The Parnell Affair (11 page)

“So you guessed why I wanted to see you,” she said.  “I know it's a lot to ask; I'm sure he's as reluctant to reveal a source as you are.”

“Maybe,” Tobias said.  “But in this case, only because I'm asking.  I've been at it all week but it's not the sort of information anyone around Congress is likely to know.  I could ask him,” Tobias said slowly.  “The thing is, we're not exactly pals.  As a matter of fact, he hates my guts.”

“I see,” Sally said and took a sip of her drink.

Tobias thought he heard a reproach in her voice.  “I could use it to my advantage, of course,” he said quickly.  “Or try to.  I could try to get him to let something slip; get him riled up enough to shout; could tell him it was illegal and maybe he'll tell me 'if so-and-so does it, it's legal' or something like that.”

“It is illegal,” Sally said.  She had been disappointed frequently during the last week and supposed she was expecting to be disappointed again.  The NOC officer in her, who'd recruited dozens of agents, told her that expecting to get nothing was the surest way to get nothing—the subject feels justified in living down to your expectations.  Sally knew she ought to treat the conversation like a recruitment, but the idea wouldn't take and she caught herself letting the silence weigh on him, hoping he'd speak.  “It's very illegal,” she said.  “There's a law, The Intelligence Identities Protection Act.  And this being the United States, anyone who violates it ought to go to jail.”

“Yeah?” Tobias said, a little surprised and not at the law's existence.  “I'll look it up before I go at him.  If that's what you want.  I only say that because enough things have been done to you without your permission,” he added quickly.

“That's sweet of you,” she said.  “But that's what I came to ask.”

“You got it,” he said.  “First thing.  There's another way, though: I'm just throwing this out there so you have options.  I could go in there and antagonize him, try to scare him, and he may let something slip: or I could call in a favor with someone friendly to him.  She's married now, so I'm not sure she'd be up for any techniques that would
absolutely
get us the dirt.”

“I see,” Sally said and shared his smile.

“But there you go,” he said.  “Good cop and bad cop.  Or naughty cop.  Whoever you want.”

“I want you to ask,” she said.  Another pause.  She arrested a shift in her seat when the cushion's leather made a rude noise against whatever fabric her daughter's low-rise pants were made out of.

“Consider it done,” Tobias said.  “He should be in on Monday; I'll ask then.  With this law against revealing agents' names, do you have any legal recourse?”

“Operatives,” she corrected. “Or Operations Officers: agents are the spies I recruit.”  Sally sighed and used a napkin to sop up the condensation pooling around her glass.  “We went to Justice,” she said.  “Or, rather, Joe went.  On Monday, when I was at headquarters.  At first they refused to even admit a crime had been committed.  It took a hell of a lot of phone calls and Joe shouting at people before they'd admit I was CIA.  At this point, it's 'under consideration,' which means they won’t say yes to an investigation and don't have the guts to say no.”

“That's outrageous,” Tobias mumbled.  “You'd think, even if the Director over there—to say nothing of the AG—were against launching a criminal investigation of the Administration that appointed them, at least some life-long public servant, some apolitical local FBI agent, would start an investigation.”

“I wouldn't think he'd get access to the people he'd need to question,” Sally said.  “Joe wanted a specially appointed independent prosecutor.  We see how well that went.  Now, we're hoping if we could learn the name of Les Vonka's source and take it to the press,” here she smiled at Tobias, “there'd be too much noise for them to ignore.”

“It's a good idea,” he said, “and I hope it works.  But if it goes that far, they'll probably just throw some sap under the bus.”

“You're probably right,” she said.  “But at least we'd be in the ring swinging.  Right now we're getting beat up in the parking lot.”

Tobias paused to work out her metaphor.  She still looked beautiful: the worry he'd seen earlier had relaxed to sorrow, which can have a profoundly stirring effect on the right sort of man.

