The following Wednesday, Meredith rose early enough to get in a run. She exited her flat, the first floor of a Dupont Circle brownstone, and hit the pavement on a shining wet Massachusetts Ave. Picking up speed, she took a right and veered toward Embassy Row.
The rain that had been falling all night wasn’t about to let up. She was decked out in her black Gore-Tex windbreaker, bounding over puddles, her hair tied behind her head. She ran with a fanny pack weighted down by her Glock. She had yet to pick up any of the surveillance that was supposedly on her, but if they were Russians, they were going to be very, very good. She couldn’t be too careful. Every hundred yards or so she took an abrupt turn and stopped, monitoring her would-be watchers through window reflections.
But she saw no one. Relieved, she went on with her workout, thinking of the day to come. A half mile on, she passed the high white spire of the Islamic Center of Washington. The sun was just coming up beneath the overcast, coating the minaret in an orange aurora. She stopped, allowing herself to catch her breath and stretch her hamstrings. The faint chant of the azan was barely audible, drifting over the parked cars. She thought of Cerberus. She thought of John. She hadn’t heard from him in almost two weeks.
Her hair was still wet ninety minutes later as she drove along the Potomac via Route 123 on her way in to HQS in her Volvo SUV. There was no point in doing an SDR on her way into the office. If anyone out there was watching, they sure as hell knew where she worked. Besides, they’d be fools to expose themselves anywhere near the hidden banks of cameras that studded the approach to Langley.
Her guard at its ebb, she thought about the meeting she was about to attend. Dorsey wanted answers. He wanted to know what was going on with Active Archer and Cerberus. He’d put himself way out on a limb by going to the director, stumping for John’s return from suspension. Now he expected a payoff, results, answers as to what was going on with the Iranian nuke program. Rance was even worse, reminding Dorsey at every turn that they never should’ve trusted John. She wished to her bones that she could show them up.
But she hadn’t heard from John either. She was beginning to have her doubts.
Her phone rang through the secure app. She answered it via Bluetooth. “Morris-Dale.”
“Hey, Meth.”
“John. Where the hell are you?”
“Good to talk to you too.”
She groaned. “Not today. I need a real status report. You’ve got to do a better job of staying in touch. I’m on my way in to see Dorsey this morning—driving there right now. You do realize he’s going to take my head off. If this is going to work and I’m to be your handler, then you’ve got to check in more. It is a major problem. Do you hear me? Do you understand that, John?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Eventually he said, “Never mind. I’ll call you later.”
She sighed. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to rip into you like that.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“No, I didn’t. But you can see the predicament I’m in. I’m a little freaked out.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious. But that’s also why I’m out here trying to take care of that little problem we have.”
There was a sudden break in the clouds. The rising sun beamed through the windshield, gleaming silver off the river. Meredith dropped the visor to ease the glare and slowed the pace of her wipers. “Oh, yeah? And where is out here? Where exactly are you?”
“Not far. Take a look in your rearview.”
She did. A dark gray Dodge Challenger swerved into the lane behind her and flashed its high beams. John was behind the wheel, grinning like a high school kid, his face bright in the sunlight.
“What the fuck are you doing, John?” she said a little louder than she probably should have.
“I think you would flunk the SDR course, Meth. No wonder you got burned.”
“Fuck off.”
He chuckled into the phone. His car dropped back, lining up to exit to the right. He said, “Meth, take the exit at Highway One Twenty. There’s a place just off the road called the Madison Community Center. Park there and go in. You can walk all the way through to a kitchen and out the back. They run some kind of art class for seniors this time of day. Nobody will even notice.”
“Really, John?”
“Yes, really. Once you get out the back door, shoot across the street into Glebe Road Park. We can talk there. Later.” He hung up. His car was gone.
Twenty minutes later, Meredith walked along a jogging trail lined with cedar bark in Glebe Road Park. A big black cloud had blown in and the rain had picked up, but she at least had an umbrella with her now. Her dark pants suit was otherwise not well equipped for a walk in the woods. Her low heels were unsteady in the soft bark.
Just as she crested a low hill, John stepped out of the trees. He was wearing Levi’s, his Blundstone boots, a green Helly Hansen raincoat, and a lopsided grin.
“Okay,” Meredith said as he approached. “Is this how it’s going to be?”
