Dead or Alive Read online

  “Is that so?”

  “Well, it is today. The world’s changed. The Romania job you and Chavez pulled off—that must have been exciting.”

  “That’s one way to put it. Not often you find yourself in a foreign country in the middle of a revolution, but we got the job done before we skipped the country.”

  “You killed your subject,” Alden said, somewhat distastefully.

  “He needed killing,” Clark said in reply, eyes locked on to Alden’s face.

  “It was against the law.”

  “I’m not an attorney, sir.” And an executive order, even a presidential one, wasn’t exactly statutory or constitutional law. This guy was a quintessential desk-sitter, John realized. If it wasn’t written down, it wasn’t real, and if it wasn’t authorized in writing, then it was wrong. “When someone points a loaded firearm at you,” Clark said, “it’s a little late to start formal negotiations.”

  “You try to avoid such contingencies?”

  “I do.” It’s better to shoot the bastards in the back and unarmed, but that’s not always possible, Clark thought. When it’s life and death, the concept of a fair fight went out the window. “My mission was to apprehend that individual and, if possible, to hand him over to appropriate authorities. Didn’t work out.”

  “Your relations with law enforcement have not always been friendly,” Alden said, flipping through pages of the classified file.

  “Excuse me, does that file have my driving record in it?”

  “Your friendship with senior people has been helpful to your career.”

  “I suppose so, but that happens with a lot of people. I generally accomplish my missions, and that’s why I stayed around so long. Mr. Alden, what is the purpose of this interview?”

  “Well, as deputy DO I have to be familiar with people in the Clandestine Service, and looking over this, I see that you’ve had a most colorful career. You’re lucky you lasted this long, and you can now look back on a singular career.”

  “And my next assignment?”

  “There is no next assignment. Oh, you can go back to The Farm as a training officer, but really my best advice would be for you to take your retirement. It’s well earned. Your retirement papers are ready for processing. You’ve earned it, John,” he said, with the cold hint of a smile.

  “But if I were twenty years younger, you would not have a place for me?”

  “Maybe an embassy posting,” Alden said. “But neither one of us is twenty years younger. The Agency’s changed, Mr. Clark. We’re getting out of the paramilitary business, except when we have people assigned directly to us from Delta Force, for example, but we’re trying to get away from the hands-on stuff that you and Chavez have specialized in. The world is a kinder and gentler place.”

  “Tell that to New Yorkers, maybe?” Clark asked evenly.

  “There are other ways to deal with things like that. The trick is finding out ahead of time and encouraging people to take a different path if they want to get our attention.”

  “How, exactly, does one do that—theoretically, of course?”

  “That’s an issue we address here on the seventh floor, on a case-by-case basis.”

  “Out in the field, issues like that one don’t always arrive in your lap in a manner which allows referral to headquarters. You have to trust your people to take the initiative, and support them when they do so intelligently. I’ve been there. It can get awfully lonely out there in the field if you do not have confidence in the people behind you, especially when they’re five thousand miles behind you.”

  “Initiative works well in the movies but not in the real world.”

  When’s the last time you were out in the field in the real world? Clark wanted to ask but did not. He was not in here for an argument or even a discussion. He was here only to listen to the voice of God, and relayed from this academic asshole. It had happened before at the Agency, but back in the 1970s, when he’d avoided involuntary retirement for the first time, with the help of James Greer, he’d made something of a name for himself working in the Soviet Union on “special” missions. It had been nice, once, to have an enemy everyone believed in.

  “So I’m out?”

  “You will retire honorably, with the thanks of the nation, which you have served well, and at peril to your life. You know, reading through this, I wonder why you don’t have a star on the atrium wall.” He referred to the white marble wall with gold stars that memorialized the names of field officers who’d died in the service of the CIA.

  The book that listed those names—it was in a glass-and-brass case—had many blank spaces showing only dates, because the names were themselves classified, even fifty years after the fact. In all likelihood, Alden took the executive elevators up from the security parking under the building, and so was not routinely forced to look at the wall—hell, not even to walk past it.

