Secrets of State (20 page)

“I think this is part of a war-game exercise. Argus does that sort of thing, doesn't it?”

“On occasion.”

“So this is almost certainly one of the pieces the game designer has put together to include for color. You know, the kind of thing they need to make the otherwise terribly dull at least palatable. That's probably why they left the name of the city out of the draft, so that they could have some flexibility in the scenario. Some people like it, I suppose, but I find war gaming so tedious, like talking about food and wine rather than sitting down to dinner.”

Deputy Assistant Secretary Tennyck had missed his calling. He should have been a colonial official in India during the British Raj. Give him a pith helmet and he would blend right in.

“I understand how this sounds,” Sam said. “I know that the evidence is weak. But look at what's happening on the ground. Tensions between Delhi and Islamabad are spiking for no real reason. I believe someone is cooking the intelligence that we are sharing with the services there and that the data being fed into the system is designed to push the two sides closer to conflict.”

“But why?” Tennyck asked. “
Cui bono?
as they say. Who benefits?”

“I think the Stoics would tell you that we do . . . in the end.”

“Well, it's all right then, isn't it?”

Sam knew that it was time to cut his losses.

“This has to remain strictly between us,” he said.

“Don't worry, Sam. I'm not taking this up with anyone. I'm quite certain no one would believe me if I did.”

•   •   •

Garret Spears
hated Washington parties. Boring, plastic people eating boring, plastic food and trolling for gossip. Whoever you spoke to would keep looking over your shoulder with at least one eye hoping to spot someone more important in the crowd so they could trade up. As much as Spears hated going to the parties, however, he would have hated not being invited considerably more. He wanted to be A-list, a confidant to presidents and prime ministers.

Argus was just a starting place for a journey that he was sure had limitless upside potential. Secretary of defense, perhaps. Senator Spears. Maybe even one day an office with no corners and its own rose garden. Why think small? Ambition was not a sin.

For now, however, it sometimes meant putting in appearances, which is why he was here at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in downtown D.C., where Raytheon was hosting a reception for the president of Kazakhstan. No doubt the corporate titans at Raytheon assessed that Nursultan Nazarbayev could be persuaded to purchase multiple billions of dollars of Raytheon missiles in exchange for little plates of cheese and crackers and tumblers of icy vodka.

Spears helped himself to a glass of sparkling water with lime from the tray of one of the gloved waiters circulating the room.

The third-tier congressman that Spears was technically talking to, if not really listening to, was prattling on about something, maybe ethanol. Spears didn't really care. He was from some Podunk district in the Midwest with more hogs than constituents . . . unless you counted the hogs as constituents and maybe he did. He was also, however, on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, so Spears was ready to stand there and smile while he blathered.

That the congressman had sought him out was a good sign. People were talking about him. His membership in the Stoics was putting him on the Washington map. Not the one of gala dinners and congressional hearings. The one that mattered. The Washington of back rooms and secret deals. Real power.

The next few weeks would be critical. Spears and Argus were on point for perhaps the most complex and far-reaching operation in the Stoics' long history. If he pulled it off, he would be able to move up in the organization's rigid hierarchy, assuming, of course, that the operation came off as planned.

It was a shame about the kid . . . Krittenbrink. But when Quick had told him about the analysis he had done, Spears knew that there was no other choice. There had not been time to summon the Council. Spears had made the call as head of Operations and Weeder had done the work. It was not as elegant as how he had handled Braithwaite, but he hadn't had much time to work with and Krittenbrink's death would go largely unnoticed, except by his family, of course.

Quick was another potential complication. With any luck, however, it would be weeks before anyone noticed he was missing. The CIA man had been something of a loner. Now he was rotting in a jungle grave in Brazil. Weeder had subcontracted the job out to a local network he had done business with before. They were professional, discreet, and expensive. Spears was confident that problem at least had been contained.

He thought of Krittenbrink and Quick much as he had of the soldiers he had ordered into combat. It was a dangerous business and sometimes you had to lose a pawn to get to the king. The trick was to remember that other people were playing the same game, and while you were pushing your pawns around the board, some other player was looking at you with the same idea in mind. You never wanted to be someone else's piece, or at least not a pawn. Pawns were for sacrifice.

