CLOAK & CORKSCREW: 7) LANGLEY

My Saturday Evening Post: A Serial Novel

17.

As the American Airlines flight from LAX descended mid-afternoon, Charles Mulberry looking out the window, left side of the plane, glimpsed the Washington Monument before the big bird turned for a final approach into Dulles International Airport.

The CIA officer counted his teeth one last time before disembarking.  He was certain he’d been recalled to headquarters to be fired and expected to be looking for another job first thing next morning.

As instructed, Mulberry glanced around for a sign that said Mr. Morel.  Minutes later, in the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car, he was looking through tinted windows at contemporary buildings owned by high-tech companies whose employees now outnumbered government workers in the greater-DC area.

The sedan swung into the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia and security guards manning the gate inspected credentials.

Mulberry counted his teeth one last time and ran through a list in his mind of risk-analysis and private security companies to whom he might apply for employment.

Inside the lobby, Mulberry was greeted by a female secretary to the chief of the Foreign Research Division.  Mulberry had only met the division chief once, before flying off to LA for his first posting. The chief had shook his hand and wished him luck.

Mulberry watched the floors light up, one by one, until an elevator reached Seventh Floor.

“This way.”  The secretary led Mulberry to a conference room. Inside, a bevy of bigwigs looked at Mulberry with grim expressions.

The young CIA officer hoped they would, mercifully, get it over with fast.

Chuck Livingstone stopped pacing as Mulberry entered.  Director of the National Clandestine Service and Mulberry’s boss of bosses, Livingstone acknowledged the field officer with a gruff nod and invited him to sit down.  Also on hand:  deputy director Mike Murray and the chief of Foreign Research, Tyler Dixon.

Livingstone, a former U.S. Marine and 32-year veteran of the CIA’s operations directorate, had served a variety of posts in war-torn areas, including Afghanistan and Iraq, where he had been Baghdad station chief, running CIA’s largest battalion outside of headquarters.  But he was equally at home in London and Paris, where he had also served as chief of station.  Paris was supposed to be his swan song before retirement.  But just days before turning in his security pass, a new CIA director had been nominated and asked Livingstone to be his operations chief.

He was about five-foot-six, stocky, and mostly bald with a graying fringe and granite features.  The sleeves of his white button-down shirt were rolled up past his elbows and his tie loosened, collar unfastened.

“I think,” he began, gesturing at his colleagues, “our combined presence reflects the gravity of why we’re gathered here.”

All this just to fire me?  Mulberry repressed a compulsion to count his teeth.

“Thanks to the FBI,” Livingstone sarcastically rolled his eyes, “the French have taken Thomas Richardson into custody.  The Bureau suspects that Richardson is a counterintelligence risk.” He shook his head.  “Just because someone attends their academy—even a foreign national—the Bureau likes to believe they can trust that person forever, as one of them.”  Livingstone folded his arms.  “Well, that’s not how it works out there.  This is turning into a fucking nightmare.  The French have every reason not to help us with Richardson, but to co-opt him with all kinds of inducements to tell them what he knows.  And if he does, the French will unroll every operation and asset we’re running in France.  As it is, we’re already shutting things down to move personnel out of harm’s way.  But these things take time.  I’ll get back to that.  First, our more immediate problem.  If Richardson talks, we’re essentially out of business in France.  We’ll have to start again from square one in a lynchpin country of strategic importance to us not only in Europe but also in the Middle East and Africa.”

“Not only that,” Mike Murray added in his soft-spoken way.  “We may have issues with the French that can never be mended.  Our country’s relationship with France will be screwed for years, maybe decades.”

Mulberry had lost the compulsion to count his teeth, his attention completely riveted on this exchange.

For three years, Murray explained, the CIA had been running an agent—code-named POLO—in the Elysee Palace, home and office to the President of the French Republic.

POLO, who worked as a national security adviser, had become one of the French president’s closest confidante’s, sharing not only the president’s professional secrets, but also the details of his personal life, which included two mistresses.

Livingstone took over from there.  “Tom Richardson knows about POLO,” he said.  “It would have been his job to take over as POLO’s case officer.  As you might imagine, the commo was very intricate, and required much training.  POLO would have been Richardson’s sole mission.”

Mulberry repulsed an urge to ask why Richardson had been fired after being trained for so sensitive a mission.       

“So now you know one of CIA’s biggest secrets,” said Livingstone.  “And right now it’s also our biggest problem.  And you are probably asking yourself, why you?”

Mulberry nodded.

Livingstone glanced at Tyler Dixon, who took the ball.  “The answer,” said Dixon, “is our asset Josh Penner.”

As they spoke, 2,697 miles away their prized movie star’s anger management issues were becoming unmanageable.

