It didn’t have to be anything fancy. It just had to get him to Florida.
Despite what he’d told the Washington Post reporter, Court was not from Dayton. He was indeed from a small town on the highway between Tallahassee and Jacksonville, and the fact Carmichael had dropped that little tidbit into the conversation, Court knew, was either meant as bait or as a threat.
If it was bait, then Court would be in real danger heading down to Florida.
But if it was a threat, if there was any chance at all something might happen to his father, his only close living relative, then Court knew he had no real alternative but to get involved.
He had to go.
He wasn’t worried that the CIA was going to hurt his father. But the other group out there, this mysterious proxy force of Middle Easterners; what was to keep Carmichael from sending them down to Florida to hurt his dad, to punish him for the actions of his son in some way, or to hold him hostage?
Court didn’t think much of his father. They hadn’t spoken in nearly twenty years. But his dad was his dad, and Court couldn’t let the same group of killers who murdered Max Ohlhauser get their hands on him.
56
A middle-aged secretary called for Denny Carmichael as he sat on the sofa outside the office of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “The director will see you now.”
Denny walked into the office of the D/CIA, a seventy-three-year-old former congressman and senator from Alabama who had also served in the directorships of Homeland Security, Defense, and even Energy. The man’s political career began in the state house in Birmingham, and it had never stopped, covering a period of fifty years.
Carmichael saw D/CIA as an intelligent man, but ultimately nothing more than a carpetbagger, a pol who took the reins of U.S. intelligence only because it was considered by others to be a coveted position, and his friend the president asked him to do so as a personal favor.
Despite the negative view the director of the National Clandestine Service held for the chief of the CIA, the man had left Denny alone, having gotten the hint from the former director of intelligence that the less one knew about the inner workings of Denny Carmichael’s NCS fiefdom, the better for one’s own tenure. Denny got things done . . . no need to dig into just how he accomplished this.
But now, as the two men shook hands perfunctorily and Denny sat on a sofa across from the handsome septuagenarian in the four-thousand-dollar suit, he worried that was all about to come to an end in the director’s mind, because D/CIA was finally getting serious heat from those above him.
The director said, “Not sure if you’ve heard yet, but I’m heading to Capitol Hill tomorrow morning for a closed-door session. I’m going to have to talk about this mess going on in the District. And I’m not going to get away with saying I don’t know a goddamned thing, even though the truth is that I really don’t know a goddamned thing.”
Carmichael said, “I understand, sir. Please know, I kept this situation off your radar for your own good.”
“I’m sure you did, and nine times out of ten I need you to do just that. But this time my willful ignorance has bit me in the ass, because I don’t know anything more than what I’ve seen on TV and read in the papers.”
“Yes, sir. Unfortunately, the enemy gets a vote, and this personality we are after has proven extremely difficult to remove from the chessboard.”
“Cathy King over there at the Post says it’s a homegrown threat. That true?”
Carmichael heaved his shoulders. “More or less.”
D/CIA cocked his head and looked at Carmichael through narrow eyes. “More? Or less?”
“He used to be one of ours. Former SAD Ground Branch.”
D/CIA winced as if he’d just put his hand on a hot plate. “Don’t tell me it’s the Gray Man.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“My predecessor told me about this one. He’s on the presidential kill list. Number one target, from what I remember. Is that right?”
Denny corrected him gently. “Actually he’s the number one target who is also a U.S. Citizen. He’s number nineteen on the list overall.”
“Right,” D/CIA said. “You know, I get to claim some plausible deniability with you and your exploits, since the president has supported your work for so long. I mean, hell, when POTUS is also president of your fan club, I can let a lot of things slide. But not this time.”
Carmichael said, “If you can run interference with Congress and do your best to keep the DOJ away from this, even for just a couple more days, then I give you my personal guarantee that we will terminate this individual, and there will be nothing more to do but handle a little after-action fallout.”