More attentive was US Navy Vice Admiral Audrey Rowland. Trim in her service dress dark-blue uniform, she sat with hands folded on the table, the thick gold sleeve stripes of her three-star rank resplendent against the dark walnut conference table. She had been named Distinguished Student after advanced studies at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at Fort McNair in Washington. During the next twenty years, she’d held increasingly more important positions, most recently as commander of the Office of Naval Research on the shores of the Potomac River in Virginia. At ONR, she energetically supervised nearly three thousand scientists, permanent civilian researchers and contractors, while managing an annual research budget of more than a billion dollars.
Audrey had risen meteorically, passing through flag ranks of rear admiral (bottom half) to rear admiral in two years, and three years later, her third star as vice admiral was awarded. Benford watched her through lowered lashes, noting that she wore more fruit salad on her chest than Bull Halsey, including the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal (three awards), the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (four awards), and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. None was an award for combat or sea duty.
At forty-nine years old, VADM Aubrey Rowland was the modern empowered woman of the twenty-first-century US Navy: brilliant, an able administrator, and decorous. She had never married—the inevitable gossip occasionally floated around, mainly among envious male peers who were still lowly captains commanding destroyer groups out of Yokosuka—but VADM Rowland otherwise was discreetly considered a benign maiden, totally dedicated to the navy and its mission. When the call went out for prospective nominees for DCIA, Rowland’s name was immediately proposed by the Chief of Naval Operations, the Secretary of the Navy, and seconded by POTUS.
There was precedent: an admiral had helmed CIA in the midseventies; it was too long ago to remember the lasting damage caused by that dour interloper’s so-called Halloween Massacre in 1977 when two hundred operations officers were fired as nonessential, followed by another eight hundred case officers through 1979, uprooting in one stroke an entire generation of experienced street veterans, most with near-native language skills, a priceless commodity. But that was thirty years ago, and today the navy would be tickled to have one of its own again running CIA, none of whose ops officers ever showed much respect to naval intelligence or NCIS, the criminal investigative service. Benford studied the admiral’s long mannish face, jutting chin, and salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a braided bun in back, but with a poufy prairie-wife curl in front that, even to Benford’s blind fashion eye, was bizarre. Rowland noticed Benford looking at her, nodded across the table, and smiled pleasantly, flashing a protruding left incisor. Okay, maybe physicist admirals don’t have to be lovely looking, especially not the brainy ones, he thought. As DCIA, she predictably would focus on the science and technology side of the house, but with luck she’d at least support a clandestine service in dire need of resuscitation.
At the far curve of the table, clearly mystified by at least two-thirds of what had been briefed so far, sat the third nominee for DCIA, Ambassador Thomas “Tommy” Vano, who had starred as a B-film actor in the 1980s (Space Rage, Maniac Brainiac), and was voted sexiest man alive in 1985, but started fading and got out of Hollywood before he permanently crashed and burned. Using modest earnings from the movies, he began buying strip malls in Florida, together with an entrepreneur brother-in-law, at the start of the nineties real-estate boom. More lucky than prescient, Vano made millions, then formed a company, a consortium of investors buying global commodities, including rare and precious metals. Over the next two decades, he followed his partners’ leads and made additional millions, several of which he donated to the right campaign, and in 2008 was named ambassador to Spain. He stayed for four years in a perpetual, if pleasant, state of mild bewilderment, where he first encountered and was transported by the wines of Rioja and caparrones, the earthy Riojan stew of white beans and smoky pimentón pepper.
Inexplicably retained by the State Department after his return from Madrid, he became Ambassador at Large for Intelligence, which meant he had a shabby office in an interior corridor at Main State, with a two-person staff, and attended countless meetings. The position had been unfilled for eighteen months, primarily because no senior State Department diplomat wanted to wet his shoes in the squishy peat bog of the spy world. But Ambassador Vano found liaison meetings with various intelligence agencies around town tolerably interesting, if not particularly demanding and as the State Department rep he was rarely asked to participate (the leper at the square dance, one NSA wit had muttered). He’d had intel briefs as Chief of Mission in Madrid, and found them thrilling, sort of like movie scripts.
However, one day Tommy Vano interrupted a discussion about strategic metals being purchased and hoarded by Moscow and Beijing, and casually mentioned that his consortium was familiar with the global commodities markets, government ministers, commercial buyers, extraction mines, and stockpiles. All of it. From that day, he had a seat at the table and, despite being more affable than discerning, was accepted as a subject-matter expert.
When the call went out for nominees for DCIA, the milk-and-water outgoing secretary of state (who still believed in the code of conduct which held that gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail), proposed the Honorable Thomas Vano for DCIA, citing his business acumen, his foreign experience as a diplomatist, and his attributes as a current Ambassador at Large for Intelligence, with deep ties to, and contacts within, the intelligence community. It was Washington-speak to be sure, and patent nonsense, but Vano made the cut for the final three.
He was tall and bird chested, with a buccaneer’s wavy black hair, limpid pools for eyes, and a Cary Grant cleft on his chin. Benford noted with interest that the sole visible respondent to Vano’s money-Hollywood-sex vibe was EA Division Chief Neff, a known free spirit once referred to by the deputy of the organized crime section in Counternarcotics Division as a habitual receiver of swollen goods. Senator Feigenbaum was too old and mean to care, and Admiral Rowland didn’t move her gold stripes an inch, and seemed oblivious.
God preserve us, thought Benford. A harpy from the Hill intent on destroying the Agency; an awkward physics bluestocking from the navy; and a stuffed-toy millionaire who as ambassador in Madrid thought the Basque terror group’s acronym ETA stood for estimated time of arrival.
Benford had demurred in today’s briefing session, “in the interest of time,” to discuss any Russian cases, and was determined to stall for as long as possible. MAGNIT was still out there, Nash had just reported that the GRU was gunning for DIVA, and all hell was going to pop in Istanbul if they didn’t do something immediately. Istanbul was going to be a disaster.
The WOLVERINEs. In Sevastopol. God help us, I hope they’re as sharp as Forsyth swears they are. The First Cold War ended thirty years ago. We’re fighting the second one now.
RIOJAN CAPARRONES STEW
Fry sliced chorizo and chopped onion and garlic in olive oil until soft. Add pimentón (hot Spanish smoked paprika) and red chili flakes and continue frying. Add chopped fresh tomatoes, water, vegetable stock, canned chopped tomatoes, and tomato paste. Bring to a boil, then simmer covered. Add chopped parsley and white beans (cannellini or navy) and continue simmering until thickened, somewhere between the consistency of a soup and a stew. Let stand an hour (or overnight), and reheat to serve piping hot, with a drizzle of olive oil and a poached egg floating on top.
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The WOLVERINEs