Langley June 30
“Turn it up, please,” Lancette said to the security officer.
They were a mile from the entrance to CIA headquarters. He ignored her request. She leaned over and increased the volume on the radio.
“So last night I hear noises. But I afraid to go downstairs to see. I wait and I hear nothing. Then I hear it again. So I call police.”
It was a woman’s voice, thickly accented, high in pitch.
“And when police come, I go downstairs, and we go together. There, we see, window is broken. I open the door for police, and they look. They tell me, nobody here. So I go, I go upstairs. Then this morning—I get up at six, there is bang, bang at door. There is men. They say they from government. They say they want to go to downstairs apartment. I open door for them. I do that. And they look everywhere. They look in closet, they look in drawer, they look under bed. Then they ask me many, many questions about Mr. Dawkins. I ask why they want to know. They don’t say. They say it’s in-vest-a-ga-tion. Then I know why.”
“You realized that Mr. Dawkins was a suspect in a conspiracy to kill President Hanover?” a male voice asked.
“I knew it was because of the President Hanover.”
“And you’re saying there was a break-in at his apartment before the federal agents appeared.”
“Window is broken,” she said.
“What can you tell us about Mr. Dawkins?”
“He is quiet—”
The security officer turned off the radio. He picked up the car phone, dialed a number, and reported he was at the front gate.
Dickhead, she thought, showing he could do what he wanted. It was O/S modus operandi all the way. She remembered when she was an analyst. Anytime a security officer visited the branch, there was more fear
than if a Russian had strolled into the section. They relished finding a safe open at the wrong time, or a classified document in the wrong pile. They chased after the slightest infractions. A totalitarian environment for the protectors of democracy.
The car stopped at the main entrance. The driver nodded toward the door on her side.
“Guess they think you don’t have to escort me all the way,” she said.
The security officer did not reply. She got out of the car.
“You do remember hitting my car?” she asked. Now the Dart was ruined.
“Yes,” he said. “You called the number I gave you, and everything was taken care of.”
Not going to get any more conversation out of him, she thought. She walked into CIA headquarters.
In the outer office of the director’s suite, Lancette stared at the photographs on the wall. They showed young Chinese men and women protesting in Tianamen Square. The photos had been taken by a student leader whom the CIA had helped escape from Beijing after the tanks were sent in. On Lancette’s first trip to Wenner’s office, he explained his reason for placing these photographs on the wall: They were a reminder of the good the Agency can do.
Viv Novek was on the phone, rearranging Wenner’s schedule. He needed to move his appointment with the chief of the French service. He wanted to keep his promised afternoon visit to a Washington high school. (Lancette imagined the questions he would face: Did the CIA kill Kennedy? Why does the government suppress information about UFOs? Does the Agency deal drugs? Did the CIA kill Hanover?) And he wanted a full briefing from the IATF on the latest in the investigation.
Novek raced through a series of calls to reconstruct his day. Then she ordered flowers to be sent, in Wenner’s name, to Dunne’s hospital room.
“Just terrible, just terrible, what happened to Mr. Dunne,” Novek said to Lancette. “Did you ever hear from Mr. Grayton? He was just on the phone with the director.”
“Yes, we had dinner.”
“And?”
“We’ve been busy since then.”
“Yes, sorry to hear about your accident. Seems like everyone is having a run of bad luck lately.”
The phone rang. Wenner was ready to see Lancette. He was at his desk, wearing half-moon reading glasses and poring over audit records. In the corner of the room, a television was tuned to CNN, with the sound off. A reporter was interviewing a Vietnamese woman. The legend on the screen read, “Arlington, Virginia.”
Wenner did not look up from the papers.
“In your ICEMAN work to date,” he asked, “have you ever come across anyone connected to us who’s involved with a white supremacist group?”
“Not in this country,” she said.
“In this country?”
“There was the German case. The leader of the group that burned down a housing project for immigrants. He said that when he lived in East Germany he gave information to an American businessman he knew as ‘Mr. Mike.’ ‘Mr. Mike’ was one of ours—”
“Yes, and that skinhead asshole slit his wrist before the trial. One break for us.”
Wenner took off his glasses and placed them on his desk.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said.
“Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”
“About what, sir?”
“You want me to be a little more precise? First, a maniac tries to run you off the road. At that particular moment, Clarence Dunne is driving by and comes to the rescue. Then you disappear for two days. Now it’s not as if we can’t get along without our historical exercises for a day or two. But then Mr. Dunne is shot in unusual circumstances, and you turn up that night with Mr. Addis at the White House. I only find this out when Mr. Grayton calls to inform me about last night’s raid. Next, I gather, you spend the entire evening at the White House.”
“Actually, Blair House, sir.”
“Thank you, Ms. Lancette, for that correction. You would concede this is an unorthodox series of days and nights? And you would acknowledge that the head of an intelligence service might have a question or two for an employee involved in such a string of events?”
“I would, sir.”
“It is time for you to speak.”
