Canfield said, “She’s on her way to Iraq, actually. She’s personally involved with an operation.”
“Personally? Why?”
“Apparently she didn’t want to lose touch with the HUMINT side of things. Said she was spending too many years in conference rooms and too much time staring at computer monitors.”
Ryan wasn’t happy about this. While he understood and appreciated the sentiment behind Mary Pat’s actions, the fact she wasn’t here during a debacle like the arrest of a CIA NOC in Tehran meant Ryan missed out on the immediate input of the most senior member of the U.S. intelligence community.
“When is she due back?”
“I sent word through her second-in-command. I assume this news out of Iran will cut her trip short. I can get her on the phone for you.”
“No, I’ll let her do what she needs to do. She can call me if she has anything on this. I sure as hell hope whatever she’s got going on over there is worth it.” Ryan waved the thought away. “Just keep me posted, especially on your investigation into how his legend was burned.”
The intercom on Ryan’s desk beeped, and his secretary came over the speaker. “Mr. President. Attorney General Murray is here, he would like five minutes of your time.”
Ryan looked to Canfield, and Canfield stood.
“Send him on in.”
Canfield greeted Dan Murray as he entered, and started passing him for the door.
Murray said, “This might prove interesting for you, too, Jay. I’d like you to stick around, if it’s okay with the President.”
Ryan motioned both men to the sofa across from him, and he sat back down himself.
Murray said, “That thing in New Jersey last weekend. It was definitely not a random act.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows. “The fact you are bringing this to my attention, and Jay’s attention, tells me there is some sort of a national-security implication in a shooting at a Mexican restaurant in New Jersey.”
“Afraid so. This will hit the news in an hour or two, but you need to know about it first. It turns out the shooter was a twenty-three-year-old Russian named Vadim Rechkov. He was in the U.S. on a student visa. He’d been studying computer science at a tech school in Oregon, but dropped out. Local cops picked him up for drunk and disorderly several months ago, and he was given an order to appear. He would have been deported after his hearing, but he didn’t show up.”
Ryan just said, “Do criminals facing deportation ever show up?”
“Not very often, so that’s not a surprise. But here comes the real surprise. The shooter had a brother who was a machinist’s mate on the Kazan, one of the Russian subs sunk by the USS James Greer. And they’ve kept it quiet until now, but one of the victims in the Mexican restaurant was Commander Scott Hagen, captain of the James Greer.”
“Oh my God,” Ryan said. He’d gone to meet Hagen and his crew personally when they returned to Virginia with his damaged Arleigh Burke — class destroyer.
Murray hastened to add, “Hagen is going to survive. Shot twice with an AK-47. But his brother-in-law took a round to the back of the head. Dead, along with a waiter and another patron. Six injured, including the commander.”
Neither Canfield nor Ryan asked if there was any chance this was a coincidence. Both men had been around too long to even wonder.
Murray added, “Scott Hagen told the police after the fact that he’d caught the shooter eyeing him before the incident. Got so creepy that he and his family were just leaving when the guy came back in with guns blazing.”
“Didn’t Hagen have security?”
“When he got back to the States, DoD arranged to keep a car with a couple agents in front of his house for a few weeks. Local police upped patrols in his neighborhood, and of course there is a lot of security at the shipyard where the James Greer was in dry dock. But no threats materialized, and this trip to New Jersey Hagen took wasn’t anything official, so he wasn’t looked after. Honestly, since there’d been zero direct threats on the commander, DoD went above and beyond the call of duty giving him any security at all.”
Ryan said, “The assumption is that this Russian just read the newspaper and saw that Commander Hagen was captain of the James Greer, he blamed him for his brother’s death, so he tracked him down and tried to kill him?”
“Seems like what happened. It’s weird, honestly. FBI investigators haven’t discovered how Rechkov knew Hagen was going to be at that restaurant at that time. The Russian rented a car in Portland six days earlier, drove cross-country, bought the AK and ammo just outside of Salt Lake City, then bought more ammo and a knife in Lincoln, Nebraska. If he ever shot the weapon at all it would have been by the side of the road somewhere. We can’t find any evidence he even visited a gun range.”
Canfield said, “So this probably wasn’t a terribly sophisticated plan if this clown just got a tip about Hagen from the far side of the country, and then acted spontaneously.”
Murray nodded. “We have a lot to learn about this, but that is what we think happened.”
Jay Canfield thought a moment. “I don’t see any chance in hell Moscow had anything to do with this. Not because they’re above it, but because this would-be assassin sounds like such a screw-up.”
“Right,” agreed Ryan.
Murray said, “DoD is ordering up personal protection for all the Marine and Navy commanders involved in the Baltic, on the off chance this is part of a wider scheme.”
The President then told the attorney general about the arrest of the CIA’s officer in Iran.
Murray looked to Canfield. “No idea how your guy was compromised?”
Canfield shook his head. “None.”
Ryan said, “The same week a NOC in Iran is exposed through unclear means, a military officer is exposed through unclear means. Does that seem weird to anybody but me?”
Canfield said, “Hagen wasn’t in a covert position like my NOC was. Still… I take your meaning. Somehow his travel plans made their way to some flunky with a grudge.”
Ryan blew out a sigh. “What a damn mess.”
6
If Dominic Caruso had not joined the FBI and then joined The Campus, he probably would have opened a restaurant.
He loved to cook. He’d learned from his mom, had spent countless hours in the kitchen as a child, and even as a teenager he could make authentic Italian dishes from scratch, while his twin brother, Brian, rarely assembled anything more sophisticated than a bologna sandwich with mayonnaise and American cheese.
Dom had gotten away from the kitchen when he was in the FBI, and during his first couple of years in The Campus he was on the go all the time and had no one to cook for anyway, but now, as a single male in his thirties, he relished the opportunity to prepare meals for company.
Especially attractive female company.
Tonight the entrée was eggplant parmigiana; his dish was in its last stages now as he browned the cheese in the broiler. And to offset this vegetarian entrée, he’d prepared an impressive-looking charcuterie platter that now took up half a shelf in his refrigerator.
The Fontanella Mt. Veeder chardonnay was chilled and waiting in the ice bucket on the small table just inside the door of his balcony, which provided a nice view of D.C.’s Logan Circle below without the warm air and street noise he would have had to deal with if he actually set up the table on the balcony.