Chapter 9: The Balustre Group

Nine Years Ago

Beltsville, Maryland

“I was thinking about my latest assignment,” Sam said. “I think we should be looking at this from a different direction.”

“How so?” replied Jenkins.

“You want me to get rid of this asshole in State the Chinese got their fingers into, right?”

Jenkins nodded. “And?”

“There’s always going to be an asshole they can target. Why not get rid of the Chinese?”

“Excuse me?”

“Their main agent here is a guy in their cultural attaché office, a fellow named Ming Fan Sung. He has a history of being able to turn our guys into assets. Let’s take him off the board.”

“Sam, this is not the bad old days of the Cold War! We don’t go around killing off the enemy!” protested Jenkins.

Sam smiled. “Who said we’d be the ones killing anybody off?”

“Again, excuse me?”

“Remember Georgi Markov?” Jenkins looked confused, and Sam continued, “Bulgarian dissident and defector, living in London, long time ago, back in the Seventies. He was killed by somebody, either the Russians or the Bulgarians with Russian help. Somebody shot him in the leg with a micro-pellet containing ricin fired by an umbrella gun.”

“Okay, I remember that, but it wasn’t a secret. The guy felt it and later figured it out before he died.”

“And now everybody in the world knows about it and how it is a Russian assassination method. Get me an umbrella gun and a ricin micro-pellet. I take out Ming Fan Sung and the Chinese blame the Russians. Maybe they take out a Russian. Maybe the Russians take out another one of the Chinese. Up for a little Spy vs. Spy?”

Jenkins rolled his eyes. “Now we’re taking ideas from Mad magazine?”

“If it works, why not?” asked Sam with a shrug.

“Well, that’s very interesting, and I’ll talk to a few people about it, but that’s not really why I’m here.”

“Oh?”

“There’s a change coming, Sam. Your employment is going to change.”

“Please tell me you don’t plan to send me back to Kansas. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll get out of your hair permanently.” ‘Getting sent to Kansas’ was a code phrase the two men used when discussing Sam being sent back to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth.

Jenkins smiled. “No, not that, though you might wonder if that would be preferable. No, you’re being privatized.”

Sam stared for a minute. “Excuse me? You’re going to have the private market do your killing for you?”

Jenkins shrugged. “Above my pay grade. Above yours, too. It has been decided that the free market will provide great improvements in pricing and service in the intelligence and counterintelligence fields. This department is being turned over to a private military contractor, the Balustre Group.”

“We want to kill traitors cheaper and quicker? Just how many more do they plan to kill? This is kind of a specialized business, you know. You’re not going to be able to make it up in volume!” Sam just shook his head in disbelief.

Jenkins sighed. “Sam, I am just passing along some information. I have been told there won’t be any significant changes.”

“Are you going to this Balustre Group?” asked Sam.

Another sigh. “No, I am transferring ... somewhere else. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Tremendous.”

“It’s supposedly just being discussed, but I’m being told privately that it’s a done deal. Beyond that, I just can’t say for sure. It will probably be formalized after you finish the Washington job.”

Sam simply gave a wry shrug. “Well, get back to me on that job. I need to know how to structure things either way.”

Sam looked up from his desk as Jenkins came in. For the first time his supervisor brought with him another individual. The only other person Sam had ever spoken to in the building was the guard operating the security airlock. Out of habit, Sam minimized the windows on his screen.

Jenkins said, “Sam, I’d like to introduce Jonathan Swan. He’s with the Balustre Group.”

Sam stood and held out his hand. “Mister Swan.”

Swan took Sam’s hand and returned a firm grip. “Ed here has spoken glowingly of your work for the agency.”

“That was very kind of him,” replied Sam.

“Ed’s told me about your latest project. I wanted to hear the latest on it.” He looked around and took the only other chair in the room. Jenkins simply stood silently.

Sam raised an eyebrow at that, looking at Jenkins; Jenkins silently nodded assent. Again, this was a first, bringing another individual into the planning process. Prior to this, whenever Sam had needed assistance in acquiring material or knowledge, he had simply gotten the assistance without letting anybody else in on the details. Sam sat down in his own chair and said, “Maybe if you could let me know what you know about the plan, so I don’t go over material you already are aware of.”

Swan gave him a cold smile. “Nice try. Just tell me your assignment and your plan.”

Sam glanced at Jenkins again, but the man had a stone face. “Okay. The assignment was to eliminate a security risk named John Swallor. He’s a Chinese asset in the State Department being run by a Chinese agent named Ming Fan Sung. Ming has a history of turning State Department personnel; he’s a very good agent. My suggestion was to take out Ming by mimicking a Russian technique. That gets the Chinese and the Russians fighting each other, it isolates Swallor, and if we get lucky, they begin to suspect him and maybe take him off the board at the same time.”

“Please continue,” said Swan. “And don’t look at your old boss. I want to hear how you plan to accomplish this.”

Well, that certainly says that Balustre was taking over his job, thought Sam. “The plan is to mimic the Russian assassination of Georgi Markov in 1978 in London. I am going to make some ricin in an unused lab at the University of Maryland in College Park. Meanwhile I am expecting the agency to provide some form of pellet and pellet gun. Ming Fan Sung is listed as an Assistant Cultural Attaché and is frequently on his own. He has to be, to meet assets and targets. I just need to approach him, hit him with the ricin pellet and break contact. There’s only symptomatic treatment, which probably won’t work, and then he’s dead a few days later. If necessary, I can take care of Swallor at a later date.”

