EARLY IN 2000, Sam knew he was violating DCI Nick Becker’s directive against any officer of the clandestine service contacting members of Congress without authorization when he called his old CO and asked for a confidential meeting in a secure location. But T. Randall Arthur, newly appointed to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, seemed happy to oblige. He welcomed Sam to his hideaway office, then guided him through the subterranean U.S. Capitol maze to the committee’s bug-proof room in the Hart office building. But not alone. Accompanying the two men was one of SSCI’s staff counsels, Virginia Vacario.
Sam protested. But as Rand Arthur explained it, no one went into the bubble room without a witness. “Too many leaks, my boy,” he’d said to Sam. “The rules have changed. It’s all on-advice-of-counsel legal mumbo jumbo these days.”
After they’d secured the thick door, Sam told the senator and his legal shadow about Pavel Baranov, described the events surrounding the general’s murder, and laid out Ed Howard’s covert action to destabilize the American intelligence community.
The senator had sat quietly and listened to his former platoon sergeant’s one-hour presentation, occasionally asking questions as Lawyer Vacario scribbled notes. When Sam had finished, the senator thanked him for coming and ushered him out. And then, on advice of counsel, he used the room’s secure telephone to dial Nick Becker’s direct line and convey the high points of Sam’s monologue.
Three days later, a story in the Washington Post citing “sources close to the intelligence community” described in broad brushstrokes the 1998 assassination of a Russian CIA agent in Moscow, the unnamed CIA station chief’s expulsion, and Langley’s subsequent embarrassment.
The following morning Sam was summoned to the DCI’s office, where Nick Becker, brandishing the Post front page, accused Sam of leaking the story to embarrass him. By noon Sam had been banished to Purgatory. The senator never returned Sam’s phone calls.
SAM SET HIS SHOULDER against the Range Rover’s door and waited, sensing with satisfaction Rand Arthur’s unease.
“Sam,” the senator finally said, “I am truly, truly sorry. I can see why you—”
Sam cut him off. “Senator,” he said, “don’t play games. Can the charm and get on with whatever it is you have to say.”
Rand Arthur grunted, an uncomfortable half laugh. “Still cut-to-the-chase, aren’t you?”
Sam glanced at the senator with hostile derision. “The Directorate of Operations nomenclature for what you’re doing is called a cold pitch. They don’t work if you dance around. Tell me what you want—and what you’ve got to offer, then I’m outta here.” Sam hooked his thumb toward the lights in the gas station across the road. “They’ll have a phone. I can call a cab.”
Rand Arthur looked into Sam’s eyes, and saw the determination in his expression. He exhaled a huge sigh that seemed to deflate his whole body. “You’re right,” he said, his tone contrite. “I knew what Nick did to you—and I did nothing about it. For my inaction, Sam, I am honestly sorry. But sometimes, that is the way things work in the real world. If you ever thought it was tough out there”—the senator’s hand waved beyond the Land Rover’s windshield—“then you should spend a few days with me. Politics is brutal, Sam. There are casualties. And loyalty? In the United States Senate, loyalty is a dispensable commodity. The Senate is nothing like the Marine Corps, my boy.” He paused, his eyes moving quickly across Sam’s face.
The senator’s voice grew stronger and more resonant. “So, yes—I abandoned you. Two years ago I was just another member of Senate Select. But there’s a very good chance I’ll become chairman if the elections go well for us. I can facilitate the improvements in policy and budget and oversight that the intelligence community wants—and more important, that it needs. And if your scalp was a small part of the price I had to pay so I could work my way up the ranks in order to achieve a series of greater goals for the committee—and perhaps the country—well, then so be it, Sam. That’s the real world. And if you can’t deal with what I’m saying, then thanks for coming, walk away, take your cab, and go home. If, however, you want to become a part of something that I believe with all my heart will forever change the course of this nation, then hand me back the keys, fasten your seat belt, and join me for the ride of your life.”
What garbage. It was drivel. Political smoke and mirrors. “Stow the speeches,” Sam growled. “You’re going to have to earn my trust the way my agents used to earn it—by delivering something tangible. Right now, Senator, you’re nothing more than a blowhard.”
The flash of anger in Rand Arthur’s eyes told Sam he’d drawn blood. But Sam didn’t let up. “Die karten auf den Tisch legen, Senator.”
“Sam?”
“Cards on the table, Senator. Tell me what you’ve got—now.”
Rand Arthur’s expression changed. “I could tell you,” he said coolly, “but I’d rather show you.”
Sam made him wait. Then he flipped the keys at the senator, who caught them clumsily.
Rand Arthur put the big SUV in gear. They drove for fifteen minutes, the road narrow and hilly. The vehicle’s lights played off tall, thick hedgerows rising on either side of the blacktop. The Range Rover came up a short rise, after which it traversed a small wooden bridge. Then the senator braked carefully and steered hard left onto a freshly graveled road that more or less paralleled the creek they’d just crossed.
