Read Online W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 by Covert Warriors - Free Book Online
Authors: Covert Warriors
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President by the House of Representatives quickly followed by an impeachment trial in the Senate.
Danton knew that the delivery of the Tupelov Tu-934A into the hands of the CIA had almost been a sideshow to what had really happened: Shortly before Clendennen had become President on the sudden death of his predecessor—an aortal aneurysm had ruptured— the United States had launched a preemptive strike on a biological warfare manufactory in the Congo.
The manufactory and everything within at least two square miles around it had been bombed and incinerated with every aerial weapon in the American arsenal except nuclear. It was believed this action had removed all of an incredibly lethal substance known as Congo-X from the planet.
This assessment was proven false when FedEx delivered several liters of Congo-X to the Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease—the euphemism for Biological Warfare Laboratories—at Fort Detrick, Maryland. This was shortly followed by the discovery of another several liters of the substance by Border Patrol agents just inside the U.S.-Mexico border.
And this was shortly followed by the SVR rezident in Washington, Sergei Murov, inviting A. Franklin Lammelle, then the CIA’s deputy director of operations, for drinks at the Russian embassy’s dacha on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
There he proposed a deal: The Russians would turn over all the Congo-X in their possession in exchange for the former SVR rezident in Berlin, Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky, and his sister, Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva, the former SVR rezident in Copenhagen, who had not only defected with the assistance of Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo but had also spilled the beans to Colonel Castillo about the “Fish Farm” in the Congo. The Russians also wanted Colonel Castillo.
When this proposal was brought to the attention of President Clendennen, he thought the deal made a great deal of sense, and ordered that it be concluded. When informed that Colonel Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva were not in the hands of the CIA, but in Argentina, with Colonel Castillo, who flatly refused to turn them over to the CIA, President Clendennen ordered Director of National Intelligence Montvale to send all the alphabet agencies of the intelligence community to find them and see that they were all loaded aboard the next available Aeroflot flight to Moscow.
Frederick P. Palmer, the United States attorney general, later described this action as being of “mind-boggling illegality,” and suggested that if anything beyond President Clendennen’s caving in to the Russians was needed to convince the House of Representatives that articles of impeachment were in order, this would do it.
And the story would have come out. The simultaneous offered resignations of Secretary of State Cohen, Director of National Intelligence Montvale, General Naylor, and even presidential spokesman Porky Parker could not be swept under the rug, even if a sense of duty might keep those resigning from making public why they could no longer serve President Clendennen.
Attorney General Palmer, however, argued that the country could not take another impeachment scandal, and that it was their duty to stay in office, with the caveats that the President appoint Montvale as Vice President, that the President ask for DCI Powell’s resignation, and that he make other changes in the senior leadership that they considered necessary.
The President, having no alternative but impeachment, quickly agreed.
Roscoe Danton, running down the rumor that Lieutenant Colonel Castillo had snatched two Russian defectors from the CIA station chief in Vienna, had first encountered members of the Merry Band of Outlaws in Argentina during the time the alphabet agencies were looking for him.
Without quite knowing how it had happened, he had wound up in Mexico embroiled in Colonel Castillo’s Merry Outlaws’ current operation.
Castillo had learned
Danton knew that the delivery of the Tupelov Tu-934A into the hands of the CIA had almost been a sideshow to what had really happened: Shortly before Clendennen had become President on the sudden death of his predecessor—an aortal aneurysm had ruptured— the United States had launched a preemptive strike on a biological warfare manufactory in the Congo.
The manufactory and everything within at least two square miles around it had been bombed and incinerated with every aerial weapon in the American arsenal except nuclear. It was believed this action had removed all of an incredibly lethal substance known as Congo-X from the planet.
This assessment was proven false when FedEx delivered several liters of Congo-X to the Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease—the euphemism for Biological Warfare Laboratories—at Fort Detrick, Maryland. This was shortly followed by the discovery of another several liters of the substance by Border Patrol agents just inside the U.S.-Mexico border.
And this was shortly followed by the SVR rezident in Washington, Sergei Murov, inviting A. Franklin Lammelle, then the CIA’s deputy director of operations, for drinks at the Russian embassy’s dacha on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
There he proposed a deal: The Russians would turn over all the Congo-X in their possession in exchange for the former SVR rezident in Berlin, Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky, and his sister, Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva, the former SVR rezident in Copenhagen, who had not only defected with the assistance of Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo but had also spilled the beans to Colonel Castillo about the “Fish Farm” in the Congo. The Russians also wanted Colonel Castillo.
When this proposal was brought to the attention of President Clendennen, he thought the deal made a great deal of sense, and ordered that it be concluded. When informed that Colonel Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva were not in the hands of the CIA, but in Argentina, with Colonel Castillo, who flatly refused to turn them over to the CIA, President Clendennen ordered Director of National Intelligence Montvale to send all the alphabet agencies of the intelligence community to find them and see that they were all loaded aboard the next available Aeroflot flight to Moscow.
Frederick P. Palmer, the United States attorney general, later described this action as being of “mind-boggling illegality,” and suggested that if anything beyond President Clendennen’s caving in to the Russians was needed to convince the House of Representatives that articles of impeachment were in order, this would do it.
And the story would have come out. The simultaneous offered resignations of Secretary of State Cohen, Director of National Intelligence Montvale, General Naylor, and even presidential spokesman Porky Parker could not be swept under the rug, even if a sense of duty might keep those resigning from making public why they could no longer serve President Clendennen.
Attorney General Palmer, however, argued that the country could not take another impeachment scandal, and that it was their duty to stay in office, with the caveats that the President appoint Montvale as Vice President, that the President ask for DCI Powell’s resignation, and that he make other changes in the senior leadership that they considered necessary.
The President, having no alternative but impeachment, quickly agreed.
Roscoe Danton, running down the rumor that Lieutenant Colonel Castillo had snatched two Russian defectors from the CIA station chief in Vienna, had first encountered members of the Merry Band of Outlaws in Argentina during the time the alphabet agencies were looking for him.
Without quite knowing how it had happened, he had wound up in Mexico embroiled in Colonel Castillo’s Merry Outlaws’ current operation.
Castillo had learned
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