He pushed the audit records to the side. There was a coffee stain on his tie.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.”
Shit, she thought, let’s see what happens.
“There was an irregularity in an ICEMAN request regarding the Hanover assassination. A report didn’t come in. The branch chief assured me the delay was due to changeover in the office. Then I was contacted by an officer in the branch who claimed that a memo he had written in response to the request had not been forwarded, that it had been … repressed. This officer—”
“Dr. Charlie Walters in the psychiatric office.”
Lancette stopped speaking.
“We know all about Dr. Walters,” Wenner said.
“What about him?” she asked.
“He was arrested in Bujumbura yesterday after he hit a street vendor with his car and nearly killed the man. The police said he was drunk at the time. He was traveling as a State doctor. So he’s covered by immunity. The police released him to the embassy but they’re holding on to his passport. God knows what they’re going to do. Walters told one of our officers there about the report claiming he met the assassin once before.”
“That’s not what he told me,” Lancette said.
“That’s what’s in the cable. I checked with his branch chief. He told me that Walters is facing two administrative actions. One for being too forward with a patient. The child of a deputy station chief recently back from Indonesia. He touched this patient”—Wenner reached for a paper on his desk and read from it—“‘in inappropriate spots, including genitalia.’ In another instance, he recently returned from lunch too inebriated to perform his duties.”
Hell, Lancette thought, if every employee who ever did that was booted, the Agency would be radically downsized.
“They also suspect he was helping himself to samples from the pharmacy. Which might explain the memo he wrote in response to your request. It’s gibberish. Look at it.”
He handed her a document and waited as she read. It was one long paragraph, single-spaced, covering two pages. Walters claimed he had once met the assassin at a bar, that this person had told him that he was part of an off-the-books hit team directed by Wenner. In the memo, Walters said that his own life was in danger, and that he would cooperate in the investigation if the administrative actions against him were dropped.
“Did he show you this document?” Wenner asked.
“No,” Lancette said.
“He admitted to our officer in Burundi that he misled you.”
But he hadn’t, she thought. He had told her enough so she was able to find Dawkins.
“Ms. Lancette, you know what happens when you start investigating craziness. You establish a paper trail that will be misinterpreted for decades to come.”
There could be no greater nightmare for him, she thought, then to have the Agency linked to another presidential assassination—especially when his name would be associated with the conspiracy. Someone had played him well. Or was he allowing himself to be played?
“So no one at IATF knows about this?” she asked.
“I’ve discussed it with Mr. Grayton, and we agreed that allegations deemed worthless need not be officially presented to the task force.”
We agreed. She looked at Wenner’s eyes. They had the same distant
appearance as always, as if he were searching for smudges on the wall at the opposite end of the room. We agreed. He and Grayton. Never hold anything back from me, he once had told her, I can always go back to Cal Tech and teach. This job needs me more than I need it. But Walters had known where to find Dawkins. His story—the one he told her—contained more than craziness.
“Director, I don’t want to challenge Mr. Grayton’s and your reading of the situation.” She paused.
“Then don’t,” he said.
“But Dr. Walters did tell me enough so I could locate Dawkins through that bar.”
“I left something out. The patient he touched inappropriately was a seventeen-year-old boy. Dr. Walters is a repressed homosexual. I don’t care about a person’s … . But he lied about it on his personnel records. We just want people to be open about it, that’s all. So he’s been to the bar. And maybe he really did meet Dawkins there and figured out something about this conspiracy. But it doesn’t matter. We cannot unleash such a noncredible source into the investigation. It will be poison. And since the owner of that bar was found with Dawkins, the investigation can target the bar. There’s no need for Walters’s report. It takes us nowhere we cannot already go.”
Except, she thought, that this is not his real report. We agreed. On how much? she wondered. She felt very far from the we.
“If Walters was in trouble, why was he sent to Africa?” she asked.
“Budget cuts. The branch was short of qualified psychiatrists. It couldn’t afford to place Walters on administrative leave.”
“I see.”
Wenner walked to the window. His shoes were scuffed. He gazed out at the woods surrounding the compound.
“I wish we could see the river from here,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. This is how they do it, she thought. Ruin and discredit a life. Walters was fucked. They were burying him.
“So you’re well enough, I suppose, to return to your normal duties?” he asked. Lancette realized it was not really a question. “And I’ve told Mr. Grayton that you will be at his disposal in case the task force does end up needing information on the Walters matter.”
“Yes, sir,” she answered.
“Thank you,” he said. Wenner was dismissing her.
She stood to leave. We agreed. That’s it? she thought. And what about her? If she didn’t agree? She opened the door to leave.
“Ms. Lancette?”
She paused at the threshold.
“I took your advice on the El Salvador business.”
She had to think for a moment. He was referring to the ICEMAN case they had recently discussed: the former death squad leader who was arrested for drug smuggling and who once had been on the CIA payroll. Wenner had decided not to interfere with the prosecution.
“Thank you,” she said and closed the door.