  “What about Chavez?”

  “As I told you, he’s eligible for retirement in just ten more weeks, counting his time in the Army. He’ll retire as GS-12, with full benefits, of course. Or if he insists, he can have a training post at The Farm for a year or two, before we send him off to Africa, probably.”

  “Why Africa?”

  “Things are happening there—enough things to keep us interested.”

  Sure. Send him to Angola, where they’ll take his Spanish accent for Portuguese and help him get whacked by some leftover guerrillas, right? Not that you’d care one way or another, Alden. These kinder and gentler people never really cared much for individuals. They were too interested in the big-picture issues of the day, forcing square reality pegs into the round theoretical holes of how the world was supposed to look and act. It was a common failing among the politically astute.

  Clark said, “Well, that’s up to him, I suppose, and after twenty-nine years, I guess I have my retirement pretty well maxed out, eh?”

  “Pretty well,” Alden agreed, with a smile about as genuine as a man about to close the sale on a 1971 Ford Pinto.

  Clark stood. He did not extend his hand, but Alden did, and Clark had to take it out of simple good manners, and good manners were always disarming to the assholes of the world.

  “Oh, I almost forgot: Someone wants to see you. You know a James Hardesty?”

  “Served with him once, yeah,” Clark replied. “Isn’t he retired by now?”

  “No, not yet. He’s working with operational archives, part of a project for the DO we’ve been running for about fourteen months—sort of a classified history project. Anyway, his office is on the fourth floor, past the kiosk by the elevators.” Alden handed over the room number, scribbled on a blank sheet of paper.

  Clark took it and folded it into his pocket. Jimmy Hardesty was still here? How the hell did he evade the attention of people like this Alden prick? “Okay, thanks. I’ll catch him on the way out.”

  “They need me in there?” Ding asked when Clark came out the door.

  “No, he just wanted me this time.” Clark adjusted his neck-tie in a prearranged signal, to which Chavez did not react. And with that, they took the elevator down to the fourth floor. They walked past the kiosk staffed by blind vendors who sold such things as candy bars and Cokes—it always struck visitors as creepy and sinister, but for the CIA it was a laudable way to provide employment to the handicapped. If they were really blind. One could never be sure of anything in this building, but that was just part of the mystique.

  They found Hardesty’s office and knocked on the cipher-locked door. It opened in a few seconds.

  “Big John,” Hardesty said in greeting.

  “Hey, Jimmy. What’re you doing in this rat hole?”

  “Writing the history of operations that nobody will ever read, at least not while we’re alive. You’re Chavez?” he asked Ding.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come on in.” Hardesty waved them into his cubbyhole, which did have two spare chairs and almost enough room for the extra legs, plus a worktable that acte
d as an ersatz desk.

  “What year are you in?” John asked.

  “Would you believe 1953? I spent all last week on Hans Tofte and the Norwegian freighter job. That job had a real body count, and they were not all bad guys. Cost of doing business back then, I guess, and the sailors on the ship should have thought twice before signing on.”

  “Before our time, Jimmy. Did you talk to Judge Moore about it? I think he had a piece of that operation.”

  Hardesty nodded. “He was in last Friday. The judge must have been a handful in his younger days, before he took that seat behind the bench. Him and Ritter both.”

  “What’s Bob Ritter doing now?”

  “You didn’t hear? Shit. Died three months ago down in Texas, liver cancer.”

  “How old was he?” Chavez asked.

  “Seventy-five. He was at MD Anderson Cancer Center, down in Texas, so he had the best treatment available, but it didn’t work.”

  “Everybody dies of something,” Clark observed. “Sooner or later. Nobody told us about Ritter over in England. I wonder why.”

  “The current administration didn’t like him much.”

