The Teeth of the Tiger Read online

  “HEY, CAPTAIN.”

  Brian Caruso turned to see James Hardesty. It wasn’t even seven in the morning. He’d just finished leading his short company of Marines through their morning routine of exercise and the three-mile run, and like all his men he’d worked up a good sweat in the process. He’d dismissed his people to their showers, and was on his way back to his quarters when he’d encountered Hardesty. But before he could say anything, a more familiar voice called.

  “Skipper?” the captain turned to see Gunnery Sergeant Sullivan, his senior NCO.

  “Yeah, Gunny. The people looked pretty sharp this morning.”

  “Yes, sir. You didn’t work us too hard. Good of you, sir,” the E-7 observed.

  “How did Corporal Ward do?” Which was why Brian hadn’t worked them too hard. Ward had said he was ready to get back into the swing, but he was still coming off some nasty wounds.

  “He’s puffing some, but he didn’t cave on us. Corpsman Randall is keeping an eye on the lad for us. You know, for a squid, he isn’t too bad,” the gunny allowed. Marines are typically fairly solicitous to their Navy corpsmen, especially the ones tough enough to play in the weeds with Force Recon.

  “Sooner or later the SEALs are going to invite him out to Coronado.”

  “True enough, Skipper, and then we’re gonna have to break in a new squid.”

  “What you need, Gunny?” Caruso asked.

  “Sir—oh, he’s here. Hey, Mr. Hardesty. Just heard you were down to see the boss. Beg pardon, Captain.”

  “No problem. See you in an hour, Gunny.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Sullivan saluted smartly and headed back to the barracks.

  “He’s a pretty good NCO,” Hardesty thought aloud.

  “Big time,” Caruso agreed. “Guys like him run the Corps. They just tolerate people like me.”

  “How’s about some breakfast, Cap’n?”

  “Need a shower first, but sure.”

  “What’s on the agenda?”

  “Today’s class work is on comms, to make sure we can all call in air and artillery support.”

  “Don’t they know that?” Hardesty asked in surprise.

  “You know how a baseball team does batting practice before every game, with the batting coach around? They all know how to swing a bat, right?”

  “Gotcha.” The reason they were called fundamentals was because they really were fundamental. And these Marines, like ballplayers, wouldn’t object to the day’s lesson. One trip into the tall weeds had taught them all how important the fundamentals were.

  It was a short walk to Caruso’s quarters. Hardesty helped himself to some coffee and a newspaper, while the young officer showered. The coffee was pretty good for a single man’s making. The paper, as usual, didn’t tell him much he didn’t already know, except for late sports scores, but the comics were always good for a laugh.

  “Ready for breakfast?” the youngster asked, all cleaned up.

  “How’s the food here?” Hardesty stood.

  “Well, kinda hard to screw up breakfast, isn’t it?”

  “True enough. Lead on, Captain.” Together they drove the mile or so to the Consolidated Mess in Caruso’s C-class Mercedes. The car marked him as a single man, to Hardesty’s relief.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again for a while,” Caruso said, from behind the wheel.

  “Or at all?” the former Special Forces officer asked lightly.

  “That, too, yes, sir.”

  “You passed the exam.”

  It was enough to turn his head. “What exam was that, sir?”

  “I didn’t think you’d notice,” Hardesty observed with a chuckle.

  “Well, sir, you have succeeded in confusing me this morning.” Which, Captain Caruso was sure, was part of today’s plan.

  “There’s an old saying: ‘If you’re not confused, you’re misinformed.’”

  “That sounds a little ominous,” Captain Caruso said, turning right into the parking lot.

  “It can be.” He got out and followed the officer toward the building.

  It was a large single-story building full of hungry Marines. The cafeteria line had racks and trays of the usual American breakfast foods, Frosted Flakes to bacon and eggs. And even some—

  “You can try the bagels, but they aren’t all that good, sir,” Caruso warned as he got two English muffins and real butter. He was clearly too young to worry about cholesterol and the other difficulties that came with increasing years. Hardesty got himself a box of Cheerios, because he had gotten that old, rather to his annoyance, along with low-fat milk and non-sugar sweetener. The coffee mugs were large, and the seating permitted a surprising amount of anonymity, though there had to be four hundred people in here, of various ranks from corporal to full-bull colonel. His host steered him to a table in a crowd of young sergeants.

  “Okay, Mr. Hardesty, what can I do for you?”

  “Number one, I know you have security clearances, up to TS, right?”

  “Yes, sir. Some compartmented stuff, but that doesn’t concern you at all.”

  “Probably,” Hardesty conceded. “Okay, what we’re about to discuss goes a little higher than that. You cannot repeat this to anyone at all. Are we clear on that?”

  “Yes, sir. This is code-word stuff. I understand.” In fact, he didn’t, thought Hardesty. This was actually beyond code word, but that explanation would have to wait for another venue. “Please go on, sir.”

  “You’ve been noticed by some fairly important people as a prime recruit prospect for a rather . . . a rather special organization that does not exist. You’ve heard this sort of thing before in movies or read it in books. But this is quite real, son. I am here to offer you a place in that organization.”

