Poisonfeather (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 2) Page 7

  To add insult to injury, briefings were scheduled for mid to late afternoon, which meant a commute in the thick of the DC rush hour. Traffic irritated him. He’d been screwing a congressional press secretary named Lily for a little over a year, often meeting her at the Hotel George after his testimony. It was a tired affair, the sex tame and predictable, but he kept it up because she was discreet, showed no interest in his work, and was flexible to his calendar. And because traffic irritated him that much.

  There were thirteen members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, nine in attendance to hear Ambrose’s testimony today. Eight and a half, if one were honest about Bill Russert of Tennessee, who was losing his battle with consciousness across the table. Good, Ambrose thought. He had worked long and hard to cultivate a droning monotone when he testified—the one he used with his wife when she got onto the subject of redecorating the bedroom. Ambrose paused for a sip of water, and Russert’s eyes fluttered opened momentarily. Ambrose fixed him with a courtesy smile until they drifted shut again. By legend, former director William J. Casey’s mutterings were so purposefully inaudible that the committee had headsets installed in the hope of catching the cagey CIA director’s testimony. Ambrose wasn’t so blatant about it, but then he was but a humble deputy director and you could only push it so far.

  “If you’ll turn to page sixty-seven, table 8J projects China’s Air Force capacity over the next ten years. As you see, the Chendu J-20 is projected to give them long-range stealth bomber capacity by 2020. However, we believe this project is significantly ahead of schedule, and our estimates place the operational date no later than 2018. We further believe that its combat capabilities have been significantly underestimated by—”

  “Mr. Ambrose, if I may? A question,” said Krista Washburn.

  Senator Krista Washburn of Iowa was an insightful, principled lawmaker gifted with a brilliant mind. She had a reputation in the intelligence community as a policy wonk and a hard sell. She asked the right questions and recognized when the snow started to fall. She did not take kindly to the kid-glove treatment, and Ambrose admired her for it. Not that he trusted her; in fact, quite the opposite. Her competence made all their jobs more difficult. Ambrose paused his testimony and ceded the floor to her.

  “Would you expand on how you’ve arrived at these estimates? This is not at all what we’re hearing from other agencies. In fact, we’ve heard testimony that the Chendu J-20 is behind schedule and that 2023 is more realistic.”

  “We have solid intelligence that Chinese claims of setbacks are diversionary.”

  “And what is the source of your intelligence?” she pressed.

  “Senator, our intelligence is a composite, and can’t be sourced to a single asset.”

  That was a lie, but one that he’d been selling to Congress convincingly for the last eight years to everyone but Senator Washburn, who was becoming increasingly disenchanted with it. However, it would be a cold, wintery day in hell before Ambrose even suggested the existence of Echo in the presence of these vultures. An asset of this quality, placed inside the Chinese Politburo itself, was irreplaceable and could not be jeopardized to satisfy Senator Washburn’s intellectual vanity.

  “Over the last several years,” Washburn continued, “you’ve been out of step with the majority of our Chinese intelligence.”

  “And have we been correct?”

  “Remarkably so, but how? That is my question. How is it that you know so much better than your colleagues? What do you say to that?”

  “You’re welcome?” Ambrose suggested.

  Senator Washburn sat back and crossed her arms, and Ambrose looked for a conciliatory gesture he could make that did not involve Echo.

  “Sir,” a voice whispered in Ambrose’s ear. It was his assistant, Kiara Hines—a smart, humorless woman. “There’s something you’re going to want to see.”

  That was good enough for Ambrose. He apologized to the chairman and asked for a brief recess. Not waiting for an answer, he gathered up his leather, gold-trimmed, monogrammed portfolio and gave a curt nod to the committee and another to Krista Washburn, whose expression assured him this conversation was far from over. So be it. He followed Kiara out into the hallway of the Hart Office Building. She handed him the April issue of Finance magazine. Charles Merrick stared defiantly out from the cover. Ambrose felt a jagged fingernail drag across his ulcer.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Page seventy-three.”

