LaValle stirred. “It’s the clearest sign yet of the deterioration of our defense grid that Secretary Halliday has been warning against for several years now.”
“When we start listening to Congress and the people of the country all hope is lost,” Kendall said. “A mulligan stew of amateurs all with petty axes to grind and absolutely no idea of how to maintain security or run the intelligence services.”
LaValle gave off an icy smile. “That’s why the secretary of defense has labored mightily to keep the workings clandestine.”
“The more they know, the less they understand,” General Kendall said, “and the more inclined they are to interfere by means of their congressional hearings and threats of budgets cuts.”
“Oversight is a bitch,” LaValle agreed. “Which is why areas of the Pentagon under my control are working without it.” He paused for a moment, studying Batt. “How does that sound to you, Deputy Director?”
“Like manna from heaven.”
Oleg had screwed up big time,” Devra said.
Arkadin took a stab. “He got in over his head with loan sharks?”
She shook her head. “That was last year. It had to do with Pyotr Zilber.”
Arkadin’s ears pricked up. “What about him?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes opened wide as Arkadin raised his fist. “I swear it.”
“But you’re part of Zilber’s network.”
She turned her head away from him, as if she couldn’t stand herself. “A minor part. I shuffle things from here to there.”
“Within the past week Shumenko gave you a document.”
“He gave me a package, I don’t know what was in it,” Devra said. “It was sealed.”
“Compartmentalization.”
“What?” She looked up at him. Blood beads on her face looked like freckles. Tears had caused her mascara to run, giving her dark half circles under her eyes.
“The first principle of putting together a cadre.” Arkadin nodded. “Go on.”
She shrugged. “That’s all I know.”
“What about the package?”
“I passed it on, as I was instructed to do.”
Arkadin bent over her. “Who did you give it to?”
She glanced at the crumpled form on the floor. “I gave it to Filya.”
LaValle had paused a moment to reflect. “We never knew each other at Yale.”
“You were two years ahead of me,” Batt said. “But in Skull and Bones you were notorious.”
LaValle laughed. “Now you flatter me.”
“Hardly.” Batt unbuttoned his overcoat. “The stories I heard.”
LaValle frowned. “Are never to be repeated.”
General Kendall let loose with a guffaw that filled the compartment. “Should I leave you two girls alone? Better not; one of you could wind up pregnant.”
The comment was meant as a joke, of course, but there was a nasty undercurrent to it. Did the military man resent his exclusion from the elite club, or the connection the other two had through Skull amp; Bones? Possibly it was a bit of both. In any event, Batt noted the second’s tone of voice, tucked the possible implications into a place where he could examine them later.
“What d’you have in mind, Mr. LaValle?”
“I’m looking for a way to convince the president that his more immoderate advisers made a mistake in recommending Veronica Hart for DCI.” LaValle pursed his lips. “Any ideas?”
“Off the top of my head, plenty,” Batt said. “What’s in it for me?”
As if on cue LaValle produced another smile. “We’re going to require a new DCI when we can Hart’s ass out of the District. Who would be your first choice?”
“The current deputy director seems the logical one,” Batt said. “That would be me.”
LaValle nodded. “Our thought precisely.”
Batt tapped his fingertips against his knee. “If you two are serious.”
“We are, I assure you.”
Batt’s mind worked furiously. “It seems to me unwise at this early juncture to have attacked Hart directly.”
“How about you don’t tell us our business,” Kendall said.
LaValle held up a hand. “Let’s hear what the man has to say, Richard.” To Batt, he added, “However, let me make something crystal clear. We want Hart out as soon as possible.”
“We all do, but you don’t want suspicion thrown back at you-or at the defense secretary.”
LaValle and General Kendall exchanged a quick and knowing look. They were like twins, able to communicate with each other without uttering a word. “Indeed not,” LaValle said.
“She told me how you ambushed her at that meeting with the president-and the threats you made to her outside the White House.”
“Women are more easily intimidated than men,” Kendall pointed out. “It’s a well-known fact.”
Batt ignored the military man. “You put her on notice. She took your threats very personally. She had a killer’s rep in Black River. I checked through my sources.”
LaValle seemed thoughtful. “How would you have handled her?”
“I would have made nice, welcomed her to the fold, let her know you’re there for her whenever she needs your help.”
“She’d never have bought it,” LaValle said. “She knows my agenda.”
“It doesn’t matter. The idea is not to antagonize her. You don’t want her knives out when you come for her.”
LaValle nodded, as if he saw the wisdom in this approach. “So how do you suggest we proceed from here?”
“Give me some time,” Batt said. “Hart’s just getting started at CI, and because I’m her deputy I know everything she does, every decision she makes. But when she’s out of the office, shadow her, see where she goes, who she meets. Using parabolic mikes you can listen in to her conversations. Between us, we’ll have her covered twenty-four/seven.”
“Sounds pretty vanilla to me,” Kendall said skeptically.
“Keep it simple, especially when there’s so much at stake, that’s my advice,” Batt said.
“What if she cottons on to the surveillance?” Kendall said.
Batt smiled. “So much the better. It’ll only bolster the CI mantra that the NSA is run by incompetents.”
LaValle laughed. “Batt, I like the way you think.”
Batt nodded, acknowledging the compliment. “Coming from the private sector Hart’s not used to government procedure. She doesn’t have the leeway she enjoyed at Black River. I can already see that, to her, rules and regs are meant to be bent, sidestepped, even, on occasion, broken. Mark my words, sooner rather than later, Director Hart is going to give us the ammunition we need to kick her butt out of CI.”
Seven
HOW IS your foot, Jason?”
Bourne looked up at Professor Specter, whose face was swollen and discolored. His left eye was half closed, dark as a storm cloud.
“Yes,” Specter said, “after what just happened I’m compelled to call you by what seems like your rightful name.”
“My heel is fine,” Bourne said. “It’s me who should be asking about you.”
Specter put fingertips gingerly against his cheek. “In my life I’ve endured worse beatings.”
The two men were seated in a high-ceilinged library filled with a large, magnificent Isfahan carpet, ox-blood leather furniture. Three walls were fitted floor-to-ceiling with books neatly arrayed on mahogany shelves. The fourth wall was pierced by a large leaded-glass window overlooking stands of stately firs on a knoll, which sloped down to a pond guarded by a weeping willow, shivering in the wind.
Specter’s personal physician had been summoned, but the professor had insisted the doctor tend to Bourne’s flayed heel first.
“I’m sure we can find you a pair of shoes somewhere,” Specter said, sending one of the half a dozen men in residence scurrying off with Bourne’s remaining shoe.
This rather large stone-and-slate house deep in the Virginia countryside to which Specter had directed Bourne was a far cry from the modest apartment the professor maintained near the university. Bourne had been to the apartment numerous times over the years, but never here. Then there was the matter of the staff, which Bourne noted with interest as well as surprise.