She nodded. It was all in the file. Subject had been retained in the early 1980s as an information source on the internal decision making of a right-wing party in El Salvador. While on the Agency payroll, he became a leader of La Fabrica, a death squad. His unit tortured, raped, and assassinated. But the CIA station did not drop him. Years later, after the civil war had ended, a State Department human rights officer in the embassy was investigating the murder of an American hotelier. He called on this fellow—the subject. The Salvadoran declared his innocence but referred, as a warning, to his connection to La Fabrica and his “mucho close” relationship to the “hombres con cajones” at the embassy. The human rights officer dispatched a cable that rang bells at Foggy Bottom and then at the CIA. An internal CIA review ended up questioning the station’s relation with this source. But no reprimands were issued, not a word was mentioned in public. Another mess was locked away in a filing cabinet—until Lancette read a story in the Miami Herald about a Salvadoran businessman arrested in Coral Gables for smuggling Mexican heroin into the United States. She called for an ICEMAN trace. The file appeared: The businessman was the same death squad leader who had been on the CIA payroll. Another potential flap.

“It’s god-damn endless,” Wenner said. “Enough bad history to keep us on our knees forever. When do the sins of the past end? At least you have job security.”

She tried to smile.

“What do you think we should do?” he asked.

This was the first time Wenner had asked her this question. During her eleven months running the ICEMAN office, she had brought him ten problem cases. He had not solicited her advice before.

“Take the hit,” she said. They both knew what that meant. Forget business as usual: leaning on the Justice Department to drop the case. Let it proceed. Let the thug try to raise his past association with the CIA to escape the jam. Let some headline-seeking member of Congress noisily inquire about his allegations. And then tell the truth. Blame it on the zealots of the bad old days. Tell the media that all that nonsense was still echoing and it’s not our fault what the cowboys did in the Cold War years. And allow those people who already think that the Agency routinely pays off murderers and scumbags in all corners of this dark, nasty world to say, “told you so.” Accept all the bother because this murderous, drugpeddling asshole did not deserve a pass.

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to take the spitballs from the windbags on the committees.”

Wenner coughed and kept talking: “Well, nothing so far from him. Maybe he forgot his old friends.” He chuckled uneasily.

They never do, Lancette thought.

As she left the office, the director asked, “And nothing came up on Max Bridge, right?”