The Parnell Affair (31 page)

Joe choked on the last words, rage and fear and the desperate desire to maintain the clear head necessary to see no such brutal people again laid hands on his daughter, crafted an unreadable mask of his face.

Opposite him, Sally had calmed as he told his story.  For a moment only did she reproach herself for her professional mind taking over.  But in truth it was her mother's instincts that demanded calm, calculation, and sat quietly in the corners of her mind ready to add their strength to the spy who found herself without a country and who must find an end to this threat against her child.

“I'm sorry, Joe,” she said, intending to deny whatever he might imply as to an ongoing operation—she knew her house must be bugged.

“Don't tell me you are sorry,” he said coldly.  “They wronged you, wronged us both.  Fine!  But the proper recourse was through the courts!”

“And the courts have been working well for you, have they?” she said, trying to fit what she said now with what she had said to John Wu, for the sake of whoever overheard.

“That is not the point,” he said, coming close enough to shout in a whisper.  He pointed up the stairs and said, “Whatever you've been doing has caused men to kidnap our daughter!”

“I'm sorry, Joe, I'm sorry but I haven't been doing anything,” she said and it hurt.

He turned away in disgust.  He read the signals she'd made to indicate the room was bugged.  His look was bordering upon hatred when he turned back.  She let herself cry, quietly, and for a moment only; she had to let him see that she felt as much horror as he did at what had happened.  But if there was a way to save her operation—particularly a way that would indicate she was not a threat and so reduce the danger to Lucy—she would pursue it.

“It's all a stupid misunderstanding,” she said, leaving her voice to crack where it wanted.  “It's horrible what they've done—and someone should be fired for it.  But I can see now why they've come to the conclusion there's an operation.  There isn't.  That's not what I was doing.  I'll tell you about what made them suspicious, but not now,” she said with shame in her voice that she did not feel.  “Not why someone else might be listening.”

Her relationship with Tobias was made to order as an excuse.  She was not investigating anything, the argument ran, she was simply interested in someone who was.  Her talking to John Wu was simply a lonely woman talking to an old college friend while her lover was away.  But she felt she could not tell Joe at that moment: the idea that her lust had caused their daughter to be kidnapped might occur to him and then who knows what he'd say.

Joe, however, had been Sally's husband for over twenty years and had had countless operational conversations with her while electronic surveillance captured every word.  He could tell she was playing—at least in part—to the crowd and suddenly didn’t care what she was doing.  He cooled to a sad calm.

“I don't give a damn who's listening,” he said.  “Let them.  I want them to hear this.  Lucy is packing her bags.  I've packed mine.  I've called Anna and told her to take only the things she needs and go to Siegfried Luntz's house (it's only blocks from Colombia).  He'll look after her until we get to New York.  Jason has a plane, you know: he is waiting to fly us there.  Once in New York, we'll take the first flight to Paris.  Anna will just have to finish her undergraduate at the Sorbonne.  Jean will put us up in Paris.”  He took a deep breath.  “This was a scare,” he said clearly and slowly.  “That's all that was intended.  And it has worked.  We both know you were outed only because we showed their WMD arguments to be hollow.  If they want to start a war on false pretenses, I don't care anymore.  I won't risk my children.”

Sally stepped back in disbelief, but nowhere in his features—which she knew as well as he did hers—did she see dissimulation.  The scare
had
worked.  She nodded without knowing it.  “Alright, Joe,” she breathed.  “I'll catch up to you in a few days or a week.”

“What?” he cried.

“You don't want me next to you on the plane, not once you know what I've really done,” she said: he did not understand but thought she was lying for sake of the bugs.  “And someone also has to close up the house.  And I have my job to think of.  I'll resign, but that can't happen overnight.  I'll catch up.  I have to see Lucy,” she said and walked to the stairs.

Halfway up the staircase, she was running and by Lucy's door her mother's instincts pushed to the front, tearfully demanding she hold her daughter.