  He flipped to the page and read the highlighted passage. When he was finished, not believing what he’d just read, he went back and read the interview in its entirety. Just to be sure he hadn’t imagined it. For anyone who knew to read between the lines, Merrick had just drawn a straight line between himself and Echo. A line that the CIA had spent years erasing. Ambrose closed the magazine and studied the man on the cover. Eight years in federal prison had been good to him. Charles Merrick was still a handsome son of a bitch—a little grayer perhaps, but if anything he looked fitter. There was no justice in the world. Certainly prison had done nothing to dim the arrogance in the man’s eyes. The caption beneath the photo read, “Unrepentant.” That was an understatement. Merrick had ruined thousands of lives and, based on a quick look at the article, had the audacity to blame them for it.

  If only he had stopped there.

  “Where is Damon Ogden? I mean, right this minute.”

  “Langley, sir. In a meeting with Krieger.” Kiara checked her watch. “The car is ready. If we leave now, we can be back at Langley in forty.”

  Ambrose thought about the Tuesday-afternoon traffic. He had Lily this evening, and there was still the matter of his testimony. If he left now, the committee would reschedule around him, but they hated doing it and would hold it against him. They might be the Committee on Intelligence, but they found the actual business of gathering intelligence mightily inconvenient.

  “No, he comes to me. Get his ass down here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Kiara?”

  She turned to face him.

  “He’d better be here when I’m done in there.”

  Bistro Bis was an upscale French restaurant attached to the Hotel George near Union Station. Its proximity to the Capitol had long made it convenient and popular for discreet meetings. Now in its second decade, however, it was no longer considered a hot spot. Exactly how Ambrose preferred it—busy but not too busy and with a staff that understood how to make themselves scarce while business was conducted. It was remarkable how much got decided over a meal in this town. One of the waiters, whom Ambrose remembered from the opulent Le Lion d’Or back in the eighties, knew more political lore than three-quarters of the members of the House. There was DC, and then there was old DC. It amused Ambrose when colleagues who had lived in Washington for a mere ten years talked about how much the city had changed—they had no idea what they were talking about. If you couldn’t remember when Tysons Corner was largely farmland, then as far as Ambrose was concerned, you were still a tourist.

  The maître d’ led Ambrose past the bar and down the stairs to the main dining area. Even though the restaurant was in the lull between the lunch rush and the start of dinner, there was only a handful of empty tables. At the far end, through an opaque glass wall, he could see the kitchen staff hard at work. He’d requested one of the top corner booths that offered a view of the restaurant, and it irritated him to see Damon Ogden had had the presumption to take the banquette that afforded the best vantage. On the plus side, Ogden looked nervous. The young African American case officer had gotten too big for his britches the last few years, and it pleased Ambrose to see him teetering on his perch. Not that Ambrose had a problem with black people. Far from it. But there was the old CIA and the new, and Damon Ogden was the face of the new century. Many in the next generation didn’t respect that the Agency had a way of doing things. That advancement took time. That there was a pecking order. Few were willing to pay their dues anymore—that was the
truth of the new CIA. Ambrose knew Ogden had an eye on his job even though he was ten years from reasonably being considered a candidate. Hell, if Ogden had his way, he would appoint himself director tomorrow.

  “Have you read it?” Ambrose asked, slapping the magazine down on the table and squeezing into the booth opposite Ogden, adjusting his belt until it sat comfortably beneath his paunch.

  “Yes, sir. On the way here.”

  “On the way . . . ? Let me ask you a question. When exactly did Merrick talk to Finance?”

  Damon Ogden cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Before Christmas.”

  “That was almost four months ago. How the hell am I just reading about this now? In a magazine no less? We’re the CIA, Damon, not Reader’s Digest.”

  “Sir, Merrick’s been a model prisoner. We had no reason to suspect he’d do something like this.”

