“There’s the key to it right there,” Ryan said. “How much you want to bet that this whole thing started because it was an election year?”
Murray’s phone rang. “Yeah? Okay, thanks.” He hung up. “Cutter just got in his car. He’s heading up the G.W. Parkway. Anybody want to guess where he’s going?”
26. Instruments of State
INSPECTOR O’DAY THANKED his lucky stars – he was an Irishman and believed in such things – that Cutter was such an idiot. Like previous National Security Advisers he’d opted against having a Secret Service detail, and the man clearly didn’t know the first thing about countersurveillance techniques. The subject drove right onto the George Washington Parkway and headed north in the firm belief that nobody would notice. No doubling back, no diversion into a one-way street, nothing that one could learn from watching a TV cop show or better yet, reading a Philip Marlowe mystery, which was how Patrick O’Day amused himself. Even on surveillances, he’d play Chandler tapes. He had more problems figuring those cases out than the real ones, but that was merely proof that Marlowe would have made one hell of a G-Man. This sort of case didn’t require that much talent. Cutter might have been a Navy three-star, but he was a babe in the woods as far as conspiracy went. His personal car didn’t even change lanes, and took the exit for CIA unless, O’Day thought, he had an unusual interest in the Federal Highway Administration’s Fairbanks Highway Research Station, which was probably closed in any case. About the only bad news was that picking Cutter up when he left would be tough to do. There wasn’t a good place to hide a car here – CIA security was pretty good. O’Day dropped his companion off to keep watch in the woods by the side of the road and whistled up another car to assist. He fully expected that Cutter would reappear shortly and drive right home.
The National Security Adviser never noticed the tail and parked in a VIP slot. As usual, someone held open the door and escorted him to Ritter’s office on the seventh floor. The Admiral took his seat without a friendly word.
“Your operation is really coming apart,” he told the DDO harshly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I met with Félix Cortez last night. He knows about the troops. He knows about the recon on the airfields. He knows about the bombs, and he knows about the helicopter we’ve been using to support SHOWBOAT. I’m shutting everything down. I’ve already had the helicopter fly back to Eglin, and I ordered the communications people at VARIABLE to terminate operations.”
“The hell you have!” Ritter shouted.
“The hell I haven’t. You’re taking your orders from me, Ritter. Is that clear?”
“What about our people?” the DDO demanded.
“I’ve taken care of that. You don’t need to know how. It’s all going to quiet down,” Cutter said. “You got your wish. There is a gang war underway. Drug exports are going to be cut by half. We can let the press report that the drug war is being won.”
“And Cortez takes over, right? Has it occurred to you that as soon as he’s settled in, things change back?”
“Has it occurred to you that he can blow the operation wide open? What do you suppose will happen to you and the Judge if he does that?”
“The same thing that’ll happen to you,” Ritter snarled back.
“Not to me. I was there, so was the Attorney General. The President never authorized you to kill anybody. He never said anything about invading a foreign country.”
“This whole operation was your idea, Cutter.”
“Says who? Do you have my signature on a single memo?” the Admiral asked. “If this gets blown, the best thing you can hope for is that we’ll be on the same cellblock. If that Fowler guy wins, we’re both fucked. That means we can’t let it get blown, can we?”
“I do have your name on a memo.”
“That operation is already terminated, and there’s no evidence left behind, either. So what can you do to expose me without exposing yourself and the Agency to far worse accusations?” Cutter was rather proud of himself. On the flight back from Panama he’d figured the whole thing out. “In any case, I’m the guy giving the orders. The CIA’s involvement in this thing is over. You’re the only guy with records. I suggest that you do away with them. All the traffic from SHOWBOAT, VARIABLE, RECIPROCITY, and EAGLE EYE gets destroyed. We can hold on to CAPER. That’s one part of the op that the other side hasn’t cottoned to. Convert that into a straight covert operation and we can still use it. You have your orders. Carry them out.”
“There will be loose ends.”
“Where? You think people are going to volunteer for a stretch in federal prison? Will your Mr. Clark announce the fact that he killed over thirty people? Will that Navy flight crew write a book about dropping two smart-bombs on private homes in a friendly country? Your radio people at VARIABLE never actually saw anything. The fighter pilot splashed some airplanes, but who’s he going to tell? The radar plane that guided him in never saw him do it, because they always switched off first. The special-ops people who handled the land side of the operation at Pensacola won’t talk. And there are only a few people from the flight crews we captured. I’m sure we can work something out with them.”
“You forgot the kids we have in the mountains,” Ritter said quietly. He knew that part of the story already.
“I need information on where they are so that I can arrange for a pickup. I’m going to handle that through my own channels, if you don’t mind. Give me the information.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a request. You know, I just could be the guy who exposes you. Then your attempts to tie me in with all this would merely look like a feeble effort at exculpating yourself.”
“It would still wreck the election.”
“And guarantee your imprisonment. Hell, Fowler doesn’t even believe in putting serial killers in the chair. How do you think he’ll react to dropping bombs on people who haven’t even been indicted – and what about that ‘collateral damage’ you were so cavalier about? This is the only way, Ritter.”
“Clark is back in Colombia. I’m sending him after Cortez. That would also tie things up.” It was Ritter’s last play, and it wasn’t good enough.
Cutter jerked in his chair. “And what if he blows it? It is not worth the risk. Call off your dog. That, too, is an order. Now give me that information – and shred your files.”
Ritter didn’t want to. But he didn’t see an alternative. The DDO walked to his wall safe – the panel was open at the moment – and pulled out the files. In SHOWBOAT-II was a tactical map showing the programmed exfiltration sites. He gave it to Cutter.
“I want it all done tonight.”
Ritter let out a breath. “It will be.”
“Fine.” Cutter folded the map into his coat pocket. He left the office without another word.
It all came down to this, Ritter told himself. Thirty years of government service, running agents all over the world, doing things that his country needed to have done, and now he had to follow an outrageous order or face Congress, and courts, and prison. And the best alternative would be to take others there with him. It wasn’t worth it. Bob Ritter worried about those kids in the mountains, but Cutter said that he’d take care of it. The Deputy Director (Operations) of the Central Intelligence Agency told himself that he could trust the man to keep his word, knowing that he wouldn’t, knowing that it was cowardice to pretend that he would.
He lifted the files off the steel shelves himself, taking them to his desk. Against the wall was a paper shredder, one of the more important instruments of contemporary government. These were the only copies of the documents in question. The communications people on that hilltop in Panama shredded everything as soon as they uplinked copies to Ritter’s office. CAPER went through NSA, but there was no operational traffic there, and those files would be lost in the mass of data in the basement of the Fort Meade complex.
The machine was a big one, with a self-feeding hopper. It was entirely normal for senior government officials to destroy records. Extra copies of sensitive files were liabilities, not assets. No notice would be taken of the fact that the clear plastic bag that had been empty was now filled with paper pasta that had once been important intelligence documents. CIA burned tons of the stuff every day, and used some of the heat that was generated to make hot water for the washrooms. Ritter set the papers in the hopper in half-inch lots, watching the entire history of his field operations turn to rubbish.