Free The Peacemakers by Richard Herman

is what Mother Nature gave me.”
    Richards nodded in sympathy. “I do understand. But career-wise, you may want to think about a breast reduction.” Richards stopped outside her office. “Jill, you are a most unique and gifted officer with a future. I’d like to help, but it may require that you step out of your traditional role.”
    Jill carefully masked her reactions and gave Richards the serious and concerned look she had practiced and refined over the years. “Thank you, ma’am. I hope I don’t disappoint you.”

    Fitzgerald hit the intercom button to his secretary. “Mary, if there’s nothing pressing on my schedule, can you clear an hour?” She told him there was nothing that couldn’t be slipped. He gave her a number to call. “Call me when you get through,” he added, wondering how he could do the job without her. He kicked back in his chair and folded his hands across his chest. His eyes never closed as he processed Jill’s briefing and what Richards had said about Allston’s unauthorized landing at Abyei being counterproductive to their mission in the Sudan. In Fitzgerald’s world, Allston’s job was to carry out the mission, and Fitzgerald’s job was to provide the support Allston needed to do it. He typed a brief message into his computer, but hesitated before hitting the send button. He humphed, the decision made, and hit the button. Exactly eight minutes later, Mary buzzed him. The spook he had summoned was waiting outside. “Please show him in,” Fitzgerald said. The civilian who came through the door moved with an easy motion that belied his bulk. He was a ‘gray man,’ perfect for his profession and nondescript to the point of invisibility. “How are things in the basement these days?” Fitzgerald asked.
    “Holding tight.” The spook headed The Boys in the Basement, the elite band of covert intelligence operators who hid in the Pentagon’s basement. On paper, they were part of the military and escaped the scrutiny of the congressional committees on intelligence oversight. More importantly, they escaped the constant leaks that bedevil all congressional committees. In the world of heads-on head intelligence, hard experience had taught the Boys that no secret was safe with a politician. As long as the Boys were ‘holding tight’ they were safe from politicians and could do their job. But they could never drop their guard.
    Fitzgerald came right to the point. “The 4440th is operating in the blind in the Sudan and I suspect the UN is hanging them out to dry. We’ve got the big picture and know what the Sudanese are up to, but we need to fill in the details on the ground or the 4440th will be blindsided before I can get them out. In short, we need better operational intelligence, which we don’t have at this time.”
    The spook had worked with Fitzgerald before and trusted him to follow the unique rules of his trade. Everything was highly compartmentalized and access to the product, and how it was gathered, was based on a strict need-to-know. “We’ve got a few gremlins who speak the lingo.”
    “Yours or mine?” Fitzgerald knew that the Boys recruited and used Air Force personnel, but the spook would never reveal their identity.
    The spook laughed and didn’t answer the question. “Fitz, you haven’t changed. Always worried about your folks.” He thought for a moment, calculating how much he could reveal. Part of his job was to give Fitzgerald credible deniability, but at the same time, the general had to be told enough to keep him in the loop. “We have a few sources in Addis Ababa we can exploit. The bad news is that the best source in the Sudan, Dr. Tobias Person at Mission Awana, won’t talk to us. He can’t risk compromising his neutrality.” He gave Fitzgerald his good old boy grin. “But we can always backdoor that one.”
    “Do it,” Fitzgerald said.
    “We’ll get on it.”
    The intercom buzzed. “General,” Mary said, “your call to France is on the