  “Well, as long as you had no reason to suspect.”

  “Sir, I am not tasked with tabbing Charles Merrick. I—”

  “Don’t. Just don’t.” Ambrose held up a warning finger. He couldn’t believe the arrogant prick was taking a tone with him. Ogden had been the golden boy so long that he’d forgotten what it was like to be downhill from a squirrel fuck. Well, he was about to find out. “Just tell me how this happened.”

  “The impression my contact gave me was that the story wasn’t supposed to be anything. Just a one-column ‘where are they now?’ piece buried in the middle of the issue.”

  Ambrose tapped his finger on Charles Merrick’s face. “Does this look like one column to you?”

  Ogden shook his head, composure slipping. Ambrose could see the younger man was just now recognizing the avalanche of shit that was headed his way. This was the CIA—even when it was no one’s fault, it was always someone’s fault. The only thing that rolled uphill in Washington was the credit. And if the wrong person read that article, there would be hell to pay. It was a career ender. Hell, it might end all their careers.

  “So what happened?”

  “Merrick happened,” Ogden said, then added “sir” as a grudging afterthought. “Once Finance realized what they had, they bumped him to the cover and did a good job keeping a lid on it. They timed the release to coincide with his impending release.”

  “Maybe I should hire them,” Ambrose said. “So . . . you know him best. What’s Merrick playing at? He’s so close to getting out. Why give the interview? What’s his game?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring. Myself, I find the timing of this extremely disturbing. When does he get out? Exactly?” Ambrose took up a menu.

  “Twenty-nine days.”

  “And then he leaves the country?”

  “That is the deal.”

  “He needs reminding of that fact.”

  “He’s on the FBI’s turf. Who do you want me to send?”

  Normally, that would have been protocol, but Echo was too critical an asset to entrust to the Bureau, and Merrick had been on the Chinese’s radar once before. Fortunately, the Ministry of State Security had never connected Merrick to Echo. Primarily because, at the time, the MSS hadn’t yet suspected that they had a problem. Well, the Chinese damn well knew they had a security leak now, and a growing faction within the MSS believed it all traced back to a mole within the Politburo working with the Americans. Ambrose feared that Merrick’s interview would hand them the missing piece of the puzzle.

  “No, I don’t want to bring the Bureau in on this,” Ambrose said. “Merrick’s name has already bounced around the MSS enough.”

  “That was before Merrick’s arrest. Their analyst was totally discredited. Merrick isn’t on the MSS’s radar.”

  “So we’ve been led to believe, but what if we’re wrong? And what are the chances that someone inside the MSS has read this interview?”

  “Better than average,” Ogden admitted.

  “So if he’s back on their radar, or worse, never left, then how will it look if the FBI descends on Merrick for a sit-down?”

  “Like confirmation.”

  “Precisely. So, no, there can’t be any unusual activity around Merrick. We can’t be seen to react to this. It has to appear business as usual.”

  “So what do you want done, sir?”

  “I want you to talk to him.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Go in quietly, unannounced and undercover, and sort him out. You brokered his deal. He knows you moved mountains for him before; best if it’s you who reminds him that those mountains can be moved back. There’s too much at stake here to allow Merrick to jeopardize Echo. Make him understand the consequences of opening his mouth again.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then he goes where no one can hear him open it,” Ambrose said. “We’re at a critical juncture, Damon. The Chinese already have their suspicions that they have a leak. Losing Echo would be a catastrophic intelligence loss. What’s the MSS calling their mole hunt? What’s their name for Echo?”

  “Zhenniao.”

  “English, Ogden.”

  “Poisonfeather.”

  “Christ, I miss the Russians. Look, we need this contained. The Chinese cannot be permitted to connect Merrick to Poisonfeather. So until he’s safely out of the country, I’m relieving you from Echo.”

