“Have you decided when to tell them?” Sanderson said.
“Not tonight. I think this will be part of the final brief. I don’t need this clouding their thoughts. They’ll be pumped full of adrenaline at that point. Less chance to register and cause them to hesitate or falter.”
“I’d recommend telling Grisha and letting him make the final decision. He knows that crew like the back of his hand. I’m willing to bet that he won’t want to tell them at all.”
Farrington knew what that meant. Bringing two of them in on the secret ensured that the final directive could be carried out if one of them was taken down. He didn’t want to spend any more mental energy on the worst-case scenario, but he agreed with Sanderson.
“I’ll talk to Grisha tonight. Let him weigh in on the decision.”
“We’ll get you the support. Berg has something up his sleeve, I can tell by his tone. He won’t let me in on it, but if I know Berg, this promises to be a good one,” Sanderson said.
“Sounds like a plan. See you at 1700.”
Farrington didn’t push the issue. He knew better than anyone that Sanderson would sell his soul to the devil to get the support they needed. His only concern was that Sanderson didn’t have any of his soul left to leverage. To have brought the Black Flag program this far, through two iterations, he’d likely signed it over several times. Farrington had been working with Sanderson ever since the two of them reconnected outside of a Senate hearing on April 12, 2000, when Sanderson’s original program came under fire from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
With a disgruntled former Black Flag operative’s help, one of Sanderson’s career enemies, Brigadier General William Tierney, started to stir up trouble from his comfortable, dead-end perch in the army’s Plans and Resources Division. Farrington never learned why Tierney hated Sanderson, but something had clearly gone awry between the two of them and had festered for years. With Tierney raising difficult questions, Pentagon supporters of Sanderson’s classified program started to shy away, taking their budget with them. Derren McKie had turned on the Black Flag program, following a precipitous fall from grace for his role in attempting to arrange and ultimately conceal a sizable arms shipment destined for elements of the Irish Republican Army.
McKie had committed two cardinal sins. First, he had violated one of Sanderson’s non-negotiable rules of engagement for Black Flag operatives: No direct action will be taken against U.S. or allied military, law enforcement or civilian entities, nor shall indirect courses of action be set in motion that would do the same. McKie’s illicit weapons shipment would most certainly be used to fuel Provisional Irish Republican Army attacks against British interests, which violated Sanderson’s directive. The general set down very few rules for his operatives, but the few he established were considered sacrosanct.
Most of the operatives had been sent to their assignments to infiltrate and provide intelligence for the Department of Defense. If their roles allowed them to participate in direct or indirect action against the regimes and criminal groups they had infiltrated, such action was encouraged as long as it did not jeopardize their undercover status. Similarly, any action taken within the regime against other criminals or regime members was fair game. Theft was encouraged, if the payoff was big enough.
Petrovich’s plan to abscond with nearly one hundred and thirty million dollars had been deemed significant enough to warrant an early end to his undercover operation. Money had continuously flowed in large quantities from Sanderson’s Central American operatives, but nothing on the scale of what Petrovich proposed. Sanderson hadn’t balked at Petrovich’s proposed finder’s fee of thirty million. The remaining one hundred million dollars could permanently bankroll the Black Flag program if invested properly.
This was where McKie made his second mistake. Knowing that Sanderson would never approve of the shipment and not wanting to lose out on a one-point-three million dollar payoff, he proceeded anyway, trying to keep the entire transaction under the radar. Fortunately for Sanderson, McKie’s acquisition efforts were far from subtle. The operative’s “legend” as an arms dealer put him in a position to seize the stockpile through a series of high-profile assassinations and double-crosses that attracted the attention of U.S. Embassy officials in Nuoachott, Mauritania. It didn’t take long for word to filter through the appropriate Department of Defense contacts, landing on Sanderson’s desk. He immediately recalled McKie and purged him from the program, making the mistake of assuming McKie would go quietly into the night.
Instead, he went noisily into General Tierney’s arms and blew the whistle on the Black Flag program. Within six months, Sanderson was tap dancing in front of Congress, and the Black Flag program was running on fumes. Petrovich’s windfall hit right about the time Sanderson decided to withdraw most of his operatives. The bulk of Petrovich’s money was disseminated into accounts that would be accessed when Sanderson was ready to start the second program.
Major Richard Farrington’s chance meeting with General Terrence Sanderson set in motion a series of events leading to the killing of Black Flag’s Judas, Derren McKie, in a baptism by fire that christened their new group, raising Black Flag from the ashes.
Chapter 23
Karl Berg shuffled a few manila file holders into his worn leather messenger bag and surveyed the top of his desk for anything he had forgotten. Satisfied that he was ready, the veteran CIA officer closed the bag’s cover flap and latched the brass buckle to secure the contents. He didn’t need the physical files, since the entire presentation had been forwarded to the White House late last night, but he felt secure knowing that the contents of the briefing could be handed directly to the president, via Director Copley, if interest in the PowerPoint slides started to wane. Berg would scrutinize the president and his tightly knit cabal closely for signs of wear, producing the documents at the necessary moment to resuscitate the briefing and achieve his true purpose for hand-carrying them into the White House.
Nothing demanded the respect and attention of politicians more than files stamped with red block letters spelling “TOP SECRET.” In Berg’s experience, once he started distributing classified memoranda, he could pretty much say whatever he pleased with little interruption. In corporate America, MBAs were taught never to distribute handouts during their PowerPoint presentations. Attendees might start reading the material and stop giving their undivided attention to your boardroom soliloquy. Berg preferred to divide his audience’s attention from the start, especially for his more controversial pitches. The last thing he truly wanted during a briefing like this was a bureaucrat’s full attention. He found it more useful to keep their concentration slightly scattered, so he had room to maneuver the facts and fictions ever so gently to achieve the desired result. And if one thing could be said about his upcoming audience with the president, he’d be blending fiction with fact.
He stared at the brown leather bag standing upright on his desk and took a deep breath. He’d stretched the truth before…stretched it pretty far in some cases. He’d just never pulled off a stunt of this magnitude in front of the president and his own chain of command. A key element to the briefing had been essentially fabricated from scratch, with the hope of sealing the president’s support for the mission. He already had the CIA director’s support for covert action against Vektor, so he didn’t feel that he was deceiving his own organization in any way. Audra Bauer might raise an eyebrow, but she’d probably know better than to say anything in front of Manning or the director. She might not say anything at all, writing it off as one of Berg’s harmless little subversions. He remained fairly certain that she would never fit the pieces together to determine the ultimate reason for his subterfuge. Lives depended on the perfect choreography of his latest masterpiece, and he had every intention of playing Carnegie Hall this morning.