The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

idealist who had graduated from Columbia's Journalism school, and though life
had made him a cynic, he was one of those few people in Washington who
remembered his ideals and occasionally mourned for them.
'Assuming I can verify this story you've told, what's in it for me?'
'Maybe just satisfaction. Maybe nothing more than that. I honestly doubt there
will be any more, but if there is, I'll let you know.'
'Just satisfaction?' Holtzman asked.
'Ever want to get even with a bully?' Clark asked lightly.
The reporter brushed that aside. 'What do you do at the Agency?'
Clark smiled. 'I'm really not supposed to talk about that.'
'Once upon a time, the story goes, a very senior Soviet official defected, right
off the tarmac at Moscow airport.'
'I've heard that story. If you ever printed it . . .'
'Yes, it would fuck up relations, wouldn't it?' Holtzman observed.
'How long have you had it?'
'Since right before the last election. The President asked me not to run it.'
'Fowler, you mean?'
'No, the one Fowler beat.'
'And you played ball.' Clark was impressed.
'The man had a family, a wife and a daughter. Were they killed in a plane crash,
like the press release said"
'You ever going to print this,"
'I can't, not for a lot of years, but someday I'm going to do a book . . .'
'They got out, too,' Clark said. 'You're looking at the guy who got them out of
the country.'
'I don't believe in coincidences.'
'The wife's name is Maria. The daughter's name is Katryn.'
Holtzman didn't react, but he knew that only a handful of people in the Agency
could possibly have known the details to that one. He'd just asked his own trick
question, and gotten the right answer.
'Five years from today, I want the details of the bust-out.'
Clark was quiet for a moment. Well, if the reporter was willing to break a rule,
then Clark had to play ball, too. 'That's fair. Okay, you have a deal.'
'Jesus Christ, John!' Chavez said.
'The man needs a quid pro quo.'
'How many people inside know the details?'
'Of the operation? Not many. My end . . . if you mean all the details, maybe
twenty, and only five of them are still in the Agency. Ten of them are not
Agency employees.'
'Then who"
'That would give too much away.'
'Air Force Special Ops,' Holtzman said. 'Or maybe the Army, Task Force 160,
those crazy guys at Fort Campbell, the ones who went into Iraq the first night –
'
'You can speculate all you want, but I'm not going to say anything. I will say
this, when I tell you my end, I want to know how the hell you figured out that
we even had this operation.'