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“So Hilger…”
“Look, think of it this way: the basis exists for a competitive, free market for intelligence. Regardless of the structure that exists by law, policymakers will always look to different factions to satisfy policymaking requirements, and develop those factions if they don’t already exist.”
I took a sip of espresso. “Hilger’s one of the factions?”
He nodded. “For almost a decade, he’s been building his own network. In a sense, he’s created a privatized intelligence service, and his product is good. A lot of policymakers have come to rely on it.”
“What happened, did the CIA get jealous?”
“That’s not the point. Sure, he was able to do things that the Agency can’t-he’s got no oversight, for one thing. But that’s exactly the problem. He’s his own extra-governmental institution.”
“And what are you doing here with me?”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Hilger was corrupt. And I’m not just talking about the two million dollars he made off with from Kwai Chung last year. I’m talking about much worse than that. Remember the U.S. diplomat who was assassinated in Amman a few years ago?”
I nodded.
“That was Hilger, making his bones.”
That tracked with the conversation I had overheard in the China Club. I nodded.
“Look,” he said, “why do you think it’s so hard for us to penetrate terrorist cells? Because there’s a simple admission test: kill a high-profile American, or carry out some other atrocity. If you can do that, you’re in. Well, the CIA can’t do that.”
“But apparently, Hilger can.”
“Can and did. Hilger created access to terrorists by being a terrorist. The thing in Jordan, deals with that guy Belghazi you took out last year, black market arms, money laundering… I’ve got evidence that he knew about the Bali bombing before the fact. Two hundred people died there. The two bombings in Jakarta, too. After all that, you think he even remembered who he was or what he was trying to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s like Nixon’s ‘madman’ theory. You want people to think you’re a madman, you have to start doing mad things. In which case, you might as well be mad. What’s the difference?”
“Tell me why you were leaking to the Post.”
He shrugged. “I had to put pressure on Hilger’s network. Publicity equals pressure.”
“The first story said the men in Manila were spooks, not ex-spooks.”
“They were ex-spooks, like I told you. But if the story was that they were current, Langley would face more questions, and Hilger would feel more heat.”
“So those ‘well-placed sources’ the stories mentioned…”
“Yeah, you’re talking to him.”
I nodded in appreciation. “What about ‘Gird Enterprises’?”
“One of Hilger’s front companies, I think. We’ll know soon enough. The media is all over it now.”
“Now that you leaked it.”
“Of course,” he said, sounding and for a moment even looking very much like Tatsu.
“Are you sure that taking down Hilger was the right thing to do?” I asked. “He’d gotten pretty close to this guy Al-Jib…”
“Ali Al-Jib?” he asked, his eyes wide.
“You know any others?”
“How do you know this?”
“Because they were meeting at the China Club in Hong Kong last night.”
“They were meeting… holy shit, where is Al-Jib now?”
“I expect he’s being fished out of Victoria Harbor. Unless he was able to swim for shore with five bullets in him.”
He shook his head as though incredulous. “That was you, at the China Club?”
I shrugged.
He shook his head again. “Someone ought to give you a medal.”
“I’d settle for just getting paid. Anyway, how do you know Hilger wasn’t trying to develop Al-Jib, run him somehow? Maybe Al-Jib would have led to other sources.”
He took a breath and let it out. “Who knows what Hilger was up to with Al-Jib? The man was dirty.”
I took a sip from the demitasse. “So what happens to him now?”
He shrugged. “I don’t think he has much of a chance, but I don’t have all the information yet. What happened at the China Club?”
I told him, leaving out Dox’s and Delilah’s involvement.
He sat silently while I briefed him, shaking his head as though incredulous. When I was done, he said, “You did Ma
“I wish I’d thought to come to you a week ago and ask what it would be worth to you for me to take these guys out. I probably could have retired on it.”
“That would be a tragic loss. Guess I can’t ask you who you were working for this time?”
“Guess you’re right.”
“It’s okay. I can imagine.”
“You can imagine all you want.”
“Well, from what you’ve told me, I don’t think Hilger can survive this. His supporters are all going to be ru
“I don’t know,” I said. “I get the feeling this guy is a survivor. Look at the way he turned things around at Kwai Chung last year, and made off with two million U.S. in the process. I wouldn’t underestimate him.”
“I’m not,” he said.
I finished my espresso and set down the demitasse. “Are you still in touch with Tatsu?” I asked.
“A bit,” he said, his tone guarded, and I knew they were in touch a lot.
I nodded. “Spend time with him. He’s walked the narrow path you seem to be on for a long time, and somehow he hasn’t managed to fall off. That’s rare. You should try to learn his secret.”
“What path are you talking about?”
“The one where the end justifies the means.”
He nodded.
“Well,” I said, getting up, “seeing as I’ve just eliminated two of the entries on Uncle Sam’s nonexistent terrorism hit list, I guess I can count on you to pay for the coffee?”
He stood and smiled. “My pleasure.”
I looked at him. “Is this on you, though? Or the government?”
“It’s on me.”
I nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
I held out my hand and we shook. “Ki o tsukero yo,” I said. Be careful.
“So shimasu,” he told me. I will.
TWENTY-THREE
HILGER SAT in the Dragonair departures area at Hong Kong International, waiting for his flight to Shanghai. The sun was up and he was exhausted.
It had been a long night. Deleting the files hadn’t required much time. They were all electronic, after all. And collecting his essential gear hadn’t been a problem, either, as much of it was kept in a bag that served as the civilian equivalent of the bug-out kits they had been taught to use in the military. It had been the phone calls that had taken a while. There were the people in his network, who needed to be warned. There were the family members, who needed to be prepared. And there were the politicians, who needed to be importuned. Each set of calls had been more difficult than the one that preceded it.
He wasn’t worried about himself. He’d been ready for a day like this, and his backup systems had worked well. Even if they hadn’t, and he’d been forced to take a fall or even worse, he could have handled it. What was hard to come to grips with was the total unraveling of his op. He’d been so close to achieving so much. America was in mortal danger, and wasn’t doing enough to safeguard against it. With his operation crippled, he thought the worst was now inevitable.
He’d read an article once, about the wildfires they have every few years in Southern California. Some expert was explaining that, because of the encroachment of suburban development on woodlands, the small fires nature employed to clear out the underbrush were no longer permissible. As a result, year after year, the underbrush got thicker and drier and more ready to combust. Sooner or later, the expert said, something will always set that underbrush off. It’s almost mathematically certain.
He looked at a WMD attack on America in much the same terms. There was so much post-Soviet matériel out there, and so many fanatics who wanted to use it, that it was just a matter of time. But no one wanted to accept this fact, any more than the Los Angeles suburban homeowners wanted to accept that a little a