The Global War on Morris (2 page)

ORANGE ALERT

MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2004

A
s soon as the gate to West Executive Drive began swinging open, Jon Pruitt felt the usual pain in his stomach and sighed. He was about to meet with Vice President Cheney, who would feel similar pain in his chest. That was the bond between these two men: it hurt them to see each other.

Pruitt peered at the scenery from the backseat of his car. The avenue was a sealed-off stretch of pavement between the West Wing of the White House and the majestic Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Now it doubled as a secure passageway and narrow parking lot. There was little movement outside. No scurrying White House aides. No bustling reporters and correspondents. It was a typical August Monday in Washington. The heat and humidity had invaded, driving Congress into its summer retreat and withering the White House press corps to a skeletal crew. West Executive Drive was like
the main street of a parched western ghost town. All it lacked was the tumbleweed.

“Side entrance,” Pruitt instructed his driver. He thought,
Freakin' Cheney. Ordering me to use the side entrance.
Sigh.

The West Wing side entrance. Not the front, where the marine guard stood frozen at attention, where the press could see who was coming and going, where one entered to the impressed gaze of the whole watching world. No, Pruitt's access was through the side door, like the servants' entrance. Which is why Cheney instructed his visitors to use it. You slipped in the side entrance that led to the back steps that climbed to the dim corridor that brought you to the Vice President's office. The exalted senior officials privileged enough to get an office in the West Wing ordinarily wanted proximity to the President or at least a decent view of the grounds. But when Vice President Cheney saw that office near the back steps by the side door that no one noticed, he said, “I'll take it!”

The car stopped near the door. As Pruitt emerged, the heat smothered him.

“Thirty minutes,” he told his driver. And then thought,
If I'm not back by then, check Guantánamo
. Sigh.

He pushed through the door and gulped the air-conditioned oxygen. A receptionist gave him the “isn't this heat brutal” smile that everyone wore this time of year.

“I have an appointment with the Vice President,” Pruitt said. At the start of his career in government, the thought that he would one day say the words “I have an appointment with the Vice President” was unfathomable. Now, when he uttered them, it was like saying, “I have an appointment with the assistant principal” after being caught instigating a food fight in the high school cafeteria.

“Yes, Mr. Pruitt. Go right up.”

He smiled, and began climbing the stairs to the West Wing's second floor. There was a time when Pruitt's compact and muscular body—sculpted from his days as an athlete at Saint David's School
in Manhattan—would have bounded up those steps. But in the year since becoming Special Legal Advisor to the Secretary of Homeland Security, his steps had become tentative, as if feeling his way in the dark. His smile had been reduced to a slight pucker, as if everything left a bad taste in his mouth.

And he sighed. Constantly. Sighing almost the way most people breathed.

T
he stomach pain flared with each step.
Why did I take this job? It was so much easier when I did legal affairs at the CIA. Sure, there were a few failed coups. And that shitstorm when those Predators misfired into that school in Somalia. But on the whole, every day was a holiday compared to the crap I get here.

He reached the top step and looked down a darkened corridor toward the Vice President's office.

In an anteroom, a few staffers sat at desks, straight and proper. One, without even looking at Pruitt, said, “The Vice President is waiting inside.”

And there he was, at the far end of the room. Leaning on his desk, his arms spread and his wrists locked. Vice President Richard Cheney. In person. Which, Pruitt thought, was more frightening than the way all the caricatures portrayed him. The editorial cartoons didn't do Cheney justice. They didn't capture that permanent sneer, the upturned lip that made it look like he was always on the verge of spitting from the side of his face; the uniform blue suit and red tie (which Pruitt was convinced Cheney wore to bed at night); the way he seemed to duck his chin beneath his collar, like a turtle retreating in its shell; the thinning white hair above the skeptical eyes. He was all the more frightening in person.

Out of the corner of his eye, Pruitt detected Karl Rove lurking in the back of the room. In this administration, the most indispensable talent was good peripheral vision.

