47

“What do you need?” Dell asked.

“POTUS wants someone to call Ryker’s mother and let her know what’s happening.”

“Let me guess. Pete Hwang.”

“Yeah—how’d you know?”

“I had the same thought the moment I heard Ryker had been snagged,” Dell said, taking a sip of coffee. “He’d be perfect.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Why not?”

“I hardly know Hwang.”

“Meaning you don’t trust him.”

“I don’t trust anyone connected to Ryker.”

“Hwang might be different.”

“I doubt it,” Stephens said.

Dell had anticipated this. She readily conceded that they needed answers to several questions. Could they trust Peter Hwang to carry out Agency orders? Just how much responsibility should they give him? He wasn’t a Company man any more than Ryker was. He had, in fact, been drafted under unique—even bizarre—circumstances. What could they really expect from him?

Then again, Hwang had not been part of Ryker’s eleventh-hour plea-bargain agreement with the president almost two years earlier. Rather, Hwang had been personally recruited by Ryker after Ryker joined the Agency. Yes, as director, Stephens had every right to overrule Ryker and let Hwang go, and Dell could see that her boss was inclined to do just that. Yet she pushed back.

Hwang, she explained, was a man in whom she saw real potential. It wasn’t every day that one of the best cardiologists in the country entered the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency, least of all one of Korean ancestry who was fluent in the Korean language. Yes, the Tanch’ŏn operation had been a bust, but that was not Hwang’s fault. In fact, he had served with bravery and distinction. Afterward, he could have left the Agency and gone back to medicine. Instead, he had stayed and was doing excellent work. He loved his country. He was proving loyal to the Agency, even while serving at DSS. And he could prove a useful link to Ryker.

This brought them back to the central question: Was Peter Hwang capable of discretion in the most sensitive of matters and missions, or was he beholden to Ryker? Given the two men’s longtime association and deep, personal friendship, Stephens’s working assumption was that the latter had to be true. That was certainly possible, Dell conceded. Yet it was a premise that should not be assumed. It ought to be tested.

Dell now made her case, and for a while, at least, Stephens listened without interrupting.

No clandestine officer in their employ, she argued, had become more important to the Agency’s mission—or potentially more catastrophic to its fortunes—than Marcus Johannes Ryker. Dell was sympathetic to the fact that Stephens could not stand him and wanted to get rid of him. Yet she noted that for the time being, Ryker was the president’s pet project, so they were stuck with him.

For good measure she added that for all the stress and chaos Ryker had injected into their carefully managed intelligence ecosystem, they had to admit—if only to themselves—that the man had racked up a rather lengthy list of accomplishments in the short time he had been with them. Among other things, Ryker was singularly responsible for identifying and bringing in “the Raven,” the highest-ranking mole in the history of the Agency, a man who month after month was providing the most valuable intelligence they had ever seen, bar none, about the inner workings of the Kremlin at a time of breathtaking change and volatility inside the Russian regime.

“Maybe so,” Stephens argued. “But that’s Ryker. Why waste my time with Hwang?”

“Because Ryker brought us the Raven, and Hwang came to us with Ryker.”

Stephens said nothing, just sipped his coffee.

“Look, sir, I’m no Ryker fan,” Dell continued. “But when he was in trouble in Russia, who was the first person he turned to?”

“Not Hwang,” Stephens noted. “He called Vinetti.”

“Exactly,” said Dell. “And when Vinetti was killed, who did he turn to next?”

Stephens did not reply. Nor did he need to.

“Sir, Ryker trusts Hwang, and this is not a man who trusts easily,” Dell continued. “And perhaps there’s cause for that. Ryker’s father was killed when he was just a boy. His wife and only son were brutally murdered a few years ago. Ryker’s closest friend, Nick Vinetti, is now dead. So is Ryker’s pastor. Not to mention numerous other friends. Ryker’s not close to McDermott, despite their years in the Marines together—”

“Perhaps because of them.”

“Perhaps. As we both know, Bill is—how shall I put this delicately?—a strong cup of tea. And let’s be frank—you and Ryker are certainly not close.”

“Well, I did try to kill him,” Stephens quipped.

“Fortunately, he doesn’t actually know that.”

“Sure he does,” Stephens responded. “The guy’s got a 146 IQ and a near-photographic memory. You think he hasn’t done the math on what really happened on the Karelian Isthmus?”

“Fair enough, sir, but that just underscores my point.”

“Which is?”

“You’re never going to have his trust, sir. You can’t earn it. You certainly can’t buy it. But if Ryker is going to be truly effective for us, then we need a way to communicate with him, advise him—corral him, if you will. We need to understand him and anticipate his moves. In short, sir, we need a go-between—someone we can trust, someone he already trusts.”

“Enough,” Stephens said. “Get Hwang in here. Then we’ll see.”