  That made sense, John thought. He was a warrior from the worst of the bad old days who’d worked in Redland against the main enemy of the time, and cold warriors died hard. “I’ll have to hoist a drink to his memory. We butted heads occasionally, but he never back-shot me. I wonder about that Alden guy.”

  “Not our kind of people, John. I’m supposed to do a full report on people we whacked along the way, what laws might have been violated, that sort of thing.”

  “So what can I do for you?” Clark asked his host.

  “Alden pitched retirement to you?”

  “Twenty-nine years. And I’m still alive. Kinda miraculous when you think about it,” John observed with a moment’s sober reflection.

  “Well, if you need something to do, I have a number for you to call. Your knowledge is an asset; you can make money off it. Buy Sandy a new car, maybe.”

  “What sort of work?”

  “Something you will find interesting. Don’t know if it’ll be your kind of thing, but what the hell. Worst case, they’ll buy lunch.”

  “Who is it?”

  Hardesty didn’t answer the question. Instead he handed over another slip of paper with a phone number on it. “Give ’em a call, John. Unless you want to write your memoirs and get it through the people on the seventh floor.”

  Clark had himself a laugh. “No way.”

  Hardesty stood up, extended his hand. “Sorry to cut this short, but I have a ton of work to do. Give ’em a call—or don’t, if you don’t feel like it. Up to you. Maybe retirement will agree with you.”

  Clark stood. “Fair enough. Thanks.”

  With that, it was one more elevator ride and out the front door. For their part, John and Ding did stop and look at the wall. For some of the people at the CIA, those stars did represent the Honored Dead, no less than Arlington National Cemetery, though tourists were allowed to go there.

  “What number, John?” Chavez asked.

  “Some place in Maryland, judging by the area code.” He checked his watch and pulled out his new cell phone. “Let’s find out where. ...”

  Jack’s daily electronic traffic scan took up the first ninety minutes of his day and provided nothing of substance, so he grabbed his third cup of coffee, picked through the bagels, then returned to his office and began what he’d come to call his “morning troll” of the myriad intercepts the campus received from the U.S. intelligence community. Forty minutes into what was amounting to an exercise in frustration, a Homeland Security intercept caught his eye. Now, that was interesting, he thought, then picked up the phone.

  He was in Jerry Rounds’s office five minutes later. “Whatcha got?” Rounds asked.

  “DHS/FBI/ATF intercept. They’re looking for a missing plane.”

  This got Rounds’s attention. The Department of Homeland Security had something of an event threshold system in place that generally did a good job of keeping trivial inquiries off its intelligence plate. The fact that such an inquiry had climbed this high on the food chain suggested that another agency had already done the routine legwork and confirmed that the plane in question hadn’t simply been misplaced by a sloppy charter company in an administrative shuffle.

  “ATF, huh?” Rounds muttered. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms also specialized in explosive-related investigations. Combine that with a missing plane . . . Jack thought.

  “What kind?” Rounds asked.

  “Didn’t say. Has to be small, noncommercial, or the news would have it.” Missing 757s tended to generate buzz.

  “How long ago?”

  “Three days.”

  “We know the source?”

  “The routing looked internal, so FAA or NTSB, maybe. I checked yesterday and today; not a peep from anyone.” Which meant somebody had clamped a lid on the subject. “Might be another way to go about this, though.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Follow the money,” Jack said.

  Rounds smiled at this. “Insurance.”

  32

  IT WAS 10:47 when his phone rang. Tom Davis had just finished a fairly large bond trade, one that would earn The Campus $1,350,000, which was not bad for three days’ work. He grabbed the phone on the second ring. “Tom Davis.”

  “Mr. Davis, my name is John Clark. I was told to give you a call. Maybe do lunch.”

  “Told by whom?”

  “Jimmy Hardesty,” Clark replied. “I’ll have a friend with me. His name is Domingo Chavez.”

  Davis thought for a moment, immediately cautious, but it was more an instinctive reaction than a necessity. Hardesty didn’t hand out these introductions to hacks. “Sure, let’s talk,” Davis replied. He gave Clark directions and said, “I’ll look for you about noon.”