The going was slower now, punctuated by the undulating crunch of stones under the tires. The hedgerows gave way to a four-batten fence that stretched off as far as Sam could see. The road before them disappeared beyond the range of the vehicle’s headlights. A mailbox advertising an equine rescue center came into view on the Range Rover’s starboard side. The senator passed it by and went another half mile. There, the road took a gentle turn to the left. Ahead, at the farthest perimeter of the headlights, Sam could make out two imposing pillars. Between the pillars, blocking the road, sat a darkened, four-door vehicle.
Rand Arthur switched his headlights on/off three times, waited two seconds, then flashed the lights once. The rolling roadblock ignited its parking lights, pulled ahead, and the senator drove past.
Sam swiveled in his seat and watched as the big Chevy sedan backed up and barred the road.
“U.S. Capitol police,” the senator said by way of explanation.
“They provide security out here?”
“They handle sensitive matters for a lot of senators, including me, if I need them to.”
Rand Arthur steered slowly around a long, gentle curve. As the tree line off to his right broke, Sam could see a big stone house, bathed in the kind of dramatic lighting often displayed in Architectural Digest. He counted chimneys in the fading light and came up with six. “Impressive place, Senator.”
“It was my wife’s. She’s dead now.”
Sam didn’t quite know how to respond. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to be,” Rand Arthur said, quite coldly.
A second car—a dark Crown Vic—with two men in plain clothes sat adjacent to the three-car garage that had been added as an obvious afterthought. Rand Arthur pulled up next to the car, switched on the Range Rover’s interior lights, and rolled his window down.
“Reese, this is Mr. Waterman,” he said to a black officer with a shaved head who sat behind the wheel of the sedan. “He’ll be with us for the foreseeable future. He can come and go as he pleases.”
The policeman peered across the senator’s torso and took a good look at Sam’s face. “Okay, Senator,” he said. ‘Thank you, sir.”
“Carry on.” Rand Arthur depressed the accelerator and the SUV nudged forward. “I had to tell him something,” the senator said, anticipating Sam’s response.
“ ‘Foreseeable future'?”
“I really do think you’ll want to stay once you understand the implications,” the senator said. “We’re roughly the same size, so clothes won’t be a problem. Or, I can send an officer to your apartment and get you what you need.” He stopped the “Range Rover outside the garage, stepped onto the pea gravel, and bid Sam to follow him.
Footfalls scrunching, they marched around the side of the house, past the accent lighting and the neatly trimmed English boxwood, up a shallow set of stone steps. Rand Arthur opened the unlocked castle-size front door without a key and ushered Sam into a huge, two-story foyer. The place had probably been built in the fifties, then gutted and redone very recently. It was impressive. The foyer floor was dark flagstone. Beyond, he could see a slice of the huge living room, whose wide floorboards were covered by antique Oriental rugs.
The senator led him past the living room and along a parquet-floored corridor hung with inscribed photographs from the rich and famous interspersed with testimonial plaques until they came to a thick, antique wood door. On the door at chest level was the same kind of twelve-key cipher lock that secured offices at SSCI, or CIA. Blocking the keys with his body so Sam couldn’t watch him enter the combination, the senator punched one-two-three-four-five-six-seven keys in rapid succession. Sam could hear the electronic lock release. Then the senator reached down and turned the door handle.
He looked back. “Please, my boy, go in,” he said, holding the door and indicating that Sam should precede him.
The room into which Sam walked was obviously The Library. It had a high, vaulted ceiling from which strategically placed spotlights illuminated half a dozen old masters on the walls. Antique furniture sat atop heart-of-pine flooring and muted Persian carpets. From hidden speakers, a Beethoven trio provided background music. Sam looked around quickly. The big rectangular room was dominated by a stone fireplace with a perfect fire crackling away behind a mesh guard. The fireplace was outlined by an ornate wooden mantel and bordered by a horseshoe-shaped, leather-covered fireplace bumper. A long, kilim-covered sofa accented by a pair of tall black leather wing chairs faced the fireplace. A folded quilt with a bed pillow atop it sat, incongruously, at one end of the sofa. Beyond, in front of the drapery-covered windows, sat a Victorian partner’s desk, with two high-backed leather judge’s chairs opposite each other.
Sam felt Rand Arthur’s hand on the small of his back, and he stepped farther into the room. Behind him, something clicked audibly. Sam turned, to see that the inside of the door had the same sort of cipher lock as the outside. Then he looked across to the partner’s desk. Sitting in the big chair facing him was a red-haired woman, half-glasses perched on the tip of her nose, an oversize pen poised three inches above a legal pad. He squinted, and recognized Rand Arthur’s SSCI lawyer lady, Virginia Vacario.
She removed her glasses and laid them on the desk. The ice of her tone unconcealed, she said, “Hello, Mr. Waterman.”
At the sound of her voice, the second chair, the one facing away from Sam, swiveled.
Edward Lee Howard extracted himself from the dark leather. “Well, at last. Cyrus N. PRINGLE. Thank you, Senator.”