I Minus 72 (4 page)

Thurmond thought for a moment. “Okay, you
want to be involved? We’re going to Krakow Wednesday night. See Sam
in the next office to get the details. I’ll expect you on that
flight. And, by the way, this is my operation. You can tag along,
but you’re liaison, not lead. You’ll take orders from me.
Understood?” Thurmond’s tone left little room for doubt. He’d
handled cocky guys like Garcia before.

Garcia smirked. “Oh yeah, I understand. But
if you screw up in any way, I’ll be right there to take over.” With
that, Garcia brought the front legs of his chair down with a bang,
stood and left the room.

Grant shook his head and went back to the
list.

Garcia had been gone less than five minutes
when a short, stocky man walked in unannounced.

“Good morning, Colonel.”

“And you would be . . . ?” It’s like Grand
Central Station around here, Thurmond thought.

“I’m Bill Barry, the Director of National
Intelligence. I’m your boss.” The man replied wryly.

“Oh, good morning, sir. Sorry I didn’t
recognize you.” Thurmond stood and walked around to the front of
the desk to shake Barry’s hand.

“Just wanted to start this thing out on the
right foot. I don’t want you gallivanting around the world digging
up old bones. You’ll just stir up more trouble for the Agency and
we have all the problems we can handle right now. You’re here to go
through all the files, old intelligence reports, all the
information we’ve received since you retired and offer suggestions
on what’s happening. I just talked with Garcia. Your trip to Poland
is cancelled. Get comfortable here, ’cause this is where you’ll be
for the remainder of this operation. We have very little time to
solve this puzzle and this is where all the information is. Your
job is to comb through that information and identify a suspect or
suspects and leave the field work to the guys who do it every day.
You’ve been away for too long. So get to those files. And, I want a
progress report from you daily. Clear?” Barry raised his eyebrows,
waiting for an answer.

“Oh, yes, sir. Very clear.” Grant stared at
him.

With that, the DNI turned and left.

Within seconds Sam was in his office. “I
didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I was just coming in before Director
Barry got here.” she said. Should I cancel the reservations?”

Thurmond let out a dry laugh. “Oh, hell no.
I’m gonna do this my way. After all, I already retired once—what’re
they gonna do to me—send me back to my ranch? Screw ’em. Call
Garcia and tell him he’d better be on that flight.”

I minus 53

Krakow

The flight arrived in Krakow right on
schedule at 8:30 a.m. local time. Thurmond and Garcia boarded the
Northwest flight the evening before and slept comfortably for five
hours in the large Business Class seats, changing planes in
Amsterdam. They were both carrying civilian passports with tourist
visas. They had nothing on them or in their luggage that would
identify them as representatives of the US Government.

After landing, they took a taxi to the Grand
Hotel in downtown Krakow. Despite the name, it was not a five star
hotel. It was average looking and had the advantage of having
several other men in the lobby that looked like US business
travelers. Thurmond thought they’d be indistinguishable from any of
the other Americans. As they entered the lobby Thurmond looked
around. There were lots of overstuffed sofas and chairs, but all of
them looked a little on the shabby side. Same went for the thin,
utilitarian carpeting. Holdovers from the Soviet days, he thought.
Everything was in order when they checked in and afterwards each
went to his separate room. As was the plan, they came back together
in five minutes in Thurmond’s room.

After letting Garcia in, Thurmond took a
seat in one of the two worn armchairs and motioned for Garcia to
sit in the other one.

Garcia spoke first. “Okay, I’ve been
patient, but do you want to tell me why we’re here?”

“I’m hoping to find and arrange a meeting
with an old friend from back in the resistance days,” said
Thurmond. “I haven’t talked with him in years, but my guess is that
he still lives in the same area. I’ll leave a mark at the usual
place and then I’ll wait.”

Garcia raised his eyebrows. “A mark. Oh,
that’s rich, Thurmond. What if the guy doesn’t show up? How long do
we wait?”

“Our arrangement was for me to be at the
meeting area for three consecutive days. I’m going to follow the
old plan to see if he shows up.” Thurmond explained, not so
patiently.

