John Weisman - Direct Action

Who didn’t have a lot of time to break the Moroccan. If the explosives were indeed in the Orly shipment, then Ben Said was almost certainly in Paris. And he’d want to get his hands on the goods so he could finish rigging the bombs. The interrogation process had to be completed in a matter of hours.

2:52. Tony Wyman paced the research room like a caged animal. He was uncharacteristically nervous. He’d spent the weekend working to unravel the Adam Margolis fiasco-and he didn’t like what he’d discovered. The order to lure Tom Stafford into a compromising situation had come straight from the seventh floor. That actually made sense in a perverted sort of way. If the seventh floor could prove Tom had acted improperly, it could arbitrarily yank his clearance. That would, in turn, put 4627’s entire CIA contract in jeopardy-a loss of more than $30 million over the next twenty months.

But why jettison 4627? It was one of the few sources of accurate and actionable intelligence product coming to Langley these days. Tony debriefed Tom, of course-but without concrete results. They’d even done a chronology and created a time line, starting when Shahram said he’d taken the surveillance pictures of Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said on rue Lambert and ending with the Iranian’s murder. But nothing made sense.

Oh, they were being gamed. Instinctively, Wyman understood that. But he had no real idea what the game was, or why it was being played. He marched over to the long walnut table and looked down at the chronology again. There was something missing from this puzzle. But what?

Tom had set up an operations center in the 4627 research room over the weekend. They’d had secure phone terminals, three computers, video equipment, and a color laser printer brought in from upstairs. The room itself was pretty secure. There were no windows, the outer walls were well insulated and had white sound running through conduits, and 4627’s technicians swept the place twice a day. He looked across the room to where MJ was Googling something or other on one of the computers.

She’d insisted on accompanying Tony Wyman to the office. “I’m going crazy in that damn hotel room,” is how she’d put it. Wyman agreed readily. She’d already proven herself to be an asset. When she and Tom married, Wyman had already decided, they’d become 4627’s first tandem.

Wyman looked over at her. “MJ?”

She swiveled her chair to face him. “Tony?”

“Do me a favor, will you?” He tapped the folder containing the chronology. “Take a look at this and tell me what’s missing.”

“No problem.”

She logged off the computer, went to the sideboard, and made herself a mug of hot chocolate, which she carried to the side table sitting next to one of the leather club chairs. Then she retrieved the two-page chronology, took a yellow legal pad and a pencil from the long walnut table, dropped into the chair, pulled her reading glasses out of her hair, and stuck them on the end of her nose.

Tom watched her settle in, thinking she was the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth.

3:11P.M. “Tony,” MJ said, “what about me?”

Wyman’s monocle dropped onto his vest. “What about you what?”

“I’m not in the chronology.”

Wyman gave her a quizzical look. “So?”

“October tenth: Shahram calls Paris station. October twelfth: Shahram visits the embassy. October twelfth: Shahram goes into hiding. October fifteenth: Gaza.” She paused. “Okay, now I add myself into the time line. FiveP.M., October sixteenth: I send the name Imad Mugniyah to Mrs. ST. JOHN. Very early October seventeenth: Mrs. ST. JOHN calls the seventh floor about my Imad Mugniyah photo. Before I get in, she’s already rejected the picture and she’s looking for a way to get rid of me.” She looked at Tony Wyman. “But the seventh floor has already heard about Imad Mugniyah-a week before.”

“Hmm.” Wyman scratched his chin.

“Then,” MJ continued, “roughly the same time as Mrs. Sin-Gin is telling me to go to hell, Tom is having lunch with Shahram. Shahram gives Tom pictures of Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said. Shahram knew he’d been set up the previous Sunday. Giving Tom those pictures and the information about Ben Said was his…I don’t know, his insurance, his…something.”

“Not insurance,” Tom broke in. “Look, Shahram had his own agenda with Langley. Maybe he was running a scam, maybe not. It’s possible Shahram wanted to see if he could still put the squeeze on the Agency. It’s also possible he felt justified about asking twenty-five mil if he facilitated Imad’s capture. But then Langley slammed him-didn’t just turn him down but painted a big target on his back.” Tom paused. “Look, Tony, I think Shahram truly believed he’d developed valid information, and he hated these people enough to want to get it out. So he called me.”

“Hoping we’d put it to good use,” Reuven said.

“Good use?” Tony Wyman pulled a vermeil Montblanc rollerball out of his vest and played with it.

“Actionable intelligence. We’d get our hands on Ben Said,” Tom said.

Tony Wyman twirled the Montblanc. “And then what?”

“Turn him over.”

“To whom?”

Tom shrugged. “Ultimately that’s your call, Tony. But if Ben Said was responsible for Jim McGee’s death, we should have him extradited to the U.S.”

“That means a trial. It means a media circus.”

“What about the French?”

“There’s no death penalty in Europe,” Reuven said.

“Which is why the French will never let him be extradited,” Tom added.

Tony Wyman slid the pen back into his vest. “This is all very preliminary,” he said. “It’s a distraction. Right now I’d like to know Langley’s motivation for throwing a wrench at us.” He looked at the others. “That affects our bottom line, lady and gentlemen.”

“Protection of the status quo,” Tom said. “Everybody keeps their jobs.” He tapped the photos MJ had printed from the video he’d shot in Ben Said’s bomb lab. “Can you imagine how long anybody on the seventh floor would be employed if you took these pictures and showed them to Porter Goss. Goss wants George Tenet’s job bad.”

Tony Wyman gave Tom a wary look. “Porter and I were in the same training class-and we’ve stayed in touch.” Wyman scratched his chin. “As I recall, he was an adequate operator.” He paused. “I agree-he wants Tenet’s job, and having one of our own as DCI could improve the situation at DO. But I’m not in favor of a coup-at least for the present.”

“Why?”

“It’s not in our interests.” Wyman’s voice took on an edginess. “Because we have no resolution, Tom. No bad guys in handcuffs. No bombs for show-and-tell.”

Wyman was deflecting. Tom couldn’t believe it. “Tony, I’m serious. Look at what’s happening in the press. Langley is leaking like a sieve these days. It’s goddamn unprecedented. All sorts of stories about how the White House cooked the books on Iraq. Stories about how CIA tried to warn the president that there were no WMDs.” Tom slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “It’s all chaff, Tony. Disinformation. What the Sovs used to call active measures. You know it as well as I do. The president asks the DCI whether or not there are WMDs, and the DCI tells him, ‘It’s a slam dunk,’ even though anyone at Langley worth their salt had doubts about the depth of the program. And now the seventh floor is trying to weasel out of the responsibility for giving everyone-everyone from the White House to the Pentagon to State-either bad intelligence or no intelligence at all. This whole rotten situation is about job security, Tony. No more, no less. We should take what we know to Porter Goss and let him run with it.”