  Ogden recoiled as Ambrose knew he would. Echo had been Ogden’s baby since the day Merrick fell into the Agency’s lap. Ogden’s career and reputation had been built on its extraordinary success. Relieving him of control would be a devastating blow to his career. Even if Merrick were brought to heel without further incident, it would be difficult to justify reinstating Ogden. Certainly, Ambrose wouldn’t go to any lengths to do so. Ogden would be fine. He had a bright future but needed to learn how the pecking order worked and where he stood in it. Ambrose didn’t have the stones he once had, so he aimed to kill all the birds he could with the ones he had left.

  To his credit, Ogden didn’t put up a fight. The man had enough savvy to recognize an argument that he couldn’t win.

  “And once Merrick is on the plane, I’m back in charge?”

  “Of course, Damon, absolutely.” Ambrose smiled, now that the battle was won. “We just can’t have loose ends. Merrick has to be contained. You’ve got to be my man on this.”

  Ambrose signaled to the waiter that he was ready to order. Ogden reached for a menu.

  “That will be all. Get it done.”

  Ogden put down the menu and stood without a word.

  “And, Ogden. You do understand the consequences, don’t you? For all of us.”

  “I do, sir. Yes.”

  “I have every confidence. Drive safe.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Charles Merrick sat on a bench, basking in the warm April sunshine. He liked his little corner of the yard by the vegetable garden, tended by a collective of diligent old-timers. Lifers, no longer a threat to anyone, doing time digging in the dirt until it was their turn to be planted. It comforted Merrick to know he wasn’t one of them. His time here was nearly done.

  He finished rereading his interview. At this point, he could all but recite it from memory. Wisely, the magazine had abandoned the three-column profile piece and put him on the cover, where he belonged. Damn right they had—it was a showstopper. Vintage Merrick. And as a result, requests for interviews had been pouring into the prison ever since. Much to the consternation of Warden Meeks, who’d issued a media blackout.

  Disappointing but predictable.

  If Merrick had one quibble about the whole thing, it was that he wasn’t altogether happy with his photo. The lighting was atrocious, but it served its purpose, he supposed. If he were being absolutely honest, he liked how it made him look just a little dangerous.

  “Merrick! Visitor!” yelled a guard from across the yard.

  Merrick looked up. “Who is it?”

  Had Warden Meeks changed his mind?

  “Your lawyer. Get your ass moving. I’m not your damn secretary.”


  The answer surprised Merrick. In the last eight years, his lawyer had made the inconvenient journey from Manhattan to Niobe, West Virginia, for a face-to-face exactly twice. Both times for intense strategy sessions that followed months of calls and e-mails. So the idea that Henry Susman had arrived at the prison unannounced made Merrick uneasy. Some kind of bad news. What else could it be? And this close to his release date? Very, very uneasy.

  Merrick trailed behind the guard to the legal counseling rooms. The guard ambled along, thumbs in his belt, whistling tunelessly. From a step behind, Merrick glared at him to hurry up, his imagination concocting worst-case scenarios for his lawyer’s visit, and by the time they arrived, he was sweating prison-issue bullets. The guard unlocked the door and ushered him inside. Henry Susman stood up from the table and buttoned his suit jacket. Except it wasn’t Henry Susman. For one, Henry Susman was white, pushing sixty, and a paunchy five four on his best day. Not Henry Susman was black, midthirties, and a lean six foot.

  “Charles, you look well,” Not Henry Susman said.

  Merrick took the compliment in stride. “Good to see you . . . Henry. Been too long.”

  The two men shook hands like old friends. The man who wasn’t Henry Susman smiled expectantly at the guard, who took the hint and excused himself. They waited in silence until they heard the door lock behind him. Merrick turned back to Not Henry Susman, whose warm smile was fast melting from his face. Merrick didn’t care for the expression that replaced it.

  “I thought we weren’t to see each other again.”

  “And we thought you’d keep your mouth shut,” Damon Ogden said.