The office was smaller than the Oval Office, and more functional. Cheney's guests sat close to the door. The less they saw of the office, the better. Plush couches faced each other, and a large blue Victorian chair was reserved for the Vice President. Cheney's favorite photograph, from the 2000 election, was prominently displayed on a mahogany table. There was President Bush, wrapping his arms around his running mate. That was the afternoon that Cheney, as head of the campaign's vice presidential search committee, announced that the search was over. And he had found himself.

Cheney looked up from the stacks of papers on his desk then nudged his eyeglasses up the bridge of his nose. “What do you have for me this morning?”

“Nothing new. Nothing since last night. The last time you asked . . . sir.”

Cheney's sneer seemed to dip, then clicked back to its usual place. “What about that report I sent you?”

“The Florida threat?”

“That one.”

“We checked it out. Turns out it's a bunch of Quakers planning a war protest.”

“So?”

“Quakers. Elderly . . . Quakers. You know, the Quaker meeting house. Nonviolence. ‘Kumbaya.' That sort of thing. They're planning a peaceful protest against the war in Iraq.”

“Protesting Quakers. Isn't that a contradiction in terms? Doesn't that seem suspicious to you? Put more people on them.”

“Sir, it's a group of religious pacifists at a Friends meeting house planning a peaceful protest. We can't spy on religious—”

Cheney gave him the death glare, and Pruitt felt his perspiration freeze-dry along with the inside of his mouth. Still, while Pruitt's stomach was now grinding, he knew that the Vice President's pacemaker had to be shifting gears as well.

“Are you the Department of Homeland Security or the ACLU? Because if you don't have the stomach to do the job, we may have to look for people who will.”

Pruitt knew what the Vice President was doing. Psychological warfare in the biggest Washington war of all: bureaucratic turf. If you can't do it, I'll find an agency that can. And further marginalize your existence. And cut your budgets.

“Yes, sir,” he muttered, sighing.

“Now, item two. The Democratic Party had their convention up in Boston. Christ, if naïveté were a disease, then that convention was a telethon.” Cheney seemed to snicker. “Kerry came out of it with a bounce”—he waved a stack of polling data in the air—“and now it's our turn. Our convention is in New York on the thirtieth. I think DHS should upgrade the terror alert.”

“But we have no credible—”

“There's intel out there about a possible al-Qaeda attack against the World Bank, the IMF, and the New York Stock Exchange!” The Vice President waved another document from his desk. “If ever there was a time to raise the alert, it's now. Today.”

“Mr. Vice President, there are no credible warnings of an imminent attack. Just media speculation. From unnamed sources. In this Administration. On Fox News.”

“Does DHS want to wait for the mushroom cloud over the New York Stock Exchange? Let me remind you of something,” Cheney said. This time his lip seemed headed straight for his right eye. “You're supposed to be my guy at DHS. The only reason I agreed to Ridge's appointment as Secretary was because I'd have a guy there to keep an eye on things. To protect the President's agenda. But lately I think you're going a little soft on us. Like Rice. And Powell. Are you going soft?”

Pruitt asked, “Is President Bush asking DHS to raise the alert?”

Cheney rolled his eyes. “I will remind you that the reason we have the color alerts at DHS is to insulate the President from the
criticism that he is politicizing threat. Or scaring the American people.”

“Well, I—”

“And besides, the President has a different announcement. We're asking Congress to create a National Intelligence Director. And a National Counterterrorism Center.”

“And where does that leave us over at DHS?”

Cheney's sneer seemed to elevate to a quasi-smile. And his eyes sparkled. “That remains to be seen. If DHS won't do the job . . .”

“I'll speak with Secretary Ridge. I'll let him know how strongly you feel about raising the threat level.”

“That would be advisable.”

Rove chimed in: “Don't raise it too high. Has to be credible. Can't look political. What color makes sense?”

I'll see if I have something in a nice orange,
Pruitt thought, and left the office.

