Christopher Reich - Rules of Deception

“Been digging, eh?”

“I’m guessing he’s the one who pulled the trigger.”

Admiral Lafever stepped closer and Palumbo could smell the coffee on his breath. “What concern of yours is one of my ops?”

Palumbo shifted his weight and felt the pistol digging into his back. “None. I’m out of my depth here. It’s just that I was able to track down some info on Lammers, the man who was shot and killed in Zurich.”

“And so?”

“Sir, we’ve got a file ten inches thick on the man. He was on our payroll for ten years. He worked in industrial espionage and was run out of our London substation. He fell off the books in 2003. I asked myself why in the world was Walid Gassan delivering explosives to men even remotely affiliated with the U.S. government. Something didn’t feel right to me about the whole thing. I made some calls around town to ask if Lammers had gone over to the other side.”

“What did you find out?”

“Oh, he’d gone over to the other side, alright. Lammers was picked up by the Defense Department two years back. At the time of his death, he was working as a consultant to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Admiral, can you tell me what in God’s name we’re doing taking out American agents?”

“I thought you’d be more concerned about why the Pentagon is trying to take down an airliner.”

“That’s my next question.”

Palumbo had been expecting a tirade. Instead, Lafever put down his coffee cup and smiled bleakly. “Are you familiar with a unit called Division?”

“Division? No, sir, I’m not.”

“Didn’t think so.” Lafever led him by the elbow toward a sliding door in the kitchen. “Let’s go outside. I need a smoke.”

Palumbo followed Lafever onto the back patio and down a flight of stairs into his backyard. It was a cold evening, the sky grim and forlorn. Their feet crunched in the snow as they ambled through a thicket of barren trees.

“It’s that Austen. He’s the problem,” said Lafever, shaking loose a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros. “Crazy Christian sonuvabitch will have me yet. Between all his prayer meetings and fundamentalist mojo, he can’t keep his fingers out of the other guy’s pie.”

“Do you mean Major General John Austen of the Air Force?”

“The one and only. It started eight years back, even before 9/11. The boys at the Pentagon wanted to start mounting clandestine operations on foreign soil. They were pissed off at how terrorists were nailing our overseas installations and had taken to going around town saying that we at CIA couldn’t do squat to stop them. The Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the numerous attacks against U.S. multinationals operating abroad. Austen went to the president and asked if he could put together a team of operators and give it a shot. The president didn’t need much convincing. He’d been riding us hard to find out who was behind the attack on the USS Cole and we weren’t able to help him. Austen’s team found the culprits lickety-split. Thirty days later, the president signed a National Security Presidential Directive authorizing the Defense Department to run units overseas.

“They called it Division. Austen ran it out of a little-known office called the Defense Human Intelligence Service, whose official job is to manage military attachés assigned to our foreign embassies. He moved fast. Within a year, he had five teams in the field. We’re talking the blackest of black ops. Clandestine. Deniable. Operating without any oversight from Congress, or even the president. The kind of blanket authorization any intelligence officer would kill for. Me included. They did some good work. I won’t deny it. Took out that murderous lunatic in Bosnia, Drako, and a couple of warlords in the Sudan. The successes went to Austen’s head. He started overstepping his bounds. Got his fingers dirty in that affair with the Lebanese prime minister. Got mixed up in the insurgency in Iraq. We are intelligence officers. It’s our job to gather information and pass it on. It’s not our job to be judge, jury, and executioner. That’s policy, and the last I looked, it was run out of the White House. Anyway, by God, Phil, after a while I’d had enough.”

“But, sir, they’re American agents.”

“They’re not American. Quitab’s an Iranian. Lammers is Dutch. Foreign born and foreign bred.”

“Even so, sir, why didn’t you go to the president?”

“And say what? I’d only look like a jealous suitor. It was the president who authorized all this. Only he can pull the plug.”

“I don’t think he would authorize U.S. agents working in concert with an Iranian illegal to take down an airliner.”

“I agree, but he wouldn’t authorize me running a mole in Austen’s network either. What with his beliefs pinned on his sleeve and all those shiny medals on his chest, John Austen is what passes for a saint on Pennsylvania Avenue. He was in the fight since the beginning. By that I mean our holy war against Jihad, Incorporated. Austen set up the plan to rescue our hostages in Iran back in 1980. He organized the first Special Ops teams. And like our commander-in-chief, he burns for Christ. What’s a whiskey-drinking pagan like me to do?”

“But that rescue attempt in Iran was a fiasco,” said Palumbo. “We crashed and burned. We lost eight men.”

“It doesn’t matter, Phil. John Austen is a hero. Like being on the hill at Calvary way back when. Whatever he says, goes…until proven otherwise.”

“With due respect, Admiral, I can’t just stand by and let him take down a plane.”

“There’s no other way, Phil. This country can’t have two separate espionage services conducting operations without one talking to the other. For too long now, the boys at Defense have been out of control. Once this thing blows up in their face, it will be over. John Austen will never be allowed to put a team in the field again. The Pentagon will be permanently out of the espionage business.”

“So you sent over Reyes to put a stop to it?”

“I sent Ricardo Reyes to show that we weren’t just sitting around with a thumb up our ass while this was going down. If we get caught flatfooted on something this big, it will just go to prove that everything Austen’s been saying to the president about the CIA is true. But if we can get within a hair’s breadth of knocking down that drone…if we can take out members of the plot…we will look like the heroes.” Lafever crushed his cigarette beneath his shoe. “Mr. Reyes won’t be able to stop the attack, and frankly, I don’t want him to. Once that plane goes down, I can go to the president with proof of who did this and show him just how badly things got out of hand. I can also show that I tried to stop it. The president will have no choice but to back me to the hilt. Division will be shut down in a second. At the end of the day, those pricks at Defense will have their asses handed to them, and the Agency will be back on top.”

Palumbo had nothing to say. He stood rooted to the spot, stunned and saddened.

Lafever stepped closer. “I can’t have any flag-waving officer of mine running off at the mouth about what he thinks he’s discovered. I need your word that you’re going to keep quiet.”

“But, sir, the plane…all the passengers…”

“I need your word.”

“But, Admiral…”

“But nothing!” said Lafever. “It’s a small price to pay to make sure that Austen doesn’t do anything else even more foolish.”

Palumbo sighed. He knew then how it was going to turn out. “I’m sorry. I just can’t allow it.”

Lafever looked at him like he was a poor, dumb rube just off the farm. “Neither can I.”

When he raised his hand again, he was pointing a compact, nickel-plated revolver at Palumbo’s heart. It was a throwaway piece with its registration filed off, loaded with standard ammo he’d probably gotten from the armory. The old man’s tradecraft was strictly by the book.