The Parnell Affair (37 page)

“If you don't sit down, you're going to make me sore,” Bill said.

Tobias stepped up to the desk between them and set both palms at either end of it, leaning over.  “Two weeks of nothing,” Tobias said, “and then the President of the United States goes on TV and with sixteen little words about uranium in Africa calls my story, me, and
The Observer
a pack of goddamn liars.  I have every right to be
sore
.”

Bill sat back and nodded.  “I'd take it personal, too,” he said.

“What changed the morning of?” Tobias said, still standing.

Bill heaved a sigh and settled his hands on his paunch.  “They called us down to the Hart building,” Bill said.  “The Deputy Director Intelligence had a lot to tell us but the parts you can't get away from, no matter what you think about uranium from Africa, are two confessions.  Two highly-placed al Qaeda figures, recently captured—”

“Khalid Sheikh Kahtani,” Tobias said and sat down.  “Captured around Christmas.”

“That's one,” Bill said.  “The other was taken earlier last year.”

“Abu Zubahd,” Tobias said.

“Check,” Bill said.  “They both confessed, Tobias.  The both said they'd had contact with Saddam Hussein through his intelligence service and that Weapons of Mass Destruction had been discussed.”

“Bullshit,” Tobias said, mind racing.  “There's no way in hell.”

“I've seen them,” Bill said, leaning his elbows on his desk.  “I've read the interrogation reports; it's true, they were talking to Saddam.”

“And the committee bought this?” Tobias asked.  “Bill, Al Qaeda hates Saddam, hates the way he lives, hates that he used to be backed by the US, and hates most of all his not following their brand of Islam.”

“Enemy of my enemy, pal,” Bill said.

“No, no,” Tobias said.  “Listen, Bill: that'd be like the Klu Klux Klan allying with the Black Panthers because they hate the US government.”

“That's just talk,” Bill said, leaning back and waving away what Tobias had said.  “Who says they wouldn't?  We've got it on paper, these guys confessed.  Whether you think it's possible or not, it happened.”

“After forging the Niger documents,” Tobias said, throwing his hands up, “you think the Administration would hesitate a moment to forge confessions?”

“Can I walk into the committee hearings and say the same thing?”  Bill asked.  “Jesus, Tobias, there's a whole bunch of people between the interrogators and the Deputy Director of Intelligence: if these confessions didn't happen, somebody would say something.”

“Sure they would,” Tobias said.  “Just like they talked about the forged Niger documents.”

“Look, believe it or don't believe it,” Bill said, “the President of the United States went on national television and told the country Saddam has nukes or is trying to make them
and
he's talking to terrorists.  How can I vote against that?”

“You know this whole thing is bullshit and you're still going to vote for it?” Tobias asked resignedly.

“That phone call Zack was making when you steamed in,” Bill said, “he's trying to find out if I can vote against war powers and have a chance in hell come next November.  But with these confessions?  I'm a little worried myself.”

“That goes for the rest of the Senate, too?” Tobias asked.

“Those in districts who can vote against war powers, when it comes up, and still expect to win their districts, will vote against,” Bill said.

“And what good is that if it still passes?” Tobias asked.

“Best we can hope for,” Bill said.  “The country and the TV press are in one of those flag-waving, freedom-fry moods.  We'll word the bill so the onus for invading is all on the President.”

“Saddam doesn't have nukes,” Tobias said.

“Does he need them?” Bill asked.  “What if he gave them, I don't know, nerve gas.  We know he has VX nerve gas: we sold it to him in the '80s when he was fighting Iran.”

“God Christ,” Tobias mumbled and stood up and faced the door.

“Hey, give me a reason to doubt the confessions,” Bill said to Tobias's back.

“Like I gave you a reason to doubt the Niger docs?” Tobias said over his shoulder.

“Not enough,” Bill said.  “Not now.”

“Their impossibility isn't enough?” Tobias said, mostly to himself.

