“Then let’s,” Stoll said. He sat on the couch to the left of the door, nervously moving his knee up and down. “Cripes, we’re secret agents. Let’s abduct the guy and give him a new identity.”
Hood frowned. “I’m open to serious suggestions.”
Stoll continued to look at Hood instead of at Political and Economics Officer Martha Mackall. She sat to his left on the couch. Her arms were crossed and she wore an unsympathetic expression.
“Awright, I don’t know what we can do,” Stoll admitted. “But the bloodhounds on the Hill won’t get to work for another ninety minutes or so. We can do something by then. Maybe we can put together a list of the missions Stephen’s assisted us on. Or we can bring in people whose lives he’s saved. Jesus, that’s got to count for something.”
“Not unless those lives add up to a hell of a lot of votes,” Hood said.
Martha crossed her long legs. “Matt, I appreciate your loyalty. But forward funding is a super-hot topic these days. Stephen Viens got caught taking money from one project and putting it into another.”
“Because he knew that project was needed for national security,” Stoll said. “It’s not like the guy got rich off what he was doing.”
“Irrelevant,” said Martha. “He broke the rules.”
“They were stupid rules.”
“Also irrelevant,” she said. “Frankly, the best we can hope for is that no one on the committee decides to investigate Op-Center because we’ve had improper access to NRO assets.”
“Preferred access,” Hood corrected her.
“Right,” said Martha. “Let’s see if Larry Rachlin calls it that when his CIA guys testify that we got ten times as much satellite time as they did. And what do you think’ll happen if the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee decides to go through our finances? We didn’t always rebate the NRO for that time because it wasn’t in our budget.”
“We’ve logged all of that debt and put it into next year’s budget,” Hood said.
“Congress’ll still say we’re living beyond our means,” Martha told him. “They’ll come looking to see how and why.”
“There!” Stoll said, clapping his hands together. “That threat is all the more reason to line up behind Stephen from the get-go. One bureau is a target. Two is a unified front. It’s power. If we go to bat for the NRO, Congress may think again about taking us on. Especially if there’s the hint of a threat that national security is going to suffer.”
Martha looked at Hood. “Frankly, Paul, some of those representatives would love to roll up their sleeves and overhaul all of national security. You know what I’ve been hearing from my friends in Congress ever since Mike Rodgers saved Japan from that North Korean nuke? Some have been saying, ‘Why should we pay to protect Japan from terrorism?’ The rest’ve been saying, ‘Nice job, but how come you didn’t know about the plot before it got so far?’ Same with the tunnel bombing in New York. We found the perpetrator, but what the bottom-liners on the Hill wanted to know is why didn’t our intelligence resources know it was going to happen and stop it. No, Matt. We’re too close to sinking ourselves to start rocking the boat.”
“I’m not asking you to rock anything,” Stoll said. “Just throw the guy a life preserver.”
“We may need it ourselves,” Martha replied.
Stoll raised his hands as if he were going to protest, then let them drop. “So is this the best we can do for a good and loyal friend? Leave him twisting in the .wind? Hell, Paul, is that what would happen to me or Martha or any from Op-Center who got into trouble?”
“You should know me better than that,” Hood said.
“Anyway, that’s different,” Martha said.
“Why?” Stoll asked. “Because we get a paycheck from this place instead of from another place?”
“No,” Martha replied coolly. “Because the people running Op-Center would have to approve whatever you did that got you in trouble. If we okayed it and it was wrong, then we’d take the heat with you. We’d deserve to.”
Stoll looked from Martha back to Hood. “Excuse me, Paul, but Martha’s here because Lowell’s out of town. You wanted a legal opinion and she’s given you one. Now I’m asking for a moral judgment.”
“Are you saying that obeying the law is immoral?” Martha demanded, her large brown eyes flashing.
“Not at all,” Stoll said. “I pick my words pretty carefully. What I said was that you gave a legal opinion.”
“My moral opinion would be the same,” Martha huffed. “That man did wrong. We didn’t. If we go to the mat for him, some headline-grabber’s going to take a magnifying glass to our operation next. Why should we risk that?”
Stoll said, “Because it’s the right thing to do. I thought we’re all supposed to be brothers and sisters here in the intelligence community. And I don’t really think it will raise any red flags if Paul or especially you, as a black woman—”
“African-American,” she said firmly.
“—were to go to the Congressional investigators and tell them that Viens’s good deeds outweigh the bad call he made with the forward funding. Christ, it’s not like he pocketed any of the money himself. It all went into the NRO coffers.”
“Unfortunately for him,” said Martha, “the national debt rose a little because of what he did. And the taxpayer got hit for the interest. I figure Jane Citizen is in the hole for about eighty million dollars because of his creative bookkeeping.”
“He used the money to do his job better,” Stoll said through his teeth. “He served Jane Citizen.”
Hood looked at the empty mug as he gently tapped its side. His wife only allowed matched coffee cups in the house. This mug was his, an old L.A. Rams mug given to him by quarterback Roman Gabriel during an Old-Timers Day tribute at Los Angeles City Hall.
Op-Center was his too. His to look after and protect. His to make work. Stephen Viens had helped make that happen. He’d helped Op-Center save lives and protect nations. Now Viens needed help.
The question was, did Hood have the right to risk the futures of people who reported directly to him, people who might be hurt by backlash and cutbacks, to help someone who didn’t?
As though reading his boss’s mind, Stoll said mournfully, “I guess Op-Center policy is to look out for people who have to give us their loyalty instead of one who gave it freely.”
Hood said, “This issue isn’t as absolute as either of you make it, and you both know it.”
Martha wiggled her foot. That was an indication that she was pissed off but wasn’t going to get into a spitting contest. Martha got pissed off a lot at Hood and others in government who did anything that might jeopardize her own career. Still, ambition didn’t necessarily make her wrong.
“Who’s our best friend on the committee investigating this?” Hood asked Martha.
“That depends,” she said, still irritated. “Do you consider Senator Fox our friend?”
Senator Barbara Fox had led the charge to gut the budget for Op-Center. She’d done an about-face when Hood, on business in Germany, had found the man who had murdered the senator’s daughter decades before.
“For the moment Senator Fox is our friend,” Hood said. “But like Matt said, one is a target while two is power. If we have to go in there swinging, who else’ve we got?”
“No one,” Martha said. “Five of the other eight committee members are up for re-election, and Chairman Landwehr is on a crusade. They’ll do whatever it takes to look good. Meaning protect the taxpayer by punishing the squanderer. The two senators who aren’t up for re-election are Boyd and Griffith. And they’re tight with Larry Rachlin.”
Hood frowned. CIA Director Rachlin was not a friend of Op-Center. He perceived the crisis management group as having stolen a great deal of his overseas thunder—and with only seventy-eight full-time employees. Barbara Fox was the only one they could even hope to count on. And there was no telling which way she’d go if the other members of the SIC and the press leaned on her. It might toughen her or cause her to back-paddle.
“You’ve both made strong cases,” Hood said, “but there’s one thing we can’t ignore. We’re in this whether we want to be or not. It makes sense to me that we take the offensive.”
Matt brightened. Martha shook her foot and drummed her fingers on the armrest.
“Martha, how well do you know Senator Landwehr?”
“Not very. We’ve bumped into one another at a couple of dinners, a few parties. He’s quiet, conservative, like it says in the papers. Why?”
“If there are any subpoenas,” Hood said, “they’ll probably go to me, to Mike Rodgers, and to Matt. But if you get in there first, we can spin this our way.”