Secrets of State (3 page)

“That's bullshit, Richard.”

Sam looked around, wondering who had said that, before realizing sheepishly that he was responsible. For a brief moment, he clung to the hope that he had only whispered it, but the substantial number of heads turning in his direction argued otherwise. There was a boom mike suspended from a long pole hanging directly over where he was sitting. It was there for the Q&A session that was supposed to follow the lecture, but Sam realized with a creeping sense of dread that someone had left it on. His sotto voce intervention had been caught out by every Washington politician's nightmare—the hot mike.

Newton paused and looked out over the audience to spot the heckler. There were maybe a hundred people in the lecture hall. He quickly zeroed in on Sam.

“Sam, is that you?”

“Sorry for the interruption, Richard. I didn't mean to say that out loud.”

“I'm quite sure you didn't. But having done so, I'd like to hear what you have to say. Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who don't know my old classmate Sam Trainor, I can assure you that I am quite used to Sam's somewhat impolitic interventions . . . at least in seminar.”

“Really, Richard, I apologize. I don't want to interrupt the talk. I was just thinking that Rangarajan has bent over backwards to accommodate the sensibilities of the generals in Pakistan. He offered President Talwar a state visit, proposed the creation of an intelligence-sharing council aimed at minimizing the risk of overreactions stemming from misunderstanding, and even quashed a move by the opposition to authorize construction of a temple to Vishnu at Ayodhya on the ruins of the Babri Mosque. That hardly sounds like the work of a guy beating the drums of war.”

Even though he had pushed Sam to speak, Dr. Richard Newton seemed somewhat at a loss. Sam suspected that Newton's thinking was very rarely challenged by the sycophants who surrounded him at the think tanks. Newton, however, had been in Washington long enough to have absorbed its mores and rules of behavior. One tried-and-true D.C. tactic was: If you don't like the message, attack the messenger.

“Thank you, Sam, for that pithy and insightful riposte. Pity you couldn't have put that down on paper. Maybe you would have managed to finish that Ph.D.”

Sam's ears burned at the gratuitous slap. Newton was so much farther up the food chain than Sam that it seemed completely uncalled-for.

“You may have something there, Dr. Newton,” he found himself saying even as half his brain willed him to shut up and take his lumps. “I never did get the degree, but I do know that the Line of Actual Control is the effective border between India and China, not between India and Pakistan. That's the Line of Control. You're a former Soviet guy slumming in South Asia as a paid consultant for the Pakistani government. But, for those of us who know the region, the two are as different from each other as England and New England.”

Newton turned beet red and the Washington sophisticates in the CFR lecture hall turned away from Sam. It was difficult to tell whether they were embarrassed for him or by him. Newton resumed speaking. Sam did not really resume listening. He knew that he had dug himself a hole that would take time to climb out of.

•   •   •

After the lecture,
the ever-efficient CFR staff served coffee and cake in an adjacent room with a panoramic wall of windows that offered a less-than-inspiring view of the boxlike office buildings lining F Street. Sam helped himself to a cup of coffee from the samovar and decided to skip the cake as both a form of penance and as a symbol of his resolve to get back into shape. As he walked around the room, Sam marveled at the new superpower he seemed to have acquired after his ill-advised confrontation with Richard Newton. He seemed to project an invisible force field that kept everyone else in the room at a distance of at least six feet. One senior Pentagon civilian almost tripped over his own feet in his rush to avoid engaging Sam in conversation. He was radioactive at this point and he could only hope that the half-life of his professional ostracism would be mercifully brief. This was not his first experience with the consequences of pointing out the emperor's state of undress.

“Making friends fast, Sam.”

“I seem to have a talent for it, Andy.”

“You know you shouldn't do stuff like that.”

“I know.”

Andy Krittenbrink was one of Sam's favorite colleagues—former colleagues, he reminded himself—and he was glad for the company. Krittenbrink was a young analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which in the intel world was known by the almost accurate acronym INR. He was a specialist in the Pakistani leadership. Until a few months ago, INR had been Sam's home institution as well. As the director of the bureau's South Asia office, he had been Andy's nominal boss. It was a lofty-sounding title, but, for a Foreign Service officer, INR was something of an elephant's graveyard for diplomatic careers. That Sam's evaluations were peppered with words such as
abrasive
,
intemperate
, and the more euphemistic but no less damning
outspoken
did not help his cause.

