Chapters (84)
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Chapter 33
- Chapter 34
- Chapter 35
- Chapter 36
- Chapter 37
- Chapter 38
- Chapter 39
- Chapter 40
- Chapter 41
- Chapter 42
- Chapter 43
- Chapter 44
- Chapter 45
- Chapter 46
- Chapter 47
- Chapter 48
- Chapter 49
- Chapter 50
- Chapter 51
- Chapter 52
- Chapter 53
- Chapter 54
- Chapter 55
- Chapter 56
- Chapter 57
- Chapter 58
- Chapter 59
- Chapter 60
- Chapter 61
- Chapter 62
- Chapter 63
- Chapter 64
- Chapter 65
- Chapter 66
- Chapter 67
- Chapter 68
- Chapter 69
- Chapter 70
- Chapter 71
- Chapter 72
- Chapter 73
- Chapter 74
- Chapter 75
- Chapter 76
- Chapter 77
- Chapter 78
- Chapter 79
- Chapter 80
- Chapter 81
- Chapter 82
- Chapter 83
- Acknowledgments
“Sounds good.”
“What?”
“Let’s go.”
“You’re kidding, right? I’m telling you, man, it’s hell.”
“I don’t think so, Danny.”
“What makes you a damn expert?”
Because I’ve actually seen hell. And it wasn’t in Virginia.
Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
JOE KNOX CLIMBED IN his Range Rover and drove slowly home, deep in thought. He’d gone over every scrap of paper in that box and each held a startling revelation. Yet while the sum total of information was considerable, the investigative leads flowing from this intelligence were negligible. The CIA was exemplary in covering its tracks, and the Agency had outdone itself here. However, Knox had been able to piece a few things together.
The reason that Gray’s home had been blown up six months ago seemed tied to an unauthorized CIA operation targeting the Soviets back in the 1980s. Exact details were not available and probably never would be. The connection in between was anything but clear. No names were available. One page in the box had stunned even the veteran Knox. There apparently had been a gun battle at the unfinished Capitol Visitor Center around the same time that Carter Gray’s home had been destroyed. An unknown number of CIA paramilitary personnel had been killed, the real circumstances of their deaths hidden from public view by the Agency’s very efficient disinformation machine. It seemed that Gray, then technically out of government, had been behind this mission. Who had killed the agents and why they were there in the first place remained a mystery.
A shoot-out in the middle of the Capitol? Gray must’ve been insane.
There was an indication in the file that Gray had met with the current CIA director, a man Knox considered a useless political appointee who had started at the Agency but had been brain-drained by his later years in the Congress. Whether Knox could get in to see the man was not a given. As Macklin Hayes had made clear, there was a difference of opinion at the Agency as to how this matter should proceed. Or not proceed.
Gray had also been given a secret audience with the president at Camp David. Knox suspected this piece of information was one of the ones Macklin Hayes had gotten hold of that he wasn’t supposed to know about. Knox realized that the odds of his interrogating the president of the United States about this meeting were about the same as his spontaneously combusting while in the shower.