Rules of Vengeance

6

“How the hell did he get to London without us knowing it?” asked Frank Co

“Turkana Refugee Camp. That’s correct.”

“Not looking very spry is he? I don’t know how anyone can survive in that hellhole. How long’s he been there? Five months?”

“He arrived in Kenya at the end of February,” said Peter Erskine, Co

“When was our last sighting?”

“A week ago. One of our contacts with Save the Children reported seeing him at the camp.”

“Save the Children?” Co

He tossed the photo on top of Ransom’s file, a binder stuffed four inches thick. The material inside dated back eight years, to Ransom’s first assignment in Liberia. But Jonathan Ransom was not in any way affiliated with Division. He’d never received a U.S. government paycheck. In fact, until five months ago, he’d had no idea that he was working on its behalf. Ransom was what professionals in the trade call a pawn, a private individual manipulated to do the government’s work without being made aware of its intent. Frank Co

Sighing, Co

Division had been created prior to 9/11 in the wake of the Central Intelligence Agency’s failure to find and punish those responsible for the bombings of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the United States embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam and numerous other attacks against American interests abroad. The fire-eaters in the Pentagon were upset and eager for revenge. They argued that the CIA had grown soft, that it had become an organization of paper-pushers content to hide behind their desks. Instead of developing flesh-and-blood sources inside hostile territory, they were satisfied to wait for the next download of satellite imagery to study beneath their microscopes. The CIA didn’t have a spy worth two cents on the ground in any of the world’s hot spots and hadn’t mounted a successful black op in ten years.

In short, the job of gathering intelligence could no longer be entrusted solely to the spooks in Langley.

It was the Pentagon’s turn.

The United States military had the resources and the culture to put men into the field capable of taking the offensive in the global war on terror, referred to in directives and white papers as “GWOT,” a name as ugly as the scourge it set out to defeat. “Proactive” was the watchword, and the former president liked the sound of it. One National Security Presidential Directive later, Division was created. A beast as secret as it was stealthy, to serve at his behest, and his behest only.

Division’s first successes came quickly. The assassination of a Bosnian general wanted for genocide. The targeted killing of a Colombian drug lord and the pillaging of his networks. The kidnapping, interrogation, and, later, execution of several Al-Qaeda supremos in Iraq and Pakistan. All were important victories, and Division’s reputation benefited accordingly. The operations it mounted grew in scope. More money. More operatives. More latitude to navigate the quicksilver currents of the gray world. Goals were no longer tactical but political. Removing a bad actor from the scene was not enough. Ideological factors were to be considered. Fostering democracy in Lebanon and kick-starting the Orange Revolution in Ukraine were but two examples.

But success bred hubris. Not content to implement policy, Division began to make it. “Proactive” took on a new meaning. It was Acton ’s theorem all over again: power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Inevitably Division went a step too far.

In Switzerland six months earlier, a plan to foment war between Iran and Israel was foiled at the last moment by a Division agent gone rogue, and an international incident was narrowly averted. Behind closed doors, the president was forced to admit American involvement. Part of his penance involved the sharp curtailing of Division’s mandate. Its operatives were recalled, its offices moved out of the Pentagon. Division’s budget was halved and its staff sent packing. The coup de grâce came when it was decided that congressional permission was henceforth required to mount an operation.

In the eyes of the intelligence community, Division had been castrated. Word went out that it was only a matter of time until it was shuttered altogether. In the meantime, Division needed an interim director. And this time he would not come from the ranks of the military.

Frank Co

Co

But equally important to his overseers at the Pentagon was what Co

And Frank Co

Frank Co