Avery declined an escort — he knew the way. He took the elevator to the fourth floor and passed through the glass-ceilinged entry corridor into the New Headquarters Building, a six story glass building built into the hills behind the Original Headquarters Building in the 1980s. Along the way, he was passed twice by uniformed security officers, which he didn’t for a second think was coincidence.
It had been a two and a half hour drive from his cabin in the backwoods of West Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. He did seventy most of the way on the interstate in his Jeep Cherokee, slowing only when his radar detector chirped, alerting him to the presence of a nearby State trooper or a speed trap. His Jeep sat now in the parking lot, with his gear and a weeks’ worth of clothing stashed in the back.
Although he welcomed the prospect of a job, he always hated coming to headquarters. He felt uncomfortable and out of place here. When he was on the regular payroll, he’d always spent most of his time in the gym or the library. The atmosphere and layout felt too much like a university campus. An apt comparison, he felt, given the fact that most of the staff here were young, right out of school, and spent most of their day writing and reading reports, far removed from the realities of the outside world.
Wearing rumpled jeans and a black t-shirt that looked like it had been through the wash too many times, Avery stood out amongst the professionally dressed staff. Passing them in the corridors, they looked straight ahead with an air of busy superiority and didn’t even acknowledge him with eye contact, or they gave him sideways glances as he passed them.
Avery checked in with the secretary manning a desk in the fifth floor office suite where Culler worked. She buzzed Culler, and a second later, Avery heard the release of the lock from inside the office. Like all offices, entry to Culler’s was granted through a tiny vestibule that lay between two sets of doors. This was to prevent anyone walking by outside from catching a glimpse inside an office where classified materials were kept or seeing who was visiting a particular office when the door was open as someone entered or left.
Culler stood up and came around his desk to greet Avery.
He was tall, almost Avery’s height, and, despite his forty-four years, he still maintained a lean physique and stood erect. He lacked the hunched stoop, paunch, and double chin of so many of his colleagues. He hadn’t allowed physical stagnation to take over, despite spending the last seven years behind a desk. That’s when he’d gone from chief of station, Kabul, where he’d first met Avery, to director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, to the Global Response Staff.
Occasionally, Avery ran with Culler, and he never needed to lighten his pace to allow the older man to keep up. Avery believed someone’s outward appearance and maintenance was a physical manifestation of what was inside, and he respected Culler as a committed, disciplined individual.
Culler ran deniable ops for the director of the National Clandestine Service, under the guise of the Global Response Staff, which provided independent contractors, recruited from the military and police SWAT units, to work undercover as bodyguards for case officers, do security at CIA bases and stations, and even operate as agent handlers and intelligence gatherers in high risk environments. The two former navy SEALs killed during the attack on the American consulate and CIA base in Benghazi came from the Global Response Staff.
The most lethal and proficient of these operatives are informally known as scorpions.
Avery shook the proffered hand.
“I see you’re keeping well,” Culler said, returning to his seat. Avery sat down in one of the chairs across from him. Culler’s office was what one would expect of a professional intelligence officer: sterile, sparse, and rigidly organized.
“Always good to see you, Matt,” Avery replied. He didn’t do small talk, awkward and obstinate. He skipped the pleasantries and knew Culler understood and would take no offense if he didn’t inquire into the well being of Culler’s wife and children, pictures of whom adorned his desk, the only personal affects in the office. Avery noted that a thickly padded, orange tabbed file folder lay on Culler’s desk.
Avery declined the offer of coffee, opting instead for a bottle of unsweetened tea from the mini-fridge. “So what is it this time?” he asked.
“There’s a developing problem in Tajikistan. We’ve lost two officers within the last twenty-four hours, including the station chief. One is confirmed KIA. The COS’s status remains unknown at this time. Planning for the worst, we must assume he has been taken by hostile agents and is currently undergoing torture and interrogation.”
“Who’s the new star to the memorial wall?” Avery didn’t mean for the inquiry to sound as flippant as it did and at once regretted his choice of words. He personally knew several of the names to the anonymous stars on the Wall of Honor in the main lobby of CIA headquarters. More names had been added in the last twelve years than the last five decades combined, most of them paramilitary officers and contractors.
“Tom Wilkes, a counterproliferation officer on special assignment to Tajikistan. He was investigating links between the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and nuclear smuggling.”
“And the station chief?” asked Avery.
“Someone you may know. Veteran ops officer named Robert Cramer. He’s a pro, one of the best in NCS.”
Avery blinked. It was difficult to catch him off-guard, but he allowed his surprise to show for a split second. “Yeah, I’ve worked with him in Afghanistan and Pakistan when I first joined the Agency. He was my base chief. He’s a smart, skilled operator and knows his job, but he wasn’t without his faults. Too bitter, and he was always too confrontational with superiors, like he was being disagreeable just for the sake of it.”
Culler arched his eyebrows. “That’s a pretty harsh critique coming from you.”
Avery seemed not to hear the remark. “To be honest, I’m rather surprised he’s still on the payroll. Last time I saw him, three, four years ago, he was being recalled from Afghanistan over some mishap and on the verge of being retired. He was pursuing the enemy a little too aggressively for some people’s liking back here, I reckon.”
“He’s close to forced retirement, mostly because he’s pissed off too many of the wrong people at Langley,” Culler confirmed. “It’ll be a shame to see him leave. The service could use more officers like him. It’ll be a bigger shame to see him go out like this, like Bill Buckley.”
He referred to the Beirut chief of station who had been abducted and then tortured for several months by Hezbollah terrorists and Iranian agents. After every last secret had been forcefully pulled out of his mouth, blowing American intelligence networks in Lebanon, he was finally, mercifully, executed.
“Secretly, the Seventh Floor’s hoping he’s already dead,” Culler said, being surprisingly frank, Avery thought. “If he’s talking to Iranian or al-Qaeda interrogators, our intelligence capabilities in the region will be impaired for the next decade, longer. If they torture him, he’ll hold out long as he can, but he’ll break eventually. A man can only take so much. The only upside is that Cramer is a mean, stubborn old bastard, and I can trust him try to drag it out and give us time to protect our people. His last medical report shows that he’s in excellent health, especially for his age.”
Avery nodded. He’d gone through National Clandestine Service training at the Farm and knew the basics of spook tradecraft, including mock interrogations and simulated torture, like sleep and sensory deprivation, solitary confinement, and water boarding. It was as close to the real thing as they could make it, similar to the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training he’d undergone in the army.