Operation Sheba (6 page)

Chapter Eight

Senator Daniel King filled his oversized leather chair to capacity, his size thirteen feet on the matching ottoman in front of him. Taking a sip of his ice-cold Scotch, he savored the tingle it left in his throat as he watched the ten o’clock newscaster embellish the day’s top story on Capitol Hill.

It was King’s favorite time of day. He could put his charming persona to bed, have a shot or two of his favorite Scotch and relax. The senator muted the TV’s volume so he could reflect on his current state of affairs. Things were going well for him. In a time of economic recession, his portfolio was growing. The president’s continuing war on terrorism had him nicely spotlighted as the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Wife number two was still looking astonishingly appealing to him even after five years. His handicap on the golf course was a lucky seven.

Better than all of that was the fact that he was on the road to becoming President of the United States. Before he turned sixty, he would be calling the shots from the Oval Office, answering press questions in the West Wing’s Cabinet Room and flying to Camp David for the weekend.

It had been a long, mostly rocky road up to this point and he was almost surprised at the tenacity he’d shown to get where he was.

Almost.

After thirty-one years in Washington, from freshman congressman to chairman of the SSCI, nothing surprised him much anymore. He had found that few people had the guts to pull off the things he had without alienating their constituents or fellow politicians.

Playing his role of a generous Democratic senator from Illinois, he scratched backs and offered generous assistance to anyone who could pay the favor back down the road. Both Democrats and Republicans found him genuinely likable and had the tendency to downplay any indebtedness they owed him. It was Washington, after all. Politics as usual.

Unfortunately for King, there was a problem looming over the horizon. It wasn’t serious yet, but in the months prior to his bid for the presidency things would get nasty as his enemies—although there were few—and the press looked to crucify him. Better to quietly handle any potential problems now before they became the nails in his hands.

He sipped his Scotch and let out a sigh of regret. The problem to be dealt with was the simple result of bad timing. He had been young and, as was the trademark of youth, had errantly thought of himself as impervious to self-destruction. Even though he was married and making his first run at the Senate, he’d let himself fall for a beautiful, intelligent and completely power-obsessed CIA agent. The intrigue, the sexiness of having an affair with such an elusive woman had made him stupid. Off and on for a year, they met in secret at various hotels outside Washington and even once when he was on the campaign trail in Illinois. Even then, Susan Richmond had been a tireless campaigner for him in the tight-knit Washington circles of power.

He had known about his illegitimate child almost from the moment she was conceived. Susan ended their affair abruptly, transferring to some godforsaken hole in Russia, and went about quietly having the child and putting her up for private adoption. He’d offered her money for an abortion, but she refused it. Her determination to take care of the problem in such a moral way had surprised him then and still did. She claimed it was her Catholic upbringing. Still, he admired her. Her time in Europe was well spent, increasing her standing in the CIA.

Over the years, King had revisited his fear of the indiscretion being exposed to the public every time reelection rolled around. However, no reporter or adversary to date had unearthed the information, and Susan was a strong ally in his bid for the presidency. He could trust her to keep her mouth shut. The woman was as greedy as he was and King was most certainly her best bet for the appointment she craved. But unfortunately, the way things were these days, he couldn’t be certain no one else would obtain the information, and he wasn’t willing to chance anything when he was running for the most powerful job in the world. An illegitimate child emerging from the depths of his past would stop his campaign cold.

The senator rested the tumbler of Scotch on the table next to him and ran a hand through his hair. Susan was as strong an asset to his team as he could want. The CIA’s CTC chief knew a bevy of influential people in and around Washington. With him, she had been a true friend as well as political ally and he wanted to keep her that way. Her willingness to share information with him about his fellow congressmen would continue to make his life easier. Her influence with potential political backers was paramount to his future career move. Their illicit past and youthful indiscretion had already cinched the deal.

As a veteran of the Senate Intelligence Committee, King knew all the dirty laundry Susan and her bosses were trying to cover up. The Central Intelligence Agency had experienced a great deal of conflict and problems over the past few years. Internally the loss of five case officers and a chief of operations in Europe had crippled foreign operations. Along with that, there had been limited success infiltrating the terrorist groups in the Middle East. If something wasn’t done soon to stop the hemorrhaging, heads at the CIA were going to roll. It wasn’t out of the question to suggest the organization might be gutted and the remains simply swallowed up by Homeland Security.

Externally, the public had lost faith in the spy agency and the current administration because of the terrorist assaults on the homeland and the outing of Valerie Plame. Suspicion and fear of abuse of power had always hovered like a shadow over the CIA in the public’s mind, but now even the atmosphere in Washington regarding the CIA had turned frigid.

The President and Congress had given the CIA a substantial increase in authority and status in recent years as well as increasing the organization’s budget by a billion dollars. But as Susan had been quick to point out to King on the golf course a week ago, those measures were simply a quick fix to try and address the current problems. The long-term problems couldn’t and wouldn’t be fixed by such simple, if expensive, measures.

The revolving door of directors over the last dozen years and the lack of integration between the nation’s thirteen different intelligence agencies had definitely left the CIA in a critical position. Director Allen, the current CIA mogul, had not succeeded in asserting control over the operations inside the CIA, much less over the entire intelligence community. Homeland Security was just another layer of bureaucratic oversight, spending millions of hours and dollars every year on illegal immigration and other subjects best left to the lesser organizations.

The CIA had simply experienced too many failures in the past few years and needed a stronger leader, someone who had the skills to bring it back around to a world-renowned intelligence agency, as well as a presidential administration that understood the business of spying.

