Echo of War Read Online Free PDF Page B

Holystone, this arm’s-length relationship with the CIA and its many spinoffs was both a blessing and a curse. Due largely to Dutcher’s universal reputation as the most even-keeled and trustworthy DDI of his generation, Holystone operated with a fair amount of autonomy, both in budget and in methods. It also operated at a fraction of the CIA’s cafeteria allotment, had full access to the U.S. intelligence system, and was exempt from the political and budgetary squabbles the CIA had to fight at every turn.
    Holystone’s curse came from its raison d’être: deniability. Holystone, its people, and its mission didn’t exist. If caught somewhere they shouldn’t be, doing something they shouldn’t be doing, operatives were on their own. As Dutcher explained it when Tanner had first come aboard, “It’s a brutal necessity—brutal for us, necessary for the president.”
    Tanner didn’t have to think long about the offer. Not only did he trust in Billings’s judgment, but like anyone who spent any time in the intelligence business, Briggs also knew of Leland Dutcher’s reputation. If he was at Holystone’s helm, it had to be something special.
    Dutcher was an old-school spook, having learned the business first with the OSS as a member of a Jedburgh Team dropped into occupied France to assist the Resistance against the German Wehrmacht, then with the CIA as it fought tooth and nail against the KGB and the East German Stazi in Cold War Berlin.
    As an agent controller, he’d won and lost both battles and people the world had never heard of and never would. He’d seen the CIA go from a small collection of case officers that succeeded through improvisation, dedication, and guile, to a premier intelligence agency armed with technology that had been unimaginable even twenty years before.
    Through it all, Dutcher had learned an unforgettable lesson: It was people, not technology, that drove the intelligence business. Cameras, microphones, and computers are a poor substitute for “eyeballs on the ground”—the impressions of a trained and seasoned spook.
    Soon after joining Holystone, Tanner realized he’d found a home, something he’d missed since leaving the tight-knit community of ISAG. In addition to Dutcher, there was Walter Oaken, his second-in-command—or as Dutcher often called him, “the oil that keeps the machine running”—and Tanner’s oldest friend, Ian Cahil, whom Tanner had recruited into Holystone a few years before. They were good people. He counted himself lucky.
    After leaving Vetsch, Tanner took 95 north to Washington, then 301 over the bridge across the bay and south to Tunis Mills. Holystone’s office, a Frank Lloyd Wrightesque building surrounded by Japanese maples and gold-mound spirea, sat perched above the banks of Leeds Creek, one of the hundreds of inlets along the eastern shore.
    Tanner pulled into the parking lot, walked up the path, and swiped his card key in the reader. At the muted click he pushed through the door into the foyer. Holystone’s layout was uncluttered, with high, vaulted ceilings and offices lining a sunken conference room. He walked back to Oaken’s office, poked his head in, and said, “Got a minute?” then continued on to Dutcher’s office.
    Dutcher looked up from a file and peered at Tanner through the pair of half-glasses perched on his nose. “I seem to recall you’re on vacation.”
    Briggs sat down on the sofa. “I love my job.”
    Oaken walked in, handed Tanner a cup of coffee, and took the seat before Dutcher’s desk.
    â€œGlad to hear it,” Dutcher said with a smile. “Now go home.”
    â€œI’ve got a situation.”
    Oaken asked, “Vetsch?”
    Tanner nodded.
    Dutcher laid aside the file. “Gill Vetsch? What’s going on?”
    â€œHe called me this morning. His daughter, Susanna, went missing