Locked On

Rockville, and then transfers to busses in Falls Church and Tysons Corner. He could have traveled on a more direct route, but he did not want to arrive too early. A man walking through the streets early on a workday was less noticeable than a man strolling through a residential neighborhood in the middle of the night.

Especially when there were trained watchers about.

From Clark’s vantage point, here between a Saab four-door and a garbage can full of what John had determined to be soiled diapers, he could not see a surveillance crew monitoring the whitewashed wood home across tiny North Fillmore, but he imagined they were there. They would have determined there was a chance he’d come here to see the man who lived here, so they would have put one car with a two-person crew somewhere in a driveway on the street. The homeowner would have come out to see what the hell the car was doing there, but the watchers would have flashed their FBI creds, and that would have been the end of that conversation.

He waited twenty-two minutes before a light came on in an upstairs window. A few more minutes and a downstairs light flicked on.

Clark waited some more. While doing so he repositioned himself, put his butt down on the edge of the carport to allow the blood to flow back into his legs.

He’d just adjusted to his new position when the front door of the home opened, a man in a windbreaker stepped out, stretched for a moment on the fence, and started up the street in a slow jog.

Clark stood slowly in the dark and retraced his steps through the two backyards.

John Clark made certain no one was following James Hardesty, CIA archivist, before he began jogging behind him. There were a few more men and women out for their predawn, pre-workday exercise now, so Clark fit in to the residential color. Or he would as long as the only illumination came from streetlights. John wore a black viny?el hooded jacket that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows on a jogger, but his belted khaki chinos and his Vasque boots weren’t typical attire for the other runners around here.

He overtook Hardesty on South Washington Boulevard, just as he passed Towers Park on the right. The CIA man glanced back for an instant as he heard the jogger behind him, he moved to the edge of the curb to let the faster man pass, but instead the man spoke. “Jim, it’s John Clark. Keep running. Let’s go up in the trees here and have a quick chat.”

Without a word, both men ran up the little incline and stepped into an empty playground. There was just faint light in the sky, enough to see faces close. They stopped by a swing set.

“How’s it going, John?”

“I guess you could say I’ve been better.”

“You don’t need that gun on your hip.”

Clark didn’t know if the weapon was printing under his jacket or if Hardesty had just assumed. “I don’t need it for you, maybe. Whether or not I need it has yet to be determined.”

Neither man was out of breath; the jog had lasted less than a half-mile.

Hardesty said, “When I heard you were on the run, I thought you might come looking for me.”

Clark replied, “The FBI probably had the same suspicions.”

A nod. “Yep. A two-man SSG team a half-block up the street. They showed up before Brannigan went on the news.” The Special Surveillance Group was a unit of non-agent FBI employees who served as the Bureau’s army of watchers.

“Figured.”

“I doubt they’ll come looking for me for a half-hour or so. I’m all yours.”

“I won’t keep you. I’m just trying to get a handle on what’s going on.”

“DOJ has a hard-on for you, big-time. That’s pretty much all I know. But I want you to know this. Whatever they got on you, John, they didn’t get anything from me that wasn’t in your file.”

Clark did not even know that Hardesty had been questioned. “The FBI interviewed you?”

Hardesty nodded. “Two senior special agents grilled me at a hotel in McLean yesterday morning. I saw some younger special agents in another meeting room interviewing other guys from the building. Pretty much everyone who was around when you were in SAD was questioned about you. I guess I warranted the first-string agents because Alden told them you and I go way back.”

“What did they ask?”

“All kinds of stuff. They had your file already. Guess those pricks Kilborn and Alden saw something in there that they didn’t like, so they started some sort of DOJ investigation.”

Clark just shook his head. “No. What could be in my CIA record that would warrant CIA going out of shop like that? Even if they thought they had me on some bullshit treason charge, they’d bring me in themselves before they breathed a word of it to DOJ.”

Hardesty shook his head. “Not if they had something on you that wasn’t part of your CIA duties. Those fucks would sell you down the river because you are friends with Ryan.”

Shit, thought Clark. What if this wasn’t about The Campus? What if this was about the election? “What did they ask?”

Hardesty shook his head but stopped it in mid-shake. “Wait. I am the archivist. I know, or at least I have seen, virtually everything in the virtual record. But there was one thing they asked me about that threw me for a loop.”

“What’s that?”

“I know all your SAD exploits don’t make it into the files, but normally there is a grain of something in the files that can link up to what you were actually working on. Meaning I might not have a clue what a paramilitary operations officer did in Nigeria, but I can tell you if he was in Africa on a particular date. Malaria shots, commercial air travel, per diems that correspond to the location, that sort of thing.”

“Right.”

“But the two feds asked me about your activities in Berlin in March 1981. I went through the files… ” Hardesty shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing at all about you being anywhere near Germany at that time.”

John Clark did not have to think back. He remembered instantly. He gave away nothing, just asked, “Did they believe you?”

James shook his head. “Hell, no. Apparently Alden had told them to watch out for me because you and I have some history. So the feds pressed me. They asked me about a hit you did on a Stasi operative named Schuman. I told them the truth. I’ve never heard of any Schuman, and I didn’t know a damn thing about you in Berlin in ’eighty-one.”

Clark just nodded, his poker face remaining intact. The dawn filled out some of the features of Hardesty’s face. The question John wanted to ask hung in the air for a moment, then Hardesty answered it unbidden.

“I did not say one damn word about Hendley Associates.” Hardesty was one of the few at CIA who knew of the existence of The Campus. In fact, Jim Hardesty was the one who suggested Chavez and Clark go meet with Gerry Hendley in the first place.

Clark stared into the man’s eyes. It was too dark to get a read on him, but, Clark decided, Jim Hardesty wouldn’t lie to him. After a few seconds he said, “Thank you.”

James just shrugged. “I’ll take that to my grave. Look, John, whatever happened in Germany, this isn’t going to be about you. You’re just a pawn. Kealty wants to push Ryan into a corner on the issue of black ops. He’s using you, guilt by association or whatever you want to call it. But the way he’s having the FBI rummage through your past ops, pulling them out, and waving them around in the air, stuff that ought to just be left right the fuck where it is — I mean, he’s digging up old bones at Langley, and nobody needs that.”

John just looked at him.

“You know and I know they don’t have anything on you substantive. No sense in you making the situation any worse.”

“Say what you want to say, Jim.”

“I am not worried about your indictment. You are a tough guy.” He sighed. “I’m worried you are going to get killed.”

John said nothing.

“It makes no sense to run from this. When Ryan gets elected, this whole thing will dry up. Maybe, just