Swan nodded in understanding, but then shook his head in the negative. “I like the overall concept, but it’s too old school. Nobody remembers ricin. No, the newest Russian technique is Novichok. You need to revise your plan to use Novichok.”

Sam stared and replied, “Novichok? You want me to use nerve agents? Are you mad?”

“Mister Wilcox, you want to implicate the Russians. What better method is there than a Russian nerve agent? Everybody in the world knows about how the Russians kill people with Novichok.”

“And they also know how dangerous it is! Bystanders and innocent people die from Novichok! Cops and EMTs die from it! And where do we get Novichok from, anyway? You plan to knock on the Russian Embassy gate in DC and ask them for some? Jesus Christ!”

“Let me make this very simple, Mister Wilcox. You now work for the Balustre Group. Your pay and benefits are actually better than what a government employee makes, but you work for us, now, and we make the rules. I’ve had an analyst run some numbers and we feel the risks involved in a Novichok attack can be minimized and are acceptable.”

“How many police officers and EMTs are acceptable as losses?”

Swan shook his head. “I’m not going to respond to that. I have your email address. I will have one of our specialists send you the specifics on the Novichok series of nerve agents. We also have a division capable of creating a delivery system that should keep accidental exposures to an acceptable minimum.”

“Before I can formulate a plan, I need to see the delivery system and the details on the Novichok. I am not doing this without knowing what the hell is involved. I’ll just take out Swallor if I don’t like the odds,” replied Sam.

“That’s really not how we do things at Balustre. We like positive control of all operations, so I’ll be that control. I will expect a complete operational plan and timetable. During the operation I will be in constant contact.”

Sam sat back at that and eyed Swan. He looked over at Jenkins, who returned a dejected shrug. Swan noticed the look at Jenkins, but since Jenkins was standing slightly behind him, couldn’t see the man’s expression. Sam was considering what he would say next. This was completely outside the operating parameters he and Jenkins had developed. Jenkins had simply given Sam a target. How, when, and where that target was handled was entirely up to Sam. There was no such thing as an acceptable risk of innocent casualties, none at all.

How Sam terminated the assignment was up to Sam. Violence, poison, accident - whatever the technique Sam determined, as long as it couldn’t be traced back to either Sam or the U.S. government, was acceptable. Sam would ask for whatever resources he needed, which usually wasn’t much more than untraceable identification and cash, and then take off for a few days. Within a week’s time the assignment was finished.

Sam looked at Swan and simply replied, “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, no. That is not how I do things. This is not a military op where I have an earbud in place and have a controller in my ear telling me go or no go. The way this works is that you give me an assignment and I handle it. I do it my way and I do it in my time and I do it where I think it should be done. You provide me the support I request ahead of time. And you stay out of my way.”

“Mister Wilcox, or whatever your name is, the Balustre Group does not do business that way. The Balustre Group does business the way it wants to, not the way you want us to,” said Swan.

Sam noticed that Swan hadn’t been provided his personnel file. Was that planned or just something Jenkins was doing to protect him? “Excuse me, Mister Swan, or whatever your name is. I provide a service, a very specialized service, for my employer. Currently that employer is the United States of America. Now you plan to take over that employment. Fine, but my contract, if you will, specifies who is responsible for what, and if you take over that contract, you need to live with the contract. If that violates your system, that’s your problem, not mine.”

“You need to be more reasonable, Mister Wilcox.”

“No, I don’t. As I mentioned, I perform a very specialized service. You can find other individuals to perform that service, but you won’t be happy with the results. The people you can hire to do this work either won’t do the work inside the country or against fellow citizens, or will enjoy the work too much and end up getting you in trouble. You give me an assignment. I investigate the assignment and verify the reason to do the assignment. And then, and only then, do I terminate the assignment. That’s the way it works. Or you find yourself another contractor.”

Jonathan Swan stood up and left the office. Jenkins stayed behind and slipped into the seat he had vacated. Before he could speak, however, Sam put his finger to his lips. He stood and came around his desk and motioned Jenkins to stand and move away. Sam knelt and ran his fingers under the arms and seat of the chair, and then smiled. He tugged for a second and then pulled loose a small black plastic dot. He took it back to his desk and dropped it into the water bottle he had been sipping from.

“Son of a bitch!” said Jenkins.

“Where do you find these guys?” asked Sam.

“Way above my pay grade, or yours. It’s like I said before. There are some people way up the ladder who think privatization is the way to go. The government should not be in the business of doing things the private sector can do perfectly fine on its own and at a lower cost.”

“Really? This guy already told me my pay is going to increase - which is perfectly fine with me, by the way - along with an increased benefits package, and he’s intimated that I am going to have a large support staff to monitor me at all times. How does that make what I do more efficient or cheaper?”

“Sam, this is a done deal. Neither of us was consulted on this. You might need to bend some. I can’t cover you. As soon as this is finalized, I’m ... elsewhere,” said Jenkins.

Sam nodded. Pointing towards the door, he said, “Then you’d better explain clearly, in small words and big pictures, the problems they are likely to have while micromanaging a professional assassin. If they insist on doing it the Balustre Group way, there are going to be some serious problems and sooner rather than later. I can’t wait for one of their plans to show up on the front page of the New York Times or the Washington Post!”

“Yeah,” agreed Jenkins tiredly. He stood. “I’ll try to see you before the final transfer. In the meantime, start studying Novichok. Maybe you can make it work.” He waved a hand and left. “By the way, you’ll be moving. The Balustre Group headquarters is in Alexandria. You’ll need a new apartment.”