“Leaving a mark, huh?” Garcia said
sarcastically. “Damn, Thurmond, you’re really an antique.”

“Yeah, well, so are my contacts. They only
know the old way,” Thurmond said with a shrug.

“You know, if it rains, it’ll wash the chalk
off and you’ll have no mark.”

Thurmond sighed. “Garcia, it’s November in
Poland. It’s not likely to rain. It may snow, but as cold as it is,
it’ll never rain, so don’t worry about it. This is the way it’s
going down.”

Garcia persisted. “And if he doesn’t show
up?”

Thurmond responded in a frustrated voice,
“Then we’ll go back home and start all over. Three days is all the
time we have to spend on this part.”

“How do you think he can help? Isn’t his
information really dated?”

“Yeah, Garcia it is,” Thurmond explained, a
growing edge in his voice. “That’s what makes it valuable. I need
him to reconstruct the old network. I need all the names and
contact locations. It’s the original members that are being
eliminated and the newer guys may not even know all the old
names.”

“I was told you had the network name list,”
Garcia said.

“I only have part of it and that’s just the
part I can remember. The only written list was destroyed years ago
and even it wasn’t complete. I don’t remember all the names or even
how to make contact with all of the ones I do remember,” Thurmond
said.

“Why in the world didn’t you, especially you
who controlled the entire network, have a complete list? Why didn’t
you keep it secure in the DIA spaces?” Garcia asked
incredulously.

Thurmond leaned back in
his chair and responded. “In the old days we believed DIA
headquarters might be infiltrated by Soviet moles. We had no hard
evidence of that, but most of us in the field decided for our own
safety and for the safety of the members of our network, to filter
the information we fed Washington. We used what I call a star
network, with the control officer in the middle. The next tier was
the American agents and they each had a star cluster of informants
that
they
used.
Then each of the informants was allowed to develop their
own
cluster of
informants.”

Garcia leaned forward, put
both hands up in front of him and asked. “I ask again, why
didn’t
you
have a
list that you kept in
your
spaces in the Pentagon?”

Grant, too, leaned forward and said, “If you
will let me finish without interrupting every few seconds, I’ll
explain it to you.” He stopped talking for a second, and when
Garcia didn’t reply, said, “Headquarters usually only saw the first
two tiers. Only the control officer saw the whole network and
sometimes even he didn’t have exposure to the last tier. Genoa
Koslowski, the man we’re looking for here, was the Eastern European
cluster control. He was the only one who knew all the names. I
didn’t even know the last tier. It was a way of protecting sources.
Surely you have something similar in the CIA.”

“But, Koslowski knew all the names?” Garcia
asked, ignoring the question.

“Just those for one part of the Eastern
European cluster. Names I didn’t even know. It’s his cluster that’s
losing assets.”

“And, we’re here to get those names?”

“Yeah. If we don’t get them we can still
proceed, but our job gets a lot tougher. We’d better get a move
on,” Grant said.

They caught a taxi just
outside the hotel and reached their destination within twenty
minutes. They were in an older residential section of the city,
populated by large, utilitarian apartment buildings with old,
mostly Soviet-era cars lining the streets. They entered a small
café on the corner and, after taking off and hanging up their
overcoats, they sat down at a table by the window and ordered
coffee. Garcia also ordered
paczki
, a favorite pastry in Poland.
They sat quietly for about half an hour, rarely speaking. Thurmond
used the time to observe the outside traffic, both auto and people.
The café, though mostly empty today, looked pretty much the same as
it used to, he thought. New menu, new tables, but otherwise, pretty
much the same. Even after all this time, it felt very, very
familiar sitting there. It didn’t even look like they’d changed the
art work on the dingy walls. He was sure he remembered some of the
prints.

Thurmond, looking around one more time to
make sure he couldn’t be overheard, finally broke the silence.
“It’s hard to believe we can just fly in, take a taxi to a hotel,
check in using our real names, and have open access around the
city. Man how things have changed. You guys really have it easy
these days.”

