Sleeper's Run

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Michael Singleton is close to death's door. He wouldn't be surprised if his ulcer is already bleeding out; he doesn't need to check his blood pressure to know it's sky high. The glass that serves as an ashtray is full of cigarette butts; another one was useful for helping him to finish a bottle of Scotch. The picture of his daughter is tucked in one of the desk drawers.

The phone call from Eric Caine a week ago has made him very paranoid. Since then, Singleton spends most of his time in his office where he feels safe, which has proven quite productive since he had to move a gargantuan amount of resources to fix things in Paris.

He has lost an entire Special Operations Group team, including Nathan Blake. Singleton can't believe it. Blake was a legend in the Special Activities Division; a man who spent his whole life serving his country. Even when a piece of shrapnel was embedded in his face during an operation in Nicaragua, Blake's sense of duty and patriotism kept him in the trenches as a leader and a cunning strategist. At least he died a soldier's death—on the field against another warrior—instead of an old, wretched soul purging his memories at the bottom of a bottle. If Singleton were a philosophical man, he'd say Blake had picked his own way to die.

Singleton's first task was to disavow the team and silence Charles Wong a.k.a. White, from COMINT, before the French police could extract any information from him. Then, Singleton had to make sure the bodies of Blake and his team could not be identified, while trying to connect them in some way with the Cuban Directorate of Intelligence; a task that has proven difficult at best.

Then there was the matter of the botched arrest. The FBI, Interpol and the French National Police were furious and they wanted answers fast. Singleton had to assure Special Agent Richard Hastings that he would have the absolute cooperation of the CIA in moving heaven and earth to find Eric Caine. To try to appease Interpol and the French police, he was forced to feed them information about certain undercover operations so that they could make some meaningful arrests and save face. This will affect some of the agency's operations in Europe, but Singleton had no choice. Everything may be forgotten if Operation Urgent Freedom comes through in the end, but the price of success is dangerously outweighing the desired results.

Singleton's headache doesn't stop there. Basem Marin, a freelance French reporter, has broken the news about Caine's arrest. Basem claims he participated in the capture operation at the Musée d'Orsay, which multiple witnesses corroborate. Basem has been quite busy trying to connect the shootout at the Le Bourget Airport and the massacre at Gare Du Nord with Caine, but the French police have stonewalled his unrelenting inquiries so far.

And finally, there is the situation with Antonio Montenegro. In the midst of significant political change in Venezuela, Antonio's faux pas in Paris could have brought the whole house of cards tumbling down. When Singleton's CIA officers told him the reason Montenegro Jr. was in France, he didn't feel that badly about Blake's demise. At least the kid was smart enough to keep his mouth shut and get a good lawyer. He'll probably have to take the rap for the cocaine charges, but the rest will have to be buried in a ton of legal papers until the political climate in Venezuela is stable, and things can be solved quietly. At least that's what he's trying to tell his boss, the Director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service.

"I should never have agreed to this absurd operation," Miles Gorski says on the phone from his Langley office. "'Zero blowback'; God, I must have been pretty desperate to let you talk me into this."

"Come on, with Libschitz safe in Israel and the Damocles' Sword laboratory in Guantanamo Bay sanitized, the tide can still turn in our favor," Singleton says.

"You mean your favor. Because you're one mistake short of sinking with your ship. One mistake too far, if you ask me."

"That's not fair. This is a dry run for what could be the future of political intervention. It works; read the report. The only mistake was Nathan Blake getting overzealous with the first choice for a sleeper."