  “Sir, I am a Marine officer, and I like that.”

  “It will not prejudice your career in the Marines. As a matter of fact, you’ve been deep-dipped for promotion to major. You’ll be getting that letter next week. So, you’ll have to leave your current billet anyway. If you stay in the Marine Corps, you’ll be sent to Headquarters Marine Corps next month, to work in the intelligence/special-operations shop. You’re also going to get a Silver Star for your action in Afghanistan.”

  “What about my people? I put them in for decorations, too.” It was the mark of this kid that he’d worry about that, Hardesty thought.

  “Everyone’s been approved. Now, you’ll be able to return to the Corps whenever you wish. Your commission and routine advancement will not suffer from this at all.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “We have friends in high places,” his guest explained. “So do you, as a matter of fact. You will continue to be paid through the Corps. You may have to set up new banking arrangements, but that’s routine stuff.”

  “What will this new posting entail?” Caruso asked.

  “It will mean serving your country. Doing things that are necessary to our national security, but doing them in a somewhat irregular manner.”

  “Doing what, exactly?”

  “Not here, not now.”

  “Can you be any more mysterious, Mr. Hardesty? I might start understanding what you’re talking about and spoil the surprise.”

  “I don’t make the rules,” he replied.

  “Agency, eh?”

  “Not exactly, but you’ll find out in due course. What I need now is a yes or a no. You can leave this organization at any time if you find it not to your liking,” he promised. “But this isn’t the proper venue for a fuller explanation.”

  “When would I have to decide?”

  “Before you finish your bacon and eggs.”

  The reply caused Captain Caruso to set his muffin down. “This isn’t some sort of joke, right?” He’d taken his share of razzing due to his family connections.

  “No, Captain, it isn’t a joke.”

  The pitch was deliberately designed to be nonthreatening. People like Caruso, however courageous they might be, often regarded the
unknown—more properly, the not-understood unknown—with some degree of trepidation. His profession was dangerous enough already, and the intelligent among us do not blissfully go seeking after danger. Theirs is usually a reasoned approach to hazard, after first making sure their training and experience are adequate to the task. And so Hardesty had made sure to tell Caruso that the womb of the United States Marine Corps would always be available to take him back. It was almost true, and that was close enough for his purposes, if not, perhaps, to the young officer’s.

  “What’s your love life like, Captain?”

  The question surprised him, but he answered it truthfully. “No attachments. There’s a few girls I date, but nothing very serious yet. Is that a concern?” Just how dangerous might this be? he wondered.

  “Only from a security point of view. Most men cannot keep secrets from their wives.” But girlfriends were a different question altogether.

  “Okay, how dangerous will this job be?”

  “Not very,” Hardesty lied, not skillfully enough to be entirely successful.

  “You know, I’ve been planning to stay in the Corps at least long enough to be a light colonel.”

  “Your evaluator at Headquarters Marine Corps thinks you’re good enough to make full-bull someday, unless you step on your crank along the way. Nobody thinks that’s likely, but it has happened to a lot of good men.” Hardesty finished his Cheerios and returned his attention to the coffee.

  “Nice to know I have a guardian angel up there somewhere,” Caruso observed dryly.

  “As I say, you’ve been noticed. The Marine Corps is pretty good at spotting talent and helping it along.”

  “And so have some other people—spotted me, I mean.”

  “That’s correct, Captain. But all I am offering you is a chance. You’ll have to prove yourself along the way.” The challenge was well considered. Capable young men had trouble turning away from one. Hardesty knew he had him.

  IT HAD been a long drive from Birmingham to Washington. Dominic Caruso did it in one long day because he didn’t much like cheap motels, but even starting at five in the morning didn’t make it any shorter. He drove a white Mercedes C-class four-door much like his brother’s, with lots of luggage piled in the back. He had been stopped twice, but on both occasions the state police cars had responded favorably to his FBI credentials—called “creedos” by the Bureau—and pulled away with nothing more than a friendly wave. There was a brotherhood among law-enforcement officers that extended at least as far as ignoring speeding violations. He arrived at Arlington, Virginia, just at ten that night, where he let a bellman unpack his car for him and took the elevator to his room on the third floor. The in-room bar had a split of a decent white wine, which he downed after the needed shower. The wine and boring TV helped him sleep. He left notice for a seven o’clock wake-up call, and faded out with the help of HBO.

  “GOOD MORNING,” Gerry Hendley said at 8:45 the next morning. “Coffee?”

  “Thank you, sir.” Jack availed himself of a cup and took his seat. “Thanks for calling back.”

  “Well, we looked at your academic records. You did okay at Georgetown.”

  “For what it costs, you might as well pay attention—and, besides, it wasn’t all that hard.” John Patrick Ryan, Jr., sipped at his coffee and wondered what would be coming next.

  “We’re prepared to discuss an entry-level job,” the former senator told him right away. He’d never been one for beating about the bush, which was one of the reasons he and his visitor’s father had gotten along so well.