The congressman finished his pitch on ethanol and shook Spears's hand with the consummate skill of a practiced politician. Firm grip. Two pumps. Left hand on the upper arm. “Stay in touch. Don't forget to vote.” Spears flashed the ingratiating smile that had been instrumental in his climb up the slippery pole in the Pentagon.

He sipped his mineral water and looked over the crowd as he mentally reviewed the state of play with the operation. The security leak surrounding the Krittenbrink analysis had been a real scare. He believed the leak had been plugged, but there was no way to be sure. Panoptes had done its work and it was time to deactivate the program. They had moved past that point.

Krittenbrink's putting the pieces together the way he had had been a neat piece of work. Spears was not, by nature, introspective. His few short forays into quiet reflection had led him to conclude that he was not particularly good at it nor especially interested in what was there to be found. It was the competitive world around him that engaged Spears. He was smart enough, however, to know that he needed people who could do the kind of thing that Krittenbrink had done. Sam Trainor, for one, would have been a real asset. He may have failed the trolleyology test, but, hell, no test was perfect. It was just broad-brush. Interesting, but not necessarily dispositive. Maybe he should give Sam another shot?

Spears felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find a man he knew vaguely standing there with a gin and tonic. He was wearing a blue blazer and gray flannel pants and one of those school ties with little emblems all over them that the East Coast elite seemed so fond of. He was State Department. What was his name? Tennyson? Tannenbaum?

“Garret, how are you?”

Tennyck. That was it. J. Winston Tennyck. He was the South Asia DAS who had helped steer the Panoptes contract to Argus.

“Just fine, Tenny. Thanks.”

“So your man came by to see me today,” Tenny said.

“My man?”

“Sam Trainor.”

“What about?”

“Well, that's the thing. He had the strangest damn story to tell. I didn't follow the whole thing, but frankly I'm worried about Sam. He didn't sound entirely rational, and after the Snowden mess, we need to be careful about contractors with clearances.”

All of Spears's internal threat warnings lit up, but he kept his expression neutral. He needed more information.

“To tell you the truth, I've been a little concerned about him myself. Sam hasn't seemed quite right for a while now, and the death of that young analyst in INR hit him really hard.”

“Do you think it would be a good idea for him to be evaluated?” Tennyck asked, with evident concern. “By a mental health professional, I mean.”

“This may well require the services of a professional,” Spears replied flatly.

He leaned in closer to Tenny as though taking him into his confidence.

“Now, tell me exactly what he told you.”

•   •   •

There was nothing
about his demeanor that would have betrayed any hint of alarm to J. Winston Tennyck as the South Asia DAS summarized his conversation with Sam. But behind the mask that he controlled with such care, Garret Spears felt a brief stab of fear and anger.

Krittenbrink had had a partner.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

SEPTEMBER 12, 1941

D
o you mind if I join you?”

Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, Office of Naval Intelligence, looked up from his beer and assayed the man who had interrupted his circular train of thought. A civilian in a dark suit and a fedora. He was thin and of average height. In his right hand, he held a black briefcase. The eyes behind the silver wire-rimmed glasses he wore were so blue they were almost clear and they reminded McCollum of the sea. It was a maudlin thought. He was on his fourth beer of the afternoon.

“It's a free country,” he said.

“For now.”

The civilian doffed his hat and sat across from McCollum at the small table near the back of the bar at the Cosmos Club. He set his hat on the table and his briefcase next to his chair.

“I haven't seen you here before. Are you a member?”

“No,” the man replied. “But I have certain privileges. My name is Smith and there is a particular issue that I would like to discuss with you.”

“What is it?”

“This.” From the briefcase, Smith retrieved a manila folder and placed it on the table. McCollum opened it and the shock of adrenaline he felt at the contents cut through the fog of alcohol like a hot knife. McCollum did not need to read the Top Secret memo inside the folder. He knew what it said. He had written it.