Tobias was not surprised that he received no call from Sally Tuesday evening, though he listened for the phone sleeplessly for most of the night.  The next morning he rose and prepared for her return, somewhat dubious of the proper mood returning with her no matter how long they'd waited.  To keep busy in the meantime (having prepped a light breakfast for them), he checked his email.  He had one from Sally, sent the night before.  With a vague anxiety tempered by hope, he opened the message to find: “Can't come tomorrow morning, no matter how desperately I want to.  I'll try to call you in the afternoon.”  She'd closed the email with “Love, Sally.”  His disappointment was sweet.  He imagined—not knowing how accurately—that something to do with Lucy prevented her from coming over: perhaps she was home sick.  He threw out the breakfast and left for the office.

DC rarely gets snow and so Tobias frequently biked to work year round.  He, in fact, preferred biking in the winter because the cool temperatures kept him from sweating on the way in.  In any event, it was not a long journey.  About halfway along it, when he took to the sidewalk to avoid some emergency road construction (looked like a water main), he noticed a bundled-up runner at the mouth of an alley.  It was Sally.  She caught his eye and then ducked down the alleyway.

Thinking at first this was some kind of romantic rendezvous, Tobias followed her in.  But as he coasted to a stop, swinging one leg over his bike and standing on one peddle, he noticed the look on Sally's face.  Serious and immobile, she had the look of a professional whose work was violent and had spent all night in its employment.  Once he stood before her, however, a small iota of her icy demeanor melted: she reached up and brushed his lips with hers.  He waited; the jackhammer in the street sent echoing peels down the alleyway.

Sally told him what had happened, about the kidnapping.  She left nothing out and—despite the noise of the jackhammer, which she deliberately endured so it would foil any surveillance that had followed Tobias—she found herself speaking faster and faster, relating everything she felt.  When she'd ground to a halt, Tobias took her in his arms.  She returned his embrace with all the surprising strength her lithe body possessed but not for long.  She disengaged them as if she would not allow herself that comfort, though she had still to stand very close to make herself heard over the jackhammer.  The question now—with the Administration aware of their interest in obtaining a copy of the Niger docs—was how should they proceed, if they could.

“Are you sure you want to continue?” Tobias asked.

“I can't give up the operation,” she said.  “If I did I think I'd fall to pieces.  Throw myself in the Potomac.”  She saw a flash of worry on Tobias's face.  She smiled bravely, defiantly: no such impulse was present in her person, there had been no room left for giving up, when Sally was created.  “I won't,” she said.  “I won't give up.  I'm still on the job, I still serve my country though her leaders are now criminals—she needs us to defend her more now than ever.  In the military, they take an oath to defend the constitution: from within the government or without, that's my oath as well—to defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign or domestic.”

Tobias could see she was talking to herself as much as to him.  Though he thought he understood this sort of nationalist sentiment, he'd never experienced it.  It surprised him to see such fervent allegiance in so down-to-earth and rational a person.  But perhaps she needed a pep talk and knew what she needed to hear.  True leaders can lead themselves.

“No matter what you choose, I'm with you,” he said.  “I'll continue the investigation even if you decide you have to call it quits.  Don't worry about that.  Just be sure you think it's worth it, risking—” he didn't enumerate whose lives were at risk.

“Worth it to stop a war?” she asked.  She shook her head.  “My children were in danger every day of their lives because of my job.  They're safer now that Joe has taken them to Paris than they've ever been.”  She stared off into space for a moment.  “She comforted me,” she said so quietly Tobias could scarcely hear her words: he knew she meant Lucy.  “I had to let her.  I had to fall to pieces and let her comfort me and hear her say, 'Let's just forget it,' so she wouldn't ask questions in her room, which was as likely to be bugged as mine.  What a wonderful mother I am: couldn't even let my daughter be scared and expect comfort.”

It sunk in for Tobias, at last, the extent to which the world had changed since last night.  Not since he'd investigated the drug cartels in Colombia in the '80s had he felt that moral danger lie around every corner.  The jackhammer began to remind him of machinegun fire he'd heard in Bogotá.

