casey looked off at the calm river with contempt before his eyes slowly settled on Treacher.

  “I have three children. I am married to the same woman. I have a good position in the Agency. I don’t need this bullshit.” Casey raised his palms. “I still smell the blood. You crafted a crime that fell to me, but I won’t fall to protect you.”

  Casey’s eyes were coals. “I am the victim here as much as that poor man. I will not suffer the howls of shame. I go to church every Sunday. I suspect it’s more than you do. Blood will have blood before I let myself be brought down for this.”

  5

  CIA Offices

  Downtown Washington, D.C.

  The Office of Security’s new satellite location was on a high floor near the National Archives’ graceful Corinthian columns and within view of the FBI’s headquarters. Michael Casey hated his new office, and particularly its view of the FBI building. FBI Headquarters’ overbearing concrete edifice had an uneven roof line and a gravel moat on three sides that reinforced a fortresslike appearance appropriate for a national police headquarters. The best that could be said of its stark, federal drabness was that its mediocre architecture was no worse than other soulless government buildings that had gone up in the preceding decade. Casey thought its severe brutalism was alien to the capital’s spirit of democracy.

  He was unhappy that he’d been moved out of Langley, away from the center of power, but when the order to move came, he obeyed. He had been served well in life by his respect for authority, but he’d also learned the price of blind obedience. The Office of Security had not fared well in the Agency’s new tortured soul-searching, and they’d become easy scapegoats for the sins of the past. Charges had been made that he was too cozy with the FBI and too quick to bend the law. The new director had banished him and his department from Langley. To keep his job, he knew he only had to outlast the director.

  Casey flicked off his desk lamp and rose from his chair, leaving an unfinished handwritten memo. He walked to the large fifth-floor windows, lit his third cigarette of the hour, and gazed out at the congested traffic detoured from cut-and-cover subway construction a few blocks away.

  “Bastards.”

  The word slipped quietly from his lips, but he said it with venom, and he followed it with a string of bitter epithets that expressed his feelings toward the new CIA and Jack Gabriel, who, without ever having met him, had become his nemesis. Somehow the FBI too had become involved and had sent a man to ask questions about Wilson.

  Casey was like other Agency staff: fiercely private, smart, and a good drinker with a stern expression that he could shed or assume at will. But he was different too: his job in the Office of Security was to protect classified material and investigate breaches of security, and this kept him faceless inside the Agency. He was convinced that the CIA’s new willingness to open up about its past was a terrible mistake, and he was appalled that the Agency’s dirty linen was being washed in public. He was a strong advocate of the view that the ends justified the means. While he had a rigid belief in the moral force America played in the world, he was quick to ignore the moral jeopardy of controversy if national security was at stake.

  His distrust of politicians found its full flowering in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, and he never forgave President Kennedy for betraying the CIA. Casey had once admired Kennedy’s intelligence, sophistication, Irish Catholic roots, and the grace that he and Jackie brought to the White House. He’d read Profiles in Courage an
d was impressed with Kennedy’s insights into the moral courage of a few senators who found a way to speak out against the mob tyranny of ignorant public opinion, but then Kennedy’s abrupt betrayal of the CIA had changed his mind. He came to despise the man he once admired.

  Kennedy’s assassination was not a grievous blow or a surprise. He had heard the rumblings inside the Agency, and while he didn’t know if the CIA was responsible, he was one of the few men inside with access to the accreting details of the assassination, and nothing he’d seen led him to reject the idea that the CIA murdered the president. Kennedy posed an existential threat to the Agency: He had planned to cut the CIA’s budget; he wanted to withdraw from South Vietnam; he made the CIA a laughingstock after the Bay of Pigs. But it was two other facts, one known to only a handful of men and the other known only to him, that shaped Casey’s opinion. He’d heard the four trace acoustic impulse patterns on the Dallas Police Department’s Dictabelt, suggesting a second gunman. And he alone knew that the CIA had ordered Wilson killed. If the Agency could kill one American citizen with impunity, why not another?