His hair and beard were longer than when she’d last seen him a few weeks ago. He looked darker, like he’d been in the sun for weeks.
“It’s almost like you’re not happy to see me,” he said, smiling.
She thought his teeth looked extra white against his dark beard. They briefly hugged.
“Glad to see you’re getting into character.”
“Yeah,” he said, stroking his beard, “I bought the double-XL package at the tanning place. Been practicing my Farsi too. Thought you’d be proud.”
“I am . . . sort of.” She pulled back from him. “But seriously, John. You get it, right? You’ve set this whole deal up with the Agency where I’m the only one you’ll talk to.”
“Right.”
“So that means you actually need to talk to me. They’re busting my proverbial balls over your silence. They think I’m a gullible idiot for trusting you. They feel like gullible idiots for trusting me.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know.” He smiled again. “But here I am. What more could you ask for?”
“You could’ve just called like I asked you to. Now I’m going to miss the meeting with Dorsey.”
Dale nodded, the grin fading. He looked out toward the rest of the park, into the rainy, woodsy reserve. On this nondescript Wednesday morning, the place was deserted.
He said, “I’m not trusting phones. You’re burned, remember?”
“That doesn’t mean the Agency phones aren’t secure.”
“Maybe we should check that with the two dead Spetz you guys pulled out of my front yard.” The rain picked up. He leaned into her. “Hey, pull that umbrella over my way a little, will ya?”
She angled the umbrella toward him. They were standing in tandem, their shoulders touching, both looking out across the greenbelt toward the community center.
“So here we are,” she said. “I’m waiting to hear your report.”
He leaned closer to her ear, brushing her hair back a little. “Okay, Meth, here’s the deal. Cerberus wants out. He wants to activate his egress plan. He wants to leave soon. He said he’d let me know when exactly.”
“It’s definite?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“He said the Russians are all over him. They’ve brought them in to fix the problems they’ve been having with the centrifuges.” He paused to let that sink in. “He says it’s just a matter of time before they figure out what’s going on. With a little more work, they’re going to pin it on him. So Cerb thinks anyway.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit.”
“How close are they to weapons grade?”
“According to Cerb, we should start getting ready to welcome the Twelfth Imam back into the regular world,” Dale said.
She blew out a long sigh. “Not funny.”
“No. They’re getting a ready supply of yellowcake from the Russians, spinning it up night and day.”
“Why are the Russians so hell-bent on arming up the Iranians?” she asked.
“Cerb has no insight on that, but you can read about the politics in the open. My guess is the Russians think a nuclear Iran will keep us out of the Gulf for good. Once we’re out, the Saudis and the rest of the A-rabs will stop playing nice with us.”
“So what?”
“So I bet the Russkies figure it nets out as a win for them, because they can open up trading routes free from sanctions and there won’t be jack shit we can do about it. They also want to curry favor with Iran before the Chinese beat ’em to it.”
“Quite a gamble, giving a bunch of madmen nukes,” she said.
“Yeah, I doubt the Kremlin’s too concerned about a lasting legacy of peace. They’re in it for the dough. And to screw us.”
“This is depressing,” she said. They briefly looked at each other and then turned away. She said, “So, not to overstate it, but the infrastructure your man Cerberus set up may very well be our last defense—and it’s crumbling.”
Dale shrugged. “You know our defenses better than me.”
“I think he’s it,” she said. “It’s why Dorsey’s been coming unglued.” She shook the umbrella to divert some water. “We need to talk Cerberus into staying. He can change the way we sabotage it. Different software, harder to find.”
“Not an option.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause he may have already taken off. If not, he’s dark, about to leave.”
“What? To where?”
Dale put his hand behind her back and leaned in close. “Look, Meth, you’re burned. Nobody knows where the leak is, but it’s somewhere in the Agency. I think I’d better just handle it, go get him quietly. The Russkies’ll never know I was there.”
“You want to do this solo? Are you nuts?”
“Yeah. It’ll work better.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I can get Dorsey and Rance to go along. If Cerberus is in the wind, then he could get snagged by the Iranians, the Russians . . . whoever. He’ll break and spill everything. All the hacker holes Cerberus has opened will close. It’s the worst possible outcome.”
“Yeah, I know. But he’s not in the wind. He’s going to be executing the egress plan we set up eight years ago. If I go get him and bring him home, you can give him his own office over at Fort Meade and work with the NSA boys to bore shiny new hacker holes.”
