“Way to go, Miyagi,” she whispered, full lips trembling slightly as they formed the words. In the right hands, the photo could finally be something — something that could end this mess and bring Jericho home.
Lost in thought over how to proceed, Garcia nearly jumped out of her skin when her group supervisor walked up behind her and cleared his throat.
“Thought we agreed you wouldn’t put that up until I went home for the night.” Bobby Jeffery nodded toward the photo of Garcia and Quinn standing in the surf at Virginia Beach.
“So apparently,” Ronnie sighed, “keeping a picture of one of America’s most wanted fugitives is against CIA office policy.”
“Apparently,” Jeffery said. “Not to mention I have to keep all the straight guys in the office from trying to get a snapshot with their cell phone of you in your yellow string bikini.”
“It’s not a bikini,” Garcia scoffed.
“Well, give the guys here five minutes with Photoshop and it’ll be less than that.”
Garcia put the photo in her lap drawer and spun in her chair to face her boss. She wanted to get rid of the image on her way around but decided it would look too guilty. She left it up, as if it was routine.
“I appreciate it,” Jeffery said in his easy Georgia twang. If voices could grin, his did. As far as bosses went, he was likeable enough — a little aloof, but Garcia knew she shared that same quality.
He stood at the opening to her cubicle, his conservative striped tie hanging like a crooked noose around an unbuttoned collar. He was only a few years older than she was, but the way he kept his wireframe glasses low on his nose gave him the look of a favorite uncle.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” Garcia said, gathering her wits. She forced herself not to shoot a look toward her computer screen. An image of the sitting president associating with a known terrorist was enough to put any good CIA agent on the guilty edge. “What’s up?”
“I’m not sure,” Jeffery said. “But something, that’s for sure. I just got a priority call from our friends over at Fort Meade.” He gave a noncommittal shrug, but his eyes stayed locked on her. “Some ID guy wants to have a chat with you.”
Garcia forced a smile.
“They asked for me by name?”
Jeffery nodded. “Afraid so.”
Stationed at Fort Meade in the offices of the National Security Agency, the Internal Defense Task Force was a government bureau formed by the new administration to root out moles and terrorists inside the government. Considering the assassination of the two top leaders in the nation under the very noses of the FBI and Homeland Security, this expansion of government was an easy sell to the American public.
Of course, Garcia could see the irony in the formation of such a unit by the President, who was now the highest-ranking mole in the government.
Other intelligence and enforcement agencies spoke of IDTF in hushed tones, if they spoke of them at all. Like the devil, if you admitted their existence, ID agents seemed to appear out of nowhere. Garcia wasn’t alone in thinking of them as vicious Orwellian dogs from Animal Farm — with President Drake as Napoleon.
Much like Winfield Palmer had organized his team using OGAs or Other Governmental Agents, the IDTF had handpicked its operatives from the NSA, CIA, and FBI, choosing, it seemed, those most bent on getting ahead in their careers at all cost.
Though rank-and-file citizens believed something with the innocuous name of Internal Defense Task Force was akin to a government Internal Affairs, that job fell to various OIGs or Offices of Inspector General. In reality, the IDTF was more like an American version of the Stasi, who had considered themselves the “Shield and Sword” of East Germany. Even agents within both the ultrasecret NSA and CIA saved a particular reverence toward those in the IDTF.
Ronnie remembered a CIA instructor at Camp Peary pointing out that in their heyday, the KGB had employed 1 agent for roughly every 5,800 Soviet citizens. The Nazis had 1 Gestapo operative for every 2,000 citizens in countries they controlled. But, using full and part-time operatives, the Stasi had 1 agent for every 6 East Germans.
The IDTF’s organizational chart was classified, but they and the administration that created them were both in their infancy, so she assumed the new bureau was yet in the middle of empire building. It would not be long before they were up and running at full strength. There were plenty of people in government willing to stomp others to a bloody pulp in order to get ahead, as well as those who just enjoyed seeing other people squirm. Recruitment wouldn’t be all that difficult.
Jeffery put a hand on the small of his back and arched, looked up at the ceiling to stretch. “Listen,” he said, “these guys are as much about witch hunts as anything. You have to watch what you say. Understand.”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
“Anything you want to tell me about?”
“Nothing I can think of,” Garcia lied. “Probably just another routine bunch of questions about my old boyfriend.”
She nodded toward the lap drawer where she’d put Jericho’s photo and then kicked back in her chair, trying to look relaxed. Inside, her gut was doing backflips. She’d taken an endless number of precautions, but obviously that was not enough. With offices at NSA and who knew how many agents on the CIA payroll, the IDTF had fingers in everyone’s pie.
They might not yet be as well staffed as the dreaded East German Shield and Sword, but at least one of them had focused on Garcia. Considering what she was a part of, any sort of scrutiny would be a bad thing indeed.
Chapter 6
Former Oregon governor Lee McKeon used the back of a slender hand to rub the skin of his furrowed brow. He ignored the quizzical looks from David Crosby, the President’s disheveled chief of staff. The Veep was being vocal at yet another meeting in the Situation Room. No surprise there, considering nothing would ever get accomplished if it were otherwise. POTUS ran meetings in the Cement Mixer — but this particular POTUS had had a difficult first five months negotiating the pitfalls and intricacies of his new job.
President Hartman Drake was a fireplug of a man, barely five-seven, but broad shouldered and narrow hipped. He never missed an opportunity to take off his suit jacket to display thick arms that bulged against a starched white shirt. He had full hair and an easy smile that endeared him to voters of both genders, but especially the women. He’d used bow-tie bluster and sex appeal to bluff his way through Congress — but that was the bush league. McKeon saw he needed a considerable amount of help not to destroy everything they’d worked for now that a series of highly choreographed events had made him commander in chief.
The worst part was that Drake was completely numb to the fact that he was doing such a poor job.
McKeon hadn’t thought being vice president would be so agonizingly difficult to stomach. He stood over six and a half feet tall with a gaunt face, narrow shoulders, and a bony, knock-kneed build. Though his name was Scottish in origin, his face held the dark complexion and East Indian features of someone from the subcontinent. Amber eyes narrowed with a hint of the almond shape of his Chinese birth mother. A self-proclaimed Chindian, he introduced himself as someone of Chinese and Indian descent. The world knew him to be adopted by a wealthy couple from Portland. According to his birth certificate, he’d been born in Salem, Oregon, in the good old US of A. His tall and gangly appearance brought a picture of Abraham Lincoln to the minds of the voters. He was willing to court wealthy donors and spout populist sentiment, but more than that, he possessed a certain magnetism, a soothing way that drew people to him and made them feel as if he had nothing but their best interest at heart. It had taken him to the governor’s mansion the year of his fortieth birthday.