  “Doing what, exactly?” Jack asked, with his eyes perked up.

  “What do you know about Hendley Associates?”

  “Only what I’ve already told you.”

  “Okay, nothing of what I’m about to tell you can be repeated anywhere. Not anywhere. Are you clear on that?”

  “Yes, sir.” And just that fast, everything was clear as hell. He’d guessed right, Jack told himself. Damn.

  “Your father was one of my closest friends. I say ‘was’ because we can’t see each other anymore, and we talk very rarely. Usually because he calls here. People like your dad never retire—never all the way, anyway. Your father was one of the best spooks who ever lived. He did some things that were never written down—at least not on government paper—and probably never will be written down. In this case, ‘never’ means fifty years or so. Your father is doing his memoirs. He’s doing two versions, one for publication in a few years, and another that won’t see the light of day for a couple of generations. It will not be published until after his death. That’s his order.”

  It stuck hard at Jack that his father was making plans for after his own death. His dad—dead? It was a lot to grasp except in a distant, intellectual sense. “Okay,” he managed to say. “Does Mom know this stuff?”

  “Probably—no, almost certainly not. Some of it may not exist even at Langley. The government occasionally does things that are not committed to paper. Your father had a gift for stumbling into the middle of stuff like that.”

  “And what about you?” Junior asked.

  Hendley leaned back and took a philosophical tone. “The problem is that no matter what you do, there’s somebody who won’t like it much. Like a joke. No matter how funny it is, somebody will be offended by it. But at a high level, when somebody is offended, instead of calling you on it to your face, he goes off and cries his eyes out to a member of the press, and it goes public, usually with a great big disapproving tone attached to it. Most often that’s careerism raising its ugly head—getting ahead by back-stabbing somebody senior to you. But it’s also because people in senior positions like to make policy in accordance with their own version of right and wrong. That’s called ego. Problem is, everyone has a different version of right and wrong. Some of them can be downright crazy.

  “Now, take our current President. In the Senate Cloakroom, once Ed told me he was so opposed to capital punishment that he couldn’t even have abided executing Adolf Hitler. That was after a few drinks—he tends to be verbose when he’s been drinking, and the sad fact is that he drinks a little too much on occasion. When he said that to me, I joked about it. I told him not to say it in a speech—the Jewish vote is big and powerful and they might see it less as a deeply held principle than as a high-order insult. In the abstract a lot of people oppose capital punishment. Okay, I can respect that, though I do not agree with it. But the drawback to that position is that you cannot then deal decisively with people who do harm to others—sometimes serious harm—without violating your principles, and to some people, their consciences or political sensibilities will not let them do it. Even though the sad fact of the matter is that due process of law is not always effective, frequently outside our borders, and, on rare occasions, inside them.

  “Okay, how does this affect America? CIA doesn’t kill people—ever. At least not since the 1950s. Eisenhower was very skillful at using CIA. He was, in fact, so brilliant at exercising power that people never knew anything was happening and thought him a dullard because he didn’t do the old war dance in front of cameras. More to the point, it was a different world back then. World War Two was recent history, and the idea of killing a lot of people—even innocent civilians—was a familiar one, mainly from the bombing campaigns,” Hendley clarified. “It was just a cost of doing business.”

  “And Castro?”

  “That was President John Kennedy and his brother Robert. They had a hard-on for doing Castro. Most people think it was embarrassment over the Bay of Pigs fiasco. I personally think it might have come more from reading too many James Bond novels. There was a glamour in murdering people back then. Today we call it sociopathy,” Hendley noted sourly. “Problem was, first, that it’s a lot more fun to read about than actually to do it, and, second, it’s not an easy thing to accomplish without highly trained and highly motivated personnel. Well, I guess they found out. Then, when it became public, somehow the involvement of the Kennedy family was gl
ossed over, and CIA paid the price for doing—badly—what the sitting President had told them to do. President Ford’s Executive Order put an end to it all. And so, CIA doesn’t deliberately kill people anymore.”

  “What about John Clark?” Jack asked, remembering the look in that guy’s eyes.

  “He’s an aberration of sorts. Yes, he has killed people more than once, but he was always careful enough to do it only when it was tactically necessary at the moment. Langley does allow people to defend themselves in the field, and he had a gift for making it tactically necessary. I’ve met Clark a couple of times. Mainly, I know him by reputation. But he’s an aberration. Now that he’s retired, maybe he’ll write a book. But even if he does, it’ll never have the full story in it. Clark plays by the rules, like your dad. Sometimes he bends those rules, but to my knowledge he’s never once broken them—well, not as a federal employee,” Hendley corrected himself. He and the elder Jack Ryan had once had a long talk about John Clark, and they were the only two people in all the world who knew the whole story.

  “Once I told Dad that I wouldn’t want to be on Clark’s bad side.”

  Hendley smiled. “That’s true enough, but you could also trust John Clark with the lives of your children. When we met last, you asked me a question about Clark. I can answer now: If he were younger, he’d be here,” Hendley said revealingly.