Meredith looked down at her shoes and shook her head. She swallowed. “John, this is too big. Way too big. We can’t just rely on you to do this on your own. We need a SAC team on this. Stakes are too high.”
SAC—Special Activities Center—was the new acronym for Dale’s old group, the covert paramilitary arm of CIA.
“I agree,” he said, “except you guys are burned. You saw the listening equipment the Spetz team set up on my property. They listened to you and me.”
“Yeah, but we recovered the audio files.”
“Maybe. We don’t know what got transmitted off before I got them.”
Meredith nodded hesitantly.
“Look,” he said, putting his arm around her. “No offense, but I think we have to assume that anything associated with this op that comes through HQS is vulnerable. If you make this anything but back-channel, it’ll lead the Russians right to Cerb. Then not only will they fix all their problems overnight, but we’ll also lose the benefit of someone that knows their systems.”
She nodded again. “Where’s his facility? We can just send in some B-2s and crater the whole fucking place.”
“Guess what.”
“What?”
“Cerb won’t tell me,” he said. “It’s like he knows us too well. He’s feeding me info, but just enough to guarantee I get him out. Like the egress. I don’t know when exactly he’s leaving. Won’t tell me. Just says to be ready. Says if we don’t do it, he fucks over the whole program for good.”
“What about his family?”
“He hasn’t been that specific. I think he’s worried we would grab the family and use them as leverage to stay where he is.”
“Manipulative fucker,” she said. “You guys are perfect for each other. You know, by the way, that the Agency can read your correspondence through the Baramar site.”
“Nah,” said Dale. “Not anymore. I set up a different protocol to head that off. It was actually Cerb’s idea.”
She shook her head. “Sounds like he’s running you.”
“Nah, he’s okay. He’s just in over his head. He wants out. We’ve been promising it to him for years. He’s calling our bluff and using his leverage.”
“Why does he trust you?”
“My winning charm?” Dale shrugged. “Must have been something I said back when we were in Canada. Or maybe he knows I’m dog shit at the Agency and I have a reason to distrust it as much as he does. When I go meet him, I’ll ask him.”
She flicked some rain off the arm of her suit jacket. “So—if I’m sworn to secrecy—what are you asking me to even do with all this noninformation?”
“I’m going to need stuff,” Dale said. “I need you to get me the right equipment, maintain my aliases, my credos, all of that shit. You know how it works. You know my favorite drop boxes.”
“Some of the finest toilets in the third world. Literal shitholes.”
“Yeah, I’ll let you know which ones to use when I need them.” He paused, squaring off to face her. “But, Meth, you’re the only one I trust—you can’t share plans with anyone. I mean it. I’m counting on you.”
“Well, I’m going to have to share plans with someone if I’m stocking up C-4 for you all over the UAE.”
“You’ll make a cover story, Meth.” Dale grinned. “There’s no better handler than you.”
A gust of wind slanted the rain toward their faces. Meredith dipped the umbrella like a shield. “So, without compromising your tactical position,” she asked, her voice echoing off the nylon, “can you tell me what you’re going to do now?”
“Sure. I’m going over to Annapolis to visit our daughter.” He glanced at his watch. “I need to leave now, in fact.”
“Oh, yeah? Does Grace know that or are you going to sneak up on her too?”
“Of course she knows. I call her all the time, reporting in. That’s how we do it.” He nudged Meredith with his elbow, goading her.
She thought of Grace’s letter, the one she’d delivered to John’s cabin several weeks back. “Right. I suppose you guys have your comms protocols. I never needed one since I was always home with her, dealing with her shit.”
“Meth . . .” He turned his head just enough to meet her eye.
“Never mind.” She glanced away. “What then? What’s after Grace?”
“Dinner usually.” Dale smiled.
She didn’t return it. “Seriously, John, what’s next?”
“I just told you. Going back to work.” He leaned forward and unexpectedly kissed her cheek. He raised a hand to caress the hair near her ear, holding her face close to his. “I may be dark for a while. If I don’t see you, Meth . . .”
She grabbed his hand, squeezed it, and pulled him close. “You’ll see me. But be careful. Lean on me when you have to. Okay?”
He nodded, let go of her hand, and backed a few feet into the woods. He waved briefly before disappearing behind a thicket.
