Without remorse - Tom Clancy [118]
'Correct. His lieutenant was furious about that, but if it's true about what he had to watch, the only thing you can fault was his judgment, rushing in the way he did.'
'I read through that, James. I doubt I could have held back,' Cas said, looking up from the notes. Once a fighter pilot, always a fighter pilot. 'Look at this, even his grammar is good!' Despite his accent, Podulski had been assiduous in learning his adopted language.
'Jesuit high school,' Greer pointed out. 'I've gone over our in-house assessment of kingpin. Kelly's analysis tracks on every major point except where he calls a few spades.'
'Who did the CIA assessment ?' Maxwell asked.
'Robert Ritter. He's a European specialist they brought in. Good man, a little terse, knows how to work the field, though.'
'Operations guy?' Maxwell asked.
'Right.' Greer nodded. 'Did some very nice work working Station Budapest.'
'And why,' Podulski asked, 'did they bring in a guy from that side of the house to look over the kingpin operation?'
'I think you know the answer, Cas,' Maxwell pointed out.
'If boxwood green goes, we need an Operations guy from this house. We have to have it. I don't have the juice to do everything. Are we agreed on that?' Greer looked around the table, seeing the reluctant nods. Podulski looked back down at his documents before saying what they all thought.
'Can we trust him?'
'He's not the one who burned kingpin. Cas, we have Jim Angleton looking at that. It was his idea to bring Ritter onboard. I'm new here, people. Ritter knows the bureaucracy here better than I do. He's an operator; I'm just an analyst-type. And his heart's in the right place. He damned near lost his job protecting a guy - he had an agent working inside GRU, and it was time to get him out. The decision-weenies upstairs didn't like the timing, with the arms talks going on, and they told him no. Ritter brought the guy out anyway. It turned out his man had something State needed, and that saved Ritter's career.' It hadn't done much for the martini-mixer upstairs, Greer didn't add, but that was a person CIA was doing rather well without.
'Swashbuckler?' Maxwell asked.
'He was loyal to his agent. Sometimes people here forget about that,' Greer said.
Admiral Podulski looked up the table. 'Sounds like our kind of guy.'
'Brief him in,' Maxwell ordered. 'But you tell him that if I ever find out some civilian in the building fucked up our chance to get these men out, I will personally drive down to Pax River, personally check out an A-4, and personally napalm his house.'
'You should let me do that, Dutch,' Cas added with a smile. 'I've always had a better hand for dropping things. Besides, I have six hundred hours in the Scooter.'
Greer wondered how much of that was humor.
'What about Kelly?' Maxwell asked.
'His CIA identity is "Clark" now. If we want him in, we can utilize him better as a civilian. He'd never get over being a chief, but a civilian doesn't have to worry about rank.'
'Make it so,' Maxwell said. It was convenient, he thought, to have a naval officer seconded to CIA, wearing civilian clothes but still subject to military discipline.
'Aye aye, sir. If we get to training, where will it be done?'
'Quantico Marine Base,' Maxwell replied. 'General Young is a pal from the old days. Aviator. He understands.'
'Marty and I went through test-pilot school together,' Podulski explained. 'From what Kelly says, we don't need that many troops. I always figured kingpin was overmanned. You know, if we bring this off, we have to get Kelly his Medal.'
'One thing at a time, Cas.' Maxwell set that aside, looking back to Greer as he stood. 'You will let us know if Angleton finds out anything?'
'Depend on it,' Greer promised. 'If there's a bad guy inside, we'll get his ass. I've fished with the guy. He can pull a brook trout out of thin air.' After they left he set an afternoon meeting with Robert Ritter. It meant putting Kelly off, but Ritter was more important now, and while there was a rush on the mission, it wasn't all that great