“Not these days,” Bill said.  “Hey, listen, I know you're getting the short end of the stick here, but could you not use my name, if you write this up?  Not that this highly sensitive, top secret material isn't being leaked to every TV news program in the country as we speak.”

“What the hell would I write?” Tobias asked.

Sally would never get a cell signal in the vault at Langley and wouldn't want any conversation with Tobias recorded on her office land-line, so, impatient to hear what Senator Snajder said, she and Tobias had agreed beforehand to meet for lunch.  A long drive for her, both ways, for disappointing news.  Tobias related his conversation as he picked at the coleslaw in its tiny stainless steel cup that served as an appetizer in the roadside diner.

“Part of the trouble now is time,” Tobias said.  “War powers will be out of committee this week, I've heard, and before the full Senate next week.  This morning, someone in the office told me that the 4
th
Infantry Division entrained their heavy equipment.  The 101
st
  is already in Kuwait.  Even if we believe these confessions to be mere forgeries, we don't have the time to find a leak—and I don't know where to begin to look, either.”

“Snajder said the DDI briefed the SSCI?” Sally asked.  Tobias noticed a strange formality about her mannerisms, subtly different from her usual demeanor; the effect of her work attire, he wondered.

“Yeah,” he said.

“That was yesterday,” she said, setting aside her coffee and gathering her purse.  “He would have returned late to the office.  And I know for a fact,” she said with a light in her eyes, “he's been in meetings all morning.”  She stood up.

“Whoa, where are you going?” Tobias asked.

She leaned over, kissed his cheek, and said, “He isn't in his office—but perhaps his briefing and notes are.”

Tobias grabbed her hand before she could walk away.  “You can't honestly—”

“What are they going to do?” she asked, grinning much the way Tobias used to.  “Fire me?”

“Yes,” he said.  “Or arrest you.”

“Don't know that I care anymore,” she said, holding his hand at arm's length.

“I care,” he said.  “If you're arrested, particularly.”

“We've done some pretty, let's say, morally ambiguous things,” she said, “for the good of the country.  Not you and I.  Well, I have, as part of my job.  It's something you could never print in the paper but occasionally, an assassination is preferable.  To a war, say.  Turning a blind eye to drug smugglers because they support your enemy's enemy might be politique—yet cold comfort if you think of babies born heroin addicts.

“But this war, they're starting for no reason at all,” she said, looking out the windows at the passing cars.  “Unless it’s something as banal as money.  And everyone you talk to—you specifically, but everyone I talk to as well—knows that we're being lied into it.  You can see it in the screaming red faces of TV pundits, in the laughing eyes of politicians, quivering in the voice of the guy holding forth at the counter over his tuna melt.  They all see the lies and are perfectly content to let them stand in for the truth, even at the cost of war.  I'm sure they all tell themselves they have very good, very smart reasons for going along with it.

“No one's supposed to do what I do unless they love their country.  And yet, Operations is crawling with guys who joined because they want to be James Bond or Steven Segal.  They were a joke before the Howland Administration took power.  They cheered when they heard they were going into Afghanistan, every one with a movie quote in his mouth, every one chomping at the bit to do something ugly and, if questioned, firing off 'just doing my job' as his defense.  They can't stand the truth about themselves, either.  But that's not why I joined.  Iraq is a civil war waiting to happen; I came from a long line of veterans and I don't want people like my family losing their lives in a war so someone can realize their oil-field-wet-dreams; I didn't volunteer to put my hands in my pockets and 'just do my job' as someone harms my country from within and every bit as badly as any foreign nation could with bombers and missiles.  We may not be able to stop them but it won't be my fault: I will not be their accomplice by letting their lies pass unchallenged or standing idly by.”

She dropped Tobias's hand and left.

It had to start down pouring as Sally drove back to CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia.  A cold, clinging rain—that would turn to snow fifty miles north—that chilled the windshield from without, making her breath a fog that clouded her vision, necessitating the car's heater as well as wipers.  She didn't want the heat, though.  She'd shrugged out of her coat as she drove and set all the windows open a half inch, despite the rain dotting the interior.  Though driving at terrific speed—for the weather—and weaving between cars, Sally's mind flipped through her memories of Duke Updike's—the Deputy Director of Intelligence's—office, his secretary's; where was his safe in relation to the door, to the desk, could she contrive a phone call to keep his secretary, Marjorie, busy?

