The Disappearance of Harry Davis

By T.N. Davey

Even years later, when over and over again he tried to fit the pieces together to make sense of what had happened to him, Harry Davis would recall that early December evening in the African city at seven thousand feet altitude, only a few hundred miles shy of the equator. He would recall how in winter the sun plunged beyond the horizon on the hour promptly at 6 p.m. and darkness followed with the speed of a curtain dropping on a stage. And he could still feel the chill of the forty degree cold that as night fell descended upon the city with almost equal suddeness.

T.N. Davey is a writer living in Washington, D.C.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 27, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440124068

T.N. Davey

T.N. Davey is a writer living in Washington, D.C.

Book preview

The

Disappearance

of Harry Davis

T.N. Davey

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

The Disappearance of Harry Davis

Copyright © 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4401-2405-1 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-2406-8 (eBook)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 3/10/2009

Contents

Prelude

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

For R.C.

who was an important part of this story

as of all the rest

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

George Orwell

The annals of the Central Intelligence Agency are filled with folly and misfortune….

Tim Weiner

Legacy of Ashes

PRELUDE

As usual when such matters were to be addressed, the meeting was held in a conference room in the basement of the White House. Ordinarily the group convened at 4 p.m., but that day, owing to the conflicting schedules of the officials involved, it was set for 7. A regulation 30 minutes before that time a uniformed guard, tall, trim and smartly outfitted in starched white shirt with military shoulder straps, coal black tie, charcoal gray woolen trousers and brightly shining black patent leather shoes took up position at the doorway. A .38 caliber pistol was strapped tightly to his right hip. In his left hand he held a clipboard to which was attached a computer printout list of the attendees.

The list was short but long in titles: the Deputy National Security Adviser, the Central Intelligence Agency’s Deputy Director for Operations, the Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (substituting for the Assistant Secretary), the State Department Assistant Secretary for Intelligence, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa (substituting for the Assistant Secretary), and the National Security Officer for Africa. Senior level bureaucrats gut nobody with a name widely known to the public. These six were the only participants that evening for a gathering once known as the Forty Committee, now re-christened the National Security Planning Group, names intended to obscure the nature of its business.

First to arrive, at three minutes before the appointed hour, was the Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, the participant with the least interest in the matter. A retired three star admiral, upon seeing himself alone in the room, he ostentatiously checked his watch and muttered a complaint about civilian inattention to punctuality. As if to answer, he was joined promptly by the National Security Officer for Africa, an eager young man in his early thirties who had done some small service in helping win Tennessee for the president and was now on a two year leave of absence from his job as assistant professor of political science at the state university. But for his thinning hair he could easily have been mistaken for a college freshman.

Then came the two State Department representatives, both career Foreign Service Officers in their early fifties and both dressed in charcoal gray suits, white shirts and conservative ties. They had ridden over together from State. Having been unable to meet earlier, they had conferred in route about the business to be transacted, full well knowing that discussing a covert operation in the back seat of a car, even an official car and even in whispers, was a violation of security.

At ten minutes after the hour, the Deputy National Security Adviser, a former Marine lieutenant colonel whose ambition to become National Security Advisor was widely broadcast, entered with the flourish he thought befitted his role as host and presiding officer. He proceeded to shake hands all around the table, greeting all by their first names, though in the case of the admiral – to whom in other circumstances he would have owed deference – the familiarity cost him a certain effort. He had been told by his staff assistant that attendance was complete. When he realized that the CIA’s representative had not yet arrived he made no effort to hide his annoyance.

Anyone heard the story about the spook who had himself driven to Dulles and took a plane to Paris when he was scheduled to be at a meeting at the White House? Nobody ever knew whether it was absent mindedness or clever subterfuge.

The sally drew polite chuckles from all but the National Security Officer for Africa, who laughed his appreciation loudly.

Maybe we’ll just have to decide this issue without the Agency. On its merits, shall we say?

The Deputy Director for Operations arrived well before this threat, which in any event all knew to be empty, could be carried out. The DDO was one of the CIA’s old boys. He came to the Agency in the early days when it recruited almost exclusively from ivy league universities. He disdained he dress code that called for senior bureaucrats to outfit themselves in suits. Double breasted blue blazers, blue and white striped shirts and polka dot ties were his trademark. In his New England high establishment accent he set out the details of the proposed operation, the means to be employed, the dollar cost figure, the duration and the goal to be achieved.

Let me add, he said gravely in closing his presentation, that the Director considers this a very important operation. The previous administration was derelict in its duty in failing to use the very effective weapon of covert action against a regime so clearly communist in nature and so closely allied with the Soviet Union. He is sure that no one in a position of responsibility in this administration would wish to see that mistake repeated.

