The Red Cell. André Le Gallo
had failed in their mission. They would need to report to their superiors as quickly as possible and not risk capture. They had to be heading to New York.
The chase was on. Despite the hour, parkway traffic was moving along well, and Steve in the truck was losing ground. In just a few minutes they sped past the Route 123 exit that led to CIA headquarters. Years before, Mir Aimal Kasi, a Pakistani gunman, had killed two intelligence officers and wounded three others, all of them lined up to enter the compound at Langley. Steve, speeding in and out of lanes as if the fate of the world depended on delivering a pane of glass, tried to catch up as much as he could. Fortunately, none of the other drivers tried to challenge him or block his progress, even though trucks were prohibited on the parkway.
Still focusing intensely on the road ahead, he managed to pull his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and call Jonathan Spencer, the FBI liaison on the White House staff, to have him contact the U.S. Park Police, plus authorities in Virginia and Maryland. “The first actionable intelligence to come from the White House since the Brits burned the place down in 1812,” Spencer replied.
“Since the Iranians don’t have an embassy in Washington,” Steve added, “I assume these guys are heading to their New York mission. But I could be wrong. I’m going to try to catch them on the Beltway. You probably want to look out for them there.”
He had been so intent on catching the bike guys he hadn’t once checked his speedometer. When he glanced down, what he saw shocked him: 90 miles an hour!
What must these commuters be thinking? An emergency window replacement?
He continued blasting his horn and weaving lanes, when he spotted the bikers again, about a quarter-mile ahead, veering off the parkway onto the Beltway. That’s when he heard the siren. A Park Police cruiser was surging in his rear view mirror, lights flashing.
Steve wasn’t about to be stopped, close as he was to the bike, which was roaring toward the American Legion Bridge over the Potomac, with the truck and now the police cruiser in hot pursuit. The driver stayed on course, head down, but his back-seat colleague was clearly agitated and shouting at his companion every few seconds. After failing to get a reaction from him, he plunged a hand in his jacket.
As Steve drew closer, the police car suddenly passed him, coming abreast of the bikers. Just then, the back rider fired at the cruiser, which immediately slowed and dropped directly behind the shooter.
“Think you’ve figured this out, officer?” Steve muttered to himself.
He had just begun to wonder if, after this much commotion, the police had dispatched only one vehicle, when a second cruiser appeared on his right on the highway’s shoulder. This one, he saw, contained two officers, with the passenger leaning out the open window behind the driver and training a shotgun on … him!
Reflexively, Steve slammed on the brakes, and as the truck dropped back the armed officer spotted the bike passenger about to fire at him. The cruiser’s driver must have spotted him, too, because the car swerved sharply to the left and bumped the motorcycle against the Jersey barrier separating the Beltway loops. The impact sent the shooter over the barrier and directly into the path of a semi-trailer, while driver and bike ricocheted off the wall and under the wheels of the cruiser.
Steve screeched the truck to a stop, while the hundreds of drivers approaching the scene took frantic evasive actions, some successful, some resulting in smashed fenders and crumpled bumpers.
In a few moments, traffic had ground to a halt in both directions, surrounding the two dead men, the police, and Steve, sitting in the truck and staring at the miraculously unbroken pane of glass still attached to its side.
“We could be in the galley of a submarine,” Kristen said to her chief, as she patted her black flapper style curls. She and Tom Nortsen, a white-haired man in a gray suit, were sitting in the cafeteria of the old executive building next to the White House, having arrived early for a meeting with the director of the White House intelligence staff, Steve Church. Kristen, a very junior CIA officer on the Iranian desk, was thrilled and she savored the moment, trying to absorb her environment. Early on in her training at the Farm, she had put in a request that one of her interims be with the Near East Division. Nortsen, according to his reputation, took good care of the trainees assigned to him.
“White House staffs keep getting bigger and bigger but their offices have to get smaller and smaller. If you ever get assigned here later in your career, you would be lucky to have your own desk.”
“Can you tell me anything about Steve Church before we go up?” Kristen asked.
“He is in his mid-thirties, grew up overseas wherever his father’s CIA assignments took the family,” Nortsen replied, taking a sip of his coffee. “International relations, wrestling and rifle teams at Lehigh. A master’s degree from Brussels when his father was chief of station there. Then NATO headquarters, also in Brussels, sent him to open an office in Moldova. Two years later, he designed a counter-proliferation exercise for the U.S. Air Force in South Korea while working for West Gate International, a large defense contractor with CIA connections.”
“Wow, you seem to know him pretty well. But I meant what about his CIA connection? He seems to have done a lot considering he’s not even a CIA officer.”
“I know his father, Marshall, a lot better. Marshall retired from the CIA, but he formed his own company, and now he is more involved in intelligence operations than ever through his Red Cell. But we better head up,” Nortsen said as he looked at his watch and finished his coffee.
As they headed to the elevator, he asked, “But what about you? Why did you join the CIA?”
“Well, I had a choice. Most of my classmates at Johns Hopkins went to work for oil companies in the Middle East. Money or do something for my country? Plus, the excitement, of course. And I wanted to meet interesting people who also wanted to make a difference.”
“Well, you came to the right place. Although not everyone in the agency likes him because he is not a CIA staffer, Steve is one of the more interesting people you are likely to meet. Several intelligence awards in return for saving the lives of thousands of people in the Middle East and our country’s cyber infrastructure.”
Steve Church’s office was next to the National Security Council on the third floor. As advertised, it was modest in size and the several chairs that had been brought in for this meeting made it appear even smaller. Kristen was surprised high-ranking officials were squeezed into so many cubbyholes. She supposed proximity to power made up for the lack of space.
They were among the first to arrive and Nortsen introduced Kristen. “Always happy to meet one of Tom’s protégés,” Church said. “I believe trainees usually spend a couple of months at an overseas station before their permanent assignment. Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know yet,” Kristen said.”
“We’re going to lose her to the European Division,” Nortsen interjected, “but I’ll make sure we get her back.”
The room quickly filled up with officials from other intelligence community organizations and Steve gave the group a quick summary of the previous day’s excitement. Kristen looked around the room sizing up the individuals at the center of American intelligence but her eyes rested on the speaker. Steve stood about six feet one, was fit-looking, had short brown hair, brown eyes, and an easy smile. He exuded confidence, vitality, and the sense any goal was within his grasp. Trust, she decided; she trusted him. And he wasn’t bad-looking, either in an unselfconscious way.
“How do we know those two guys were Iranians?” someone who identified himself as Defense Intelligence Agency asked.
“Interesting question,” Steve replied. “Mary Margaret, do you want to take that one?”“About a week ago, we at NSA intercepted an Iranian message, which in hindsight should have warned us this hit team was in the Washington area,” a well-dressed, blonde, middle-aged woman said. “Its target, which they referred to as Satan’s Spy, we now know was Steve. However, the message was not processed quickly enough. And it