The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [35]
"Charlottesville?" Dominic asked. "I thought-"
"Since the time of Director Hoover, the Bureau has had a safe house facility down there. Technically, it doesn't belong to the FBI. It's where we keep the Gray Files."
"Oh." He'd heard about that from a senior instructor at the Academy. The Gray Files-outsiders never even knew the term-were supposed to be Hoover's files on political figures, all manner of personal irregularities, which politicians collected as other men collected stamps and coins. Supposedly destroyed at Hoover's death in 1972, in fact they'd been sequestered in Charlottesville, Virginia, in a large safe house on a hilltop across the gentle valley from Tom Jefferson's Monticello and overlooking the University of Virginia. The old plantation house had been built with a capacious wine cellar, which for more than fifty years had held rather more precious contents. It was the blackest of Bureau secrets, known only to a handful of people, which did not necessarily include the sitting FBI Director, but rather controlled by only the most trusted of career agents. The files were never opened, at least not the political ones. That junior senator during the Truman administration, for example, did not need to have his penchant for underage females revealed to the public. He was long dead in any case, as was the abortionist. But the fear of these records, whose continuation was widely believed to be carried on, explained why Congress rarely attacked the FBI on matters of appropriations. A really good archivist with a computerized memory might have inferred their existence from subtle holes in the Bureau's voluminous records, but that would have been a task worthy of Heracles. Besides, there were much juicier secrets than that to be found in the White Files squirreled off in a former West Virginia coal mine-or so an historian might think.
"We're going to detach you from the Bureau," Werner said next.
"What?" Dominic Caruso asked. "Why?" The shock of that pronouncement nearly ejected him from his chair.
"Dominic, there's a special unit that wants to talk to you. Your employment will continue there. They will fill you in. I said 'detach,' not 'terminate,' remember. Your pay will continue. You'll be kept on the books as a Special Agent on special assignment to counter-terrorism investigations directly under my office. You'll continue to get normal promotions and pay raises. This information is secret, Agent Caruso," Werner went on. "You cannot discuss it with anyone but me. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir, but I cannot say I understand."
"You will in due course. You will continue to investigate criminal activity, and probably to act upon it. If your new assignment turns out to be not to your liking, you can tell me, and we'll reassign you to a new field division for more conventional duties. But, I repeat, you cannot discuss your new assignment with anyone but me. If anyone asks, you're still a Special Agent of the FBI, but you are unable to discuss your work with anyone. You will not be vulnerable to any adverse action of any kind as long as you do your job properly. You will find that the oversight is looser than you're used to. But you will be accountable to someone at all times."
"Sir, this is still not very clear," Special Agent Caruso observed.
"You will be doing work of the highest national importance, mainly counter-terrorism. There will be danger attached to it. The terrorist community is not a civilized one."
"This is an undercover assignment, then?"
Werner nodded. "Correct."
"And it's run out of this office?"
"More or less," Werner dodged with a nod.
"And I can bail out whenever I want?"
"Correct."
"Okay, sir, I'll give it a look. What do I do now?"
Werner wrote on a small pad of paper and handed it across. "Go to that address. Tell them you want to see Gerry."
"Right