The Foreign Service, like the military, was a rank-in-person, up-or-out system. A civil servant could burrow into a position in the federal government and, assuming even a minimum level of competence, could essentially stay in the job until mandatory retirement at age seventy. The Foreign Service was more dog-eat-dog. At every grade, an officer had a fixed number of years to earn a competitive promotion against his or her peers. Fail to make the cut and your reward was early retirement. The jump from FS-01 into the Senior Foreign Service was equivalent to the jump from colonel to brigadier general. It was also where the most drastic cuts in numbers were made. FSOs called it the “Threshold.” INR was not a good springboard for making the leap, and Sam had failed to clear the Threshold on his final try. After that, it was just a matter of how long it took Human Resources to finish the retirement paperwork.

“So how is life in the real world? Are things as green as they say on the other side of the fence?” Krittenbrink's Adam's apple jumped up and down excitedly when he talked. His suit was at least two sizes too big across the shoulders. It looked like something he had borrowed from his father. Andy was the quintessential career analyst. A little schlubby, socially awkward, and sharp as a razor. As one Washington wag had once observed, you could spot the extrovert in the CIA's analytical division, the Directorate of Intelligence, because he looked at
your
shoes when he talked to you.

“Not too bad,” Sam replied. “I took a job at Argus Systems in Arlington. They just got a big contract with the Agency to provide intelligence and analysis on South Asia, and I'm heading up the Indo-Pak team. It's not too different from what I was doing in INR, so the learning curve's not too steep.”

“I still don't understand why you didn't get promoted into the Seniors,” Andy said. “You were the best South Asia specialist in the department. It seems criminal to lose you.”

Sam smiled ruefully.

“Thanks, Andy. I appreciate the support. But you said it yourself. I was a specialist. That's not a good thing to be at State. You're civil service, and they hired you to be an expert in what you do. In the Foreign Service, we're all supposed to be generalists, and there are consequences for being too specialized. I spent too much time in South Asia. My choice, and I loved every minute of it, so I can't complain.”

“This wouldn't have anything to do with that time you told the assistant secretary to go to hell, would it? You were dead right.”

“Maybe. But that's not the point. Look at Richard and learn something from him. You're young. You've got time. He's spread so thin that he may not know very much about the issues he speaks and writes about, but he is as smooth as eighteen-year-old scotch and he plays the Washington political game as well as any elected official. Don't underestimate that. It's a real skill. It's just not mine.”

“I was sorry to see you go. You were a great boss. The guy who came in behind you couldn't find Bangladesh on a map of South Asia. Heck, I'm not sure he could find it on a map of Bangladesh.”

“I was sorry to leave. But I've made my peace with it. Let me be the voice of experience. Don't fight with the new guy. Take it from me, there's no percentage in it.” Privately, Sam wondered whether he really had accepted his forced retirement from diplomacy and the move to the private sector. He was ambivalent at best about taking a job at a Beltway Bandit consultancy, and he had thought hard about moving away to some small town in Montana or the Pacific Northwest and maybe finally finishing the Ph.D. He had even considered renting some fishing shack on the beach in Goa. In the end, there were personal ties that had kept him in Washington, and the job at Argus at least allowed him to stay in the policy game. It was a good holding position. Fortunes could swing rapidly in Washington. There was no telling what the future might hold. For now, he wanted to offer his onetime subordinate the best advice he could. Andy had a promising career in front of him if he could learn to play the game better than Sam had.

“I don't want to fight,” Andy agreed. “But the layers of bureaucracy can wear you down. I don't really like the way the intel machinery polishes all of the sharp edges of what we write. In the end, it's all mushy, lowest-common-denominator analysis and I think that's a disservice to the policy makers.”

“You're almost certainly right about that. We have a little more freedom at Argus and my team tries to take full advantage of that. It's our job to speak truth to power, but don't expect that they'll love you for it. Powerful and successful people will all tell you that they don't want to be surrounded by sycophants and yes-men and every one of them is lying.”

