Page 87 of Turn the Tide
Saturday, March 5, 11:48 p.m. EST/ Sunday, March 6, 5:48 a.m. CET
The D/CIA, director of the Agency, had put her cards on the table, not wanting to get in Bruce Sanborn’s crosshairs. Had sworn on her children’s lives that she hadn’t violated their agreement. Twenty-four hours for him to fix thismishap.
As far as she was concerned.
Nothing more needed to be said. The D/CIA’s deliberate choice of words had been enough. She wasn’t responsible for sendingcleanersin early. So, he’d come to the last place with answers, the West Wing and office of the national security advisor, after trying him at home first due to the late hour.
Sanborn sat across from Winthrop Lee Pomeroy III, holding a scotch he’d yet to take a sip of. They’d been roommates at Harvard and remained friends, despite Lee’s track record of messy dealings and backstabbing to further his career.
Lee came from old-world money and high-powered connections. His first wife, then his fiancée, queen bee of Washington, DC, had introduced Sanborn to the love of his life, Penny. In a small way, he owed him his happiness. The only brightness in his otherwise dark world.
Out of respect for their friendship, he’d endured two tedious minutes of baloney pleasantries, but his patience was threadbare. “Why are you meddling in my op, Lee?”
“Whoa. This isn’tyourop.” Lee had thinning blond hair, muddy-green eyes, and a Floridian tan regardless of the season. Ruffling feathers was his hobby,You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelethis motto, but he had a knack for mending the right bridges on his climb up the ladder of power. “It’s the president’s op. He wanted insurance on this.”
“What insurance?”
Lowering his pink face, Lee reclined in his chair. “I have a former Agency asset on retainer, does work for me.” He took a swig of scotch. “I put him on your girl at the very beginning. Just to make sure things went smoothly. If she was caught, he was to neutralize her before she talked. If she got her hands on the data, he was to make sure she transmitted it. He suggested breaking into the safe house and taking her go-bag to hinder her from running into a worst-case scenario. Not that it stopped her. We couldn’t afford a screwup. This administration has a lot at stake here.”
Lee had a lot at stake here.
“As soon as your girl accessed the drive at the safe house, Langley notified me. When we reached the twenty-minute marker and she hadn’t begun uploading the data, I green-lit my guy to take action.”
Too many cooks in the kitchen ruined the dish every time. “Who did you put on her?”
“Howe Fuller. He’s using his German alias of—”
“Helmut Fuchs.” Sanborn knew the former asset.
Images of hellish torture flashed in his mind. Most of the Company’s interrogators andcleanerswere good, decent people who used compartmentalization, sessions with the Agency therapist, or too much booze to handle the ugliness of the business. Most lasted two or three years before rotating to something else.
Howe Fuller, a twisted man who had no conscience, showed no mercy, and had been acleanerfor a decade before the CIA fired him. He was the personification of evil, and Lee had unleashed him on Ashley.
Sanborn’s palms itched. “There’s a sanitation team in play. Early.”
“They were cleaning up in Munich. We need to be the only ones who have this. We can’t have BioGenApex re-creating it.” He drained his glass and poured another two fingers of Glenmorangie Grand Vintage Malt. “They’re in Berlin now. With Howe.”
This wasn’t a wrench thrown in the works—it was a whole toolbox tossed into the game. “This violates our agreement.”
“The president is worried about who she’s talked to, whether she’s shown anyone what’s on the drive. Everyone who’s been in contact with her is a liability. To calm his nerves, I authorized the team to mop up things early.”
Sanborn bristled but pasted on the perilously soft smile of a man who measured his words before speaking and poured his will into winning. “I won’t abide it. These are my people.” And he would do whatever was necessary to protect them.
Lee’s ruddy complexion deepened in color. “The girl betrayed you. What do you care if she catches a bullet in the back of the head?”
“She’s mine. I’ll deal with her as I see fit.” He’d eviscerate her with words, fire her, banish her. Not have hercleaned. “The rest of my team isn’t a liability. You would have the drive by now if you hadn’t interfered. I won’t let anything happen to them.”
No one jeopardized the lives of his people arbitrarily. Ash was still his until he knew why she went rogue, and Logan had never stopped being family.
Lee frowned, relaxing his once-lean body. “The president is standing up a new agency. A 9/11 initiative that’s taken well over a decade to bring to fruition.”
“Relevance here?” Annoyance seeped into his tone.
“It’s something special, a radical approach. Totally off-the-books with a deep, black budget never meant to see daylight. Freedom to operate on foreignanddomestic soil. Beholden to no other agency, no oversight council of politicians unqualified to weigh in on covert operations, bypassing the bureaucratic red tape. Tip of the spear. Nothing else like it. We’re calling it the Gray Box.”
Intelligence and direct action rolled into one organization without the territorial quibbling between the CIA and DoD was precisely what the republic required to fight the new war on terror—necessary but dangerous. That type of agency could only be created by skirting the United States Constitution.
Gut instinct told Sanborn everything was about to go sideways. He braced himself, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it did.
