The Parnell Affair (9 page)

Though the dinner went well—Nate McLean, the Secretary of State, tall and elegant with still a touch of his military fitness, together with Linda kept the conversation lively, varied, and light (Ben Butler managed to pull at his collar only fifteen times)—nothing of importance was discussed until the following day.  Throughout the morning, British and American counterparts broadly covered their positions on Iraq, its WMD program, and the potential for action.  Specifics were discouraged by and large, much to Nate McLean's displeasure.  So when, after lunch, the President suggested the counterparts and their staffs separate to discuss their departmental concerns, all were more than willing.  Ben Butler—as he showed his British equivalent Jeff to a massive terrain model of Iraq laid out in a barn—shared a smile, half sneering, with Paul Kluister, who accompanied Nate and Jack Hay (the UK Foreign Secretary), to monitor their talk.  The President, meanwhile, took Anthony Bellow riding, much to his ill-concealed delight, with only a few Secret Service and Karl and Alistair (Anthony's Karl) for company.

Though a hot day, the breeze across so much open land kept it from becoming stifling.  Anthony Bellow was not a horseman (despite Pete's earlier view of him as the quintessential English gentleman, he hadn't attended Eton, his accent had a touch of the Cornish coast about it, and he'd never worn hunting pink).  Understandably, Pete had a gentle older horse brought for Anthony; surreptitiously, however, he introduced his finger and its sharp nail into the horse's gums from the other side of its head before Anthony mounted.  This caused the horse to jerk back and Pete gave the impression that the horse needed a firm hand but that where they were going, strong horses were needed.  Anthony, with visible trepidation, did mount the horse, which seemed to approve of his total lack of command (to say nothing of his keeping his fingers to himself).  It followed Pete's horse dutifully (as it did when carrying Mrs. Howland).  Alistair had the sort of background Pete imagined and so was quite comfortable, even in an American saddle; Karl's experience atop a horse consisted of thirty years of following Pete.

A mile from the ranch, with Secret Service helicopters out of sight but watchful, and riders stationed between the party and the mile after mile of very little, Pete brought his horse to a stop with Anthony beside him at the top of a small bluff.  Terrain as it was, Karl and Alistair had to wait on the slope below until the President moved on, providing a semblance of privacy.  A picturesquely lone tree was all that broke the landscape before Anthony, apart from a haze of heat and scrub grass.

“Everything's bigger in America, isn't it?” Anthony said with a smile.  “The cars are bigger, the portions are bigger, even the bloody sky is bigger,” he said, gesturing.  “I mean, just look at it!  Beautiful.  I can easily see why you keep a ranch here, Peter; Pete, I should say.”

Smiling, Pete said: “Doesn't get any better than this, does it?  Until sunset,” he said, raising a finger.  He leaned casually to one side.  “Yeah, then the sky fills with red and purple fit to make you believe the sun'd just set right down there a half mile yonder,” he said.  “We'll watch it tonight off the back porch.  That and a cup of coffee?  Nothin' finer.”

“I look forward to it,” Anthony said.

“Good,” Pete said, stealing a glance over his shoulder.  “Yeah, things are bigger in America—we've got the space!  Even our problems are bigger.  I won't deny I brought you out here for more than to take a look at my property.  Back at the house, everyone has their two cents to throw on the table—shoot, it takes a week just to say, hello,” Pete said and then leaned to his other side and spat.  “But I figure we could come out here and talk man to man.”

“I'm pleased you did, Pete,” Anthony said.  “A little frank talk is just what we need.  The challenges we face are too critical and time is too short for, hmm, whingeing disguised as diplomacy.”

“Well said,” said Pete.  “And out here I don't mind telling you exactly what's on my mind.  We both know—and we know damn well—that if Saddam could get his hands on a nuclear weapon, be it buying or making, he would.  And if he had it, you can be damn sure he'd give it to Al Qaeda—and we both know what they'd do with it!  Am I supposed to wait for perfect evidence?  I'm not going to wait: this is a gun fight!  The man who's quickest on the draw and steadiest in the hand wins!”

Anthony's eyes danced to the metaphor; he breathed deeply and rapidly.  He attempted the same lounging posture Pete affected in the saddle.

“And that's another reason I wanted to come out here,” Pete said, “to thank you properly for sending us those documents on Niger.”  Pete held out his hand and Anthony took it.

“I could do no less,” Anthony breathed.  “And I'm of the same opinion regarding Saddam Hussein.  He's merely biding his time; he's looking for an opportunity to attack us or our friends again.  And if the time has not come to bring him in—to, to justice—then it had better come soon.  Or he'll out-draw us,” he said, raising his chin.  “A showdown is inevitable.”