Garcia remained quiet for a moment, then
said in a serious tone, “We have different enemies these days,
Thurmond.”

“Look, the Soviet Union may have collapsed,
but we still have Russia to worry about,” Thurmond responded.

“Yeah, but we also have others . . . like
the terrorists hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan,
in the jungles of Malaysia and the Philippines and even in
governments like Iran, North Korea, China, even Zimbabwe.”

Thurmond replied, “I understand that, but
why is it so different than before when our primary enemy was the
Soviet Union? It’s still just a matter of collecting information.
You get people on the inside and they send us all matter of
information, some of it useful. We use the useful information to
protect the US.”

Garcia shifted in his chair and took a sip
of his coffee. “Our opponents now are incredibly secretive. They
don’t have a lot of recorded documents for us to tap into. It’s
mostly word of mouth. The terrorists have no headquarters
buildings, no government bureaucracy, and, although they do have a
command structure, getting into the inner circle is impossible
without many years of trusted service and a proven background of
terrorist activities. Our challenge today is different than yours
was. And in many ways, more difficult.” Garcia sounded
frustrated.

Leaning back and crossing his legs, he
continued, “Also, the actions of the last President didn’t help. As
you know, we were forced to pull hundreds of people off the street.
We’ve lost so many of our eyes and ears that, even if the
Presidential Directive is revoked, it’ll take us years to get back
to where we were before. These guys we face today are fanatics. To
them, dying is an honor. Today, terrorism is our big threat, not
communism.”

“You’re focused mainly on the Middle East?”
Grant asked.

Garcia shrugged. “We’re
focused everywhere. There are terrorist training camps set up
throughout the Middle East and also in many African countries. Even
in Southern Asia. The people attending these camps are mostly young
Muslims who are being fed a steady stream of hate propaganda about
how evil the West is. They undergo physical exercise and are being
trained in how to use weapons and explosives. Their goal is to
bring down ‘the infidels.’ That’s us. They are our real enemies and
most of us are concerned that we can’t get close enough to find out
what they’re going to do. Now you know what keeps
me
up at night.” Garcia
sat back and stared at Thurmond.

Thurmond stared back a moment then said,
“Guess you’re right. It really is a different world since 9/11.”
Then standing up he said, “We’d better get going.”

I minus 53

The Pentagon

Bill Barry, at the Pentagon for a DOD
briefing, decided to check in and see how Thurmond was progressing.
Seeing Thurmond’s empty office, the DNI charged into Sam’s
adjoining office demanding to know where Thurmond was and telling
her he’d better just be getting coffee.

“Sir, he just said he was going out. I
haven’t seen him since.”

“Have him call me the minute he returns—and
it’d better be soon!” Barry was almost shouting.

“Yes, sir,” Sam said as Barry stormed out of
her office.

Sam’s first thought was oh shit! I have no
way to contact the Colonel and I’ve got a cabinet member breathing
down my neck. She figured it would be better if she weren’t around
the next time the DNI came by, so she decided to go home early.
Although she had no way to reach him, the Colonel had her cell
number if he needed her. Maybe he’d call and she could tell him
about the DNI’s visit. Then she thought about General Wheeler. I
should call him, she thought, he’ll know what to do.

“General, this is Sergeant First Class
Rogers. I’m Colonel Thurmond’s assistant. We have a slight problem
you should know about.” She explained the situation and asked what
she should do next.

“Okay, just sit tight, Rogers.” Said the
General, “I’ll call the DNI and settle him down. I’ll tell him I
ordered the Colonel to complete the trip so he was just following
my orders. The DNI’s really a pretty good guy, so that should buy
us a couple of days. But if you hear from the Colonel, call me. I
want to know what’s going on, so keep me in the loop.”

***

After he left the Thurmond’s office, Bill
Barry headed straight to the President-elect’s offices. As his
driver pulled into the turning circle outside the building, he got
the general’s call. Although he wasn’t happy with the conversation,
he at least owed the General time to get the Colonel under control.
He’d ordered a briefing for Monday morning. Thurmond had better, by
God, be back by then.