“
How did you get this?” he asked.

“It came to me in the normal course of my duties,” Smith explained unhelpfully.

“Am I under investigation?” Smith looked like a G-man and McCollum had been keenly aware when he sent the memo that it was the kind of thing that could be used to hang a man.

“Perhaps. But not by me.”

“Are you Naval Intelligence?”

“No.”

“What then? FBI?”

Smith smiled, exposing his teeth. “Something else.”

“What do you want from me?”

“You have it backwards, Commander. The question is not what I want; the question is what am I offering.”

McCollum looked at Smith suspiciously.

“Your reasoning in this memo is quite compelling. It so happens that there are others in positions of influence in this government who share your views and appreciate your logic.”

Some months ago, McCollum had drafted a memo to his superiors in Naval Intelligence detailing eight actions the United States might take to provoke Japan into an attack. War was sweeping the globe. The democracies were losing. The American people, however, having burned their fingers in the Great War and having just begun to pull themselves out of the Great Depression had no interest in foreign entanglements. By the time they awoke to the dangers, it would be too late. The United States could not remain neutral in this global conflict, but it would require some shock to the system to rouse the sleeping American giant. Pushing Japan into an overt act of war, McCollum had argued in his memo, would do just that. His superiors had warned him off this line of argument. It was dangerous, maybe even treasonous. McCollum had been shunted off into a series of lesser assignments, but he had not lost faith in the fundamental rightness of his views. It was this logic loop that had been occupying his thoughts when Mr. Smith arrived to interrupt his beery reverie.

McCollum closed the folder and pushed it back toward Smith.

“So what do you propose to do about it?” he asked.

“Those of us of like minds have been working to put in place policies quite similar to those that you describe in this memo. We believe that we have been successful in bringing the Empire of Japan around to the view that it has no choice but to attack the United States preemptively, although the when and where are for the time being uncertain. Personally, I think the Philippines is the most likely target. More important, there are reasons to believe this attack will trigger war not only with Japan, but also with Germany—a much more dangerous opponent.”

“What sort of reasons?”

“Magic.”

McCollum did not deign to respond.

“We have broken the Japanese codes,” Smith explained. “Naval and diplomatic. The program is called Magic.”

McCollum worked in intelligence and he had heard rumors from those in a position to know that the U.S. government was reading the emperor's mail, but this was the first solid confirmation he had that the program was real.

“And what do you want from me?”

“It is important that when the blow finally falls it is strong enough to force the United States into a war it does not yet want. If the military knows through intercepted Japanese traffic that the attack is coming, the navy might respond to preempt it or at least soften the attack to the point where it is no longer a compelling casus belli.”

McCollum understood this.

“In my memo, I made the same point, that when the Japanese were ready to attack we should let them hit us hard enough to hurt.”

“We know. And we appreciate the clarity of your arguments.”

“I
need to ask you again. What's my role in all this?”

“Magic is a priceless asset, but it is poorly understood by the navy's senior leadership and it is underfunded. There are a limited number of translators and analysts. All are overworked. There is a single position responsible for taking the raw intelligence and directing it to the analysts. They only have the time and resources to examine the pieces marked high priority. Routine reports are rarely, if ever, looked at. Those deemed nonsubstantive are simply destroyed. We want you to take that position and use it to ensure that any Magic traffic related to an attack on the United States is kept out of the system.”

“Who would I be working for?”

“Nominally, you would be under Admiral Croft, the head of the Magic project. In reality, you would be working for me.”

There were risks to this, McCollum knew. But they were manageable. The naval bureaucracy was slow and cumbersome. Once war came, all of the antecedents would be lost in the flood of new information. No one was likely to go back to review old reports, at least not until the war was over. He was a patriot. He couldn't say no.

“When do I start?” he asked.

“Would tomorrow be soon enough?”

“I think that will do. Where do I report?”

“That's the best part. One of the sweetest and safest assignments the United States Navy has to offer, right in the belly of the beast. Magic operates out of the headquarters of the Pacific Fleet . . . Pearl Harbor.”