  Hey, Gerry,” Davis said on entering the top-floor office. “Just got a call.”

  “Anybody we know?” the boss asked.

  “Hardesty at Langley sent two guys to see us. Both slotted for retirement from the Agency. John Clark and Domingo Chavez.”

  Hendley’s eyes went a little wide. “The John Clark?”

  “So it would appear. He’ll be here around noon.”

  “Do we want him?” the former senator asked, already half-knowing the answer.

  “He’s certainly worth talking to, boss. If nothing else, he’d be a hell of a training officer for our field people. I only know him by reputation. Ed and Mary Pat Foley love the guy, and that’s a hard endorsement to ignore. He doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty, thinks on his feet. Good instincts, plenty smart. Chavez is cut from the same cloth. He was part of Rainbow with Clark.”

  “Reliable?”

  “We have to talk to them, but probably.”

  “Fair enough. Bring them over if you think it’s worthwhile.”

  “Will do.” Davis made his way out.

  Christ on a bike, Hendley thought. John Clark.

  Left here,” Domingo said as they got within a hundred yards of the light.

  “Yeah. Must be that building there on the right. See the antenna farm?”

  “Yep,” Chavez observed as they took the turn. “Get a whole shitload of FM with that.”

  Clark chuckled at that. “Don’t see any security. Good sign.” Professionals knew when to play harmless.

  He parked the rent-a-car in what seemed to be the visitors’ lot, and they got out and walked in the front door.

  “Good morning, sir,” said a uniformed security guard. He was in a generic uniform, and his name tag said CHAMBERS. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see a Mr. Davis. John Clark and Domingo Chavez.”

  Chambers lifted his phone and punched some numbers. “Mr. Davis? Chambers here in the lobby. Two gentlemen here to see you. Yes, sir, thank you.” The phone went back down. “He’s coming down to see you, gentlemen.”

  Davis appeared in just over a minute. He was blac
k, of average size, about fifty or so, Clark estimated. Well dressed, shirtsleeves rolled up, tie loosened. The busy broker. “Thanks, Ernie,” he said to the security guard, then: “You must be John Clark.”

  “Guilty,” John admitted. “And this is Domingo Chavez.” And handshakes were exchanged.

  “Come on up.” Davis led them inside to the elevators.

  “I’ve seen your face before. Other side of the river,” Chavez clarified.

  “Oh?” Davis reacted guardedly.

  “At the operations room. Watch officer?”

  “Well, once I was an NIO. Here I’m a lowly bond trader. Mainly corporate stuff, but some government issues.”

  They followed Davis to the top floor and then to his office—or most of the way. His office was right next to Rick Bell’s, and someone was heading in there.

  “Hey,” Clark heard, and turned around to find Jack Ryan Jr. walking down the hall.

  Clark took his hand, and for once his face showed surprise. “Jack . . . You work here, eh?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Currency arbitrage, mostly. Swapping money back and forth, stuff like that.”

  “I thought the family business was stocks and bonds,” Clark observed mildly.

  “Not into that . . . yet,” Jack responded. “Well, I’ve got to run. Catch you later, maybe?”

  “Sure,” Clark said. His brain wasn’t exactly spinning, but he wasn’t entirely oriented to the day’s discoveries.

  “Come on in,” Davis said next, waving him through the door.

  The office was a comfortable one and wasn’t full of furniture made in a federal prison, such as they had at CIA headquarters. Davis waved them into seats. “So how long have you known Jimmy Hardesty?”

  “For ten or fifteen years,” Clark replied. “Good man.”

  “He is that. So: You want to retire?”

  “I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “What about you, Mr. Chavez?”

  “I’m not ready for Social Security, either, and I guess I have a few marketable skills. Wife and kid, with another one on the way. Till now I haven’t had to give it much thought, but what you do here looks to be miles out of our skill set.”