Andy shook his head in disbelief.

“I know you're right. But I didn't come to Washington because I wanted to get ahead. I came here because I wanted to do big things. I wanted to make a difference in the world. The only thing I'm making now is condo payments.”

“You will make a difference, Andy. I'm sure of it. Patience, young grasshopper.” Krittenbrink had not been born when
Kung Fu
went off the air, but Sam was confident that he was geeky enough to get the reference.

The young analyst did not disappoint.

“Thank you, Master Po.”

MATHIAS, WEST VIRGINIA

MARCH 29

Y
ou know you can't do things like that, Sam. You are your own worst enemy.”

Vanalika Chandra stretched languidly on the bed, the sheets still tousled and slightly damp from sex. She arched her back slightly. It was just one more thing she did that reminded Sam of a cat. He ran his finger lightly across her thigh. Her skin was the color of cinnamon.

“I know,” Sam acknowledged. He'd just finished telling Vanalika about his unfortunate exchange with Richard Newton the night before. “It was not my finest hour. The worst part is that I kind of enjoyed it. Newton is living proof that you can be a stuffed shirt and an empty suit at the same time, and I liked being the one to expose that for all to see.”

“You don't understand.” Vanalika sat up and Sam let his gaze wander idly for a brief moment over her perfect body. “All of the people in that room feel like you made Richard Newton look. Yes, they're arrogant narcissists, but they also suffer from imposter syndrome. They wake up every morning asking themselves if today's the day. The day they get caught. Exposed as ignorant frauds who don't know enough or aren't smart enough or wise enough to be in the positions they're in. They're all insecure little children underneath. What you did to Newton you could have done to any of them. He just made the mistake of speaking carelessly in front of someone who both knows what he's talking about and has no idea what's good for him.”

Vanalika reached for a pack of Marlboros on the nightstand.

“Now who doesn't know what's good for her?” Sam asked, as he lit her cigarette with the Bic lighter that had been set next to the cigarettes.

“I'm cutting back,” Vanalika protested. “I only smoke after sex, and even then only after good sex. That means my husband doesn't know. He thinks I quit six months ago.”

“And how is Rajiv?”

“Dull. And traveling a lot, fortunately.”

Vanalika, the political counselor at the Indian Embassy in Washington, was married to a wealthy and powerful Indian businessman. It had been an arranged marriage, but whatever advantage their families had hoped to gain from their union had been made moot by the couple's failure to have children. A blessing, Vanalika had once confessed to Sam. She and Rajiv remained married more out of habit and duty than because either of them was really invested.

It had been almost a year since she and Sam had become lovers. It was an illicit affair. Vanalika, in particular, would face both personal and professional disgrace should it become public. Sam was not much safer. He was employed by Argus Systems, but Diplomatic Security owned his clearances. Not without reason, DS considered adulterous relationships with foreign government officials an open invitation to blackmail. If the State Department knew about his relationship with Vanalika, DS would strip Sam of his clearances—and his access to classified information—in less time than it would take to soft-boil an egg. They were careful. This weekend was one of the few they had been able to steal. The cabin in the Shenandoah Valley was a three-hour drive from the Beltway. It was rented in a false name and isolated enough that there was no cell reception.

Vanalika flicked the ash from her cigarette into a glass ashtray advertising Greenwood Mountain Lodges and leaned back against the pillows.

“You seem a little down for a man who just got lucky with an incredible exotic fox. Please tell me that what Newton said didn't get to you. He was just being spiteful because you wounded his pride.”

“No, it's not Newton,” Sam replied. “At least not what he said. But I can't help comparing where he is with where I am. Argus was a nice soft landing spot for me after the State Department and I came to our parting of ways. But I miss it. I'm not happy with the way it ended, and I'm not thrilled about being at a Beltway Bandit. I never saw myself bellying up to the government trough as a contractor. Somehow, I always thought I'd have a little more self-respect.”

“Times change, Sam. There's no shame in what you're doing. Contractors are doing more and more of the heavy lifting in your government. Mine too, but Delhi has a long way to go before it catches up with Washington.”