After the briefing, Dorsey asked Meredith to leave. He wanted to speak with Rance alone.
Since she’d already gotten what she wanted, she was more than happy to flee the SCIF and get to work.
After the SCIF door closed again, Dorsey looked at his head of Counterproliferation. “Well, Ed, what do you think?” He pushed his rolled sleeves past his elbows.
Rance crossed his legs, relaxing. Whenever Meredith left the room, he could feel the tension lift. He shook his head. “Letting Dale go get our asset on his own? Without a supporting SAC team? I think you know what I think.”
“You don’t trust Dale.”
“Of course not.”
Dorsey nodded. “At least he’s back on side. Not easy after what we did to him.”
“What he did to himself, you mean.”
Dorsey grunted. “I know you don’t like Meredith. But you have to admit, she did a good job bringing him back. At least now we have a play.”
“A risky one,” Rance said, staring at his bent knee.
“I’m asking you, Ed.” Dorsey leaned over his elbows on the table. “Can you at least back off of the Dales long enough to let them give it a shot? Can you find your way to supporting this?”
Rance crossed his arms and composed his thoughts. “You do understand that this is all falling under my division. She’s a hothead. And if it’s up to me, I don’t trust Dale. If you’re saying it’s up to you, then fine. It’s your call. But I don’t want this to . . .”
“Come back, bite you in the ass, fuck your career?”
Rance shrugged. “Things like that do happen around here.”
“Right. They do.” Dorsey turned to a credenza behind him. He’d stacked his leather-bound portfolio, an iPad, and a handful of red-striped classified files there. He brought the stack to the table. “Listen,” he said, “I need to show you something.”
Rance leaned forward. He was thinking Dorsey had been good enough to create a memo, absolving him of responsibility for this crazy Dale mission.
But instead, the deputy director fired up his iPad and turned it toward Rance. It was a wide-screen photo. Rance recognized the Four Seasons bar. He recognized himself. Genevieve.
Dorsey swiped through a half dozen photos, saying nothing. There was Rance talking to her. There he was walking away arm in arm with her. There they were kissing at the elevator bank. There he was, grabbing her ass beneath her skirt.
“Look,” Dorsey said solemnly, tapping the iPad’s power button, “since Meredith got burned, I’ve had the CI guys looking after everyone involved with Active Archer. That includes you.”
Rance was speechless. “Jeff, I . . .”
“It’s a matter of safety,” he continued. “We know the Russians are onto us somehow. I need to counter it, protect my people, et cetera.”
“You don’t think I’m the leak, do you? You think I burned Meredith?” Rance said loudly, indignant. “You think I’m bent?”
Dorsey held out his hands, palms down. “Whoa, not saying that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“That you need to be careful.” He tapped the iPad with his finger. “I don’t know who she is, but I do know what I’m looking at.”
“It’s my business.”
“It’s a vulnerability. You did a background check on her?”
“Yes,” Rance said. He had done one. But not the official kind that Dorsey meant.
The boss leaned far back in his chair, looking Rance in the eye. He laced his fingers behind his head. “You know, Ed, if we were a couple of execs over at Raytheon, I’d agree with you. This would be none of my business. But we’re not. We operate differently. I can’t have one of my top guys exposed like this. If I’ve uncovered it, you can bet the Russians have too. You’ll probably be blackmailed before the year’s out.”
Rance thought of his wife and three boys. He grabbed the iPad and swiped through the photos, slowly shaking his head while his boss looked on. The silence in the SCIF was like a physical thing.
Finally, he looked up, meeting the deputy director’s eye. “Jeff, I’ll take care of it.” He pointed at the photo of Genevieve. “She’s gone. Over.”
“Good man,” Dorsey said, leaning forward, his elbows back on the table. “Enough said. But just to be safe, I’m going to ask you to get over to Europe for a few weeks. I think it would be good to break up our patterns.”
“What about Archer?”
“You said yourself Meredith’s got it. Keep an eye on her from afar. But I’m asking you, give her some leeway.”
Driving back to his wife that afternoon, Rance replayed the conversation a half dozen times in his mind, agonizing over the fact he’d been caught. But Dorsey had made him a fair deal. He could give up Genevieve. It would suck, but he could do it. The unexpectedly positive turn was that he could now officially distance himself from Archer, per Dorsey’s request. Fine with him. It was just a matter of time before the Dales fucked it all up.