Grafton had been a navy attack pilot in his youth. He had absorbed the lessons well. For years he was the Pentagon’s go-to guy when crises erupted here and there.
Grafton was correct about one thing: National Security Adviser Jurgen Schulz had argued vociferously this morning against giving Grafton a jot more power. “He’s a loose cannon,” Schulz said, “who can’t be trusted. One of these days one of his little plots is going to blow up in his face, and this administration is going to be the party that gets badly burned.”
The secretary of Homeland Security thought someone with more political savvy should be installed immediately as interim director, then senior leaders of the president’s party in Congress should be sounded out about possible permanent replacements.
The president heard them all out, thanked everyone and shooed them off. When they were alone, he asked Molina what he thought.
“Grafton,” the president’s man said. “I’d pick him for my team for anything from softball to hand grenades to nuclear war. That said, frankly, sometimes Grafton gives me the willies. He plays his cards close to his vest, doesn’t keep his superiors informed, and he’s perfectly willing to ignore all the rules. Yet he always gets results. Not the results we thought we wanted, but usually the best possible outcome.”
The president mulled it while he twirled a pencil in his fingers. He instinctively distrusted the intelligence bureaucracy. And the military bureaucracy. Too damned many secrets and hidden agendas. On the other hand, Grafton got things done, he hadn’t stepped on any politicians’ toes lately, and this appointment was only an interim, “acting” deal, until the president could get a loyal man appointed and confirmed.
“Okay,” the elected one said. “Grafton it is. Go tell him.” The president made a dozen or two decisions a day, and he wasn’t going to waste more time on this one.
“Sometimes I get the feeling with Jake Grafton that I’m up on the back of an infuriated tiger,” Molina told the big boss, “and I’m about to fall off.”
“As long as he’s our tiger.”
“He’s America’s tiger, not ours. You can bet your tiny little political soul that no one owns him. Appointing him acting director won’t get you any points with him. With some of those people in Congress, maybe.”
“What the hell could happen in three or four months?” the big banana asked rhetorically. “He’ll do until we get someone else. Go tell him.”
That was this morning. Molina was jerked back to the here and now when Grafton cleared his throat. He had the president’s man skewered with his gaze.
“I’ll take the job,” he said.
“What made you change your mind?”
“Mario Tomazic was probably murdered.”
Molina rubbed his eyes. Oooh man! Here we go again. “Okay,” he said.
“You go tell Merritt that the president wants me. Better make it good. He knows this agency inside and out, and I am going to need him just as much as Tomazic did.”
“Sure.”
Jake stood and walked Molina to the door. “I should be thanking you, I suppose, but I won’t. I will tell you this. If Tomazic was murdered, we’ll get the people that did it. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.”
“Umm.”
“Better tell the president that before he signs the interim appointment letter. If I’m in, I’m all in.”
“Jake, this administration can’t afford another intelligence scandal.”
“I understand. But I didn’t kill Tomazic. If someone did, it’s a problem that will have to be faced … regardless of where the trail leads or who over at the White House doesn’t want to hear about it. You can tell Reinicke and Schulz I said that.”
Molina took a last good look at those cold gray eyes, grunted, then left.
Jake Grafton went out to the coffeepot and poured himself another cup.
On Willoughby Spit, Zhang Ping and Choy Lee watched a thunderstorm roll out in the estuary. Dark, malevolent, flashing lightning and vomiting an opaque cloud of rain, it was impressive.
Zhang wondered what would happen if a bolt of lightning struck near the warhead, but after a few seconds’ thought he stopped thinking about it. If the warhead exploded, he and everyone within fifteen miles would be instantly, totally dead. He wouldn’t even feel the transition from this life to the next. Actually, that would probably be a pretty good death. No debilitating old age, no loss of dignity, no shameful last-second thoughts. Click. And he would be gone to the next adventure, if there was one, which he doubted. But he would be beyond earthly concerns. That was an absolute fact.
Zhang and Choy had just loaded the boat onto its trailer after a reconnaissance down the river to look over the naval piers and generally snoop around. Everything normal. Absolutely normal.
Now they were in the SUV watching the storm.
“Want to go get a beer?” Choy Lee asked.
“Why not?”
Choy started the engine and pulled the transmission lever into drive.
That evening he took Sally to a movie, a soapy love story. Sally snuggled up against him in her theater seat and held his hand. Just like the American girls up and down the rows near them.
She was an American, of course, third generation. She spoke not a word of Chinese and merely giggled when he spouted some occasionally. Unlike Chinese girls, she didn’t cover her mouth with her hand when she smiled or giggled. She showed off perfect white teeth that her father had paid a whopping orthodontist bill to provide. Choy thought she was very charming. And her hand was warm and firm, supple, sensuous.
He felt very, very good. Maybe he should marry this woman. Maybe he should ask her. But there was Zhang. If it weren’t for him, Choy could just cease his activities for his controller, get a job, probably move, and Chinese intelligence would be out of his life and a part of his past. They would never find him among three hundred million Americans.
He would need a job, of course, because without the controller the money would stop. But jobs were plentiful in America if you were willing to work hard and had a little bit of intelligence.
Choy Lee thought about all this and held Sally’s hand and let the sensations of life and love warm him gently.
CHAPTER FIVE
If men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail.
Coffee cup in hand, Jake Grafton walked down the hall to the director’s office. After a short word with an executive assistant in the outer office, he punched in the code on the door and went in, closing it behind him. Today rain was hammering against the double-pane security glass of the office window and wind was shaking the branches of the nearby trees, which Grafton could have seen if he had looked, but he didn’t.
Acting director!
He didn’t know where to start. Soon, perhaps tomorrow, he would have to talk to the department heads, see where the agency’s budget was and how the draft budget for next year was coming together, review all the big irons in the fire … and he was going to have to find someone to run Middle Eastern ops. There was no way he could do the director’s job and that one, too.
The CIA was a huge, global operation. Not that the agency’s staff was the sole outfit in the government charged with gathering foreign intelligence, because they weren’t. Still, this agency was supposed to collect, analyze and pass on the intelligence it collected to the director of national intelligence, Reinicke, who was supposed to pass it on to senior decision makers in the White House, and in military and civilian agencies and departments.