“You're damn right it is,” Pete said and spat again.  “And we know how to handle his kind; we've done it before.  Hell, it's our two countries as kept the world free all these years.  From the Kaiser to Saddam, we've ridden out together and none could stop us.  We smacked Saddam last time, but he hasn't learned.  Time's come to bring this evil man in and my country is prepared to take action on the evidence you've given us.”

“And my country is prepared to stand beside you, all the way,” Anthony cried.  “There's no sense in waiting to be attacked, possibly with a nuclear weapon as you say!  A little work needs to be done to bring parliament together, but I feel confident we could be ready in a matter of weeks.”

“Well, hell,” Pete said, laughed and pushed his hat back on his head with one finger.  He was glad Anthony offered assistance rather than having had to ask: the inclusion of British forces would lend legitimacy to the war, he felt.  “We still have plenty of work to do to get our Senate in order.  (The House is solid.)  Karl!  Get up here!” he shouted.

Karl and Alistair rode to the bluff's top and came before the President and Prime Minister.

“One of the first things we're going to need to do is go to the UN,” Pete began.

“I'm not entirely sure you need to, Pete,” Anthony said, drawing looks from the Americans.  “After all, the Security Council will never pass a resolution authorizing force, not with a Russian and Chinese veto certain.  But by the same token, we needn't fear any sanction from it either, as we could simply use our vetoes.  If you wish to go into Iraq,” Anthony said, “then we go in and the world be damned.”

“Well now, I won't say you're wrong,” Pete said, rubbing his neck, “but we've got to wrangle the Senate into this.  We need war powers from them and they can be as ornery as a rutting bull.  We're sort of being crafty with the whole UN business: we figure they'll never pass a resolution with teeth, so we'll then go to the Senate and say, 'Look, everyone recognizes the threat but won't do anything—you've got to do something.'”

“Oh, I see,” Anthony said.

“It's not a bad idea, really,” Alastair said.  “We could use much the same excuse on our end, though blaming the Russian veto.  It could remove—or, at least, mitigate—the word 'unilateral' from the debate.”

“Somehow, I doubt it,” Anthony said, with a wry smile.  “The bloody Tories will be easier to bring around than our own party.”  To the President: “If you're determined to approach the Security Council to help with your Senate, we'll of course support you.  I would have thought the Niger documents significant enough to convince anyone.”

“Uh, we had a slight setback in regard to those documents,” Karl said.  “But it is being taken care of.  Sometimes, I envy your parliamentary system: when you are in power, you are in power.  Here, even with a clear mandate from the people, controlling both houses, we have hoops to jump through and hands to hold.”

“Yes, well,” Anthony said, “we have a bit of that, too.  But I feel confident we will rally the party, and certainly the majority of parliament, in favor of war.  And so I can say it here,” he said to Pete, “man to man, that whenever you're ready to go get this bastard, we've got your back.”

The remainder of the visit was spent in broadly mapping the two countries' actions leading up to war.  It perplexed Anthony Bellow to see President Howland visibly restrain his Defense Secretary and often surrender the floor to Secretary of State McLean, who continued to stress verification, diplomacy, and the UN.  The Prime Minister's questioning looks were placated by surreptitious winks from the President at first, but a hurriedly whispered explanation from his Chief of Staff—that McLean was necessary to convincing the UN and so must be humored at present—finally set the young leader's mind at ease.  After three days of conference, Marine Two lifted off and returned the UK contingent to Dallas and their awaiting flight home.