  Bastards! Casey ground his cigarette into an overflowing ashtray. He had let himself believe that his role in the Wilson killing would remain forever between him and his conscience, but that comfort was gone. How would he deal with the problem?

  The answer came to him a few minutes later as he gazed out the window. He dismissed the thought at first, but once it entered his mind, he was stubbornly drawn back to the possibility. It was so simple, so audacious, and in the climate of public antipathy toward the CIA, quite reasonable. If only he could find a way to stop Gabriel. If only such a thing could be done. From the inside.

  Casey had always been a methodical case officer, painstakingly slow. Just sometimes he had a flash of inspiration that turned him from a good intelligence officer into a brilliant conspirator. What if Gabriel could be discredited—forced out. Slowly, Casey assembled a plan, testing the risks, calculating the dangers, and subjecting it to the scrutiny he knew would fall on it. The plan passed each of the tests.

  By late afternoon he had retrieved the Agency’s personnel file on Jack Gabriel. The CIA kept detailed files on its employees, which included regular background checks to determine if an employee’s lifestyle was a security risk, and the material was used to evaluate officers for promotions. Salacious hearsay and moral turpitude were tactical weapons in the Agency’s ongoing search for compromised officers.

  Casey read Gabriel’s three-page summary dossier, scanning it once, and then turned to the performance reviews, looking for a weakness. There was much good in his record—commendations for service in Vietnam, outstanding fitness reports, merit promotions, his marriage, old stuff about his alcoholic father, and Gabriel’s half-dozen speeding tickets. Nothing useful jumped out, but Casey knew that every man has his weakness—alcohol, gambling, spending beyond his means, failed polygraphs, women, jealousy, arrogance. No man was free of corrupting sin. The only question was to find that weakness—however deep it was buried—and tempt it into the light of day. Gabriel had to be taken down.

  Casey convened a breakfast meeting the next day in a Reston, Virginia, coffee shop. Across from him in the booth were two ex-CIA operatives, veterans of the Bay of Pigs fiasco whom Casey had kept close to the Agency. He used them for dirty work that he didn’t want traced to the Office of Security. William Barber was middle-aged Boston Irish with a big chest and a thick neck contained by a loosely knotted tie. The Cuban Eugenio Martinez was Barber’s physical opposite: tall, thin, and his skin had an olive sheen. His eyes were large on his narrow face, and they had a disturbing calm. Both men wore business suits.

  “Gentlemen,” Casey began, pushing the dossier across the table. “Jack Gabriel is a problem for the Agency. He is in the inspector general’s office, but he has become a security risk, a man who doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. The work you’ll do is off the books.”

  Martinez sipped his coffee. “What work?”

  Casey scanned the coffee shop, again confirming there was no one who would recognize him. “I don’t know yet. But I suspect he’s forgotten the distinction between what we do and what the FBI does.”

  Casey gave a short lecture on the law, laying out a case for the work he wanted done. The CIA, he reminded them, gathered foreign intelligence, and the FBI pursued domestic criminal investigations and made arrests. Gabriel was stepping over the line with his investigation into the death of Dr. Charles Wilson, and he was likely to stumble upon other matters that remained highly classified. “Things that need to stay unknown. We need to stop him.” He added that laws might have to be broken, but they couldn’t make stupid mistakes like the Watergate burglars had made.

  “Is that clear?” Casey looked at the two men. “I want to know who he speaks with and where he goes. Keep these names in mind.”

  Casey wrote ROGER AINSLEY and herb weisenthal in neat block letters. Casey tore the sheet from his notepad and handed it across the table. He handed each man an envelope of cash. “If you need to speak with me, tell my assistant you’re security consultants from Florida.”

  6

  Headquarters

  Friday afternoon vespers at Langley Headquarters. Jack Gabriel stood among intelligence officers and the director’s top men, who gathered to end the workweek with a generous scotch. Gabriel was chatting with two recent graduates of the Farm when he spotted James Coffin arriving, and he begged an excuse to engage the head of Counterintelligence.

