Edge of Tomorrow by Wolf Wootan Read Free Book Online Page B

The intelligence community would now believe that The
Hatchet Man was dead. They would assume the man with no face was
him. The Company would start looking for Gaines in a frenzy, but
they would never find him. That chapter was closed. On to the
next.
     

 
Chapter5
     
    Langley, Virginia
    Friday, August 17, 1984
    3:00 P.M.
     
    James Gramble, Assistant Deputy Director of
Foreign Assessment, was pacing back and forth in his office,
unhappy with the situation in which he found himself. Not many
people, even within the CIA, knew that his title was a smoke screen
for his real job—Manager of the Black Money Fund and a dozen or so
NOC agents. Authorized covert, or black, operations were run out of
another department. Those operations had Presidential approval and
were carefully managed by the appropriate high-level officials.
    The tasks performed by Gramble’s agents were
never officially acknowledged as CIA operations. Complete
deniability was a must. His operations were blacker than black. He
reported to the Deputy Director of Operations (DDO), and received
his assignments from him, but the DDO never asked for any of the
details of a mission’s execution. This made John Gramble a very
powerful man. He could assign missions to agents that served his
own agenda if he wished, and no one would ever know about it. He
had access to large amounts of money to be used for assignments,
but an accounting for this money was never required, except in the
broadest sense, because officially the money did not exist in any
budget.
    Gramble was an ambitious man with his eye on
the office of the DDI (Deputy Director of Intelligence), since he
was certain that they would never make him DDO. He was barely
five-foot-three, and some said he had a Napoleon Complex; he was
pushy, controlling, and could be obnoxious in meetings. The
activities of the last six days were threatening his ambitious
goals. First, a call from McGinnis in London informed him that two
Stasi agents were dead, Bob Hatcher was dead, and his lead contact
agent in Europe had quit and disappeared, but not before blabbing
everything on an unsecured phone line. Now, every intelligence
organization worth its salt knew that The Hatchet Man was dead.
Champagne corks were popping all over the secret world of
spies.
    Second, he had talked to McGinnis in London
the day before, finding out that six Stasi agents and a KGB Colonel
had been killed during the days since Hatcher’s death. The KGB and
Stasi were blaming the CIA. McGinnis claimed it was not any of his
agents taking revenge, unless they were lying to him. Then, who was
it? The DDO had made a rare call to Gramble this morning demanding
an explanation that he could give to the DCI, who was bugging
him.
    And now, the final straw! He had just been
informed that McGinnis was found floating in the Thames, cause of
death unknown. It was officially deemed a suicide. Gramble’s world
had become a nightmare in just six days!
    What’s happening here? It
should have been a simple job. The Stasi take care of the bitch, their
own defector. Hatcher kills a couple of them for revenge. Hatcher
doesn’t quit. We go on as usual. That damned Gaines fucked up
everything, and now he’s gone. But I’ll find him and tie off that
loose end! What’s the real story on McGinnis? And who is trying to
start World War III? Shit!
    Gramble decided he had better get out of the
office before he got any more calls. He would go home and have a
drink. There would be no one there to bitch at him; his wife and
two daughters had just finished the first week of a two-week
vacation on Cape Cod. He was supposed to fly up tomorrow and join
them for the weekend.
    • • •
    Gramble pulled his car into his long, curving
driveway and hit the button on his garage door opener. The double
door opened smoothly, and he pulled his Lincoln into the garage and
parked next to his Jaguar. He got out, then locked the car. He
deactivated the alarm system on the entry door and