Avenger

In 1966, he was nineteen. It was the pi

For Paul Devereaux the two were synonymous: Atheism was not always communism, but communism was atheism. He would serve his country not in the church or in academia but in that other place quietly mentioned to him at the country club by a pipe-smoking man introduced by a colleague of his father.

A week after graduating from Boston College, Paul Devereaux was sworn into the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency. For him it was the poet's bright, confident morning. The great scandals were yet to come. With his patrician background and contacts, he rose in the hierarchy, blunting the shafts of jealousy with a combination of easy charm and sheer cleverness. He also proved that he had a bucketful of the most prized currency of them all in the Agency in those years: He was loyal. For that a man can be forgiven an awful lot, maybe sometimes a bit too much. He spent time in the three major divisions: Operations (Ops), Intelligence (Analysis), and Counterintelligence (Internal Security). His career hit the buffers with the arrival of John Deutsch as director.

The two men simply did not like each other. It happens. Deutsch, with no background in intelligence gathering, was the latest in a long and, with hindsight, pretty disastrous line of political appointees. He believed Devereaux, with seven fluent languages, was quietly looking down on him; and he could have been right.

Devereaux regarded the new DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) as a politically correct nincompoop appointed by the Arkansan president whom, although a fellow Democrat, he despised, and that was before Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. It was not a marriage made in heaven, and it almost became a divorce when Devereaux came to the defence of a division chief in South America accused of employing unsavoury contacts.

The entire agency had swallowed Executive Order 12333 with good grace, except for a few dinosaurs who went back to World War II. This was the EO brought in by Pres. Ronald Reagan that forbade any more "terminations."

Devereaux had considerable reservations but was too junior to be sought out for his counsel. It seemed to him that in the thoroughly imperfect world occupied by covert intelligence gathering there would arise occasions where an enemy, in the form of a betrayer, might have to be "terminated" as a preemption. Put another way, one life may have to be terminated to preserve a likely ten.

As to the final judgment in such a case, Devereaux believed that if the director himself was not a man of wholly sufficient moral integrity to be entrusted with such a decision, he should not be director at all.

But under Clinton, in the by-now veteran agent's view, political correctness went quite lunatic with the instruction that disreputable sources were not to be used as informants. He felt it was like being asked to confine one's sources to monks and choirboys.

So when a man in South America was threatened with the wreckage of his career for using ex-terrorists to inform on functioning terrorists, Devereaux wrote a paper so sarcastic that it circulated throughout the gri

Deutsch wanted to require the departure of Devereaux at that point, but his deputy director, George Tenet, advised caution and eventually it was Deutsch who went, to be replaced by Tenet himself.

Something happened in Africa that summer of 1998 that caused the new director to need the mordant but effective intellectual, despite his views on their joint commander in chief. Two U.S. embassies were blown up. It was no secret to the lowliest cleaner that since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the new cold war had been against the steadily growing rise of terrorism, and the "happening" unit within Ops Division was the Counterterrorism Centre.

Paul Devereaux was not working in the CT Centre. Because one of his languages was Arabic, and his career included three stints in Arabic countries, he was Number Two in the Middle East at the time.

The destruction of the embassies brought him out of there and into the leadership of a small task force dedicated to one task and answering only to the director himself. The job in hand was called Project Peregrine, after that falcon who hovers high and silent above his prey until he is certain of a lethal hit and then descends with awesome speed and accuracy.

In the new office Devereaux had no-limits access to any information from any other source that he might want and a small but expert team. For his Number Two he chose Kevin McBride, not an intellectual patch on himself, but experienced, willing, and loyal. It was McBride who took the call and held his hand across the mouthpiece.

"Assistant Director Fleming at the Bureau," he said. "Doesn't sound happy. Shall I leave?"

Devereaux signalled for him to stay.

"ColinÉPaul Devereaux. What can I do for you?"

His brow furrowed as he listened. "Why surely, I think a meeting would be a good idea."

It was a safe house, always convenient for a row. Daily "swept" for bugs every word recorded with the full knowledge of the conference participants, refreshments on immediate call.

Fleming thrust the report from Bill Brunton under Devereaux's nose and let him read it. The Arabist's face remained impassive.

"So?" he queried.

"Please don't tell me the Dubai inspector got it wrong," said Fleming. "Zilic was the biggest arms trafficker in Yugoslavia. He quit, disappeared. Now he is seen conferring with the biggest arms trafficker in the Gulf and Africa. Totally logical."

"I wouldn't dream of trying to fault the logic," said Devereaux.

"And in conference with your man covering the Persian Gulf."

"The Agency's man covering the Gulf," said Devereaux mildly. "Why me?"

"Because you virtually ran the Mid East, although you were supposed to be second string. Because back then all company staff in the Gulf would have reported to you. Because even though you are now in some kind of special project, that situation has not changed. Because I very much doubt that two weeks ago was Zilic's first visit to that neck of the woods. My guess is that you knew exactly where Zilic was when the request came through or at least that he would be in the Gulf and available for a snatch on a certain day. And you said nothing."

"So? Even in our business, suspicions are a long way from proof."

"This is more serious than you seem to think, my friend. By any count, you and your agents are consorting with known criminals and of the filthiest hue. Against the rules, flat against all the rules."

"So. Some foolish rules have been breached. Ours is not a business for the squeamish. Even the Bureau must have a comprehension of the smaller evil to obtain the greater good."

"Don't patronise me," snapped Colin Fleming.

"I'll try not," drawled the Bostonian. "All right, you're upset. What are you going to do about it?"

There was no need to be polite any more. The gloves were off and lying on the floor. "I don't think I can let this ride," said Fleming. "This man Zilic is obscene. You must have read what he did to that boy from Georgetown. But you're consorting. By proxy, but consorting for all that. You know what Zilic can do; what he's already done. All on file and I know you must have read it. There's testimony that as a gangster he hung a nonpaying shopkeeper from his heels six inches above a two-bar electric fire until his brains boiled. He's a raving sadist. What the hell are you using him for?"

"If indeed I am, then it's classified. Even from an assistant director of the Bureau."