Exile Hunter (16 page)

“You’ve missed my
point, or maybe I’ve muddled it,” Moran began again. “It’s
not that spying will stop. It’s that the Agency will be directed
inward once we don’t have foreign enemies to kick around any more.”

Moran took a sip of his
scotch and looked around to see if anyone could overhear him before
continuing.

“Look, it’s not for
me to say if the President was right or wrong to bring us all home.
All I know is that Jack Moran, for one, no longer has to risk his
immortal soul messing up other people’s lives for a living. Now
that my country says it doesn’t need me out there any more, I’m
more than happy to go on home. My wife is counting the days till she
has me back, body and soul.”

“Oh, a wife? What’s
that?” Linder joked to lighten the atmosphere.

While each man took a
long pull at his whiskey glass, Linder noticed Neil Denniston enter
through a side door. By now, the club had grown crowded and Linder
spotted Denniston before being seen. Jack Moran’s eyes followed
Linder’s line of sight to the door and noticed the newcomer, as
well. Denniston returned Linder’s wave but signaled his intention
to order a drink before joining them.

“Is Denniston a
friend of yours?” Moran asked.

“Definitely,”
Linder answered brightly. “We knew each other in college and joined
the Agency within months of each other. He’s just back from Dubai
and we’ve been plotting our next move.”

“At the risk of being
out of line, I’d be careful not to hitch my star too closely to
that one,” Moran advised.

“Oh?” Linder
replied as if surprised.

““Let’s just say
he’s been under a cloud lately,” Moran answered, swirling the ice
idly in his empty glass.

“Actually, I did hear
something, but I’ve been waiting for Neil to talk about it.”

“So he hasn’t told
you what he’s charged with?” Moran questioned.

“Charges? All he told
me was that he hadn’t been seeing eye to eye with his new COS.
Something about the new chief wanting to bring in his own team. Clean
sweep and all that…”

“I suppose that’s
true to a point,” Moran said, “but it wouldn’t account for his
being called before a disciplinary panel.”

“Wait, that doesn’t
make sense,” Linder insisted. “Neil made three huge recruitments
in Dubai and was promoted two years in a row. That kind of
performance tends to excuse a multitude of sins.”

“Except that
Denniston appears to have fabricated the new agents’ reporting. And
I happen to know it’s not just a straw in the wind, because he
worked for me on his first tour and I caught him fabricating then,
too. At the time, it looked like minor gap filling and embellishment,
so Headquarters gave him a second chance and let him off with a
warning—against my recommendation. But this time, he’s accused of
inventing intel reports out of whole cloth. In this outfit, that’s
always been a firing offense. Only now, it seems, if you’re a
member in good standing in the Unionist Party, the old rules don’t
apply. Anyway, if I were you, I wouldn’t take my cues from the
likes of Neil Denniston.”

Linder took another sip
of bourbon and nearly choked on it, turning his head just fast enough
to sputter onto the floor rather than at Moran.

The chief waited for
Linder to recover, then offered him a wad of cocktail napkins.

“Shocked?” he asked
with an amused glint in his eye.

“Not really, but I’d
still like to hear Neil’s side of the story before I draw any
conclusions,” Linder answered.

Indeed, the news that
Denniston’s habitual cheating had finally caught up with him did
not surprise Linder one bit. Denniston’s dishonesty had surfaced as
early as the Introductory Ops Course, which he and Linder had taken
at the same time, though Denniston had entered the Agency a year
earlier. Both had done well in the course, but for entirely different
reasons. Linder had excelled due to his innate talent and hard work.
Denniston possessed a similar level of talent, but had substituted
deception for effort wherever and whenever he could.

The Agency’s
intelligence operations courses were the only professional training
Linder knew where guile and deceit, in the guise of “G2-ing the
problem,” was not only condoned but rewarded. The verb, “to G2”,
referred to the historical military designation for a unit’s
intelligence and security staff. To “G2 a problem” meant to pass
an exercise or an exam by means of intelligence techniques entirely
outside conventional course rules, that is, not by practice and
study, but by stealing test answers, suborning an instructor, or
bribing a clerical worker. Denniston had rapidly become a master of
G2-ing techniques at the Farm and had employed them so boldly and so
often that, before long, he forfeited the benefits of stealth. No
matter what game he played, everyone suspected him of cheating.