  Gabriel’s march across the room abruptly ended with a booming voice. “Jack. Jack Gabriel.”

  Gabriel found himself approached by George Mueller, the less-than-warm Deputy Director of Plans whose rise through the ranks was a tribute to organization, good luck, and his mordant humor. His voice had rolled across the room like distant thunder, getting attention from other men who, seeing it was Mueller, returned to their conversations.

  “Weisenthal living up to his reputation, is he?” Mueller said. “We’re all shaped by something, and for him it was his belief he could manipulate the human mind. I heard he’s had a transformation; he’s an organic farmer and does volunteer speech therapy with kids. He’s putting his sins behind him.”

  Now facing Gabriel, Mueller dropped his voice to a cordial murmur. “Come on, Jack, how could you not know?”

  Gabriel smiled. “I didn’t say I didn’t know.”

  “Your face said it. His name was on the invitation the widow waved at the hearing. Now he’s been called to testify in the Senate. We’re all interested to hear what he has to say.”

  “One did follow the other.”

  “Like night the day. I hear you’re staying on. Rumor true?”

  Gabriel was always alert to the possibility that there were men in the bureaucracy who knew more about his prospects than he did, and rumors—sometimes true, often not—took on a life of their own. As he faced Mueller, sipping his drink and waiting for an answer, Gabriel calculated the algebra of discretion.

  “For the moment, I’m here,” Gabriel said. “We’re supposed to talk about Wilson. You were in the Agency then. What do you remember?”

  “I left in May 1953. I knew him, but by November that year, when it all happened, I was teaching in New Haven. I don’t think I can be of any help. But look, I see you were on your way to Coffin. He’s a better source than me. He has all the history in his head, if you can coax it out.” Mueller leaned forward and spoke in an intimate whisper. “We all know there is a move to shrink our ranks and remove dead wood. The retirement package offered is an attractive inducement. What’s next for you? For me? What’s next for any of us? We’re excoriated by the press, hounded by Congress. I don’t know what’s next, but yes, I do think about the possibilities of life on the outside. And you should, too.” Mueller smiled. “Go ahead, speak with Coffin. See if he is willing to share anything beyond the time of day.”

  Gabriel joined James Coffin at the bar, where he found the head of Counterintelligence lamen
ting the empty bottle of Macallan. “I prefer scotch, but Kentucky bourbon will do. Good to see you, Jack. The Boss said we should talk. So let’s talk.” He nodded at the exit.

  The two men stepped into the courtyard, out of earshot of the noisy drinkers. The sun had sunk below the horizon, and the evening air had cooled and lost its steamy humidity. Coffin and Gabriel had circled each other in their careers as wary allies and occasional adversaries. Coffin’s longtime smoking habit had given his face the pallor of death. His years in charge of CI had turned him inward, his eyes settled in their sockets, and he wore a permanently skeptical expression. Gabriel had known Coffin to smile, but it was a rare event, and it happened mostly when he was pleased to have impressed a person by quoting Hamlet or Ezra Pound, or offering trivia on orchids or fly-fishing. Gabriel thought Coffin a cipher whose face was an inscrutable Venetian mask. Legends had built up around the man, and while Gabriel was certain Coffin did nothing to feed the stories, his rigorous work discipline, idiosyncratic habits, and passionate concern about postwar threats fed the rumors. There were those who insisted that Coffin studied Burgundy wines to impress his French counterparts, but Gabriel knew that his deep knowledge was acquired in London during the war—where he’d also acquired a taste for bespoke English suits.

  Coffin lit a cigarette, waving away a cloud of smoke, and contemplated Gabriel. “The Boss is making changes,” Coffin began, barely hiding his disdain. “He wants to bring us in step with the times. Wants to make us more egalitarian. He parks in the employee lot, promotes women, lunches with newbies once a week. Next, we’ll be hiring handicapped guards and wheelchair assassins. Then we’ll be asked to give up Friday vespers.” He held up his glass. “To the old guard.” He looked at Gabriel. “I saw you with George. He won’t give you the time of day.”