Carmichael expected D/CIA to open his drawer and pull out a bottle of Maalox. He wasn’t suited for this type of work. But the next thing the man from Alabama said surprised him greatly.
“What alternative do I have? I can already hear them in the congressional inquiries. Carmichael’s your top spook, they’ll say . . . This happened on your watch. Hell, the Republicans are already plucking the chickens and heatin’ up the tar.”
Denny said nothing. Must have been some sort of Alabama reference, he assumed.
D/CIA said, “I can take some heat and buy you some time. But not much. What else can I do for you, something that might make killing this man easier?”
Carmichael blew out an inward sigh of relief. Then he decided to press his luck. “There is one other initiative that might be helpful, sir.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Unmanned aerials.”
“Unmanned aerials? You mean drones?”
“Small ones. No more than three up at any one time. Crisscrossing the District. We have the best facial recognition suites known to man, but this personality has gone to great lengths to defeat them. If we were able to find, fix, and finish him from the air, then we could end this situation in short order.”
“Finish.” D/CIA said it softly, a statement, not a question, weighing the import of that word.
Denny nodded slowly. He had expected some shock from the man, but the older man showed nothing to indicate this was unexpected.
“You are asking for armed drones, then?” the director asked.
Denny replied defensively. “There are weaponized platforms that are extremely discreet. Virtually undetectable, and fundamentally no chance for collateral damage considering all the fail-safes and controls we have in place to prevent accidents and overkill.”
The silence in the room hung over both men. Until: “Just one perfunctory question, Denny.”
“What’s that?”
D/CIA leaned forward. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Carmichael sighed. Clearly, he would not be getting his armed drones.
“I’m not putting fucking remote-controlled killing machines in the airspace over Washington, D.C.!”
“I understand, sir. We’ll proceed without them. I just thought you understood how dangerous a situation we have here, from a political perspective, if nothing else.”
D/CIA snorted out a laugh. “There is one thing you are not taking into consideration, Carmichael. One thing that makes me very different from you.”
“And what’s that?”
“I don’t really give a damn about your Gray Man. I hope you get him before he murders more of our good people, but this really isn’t my fight. And I don’t care about politics. Not anymore. CIA won’t be my last job, but it sure as hell will be my last government job. I’ll be a college president three weeks after walking out the door here, and no one at UCLA or Duke is going to give a rat’s ass that a rogue assassin rampaged around in D.C. for a few days shooting fascist spymasters before he was shot dead.”
Neither Ohlhauser nor Babbitt were fascists, nor were they spymasters. But Denny got the point.
“I understand, sir,” Denny said, but it wasn’t true. He was tired of kissing this man’s ass. It hadn’t won him what he wanted. So he changed gears. “You don’t want to be involved, I get it. But understand this. I will get what I need. Even if I am forced to pursue other avenues.”
“You mean you’re going to go to POTUS.”
“I haven’t ruled it out.”
The director said, “I’m the goddamned director of the CIA. You report to me.”
“And I have reported.”
The seventy-three-year-old fumed. “You see yourself as the king here, Carmichael. The master of all you survey. You don’t think you can be stopped, do you?”
A small snicker from Denny now. “Not by you, sir. No.”
D/CIA rose to this challenge. “I might not be a killer like you, but by virtue of my title and rank, you know I have access to people who can stop people like you.”
Carmichael just smiled. “You have direct access, of course. You just call me up, and I arrange it. Which means, I have access to the same assets as you.”
“That a threat?”
Carmichael shook his head. “Nothing of the sort. I am just reminding you that I serve as a buffer between you and the elements out there that could be harmful to you.” He paused. “Politically. I am speaking in purely political terms. Don’t get dramatic.”
“Get out of my office.”
Denny stood and turned for the door. Then, just as Denny knew he would, the director blinked.
“Carmichael?”
Denny turned. “Sir?”
“Go back to your cave. Kill this man who’s causing so much trouble. I’ll give you a lot of latitude, just like you were going after some high-value target overseas. But I’m not giving you killer robots.”
“Very well, sir.”
He turned to leave again, but once more the director called out. “They tell me you have been sleeping in your office for the last week.”