Marty Bambridge, the CIA’s deputy director of operations, was awakened by his wife, who kept pushing at his shoulder. He was in a foul mood: too much red wine last night at dinner, from which nothing was left but a son-of-a-bitch headache and a crappy taste in his mouth. Along with that was the rumor floating around campus that the DCI Walt Page was on his way out, and there was talk of a clean sweep. All the old brass was going with him.
Which meant the heads of each directorate—intelligence, science and technology, management and services, and operations, formerly the directorate of national clandestine service.
Bambridge was a spy master, a job he knew he’d been meant for, when as a kid studying law and foreign relations at the University of Minnesota he’d read and reread every espionage novel he could get his hands on—especially the James Bond stories. But never in his dreams in those days did he believe he would actually get to run the CIA’s spies.
If it was actually coming to an end for him, he had no earthly idea what he would do with himself. He was helpless and frightened, which made him angry.
He growled at his wife. “What?”
“Phone,” she mumbled. She handed it to him, then rolled over and went back to sleep.
“Bambridge,” he said, sitting up.
“This is Bob Blankenship, campus security, sir. We have a problem.”
“Write me a memo, for Christ’s sake. I’ll deal with it in the morning.”
“No, sir. Mr. Page has been informed, and he specifically wants you involved. There’s been a murder here on the third floor of the OHB. One of your people. A former field officer.”
Bambridge was suddenly wide-awake. He turned on the nightstand light. It was after 1 A.M. “Who is it?”
“The security pass we found on the body identified him as Walter Wager. He worked as a mid-level operational planner on your staff.”
“I know him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You said murder? How?”
“I think it would be best if you came in and took a look yourself. Mr. Page did not want the authorities notified before you had a chance to get here. Nor are we moving the body.”
“Shit, shit,” Bambridge said under his breath. “Any witnesses?”
“He was alone on the floor.”
“Surveillance videos?”
“No, sir.”
“God damn it. One of the cameras in the corridor must have picked up something.”
“They were disabled.”
“Who the hell was monitoring?”
“A loop was inserted into the recording unit for the entire floor. Shows the same images over and over.”
Bambridge tried to think of some reason he wouldn’t have to go out. At forty-three, he had become soft. He’d never actually served as a field officer, though he did two five-year stints as assistant to the chief of station, one in Ottawa and the other in Canberra, neither them hot spots under any stretch of the imagination. He’d never humped his butt in Iraq or Afghanistan like many of the officers who’d worked for him had, so he’d never formed a bond—especially not with the NOCs who he’d always considered to be prima donnas. Just like Wager.
“Turn out the light,” his wife said.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he told the security officer. “Touch nothing.”
He got up and flipped on the lights in the bathroom and the closet. His wife buried her head deeper into the covers. If she had been a thoughtful woman, Marty mused, she would have gotten up and had the coffee on by now.
It was just one more brick in his wall of frustration and anger.
* * *
They had a nice two-story colonial on Davis Street NW near the Naval Observatory, and Bambridge had crossed the Key Bridge and was heading north on the GW Parkway to Langley before one thirty. Traffic was very light, the October morning cool, even crisp after a steamy summer, but he felt a heaviness in his chest he’d never felt before. And he was a little worried. His wife sometimes called him a hypochondriac, but over the past few months, and especially this morning, he’d seriously begun to get concerned he was developing heart troubles. It was the stress of the job, he told himself. Lately the stress of losing his job. And just now a murder inside the CIA’s campus. It was unbelievable, and the only other word he could think of was incompetence. Heads would roll, he would make sure of it.
The security officers at the main gate looked up as Bambridge’s BMW breezed through the employee lane; a bar code in the windshield along with a photograph of the driver’s face recognized the car and the DDO even before the rear bumper cleared.
Up at the OHB, which was the first of several buildings on campus, Bambridge’s bar code allowed him access to the underground VIP parking garage, and three minutes later he was getting off the elevator on the third floor—having passed his badge through the security reader in the basement and submitted to a retinal scan.
Bambridge was a narrow, slope-shouldered man whose acquaintances described him as almost always surprised, but whose friends described him as seriously intent. His features were dark; some French Canadian blood a couple of generations ago, according to his mother, who still lived in northern Minnesota. He harbored the more romantic notion that a Sicilian had gotten in there somewhere, which gave him a penchant for mysteriousness and a touch of violence.
Blankenship, a much taller, broader man in his early fifties, who wore a ridiculous military buzz cut, had been notified of the DDO’s arrival and was waiting for him.
“I hope you haven’t had breakfast yet, sir,” he said.
“No. Let’s get this over with so I can.”
At least a dozen security officers in short-sleeved shirts, khaki trousers, badges, and pistols in hip holsters filled the corridor around an open door just three down from the elevator.
“We’ve taken all the photographs we need, and I’ve had our techs dust for fingerprints and collect whatever DNA evidence they could find,” Blankenship said. “We’re also looking at the hard disk on Walt’s computer, along with his phone records for the past three months.”
“I want his entire contact sheet—computer, phone, and face-to-face—for as far back as you can dig it up,” Bambridge replied.
“Yes, sir,” the security officer said. “Can you think of any enemies Mr. Wager might have had?”
The guy had to be kidding. Bambridge gave him a look. “North Koreans, Cubans, Iraqis, Iranians, some Russians, Afghanis. Shall I go on?”
“Sorry, sir. I meant here on campus.”
“He’s only been back less than a year. I don’t think Walt even had enough time to make friends let alone enemies.”
Another security officer was leaning against the wall just before the open door. He looked a little green. When Bambridge and Blankenship approached, he straightened up.
Around the corner, just inside the tiny office, Bambridge pulled up short. The stench of fecal matter, and of something sweet, hit him all at once, at the same time he caught sight of the blood pooled on the floor. But then he came full face on with the ruined remains of what he could only vaguely describe as a human being. His stomach did a very sharp roll.
Wager, if that was who it was, had been destroyed from the neck up. Something had bitten or chewed out the entire side of his neck on the left side, blood all down the front and side of his white shirt. His face had been massively damaged as well, as if a pack of wild animals had had at him. His nose was mostly gone, his eyebrows shredded, his lips missing, his teeth obscenely white.
Bambridge stepped back a pace, a sickness rising in his throat. “My God,” he whispered.
Wager’s body lay on its side in front of a small desk. The chair had been pushed to one side, up against a file cabinet. The back of his trousers was completely covered in fecal matter. He’d lost control of his bowels either at the time of his death or shortly before. If there had been any sign of horror or pain or surprise on his face, it was completely gone. His features had either been eaten away or were covered in blood and tissue—human meat.
It was the most awful thing Bambridge had ever seen or imagined.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I could not have described this to you,” Blankenship said.
“Could a guard dog have gotten in here?” Bambridge asked. It was the only thing he could think to ask.
“No, sir. They’re all accounted for. Anyway, none of our dogs would have done something like this.”
“A wild animal?”
“Maybe, but then someone with the proper badges to get into this building, onto this floor, and into this office would have had to let it in.”
“No one saw or heard a thing?”
“No, sir.”
A few splotches of blood had stained the desktop inches from the phone.
“Did he manage to call someone?”
“No.”
Bambridge tore his eyes away from the horrible thing on the floor, gagging as the smell, associated with what he was seeing, fully hit him. He walked out into the clean air of the corridor, where he leaned his back against the wall.
Blankenship joined him. “What’re your orders, sir?”
“Are your people finished?”
“Just about.”
“When they are, call the police. I want the body out of here and the mess cleaned up before the morning shift.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bambridge looked at him. “I’ll be back later, but right now I’m going home. I need a shower.”
“I understand.”