68.
At first, LA-based CIA officer Charles Mulberry did not comprehend the meaning of Tom Richardson’s presence on the Seventh Floor. Had he been caught? But the smile on Richardson’s face expressed contentment. And so it took only a few seconds for Mulberry to fathom the situation, before any of the assembled CIA brass opened their mouths: Richardson had been brought in from the cold.
“Mission accomplished,” said Chuck Livingstone, the clandestine service chief. “Thank you, Charlie, for your role.”
Mulberry shrugged, incredulous that he did not need to commence job-hunting next morning. “Thank you, sir.” He paused. “I realize I don’t have a need to know, but can anyone tell me in general terms what happened?”
Livingstone glanced at the others and nodded. “We sent Richardson to Paris under deep cover. His legend? Vengeful rogue agent, bent on exposing secrets. We needed to disrupt an extremely important Russian intelligence operation based in France—and Tom was our bait. We lured the Russians to him.”
“The French couldn’t have helped?”
Livingstone shook his head. “The French were part of it, so we needed to ruse them, too.”
“Part of what?”
“That’s where need to know cuts in,” said Livingstone. “But I’ll tell you that we succeeded in breaking up an extremely important relationship between the Russian FSB and French DGSE that dealt with selling weapons to countries hostile to the United States. And it appears, as a bonus, our operation has driven a major wedge between Russia and France.”
Mulberry, who had been standing, too astonished to move, finally sat down, shaking his head. He turned to Richardson. “Ballsy stuff. Well done. But what do you do now?”
Tyler Dixon, chief of Foreign Research responded. “We have a few ideas we’re working on. We may bring Tom into our division under the same legend he used in France, as a CIA critic, turn him into a lightning rod for those who wish us harm. We’re also thinking of sending him out to California—an appropriate place for a CIA critic—and running him through LA field office. He can ingratiate himself with the kind of people we would normally try to recruit in Hollywood.”
“Oh, and the main reason we wanted you here this evening,” said Livingstone.
There was more?
“Our Public Affairs office received a call from Brooke Holden of TZM. It appears they have uncovered Josh Penner’s past—and I do mean past-tense—association with our agency.”
Mulberry shuddered, and repressed an immediate impulse to count every tooth in his mouth.
“We think we can contain it,” Livingstone continued. “We invited Mr. Holden to Washington at our expense, and tomorrow we will give him The Treatment. We wanted you here for that.”
“The Treatment?” Mulberry gulped.
Livingstone studied the young case officer, amused. “Don’t worry, Charlie—we’re not going to ask you to kill him.” He winked at the others. “We will give him the grand tour of Langley, wine and dine him, and brief him, generally, on how we work with access agents. We hope to win him over—and maybe even gain his cooperation going forward. Tyler and I will welcome him personally to the Seventh Floor, and you will be his guide. Can you handle that?”
69.
Brooke Holden of TZM had, that evening, checked into the swank Hay-Adams Hotel on Lafayette Square —a lavish suite overlooking the White House—courtesy of Uncle Sam.
He huddled with Jeremy Katz to come up to scratch on what the private eye had witnessed, a supplement to the Dataveillant’s information and analysis, and to take possession of all his photos from Zurich. But it was Penner’s precise whereabouts, presumably in Washington, that was of utmost importance to the TZM chief.
70.
Jose Hernandez did not normally attempt to seek out the director of DISIP with a problem. But this was no normal circumstance.
It took about two hours for the call to be arranged, and when DISIP’s director finally got on the horn, Hernandez hurried to the sound-proofed room where the cryptographic STE had already been code-keyed for him.
Hernandez outlined his quandary: His two missions had become entangled. The spy he had been ordered to bring home to Caracas as a trophy had gone behind his back and coerced Josh Penner, the Hollywood star with whom he had become the intermediary on behalf of their esteemed president, into arranging a personal introduction to Chavez, supposedly to create a back-channel.
The director listened patiently until Hernandez completed his long whine. And the he said, “So what is the problem?”
Hernandez, believing he had not been understood, launched into his spiel a second time.
The director stopped him. “Don’t you see, this is good, not bad.”
Hernandez tried to comprehend what was good about this. “Our president would like a back-channel?” he asked.
“No, Jose. The president wants the man you are running to appear in Caracas. The man you are running has figured out a safer way of traveling to Caracas than through exfiltration, which has some risks. Don’t you understand that he is one step ahead of you?”
This stumped Hernandez. And he suddenly felt the fool. “I thought so, too,” he mumbled to his director. “But I felt I should seek your expert guidance to be certain.”
Humbled, Hernandez returned to his cubicle to smoke a cigarette and calm himself, having just made a fool of himself in the director’s eyes, and to configure how to get Jack Woodward back on the train he had all but derailed.
He did not have a good way to make contact with Woodward, and he did not want to ambush him again at Martin’s Tavern.
The nicotine, he hoped, would steady his nerves and stimulate his mind.