Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [131]
“Where do we stand with Lotus?” Mary Pat asked. The NSA had been scouring its intercepts for any references to Lotus, in hopes of finding a pattern with which the NCTC could start back-building a picture. Like the model on which Collage was built, the number of questions they would have to answer to assemble the puzzle was daunting: When did the term first come into use? In what frequency? From which parts of the world? How was it most often disseminated—by e-mail, by phone, or through websites, or something else they hadn’t yet considered? Did Lotus precede or follow any major terrorist incidents? And so on. Hell, there were no assurances Lotus meant anything. For all they knew, it could be a pet name for the Emir’s girlfriend.
“Okay, let’s play worst-case scenario,” Margolin said, bringing things back on track.
“I say we double-cover our bets,” Cummings replied. “We know where the cave is, and we know the signal had a fairly short reach—a few dozen miles on either side of the border. Assuming Lotus means anything at all, the chances are halfway decent that it caused some kind of movement—personnel, logistics, money… . Who knows.”
The problem, Mary Pat thought, was that personnel and logistics were often better tracked with HUMINT—human intelligence—than they were with signals intelligence, and right now they had virtually none of those assets in the area.
“You know what my vote would be,” Mary Pat told the NCTC’s director.
“We’ve all got the same wish list, but the resources just aren’t there—not in the depth we’d like.”
Thanks to Ed Kealty and DCI Scott Kilborn, she thought sourly. Having spent the better part of a decade rebuilding its stable of case officers—much of it through Plan Blue—the Clandestine Service had been ordered to scale back its overseas presence in favor of ally-generated intelligence. Men and women who had risked their lives building agent networks in the bad-lands of Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iran were being reeled back into the embassies and consulates with not so much as an attaboy.
God save us from the shortsighted politicalization of intelligence.
“Then let’s think out of the box,” Mary Pat said. “We’ve got tappable assets there—just not ours. Let’s reach out for some good old-fashioned ally-generated intelligence.”
“The Brits?” Turnbull asked.
“Yep. They’ve got more experience in Central Asia than anyone else, including the Russians. Couldn’t hurt to ask. Have somebody check the dead drops, see if they’re still viable.”
“And then?”
“We cross that bridge when we get there.”
At the end of the conference table, Margolin tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. “The problem isn’t the asking; the problem is getting permission to ask.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Cummings said.
He wasn’t, Mary Pat knew. While Kilborn’s deputies in intelligence and Clandestine hadn’t guzzled the Kool-Aid like the DCI had, they were certainly imbibing. In choosing Kilborn, President Kealty had ensured that the CIA’s upper echelons would toe the executive branch’s new line, regardless of the consequences to the agency or to the intelligence community at large.
“So don’t ask,” Mary Pat said simply.
“What?” replied Margolin.
“If we don’t ask, we can’t get a no. We’re still spitballing here, right? Nothing’s operational, nothing’s funded. We’re just fishing. It’s what we do; it’s what they pay us to do. Since when do we have to ask anyone about a little chat with an ally?”
Margolin looked hard at her for a few moments, then shrugged. The gesture said nothing and everything. She knew her boss well enough to know she’d struck a chord. Like her, Margolin loved his career but not at the expense of doing his job.
“We never talked about this,” Margolin said. “Let me run it up the flagpole. If we’re flamed, we’ll do it your way.”
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