just got back from his lunch and chat with Pete, and had just about made up his mind to do something in the evening-some propitiatory gesture in the direction of having a life, like phoning his sister Lois (in Boulder, safely distant) or renting a movie-when his insecure phone rang. 'Mike? Deirdre here. Can you come up to the meeting room, please? Eric would like a word with you.' 'Eric'-Colonel Smith-was one rung above him on the embryonic org chart, and the colonel was more likely to give him a headache than offer him a Tylenol. Odds were high that the phone call meant he'd be working as late as usual tonight. Bad cop, no life. It was like being on a homicide case twenty-four/seven.
The twenty-first floor had once been mahogany row, back when these offices had belonged to a dot-bomb. FTO had leased them cheap, from the sixth floor up. Everything below ten was a red zone-at risk of enemy incursion. Mike's destination was the office meeting room. It bore a red security seal, but there was no combination lock-it was a meeting room, not a High Security Portal leading to an NSA-style Vault Type Room. FTO didn't have enough secrets yet to fill a bucket of warm spit, much less a multimillion-dollar bank vault in the penthouse of an office block. It was a sign, in Mike's opinion, of how badly the whole business was going. Or of how starved they were for intelligence.
Mike hit the buzzer outside the door, next to the small CCTV lens. 'Mike Fleming, as requested. You wanted to see me?'
'Come in, Mike.' Smith normally tried to be friendly but sounded unusually reserved today. Taking his cue, Mike straightened up as the door opened.
Despite not being a full VTR, the meeting room was about as friendly as Dracula's crypt-no windows, air- conditioning ducts and ceiling and floor tiles made out of transparent Lexan so you could check them visually for bugs, white-noise generators glommed against every flat resonant surface to confound any bugging devices. It hummed and whistled like an asthmatic air conditioner, mumbling to itself incessantly to drown out any secrets the conferees might let slip. Meetings in the crypt always sounded like a conference of deaf folks: Eh, what? Would you repeat that?
Mike waited for Smith to unlock the door. Smith was in shirtsleeves, his collar undone and his tie loose. Air conditioner must be acting up again, Mike thought before he registered the other man sitting at the transparent table.
'What can I do for you, sir?' He glanced at the stranger, appraisingly. Red badge, purple stripe. In the arcane color-coded NSA hierarchy Smith had imported, that meant a visitor, but the kind of visitor who was allowed to ask pointed questions. 'Good morning,' Mike added, cautiously.
'Have a seat.' Smith dropped back into his own chair so Mike took his cue, settled at the other side of the table. The visitor was thin-faced, in his thirties or forties, and had a receding hairline, like Hugo Weaving in The Matrix, Mike realized. Right down to the tie clip. That had to be deliberate. An asshole, but a high-clearance asshole, he thought irritably.
'Mike, this is Dr. Andrew James, from Yale by way of the Agency and the Heritage Foundation. Andrew, this is senior agent Mike Fleming, DEA, on secondment to FTO. So you know where you stand, Mike, Dr. James is our new Deputy Director of Operational Intelligence, which is to say, he's going to be running our side of the show once we achieve some organizational focus.' His cheek twitched. 'Any questions?'
'I'm very pleased to meet you, sir,' Mike said politely, trying to keep his face impassive. Shit, another spook. 'Spook' spelled 'cowboy,' as far as Mike was concerned. They tended to know nothing about law enforcement, and cared less. Which said something unpleasant about the direction in which this meeting was going to go.
'I'm sure you're pleased.' James had a dry, gravelly voice. 'I know what you're thinking.' He didn't smile. He didn't frown. He looks like a robot, Mike thought. He rubbed his palms on his trousers, abruptly uneasy.
'You're dead right,' James continued. 'I am a political appointee. I'm here because certain parties in the administration want to keep a tight lock on the operational cycle of the Family Trade Organization and ensure it doesn't run wild. You're currently stovepiped into NSA and DEA, but that's got to change. We're keeping the DOJ connection, but it's been decided that the operational emphasis in the organization is going to be moved toward the military side. So my public title is Deputy Director, Political-Military Affairs, reporting to NSC. In reality, I'm going to be moving into your turf here as your DD/OI, liaising with NSC and the White House to keep them appraised of whatever you HUMINT guys can get out of our assets, and also to keep Justice in the loop. Are we clear, yet?' He cracked a wintry smile.
