The second message was from Frank Mraz, the deputy director of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. God, what a title, thought Harvath as he reminded himself who Mraz was. The message was succinct and to the point. Mraz wanted to see Scot at Langley today for a debriefing on everything that had happened in Cairo. The Agency would send a car for him at nine o’clock. Business casual attire was fine and the Agency would see to his lunch.
Business casual? Lunch? Mraz made it sound more like a social invitation than a debriefing. Harvath hopped in the shower, shaved, and then put on one of his dark Brooks Brothers suits with a white shirt and gold tie. He didn’t know what Mraz’s game was, but he wasn’t about to let the CIA dictate to him how to dress. He had half a mind to pack his own lunch, but decided against it. He’d been to Langley before and they had a relatively decent cafeteria. Buying him lunch was the least the CIA could do, especially as he was going to fill them in on all of the mistakes their “Special” Activities Staff had made over the past two days.
Even though he knew he’d never be allowed into the building with it, he brought along the H amp;K USP pistol he had been issued in Cairo. It was just another way to reiterate to Mraz that Harvath didn’t trust him or anyone working for him.
The last thing Harvath did before leaving his apartment was call Lawlor’s office regarding a protective detail for Meg. Neither Lawlor, nor his secretary were in, so Harvath left a message on his voice mail.
At precisely nine o’clock a navy blue Ford Crown Victoria pulled up in front of Harvath’s building. The driver didn’t have to bother ringing the bell. Scot knew the man would be right on time and he was already waiting for him. Normally, Harvath would have sat in the front seat and made conversation with whoever was driving, but this guy didn’t look like much of a talker, so Scot sat in back. As it turned out, he was right. The driver didn’t say a single thing during the entire drive to Langley.
The silence suited him just fine. It was a beautiful summer day, and Harvath sat back and watched the gently rolling countryside through the smoked windows of the car as they made their way northwest along the Potomac.
When they arrived at the main entrance of the sprawling CIA campus, the driver pulled into the employee lane. At the cinderblock checkpoint, black-clad, submachine-gun-toting operatives from the Office of Security Operations checked the driver’s identification and gave the entire vehicle the once-over. The Central Intelligence Agency was more vigilant about security now than ever before. For every security measure a visitor or employee of the CIA saw, there were hundreds more they didn’t. For instance, Harvath knew that unseen behind the bulletproof, tinted glass of the checkpoint house was a fully armed and armored tactical unit ready to meet any assault head-on.
They were outfitted with nothing but the best weapons, including.45 and.357 pistols with hollow-point Hydra-Shok bullets; H amp;K 21E fully automatic machine guns, effective out to half a mile; custom-made Robar.50-caliber sniper rifles capable of knocking out aircraft, vehicles, and even terrorists at well over a mile; M249 Squad Automatic Weapons, known as SAWs; M203 40-millimeter grenade launchers; as well as shoulder-fired antiaircraft and antitank missiles. There were also the concrete-and-steel bollards recessed just beneath the surface of each lane resting upon high-tensile industrial-strength coils that in a fraction of a second could be “popped” up in case a car tried to rush through the checkpoint and into the CIA’s compound.
Once cleared at the main entrance, the driver proceeded to the underground parking garage of the Old Headquarters Building, where he was again required to show his ID before being allowed to enter. The car rolled down the concrete ramp and once the driver had parked, he opened his door and motioned for Harvath to follow. They passed through a series of steel fire doors and emerged into a small service corridor and another security checkpoint. This time, Harvath was also asked to present identification and to sign in. Next, he was instructed to pass through a metal detector, which immediately went off.
Slowly and with a wide grin, Harvath unbuttoned his suit coat and drew it back to reveal the butt of his semiautomatic. “Just like my American Express card. I never leave home without it.” No one laughed.
Harvath carefully withdrew the weapon and handed it to the security guard, who ejected the magazine, cleared the chambered round, and handed the whole lot over to Harvath’s driver. In the next machine, an explosives “sniffer,” Harvath was required to stand still as small puffs of air were bounced against his clothes and returned to the machine for analysis.
“You guys get HBO on this?” asked Harvath
Again, none of the security staff said a word. Harvath figured they had probably had the same sense-of-humor-gland removal that Morrell’s people had had.
After Harvath had been handed his ID badge, the driver led him into a waiting elevator and punched the button for the sixth floor. “So this is it? We just zip right up in the elevator?” asked Harvath as the doors closed and the elevator began to rise. “No tour? What about the Berlin Wall Monument? Or the sculpture in the New Headquarters courtyard? You gotta promise me you’ll at least walk me through the directors’ portrait gallery on our way out. Okay? You promise?”
“Shut the fuck up,” replied the rather surly operative.
Finally, Harvath had gotten to him, and he smiled to himself.
When the doors of the elevator opened, they walked down a short hall and entered the CIA’s highly vaunted Counter Terrorist Center, known as the CTC. Predominantly windowless, the center was composed of groupings of hundreds upon hundreds of cubicles. Street signs proclaiming, “Osama bin Lane,” “Saddam Street,” and “Qadhafi Qourt” informed passersby what area of expertise they were entering. So the CIA did have a sense of humor after all.
Signs and placards were everywhere with pictures of the smoking World Trade Center on one side, a badly damaged Pentagon on the other, and in the middle a billowing American flag with the words “Let’s Roll.” Harvath knew that coffeepots percolated around the clock and dedicated CTC operatives often slept on mattresses laid out in the hallways. This was one of the key nerve centers in America’s war on terrorism, and it looked every bit the part. For a moment, Harvath almost felt guilty for razzing the always serious CIA, but then he changed his mind. Yes, they had a tough job to do, but so did he. People who took themselves too seriously not only were no fun, but could also be very dangerous.
The CTC had been established in 1986 by then-CIA-director William Casey. The idea was to bring together the Agency’s four directorates to address terrorism and to coordinate the Agency’s efforts with other law enforcement agencies. The CTC monitored the whereabouts of known terrorists around-the-world, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. Agents from the FBI, Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, and elsewhere were also stationed at the CTC. It was a warren of intelligence officers, psychiatrists, explosives experts, hostage negotiators, cultural, religious, and language experts-all of whom aided in the gathering and analyzing of intelligence and the running of covert operations both at home and abroad.
The center, though widely criticized for some of its dramatic misses, had had several significant hits. The CTC was responsible for linking the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, with Abu Nidal and several Libyan agents, for uncovering Saddam Hussein’s plot in 1993 to assassinate former president George Bush, and had continued to be extremely instrumental in assisting both domestic and foreign intelligence agencies in the arrests of countless terrorist operatives.