to that other agent you mentioned. That would be Jason Bourne. He was the agent involved in the debacle of the escaped terrorist. He was the one who took your prisoner out of his cell without proper authorization, correct?"
"This is strictly an internal matter, Mr. LaValle."
"In this room, at least, I think the need to be candid outweighs any sense of interagency rivalry," the Pentagon intelligence czar said. "Frankly, I question whether anything Bourne says can be believed."
"You've run into difficulty before with him, haven't you, Director?" This from Secretary Halliday.
The DCI looked as if he was half asleep. In fact, his brain was running at full speed. He knew the moment he'd been waiting for had arrived. He was under a carefully coordinated attack. "What of it?"
Halliday smiled thinly. "With all due respect, Director, I'd submit that this man is an embarrassment to your agency, to the administration, to all of us. He allowed a high-level suspect to escape from CI custody and in the process endangered the lives of I don't know how many innocent citizens. I submit that he needs to be dealt with, the sooner the better."
The DCI swiped the secretary's words away with the back of his hand. "Can we get back to the issue at hand, Mr. President? Dujja-"
"Secretary Halliday is right," LaValle persisted. "We are at war with Dujja. We cannot afford to lose control of one of their assets. That being the case, kindly tell us what steps your agency is taking against Jason Bourne."
"Mr. LaValle's point is well taken, Director," Secretary Halliday said in his oiliest Texan imitation of Lyndon Johnson. "That very public screwup on the Arlington Memorial Bridge gave us all a black eye and our enemy a moral lift just when we can least afford it. Following the collateral death of one of your own-" He snapped his fingers. "What was his name?"
"Timothy Hytner," the DCI supplied.
"That's right. Hytner," the secretary continued as if confirming the DCI's response. "With all due respect, Director, if I were you, I'd be far more concerned with internal security than you seem to be."
This was what the DCI had been waiting for. He opened the thinner of the two dossiers that Martin Lindros had turned over to him in the Tunnel. "In point of fact, we have just concluded our internal investigation into those matters you just brought up, Mr. Secretary. Here is our irrefutable conclusion." He spun the top sheet across the tabletop, watched Halliday take cautious possession of it.
"While the Defense Secretary is reading, I'll summarize the conclusions for the rest of you." The DCI laced his fingers, bent forward like a professor addressing his students. "We discovered that we had a mole inside CI. His name? Timothy Hytner. It was Hytner who caught Soraya Moore's call informing him that the prisoner was being taken out of his cell. It was Timothy Hytner who called the prisoner's cohorts to effect his escape. Unfortunately for him, a shot meant for Ms. Moore struck him instead, killing him."
The DCI looked from face to face around the War Room. "As I said, our internal security is under control. Now we can direct our full attention to where it belongs: stopping Dujja in its tracks and bringing its members to justice."
His gaze fell upon Secretary Halliday last, lingered there significantly. Here was the origin of the attack, he was certain of it. He'd been warned that Halliday and LaValle wanted to move into the sphere traditionally controlled by CI, which was why he'd concocted the rumors about himself. Over the last six months, during meetings up on Capitol Hill, lunches and dinner with both colleagues and rivals, he'd put in some strenuous acting time, pretending bouts of vagueness, depression, momentary disorientation. He aim was to give the impression that his advanced age was taking its toll on him; that he wasn't the man he'd once been. That he was, at long last, vulnerable to political attack.
In response, as he had hoped, the cabal had come out of the shadows at last. One thing concerned him, however: Why hadn't the president intervened to stop the attack against him? Had he done too good a job? Had the cabal convinced the president that he was on the verge of becoming incompetent to continue as DCI?
The call came at precisely twelve minutes after midnight. Bourne picked up the phone and heard a male voice give him a street corner three blocks from the hotel. He'd had hours