The Threat (7 page)

Dan didn't know if he cared for the sound of this. Governments raiding drug cartels for their profits? But the investigator was still going. “However, when we checked with Swiss authorities they were firm in their denials. What we came up with is
purchases
from France and the former Warsaw Pact countries. Given that those are not major drug-producing areas, we're tabbing it as arms and equipment buys.”

“Big ones,” Dan said. If he was reading it right, they were talking sixteen billion a year.

“Significant links between the cartels and arms dealers in Europe.” The investigator paused, then said with a satisfied air, “But that's not really news, is it? What I wanted you to see is this.” He slid another graphic and sat back.

It looked like a who's who of the European defense industry. Major producers of jet aircraft, advanced avionics, small arms, artillery. One he recognized as a French company that produced some of the most advanced electronics in existence. The Navy was evaluating its masking equipment, designed to conceal ships and aircraft from hostile radar.

He rubbed his mouth. “You got all this from tracing dollar bills?”

“It's more complicated than that. And as you can imagine, some governments don't want us looking into their financial systems. I have to say, the president's economic adviser could be more helpful in pressuring international banks to open their books.” He paused, as if waiting for Dan to defend another part of the executive staff. When he didn't, the investigator sniffed and continued. “But we're reaching a point where we can trace some payments direct from the cartel to its suppliers.”

*   *   *

His second appointment was at Foggy Bottom. The State Department.

He'd realized by now the government didn't work like the military. Agencies didn't respond to orders. They were separate circles of power. He was used to having everyone work together. The machinist's mates didn't have a different policy from the fire control technicians. But this was the opposite of a ship. Even a presidential directive might not mean much would happen. To get anything done, you had to work through persuasion. That meant meeting people, finding out what they wanted, what their agency's interest was, then crafting an approach that benefited everyone.

So he'd set up an appointment with Dr. Dina White, who held the counterdrug portfolio at State.

Lanky as a heron, White met him in the enormous 1960s-modern lobby. Around them people of every color were speaking every language he recognized and dozens he couldn't guess at.

Her upstairs office was less impressive, the cubbyhole of an untenured academic. Binders sloped off metal shelves. The brown leaves of a long-dead pothos rustled in the blast of an air conditioner. She shuffled papers off a chair so he could sit down.

Over Taylors Yorkshire from an electric kettle White told him how optimistic State was about the new administration in Colombia. Senator Edgar Valencia Tejeiro had campaigned on a platform of reducing cartel violence, restoring justice, returning the country to normalcy. It was important to encourage him. That included the usual way America expressed friendship, with helicopters and other weapons. Congress was considering a $1.2 billion supplemental appropriation. The actual transfer would be a Defense responsibility, under the Foreign Military Assistance Program. Dan said he knew people in that office. Perhaps he could help expedite it. White said she'd appreciate anything he could do.

“The point I want to get across, that our people in country are telling us, is that this is a dangerous time for President Tejeiro. The cartels have assassinated newspeople, police, even high officials in the Justice Ministry. He could be a target too if he presses them too hard.”

He told her, “Yeah, I'd heard that. How can we help over at NSC?”

White said she'd drafted an attempt to persuade France and Germany to put the same financial and legal controls in place that the U.S., Britain, and Japan had. The European Union should enforce heavy penalties for laundering money and supplying arms and technical assistance to the cartels.

“All right,” Dan said. “Our shop will support that, and I have a contact at Treasury who's thinking along the same lines. Maybe a meeting? To look at your draft?”

“Set up a time and I'll be there.”

“Now let me shift to a different issue. Threat reduction.”

“Um, I do work some of that, but Dr. Sola has the lead in that area. Dr. Umberto Sola. Director of the Office of Nuclear Affairs. Unfortunately he's speaking at the Middle East Center in Michigan today.”