Pete sat in the master bedroom—with the lights off—and watched the red and purple sunset.  Not bad, he thought, but really I prefer dead of night with the sky so thick with stars you expect to cast a shadow.  He sipped from a cup of coffee he'd snuck past his wife—not that she'd have taken it away or lectured him, not Linda, but it would have worried her.  His doctor said to limit himself to two cups a day.  Pete sipped again and chuckled silently, shaking his head slowly.  Knew there was no reason to worry, he told himself.  He thought about Anthony Bellow's behavior, how easily he was taken in hand, how readily influenced, the leader of a sovereign nation committing himself and his people to war while dressed as any American boy might have on any Christmas Day over the past hundred years.  The image shook a few audible chuckles from Pete.  He set down his coffee, shaking his head some more.  I've seen that look and heard that nervous laughter before, he thought.  Goddamn Yale, he thought but not as he had several days earlier while remembering his awkwardness and social failures.  Now he remembered his discovery of the Young Republicans and its rank upon rank of middle class, eager young men.  Most had no connections worth mentioning and nowhere near the money of those who'd snubbed Pete until Linda saved him.  No one snubbed him at the Young Republicans.  His father was said—quite rightly—to run the machine in Texas.  A rumor had it that even Lyndon Johnson had had to kiss his ring (and that his withdrawal of political neutrality is what tipped the scales against Johnson running in '68).  Pete was seen to have power and influence—to breathe the rarified air of 'inside'—to those who'd grown up in towns not unlike his, lived lives like his.  They craved his attention, his approval, his good will, thinking that when he finally arose to some lofty place he would condescend to elevate them as well.  Pete was handed first the treasurer's post (unheard of for a freshman) and then the Presidency of their chapter (rising to National leader in time for the '68 election) as a matter of course.  He'd met Paul Kluister and the two had quickly formed a lasting friendship.  The wildest times Pete had at college were with Paul—until Paul's drinking got out of hand sophomore year and he flunked all of his courses, necessitating his return to Oklahoma.  Others took Paul's place, asserting their collective right to power—if they were strong enough to take it.  Their right was inherited but they deserved it only if they had the strength to seize it.  When word came down from the campaign that disrupting Democratic activities would be viewed kindly and not forgotten by a successful Nixon Administration, Pete saw the opportunity to take the first step toward seizing a power that was rightfully his.  Flush with confidence bolstered by the obsequious praise of those who shared his vision of being one of the elect, Pete orchestrated disruptions emanating from every chapter of the Young Republicans.  Never strictly illegal but always devious in conception, Pete was assisted in '68 by a new freshman with a mind for such work, a young Karl Kristiansen.

Oh, Karl, Pete thought while chuckling, I remember how his hands shook when I first met him.  Hard to believe thirty some years have passed and I still haven't seized what's mine, he thought.  Heaving a sigh, he stood up.

“Good bye, ranch,” he said to the window.  “Time to go back to that goddamn White House.  Hope they remember to get me a copy of
The Washington Observer's
Sunday edition tomorrow morning.”

Sunday mornings were typically lazy at
The Washington Observer
.  Tobias came in at what he considered late, about 9:00 am, only to check email and phone messages.  Often he'd lend a hand to the younger go-getter reporters, though there seemed to be less of them these days.  This particular Sunday, the last of July, he'd forgotten Jazelle wouldn't return for a few more days and waited around reading the Sunday edition thinking she'd pop in sometime before lunch.

The front page and most of section A were devoted to national issues, with an amount of WMD related stories that surprised Tobias.  He'd noticed (and worried about) a decline in interest on the subject over the past two weeks—since Joe's return and white paper.  Coming to the editorial section, he discovered the cause of WMD's return.

Les Vonka was the paper's big-gun political editorialist.  A syndicated columnist for over twenty years, his celebrity star had been in ascendance for the past two years, due mostly to his frequent appearances on heated cable news shows.  Personally as well as professionally, Tobias couldn't stand the man and the sentiment was reciprocated.  Both were frequently consulted on major Washington stories but what should have been a productive rivalry between them always descended into personal innuendos, dredging up past failures, and occasionally undisguised insults.

Les Vonka had written a long exposé on the Administration's investigation of Saddam Hussein's WMD program.  The lede promised proof and paragraph one described a set of documents obtained by British intelligence connecting Iraq to Niger's uranium yellowcake production.

“Son of a bitch,” Tobias growled through clenched teeth.  No one likes getting scooped, but Tobias usually laughed on the outside if nothing else.  Having sat on Joe's story and his copy of Joe's white paper—to say nothing of getting scooped by Vonka, of all people—made Tobias grind his teeth as he read on.

It got worse for Tobias.  Further down the page, Vonka broke Joe Parnell's trip to Africa.  Worse yet, Vonka briefly referred to Joe's white paper refuting the Administration's claims.  The substance of Joe's counter argument was not detailed, however, and the paragraph ended oddly, Tobias thought.  “The Howland Administration has rejected the Parnell white paper and continues gathering evidence of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.

“Sources within the Administration have revealed, on condition of anonymity, their belief that Joseph Parnell's professional opinion has been compromised by his devotion to his wife.  Mrs. Sally Parnell is a covert CIA operative specializing in Weapons of Mass Destruction.  She had visited Niger a few years earlier, at the time of the events described in the Niger documents, but cleared Niger of any illicit dealings.  Administration sources believe Joseph Parnell declaimed the findings of British Intelligence to cover up his wife's incompetent handling of Niger in years past, thus explaining why the Administration has rejected his opinion.”