There was a moment of silence as the others digested these ominous words. None of those present needed be told that the Director of Central Intelligence was a powerful figure. He had played a key role in the president’s electoral victory, and he was a long time friend and advisor of the president’s. He was, moreover, a man used to having his way, ruthless if need be. He had more than enough influence to block any appointment, including that of the next National Security Adviser.

Not in his most rash moment would the Deputy National Security Adviser have thought of putting himself at cross purposes with the Director of Central Intelligence, even had he considered the proposed operation a disaster waiting to happen. In this case, however, he felt no need to. He agreed wholeheartedly with the Director and the Agency and went one further in his view of the previous administration’s inaction: it was tantamount to treason. His thoughts on the matter were summed up in the briefing paper his staff had prepared for the meeting. The target regime was a clear threat to United States national security interests. It rules a country that is strategically located, cutting across possible wartime lines of U.S. military communications. It borders on and threatens to infect with the communist virus three countries governed by friends of the United States.

If pressed, the Deputy National Security Adviser might have acknowledged that the proposed operation hardly seemed to have the potential, which the Agency claimed for it, to bring down the target regime. But that mattered little. What was important was to do something.

The two State Department representatives had long had reservations about the operation. Each in his own capacity had employed the various subterfuges of bureaucracy to delay its being brought up for decision. They viewed it, in State Department speak, as unlikely to achieve any significant purpose and at worst capable of creating a variety of complications – or more plainly, as dumb. They would have liked to kill the operation outright. In theory State could do that, but given the politics of the issue they would need the full backing of the Secretary of State. The Secretary was a reasonable man. He would almost certainly have agreed with their view, if they had had the opportunity to present it to him. They had not, however, had that opportunity, and being realists they knew it to be very unlikely that they could expect it. The Secretary of State had no time for minor matters. He was the administration’s chief fire marshal, and as blazes broke out across the globe his attention shifted from one alarm to the next. And even he had to exercise a certain caution in his relations with the powerful Director of Central Intelligence. Unless his representatives were prepared to forecast a major disaster they stood no chance of getting his backing. That they assuredly would not do, for it would seem a rash judgment and tarnish long and carefully cultivated reputations for balance. People who offered rash judgments did not get ahead at State.

But that was not the whole of it. Both men were angling for ambassadorial appointments. The Assistant Secretary for Intelligence was at the top of the list for ambassador to a major NATO ally, a plum that only rarely fell to a career officer. The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Africa had been in Washington for six years, had a son and daughter in college and desperately needed a posting abroad to pay the bills. He was slated for an important African embassy. It would do neither of them any good to incur the displeasure of the Director of Central Intelligence, who in any case would have his way in this particular matter.

For all these reasons – the career ones left unspoken – they had agreed between themselves that they would not oppose the operation in this meeting called for its final approval. Instead they would put questions they hoped would show up its flaws, in the aim of gaining a further delay, or barring that, of winning mitigating concessions.

You haven’t discussed the risks, the Assistant Secretary for Intelligence objected. How are you going to run this operation in a city that is so heavily policed, with the Soviet and East German services backing up the locals at every turn?

The DDO was not about to be drawn into offering a serious response to such a puerile question. How the Agency ran its operations was not the business of State or anyone else. He knew the wimps at State were not comfortable with the operation, and he knew they would back off rather than risk crossing the Director. He savored the opportunity to lecture them a bit.

There are always risks, he said, cracking a sardonic half smile. If we are going to be deterred by risk, we would never run any operation. Without risk there can be no gain. Our boys are trained to handle risk. In any case, this is a situation that warrants risk. Do you really want to say there is nothing we can do to make it tough on this tin horn commie dictator, that it’s too dangerous?

The National Security Officer for Africa had written his doctoral thesis on Soviet efforts to penetrate third world regimes. That, he considered, gave him more than sufficient standing to intervene in the discussion and, not coincidentally, to score points with his boss and with the Agency.

If we don’t stop this regime now, he interjected breathlessly, we’ll find ourselves confronted with communist subversion all over Africa. Whatever the risks, I regard this operation as essential.

The Defense Department representative had not planned to take sides in this debate, but these remarks struck him as too foolish to let pass unchallenged. Defense had long ago written off this renegade African regime. It mattered not a hoot to those who ruled the Pentagon what shenanigans the CIA wanted to try to oust it. But the admiral had spent most of his career in naval intelligence. He was one of the few people in or out of government who knew the secret history of the Agency’s many fiascos. He had come to regard the CIA as amateurish, bungling and not infrequently more dangerous to the national security of the United States than to any foreign government. He himself, alone of those in the room, had no further career aspirations. Three star admiral was quite all he needed in life. They could fire him if they wished. He could make a lot more money on the outside than in government.

