Читать книгу State Of Attack - Gary Haynes - Страница 26

Chapter 17

It was only a twenty minute journey to Fairfax County, Virginia. Tom was driving his Buick, the streets deserted but well lit. The CIA HQ was known as Langley after the unincorporated community it was situated in a few miles west of DC. But it had been called the George Bush Center for Intelligence since 1999, a compound consisting of a couple of major linked buildings set in two hundred and fifty-eight acres of land.

After passing through the high-level security checkpoint, Tom parked his Buick in the visitors’ car lot and walked to the entrance of the New Headquarters Building, or NHB. It was a chilly early morning, dawn still hours away. He passed the “Kyptos” sculpture, which ran from the entrance to the north-west corner of the courtyard, a massive S-shaped copper screen containing numerous coded messages, and felt his sense of unease heighten.

The single-storey section of the compound was flanked by two marble pillars, the glass facade on either side bathed in a yellowish glow from the security lights. Atop the pillars, an elongated, curved glass roof gave it the appearance of a modern art museum, rather than the most sophisticated intelligence hub on earth. The NHB, completed in 1991, was characterized by two, six-storey office blocks and was situated on a hill behind the well-known Old Headquarters Building, with its iconic CIA seal in the entrance lobby.

After being processed by internal security and given a laminated visitor’s badge, Tom entered the lobby area of the NHB, which was dotted with commemorative plaques and an impressive collection of donated statues. The four-storey glass atrium between the two tower blocks had three model drones suspended overhead. They were beetle-black and would ensure that visitors were left in no doubt that what went on here was deadly serious, Tom thought.

The main entrance to the NHB was on the fourth floor of one of the blocks, with an impressive skylight ceiling. Tom stepped out of an elevator into the corridor. At the end, he could see the still well-lit structure of the Old Headquarters Building, integrated by a network of further corridors, the wall space broken up by hung works of abstract art of the Washington Color School.

Before he could be questioned at the reception desk, he noticed a slim young woman dressed in a black business suit with a large-lapelled white shirt walking towards him. Her blonde hair was cut in a neat bob, her gait confident.

As she held out her long-fingered hand to greet him, he caught a waft of her perfume. Expensive and classy, he thought, reminding himself that he hadn’t been in a relationship with a woman for close to three years. He was left feeling oddly remorseful about that, given the circumstances of his visit.

“Cindy Rimes,” she said with a distinct New York accent. “Thank you for coming, Mr Dupree.”

Tom shook her hand and nodded. “My pleasure, ma’am.”

He got the impression that she was slightly embarrassed by her name, but couldn’t think why. It was as good a name as any. He didn’t ask her why he’d been woken up and told to report here. He’d get the answers regarding his father soon enough, he figured.

“Please follow me, sir,” she said, leading him down the corridor.

Getting about halfway up the corridor he saw a large alcove and was invited to sit on a low-slung chair behind a chrome and glass table, containing several copies of the National Geographic and promotional material for the agency. Apart from a water cooler and a vending machine, the space was empty.

Thirty seconds later he watched another woman approaching him, her hair in a French plait. She was wearing a fawn skirt and pearl-white blouse. He declined the offer of coffee and was led into a meeting room nearby. Judging by the acres of glass at the NHB, he reckoned it was the only room without windows. It was roughly thirty feet square, with bare walls and a tiled floor. He sat on a chrome-armed chair at the oblong pinewood table and waited. The woman, a six-foot redhead, with flawless skin, a twenty-thousand-dollar porcelain smile and an Ivy League assuredness, had said that someone would be along shortly.

After a couple of minutes, the door opened without a knock and a heavy-set man in his early sixties entered. He wore a dove-grey suit and shiny loafers. Dan Crane, the newly appointed director of the agency’s National Clandestine Service, although that was classified.

He sat at the table and immediately began to ride the chair. “You look better than the last time I saw you, Tom,” he said. “But saying that, you couldn’t have looked worse if you’d been trampled by a herd of goddamned wildebeest. Those jokers in the DS handed you a medal yet? Saving the Secretary of State’s ass singlehanded like that. I told ya, come work for me.”

“You put weight on?” Tom asked. He didn’t like Crane’s jibe about the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and his back was up. Crane had a habit of doing that.

“Nah. Lost a couple of pounds in point of fact.”

“What’s this all about?” Tom said.

“Your father was the victim of a truck bomb in Ankara.”

Tom felt nauseous, his brain finding it hard to digest what he’d been told. He clenched his jaw and grimaced.

“You wanna glass of water? Something stronger?” Crane said.

Tom fought hard to hide his shock; his pain, too. “Just tell me he’s okay and then give it to me frame by frame.”

Crane stopped riding the chair, eased forwards a fraction and pinched his forehead. “He survived the blast, but the last I heard, he’s in a bad way.”

“You don’t have anything up to date? I heard there were two American casualties.”

“No. Sorry, Tom. He was there on an official visit to find out how the sectarian violence is panning out, and whether there’s a threat of civil war. Face-to-face is always preferable,” Crane said. “They hit him in a square. The bomb was likely Semtex. The Americans were a couple on a world tour. Pensioners by all accounts. Goddamn bad luck.”

“That it?”

Crane nodded.

“If you’re holding out on me, I won’t take it kindly.”

“I’ll forgive you that one, Tom, cuz of your old man and I like ya. But you keep pulling my chain, I won’t take kindly to that, either,” Crane said, and he began to ride the chair again.

Tom nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Crane smiled, his lips closed. “Okay then. The Pentagon is sending a medical team. If he’s up to it, he’ll come home where he belongs. I’m sending four CIA paramilitaries to make sure there ain’t a replay. You’re free to go along, too.”

“Who was it?”

“We don’t know. Yet,” Crane replied. “But I promise you this, Tom, when we do they’ll either rot in solitary, or the earth.”