“Whatever I can do, in any way I can help,” he said.  “I will.”  She returned his gaze steadily and a little color returned to her features.  “And if I can't choke the source out of Vonka,” Tobias said lightly, “I could always attend one of those White House press briefs.  Put a fire under them.  Haven't gone to one of those things in years but it may be our only option.  Vonka implicated them, after all.  I could read up on the law, talk to a few lawyers, and accuse them in front of the cameras.”

“That's a good plan B,” she said, shifting forward in her chair and squeaking again.  “What is with this thing?” she mumbled.  “Actually, that may be better than plan A: if Vonka doesn't give you the name, it looks like a cover up.  And I can give you the names of some lawyers, professors at Georgetown that Joe went to for advice.  But, can I ask you another favor?”

“You can ask me anything,” he said.

“Could you use my name when you confront Vonka?” she said, a little cold heat flashing in the blue-diamond of her eyes.  “Not at first, if you don't think it'll help,” she said.  “But sometime?  As a last resort.”

“As in, 'In the name of the family, I demand,' kind of thing?” he asked.

“Oh, god,” she whispered as if embarrassed for him.

“Well, I mean, not in those words, obviously,” he said, not embarrassed but grinning.

“That's the sentiment, yes,” she said.  She threw back the rest of her drink.  “Let him know I'm behind the question,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” Tobias said.  No nonsense in her voice, he thought.

“I'd like another, but I have to drive home,” she said as the barman approached.  “Just water,” she told him.  When he left, to Tobias she said, “This may be out of line, but could you ask his editor?  Or the Editor in Chief?”

“It's not out of line,” Tobias said, “but they wouldn't do anything.  They'd love the controversy: circulation,” he whispered and winked.  “And it would give him a chance to throw back in my face all the stuff I've ever said about not revealing
my
sources.  Vonka may try that, too, but I've got his number.”

The barman dropped off her water and Sally drained half of it in one go.  She's still here, Tobias thought, even after she asked her favor.

“How have you been holding up?” he asked.

She paused in lowering her glass, then put it down.  “I bet it shows on my face,” she said, “under my eyes.”

“I think you look beautiful,” he said.  Realizing what he'd just said, Tobias drew a confused look across his face; Sally waited, also surprised.  “Well, hell,” he said, settling back in his chair, “that's not a secret, is it?”

She laughed silently.  “Haven't thought about it in a while,” she lied.

“I'm sure,” he said.  “Christ, you'll let me say I'm sorry one time, won't you?” he asked.  She nodded.  “I'm sorry.  Is it an absolute career killer?”

“Not just my career,” she said.

“What's that?” he asked.

“I can't really go into it,” she said haltingly, “even off the record, what I did at the agency.  But nobody works alone, do they?  Even you.”

“Shit,” he said quietly.  Leaning forward, he said, “I didn't even think of that.  I guess I thought of you as some sort of Jane Bond, breaking into SPECTRE Control Center.  Pretty stupid, come to think of it.  I didn't consider all the people involved, left hanging—endangered.  In other countries?  Have any—” he began to ask but left off at the look on her face.  “Oh, Sally,” he breathed.

She wasn't on the verge of tears, though her breathing had increased: her eyes, Tobias thought, had run out of tears.  He opened his mouth to say sorry again, saw it was unwelcome, and said: “I think maybe you can risk that second drink.”

She shook her head.  “I still have to drive home,” she said.  “I'll just take a slug of yours.”  She preferred white wine but the unexpected coolness of the Beaujolais braced her up against the all too familiar specters of the dead, who'd trusted her, and the signals she'd ignored.  She caught him staring, though it wasn't the sort from earlier: he had appraising eyes, like Henry Updike's or Arthur MacGregor's, only more so.

“Back to work,” he said quietly.  She took a breath.  “It's horrible, and it ups the stakes: it may have technically broken the law earlier, now it's homicide.  I don't want to sound too much like a bastard, but we can use their deaths—I'm assuming more than one, and nothing worse than death—to lean on underlings who may not want to become the Don Segretti's of Parnell-gate,” he said, alluding to the famous bumbling political saboteur whose discovery helped bring down Nixon.  “The other side of the coin is that the Administration will play very hard ball.”