Again, Natalie Ruvo and Bradley Bish of TMZ ambushed him, this time as he argued with his ex-wife in the parking lot of Malibu Mart.  They had meant to lunch together at Tra di Noi to discuss the schooling of their eight year-old son, who had just been suspended from his third grade class for asking a female student for a blowjob, but within minutes of connecting outside Starbucks their voices had risen in heated disagreement over how to handle the situation.  Giselle wanted a another private school; Penner did not want to lose a year’s tuition but felt it better to demand a meeting with the school’s principal and give him a piece of his mind.

The intrepid reporters from TMZ just happened to be on hand, having expected two of the Baldwin brothers, and got lucky.

But on the heels of TMZ’s Oxnard encounter, Penner was less than thrilled for them to witness him scowling and hissing at his wife.

“Oh my God!” Ruvo exclaimed to her video technician.  “Did you get that?”

Penner had clipped his wife with face-slap

“Got it,” said Bish softly, not wishing to attract Penner’s attention—nor his wrath.

Too late.  Penner’s eardrum vibrated from Ruvo’s shrill voice.  Recognizing the TMZ duo, he charged them.

Bish watched it through his video-finding screen  and wasn’t quick enough to avoid Penner’s fist slamming into the side of his face.

Bish blacked out momentarily before hitting the pavement.  Then he squealed in pain  and put his open palm to the side of his mouth, feeling for broken teeth.

The enraged celebrity pulled the video camera from Bish’s clenched fist.  Arching his arm, he heaved TMZ’s camera to the ground with such force it splintered into a hundred pieces.

Poised to kick Bish in the groin, Penner thought better of it as he noticed horrified bystanders—all potential witnesses against him.

“This is what happens to scumbags who harass me!” Penner shouted at a small crowd that gathered outside Starbucks.

Somebody had already called Malibu’s finest from a cell phone and now a siren wailed in the near distance.  A police cruiser turned off Cross Creek Road and rolled to where Penner hovered near Bish, who was still lying on the ground.  Two officers got out.

“We have a law about this kind of thing in California!” Penner hollered, taking the offensive.  “I was defending myself!  I demand that you charge these two with taking photographs that invade my privacy!”

After separating parties, hearing their stories and talking to a half-dozen witnesses, the cops arrested Josh Penner on suspicion of assault and battery.  The movie star was handcuffed, read his Miranda rights and stuffed into the cruiser’s backseat.

Natalie Ruvo caught it all on her iPhone.

18.

For the first time, Charles Mulberry understood his presence among CIA’s most senior bigwigs on the executive seventh floor was not about him; that he was not going to be fired any second.

Josh Penner.  The name uttered by his boss at Foreign Research echoed in his head—until the sound of his cell phone mortified him back to the table.  I forgot to turn in my cell phone!  Such contraptions were verboten beyond the lobby.

The bigwigs were amused by Mulberry’s startled reaction to this obvious lapse of security.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry…” Mulberry made a quick inspection of the Caller ID, and stopped within a millimeter of punching the off key.  “It’s him.” He paused.  “Penner. Shall I take it?”

Tyler Dixon nodded.

“Hi, I’m in a meeting but… WHAT?”

“They said I’m allowed only one call, AND YOU”RE IT!” shouted Josh Penner.

“Who’s they?”

“The cops.  They arrested me.”

Mulberry glanced up at three pairs of eyes.  “For what?” he said into his cell phone.

The movie star explained how he had been ambushed by TMZ while meeting his ex-wife in Malibu, that their altercation had resulted in his arrest, that he was being held until a bail hearing.  “I want out.  Now.”

“What do you expect me to do?” said Mulberry.

“You’re the C-I-fucking-A!” hollered Penner.  “You can do anything you want!”

“What’s going on?” asked Chuck Livingstone.

Mulberry touched the mute key of his phone.  “Penner’s been arrested.”

“For what?”

“Assault and battery.”  He paused.  “Penner has anger management issues.  Especially with paparazzi.”

Livingstone rose and began to pace as Mulberry resumed his phone conversation.

“Where’d you go?  Where are you?” Penner thought he had been disconnected.

 “I’m in Washington, D.C.”

“Oh.  Well, you need to get me out of here, like, immediately.”

“It’s not that easy for us to intervene.  Why don’t you phone your lawyer and…”

“I’m phoning YOU!” Penner shouted loud enough for Mulberry’s bigwigs to hear.  “I don’t ask you for much!  I don’t need you to pay me for my services!  But if you can’t back me up…!”  Mulberry held up his phone for the others to hear.  “I bet the FBI would get me out of this!”

“Calm down, relax,” said Mulberry.  “And don’t call the FBI.  We’ll see what we can do.”

“You got an hour,” said Penner, before the line went dead.

