Covert Warriors

Andrews Air Force Base, he realized that he had been accepted by the Merry Outlaws as one of their own.

There were advantages to this-for example, he had been given a CaseyBerry, over which the secretary of State had given him the scoop about the murders and kidnapping in Mexico-and he could see a cornucopia of other news that would come his way in the future.

But there were manifold disadvantages to his being a professional journalist that he could see as well.

As Roscoe pulled on his shorts in his bedroom, he said: “Guys, I really don’t want to go out there. Why? Wolf News will carry the President’s press conference from the first line of bullshit to the last.”

“You’re going, Roscoe,” Yung said. “Charley wants you to go.”

“When you get down to it, guys, I’m really not one of you.”

“Charley thinks you are,” Yung said. “That’s good enough for the executive combat pay committee.”

“For the what?”

“The executive combat pay committee,” Delchamps replied. “Two-Gun, Alex Darby, and me. We’re the ones who pass out the combat pay.”

Yung added, “The committee asked Charley, ‘What about Roscoe?’ And Charley replied, ‘He was on the island, wasn’t he?’ ”

“I was on the island as a journalist,” Roscoe replied. “A neutral, non-combatant observer.”

But Danton thought, Shit, I don’t believe that.

I was rooting for the good guys.

And I took the Uzi that Castillo said I might need.

“If that was the case,” Delchamps said, “we’d have to kill you. You know too much.”

There he goes with that “we’d have to kill you” bullshit again.

The trouble with that being I’m not sure it’s bullshit.

I do know too much.

“And if we killed you, then you wouldn’t get the million,” Yung said.

“What fucking million?”

“I could set up a trust fund for your kids, I suppose,” Yung said thoughtfully.

“What fucking million?” Roscoe demanded as he rummaged through his tie rack.

“Shooters,” Delchamps said, “roughly defined as everybody who went to the island, get a million. Plus, of course, everybody who went into the Congo. Charley, Sweaty, and Dmitri opted out.”

My God, they’re serious! I’m being offered a million dollars!

How much would that be when the IRS was through with me?

Why am I asking?

Pure and noble journalist that I am, I’m of course going to have to refuse it.

What is this “pure and noble journalist” bullshit?

What’s the difference between me taking free meals and booze from any lobbyist with a credit card and taking a million from the Merry Outlaws?

I write what I want, period.

And I was on that island, and I could have been killed.

Roscoe had a sudden, very clear flashback to what had happened several years before at the National Press Club.

Somebody had jumped on Frank Cesno, then high up in CNN’s Washington Bureau-and a hell of a journalist- about the recent tendency of TV journalists to paint themselves as absolutely neutral when covering a war.

“Otherwise, both sides would think of us as spies, not journalists,” Cesno had announced, more than a little piously.

Whereupon he had been shot out of the saddle by Admiral Stans-field Turner, who had been director of the CIA under Jimmy Carter.

“Frank,” the admiral had said, “what do you think the Russians or the North Koreans-or anybody-think when they look at someone like you? Noble member of the Fourth Estate or spy?”

“David,” Roscoe J. Danton inquired, “how much of a bite would the IRS take from that million?”

THREE

Auditorium Three CIA Headquarters McLean, Virginia 1100 12 April 2007

Auditorium Three, unofficially known as the Director’s Auditorium, was a multipurpose room which could be used as a small theater capable of hosting forty people in theater-style seating and another eight in more elegant seats in the front row, each provided with a small table and a telephone. It could also be used as a dining room capable of feeding as many as sixty people, with five tables, each seating a dozen guests.

It was secure, which caused it also to be known as the Director’s Bubble, which meant that great effort was expended just about daily to ensure that nothing said or seen in the room could possibly be heard or seen anywhere else.

That sort of security wasn’t a consideration today, where what was to be said by President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen would be heard and viewed in real time all over the world.

There was security, of course. Not only was this the headquarters of the CIA, but the President of the United States was going to be there. As were the Vice President, the secretary of State, and other very senior officials.

There are so many Secret Service guys in here, Roscoe J. Danton thought as he entered Auditorium Three, that they’re falling all over each other.

They’re competing for space with the State Department security guys-and gals-protecting Natalie Cohen, the Army security guys protecting Naylor, and the CIA’s own security guys keeping an eye on both Frank Lammelle and the store in general.

Edgar Delchamps and Two-Gun Yung had dropped off Danton at the main entrance, saying they’d wait for him in the parking garage, which caused Danton to again recall the allegation-which he believed-that Delchamps had taken out a CIA traitor in the parking garage by inserting an ice pick into his auditory canal, thereby saving the Agency from the embarrassment that trying the sonofabitch would have caused.

Some of the White House Press Corps filled most of the seats in the auditorium. There were far more members of that elite body than there were seats for them here today.

When Roscoe had shown his White House Press Corps credentials to the first of three security points-the “outside” one, near the main entrance-one of Lammelle’s security people had handed him another credential, this one a plastic-sealed card on what Roscoe thought of as a “beaded dog tag chain.” He looked at it. It held his photo and the legend PRESIDENTIAL PRESS CONFERENCE AT CIA HEADQUARTERS 1100 APRIL 12TH 2007.

“You’re on the reserved-seating list, Mr. Danton,” the man said.

Roscoe found this interesting, because before he had been so rudely awakened, he had had no intention of coming out here today and hadn’t asked for credentials, let alone a reserved-seat reservation.

He knew the protocol for events like this, at which there would be far more seats requested by members of the White House Press Corps than were available. The “host”-in this case, Frank Lammelle-and Porky Parker would put their heads together and decide who got in. And who would have to wait outside, fuming.

Roscoe intuited that he was on the reserved-seating list because of Lammelle, not Porky Parker. While he had no problems with Porky, Porky could be expected to hand out reserved seats to the elite of the White House Press Corps, and Roscoe knew that he wasn’t a member of that elite. Close, but no golden ring.

And he further intuited that it was due to his new status as a member-however uncomfortable-of the Merry Outlaws. At the beginning, Frank Lammelle had headed the CIA delegation of the alphabet agencies looking for Charley Castillo.

Lammelle even had an air-powered dart gun-