“Yeah. Back in the initial invasion into Iraq, I was a sergeant in 5th Group. I ended up staying a couple nights in the palace of Uday, one of Saddam’s kids. It was a big gilded room. A couple nights later I was in Al-Faw at one of Saddam’s palaces. Again, me and my A-team ended up in a room with all this gold-leaf shit everywhere. Then, up in Tikrit, we were billeted in Saddam’s mom’s palace. I don’t even remember if the room had gold in it, but I’m told it did. A few years later, after I made officer I went through selection and assessment at Delta. One of the cadre remembered running into me and my A-team in all these golden rooms. He said I must have had the Midas touch because he and the other D-boys always had to stay in some cinder-block shit house.”
Clark laughed. “Let me guess, you haven’t been in another golden room since you got the name Midas.”
Midas said, “Yeah, it’s been pretty much cinder-block shit houses ever since.” He looked at Clark. “You were a SEAL, right?”
“In another life.”
“What did they call you back on the teams?”
Clark answered flatly, “They called me Kelly.”
“Why?”
“Because that was my name back then.” There was a tone that told Midas he’d asked one question too many, so he left it right there.
Clark said, “I’ve seen your DoD photo. With the possible exception of Jack Junior, I’ve never seen anybody in my life who looks more different when he wears a beard as compared to when he doesn’t.”
Midas cracked a little smile. “I kind of look like a banker or something.”
“I was going to say computer repair.”
Midas nodded. “Yeah, that works. I see my brother and his family once a year or so. If I wear my beard my little niece bawls her eyes out.”
Both men sipped beers in silence, then Clark said, “There would be a training workup, but nothing like what you went through to get into Delta.”
Midas said, “That’s good. I left the bottoms of both feet somewhere on a hill up in West Virginia.”
Clark said, “SEAL training was damn tough, but Delta Selection and Assessment just sounds cruel.”
Midas shrugged. “They try to weed out the sane guys by making it to where only crazy folks would stick it out, and then they take what’s left and weed out the ultracrazy. There is an acceptable level of freak that works best in Delta.” Midas shrugged. “I served ten years in the Unit, so make of that what you will.”
“I’ll make an offer. I want you to come work for us. You interested?”
Midas said, “Let’s say I agree. Let’s say I get in and it doesn’t work out. I don’t know why, maybe I spend a year twiddling my thumbs, don’t feel like I’m making an impact. Is my working with you going to damage my chances at getting in the Agency?”
“Not at all. If you come to me and say you want out, I’ll put in a good word for you wherever you want to go.”
Midas shrugged. “All right, Mr. Clark. You’ve just caught yourself a fish. Let’s see what this is all about.”
Both men climbed off their stumps and shook hands.
15
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is located in Tysons Corner, Virginia, a ten-minute drive south from CIA headquarters, and a half-hour west of the White House in good traffic, which pretty much exists only in the middle of the night.
The government complex that houses the organization is called Liberty Crossing, abbreviated in the government to LX, with the property split into two main sections. The National Counterterrorism Center fills up LX1, and the ODNI is at LX2.
On the top floor of LX2, in the office of the director, Mary Pat Foley returned from a meeting at noon. A cranberry chicken salad and an iced tea had been placed on her desk for her so she could work through lunch, and she’d just sat down when her secretary’s voice came over the intercom.
“Madam Director, I have Directors Canfield and Murray on a conference call for you.”
Mary Pat’s shoulders slumped a little. The salad looked good, and now she’d have to just stare at it through the phone call.
The call was put through, and Dan Murray spoke first. “My snatch team, the guys who flew from HK to Indonesia to pick up the Department of State guy spying for the North Koreans. They were just detained at the airport in Jakarta.”
Instantly, Mary Pat realized this had a familiar ring to it. “Detained? Why?”
Jay Canfield said, “Same as in Iran. We don’t know, but the word is it had something to do with the fingerprint scanner.”
Murray added, “Their covers were solid. Rock solid. The biometric data of those men matches their passports. Somehow the Indonesians knew the men’s actual identities.”
“How is that possible?” Foley asked, and then she answered her own question. “Somehow, in some way, there has been a breach of data, and it has been exploited by multiple parties.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Canfield said. “Iran was my guy. CIA. New Jersey was a Navy officer. And this… these guys are FBI. How the hell could Russians, Indonesians, and Iranians simultaneously find out the identities of all these different assets across all these different divisions of the U.S. government?”
Mary Pat said, “I have no idea, but we have to find the commonality between these three incidents. We also have to figure out how large this is. We have a lot of assets out in the field, obviously, and no idea who might be compromised.”
Dan Murray said, “Look, all this is true, but putting that crisis aside for the moment, I have to get somebody into Jakarta, now.”
Canfield asked, “Don’t you have anybody at the embassy there who could take care of it?”
“Not really. I have special agents there, but they aren’t trained in counterintel to the point they could be relied on to tag and bag this unknown traitor right in front of the North Koreans without it turning into a big mess.”
Mary Pat had an answer. “We need somebody who is not part of the U.S. government, and we need them to be discreet and skilled.”
Dan Murray said, “You’re talking about Gerry Hendley’s boys.” Murray had recently been read in on The Campus and its work with the U.S. intelligence community abroad.
“Yes, I am,” Mary Pat said.
There was a short pause, then Director Murray sighed. “Yeah, okay. I don’t know what other options we have. I’ll send everything I have on the case directly to you. I assume you can pass it on.”
“I’ll take care of it personally.”
Two minutes later Foley’s salad remained untouched, and she was on the phone with Gerry Hendley. “We’ve got an emergent situation in Jakarta. Is your team in a position where they can get moving quickly and help us out?”
“How soon do you need us there?”
“Now, frankly.”
Gerry spoke quickly. “The Gulfstream is at Reagan, a ten-minute drive from the office. The flight crew is at the airport now, and all three of my operatives are here in the building. I can get them in a van fifteen minutes from now. I imagine they’ll have to refuel en route, and I don’t know the flight time.”
Mary Pat said, “The flight time is twenty-two hours from Andrews, including a refueling stop. DCA will be virtually the same.”
Gerry said, “Then I can have Chavez, Caruso, and Ryan there by roughly this time tomorrow. Will that do you any good?”
Mary Pat said, “That’s within my time window, but barely. Please get them moving, I’ll give you specifics when everything is in motion.”
“Of course. Any special equipment they need to bring with them?”
Mary Pat thought for a moment. She said, “Basic surveillance gear. And some weapons for their own defense. This might involve a hostile party willing to put up a fight.”