Across the room, Linder
saw Neil Denniston weave his way through the crowd with a drink in
each hand. Moran, too, could see that Denniston was only a minute or
two from joining them.

“Tell me, Warren, are
you a poker player?” he asked.

Linder shook his head.
“Not my game. I played a bit in college but gave it up. Why?”

“I used to play quite
a bit,” Moran continued. “But one day I picked up a book called
Poker: A Guaranteed Income for Life
. At the book’s end,
after the author has revealed his secrets about how to manipulate
other players’ weaknesses to take their money, he writes that a
good player ends up being the biggest loser at poker. Because to win,
the good poker player has to surround himself with people who
regularly default on the use of their minds instead of people he
might come to respect and enjoy. So, the true cost of winning at
poker is that you sacrifice irreplaceable chunks of your life
catering to the self-destructive needs of neurotic losers. Now,
doesn’t that sound just a bit like what a case officer does?”

A moment after Moran
left his question hanging in the air, Neil Denniston arrived at the
booth and laid two identical drinks on the table.

“Jim Beam on the
rocks, right?”

“That’ll do just
fine,” Linder answered with an awkward laugh.

Denniston and Moran
exchanged quick glances but did not speak to one other. Moran slid
out from his seat and rose to leave.

“See you around the
quad,” he said to Linder in parting while acknowledging Denniston
with a curt nod.

“What did that old
fart want?” Denniston asked the moment Moran was out of earshot.

“He didn’t want
anything,” Linder replied. “He was just trying to cheer me up by
telling it’s no big loss if I lose my job. Except, of course, that
we’re facing the worst depression in a hundred years and suddenly
zillions of ex-military and intel guys like us are all hitting the
streets at the same time...”

“You know, I was
about to tell you what an idiot Moran is, but for once the idiot may
be right. The President’s speech is only the beginning. Let’s
face it: there’s no future for us in the Agency. None at all. But
when one door closes, as they say, another one opens. The good news
is, I know some people in the DSS. And they’ve told me about some
opportunities over there. I’m pretty sure we’re among the first
with our particular background to home in on this. So if you’re
game to check it out with me, you and I could be the first
counterterrorist officers from the Agency to slot into the DSS’s
new intelligence arm, just as our own organization starts handing out
the pink slips.”

Linder nodded without
speaking. Denniston went on.

“To be perfectly
frank, Warren, I’ve already decided to sign on with the DSS, but I
wanted to stick around long enough to come down here and talk to you
about coming with me. What do you think?”

“You mean you won’t
be completing the refresher course?”

“Hell no,”
Denniston snorted, “and neither should you, if you still want to be
on the government payroll after the course is over.”

“And what makes you
so sure of that?” Linder challenged.

“Here’s the deal,”
Denniston explained. “The new Department of State Security wants
desperately to create its own intelligence arm to focus on the
threats it sees to the Unionist administration and the party
leadership. Right now, most DSS officers are police types. They know
from arrests and busts but don’t have a clue about intel gathering.
But the top-level DSS leaders go bonkers over spy gear and tradecraft
and the whole James Bond thing. They desperately want to recruit a
core cadre of intelligence case officers, preferably with Agency
training and experience, who can help them build a new intel service
that answers only to them.”

“So are these new
jobs open right now, or do we have to wait for approval or funding or
an executive order that may not ever come?” Linder challenged.

Denniston leaned back
and looked his colleague in the eye while finishing his drink.

“The funding is there
and they have HR people standing by to handle the paperwork. What
they want from the likes of us is two things: first, an Agency
training pedigree, with advanced tradecraft skills and a record of
performance in the field; and, second, you have to kowtow to the
Unionist Party and its style of politics. If you qualify, you’ll
get hired at your current pay grade or higher, you’ll get your pick
of assignments and you’ll be put on a fast track toward promotion.
What’s not to like about that?”

“Where would the
assignments be?” Linder probed. “Are all their field locations
stateside, or will they operate overseas despite the pullback?”

