No Fortunate Son (Pike Logan, #7)(9)

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Driving across the Key Bridge, George Wolffe finally broke the silence. “Hey, you going to let me in on what’s going through that head? You thinking about those missing soldiers, or are you finally accepting what happened to Pike? Still time to change your mind on this brief.”

Interrupted from his trance, Kurt faked a grin and said, “No, nothing like that. Just some personal stuff.”

“Personal? Last I saw you had no life outside of this organization. You seeing someone? After my forty-two attempts at a setup? Marge is going to be pissed.”

This time Kurt grinned for real. Wolffe was the deputy commander of the Taskforce—Kurt Hale’s number two. Like Kurt, he’d basically torpedoed his career to create and help command Project Prometheus, the thrill of the mission much more attractive than the potential future rank. Unlike Kurt, he had a family to come home to, complete with a wife who took pity on the vaunted Taskforce Commander, trying to set him up with every middle-aged divorcée she could find.

Kurt said, “It’s not like that. It’s some trouble with my sister. Nothing like the trouble Pike is in.”

George continued in silence for a moment, weaving through the downtown DC traffic, then said, “You know, falling on your sword is so 1990s. The nobility of sticking to your convictions doesn’t fly anymore.”

Kurt said, “Tough shit. It flies in our organization. It’s what makes our organization what it is.”

“Kurt, I get the military code, but you don’t know this place like I do. That code is fine on the battlefield, when bullets are flying. This battlefield is all about what have you done for me lately.”

Unlike Kurt—who’d grown up in special-mission units in the Department of Defense—George was CIA. As such, he had lived through quite a few purges and witch hunts, all looking to hang good men for a petty political edge.

George turned from the wheel and caught Kurt’s eye. “This isn’t going anywhere. All you’ll do is cause a lack of trust in your judgment. You defend Pike and they’re going to think you agree with what he did. Agree that ignoring their orders is okay. Which will cause them to question you on everything you bring forward. Think about that.”

Kurt reflected a moment, then said, “Trust is the cornerstone of our organization. Faith is how we operate. Faith that the Operator will do the right thing. Pike was the man on the ground. We were a thousand miles away. He ignored Oversight Council orders and made a call. It ended up being correct. He saved tens of thousands of lives at great risk to himself. I will not destroy him because a bunch of political animals now find it expedient.”

“Kurt, he went on the warpath over Decoy’s death. He lucked into the thread of the WMD by hunting the Russians. He wanted to kill those men, and he did. You have to see that. He cannot be controlled. Even you couldn’t control him.”

“He didn’t luck into shit.”

“What’s that mean?”

Kurt looked at his trusted friend and said what he thought would never be uttered. “I let him off the chain.”

“What? Are you saying you gave him permission?”

Kurt sagged in the seat and said, “No. Not in so many words. But I knew what he would do, and I didn’t stop him. He would have listened to me. I let him go. Hell, I gave him assets to do so.”

“Jesus. Kurt, you can’t say that. That is not a defense. That will destroy the Taskforce.”

Kurt smiled. “Calm down. I never thought I’d say those words out loud, and I’m certainly not going to tell the Council. I’m not even sure Pike realizes how I felt. Look, the Oversight Council is a necessary thing to keep us in check, but he’s what’s right in our organization. And I’ll defend what’s right.”






6




They rolled into the security checkpoint for the West Wing of the White House, the granite monolith of the Old Executive Office Building off to the left. Alexander Palmer, the president’s national security advisor—one of about a dozen read onto the Taskforce—had been promising for years to get the Oversight Council a permanent home, but so far the Council members still trekked inside the same building like a multitude of other government employees. It made Kurt skittish, because sooner or later someone was going to ask what the hell the top secret meetings were about. All it would take was one NSC staffer to speculate, and The Washington Post would go into a frenzy.

Trudging up the stairs, Kurt began to rehearse what he was going to say. George had said Kurt was na?ve to the ways inside the Beltway, but that wasn’t the case. He understood completely what he was facing, including who was an ally and who was an enemy. He needed to massage both.

They reached the conference room and Kurt saw no Secret Service. Which meant no President Warren, the biggest gun who could help. George stopped, his hand on the door. “Last chance. I have that offer to open a yogurt shop. You want in?”

Kurt grimaced and said, “Sharks aren’t out yet. Let me chum the waters before I give you an answer.”

George swung the door open, and Kurt saw bedlam.

Everyone in the room was waving their arms or talking over one another. Usually, the Council was sitting still when he entered, like Supreme Court justices about to hear an argument before them. Handpicked by the president of the United States, they were all members of the executive branch or private citizens. By design, none were in the legislative branch, in order to allow a calm, unbiased analysis of the potential fallout of Taskforce actions, free from competing political pressures. And usually they were calm, but what Kurt saw looked like a couple of cliques at a junior high yelling at each other.