House Secrets (50 page)

The next question she’d asked had been: Why should I believe you? And that’s when he had pulled out his CIA credentials. He also showed her proof that Diller had flown to Iran. Then she did
what any good reporter would do: she confirmed the facts as best she could. She verified that Conrad Diller worked for Marty Taylor and verified, via an independent source, that he had taken a flight to Tehran from Cairo. She also called a guy at the
Wall Street Journal
that she’d had an affair with fifteen years ago and he confirmed that Taylor’s company was in deep financial trouble. Whitmore figured that Marty Taylor had to be up to his pretty neck in red ink to be selling classified shit to Iran.

Lastly, she called the CIA and asked if the agency would care to comment on her story. They pulled the usual gambit of stalling until right before her deadline, and when they called back all they did was badger her for her source. When she refused to name him, they said that if she published, ongoing operations could be jeopardized. The CIA’s lawyer then quoted some obscure federal code and said that if their operations were in any way compromised she could be subject to criminal charges. But that’s all the arrogant bastards said, and they never said anything about some spy being in danger. And so she published—and now she was in a jail jumpsuit.

She remembered the shit storm that had erupted in 2003 when that CIA agent Valerie Plame had her cover blown by Scooter Libby—or whoever the hell it really was. A couple of reporters were jailed for contempt for refusing to reveal their sources and one, a gal named Judith Miller who worked for the
New York Times
, spent almost three months in jail for refusing to give up a source. Whitmore didn’t know all the details regarding Plame, or what Miller had done; all she knew was that the leak investigation had gone on for months, had involved a gaggle of politicians and prominent journalists, and they came damn close to getting the vice president before it was all over.

And all that ruckus just for
naming
a spy—not for getting one killed.

She was in a world of trouble.

“Ms. Whitmore,” the judge asked, “do you understand that I’m going to place you in jail for contempt and that you’ll remain there until you agree to cooperate?”

Whitmore looked up at the judge’s glowering face and then glanced over at a guy from the
LA Times
she knew. He didn’t look the least bit sympathetic; he looked like he was having a ball. The little prick.

“Ms. Whitmore, do you understand me?” the judge repeated.

She looked back at the judge, directly into his beady eyes, and tilted her chin defiantly. “Yeah, I understand,” she said. And then, for the benefit of all the media present, she added, “And you can lock me up forever. I’ll never give up a source.”

One of the journalists sitting behind her cheered, and she figured that whoever he was he had to be very young. The rest of the journalists all let out little groans as they wrote down the hackneyed, self-serving quote they would be forced to include in their stories.

Actually, she was petrified of going to jail. She had three addictions: nicotine, alcohol, and pain medication. She’d been taking painkillers ever since she sprained her back five years ago, and at work she went outside every half hour to smoke. And at night,
every
night, she drank half a bottle of cheap scotch. Jail was going to be a living hell—and the government was going to do everything it could to make it so.

But she would endure it, by God, she would.

This was the best thing that had happened to her in twenty years.