Mulberry looked at the mournful faces around him.  I’m going to lose my job.  I should have water boarded that sonofabitch in Oxnard.  He shrugged.  “Hollywood.”

Livingstone looked at the other two bigwigs.  “We need him.  Special circumstances.”  He drilled his eyes into his deputy.  “Mike, take care of this?”

“Which police, where?” Mike Murray demanded of Mulberry.

“Malibu.”

“What was that he said about the FBI?” asked Livingstone.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard yet,” Mulberry said sheepishly.  “The FBI is trying to co-opt Penner.”

“WHAT?”  Livingstone banged the table with a clenched fist.

 This news had obviously not yet made it up the ladder.

Mulberry ran through his meeting at the federal building with special agents-in-charge as Livingstone shook his head in disbelief.

“Penner is in contact with a female special agent who, I think, is plying him with charm.  She’s a looker. If we can’t spring him, that’ll be the next call he makes.”

Livingstone picked up an internal phone on the conference table, connected to his secretary.  “Get me the Attorney General.  It’s urgent.”   The Director of the National Clandestine Service did not like throwing his weight around  or pulling favors.  Even as an executive administrator, he preferred the same low profile he’d maintained abroad, in the field.  He found it especially distasteful to use the letters C-I-A to intimidate others in government, and in all his years of service had never once shown his agency ID card to anyone but agency security guards for access to his office and level of classification.

Over the next few minutes, Livingstone conveyed in detail precisely what he wanted Charles Mulberry to instruct Josh Penner to do, and how to do it.

As for the FBI’s aggressive poaching, Livingstone said, “We can play that game too.”  He looked at his deputy.  “Where is Sophie?”

If the agency ever staged a Miss CIA Contest, Sophie Gunderson would have won every year since joining six years before at age 23.  She was also smart as a whip, destined for senior management by her mid-thirties.

“Kabul.” replied Mike Murray.

All the smartest, most ambitious officers were in Kabul.  Or Baghdad.

“Recall her to headquarters.”  He turned to Mulberry.  “Grab the next plane back to LA and get this going with Penner a.s.a.p.”

“What if the police are still holding him?”

The conference room phone rang.  Livingstone picked it up.  His secretary told him she had the Attorney General.  “Put him through.”  He cupped the mouthpiece with his hand and addressed Mulberry.  “By the time your plane lands, your asset will be out.”

19.

As Charles Mulberry checked in for an evening flight to LA, Jenny Jones was traversing arrivals zone at the same airport. She taxied to the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, checked in at the Badge Room and was escorted into an austere concrete building most special agents in the field wished to avoid.

Awaiting her presence:  A Special Agent from the Bureau’s Washington field officer and from the Bureau’s National Security Division, a unit chief with responsibility for Latin America.

Jones already knew that Jose Hernandez, the Venezuelan intelligence officer, was of special interest to the FBI.  But she did not yet know why.  She could only speculate it must be pretty darn important if they were willing go head-to-head with CIA.  Choose your fights carefully.

The unit chief, Ramon Fernandes, a Cuban-American, filled her in, while the DC field agent, whose duty it was to monitor Hernandez’s movements, listened quietly.

“We believe,” said Fernandes, “that Hernandez has been sent to Washington specifically to handle a spy they’ve been running inside the U.S. State Department.”

Jones whistled softly.

“We don’t know the spy’s identity, only that he or she exists, and the spy has been providing vital U.S. national security secrets to Venezuela.  We know from NSA intercepts that Hugo Chavez personally has taken a special interest in this spy.”  He paused.  “We also have reason to believe, through some of the same intercepts, that Chavez wants their spy to defect to Caracas and be paraded as a trophy in their on-going PR offensive against our country.  We think Chavez’s intelligence chief is fighting this, on the basis that the intelligence they’re receiving is strategically important.  But Chavez always gets his way.  Hernandez is in the middle, awaiting their final decision.  It will be his job to organize an exfiltration of the spy from Washington to Venezuela.”

Jones nodded, then opened her mouth to pose a question.

Fernandes put his hand up.  “I’m not finished.  We want to pitch Hernandez a deal.  Entice him to come over to our side and purposely screw up the exfiltration.  With his assistance, we catch the spy red-handed as he or she is attempting to flee with a suitcase full of classified documents.”

“How…?”

“I’m getting there.”  Fernandes exchanged glances with the DC field agent.  “Our profile of Hernandez suggests that he adores his country and his president, and so our standard approach, driving an ideological wedge while offering an all-expense-paid new life in this country, would probably not sway him.”  Fernandes paused.  “That’s where Josh Penner comes in.”

And then Ramon Fernandes briefed Jenny Jones on precisely what the FBI, at his highest level, desired for her to organize with Josh Penner.