May I suggest, he boomed in a mellifluous southern drawl, that we not let ourselves be carried way by considerations of ideology. I have heard nothing so far that would persuade me that this operation has the potential to cause any serious damage to the target regime. If successful, at best it might become a minor annoyance. At worst it could become a serious embarrassment to our government.

Then perhaps, admiral, said the DDO, I should explain it again, so that you may better understand it. But first, may I ask if you have instructions from the Secretary of Defense to oppose it?

Sir, I do not. Defense takes no position in this matter. I assume, however, that does not bar me from expressing a personal opinion.

You may be assured that your personal views have been noted, the DDO added acidly, for whatever they are worth.

It cost the Deputy National Security Adviser some effort to disguise the satisfaction he felt in seeing a much too outspoken admiral put so neatly in his place. But it was time to close. There were only a few minutes left for him to change into formal evening dress for the president’s dinner for the King of Thailand. Being late for an official function was a sure way of putting oneself in the bad books of the first lady. Under no circumstances did he wish to risk it.

Let’s sum up. I cast my vote with the Agency. Defense takes no position, which I gather means it interposes no objection. Where does State stand?

The Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence had built his career on a clever ability to avoid giving direct answers to unwelcome questions. By force of exercise over three decades in the bureaucracy of diplomacy this had become an ingrained habit. A straight yes or no was out of the question.

We have an important substantive issue we want to raise. We think it very important to be assured that the operation will be confined to the distribution of anti-regime propaganda and the organization of opposition cells, and that no arms of any sort be provided.

The Deputy National Security Adviser turned to the CIA representative. Farnsworth, what do you say to that?

State drives a hard bargain, but the Agency can live with that.

Then we are agreed. Unless I hear a nay from the State side, the operation is approved. I’ll see that a finding is issued.

In the official car that carried them back to their offices, the two State Department officials congratulated themselves on having won an important concession which, they assured one another, amply justified their role in the matter.

The Deputy Director for Operations whistled a tune all the way back to Langley. Not only had he accomplished what the Director had sent him to do but he had given away nothing in the process. The plan that he presented had no provision for the supply of arms. It covered only the initial stage of the operation. The Agency had a draft operational plan for the second stage in which opposition cells, once set up and solidly established, would be supplied the necessary means to pass to armed resistance. But that would be for another meeting. There was no need to talk about it now.

ONE

Even years later, when over and over again he tried to fit the pieces together to make sense of what had happened to him, Harry Davis would recall that early December evening in the African city at seven thousand feet altitude only a few hundred miles shy of the equator. He would recall how in winter the sun plunged beyond the horizon on the hour promptly at 6 p.m. and darkness followed with the speed of a curtain dropping on a stage. And he could still feel the chill of the forty degree cold that as night fell descended upon the city with almost equal suddenness.

On that particular evening, which both was and was not the beginning of his story, Davis left his house at seven for his appointment. By then it was pitch black. There was no moon, and the lights of the night sky – the planets and stars that seen from great altitude blaze like neon – were obscured by a thick smog, the product of the tens of thousands of brushwood and charcoal fires that erupted throughout the city to cook the meager dinners and warm the hovels of the great mass of the poor. The nearly two million who lived in the teeming slums where open sewers ran down the middle of the streets and children with untended sores wandered aimlessly about.

Because Harry Davis thought of himself as short – though at 5 feet 7 inches he could qualify for medium height – he liked to turn up the high collar of the trench coat he customarily wore for such wintertime evening appointments. It made him look taller, he thought, but it also had the virtue of obscuring his face from side view. All that could be seen were a few unruly strands of hair shooting out of the pale top of an otherwise balding head. He preferred this to the alternative, his latex mask. The mask gave him the smooth dark skin and the aquiline features of the people one saw in the offices and on the city streets. It was artfully done. It had been made to measure for Davis, in a laboratory somewhere in Germany by master craftsmen. No expense had been spared in its execution. Davis thought of it as a condom. Sometimes he had to wear it for protection, but he never enjoyed it. It took away all pleasure.

There was a reason for dispensing with the mask that evening. If Davis were going to be driving around the city making dead drops or pick-ups – Hawke, his boss, considered the city, with its chaotic jumble of infrequently and dimly lit streets, ideal for dead drops – the mask would have been useful, practically mandatory. But that was not what Harry Davis set out to do on that particular evening.

Davis fumbled in the dark to fit the key into the ignition of the 1960s model Volkswagen beetle he drove on such occasions. By the early 1980s small Japanese cars were more and more seen around the city. But the beetle’s durability and the