Fatal Conceit (10 page)

“I can't say how I know,” Karp added, “but Stupenagel's comment about the Russians' using this as an excuse to crack down on separatists fits what I've heard from a very reputable source on the region. So was her remark about Al Qaeda.”

“I believe it,” Jaxon said, then smiled. “So the long arm of Butch Karp stretches halfway around the globe, eh?”

Karp, thinking about his wife and his cousin, Ivgeny Karchovski, simply replied, “I just happen to know someone who knows someone.”

“Well, Ariadne seemed certain of herself,” Jaxon noted. “I mean, the girl has never lacked for sources. I wonder how concrete her information is and where she got it.”

“Might be worth asking her,” Karp said. “But she has this thing about protecting her sources and gets her back up when asked. She is a sucker for a good-looking guy, however, in spite of being betrothed to my office manager, Gilbert Murrow, so you might turn on the old Jaxon charm.”

“I tried that a few years ago with her, hoping she'd reveal a source.” Jaxon laughed. “But all I got out of it was a big bar bill and a proposition that I'm still not sure is physically possible.”

R
OD
F
AUHOMME HOISTED HIMSELF UP
from his chair and lumbered across the room with his hand extended when the fit-looking man with the tan, chiseled face knocked and entered the office in the West Wing of the White House. “General Allen, good of you to join us,” he said in his best midwestern “damn glad to meet you” voice.

Lt. Gen. Sam Allen regarded him for a moment with his cool hazel eyes and then nodded. “Thank you. I didn't realize you'd be here when Mr. Lindsey asked me to drop by. I thought this was a security matter, not politics,” he said, and turned to face the president's national security adviser, who stood up at his desk but remained next to his chair.

Fauhomme let the snub slide off him like grease on a hot skillet. He was used to the rich and powerful regarding him as a political hack, useful when the going got tough, and paid to do a dirty job so that they could keep their hands clean and have someone else to blame if something went wrong.
Like a plumber called in to unclog a toilet,
he thought as he dropped his hand but continued to smile at the general. They were also afraid of him, and with good reason; he was the kingmaker and whatever it took was what he did.
That's okay, pretty boy
,
as long as you play ball with my
team I couldn't care less what you think of me. But step out of line and I'll crush you like a grape. AND enjoy doing it.

Over at his desk, Tucker Lindsey suppressed a smile at the slight to Fauhomme.
Way to put the son of a bitch in his place,
he thought. However, he remained standing next to his chair for a reason, which was to establish the pecking order. He was the president's NSA, and one of his most trusted friends and advisers during his first term in office; Allen was “just” the acting director of the CIA and an outsider in the administration. Lindsey wanted to make sure the man knew who he had to answer to; it was at Lindsey's suggestion that the president submitted Allen's name to Congress for confirmation and Lindsey could make sure that nomination was withdrawn, too.

Some in the president's entourage of advisers thought Allen was an odd choice in the first place. By all accounts, the general seemed at best apolitical and certainly had never evinced any of the left-leaning views of the administration. But the agency director before him, a political-payback appointee from the first term, had resigned in disgrace after being caught in a child pornography sting by D.C. police. It was a public relations nightmare with the president's re-election campaign in full swing and already taking hits for the economy and a series of foreign policy gaffes. They needed to come up with a replacement whose reputation on both sides of the aisle, as well as with the American public, was unimpeachable. And who better than an American war hero?

As the press was fond of writing, Lt. Gen. Sam Allen was a soldier's soldier. He eschewed politics and even stayed away from the jockeying for position and publicity common among the military hierarchy, in which generals vied to become celebrities with an eye on lucrative television contracts as “military experts” after retirement. Instead, throughout his long and illustrious military career, Allen had quietly done his job, honoring his oath to protect the Constitution and serve at the behest of whoever was his commander-in-chief.

His resume couldn't have been better, or cleaner. He was a West Point man; graduated head of his class. In 1991, he served in Operation Desert Storm, where he earned his first Silver Star. Twenty years later, he had a chest full of medals, though except on formal occasions the only extraneous emblems that appeared on his uniform, other than his symbols of rank, were the dual parachutes of the 101st Airborne. The public knew him as the general who saved the administration's bacon in Afghanistan when it looked like the Taliban was going to send the U.S. home in a press-orchestrated, Vietnam-like defeat.

When the former agency director got caught literally with his pants down, Lindsey had suggested the president consider the recently retired Allen as a quick way to stop the bleeding on the scandal. He thought that if Allen later proved difficult from a policy standpoint, he could be replaced after the “Child Porn Spy” incident was forgotten. Lindsey knew that Allen was his own man, that he'd done his job for his men and his country, not any political party or politician. So he was somewhat surprised and pleased that Allen was so obviously interested in the job and expressed his gratitude at even being considered for the short list of potential replacements; he'd been even more appreciative when the president settled on him in September as his nominee.

After Lindsey thought about Allen's reaction, it made sense. The general was a man of action who was not looking forward to quiet retirement. Heading up the world's most powerful spy agency beat planting roses and writing his memoir.
We'll see how appreciative,
he thought as the general crossed the room to greet him.
And if he's not, Fauhomme has another trick up his sleeve
.
Our good general is not as lily white as he would have us believe.
“Thanks for coming, Sam,” he said, holding out his hand. “Have a seat. How's the missus?”

“She's well, thank you,” Allen replied a little tightly. “To be honest, I haven't seen her much lately. We've both been so busy. I've been trying to get up to speed at the agency and putting out fires.
And she's busy with her charity work, and when she's not, she spends most of her time on our little farm in Vermont. But everything's fine.”