Mike glanced at Smith, registering his close-faced expression. This is not good. 'Not entirely, sir,' he said slowly, trying to get his thoughts in order. 'I understand the oversight aspect. But am I right in saying that you see this as primarily a national security problem, rather than a domestic policing one?'
'Yes.' James laid his hands flat on the tabletop, fingers spread wide across it. 'We will be emphasizing national security approaches. These-this 'Clan'-is an external threat. They've got nuclear material, and the narcoterrorism angle is, in our view-that is, the strategic view received from the top down-of subsidiary importance to the question of whether a hostile power is going to start blowing up our cities.'
'Am I still needed?' Mike asked bluntly, a disturbing sense of anger and helplessness stealing over him. 'Or did you call me up here to reassign me?'
James smiled again, like a shark circling wounded prey in the water. 'Not exactly. Colonel Smith tells me that in the eighty-one days since this organization got off the ground, the organization has laid its hands on just one willing HUMINT asset, and he's of questionable worth. You've been tasked with interrogating him, because you were his first contact. I find that kind of hard to believe-can you summarize for me?'
Mike felt his pulse quicken. Smith set me up. He glanced at his boss, who narrowed his eyes and shook his head infinitesimally. No? Then it was James. Spook tactics. Double-check everyone against everyone else, trust nobody, grab the situation by the throat-hang on. 'Can you confirm your clearances for me? No offense, but so far all I've got to go on is your word.' He nodded at Smith. 'Standard protocol.' Standard protocol was trust nobody, accept nothing, and it was supposed to apply at all levels-which was why Swann checked Mike's ID and clearances every morning before giving him the keys to his own office. He tensed: if James wanted to make an issue of it-
But instead he nodded agreeably. 'Very good, Mr. Fleming. Badge reader over there.' He stood up and walked over to the machine. 'Why don't you clear yourself to me, at the same time?'
'I think that would be a very good idea, sir,' Mike said carefully. They both ran their badges through the scanner, and Mike noted James's list of clearances. It was about a third longer than his own. 'Great, I'm allowed to tell you that you exist.' He smiled, experimentally, and James nodded as he returned to his seat.
Mike took a deep breath. Okay, so he's not a total jerk. I can live with that. 'We have a problem with intelligence assets,' he began. 'All we've got is one willing defector and two prisoners. The defector, as usual, is willing to tell us one hundred and fifty percent of whatever he thinks we want to hear. And the prisoners not only aren't talking, I don't think they can talk.'
James grunted as if he'd been punched in the gut. 'Explain.' He held up one hand: 'I've read the backgrounder and played the debrief tapes from Matt. Color me an interested ignoramus and give it to me straight, I don't have time for excuses. Pretend I'm Daddy Warbucks, if you like. That's where this buck stops.'
'Uh, okay.' Mike sat down again, head whirling. The Office of the Vice President? He's in charge, now? Notoriously strong-willed, the VP in this administration more than made up for any lack of experience in the Oval Office. But this was still news to Mike. Later.
He cleared his throat. 'We got a windfall in the form of Matt. Without him, FTO wouldn't exist. We'd still be looking at eight to ten gigabucks of H and C per annum transshipping into the east coast with no clue how it was getting past the Coast Guard. We're still probably looking at half that, but for now-' He shrugged. 'First thing first, Matt is probably the most valuable informer any American police or security department has acquired, ever.'
He swallowed. 'But we hit a concrete wall in the follow-through stage.'
'Concrete.' James made a steeple of his fingers, elbows braced on the transparent tabletop. 'What do you mean, concrete?'
'Okay. In our first week, Pete and I holed up with Matt and milked him like crazy. Apart from the side trip to the black box down in Crypto City, of course.' He nodded at Smith. 'By day six on the timeline we were ready to move. Thanks to the courier snatch on day two, the other side already knew we were active, so it wasn't much of a surprise when we rolled eight empty nests in a row. The haul was pretty good but the assets had flown, money and bodies and drugs. If you've seen the details of what we found'-James nodded-'you'll know it was a very substantial operation. Disturbingly well structured. These guys are like a major espionage agency in their approach, sort of like the old-time KGB: organized in teams with secure communications and safe houses and an org chart. This isn't