She knew she was impressing a point upon him, not testing his nerve or resolve but bringing it to life.  The NOC officer in her had done so countless times with foreign agents in twenty years.  She also knew no such technique would pass unnoticed, not past Tobias, and so she did not consider it manipulation.

“I don't know if I've sown any seeds of doubt in their minds with the way I've handled things,” she said.  “Maybe they never doubt.  Maybe the first suspicion made procuring the documents impossible, even if they haven't destroyed them.”

“I don't think they have,” he said.  “They still have to make
Congress grant them war powers and they may need their most definitive proof to sway any holdouts.  As for the impossibility of our getting a hold of the docs, I don't know.  It could be this whole thing happened solely because of your pass at John Wu.  They didn't seem to react to my pass at that State Department woman who didn't think I was attractive.  If they haven't warned everyone off me, I might still have a shot.  But it's looking pretty grim.”

“Undoubtedly the whole OSP has been warned that I was soliciting a leak of the Niger docs,” she said.  “Getting any of them to leak now seems all but hopeless.  That can't be our only way.”

“If you want to stop the war, they pretty much are,” he said.  “They're the only evidence we know about that proves the case for war was faked.”

Sally did not look happy but, if anything, all the more determined.  “Maybe I'll go to the DCI,” she said.  “Lodge probably won't want to damage his relationship with the White House—anymore than it already is—but we do have an operative at the OSP.  Some punk with his nose up the DDO's ass, but Lodge could order him to make a copy of the docs and bring them out.  If it were any other building than the Pentagon—”
she said but let her expression finish the sentence.

“Wait, look,” Tobias said, wanting to buy some time for reflection before she tried some 007 infiltration of the Pentagon.  “Let's take this one step at a time.  I'll contact that guy at State I talked to before.  If there's a general warning about me, he won't even say hello.  If there isn't a warning out on me, I could try to get a meeting with the Secretary of State.  He's said to oppose the war, had pushed for inspectors at the UN.”

“Who have found nothing in Iraq,” Sally said, “and the White House and press are playing it as if that's proof that Iraq isn't complying with the UN resolution.”  Sally closed her eyes and sighed.  “I know, I know,” she said.  “I need to take a few days to cool down.  Christmas is Friday,” she said sadly.  “Despite all the crazy things my life has asked of me, I've never missed Christmas with the girls.”

Tobias wasn't sure what they could do at this point.  He'd hit stonewalls before while pursuing a story but if they were ever this high they'd never been capped with barbed wire and machinegun nests.  He wondered whether approaching any member of the OSP was now entirely out of the question: true, they must have been warned about Sally, but someone who had reservations before the warning would not lose them because of threats and cautions.  If anything, he thought, misgivings a member of the OSP might have would be strengthened knowing others shared them.  Another option was to recruit someone to their cause with so much clout that he or she could simply walk in and take the Niger docs.  But who could he approach?

Before anything, he had to know if his play at the UN had poisoned his name.  He thought not; they wouldn't want a rumor spreading that the Niger docs were fake and couldn't warn people about him without saying why.  To make sure, though, he called Gerald Hicman at State.  If Gerald talked to him, then Tobias still had his name.

Tobias still had his name.  After the usual introductions, after it was clear Gerald felt no more than his usual unease about talking to Tobias, Tobias had to come up with an excuse for the call.

“So, I'm just going through the list of people I'd talked to about the case for war,” he said.  “Always like to keep in touch, see if anything new has come up.”  Cold calls were standard procedure in his line of work; never knew when a source or potential source would decide to speak.

“Glad to hear from you,” Gerald said, though not as if it were anything more than formality.  “Haven't heard much lately, except from the news.”

He sounded puzzled and Tobias didn't want to raise any suspicions.  “Things cool down between the appointees and the Secretary?”

“Oh, you heard about that?” Gerald said with a laugh.  “About Thoblon.”

“Only what you told me last time,” Tobias said.