Allen's voice caught a little at the end, but he didn't notice the quick look between Fauhomme and Lindsey. He blinked hard and then got down to business. “Anyway, you wanted me to come see you about my testimony before the congressional committee on Tuesday,” he said.

Lindsey nodded. It was Thursday, five days since he and Fauhomme watched a well-organized terrorist attack overrun a State Department compound and murder Americans as if it was a television show. Ever since then they'd been in scramble mode to control what information was released and how the media portrayed it. It was unlikely that the truth would never come out, but the election was only two weeks away so delay, delay, delay was the strategy. After the election, it wouldn't matter.

On Tuesday, they watched the president's performance with satisfaction from Lindsey's office. The boss had stuck to the agreed-upon talking points: the enemy struck with no warning, the attack was over in a half hour or less, there was no time to render assistance. He'd emphasized that the Americans were there on a peaceful trade mission, and when that female reporter tried to interject Al Qaeda into the conversation, the president put her in her place. And he handled the whole thing with a lot of plausible deniability—“it is my understanding at this moment” and “that I am aware of”—that could be reconstructed at a later time as circumstances dictated.

“I did like the touch about setting up Iran as the straw man here,” Fauhomme had said after the press conference was over. “Everybody's afraid of those crazy Iranians and this is just the sort of stunt the American public expects from Tehran. The press will dig up some old stock footage of Ahmadinejad ranting at the United Nations and that will be the story that everybody assumes is true.”

Since the Rose Garden press conference, however, there had been a number of small issues that had to be dealt with. The day after the president's comments, the BBC had reported that locals from the nearby village claimed to have heard firing from the direction of the compound more than an hour before the official time given and that it had gone on for nearly two hours. The European news agency Reuters then added that some witnesses reported hearing the buzzing of a drone over the village during the height of the battle.

The task of dealing with the reports had mostly fallen on Rosemary Hilb as the mouthpiece of the administration, with Fauhomme calling the shots behind the scenes. She complained to Lindsey that at times she felt like a woman with a garden hose trying to put out a forest fire by running from one tree to the next.

The administration was, she told the media, not ruling out any possibilities, recognizing that in the “fog of war” it often took time and “careful winnowing of the chaff from the wheat” for the full truth to emerge. “Having said that, these unsubstantiated reports that the attack began sooner, and lasted longer, conflict with the timing of when we were made aware that there was a problem and immediately responded.” She'd noted that reports of small-arms fire, including for “nighttime hunting,” were not “uncommon in that part of the world.” She implied that the simple villagers of Chechnya had condensed the events of the night so that hearing a few unrelated shots, then the actual attack, and finally the arrival of the drone “all seemed to occur at approximately the same time.”

As usual, the administration's cause was helped by a compliant and lazy U.S. media that asked few penetrating questions and couldn't be bothered to dig for the truth. Instead, they preferred running with the official storyline and Fauhomme's script that the separatists were a bunch of murderous criminals and terrorists. With the help of the administration, as well as a Russian government only too happy to supply old film footage, the major networks
and cable shows all cobbled together “documentaries” about school massacres and bombings in Russia by the evil separatists. In the meantime, the press completely ignored the truth about villages razed by Russian tanks, summary executions, indiscriminate aerial bombings and artillery shelling, as well as the disappearance of “suspected terrorists” who were never heard from again.

It didn't hurt that a large segment of the public, particularly younger supporters of the president, got its news and formed their opinions by watching “talk” shows on the Comedy Channel in which the hosts at times pretended to be serious journalists asking tough questions, but retreated to the “I'm just an entertainer” excuse when they got the facts wrong.

These comedian/journalists were soon joined by the mainstream press in mocking senators and congressmen of the opposition party who, citing the conflicting reports on the “Chechnya incident,” called for hearings. Fauhomme had hoped that with enough ridicule the opposition would forget about the hearings, but surprisingly they'd stuck to their guns. The hearings were set to begin Monday with Tucker Lindsey and Helene Vonu, the assistant secretary of state specializing in that part of the world, appearing first and then General Allen testifying on Tuesday.

At Fauhomme's insistence the administration had circled the wagons, and a pointed memo had been sent to the affected parties reminding them to stick to the agreed-upon talking points and nothing more. Of the three administration officials subpoenaed, only Lindsey knew the real truth. Vonu, a strikingly beautiful Greek-American and career diplomat with an eye on the secretary of state cabinet position in the second term, would be making the rounds of the Sunday morning news talk shows and visiting the editorial boards of the major newspapers; she'd even scheduled an appearance on one of the Comedy Central shows in an effort to reach young voters and make sure they were in the fold.

By and large, Fauhomme had told Lindsey, the situation was under control. The hearing might be contentious, with a lot of
posturing on both sides—after all, it was an election year—but nothing would come of it “so long as we all pull together as a team,” the politico had written in his memo.

Actually, the hearings could work in favor of the campaign, he noted in a private conversation with the NSA director. After the three administration officials testified, there were more than a dozen other people who'd either been subpoenaed or asked to appear voluntarily, ranging from experts on the region to security “specialists” who could be expected to make the usual, self-serving statements about inadequate preparations or tactical “mistakes” that had led to the slaughter but were meaningless now.

Allegations would be made and countered; impromptu press conferences in the halls of Congress would materialize, with each side complaining that the other was using the death of Americans at the hands of terrorists for political gain. And in the end, nothing would come of it, and nothing new would be divulged, at least nothing the opposition could make stick. In the meantime, the identification of the bodies in Chechnya would be dragged out. Again the Russians were cooperating, and the American team had been warned in no uncertain terms that they were not to release the results of their findings until the president and his advisers had an opportunity to review the report. Between the opposition senators and congressmen, and those in the president's party, the questioning, bombast, and posturing could well eat up the weeks before the election.