Dan tried to find out exactly what State's plan was for expanding operations in Kazakhstan. White grew vague. She said the effort was underfunded and not well coordinated. He asked whom she dealt with at Defense. She said as far as she and Sola had observed, Defense displayed little interest in threat reduction. “The undersecretary's tried to push it in several venues. With nothing in the way of concrete results, manning, or even transport. Destroying a weapon by negotiation's not
manly,
I guess. Or maybe, the more warheads the other side has left, the more Defense gets to keep. Regardless of what the president's promised.”

“That's a pretty cynical attitude,” Dan told her.

White looked as if he'd just told a joke. “You think so? The Chiefs pooh-pooh
anything
from us. They might respond to White House direction, though.”

“I have some of the action on threat reduction,” Dan said, though so far he hadn't actually seen his name on anything. “Maybe we could coordinate a paper. Or ask for a supplemental?”

White said it would be good if he could get it into one of the president's speeches somehow. Just a line or two. “Funding's what makes things happen, but it's not the whole story. We can have teams out there, but if the leadership, on both sides, isn't serious about securing the weapons, the situation on the ground's not going to change. De Bari's personal attention, that could move it to the top of everyone's agenda.”

Dan reflected grimly on the damage one loose nuclear shell had caused. He'd lost ten people topside to the burst itself, forty blinded or injured, and who knew how many to cancer in years to come. Maybe it wasn't where Sebold and Clayton wanted him to put in his time, but he was determined to get involved somehow. And hadn't De Bari said, while they were jogging, that he wanted his ideas? “Well, I can't promise anything, but there might be a chance of getting the president to go on the record. If you and this Dr. Sola think it'd help.”

“That would be
great,
” she said, and knocked a binder off the desk. It hit a pile of papers and publications, and the tower rocked alarmingly before she grabbed it. “The last administration blew us off whenever we tried to do
anything.
”

He tried one more question. “Has anyone over here given any consideration to how somebody could get nukes into this country?”

White looked surprised. “Well, that's not our area of expertise. I'm sure your military and intelligence people have
that
covered. On threat reduction, let me talk to Dr. Sola when he comes back. Let's see if there's
something
we can do to move this issue forward. Are you going to Leningrad? I mean, Petrograd? The conference?”

“I'd like to, but I'm not sure they'll send me.”

“I might be able to do something. To make sure you get invited.”

*   *   *

The Pentagon. He had a turkey sub and soup in one of the cafeterias off the Concourse, with two colonels. Then, though it hadn't been on the agenda, they told him their boss would like ten minutes. Dan followed them through polished sunlit corridors around to the Army staff spaces in Wedge One.

The sign on the door of 3D389 said Lieutenant General Thurman Knight, U.S. Army, was the Army's operations deputy. Most civilians thought the Joint Chiefs directed military operations. But that was actually the job of the combatant commanders, four-stars who controlled all forces, from whatever service, within their geographic area. But the old terminology lived. Each service chief appointed a deputy who worked with the director, Joint Staff, to form the body known as the Operations Deputies, or OPSDEPS in milspeak. They met in sessions chaired by the director, Joint Staff, in his office, or in the Tank, to review major issues before they went up to the Chiefs and then the SecDef.

Knight welcomed him into a better-appointed and larger office than either he'd been in earlier. The general's dress greens matched his eyes. Huskier than Dan, he moved with the deliberation of a trainer of wolves. The diplomas on his walls were from the War College, the School of the Americas, and the Command and General Staff College.

Dan had looked up Knight's bio before he came over. The general had been a first lieutenant in Korea, served as an adviser with the Vietnamese and Peruvian armies, and commanded first an airborne brigade and then the 101st Airborne before commanding the Special Operations Command South in Panama. Looking at his chest, Dan read the Distinguished Service Medal, the Purple Heart, the Superior Service Medal with an oak-leaf cluster, the Legion of Merit with an oak-leaf cluster, the Bronze Star with a V and three oak-leaf clusters, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Medal, and the Army Commendation Medal. He had the rifle and wreath of the Combat Infantryman Badge, a parachutist's badge of some sort, and Ranger and Special Forces tabs.

