House Divided (37 page)

After six months of grueling work, the inspectors found a few minor compliance and procedural problems but failed to uncover the true nature of Claire Whiting’s secret division. One reason for this was because the day after DeMarco gave the recordings to Justice Antonelli, Claire’s personnel all began to perform legitimate—albeit less useful—functions, and the only American communications they intercepted while the inspectors were conducting their review were those permitted by FISA warrants. Claire’s ability to hide her true role in Dillon’s organization was also made easier by the fact that after Dillon was incarcerated, the new NSA director, deciding he needed to raise the glass ceiling at Fort Meade and have a few more women in high-ranking positions, concluded that Claire was the best person to fill Dillon’s former position at the agency.

The president’s special prosecutor also questioned the two young soldiers who had killed Paul Russo and the reporter, Robert Hansen. They sat there, shell-shocked, saying how they’d been told by John Levy that the men they had killed were foreign terrorists, and the prosecutor had no doubt the soldiers had been duped by Levy and the late Colonel Gilmore. The soldiers, however, knew nothing regarding Levy’s connection to Charles Bradford.

The prosecutor realized that there were probably ten or twenty soldiers out there, present and former members of the Old Guard at Fort Myer, who had committed assassinations under Bradford’s orders. He was sure all these dedicated young men had no idea that they had done anything illegal, and he was equally sure they had all been sworn to secrecy. And he was confident that Charles Bradford and Martin Breed had selected only men who could keep a secret. The prosecutor decided—and the president concurred—that it would be in everyone’s best interest to probe no deeper into the activities of the Old Guard. Without a Charles Bradford to lead them, the sentinels who guarded the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier would go back to being nothing more than exceptional sentinels.

Charles Bradford, as Dillon had expected, presented the president with an impossible dilemma. There was no direct evidence proving Bradford had ordered Martin Breed to assassinate anyone—and Bradford, when questioned by the prosecutor, denied giving Breed any such orders. Bradford said he may have supported
in principle
what Breed had done, but he would never have acted in such a unilateral, illegal, and dangerous manner. And he noted that, at the end of his life, Martin Breed had been afflicted by a terrible case of brain cancer, and the last time he saw Breed, the man had been unable to distinguish reality from fantasy.

The prosecutor did have in his possession the recording DeMarco had given to Thomas Antonelli, the recording in which Breed admitted to carrying out thirteen assassinations for Charles Bradford. The prosecutor was sure that Breed’s admissions on the recording, combined with DeMarco’s testimony, would be sufficient to convince any reasonable jury of Charles Bradford’s guilt. When he told Bradford this, Bradford’s response had been:
So try me
.

Bradford knew the last thing that the president wanted was a public trial or a court-martial. Bradford also knew that when the public heard about who Breed had assassinated—mostly people with known links to terrorists—a large segment of the population would consider Charles Bradford a hero for what he had allegedly done. The rest of the world would, of course, have a different view of his actions—and it was really the rest of the world the president was trying to keep in the dark.

The president considered convening a secret military tribunal; after Bradford was found guilty he would be locked away in a maximum security prison in total isolation. He was afraid if he did this, however, someone on the tribunal, someone sympathetic to Bradford, would talk to the press. Someone always talked to the press. He also considered simply having Bradford killed and wondered if he could do as King Henry II had done with Thomas A Becket—
Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest
?—and hope that someone on his staff would show some damn initiative for a change. In the end, though, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wanted whatever he did with Charles Bradford to have at least the appearance of being legal.

While the president was deliberating, Chief Justice Thomas Antonelli was leaping up and down in his black robes, demanding that the president do something, and do something soon! Antonelli had knowledge that crimes had been committed, and this knowledge weighed heavily upon his conscience. And he pointed out that Bradford hadn’t just assassinated foreigners, he’d also killed a number of U.S. citizens, including Paul Russo and a member of the press.

Thomas Antonelli didn’t see the big picture either.

Then the president’s devious, brilliant, special prosecutor found a solution.