THE TOWEL ATTENDANT

MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2004

F
lesh. Hassan tried so hard not to notice, but it was impossible. Flesh
encircled him at the main pool of the Paradise Hotel and Residences at Boca. Fleshy
breasts taunted him from low bikini tops, and fleshy thighs sloped from bikini
bottoms. There were stomachs, taut and flat, but also undulating bellies, soft and
bloated from the breakfast buffet. There was deep brown flesh, and bronze flesh, and
pallid white flesh, and flesh turned red from the hot sun. Creases in the flesh ran
in all directions, plunging into and swooping out of swimsuits, leading Hassan's
eyes to forbidden places. There were also the fleshy remains of the seniors who
migrated to Florida from all points north. The nanas and poppies and grannies and
grampses who flocked there to roast in the sun. They became so brown and shriveled
that they looked like walking beef jerky with New York accents.

And how these people positioned themselves! Sprawled on chaise
lounges with their knees high in the air and their legs spread
wide. They splayed their arms across each other's bodies, or sometimes wedged
themselves into a single chaise lounge, interlocking their perspiring bodies in a
helix position, flesh on flesh.

It wasn't easy being a celibate terrorist and pool towel attendant at the
Paradise.

This is the test of my
worthiness,
Hassan thought.
They promised me seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Then they send me to the
Paradise Hotel and Residences and tempt me with flesh, and try to break me with
the constant calypso music over the loudspeaker, turning my mind into steel
drums.

Hassan was feeling the strain. How could he concentrate on leading his
sleeper cell with these pounding headaches? Not to mention that stabbing pain in his
groin. Maybe a hernia, he had read on
WebMD
. But the Paradise Hotel didn't offer health insurance to
part-timers, and the budget guys at the Abu al-Zarqawi Army of Jihad Martyrs of
Militancy Brigade declined his request for more money for medical expenses. They
did, in their infinite mercy, make one suggestion: “How about a forged Medicaid
card? That we can do.” So Hassan filled out the paperwork and emailed it to Tora
Bora. Every week for the past six weeks a functionary had promised him, “Hand to
God, it will only take one more week, Hassan.” Meanwhile, the groin pain was getting
worse.

“This is my test. I will not fail,” Hassan coached himself every day. From
early morning, when he dispensed fresh towels poolside, to the evening, when he
limped from chair to chair, swiping off clumps of towels saturated with sweat and
chlorine and sand and suntan oils and God knows what else. And in the hours in
between, he stood guard in the towel hut, battling the infidels all day
about . . . towels. What was it with these people and their
insatiable demand for towels? He would dispense the maximum two towels per guest,
and then fight with each guest about the two-towel maximum. He would point to the
massive sign with the huge red words:
TOWEL
LIMIT: 2 TOWELS PER
GUEST. THANK YOU
, and still they would
demand three towels or four or even more.
No wonder they won't give us back our land
, he thought.
Look how they fight for an extra
towel!

Of course, it didn't matter to Hassan that the Americans who visited the
Paradise never took any land from his people. To him, they were all Zionists. The
Italian Americans, the Irish Americans, the African-Americans, the Hispanic
Americans. If they were American, he was sworn to destroy them. He had even said so,
in the video that awaited his final act. He took an oath to destroy them, to
annihilate them, to consume them in a wrathful, unmerciful, apocalyptic
fireball.

But until then, he had to keep them dry.

His reward was nearing. Within months, God willing, his task would be
complete. The sleeper cell would be activated. Azad, Achmed, Pervez, and he would be
roused from their long hibernation. Azad would be freed from his job at Bozzotti
Bros. Landscaping; Achmed liberated from the humiliation of cleaning planes of the
mess left by first-class infidels; and Pervez would serve his last Happy Meal as a
McDonald's counterman. They would attack. Then Allah be praised, Paradise wouldn't
be the name of the hotel where he worked, but the afterlife he had been promised.
Paradise, where he would meet the seventy-two virgins. In the flesh.

He closed his eyes, imagining the virgins, imagining away the pain in his
head and groin.