“That's just the point. It was one thing when federal agencies were outsourcing noncore functions. I don't especially care who runs the State Department cafeteria, for example. That's not an inherently governmental responsibility. But these contracting firms are sprouting up in the D.C. area like mushrooms or Starbucks. They've gone from running the Pentagon's shuttle-bus service to making government policy. Argus works on national security. That's about as ‘core' a function as I can think of.”

“In which case, the American people are lucky that you're the one doing the job. I'm sure you'll be a star. Maybe I can leak you some classified information just to make sure that you get off on the right foot.”

“Got anything good?”

“Well, I hear that the Indian political counselor is having a torrid affair.”

“Do tell. Is it serious?”

“Very.” She giggled.

“I'm still not sure I see the harm in the contracting boom,” Vanalika continued. “Governments are big and slow, and private companies can often do things faster and cheaper. What does it really matter as long as the work is getting done and getting done well?”

“Look, I know a guy at the CIA who's worked on analyzing satellite imagery for twenty years. It's pretty tedious work, but it's important and highly technical. He's the guy who can tell you when the North Koreans are getting ready to launch a missile. He'd also be the first to tell you that he was glad for the steady work and government benefits, but he did the job because he was a patriot and he was helping to keep his country safe. A few weeks ago, he left the CIA and took a job at True North, a fairly typical consultancy with a contract to analyze overhead imagery for the Agency. You know budgets are tight when even Langley is looking to downsize. This guy resigned on Friday and was back at the same office on Monday doing the same thing at twice the salary. The only difference is that now he's got a red contractor badge rather than a blue Agency badge. Oh, and one more thing. He's no longer sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. Now he's responsible to his corporate masters and the company's shareholders. What he's doing is ultimately about profit and loss, and that feels wrong. Not as wrong as Richard Newton, mind you, but wrong.”

Vanalika frowned slightly and her forehead furrowed as though she were suddenly deep in thought. She had an agile mind that allowed her to skip lightly from topic to topic, and if Sam wasn't careful, he sometimes found himself a beat or two behind in their conversations.

“Are you sure that Newton is wrong?” she asked. “About Rangarajan, I mean. I'm worried about the damage he could do to the relationship with Pakistan even inadvertently. He's young and inexperienced. Some of the decisions he's made could be seen in Islamabad as provocative. Certainly Talwar seems to see it that way. You and I have read the same intel reports. The things the Pakistanis are saying in private are alarming and unremittingly hostile. Talwar neither fears nor respects Rangarajan. We don't need both, but to have neither seems a very dangerous set of circumstances.”

“Rangarajan's got to walk a fine line,” Sam agreed. “But he's no babe in the woods. You don't get to the top of the Congress Party without good political instincts and an understanding of power. He knows he can't push Talwar and the clerics too hard, but neither can he afford to look like a pushover himself. That's not an easy balance to strike. I'm not saying that he's always got it right. But I think he's doing okay. And I believe he's genuinely committed to peace with Pakistan.”

“God, I hope so,” Vanalika said. She left her cigarette smoldering in the ashtray and laid her head on Sam's shoulder. Her hair was jet-black and thick and smelled of lavender. Vanalika was not a classic beauty. Her nose, for one thing, was just a little too prominent and a little off center, the result of a childhood horse-riding accident she had once told Sam. In repose, she was rather ordinary-looking, but she had a megawatt smile and dark eyes that sparkled with intelligence and wit. To Sam, she was beautiful and challenging, and he was grateful for the time they had together.

Vanalika sat up to retrieve her cigarette.

“I just can't image that either side really wants a war,” she said, “no matter how tense things get in Kashmir.”

“They don't need to want it. They just need to choose it. There are some things they'll want even less than war. When it comes to issues of pride and identity, nations and leaders can be almost unbelievably shortsighted. No one in power wants to look weak, and when leaders get caught in the kind of standoff Talwar and Rangarajan are in right now, it can be easier for them to go down the road to war than the road to peace. It sometimes seems the path of least resistance. At first. What comes later is something else. No one ever seems more surprised by war and its costs than the leaders who make that particular choice.”

