His apartment was on the top floor of a building on the eastern edge of Beverly Hills, almost to West Hollywood. One bank of windows looked across Doheny Drive toward the leafy suburbs and the hills. Another looked down Santa Monica Boulevard toward the sprawl of downtown, half hidden by the smoky mist of the morning. He took a Red Bull out of the refrigerator, and then popped one of the energy pills his homeopathic counselor had recommended.
Gertz threw his briefcase in the Corvette. Though it was a sunny day, he left the top up. He turned on the local NPR station and listened until they mentioned the Moscow shooting. Then he turned the radio off. He didn’t want to hear.
Gertz knew how to take a punch. That was part of why he had risen so quickly in the agency. He had been ready to take risks when other people were worrying about whether their legal insurance was paid up. When people had decided the CIA was so messed up it was time to start over, Gertz had been there, the resilient one, ready to take the enterprise deep underground.
This was a combination punch: Two members of his organization had been targeted in two weeks, and he didn’t know why. He felt bad about the people, in a generalized sort of way, but he barely knew them. He felt worse for himself. If he didn’t draw a tight circle now and control information, the structure he had created would begin to wobble. People would ask questions, secretly at first, but that would lead to other questions. The garment would begin to fray along the seams, and then-if people really began to pull-it would come apart.
It was the same as with any flap, Gertz told himself. The best solution was to hunker down and wait for it to go away.
When Gertz arrived at the office block on Ventura Boulevard, the facade was bleached white in the morning sun. Inside, there was a hum of anxiety: People had been waiting for the boss to arrive, and now they wanted him to give orders. There was a low-level panic. The news had spread rapidly; how could it be otherwise? People worried that their invisible organization had somehow come under a spotlight, and that they all were vulnerable.
Gertz did the one thing nobody would have expected, which was to act normal. He said hello to the secretaries by name, and then went into his office to read the message traffic. He summoned Arden for a report: The calls to Kiosks Unlimited in Amsterdam were being answered by the reports officer who worked with Frankel as his secretary; she was quoted in the latest news reports expressing shock and sorrow. The dam was holding, at least for the moment.
Gertz placed a call to Cyril Hoffman at Headquarters. Hoffman didn’t know much, either, but he agreed that in a situation of uncertainty, the best thing to do was for everyone to keep their mouths shut. The best damage control policy, in this case, was to do nothing.
“What was your man working on in Moscow, anyway?” asked Hoffman. “Odd spot to visit.”
“Pakistan. He was meeting a diplomat.”
“Do I know about this?”
“Of course you do. You know about everything. If you want details, check the White House.”
“Why was he killed? This sounds like another Karachi problem. He’s dead, by the way, your man Egan. Confirmed. Roger that. I think this second one was a mafia hit.”
“You’re joking, surely,” said Hoffman.
“That’s what they’re saying on television. Chechen mobsters.”
“But surely that’s untrue.”
“Maybe. But it’s convenient. Don’t rock our boat, Mr. Hoffman. That’s my advice. I am trying to keep a lid on. I hope you are, too.”
“Be careful about Pakistan. My sources say people there are rather upset with us. They don’t like being vaporized from ten thousand feet. And they don’t like having money thrown at them by the CIA, even in the benign and invisible form you like to imagine that you have created.”
“My sources tell me that when people are shooting at you, you buy up their guns.”
“Does that refer to us or the Pakistanis, I wonder?”
“Both, sir.”
“Bold words: I will send you a soapbox.”
“Hey, Mr. Hoffman, if you’re unhappy with me, just say so.”
“Heavens, no. Following your adventures is one of my few pleasures. But perhaps a little more contact with the home office. The personal touch. What say?”
They talked for several more minutes before the associate deputy director said, “Cheerio!” in his usual, incongruously upbeat voice, and rang off.
When Gertz finished his conversation with Hoffman, he called Steve Rossetti and said he wanted to hold a senior staff meeting in the secure conference room.
The group gathered on the third floor. People dropped their cell phones in the locker outside the room and trundled in. There were about twenty people, the heads of all the main operational departments and their deputies, plus a few other key staff members. They nodded stiffly at Gertz as they entered. They had liked being part of his great experiment, but most of them didn’t know him very well.
Sophie Marx entered the room and took a chair at the far end. She was wearing a black suit, well tailored but somber. She was tired, with the sallow look that agency officers sometimes described as a “safe house tan.” After the quick trip to Dubai she had labored for many hours in the Colonel’s files. She needed to talk with Gertz. She had sent him a brief memo about her polygraph of Hamid Akbar and asking for a meeting to discuss her plans, but he hadn’t answered.
Marx was settled in her chair, wishing she had worn more makeup to hide her fatigue, when Gertz walked toward her. He passed all the way around the conference table to her place. She had wanted to talk to him, but not now, with the senior staff listening.
“How was Dubai?” he queried, shaking her hand. “Good trip?”
“Yes and no,” she answered. “It demolished one of my theories. Now I have to start over.”
“We all do,” said Gertz. “Come see me later today, when this Moscow business is sorted out. We’ll decide what to do next.”
Everyone in the room heard the exchange. People moved in their chairs, or cleared their throats, or otherwise signaled their unease. They could see, if they hadn’t known already, that Sophie Marx had a special role in this crisis, and that whatever Gertz was doing to contain it, she was his partner.
Gertz waited until everyone had arrived, and gave them a little more time after that, until there were no more coughs and whispers.
“I want to confirm what most of you have already heard,” he began. “Today in Moscow, one of our officers was killed. He was shot downtown, near the Kremlin, three times at close range. I am told that he died on the scene.”
There were groans around the room. For all the bravura of people in the intelligence business, things like this didn’t happen to them. They weren’t soldiers, and they certainly didn’t expect that their colleagues would be gunned down, Mafia-style.
“Let me say a few words about our colleague Mr. Frankel. He was operating under very deep cover, unknown even to some of the people in this room, and he was an unusually capable young officer. He epitomized what our new organization is about-secrecy, speed, daring. He was one of the best. Unfortunately, the world will never, ever know that. He took his cover with him to the grave. He would want us to keep it there. I trust we are all clear on that.”
In the silence, Steve Rossetti spoke up. He was wearing his blazer with the American flag pin on the lapel. He was known to be close to Headquarters, so people listened to him with special attention.
“Can we still maintain that cover?” Rossetti asked. “I mean, won’t the NSC want to look at this? And the inspector general at Langley? And the congressional committees, won’t they have some issues here?”
“No, no, and no,” answered Gertz. “We are not going to open our doors for anyone. There’s nothing to disclose. This is a personal tragedy, and there are some operational issues we have to address. But that’s our business and nobody else’s.”