Susan had proposed a partnership that would do exactly that and benefit them both. Just that day she had called his beeper to let him know her plan was in motion. King knew she had sensitive information that could solve a multitude of the Agency’s internal problems. In the right hands, that information could be used to refocus the CIA and its mission.

And the person who eradicated the CIA’s problems and set it back on track would win bipartisan support from those on Capitol Hill and would be seen as a competent leader by the American people. Enter the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and future president.

Susan could make King’s dream to occupy the White House in a few years a reality for him. As president, he would want a director of Central Intelligence he could trust and who would work aggressively to complement his administration. Susan Richmond was the blue superhero suit that would turn King from Clark Kent into Superman. Their partnership could out distance any bullet, jump any hurdle. Tomorrow, he would call her—no, visit her—and find out how her stratagem for revamping the internal workings of the CIA was coming. He would also confirm his youthful indiscretion would be handled if it came out of hiding.

The senator glanced up just in time to see the blonde weather announcer flash her flawless smile at him from the television. He turned up the volume.

Tomorrow’s weather would be sunny and seasonal. High in the upper-60s.

Perfect, he thought. Another perfect day for golf.

“Manny DeSmet was a CIA operator in Germany in the early ’90s.” Conrad laid a file on the coffee table in front of Julia. “He infiltrated a group run by a couple of good ol’ German boys, Heinrich and Gustav Kramer, who dealt in black-market weapons acquired from American and Russian contacts.

“DeSmet cultivated an asset inside of the operation who acquired an extensive list of those contacts and enough information about the operation to take it down. The Kramer brothers were imprisoned and a large number of their suppliers and buyers were put out of business overnight.

“A few years later, along comes Heinrich’s twenty-three-year-old son, Henry Junior, who decided to pick up where Dad left off. Only his operation was bigger and better. Junior didn’t limit himself to selling simple munitions like AK-47s and SAMs, he was running anything he could get his hands on—drugs, biological weapons, chemicals, diamonds, you name it. And along the way, he decided to take a little revenge. He started gathering information on Americans, specifically CIA operatives and military folks he could burn down the road.”

Julia leafed through the file’s contents. A picture of Heinrich Kramer II with his arms wrapped around a woman caught her attention. The woman’s eyes were hidden behind John Lennon specs, long dark hair blowing out behind her. “Who’s this with him?”

“Cari Von Motz, his girlfriend, who just happened to be a foreign asset on the Director of Operations’ payroll.”

“She was feeding Kramer information about CIA operations?”

“At first it wasn’t clear what was happening,” Smitty answered. “Cari’s chief of station was so happy to have someone inside Kramer’s organization that he conveniently overlooked any possibility she was selling us out. According to him, she was following procedure and turning over important documentation about Kramer’s operation. He repeatedly cautioned her against becoming involved with Henry, but she assured him she was simply
enjoying
her assignment.”

Julia looked at Conrad. “This is the group you were infiltrating when you went to Berlin?”

“Yes.” He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “In Paris I had hooked up with Pierre LeMont, the small-time arms dealer you and I did surveillance on.”

“I remember.”

“Through him, I was put in touch with Henry Jr.’s partner, Georges Durand. My cover was as a buyer for a private entity. As a test, Cari’s station chief left her in the dark about my affiliation with the CIA. After negotiating a couple of deals with Durand, he hired me to do some independent contracting for him and Kramer. In the process I figured out Cari’s romance with Henry was not an act. She was giving classified information to him and feeding mostly false information back to her COS.”

Smitty swiveled in his chair and put his feet on the coffee table. “The topper was that the Kramer clan is kissing cousins to Germany’s chancellor, Wilhelm Ruger. The information young Kramer received was being passed on to the German government. I decided to keep Con undercover there until we could determine what to do with Cari. We were hoping to find out more about Kramer’s operation before we terminated her employment.”

Julia sank back into the futon. “The warehouse we blew up in Berlin—was that part of your independent contracting?”

Conrad nodded. “Kramer and Durand needed some competition put out of business. Of course, that part of my contracting was never officially reported to the Agency.”

Pushing off the wall, he leaned over the table. He rifled through the file until he found several papers. “Cari was receiving e-mail correspondence from someone at Langley.” Handing the papers to Julia, he continued. “They were bypassing the European Chief of Op and her station chief with information a person in her capacity shouldn’t have had access to.”

Julia sat forward and studied the copies of e-mail correspondence. Names were in code, but the messages provided a cache of information ranging from the itineraries of dignitaries to the logistics of packages containing gray arms entering the country.

“Was Kramer paying for this information?”

Conrad shrugged. “Not that we could track, which was odd. It would have made more sense if someone was selling the info to him, but it appeared they weren’t. Smitty and I decided we had to find out who was giving up the info and why. Since I was already inside, I continued to shadow Cari and intercept as much as possible in order to find out the identity of the mole. Her COS agreed to the arrangement.

“After you and I blew up that warehouse, I was sitting around getting Durand drunk one night when he showed me this.” Conrad pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to Julia.

Folded down into a small rectangle, the paper was creased and worn at the edges. Julia’s skin prickled with foreboding. If Con was carrying it on him, the link written on that piece of paper was crucial to the operation.

“Apparently Cari’s friend in the Agency got bold enough to hand over names of operators in Europe—just the thing Kramer wanted. His plan was to expose the agents to the underground world and then sit back and watch. It wouldn’t take long for the terrorists, organized crime lords or drug czars to eliminate the CIA operators, effectively crippling the European operations with no direct involvement on his part.”