Through gates where her ID was checked to a parking space and a dash inside and into an elevator, Sally carefully performed her usual idiosyncrasies—which did not rise of their own accord on this strangest of days—lest their absence draw attention from those who knew her.  Sally couldn't help noticing, as she passed the huge CIA seal, the plaque honoring officers who'd given their lives in their nation's service.  They never came in from the cold, she thought as the elevator rose.  After discarding her coat, she scanned through her email to find into what meeting Duke Updike would next be heading and when.  She had a minute or two to make it, if the window had not already closed.  She went down two floors and ran through a few windowless corridors, if no one was watching, and caught up with a line of suits filing into a dark room like a small private theater.  The DDI was at the end, chuckling affectedly at some bantering ahead.  Sally took his arm with one hand and put the other around his waist, leaning close to his ear to speak.  He inclined to assist her.

“I know you're in meetings all day,” she said, “but can I have a few minutes this afternoon?”

“Certainly,” he said quietly.  “Damn budget meetings; they don’t' really need
me
.  I think 4:30 is possible.”

“Thanks, Duke,” she whispered and gave him a squeeze before leaving him at the door and heading the other way.

She'd picked his pocket as he spoke.  A peculiarity of his, a minor handicap some would say, prevented him from wearing metal next to his skin.  Some thought it the reason he'd not joined operations as a young man (it wasn't).  He couldn't, therefore, wear a wrist watch, unless plastic (he used a pocket watch), or his wedding ring, or even a metal belt buckle despite the three layers of fabric between it and the flesh of his belly.  He would get terrible rashes from skin contact with metal; he'd even taken to eating with chopsticks.  Consequently, he kept the key to the safe in his office—which required both a key and a combination—on a leather thong attached to his belt rather than on a silver chain around his neck as expected, as the DDO did.  Sally had detached it with the hand around his waist.

She then returned to her office and heaped folders into a tower of Babel, all concerning Pakistan's nuclear technology and Iran's budding program.  A serious but not pressing issue, Sally could over-play her concerns and make a meal out of a few similarities she'd noticed in how both countries' enrichment teams euphemized the process, giving the impression their people shared a teacher or source of information in common (possibly other than the infamous A.Q. Khan).  It was an excuse to get into his office and that's all she wanted.

Lifting the stack of folders—which rose from her waist to her chin—she carried it to the elevator, shaking off offers to help.  At Marjorie's office—which connected to the DDI's, though he had a private entrance on the hall across from the DDO near the DCI—Sally nudged open the door with her foot and then barreled through.

“Could you get the door, please?” she asked Marjorie, raising her burden a few inches and resting her chin on it to amplify its encumbering appearance.

“Um, yes, I, what is all this?” Marjorie—a woman roughly the same age as Sally but plump and matronly in her dress and girlish in her mannerisms—asked as she opened the door, somewhat hesitantly, to the DDI's office.

“Prepositioning,” Sally said as she passed by.  She set the folders on Updike's desk with a thump.  “There,” she breathed.  “He said he'd try to give me some time this afternoon, at 4:30, so I want everything I'll need at hand.  I doubt I'll have enough time to run back and forth if I've forgotten something.  He said 4:30 but does that sound plausible to
you
?” she asked Marjorie, while resting an arm on her pile of folders.

“Well, I'm not sure,” Marjorie said, turning back to her desk to consult a schedule sheet she knew by heart.  Out of sight for only a second (as Sally refreshed her memory of Duke's office; she'd had it right), Marjorie dashed back, twisting her fingers, evidently uncomfortable with Sally standing unsupervised in her boss's office.  “He'd have to duck out of a meeting early, but I think he intended to skip most of it anyway,” she said.  “He has another at 5:00.”