For the first time, Dan wished he'd worn his lapel decoration. Knight's gaze moved as slowly as he did and, when it settled, was hard to meet directly. His grip, complete with a gold VMI ring the size of a handball, was hearty, but his manner warned this might not be a pleasant call.

In his inner office, settled on a sofa so close Dan smelled lime aftershave, Knight didn't want to discuss the issue items Dan had brought with him. He wanted to talk budget. Specifically, the line items the president's budget reduced. Dan said he wasn't on the budget side. The general asked if the president had any idea how hard he was stressing the services. Dan said he presumed De Bari was getting that word during the lunch he had every week with Jack Weatherfield, the secretary of defense, and General Stahl, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This didn't seem to be what Knight wanted to hear. He lit a cigar, toasting the cut end with a chrome lighter in the shape of a Maxim gun. Almost as an afterthought, offered one. Dan shook his head.

“Now, correct me if I'm wrong, Lenson. Let's not make this on any kind of record, all right? But you're military staff over there, that right? What—an O-6?”

“O-5, sir.”

“Army? Guard?”

“Navy, sir.”

“Well, you're uniformed service. Academy too, I see.”

“Yes, sir.” Dan wondered if he should quit wearing the ring, since he wasn't supposed to be in uniform.

“We're getting concerned over here. It started with this ‘no further discrimination' bullshit, which wasn't the way to get on our good side. And it's gone downhill from there.”

One of De Bari's first acts on taking office had been to end the services' exclusion of gays. And part of his platform, responding to the recession, had been what he called a “tailored” cutback of 10 percent per year in military expenditures, down to a 40 percent reduction in the Pentagon's budget by the end of his term.

Knight said, “This guy's tuned to the moon, if he thinks what he's doing is enhancing our national security. Pulling back from Germany, the Horn of Africa, now Korea. Korea! It's quieted down some now, but now Pyongyang's out from under the inspection regime, God knows what they're up to. This is all between us, by the way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We've got civilian appointees without the faintest idea what they're doing. No prior military. Well, you know what I mean. Working with them every day. What do you hear over there? What kind of atmosphere readings are you getting?”

Dan didn't like this question. He wondered if the appointees Knight was talking about included Blair. She couldn't drive a tank or assemble a bomb. But he didn't know anyone in uniform, from flag rank down, who could drill as deep into a manpower issue as she could. He cleared his throat and shifted on the sofa. “If you mean, is this a military-oriented administration, I guess the answer's ‘not very.' But it's still early.”

“I've been over there twice talking to Garn Sebold and what's her name, the Asian woman. I understand campaign promises. But once the election's over, you expect some movement toward reality. The fact of the matter: We have defensive boundaries around the world. A lot of guys, some I knew, gave their lives to put them there. We keep backpedaling like this … it's like you live in the projects and you put a sign on your door, ‘Break in my house, rape my wife, and steal my shit.'”

Dan didn't believe a three-star couldn't remember the name of the national security adviser. It was a put-down, though subtle enough it couldn't be quoted against him. “Well, sir, like everywhere, I'd say some are professional, others less so.”

Knight shook his head, scowling. “I'd rather have them over there than over here. But cutting our readiness, manning, the procurement accounts—that's a no-go. Let me tell you a little story.

“Back in '32, '33, this country was in a worse depression than anyone remembers now. FDR wanted to cut the Army budget to practically zero. Douglas MacArthur was the chief of staff back then. He went to Roosevelt's office and put his resignation on the table. He said that when we lost the next war, and an American boy was dying in the mud with a bayonet in his belly, he wanted him to die cursing Franklin Roosevelt, not Douglas MacArthur.”

Dan wasn't sure whether this was a historical reflection, a message he was supposed to take back, or just the general blowing off steam. As far as he could see, he was pointing the finger in the wrong direction. “General, I know this administration's committed to reductions in defense. It was in their platform from the start. But what actually gets appropriated isn't an executive branch call. Congress sizes the accounts.”