W. Griffin - Covert Warriors

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

“Yes, sir.”

McNab replaced the handset and closed the attache case.

Apartment 606 The Watergate Apartments 2639 I Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 0935 12 April 2007

“I would much rather drip ice water in his ear,” Edgar Delchamps said as he stood beside the bed of Roscoe J. Danton. “But we’re a little pressed for time.”

He picked up the foot of Danton’s bed, raised it three feet, and dropped it.

“You sonsofbitches!” Mr. Danton said upon being roused from his slumber.

He sat up suddenly, and then pushed himself back against the headboard.

“Rise and shine, Roscoe,” David W. Yung, Jr., said.

“How the hell did you two get in here?” Danton demanded.

“And good morning to you, too, Roscoe,” Delchamps said.

“The door was open,” Yung said.

Mr. Danton’s door came equipped-in addition to the locking mechanism that came with the knob-with two dead bolts, both of which Danton was sure he had set.

“How did you get through the lobby?” Danton challenged. “Or into the garage?”

“There didn’t seem to be anyone on duty,” Delchamps said. “Up and at ’em, Roscoe. Before we go out to Langley I want to pick up a little liquid courage at the Old Ebbitt Grill. They serve a magnificent Bloody Mary.”

“I’m not going out to Langley,” Roscoe said.

“And we have to talk about your million dollars,” Yung said.

Danton eyed Yung. What did he say?

Roscoe J. Danton was a little embarrassed to privately admit that he was more than a little afraid of both men. While he didn’t think David W. Yung, Jr., was capable of the sort of violence attributed to Edgar Delchamps, on the other hand, Yung’s peers-that was to say, others in Castillo’s Merry Band of Outlaws-called him Two-Gun, and Roscoe didn’t think they’d just plucked that out of thin air.

“Time, Roscoe, is of the essence,” Delchamps said. “Remember to wash behind your ears.”

Roscoe had some time-not much-to once again think his situation over during his ablutions.

He had come close to what President Clendennen derisively called “Castillo’s Merry Band of Outlaws” in the practice of his profession, which was to say running down a story. That was a bona fide journalistic accomplishment; he was the only journalist ever to do so, and Roscoe took some justifiable pride in his having done so.

Among other things, it had resulted in a page-one, above-the-fold story in The Washington Times-Post :

BRILLIANT INTELLIGENCE COUP SEES MAJOR CHANGES IN WHITE HOUSE

By Roscoe J. Danton

Washington Times-Post Writers Syndicate

President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen today chose Ambassador Charles W. Montvale, the director of National Intelligence, to be Vice President less than twenty-four hours after Secretary of State Natalie Cohen revealed that Montvale had been the brains behind the brilliant intelligence coup that saw Russia’s super-secret Tupelov Tu-934A touch down at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington with American intelligence operatives at the controls.

How the aircraft-described, off the record, by senior Air Force officials as “years ahead of anything in the American arsenal”-came into U.S. possession remains a closely guarded secret, but it is known that the Central Intelligence Agency had a standing offer of $125 million for the delivery of one into its hands.

Montvale announced at Andrews that the money would be paid to the two pilots who flew it into Andrews. They were identified only as “retired officers with an intelligence background.”

Secretary of State Natalie Cohen, pointing to Montvale’s long and distinguished career in public service-he has been a deputy secretary of State, secretary of the Treasury, and ambassador to the European Union-said she could think of no one better qualified to be Vice President, and hoped his selection to that office would “put to rest once and for all the scurrilous rumors of bad blood between Montvale and the President.”

President Clendennen immediately nominated Truman C. Ellsworth, who had been Montvale’s deputy, to be director of National Intelligence. That appointment, according to White House insiders, almost certainly was behind the resignation of CIA Director John Powell, although the official version is that Powell “decided it was time for him to return to private life.”

The President announced that he was sending the name of CIA Deputy Director for Operations A. Franklin Lammelle to the Senate for confirmation as CIA Director. Lammelle, who has worked closely with both Montvale and Secretary of State Cohen, is widely believed to have been deeply involved with Montvale in the operation that saw the super-secret Russian Tupelov Tu-934A come into American hands.

Presidential spokesman John David Parker said the President would have nothing further to say about the intelligence coup, stating that it “was, after all, a clandestine operation, and the less said about it, the better.”

The problem was that Roscoe not only knew the backstory, which he had not written about, but had been part of it. He knew, for example, that the President had been known to refer to Montvale as “Ambassador Stupid, director of National Ignorance.” He also knew that President Clendennen, shortly after taking office, had ordered Montvale’s “Red Phone”-which provided instant access to the President and cabinet heads-shut off, and canceled Montvale’s access to the White House fleet of limousines and GMC Yukons, in the hope that this would encourage Montvale to resign, so that he could appoint CIA Director John Powell-who could , in the President’s judgment, find his ass with both hands-to replace him.

He also knew, for example, that President Clendennen had named Ambassador Montvale to be his Vice President not as a reward for the intelligence coup, or because of his admiration for him, but because the alternative had been the virtually certain indictment of the President by the House of Representatives quickly followed by an impeachment trial in the Senate.

Danton knew that the delivery of the Tupelov Tu-934A into the hands of the CIA had almost been a sideshow to what had really happened: Shortly before Clendennen had become President on the sudden death of his predecessor-an aortal aneurysm had ruptured- the United States had launched a preemptive strike on a biological warfare manufactory in the Congo.

The manufactory and everything within at least two square miles around it had been bombed and incinerated with every aerial weapon in the American arsenal except nuclear. It was believed this action had removed all of an incredibly lethal substance known as Congo-X from the planet.

This assessment was proven false when FedEx delivered several liters of Congo-X to the Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease-the euphemism for Biological Warfare Laboratories-at Fort Detrick, Maryland. This was shortly followed by the discovery of another several liters of the substance by Border Patrol agents just inside the U.S.-Mexico border.

And this was shortly followed by the SVR rezident in Washington, Sergei Murov, inviting A. Franklin Lammelle, then the CIA’s deputy director of operations, for drinks at the Russian embassy’s dacha on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

There he proposed a deal: The Russians would turn over all the Congo-X in their possession in exchange for the former SVR rezident in Berlin, Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky, and his sister, Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva, the former SVR rezident in Copenhagen, who had not only defected with the assistance of Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo but had also spilled the beans to Colonel Castillo about the “Fish Farm” in the Congo. The Russians also wanted Colonel Castillo.