Robert Bidinotto - Hunter

He paused for another sip. “Matthew idolized his father. He described Mike as a man’s man with a strict code of honor and a strong drive to achieve. Clearly, he was a brilliant entrepreneur. Before he died, Malone Commercial Development had branches in ten states, and the family fortune was estimated at over a half-billion dollars.”

Garrett whistled. “I didn’t know it was that much.”

“Oh yes. The Malones lived in an upscale Pittsburgh suburb, Fox Chapel. Matthew didn’t want for material things or opportunities, including foreign travel and a great private school. And thanks to his mother, there were plenty of books in the house to pique the curiosity of a little boy with a restless, inquisitive mind. He told me that current events and politics were frequent topics around the dinner table.”

Kessler looked off into space. “Well, Matthew could have turned out to be just another spoiled rich kid. But instead he grew into a well-educated, athletic young man with unusual poise and self-confidence. And he had a charming, dry sense of humor, too.”

“I envy his girlfriends,” she said, interrupting his reverie. “He must have been the most popular guy in school.”

Kessler shook his head. “You would think so. But actually, he was a loner. Not antisocial, just not really very social, if you get what I mean. Serious, solitary, self-sufficient. He told me once that he had been so captivated by the world of ideas that he felt little kinship with his more conventional peers.” He smiled. “I could relate to that. Perhaps that’s why we hit it off when we met, and why he eventually opened up to me.”

Garrett got up and began to pace near the windows as Kessler continued.

“He might have become a scholar. But his father wanted to temper his cerebral preoccupations with involvement in the real world. So, in addition to getting his son’s hands dirty on his construction sites, Mike insisted that he take up at least one competitive sport each school year. Predictably, he avoided team sports and chose the individual ones: swimming, gymnastics, martial arts. He told me he preferred to be the only person responsible for his success or failure.”

“How did you get to know him so well?”

“We met by sheer serendipity, Annie. I was into martial arts, too, and we had both signed up for a hapkido class not long after he arrived as a freshman. That was in ’87. Well, after one sparring session, I found that we shared many philosophical views, and he was extraordinarily articulate about his. I learned that he was majoring in Politics, with a focus in political theory, and it turned out that he’d be taking a lot of my classes.

“I liked him immediately, so I invited him to a party at our home for some grad students. These were some of the smartest young intellectuals at Princeton-which means some of the smartest in America. Anyway, some hot political argument started up, as they often did among those kids. But even though he was about six years younger than most of them, he held his own. Let me tell you, I was impressed. So much so that I arranged to become his faculty advisor. Over time, we became friends, and I continued to invite him to our home. Jill became quite fond of him, too.”

He paused, just an instant. The loss seemed fresh. “Anyway, Princeton is quite tough on Politics undergrads. But his grades were exceptional, and somehow, despite his course load, he still managed to keep up competitive swimming and martial arts. He even did some reporting and columns for the campus paper.”

She picked up and studied his photo again. She tried to reconcile what she was hearing with the bearded, rough-looking thug cradling the rifle.

“When he graduated in 1990,” Kessler went on, “I encouraged him to pursue a Master’s in international affairs and also to take some Middle Eastern languages. I told him that the Middle East was where the important action in the world would be centered for the foreseeable future. He agreed and jumped right in. He became my preceptor-I’m sorry, that’s Princetonese for ‘teaching assistant’-and he enrolled in the local Berlitz courses in Farsi and Arabic. That’s when I discovered another remarkable thing about him: Matthew had an incredible facility for languages.”

“You were grooming him.”

He held her eyes. “And I make no apologies for it. Matthew was highly patriotic, and he had all the talents and aptitudes that would make him a great case officer.”

“So, how did you make the pitch?”

“Before I could, there was an interruption. In 1992, Mike Malone was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It hit Matthew hard. He took off the spring semester-which would have been his last-to care for his dying father and help his mother cope. Mike died that summer, and Matthew returned to complete his last semester in the fall.”

“Which brings us up to the first World Trade Center bombing.”

He pointed a thin finger at her and smiled. “Good girl. February 26, 1993. Yes, that was the turning point. I immediately took a month’s leave to do some consulting here at Langley and over at the Pentagon.”

Garrett approached, cigarette in hand. “After that bombing, Congress leaned hard on us to put more officers in the field and try to recruit agents inside the terrorist networks. That’s when I finally got the green light to ramp up our own recruiting here in Ops. So, when Don showed up here in my office and started raving about this potential NOC superstar-” He spread his hands.

“NOC?” It surprised her. She knew most CIA case officer candidates were trained for eventual “official cover” status in a foreign embassy, usually with a transparently fake job title. They had the protection of official diplomatic status. A “non-official cover” officer, however, was a different breed. NOCs lived under deep cover, out in the cold, operating largely on their own and without diplomatic immunity. Typically, they held a cover job with a private company. “How did you peg him as a NOC so early?”

“Think about it, Annie,” Garrett said, ticking off the points on his fingers. “Loner-completely self-reliant and utterly self-confident. Super smart. Fluent in the right languages. Skilled in martial arts. Experienced with firearms. Patriotic. Self-disciplined. Highly motivated. Hell, I never thought twice about putting him into the usual training track down on the Farm. I knew that after a couple years, he’d wind up making paper airplanes behind some desk in Madrid. Just another total waste of talent.”

He took a puff, blew a stream of smoke before continuing. “And we just couldn’t afford that. Not anymore. Not with the terrorist threat spinning out of control. I needed people who could be trained to operate without anybody holding their hands. People who would be willing and able to go out and mix it up with the hajis.”

She had to smile. Nobody ever accused Garrett of being Politically Correct. “So you signed off on it.”

“And sent Don right back home to make the pitch.”

Kessler picked up the tale again. “I invited Matthew to discuss something over drinks down in D-Bar-that’s a watering hole in a basement at the Grad College. After some small talk, I brought up the World Trade Center bombing. The implications. Where it was all headed. I remember saying, ‘The next time will be much worse.’ My God, I had no idea, then… Well, Matthew agreed with me. He was passionately opposed to radical Islam and keenly understood the dangers that it poses to the West.”

“So over beers, you pitched him.”

“I did. I told him my history with the Company; that one of my jobs was to find qualified candidates to help fight the war against violent Islamic fundamentalists; that I thought he had an extraordinary set of abilities to bring to the defense of America.”