“That’s the best
part of it, dude,” Denniston replied with a grin. “Foreign
assignments are definitely in play. Believe it or not, overseas is
actually where the DSS has its greatest need right now. So, get this,
you and I have a shot at going back overseas with the DSS at a time
when the Agency is losing its overseas slots. All you have to do is
belly up to the bar and drink some of that Unionist Kool-Aid. I
realize it may be tough to swallow, but what an opportunity, eh?”

A welter of confused
and conflicting thoughts raced through Linder’s mind as he pondered
the proposal. Loyalties, friendships, principles, pride, and
probabilities: how could he weigh one against the other and make a
rational decision? His gut said to wait, to be cautious. But if he
waited too long, he risked losing everything he had worked to
achieve.

Denniston interrupted
to force the issue.

“Listen, Warren, if I
can get you an interview with a State Security recruiter, are you
game?” he probed.

Linder would not give a
direct answer.

“I just don’t
know,” he said, taking a stiff hit of bourbon. “Who’s going to
be in charge over there? And what kind of work would they have us do?
If all they want is hit men and snatch artists, count me out. It’s
one thing to drop the dime on some Jihadist with blood on his hands
while he swills espresso in a West Beirut cafe, but it’s quite
another to target Americans. I didn’t join the government to help
the Unionist Party settle scores against their political opponents.”

Denniston leaned
forward, rested his elbows on the table, and addressed Linder with a
mocking smile.

“I understand your
concerns, Warren, and I respect your fine sensibilities. But the
Germans have a saying for that:
“Wer A sagt, muss auch B sagen.”
He who says A must also say B. For Christ’s sake, Warren,” he
added, raising his voice, “what do you think you’ve been doing
for the past six years? You’re a targets officer, man! The
government picks the target, you find him and set him up, and other
people go in to whack or snatch him. Isn’t it a bit late in the
game to be turning up your nose at the government’s choice of
targets? That call is beyond our pay grade.”

“Sorry, but I don’t
see it that way,” Linder answered quietly, shaking his head.
“Killing unlawful enemy combatants is war. Killing political
dissidents is murder. Big difference.”

Denniston rolled his
eyes and downed the last of his bourbon.

“Please,” he began
with exaggerated irony as he pushed the empty glass toward the center
of the table. “Don’t try to tell me you got into this line of
work because you wanted to protect people. That’s not what we do.
Never has been. We attack people.”

“Speak for yourself,
Neil,” Linder replied with a scowl, leaning back in his chair even
as his friend inclined toward him. Though he had learned to discount
Denniston’s frequent hyperbole, what he was hearing now disturbed
him more than he expected.

“Come on, let’s be
practical about this, Warren. A person can go forward in this life
but he can’t go back. I say we stop arguing and go talk to the DSS
recruiter this weekend. She’ll be coming to work on Saturday
morning just for us. Think about it.”

“Sure,” Linder
answered grudgingly as he rose to his feet. “In the meantime, let’s
get some dinner and talk about something else, okay?”

* * *

On leaving the
Officer’s Club, Linder and Denniston drove out the front gate in a
battered Ford pickup that Denniston had borrowed from a friend. They
bypassed Williamsburg and its usual tourist watering holes, now
off-limits to Agency employees owing to recent insurgent attacks
targeting military and intelligence personnel. Instead they headed
down the Colonial Parkway to Yorktown to a place Denniston had
visited on a recent TDY to the Farm.

For decades, Nick’s
Seafood Pavilion on the York River had been a popular seafood
restaurant known for its crab cakes, oysters, and garish décor. Like
many upscale eateries around the country, Nick’s faced bankruptcy
with the onset of food shortages, rationing, sky-high alcohol taxes,
plummeting consumer spending and cutbacks in business entertainment.

So it happened that
Nick’s, being located within a short ride of several major military
installations and a thriving service depot for offshore oil drilling,
was reborn as Nick’s Pavilion Club, an equally garish gentlemen’s
fantasy club with dancing, gambling, and live adult entertainment as
well as an expensive cover charge, stiff drink prices, and a flock of
alluring waitresses and B-girls trained to encourage heavy spending.
The club’s typical patrons included military officers and senior
enlisted men, civilian defense contractors, local businessmen, and
oil drillers rotating in from offshore rigs in Chesapeake Bay and
further out to sea.