The right of habeas corpus—basically, the constitutional right to be tried before one is imprisoned—had been overturned several times by past presidents via executive order. Lincoln issued an executive order to suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War. Japanese Americans were interned during World War II because of an executive order issued by Roosevelt. In more recent times, executive orders had been issued to suspend habeas corpus in the case of folks like the terrorists in Guantanamo.

Well, okay, the president said. If it was good enough for Lincoln and Roosevelt, it was good enough for him, so he had his special prosecutor write up an executive order saying, in flowery legal language peppered with historical precedents, that it was okay for him to toss a guy into a cell without a trial when the guy had committed extraordinary crimes and when public disclosure of those crimes could do grave harm to the United States. The president figured he might be able to convince Justice Antonelli to play along if he promised to limit his executive order to Charles Bradford and shredded it immediately thereafter. If Antonelli didn’t play along, at some point he would have to admit that he had remained silent while the president struggled with the Bradford dilemma.

Yes, the president liked the idea. There were still a few details to be ironed out, but the basic concept was solid. He’d sign the executive order and then Bradford would be whisked off to a cell by a few extremely tight-lipped folks and be kept in isolation until he died. Exactly where the cell would be and who would do the whisking were a couple of those details that needed to be nailed down. To explain why Bradford had suddenly disappeared, he would appear to die while piloting the Cessna he owned. But then—just when the president was on the cusp of discussing his plan with Justice Antonelli—something happened, something that made Dillon Crane, a lifelong agnostic, reconsider his views regarding the existence of a Divine Being: Charles Bradford was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He would be dead in less than a year.

The president summoned Bradford to the Oval Office, showed him the executive order, and gave Bradford a choice: resign immediately and agree to keep his mouth shut or he would go directly from the White House to a special facility in the Blue Ridge Mountains the CIA used for detaining certain folk. Bradford, still in shock from the news of his illness and impending death, took the deal. After he resigned, the president took the precaution of assigning people to monitor all of Bradford’s communications to make sure he didn’t e-mail his memoirs to a publisher; in a twist of irony, the organization assigned to monitor Bradford was the NSA.

So in the end, except for the fact that Dillon now resided behind bars in White Deer, Pennsylvania, things worked out. The men responsible for the deaths of Paul Russo, Robert Hansen, and several others were all dead or soon would be, and the world at large would never know what Charles Bradford had done.

Dillon’s reverie was interrupted by George Aguilera. “Dillon, for God’s sake, will you please settle this? How much did we agree the damn oysters are worth?”

Dillon sighed, opened his eyes, and stood up. “Would you gentlemen please excuse me? I’m not feeling very well.”

Actually, he’d never felt better in his life. That was one of the positive things about a prison environment: it was extraordinarily healthy. He ate a balanced diet, slept eight hours a night, exercised regularly, and ingested no alcohol. He’d even taken up yoga and was more flexible than he’d been as a teenager.

He walked out into the exercise yard, took a seat on a bench, turned his face toward the sun, closed his eyes—and recommenced designing the villa. He’d already designed the exterior, the great room, the master bedroom, and was now working on the kitchen. He’d committed none of his plans to paper, preferring to keep it all in his head as a mental exercise. Soon, however, he would actually begin constructing the villa on land he’d already purchased in Italy on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean.

He would be released as soon as Bradford died, although the government hadn’t agreed to this yet. He hadn’t been convicted of a crime; he had been jailed for contempt, for refusing to tell the special prosecutor who had helped him at the NSA. The reality was, however, that, just like Charles Bradford, no one was quite sure what to do with him, and he’d made it clear to the prosecutor—and the president—that to do anything truly harmful could have grave consequences.

Dillon just
knew
too much. He knew too much about too many operations and about too many people. He and Claire had acquired enough information since 2002 to blackmail a large number of very influential politicians in Washington—Justice Thomas Antonelli and the president’s special prosecutor, unfortunately, being exceptions. He also had in his possession, or so he told the prosecutor, a recording of the president having a very interesting phone conversation with a young woman in Miami. He pointed out to the president’s lawyer that with all the other problems the president currently had, he certainly didn’t need to go down the Bill Clinton trail.