The exposé went on to offer a half-hearted conciliation to Joe, applauding his support of his wife, while condemning them both as selfishly placing their careers before the safety of the nation.  Tobias couldn't see the words on the page.  He sat motionless, hardly breathing.  His stomach contacted around a cold coiling knot deep within him.  The sensation mimicked his nightmare of breaking a confidence, revealing a source.  That he had nothing to do with the story never occurred to his mind, not in that state.  Only when his oxygen-starved lungs inflated of their own accord did Tobias break to the surface of his thoughts.

Shooting to his feet, scattering the paper, he rifled his pockets until he found his cell phone.  With numb fingers, he found the Parnell house-phone number and called.

“Hello?” a sleepy woman's voice said after two rings.

“Mrs. Parnell, I'm sorry to have to call you so early,” Tobias said.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“It's, it's a quarter past nine,” Tobias said.  “Listen—”

“That late?” she said, awakening.  “Oh, who is this?”

“This is Tobias Hallström of
The Washington Observer
,” Tobias said.  Uttering those words of professional ritual calmed him.  He tried to think of a way to tell her what had happened.

“Oh, hello, Tobias,” she said, stealing a quick glance at the sound asleep Joe.  “Thought you were going to call me Sally.”

“I have to ask you to do something for me,” Tobias said.  “Uh, you don't happen to get
The Washington Observer
, do you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Could you go take a look at it?” he asked.

“Sure but, are you sure you want me?” she said, slowly getting out of bed.  “Joe's right—”

“Not yet,” Tobias said, thinking: her reading it will be a better explanation that you stumbling through.  “Could you just take a look at something for me?  Please, you need to see this.”

Sally said okay and, throwing her robe around her, went and fetched the paper from the front door.  Taking it to the kitchen table, she asked: “What am I looking for?”

“Les Vonka's editorial,” Tobias said.

Flipping through until she found it, Sally froze at the headline: “WMD in Iraq: the Administration's evidence.”  They couldn't have, she thought; no, it's not possible.

Tobias must have heard her breath catch.  He said, “The fourth paragraph down.”

Sally read the end of her career, the end of twenty years of service, the end of the life she'd led since she was twenty-three, in four lines of bad prose.

“Oh my god,” she breathed.

“I'm sorry,” Tobias said, surprised at how close to shouting he was.  “I'm sorry!  I had nothing to do with it.  I never would have let them or at least given you a warning if I couldn't stop them.  It's totally wrong what they've done, despicable and probably illegal.  I'm so sorry.  If there's anything I can do, name it,” he babbled at an ever increasing rate.

She barely heard a word he spoke.  A minute passed and she returned to reality.

“I'm sorry, Tobias, I have to go,” she said.

“I'm sorry!” he said.  “Anything you need, ask me.  I'll resign, just say the word.”

“Thank you,” she said.  “Good bye.”  She hung up.

Around the world, cell upon cell of spies she'd recruited were in the most mortal of danger.  It wouldn't take long for her associations to be mapped and for cells to be compromised and collapsed; her people to be taken, interrogated, tortured, and executed.  Dozens of people—some struggling against oppressive regimes, others lining their pockets—who had agreed to spy because they'd trusted her were now laid bare to the countries they'd betrayed.

Sally dialed a number from memory that she'd never called before.  A single word spoken was all it took to communicate that she'd been outed and totally compromised.  She ran upstairs and threw the phone and paper on the bed and shouted at Joe.  He sprang upright in bed, surprised and immediately alarmed to see his wife hurriedly undressing before him.

“Les Vonka just outed me in the paper,” she said, stepping into a pants suit.

Joe lost his temper, shouting and mangling the sides of the paper as he found the damning paragraph.  Sally let him seethe until she had her jacket on.

“Joe!” she yelled, breaking his rant.  “I have to go to headquarters right now. 
You
have to tell Lucy,” she said with an unexpectedly cracking voice.  “Don't try to explain, just let her know what's going on and that I'll explain when I get home.”

All the guilt and self-recrimination of the last eight years, of a marriage that he felt had failed because of him, stifled anything Joe could have said.  Sally caught only a whisper of such thoughts as they were locked into the drawers of her mind—the faces, voices, the lives and tears and fears of her agents, her recruits, urged her to action.  She took the stairs down two at a time, shoes in one hand and purse in the other.

None of her communications could be trusted, so her drive to CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia was accomplished in ninety-mile-an-hour silence.  It helped.  Sally ordered her agents in her mind: who was most suspected, most watched, who could easily expatriate, who would need extraction, how to contact, who were the local handlers, and on and on and on.