“They've been playing very rough since before we knew there was a game,” she said.  “Though we should have.”

“You can't blame yourself for this,” he said.  He could see her say, 'Can't I?' in her mind.  “Well, you shouldn't.”

“Stop listening to my thoughts,” she said, trying to smile.  “There are things I should have heeded, warnings that I haven't told you about.”

“But I've guessed them,” Tobias said.  “Joe told me about his meeting at the White House, about how they told him to change his story.  He said there was more to it but that he needed time to consider if going public was the right thing to do.  Well, I can guess what he left out: they threatened to expose you if Joe didn't get in line.  You seem to be blaming yourself so either you think you should have changed your reports—and from what Joe told me of the uranium operations in Niger, that's not remotely possible—or you think you should have sent up a warning flare to CIA and didn't.  You can't blame yourself for that!”

“Tobias, please,” she said, not wanting to go through it all again.  Not this soon.  She said ingenuously, “I'm still under confidentiality: I can't talk about it.”

“I'm sorry but you can't blame yourself,” he pressed.  “You had every right to expect them to protect you and everyone involved in your work.  Every right.”

She held up a hand to stop him talking.  “I'm sure I'll come to believe that in time,” she said.  She took a breath deep enough to control herself, her first in a while.  “But not today.  And I don't think it's a bad thing to feel at least partially responsible for, for what's happened: that won't stop me from trying to hold accountable those who are wholly responsible.”

Her agents' deaths should not go unpunished, of that she was certain and she owed them no less.  But the senselessness of her betrayal left her with the unanswerable questions faced by those who lose someone in a car crash, a fall down the stairs, or a slip in the shower: why them, why now, how could this happen?  Death without reason haunts the human mind.  Amid such unanswered questions, pursued by unfulfilled responsibilities, one thought remained clear to Sally: to seek justice for the living and
vengeance for the dead.

Tobias nodded minutely as a moment passed.  “Inside all those good looks,” he said, “there's one tough mother.”

She laughed without sound and rolled her eyes.  Taking a sip of her water, her hand came away soaked with condensation.  She reached for a napkin down the bar to dry her hand, taking a deliberate amount of time.  Why are you still here? Tobias thought.  Wouldn't you have had this conversation with Joe?  Bad blood between you about his role in your outing?  She saw his apprising eyes peering into her.

“How far had your investigation gone?” she asked.  “Before Vonka threw his monkey wrench into it.”

“It went pretty well,” he said, “or I thought it had, but apparently not far enough.  I found a copy of Joe's report,” he said and watched her features.  Nothing.  “It reads just like he said.  Did he mention those Niger documents to you?  The ones Vonka wrote about.”

“Yes,” she said.  “They pulled them out when he was at the White House.  I'm a bad spy because I didn't find them,” she said with the poise of a crouching leopard.  “And regardless of what Mr. Vonka may write about these mysterious Niger documents, they cannot, in anyway, prove what he claims.”

“Wait a second,” Tobias said, leaning forward.  “Have you still not seen them?  I would have thought—you must have been debriefed.  Didn't CIA tell you what was in them?”

“But they've never seen them,” former NOC officer Sally Parnell said before freezing, eyes wide, at her breach of security, her first in twenty years of service.

“We're off the record,” Tobias said casually, waving a hand and leaning closer.  “Don't worry about that.”

“It's not that simple,” she said faintly.  “Maybe you'll keep your mouth shut about it—”

“There's no 'maybe' about it,” he said, interrupting.

“Fine, but that still doesn't give me the right to divulge confidential information,” she said.

“It's not all that confidential,” he said.  “I've got a copy of the summery of the Niger docs—the one prepared for the Senate—at home.”

Sally said nothing.

“Wait a second,” he said.  “If they've never seen them, then they didn't write the summary.  Who the hell did? NSA?”

Sally shrugged.  “Anything's possible,” she said, “though they deal mostly with electronic surveillance.  Our sort of agencies aren't exactly renowned for sharing information,” she tried to joke.