“I see; I thought news had traveled real fast,” Gerald said.  “Here's the next installment for you.”  There was a pause as Gerald leaned over to close his office door; he spoke more quietly and with more pleasure when he returned.  “So you know he and the Secretary were at odds because Thoblon wouldn't cooperate with me—or anybody else.  Well, the day before the secretary went to the UN, he told Thoblon he wanted his resignation on his desk by the time he got back.”

“Whoa,” Tobias said.

“Yeah,” Gerald laughed.  “Big whoa.  Here's the kicker.  Thoblon didn't comply.  He was appointed by the President, confirmed by Congress: he can't be fired.  So he wouldn't leave.  The Secretary couldn't believe it.  Hauled him into his office, bawled him out—nothing.  Took all his work away, took his secretary, limited his access to the building to just his office and the front door—Thoblon wouldn't budge.”

“Good Christ,” Tobias said, thinking he could do something with this story if nothing else.

“I know; amazing,” Gerald said.

“What could he be thinking?” Tobias asked.

“Who knows?” Gerald said.  “Nobody could believe it.  But last night, after weeks and weeks of holing up in his office like a squatter, he packs up his office in the middle of the night and, apparently, slips his one-line resignation under the Secretary's door.”

“He left in the middle of the night?” Tobias asked.

“Yup,” Gerald said.  “Incredible.  Though, maybe sentimental.”  Tobias asked him what he meant.  “Christmas is the day after tomorrow,” Gerald said.  “Thoblon always goes home to Alabama.  Some big Christmas Eve party at his Masons lodge or something.  Wouldn't shut up about it last year.  Probably didn’t want to come back to find the locks on his office door changed.”

Tobias agreed, thanked Gerald, and hung up.  It was all the confirmation he needed.  Clearly Gerald would never have spilled so juicy an office rumor if Tobias's name was under general suspicion.  That night, as Tobias rolled up to his building, Sally appeared out of nowhere.  The sudden return of last night's possibilities must have flushed his face, Sally smiled but shook her head and indicated she wanted to walk somewhere.  Tobias dropped off his bike and they left.

After walking several blocks, in a circle, and then taking three cabs, they ended up in a little greasy-spoon diner near the hospital.  Though it was Tobias's old neighborhood, he'd never been there.  As small as it was, a resident could have lived eighty years in the neighborhood and missed that diner every time.  The winter darkness—complete even at their early hour of six o'clock—concealed the place all the more.

“So I have bad good news,” Sally said after their coffee came.  Tobias must have looked worried.  “Not as bad as last night,” she added.  “When I got to work this morning, I found all the intelligence material we'd sent to the OSP had been returned by c
ourier last night.”

“That's bad good news?” Tobias asked, shaking his head.

“On the sheet we use to keep track of who signs for custody of a given piece of intel, I noticed everything CIA sent to the OSP—not just from my department—had been returned.  My guess is that the Niger docs are no longer at the Pentagon.  That's good news: breaking into the Pentagon could have been tough.  The bad part is that—if we're right and they came from State—”

“Oh shit!” Tobias said, coughing into his coffee cup.

“What?” Sally asked.

“I know where they are,” he said breathlessly.  “I even know what state they're in: Alabama.”

“What?  How?” she asked.

“I called that guy Gerald Hicman over at State today; the INR guy Senator Snajder sent me to a few months ago,” he said.  “I figured if he's willing to talk to me then no warnings have gone out about me.  Anyway, he gave me a little office gossip.  Seems the Secretary had it up to here with Jon Thoblon, demanded his resignation, but Thoblon wouldn't budge—until the middle of last night when he packed up his office and left.”

“Oh my god,” Sally said, her eyes lighting up.  “He would have received back the Niger docs late yesterday evening.”

“He must have been squatting at the State Department, waiting for them to return,” he said.

“Or maybe my pitching woo at Wu did some good after all,” she said: “they were worried enough that they immediately moved the Niger docs.  Although, maybe Thoblon had been camped out at State waiting for them anyway, unless he had no idea of ever leaving, no matter the Secretary, and only broke his sit-in because they felt the Niger docs were in danger.  Funny.  And now that he has them, he's taking them out of state—no pun intended—to keep them safe until Congress votes on war powers.”