“Peace has its own perils,” Vanalika observed. “Rangarajan has reached out to Talwar, but the clerics in Islamabad have broken every agreement they've signed so far. If Rangarajan is seen as weak, the Pakistanis will just keep pushing and taking until there's nothing left to take.”

“I'm not saying you need to ask these guys to the prom. I'm just saying that Rangarajan is right to be looking for some kind of compromise. Geography is destiny, and India and Pakistan just can't escape each other.”

“Not every situation is amenable to compromise. What if the European powers of the day, horrified by the violence of Shiloh and Antietam, had sent peacekeepers to America to separate the North and the South in your civil war and force a negotiated settlement? Would the world be a better place? Sometimes victory may be the best outcome to conflict even if the costs are terrible. Sometimes, maybe, it's worth any price.”

“The Union and the Confederacy fought with ironclad warships and muzzle-loading rifles,” Sam replied. “India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Once you cross the nuclear Rubicon, there's no going back. You need to find a way to live together without killing each other.”

“Kind of like my marriage,” Vanalika suggested.

“Exactly like your marriage,” Sam agreed.

“Vanalika,” he said, suddenly serious. “Why don't you leave him? Move in with me. We can stop skulking around. Maybe even go out to dinner in D.C. in a restaurant with a wine list instead of a selection of light beers in a can.”

“Sam, we've been over this,” Vanalika replied, with a hint of reproof in her voice. “I like what we are. I don't need more. I don't want more. Rajiv is a snake, but I know how to handle snakes. He doesn't make me happy; he doesn't make me unhappy either. You make me happy, Sam. Even so, we'd never make it as a real couple. And, in any event, you're living with someone already.”

“The boxes of Indian takeout piling up in my fridge would beg to differ. Who, pray tell, is my live-in love?”

“Janani. You've been living with her ghost for seven years. A mere flesh-and-blood girl could never measure up to that kind of competition.” Vanalika reached over and gently stroked his cheek. “We have a good thing here. Don't spoil it by trying to rescue me from the dark knight. I don't need rescuing.”

“Do you really think my motives are so simon-pure? Maybe I'm just in it for the sex.”

“You do seem to have a thing for Indian girls. Am I just the latest in a string of South Asian conquests? Another jewel in the crown?” She smiled as she said this to show that she did not mean anything unkind.

“That's right. I'm a Mughal emperor and you're my barbarian princess.”

“Oh, come on. Talk to me. You know everything there is to know about Rajiv, and I know next to nothing about your past. I don't mind sharing you with Janani. I just want to know what she was like. Are you with me because I remind you of her?”

“No. She was different than you.”

“Different how?” Vanalika wrapped her fingers around Sam's and pulled his hand up to her lips. She kissed his knuckles softly.

“You're a Brahmin, Vee. You grew up in comfort with power and privilege. You wear it well. It looks good on you. But you wear it easily because you've never known anything else. Janani was Dalit.”

He felt Vanalika stiffen almost imperceptibly at that revelation. It was so slight that she might not even have been aware of it, but with her body pressed up against his, Sam could feel it.

“Really?” she asked.

“Really.”

Vanalika shifted onto one elbow. There was a gleam in her eye as though he had just told her something shocking or salacious. Sam understood why this piece of information about his former spouse would be so titillating. The Dalit were untouchables, members of the so-called unscheduled castes whose ancestors had been tanners or butchers or laborers doing work that the Hindu religion considered unclean. The structure of the caste system was complex and multidimensional, with four major castes and literally thousands of subdivisions. But however you looked at it, the Brahmins were at the top and the Dalit were on the bottom. Caste was a rough analogue to race in the United States. Officially, discrimination on the basis of caste was against the law in modern India. There were affirmative action programs in place for low-caste Indians at universities, in government ministries, and in state-run businesses. There had even been a Dalit president of the country. Life for the lower castes had definitely improved over the last twenty years, but prejudice remained, buried just under the surface. And it ran deep, especially in rural areas. High-caste families would not dream of letting their children “marry down.” Sam doubted that Vanalika, who was from the highest echelons of Indian society, had many—if any—Dalit friends.