Black Flagged Redux

Chapter 41





8:45 AM

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia





Thomas Manning interlocked his fingers and turned away from the forty-two-inch flat-screen monitor mounted to his office wall. Audra waited for him to speak. Surprisingly, she hadn't been nervous about this meeting. The potential disaster looming over the United States and its European allies dwarfed the potential issues raised by the breaches of protocol and procedure she had authorized. If Manning chose to focus on these aspects instead of a confirmed bioweapons threat, there was nothing she could do about it. She didn't know Thomas Manning well enough to make a personal assessment of how he would respond, but he had a solid reputation for being practical. Still, nobody rose to the rank of National Clandestine Service director without a solid foundation in political maneuvering. This was the only facet of Thomas Manning that concerned her.

"We have a serious problem on our hands. Don't make any plans for the day and cancel any meetings you have scheduled. I expect to walk this up to the director's office within the hour. From there, we'll be on immediate standby to meet with the national security advisor. I can't imagine the Helsinki lab will sit on these results for very long, and if Reuters can confirm any of the story passed to them from Monchegorsk, this will break wide open. The White House will want to stay slightly ahead of this, if that's even possible at this point."

"The lab assured me complete discretion. I reinforced the need for that discretion with some scary-looking operatives and cash, which was accepted."

"I'm not even going to ask any questions about who you have running around Europe," he said.

"You really don't want to know," she said.

"I bet I don't," he said and paused before continuing. "Excellent work on this, Audra. All of it."

"Thank you, sir," she said.

"Now that I got that out of the way, I needed to know about the Predator drone as soon as you requisitioned it," he said.

"But you wouldn't have authorized an armed Predator drone for this mission. Nobody would have, based on the scant information available at the time," she said.

"And your initiative in the case still falls under the 'excellent work' category. Still, I should have been notified when it was used to attack Russian forces."

"We still don't know they were Russian. The helicopters were unmarked and the ground forces were dressed like locals. If they were Russian, the Kazakhstan government should be happy that we defended their sovereign borders."

"Luckily, the threat you uncovered far overshadows things like unauthorized Predator strikes or illegal invasions on Russian soil," he said.

"A simple snowmobile trip to the Kola Peninsula. It's a popular destination this time of the year," Audra said smoothly.

"Most tourists don't return with a severed head in a cooler. I assume they avoided customs?"

"Presumably," she said, smiling.

"When the dust settles, I'm sure we'll…I mean you'll have to answer some questions, along with your partner in crime, Karl Berg. I'm promoting him to the position of assistant deputy director. Effective immediately."

"I didn't know that position existed."

"Everyone complains that we lack the resources to fight the War on Terror. I've just enhanced our capabilities…and when we talk to the White House, I need this to look like a consolidated effort by the National Clandestine Service. "

"He'll be happy to hear that."

"Don't count on it. Karl Berg likes to operate in the shadows. In many ways, he's most effective on the fringes, just out of sight. Give me a few minutes to process all of this and stay close. We could be walking down the hall at any minute," he said.