CHAPTER
48
JEANNE STERLING and I went for a ride through the surrounding countryside. The CIA inspector general had a new station wagon, a dark blue Volvo that she drove like a race car. Brahms was playing softly on the radio as we headed for Chevy Chase, one of Washington’s small, affluent bedroom communities. I was about to meet a “ghost.” A professional killer. One of ours.
Oh brother, oh shit.
“Plot and counterplot, ruse and treachery, true agent, double agent, false agent… didn’t Churchill describe your business something like that?”
Jeanne Sterling cracked a wide smile, her large teeth suddenly very prominent. She was a very serious person, but she had a quick sense of humor, too. The inspector general. “We’re trying to change from the past, both the perception and the reality. Either the Agency does that or somebody will pull the plug. That’s why I invited the FBI and the Washington police in on this. I don’t want the usual internal investigation, and then charges of a cover-up,” she told me as she engineered her car underneath towering, ancient trees that evoked Richmond or Charlottesville. “The CIA is no longer a ‘cult,’ as we’ve been called by several self-serving congressmen. We’re changing everything. Fast. Maybe even too fast.”
“You disapprove?” I asked her.
“Not at all. It has to happen. I just don’t like all the theater surrounding it. And I certainly don’t appreciate the media coverage. What an incredible assemblage of jerk-offs.”
We had crossed inside the beltway and were entering Chevy Chase now. We were headed for a meeting with a man named Andrew Klauk. Klauk was a former contract killer for the Agency: the so-called killer elite, the “ghosts.”
Jeanne Sterling continued to drive the way she talked, without effort and rapidly. It was the way she seemed to do everything. A very smart and impressive person. I guessed she needed to be. Internal affairs at the CIA had to be extremely demanding.
“So, what have you heard about us, Alex?” she finally asked me. “What’s the scuttlebutt? The intelligence?”
“Don Hamerman says you’re a straight arrow, and that’s what the Agency needs right now. He believes Aldrich Ames hurt the CIA even more than we read. He also believes Moynihan’s ‘End of the Cold War’ bill was an American tragedy. He says they call you Clean Jeanne out here at Langley. Your own people do. He’s a big fan of yours.”
Jeanne Sterling smiled, but the smile was controlled. She was a woman very much in control of herself: intellectually, emotionally, and even physically. She was substantial and sturdy, and her striking amber eyes always seemed to want to dig a little deeper into you. She wasn’t satisfied with surface appearances or answers: the mark of a good investigator.
“I’m not really such a goody-goody.” She made a pouty face. “I was a pretty fair caseworker in Budapest my first two years. Caseworker is our sobriquet for ‘spy,’ Alex. I was a spy in Europe. Harmless stuff, information-gathering mostly.
“After that I was at the War College. Fort McBain. My father is career Army. Lives with my mother in Arlington. They both voted for Oliver North. I fervently believe in our form of government. I’m also hooked on making it work better somehow. I think we actually can. I’m convinced of it.”
“That sounds pretty good to me,” I told her. It did. All except the Oliver North part.
We were just pulling up to a house that was very close to Connecticut Avenue and the Circle. The place was Colonial revival, three stories, very homey and nice. Beautiful. Attractive moss crawled over the hipped roof and down the north side.
“This is where you live?” I smiled at Jeanne. “But you’re not Miss Goody Two-shoes? You’re not Clean Jeanne?”
“Right. It’s all a clever facade, Alex. Like Disneyland, or Williamsburg, or the White House. To prove it to you, there’s a trained killer waiting for us inside,” Jeanne Sterling said, and winked.
“There’s one in your car, too.” I winked back at her.
CHAPTER
49
THE LATE-DECEMBER AFTERNOON was unusually bright and sunny. The temperature was in the high fifties, so Andrew Klauk and I sat in the backyard at Jeanne Sterling’s lovely home in Chevy Chase.
A simple, wrought-iron fence surrounded the property. The gate was forest green, recently painted, slightly ajar. A breach in security.
CIA hitmen. Killer elite. Ghosts. They do exist. More than two hundred of them, according to Jeanne Sterling. A freelance list. A weird, scary notion for the 1990s in America. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
And yet here I was with one of them.
It was past three when Andrew Klauk and I began our talk. A bright yellow school bus stopped by the fence, dropping off kids on the quiet suburban street. A small towheaded boy of ten or eleven came running up the driveway and into the house. I thought that I recognized the boy from the photos at her office. Jeanne Sterling had a boy and a little girl. Just like me. She brought her casework home, just like me. Scary.
Andrew Klauk was a whale of a man who looked as if he could move very well, anyway. A whale who dreamed of dancing. He was probably about forty-five years old. He was calm and extremely self-assured. Piercing brown eyes that grabbed and wouldn’t let go. Penetrated deeply. He wore a shapeless gray suit with an open-neck white shirt that was wrinkled and dingy. Brown Italian leather shoes. Another kind of killer, but a killer all the same, I was thinking.
Jeanne Sterling had raised a very provocative
question for me on our drive: What was the difference between the serial killers I had pursued in the past and the contract killers used by the CIA and Army? Did I think one of these sanctioned killers could actually be Jack of Jack and Jill?