But when Bradford died, he would ask, quite politely, to be released. After Bradford was dead—and after the new NSA director had completed his review to verify that the NSA was squeaky clean—there wasn’t much point in keeping Dillon in prison and risking his talking about what he knew. So he’d wait, and after Bradford’s funeral he would remind the special prosecutor it would be in everyone’s best interest if he were to be given a very quiet, under-the-table, presidential pardon for any crimes he
might
have committed and allowed simply to retire to Italy.

Why Italy he wasn’t really sure, but that’s where he had decided to build his villa. He could have stayed in the Untied States, but it seemed prudent to put some distance between himself and his homeland. He knew he’d enjoy the Italian climate, food, and wine; he might even be able to find a group of people who could actually play poker. But the truth was that he didn’t want to retire. He was afraid that his Italian villa would soon become just another prison and he’d be as bored there as he was now.

He missed the game so. The game the NSA played, the game he’d played all his life—the game he’d never play again.

DeMarco couldn’t figure out what to do with his cousin’s ashes.

After he finished testifying to the president’s special prosecutor about Charles Bradford and Dillon Crane, he called the young pastor at St. James, told him that Paul had a will in a safety deposit box at his bank, the will left about four grand to the church—and if the padre wanted the money, it was
his
problem to figure out how to get it. The only remaining task he had on his plate related to his late cousin was dealing with his ashes—and he was stumped.

He finally called Mary Albertson, the lady who had worked so closely with Paul at the church. She told him there was a spot on the Potomac that Paul always spoke of, a peaceful place shaded by old trees where the river flowed rapidly over a number of large boulders. Mary said Paul used to go there quite often to relax and pray. When she volunteered to go there with him to hold a small service for Paul, DeMarco could have kissed her.

Mary recited a couple of psalms from memory and, as she did, DeMarco thought about his cousin—a quiet, pious man, who had the courage to do something so incredibly dangerous that it cost him his life. As DeMarco released Paul’s remains into the current, Mary Albertson sang “Amazing Grace.” She had a magnificent voice and almost moved DeMarco to tears.

The president’s prosecutor had scared the hell out of DeMarco. He said that if DeMarco lied to him, he was going to throw him in jail. He told him if ever spoke to anybody about Charles Bradford, Dillon Crane, or the true circumstances surrounding the deaths of David Hopper, John Levy, and Paul Russo, he would also throw him in jail. DeMarco didn’t know if the prosecutor actually had the authority to make good on these threats, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because (a) he was terrified of the prosecutor and (b) he had no desire to talk to anyone about what he knew. He couldn’t do his job for Mahoney if he was a celebrity witness—nor could he do his job if he was in jail.

Mahoney recovered completely from the infection that almost killed him. DeMarco was relieved by this but not surprised; he had always known John Mahoney couldn’t be killed by an army of tiny germs. Mahoney would meet his end one day with a massive heart attack, or the husband of some young woman he was bedding would shoot him through the heart. DeMarco did end up telling Mahoney about Charles Bradford and Dillon Crane in spite of the prosecutor’s dire warnings. He did this because Mahoney found out through his vast network of informants that DeMarco had been to the Justice Department several times to meet with an unnamed prosecutor, and Mahoney was afraid DeMarco might be testifying against
him
. So to allay his boss’s concerns—and to keep his job—DeMarco eventually told Mahoney what had transpired while Mahoney had been in a coma.

Angela returned home from Afghanistan. She had lost weight and had deep circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept for a month. Worse than her appearance, though, she couldn’t sleep after she returned to Washington and eventually began to see a CIA psychiatrist twice a week. DeMarco had no idea what she had done for the CIA in Afghanistan or what she had experienced. All he knew was he hated her damn job but she refused to quit.