She had no credentials to pass the gate at headquarters.  She'd only been there once over winter break during her senior year at Stanford, twenty years before.  A woman with her mind, her cool nerves, coming from a trusted Navy family, and—it must be said—her breathtaking beauty was a prize asset and every pain had been taken to keep her identity a secret.  The gate guard had company: a man in a suit stepped out of the shack as she pulled up, examined her driver's license, and told her where to park.  Inside the front lobby, she was met by Henry Updike, the DDI (Deputy Director, Intelligence).

Henry Updike, at one time called “Duke” Updike, had, like Sally, boxed in college; he'd always been in Intelligence, never Operations; and after losing his wife to cancer four years earlier, often worked Sundays.  Sally had met Henry on a couple occasions, clandestine meetings to do with North Korea, and had formed an instant rapport, due in part to their both talking in boxing metaphors and in part to a similarity of sensibilities.

“We've known for five hours,” he said, waving a hand for her to slow down as she hustled to meet him over the enormous CIA seal on the room's floor.  “A tip from the printing plant,” he said quietly as she drew near.  “How are you?”

“Better for hearing that,” she said, marching toward the elevator bank.  “Arnaldi?” she asked: the DDO (Deputy Director, Operations).

“Afghanistan,” Henry said as the elevator doors closed.  “The DCI was out of state; should be here within the hour.”

“The Sudden Spring?” she asked, the name of the North Korean operation she had set up.

“No news, yet,” Henry said, smiling conciliatorily.  “Have you any idea how this happened?”

“Yes,” she said, not looking at him.  “Better wait for Lodge.”

A debriefing is of vital importance in such a case, to determine who knew the revealed agent's identity and to estimate how long it would take to become common knowledge.  But with Sally being outed in a major international news paper, coordinating the extraction or—in a few rare cases—the preservation of her agents was vastly more important.  In Henry's office—with the door wide open so they could use his phones and his secretary's—they received reports concerning extractions, operations to inform possibly compromised agents, and indications that foreign intelligence services were aware and on the hunt for one of Sally's spies.

When a single agent is discovered, it's bad enough: not only the agent and his information lost but the series of operations officers and couriers that bring out the information and take in new orders then faces possible detection.  Sally's ouster was catastrophic in comparison: with multiple cells in several countries compromised, the supporting operatives, front companies, sympathetic organizations, dummy finance groups were all under suspicion and could be used to triangulate one another.  In countries such as North Korea and Iran, with their autocratic oligarchies (to say nothing of their functioning nuclear programs), the net would be cast very wide, catching many innocent and uninvolved people—but also catching the supporting infrastructure.  And it was that loss of support that would harm operations the most: new spies could be recruited, but creating an entirely new intelligence apparatus could take years upon years—all the while in the dark.

The saving of agents and organizations was complicated further by the sheer number of compromised cells.  Sally had risen to a rare height in CIA; possessed of specific technical knowledge and impeccable credentials, she had succeeded in recruiting agents where others had failed.  Many of such agents—Pakistan's, for instance—were years past when they should have been retired: their information, however, was too good to lose and the times too dangerous for undue caution.  The result was so many operations running simultaneously that closing them all as quickly and efficiently as protocol demanded was impossible, particularly with the Directorate of Operations focusing its manpower and energy in Afghanistan.

Just after ten in the morning, John Lodge, the Director Central Intelligence (DCI), walked briskly into Henry's office.  A Princetonian born, raised, and educated, Lodge was a career civil servant who'd served in CIA, Justice, on the Congressional staffs of intel committee members, had been a frequent member himself of special intelligence commissions, before being appointed Director by the former President.  Despite all of that he was damn human.  He brushed aside Sally's outstretched hand and gave her a fatherly hug.  He waved the others to follow him to his office.

Once seated and the appropriate calls made to have updates sent immediately to his office, Lodge asked Sally to walk through what she knew, a sort of informal debrief.  She told them of Joe's meeting with the President and subsequently with Senator Perkin's son, of the threat against her and the reason for it.  Sally felt her heart
flutter when she heard herself describe what now sounded like silly and innocent reasons for not following procedure and informing her handler (Arthur MacGregor) as soon as she'd learned of the threat.  Her sense of guilt must have shown on her face as she fought to maintain eye contact with the Director and Deputy Director.

“None of us would have predicted the Administration would act this recklessly,” Lodge said.  “Yes, you should have mentioned it, but I probably would have come to the same conclusions Joe did.  That confronting the President would have, in all likelihood, made matters worse.  Looking at it through hindsight?  Nothing could be worse than now, but at the time—” he said and shrugged.