“That’s the worst-case scenario. It’s also starting to look more and more plausible.”
Lacy said, “What do you think, Matt?”
He considered this a moment. “Who knew the location of the extraction in Nicaragua last night?”
“Almost no one.”
“Almost no one in the IC means fifty, one hundred people.”
Watkins shrugged. “It’s a bureaucracy. What are you going to do?”
“You need a list. You need to not rule anyone out. You need to investigate this.”
Watkins said, “So now I’ll circle back to the beginning of this conversation. I don’t trust anyone I work with.”
“The director of the CIA included?”
“I’ve discussed this with Director Phillips, of course. He just told me to figure out what the problem was and to tie it off. He doesn’t understand the magnitude; he just doesn’t want the fallout to affect him.”
“Yeah, well, the fallout almost cost Violator his life.”
After a pause and a look from Lacy, Watkins said, “I do have concernsabout Gauntlet Group. They are everywhere in the IC these days. They aren’t supposed to be seeing anything that would have caused these operations to go off the rails like they did, but if you want to talk about commonalities, every single one of the seventeen departments in the IC has Gauntlet contractors doing some work with them. Security, IT, transpo, comms, hardware, whatever. This is new, and this is a problem.”
“Gauntlet employees are vetted,” Hanley countered.
“Once upon a time, Matt, Denny Carmichael was vetted.”
Denny Carmichael had been a former deputy director for operations of the CIA, and he’d been dirty. Hanley himself had been involved in bringing him down.
After a moment, Hanley said, “I get your point.”
Watkins said, “I am going to use you and your assets to find where the problem lies, and I’m going to use you and your assets to put an end to this…whatever it is.”
“Okay,” Hanley said, but his voice sounded dubious. He cocked his head as something occurred to him. “Whataren’tyou guys telling me?”
Angela asked, “What do you mean?”
To Watkins, Matt said, “You stood me and my team up as an off-book program right around the time this shit started happening. That makes me wonder if you knew this was coming somehow, or if you were setting me and my men up to take the fall for it.”
Watkins barked an angry laugh. “A setup? You don’t think I’d swing by the neck, same as you, if I was caught setting you up in an off-book program?”
“But…but you knew it was coming. You knew there was some sort of compromise of U.S. intelligence, and that’s why you needed a small group you could trust, a small group you could run outside the infrastructure.”
Watkins shrugged now. “There have been signs that I was losing hold of secrets, that there was a leak somewhere in the U.S. intelligence community. And then there were signs that the leak was bigger than my building.”
Watkins took a long breath. “Know this, Matt. I can do a lot to protect you. But I can’t protect your assets. They kick in a door in D.C. and put a bullet into a U.S. citizen’s brain, and then they get caught by the cops…there’s not a damn thing I can do for them.”
“My guys understand. They’ll do their jobs. But frankly, Trey, if I were you, I’d be more worried about the cesspool of D.C. sucking you in than I’d be worried about Violator or Hightower or anybody else on my team getting caught by five-oh.”
“Believe me, I am,” Watkins said, and then he asked, “What resources do you need to help me?”
“Jim Pace.” Pace was a former CIA Special Activities Division paramilitary officer who had moved into a role at the Agency as a case officer. Hanley had worked with the man for years, and he understood his worth.
“What about him?” Watkins asked.
“He’s proven himself as an investigator. Have him looking into this, give him carte blanche, tell him to report to Lacy here.” Hanley continued, “You know about us, Angela Lacy knows about us. Pace can know about us; I don’t want anyone else involved. Lacy can talk to me.”
Trey Watkins said, “Agreed. Angela will be your cutout to Jim Pace and his investigation. How soon till Hightower is back with you and ready?”
