“Christ, John!” Ritter was even too surprised to blast Clark for violating his own security by stepping into a separate operation.
“I recognized one of the bodies,” Clark went on. “Captain Emilio Rojas, United States Army. He was a hell of a nice kid, by the way.”
“I’m sorry about that. Nobody ever said this was safe.”
“I’m sure his family, if any, will appreciate that. This operation is blown. It’s time to cut our losses. What are we doing to get them out?” Clark asked.
“I’m looking at that. I have to coordinate with somebody. I’m not sure that he’ll agree.”
“In that case, sir,” Clark told his boss, “I suggest that you make your case rather forcefully.”
“Are you threatening me?” Ritter asked quietly.
“No, sir, I would prefer not to have you read me that way. I am telling you, on the basis of my experience, that this operation must be terminated ASAP. It is your job to make that necessity plain to the people who authorized the operation. Failing to get such permission, I would advise you to terminate the operation anyway.”
“I could lose my job for that,” the DDO pointed out.
“After I identified the body of Captain Rojas, I set fire to the truck. Couple reasons. I wanted to divert the enemy somewhat, and, of course, I also wanted to render the bodies unrecognizable. I’ve never burned the body of a friendly before. I did not like doing that. Larson still doesn’t know why I did it. He’s too young to understand. You’re not, sir. You sent those people into the field and you are responsible for them. If you are telling me that your job is more important than that, I am here to tell you that you are wrong, sir.” Clark hadn’t yet raised his voice above the level of a reasonable man discussing ordinary business, but for the first time in a very long time, Bob Ritter feared for his personal safety.
“Your diversion attempt was successful, by the way. The opposition has forty people looking in the wrong place now.”
“Good. That will make the extraction effort all the easier to accomplish.”
“John, you can’t give me orders like this.”
“Sir, I am not giving you orders. I am telling you what has. to be done. You told me that the operation was mine to run.”
“That was RECIPROCITY, not SHOWBOAT.”
“This is not a time for semantics, sir. If you do not pull those people out, more – possibly all of them – will be killed. That, sir, is your responsibility. You can’t put people in the field and not support them. You know that.”
“You’re right, of course,” Ritter said after a moment. “I can’t do it on my own. I have to inform – well, you know. I’ll take care of that. We’ll pull them out as quickly as we can.”
“Good.” Clark relaxed. Ritter was a sharp operator, often too sharp in his dealings with subordinates, but he was a man of his word. Besides, the DDO was too smart to cross him on a matter like this. Clark was sure of that. He had made his own position pretty damned clear, and Ritter had caught the signal five-by-five.
“What about Larson and his courier?”
“I’ve pulled them both out. His plane’s at Panama, and he’s at the Marriott down the road. He’s pretty good, by the way, but he’s probably blown as far as Colombia is concerned. I’d say they could both use a few weeks off.”
“Fair enough. What about you?”
“I can head back tomorrow if you want. You might want me to help with the extraction.”
“We may have a line on Cortez.”
“Really?”
“And you’re the guy who got the first picture of him.”
“Oh. Where – the guy at the Untiveros house, the guy we just barely missed?”
“The same. Positive ID from the lady he seduced. He’s running the people they have in the field from a little house near Anserma.”
“I’d have to take Larson back for that.”
“Think it’s worth the risk?”
“Getting Cortez?” Clark thought for a moment. “Depends. It’s worth a look. What do we know about his security?”
“Nothing,” Ritter admitted, “just a rough idea where the house is. We got that from an intercept. Be nice to get him alive. He knows a lot of things we want to find out. We bring him back here and we can hang a murder rap over his head. Death-penalty kind.”
Clark nodded thoughtfully. Another element of spy fiction was the canard about how people in the intelligence business were willing to take their cyanide capsules or face a firing squad with a song in their hearts. The facts were to the contrary. Men faced certain death courageously only when there was no attractive alternative. The trick was to give them such an alternative, which didn’t require the mind of a rocket scientist, as the current aphorism went. If they got Cortez, the normal form would be take him all the way through a trial, sentence him to death – just a matter of picking the right judge, and in national-security matters, there was always lots of leeway – and take it from there. Cortez would crack in due course, probably even before the trial started. Cortez was no fool, after all, and would know when and how to strike a bargain. He’d already sold out on his own country. Selling out on the Cartel was trivial beside that.
Clark nodded. “Give me a few hours to think about it.”
Ryan turned left off 10th Street, Northwest, into the drive-through. There were uniformed and plainclothes guards, one of whom held a clipboard. He approached the car.
“Jack Ryan to see Dan Murray.”
“Could I see some ID, please?”
Jack pulled out his CIA pass. The guard recognized it for what it was and waved to another guard. This one punched the button to lower the steel barrier that was supposed to prevent people with car bombs from driving under the headquarters of the FBI. He pulled over it and found a place to park the car. A young FBI agent met him in the lobby and handed him a pass that would work the Bureau’s electronic gate. If someone invented the right sort of computer virus, Jack thought, half of the government would be prevented from going to work. And maybe the country would be safe until the problem was fixed.
The Hoover Building has a decidedly unusual layout, a maze of diagonal corridors intersecting with squared-off corridors. It is even worse than the Pentagon for the uninitiated to find their way about. In this case, Ryan was well and truly disoriented by the time they found the right office. Dan was waiting for him and led him into his private office. Jack closed the door behind him.
“What gives?” Murray asked.
Ryan set his briefcase on Murray’s desk and opened it.
“I need some guidance.”
“About what?”
“About what is probably an illegal operation – several of them, as a matter of fact.”
“How illegal?”
“Murder,” Jack said as undramatically as he could manage.
“The car bombs in Colombia?” Murray asked from his swivel chair.
“Not bad, Dan. Except they weren’t car bombs.”
Oh? Dan sat down and thought for a few seconds before speaking. He remembered that whatever was being done was retribution for the murder of Emil and the rest. “Whatever they were, the law on this is fairly muddled, you know. The prohibition against killing people in intelligence operations is an Executive Order, promulgated by the President. If he writes except in this case on the bottom of the order, then it’s legal – sort of. The law on this issue is really strange. More than anything else, it’s a constitutional matter, and the Constitution is nice and vague where it has to be.”
“Yeah, I know about that. What makes it illegal is that I’ve been told to give incorrect information to Congress. If the oversight people were in on it, it wouldn’t be murder. It would be properly formulated government policy. In fact, as I understand the law, it would not be murder even if we did it first and then told Congress, because we have a lead time to start a covert op if the oversight folks are out of town. But if the DCI tells me to give false information to Congress, then we’re committing murder, because we’re not following the law. That’s the good news, Dan.”
“Go on.”
“The bad news is that too many people know what’s going on, and if the story gets out, some people we have out in the field are in a world of hurt. I’ll set the political dimension aside for the moment except to say that there’s more than one. Dan, I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do.” Ryan’s analysis, as usual, was very accurate. He’d made only a single mistake. He didn’t know what the real bad news was.