Beats me, but if you figure it out, let me know. Then maybe we can make a stab at who’s guilty.
Good luck.
When Casey finished the blog post, he closed the laptop computer and rubbed his eyes. Now he was tired. Very tired. He knew he probably wouldn’t get an answer to the challenge he just gave to his readers—no serious answers, anyway. But the blog post was more for him than anyone else. And though he knew he wouldn’t be able to come up with a plausible connection between the house of bagels and the houses of worship that night, he hoped his subconscious would let him wait until morning to think about it. He needed to sleep.
Chapter 12
Casey woke to daylight, the blaring horns of New York City traffic, and a sweat-soaked pillow. He looked at the clock on his nightstand and groaned. There was no such thing as sleeping late in The City That Never Sleeps, and that was doubly true in Casey’s apartment. With no air conditioning, he kept the windows open just to survive. That also meant he had no way to block the sounds and smells of the street below, generally translating to a bad night’s sleep.
Casey threw on some jeans and a sort-of-clean t-shirt and made his way to the kitchen area. Calling the space an outright kitchen would be giving too much credit. He took the phone off of its charger and dialed while he looked for something to eat.
“Hello?”
“How’s it going there?” Casey asked.
Susan sighed. “Okay, I guess.”
Casey stopped his fruitless search for food he knew he didn’t have. “Any change?”
“No. She’s hanging in there, but the doctor’s not very optimistic. At least he doesn’t seem very optimistic.”
Casey didn’t ask for more detail. Susan sounded tired and defeated, and he didn’t want to say the wrong thing and set her off, so he let her commentary go. “Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?” he offered.
“I can’t. Right now I’m the only one Mari’s got, and I’m not going to abandon her again. So until her parents get in tomorrow morning, I’m staying right here.”
“Okay,” he said. “But if you need anything, just give me a call. I’m going into the office in a little while, so if you don’t get an answer at my apartment you can try there.”
“It’s Saturday. Why are you going to work?”
“I told Andie that I’d come in and work with her on the Senate resolution assignment, since I didn’t make it in yesterday.”
“She had the nerve to call you this morning and ask if you could come in to help her? Doesn’t that bitch know what happened to you yesterday?”
“Take it easy, Susan. I called her last night from the hospital. I thought the best thing for me would be to keep busy, and I had to get away from all the talking heads on TV. If I sit here all day and listen to their bullshit theories about what happened at the deli, it’s going to cloud my own judgment, and I’ll start thinking like they do.” Casey didn’t bring up the stuff he found on Mari’s thumb drive because Susan didn’t even know he had it. Plus, he wanted to find more answers before she came up with more questions.
“You’re right,” Susan said. “It’s hard to find anything else to watch. I’d be going nuts here if there wasn’t a small gift shop down by the lobby. I’m already on my third James Patterson book.” She forced a chuckle, essentially apologizing without offering an apology. She wanted to give the impression that she didn’t mind waiting for Mari’s parents to arrive, but Casey knew his friend was not having an easy time.
Casey heard a loud crack, followed by a series of curses on the other end of the line. He knew someone had just been robbed of their hard-earned change by a thieving vending machine, and he guessed that Susan was in the same break room where he met Officer Paul Giordano. He decided it was safe to end the conversation since he knew Susan wasn’t alone at the moment.
“Well, again, if you need anything, just let me know.”
“Alright,” Susan said. “And Casey...thanks for checking in.”
Casey smiled. “No problem. Talk to you later.” Casey hung up the phone and went back to the bedroom. He surveyed the mess on the floor and shook his head. “Where are my damn shoes?”
* * * * *
Andie was already at her computer when Casey arrived at the Intelligence Watch Group offices just after ten.
“Did you at least shower?” Andie asked when Casey walked into her cubicle.
“Yesterday,” Casey said. “Why? Do I smell?” Casey didn’t think to tell Andie about the relaxed weekend dress code at IWG, and her business suit was in sharp contrast to Casey’s NASCAR tailgating attire.
“You sure you’re up to working right now? I mean, after yesterday and all?” Andie eyed the bandage on Casey’s arm.
“Oh this? This is just a scratch. A pretty big scratch with lots of stitches, but it’s not that bad.”
“Still....” Andie had only met Casey three days earlier, but they hit it off right from the beginning. The Atlanta connection instantly gave them a common reference point, but unlike a lot of white folks who grew up in the South, Casey didn’t seem to have a prejudiced bone in his body. As a black woman who also grew up in that world, she learned first-hand to recognize the subtleties of modern-day racism, and from the time she was young, her mother bred her to always look beyond the surface of people she met. She knew that view in itself could also be construed as racism, but as a single woman, she thought it was good advice when dealing with men in general—regardless of race. In her experience, evil had all kinds of motivations. Casey didn’t set off any of her alarms, and she actually liked the guy, which was making her transition to New York that much easier.
“I’ll be all right,” Casey assured her.
“How about that girl you and Susan went to see? You said she was in pretty bad shape, didn’t you?”
Casey turned around an empty chair from the other desk in the cubicle and sat down. “Still in a coma. Susan said the doctors don’t think she’s gonna come out of it, either. But my understanding is you can never really know whether someone’s gonna wake up from that or not.”
“I guess you’re right.” Andie didn’t know what else to say. Truth was, she didn’t want to talk about it. She only asked about Mari’s condition because she thought it was the polite thing to do, and she was glad when Casey got them on task.
“Were you able to get a copy of the resolution?”
“Yes,” Andie said, handing Casey a print-out of Senate Resolution 95. “Here’s a draft copy. The final won’t be available until after the vote on August 1st.”
Casey skipped the title information and went right to the main body. He had only read a few congressional resolutions in the past, and he was surprised that the document he had in his hands was only two pages long. When he was done, he understood why it was so short. It didn’t say anything—nothing he hadn’t heard before. There were plenty of fancy words, to be sure, but there was no action behind them.
“What do you think?” Andie asked when she saw Casey was done.
“What do I think? I think it’s worthless,” Casey said. “I mean, it’s really just a suggestion. They want the State Department to take Mujahideen e-Khalq off the bad guy list. People have been asking for that since the MeK was put on it.”
“Yes, but it’s election time. Normally these types of resolutions are done for political reasons. That’s why we’re looking into this one—to figure out what the political gain is by pushing for a terrorist group to essentially get a pardon.”
“Gain for who?”
“Didn’t you read it?” Andie scolded, pointing to the front matter that Casey conveniently ignored.
Casey looked back at the title information on the first page. There were ten names listed under the date of the document indicating who submitted the resolution. Casey stared at the first name on the list. Now he understood what Andie was talking about. “What does this resolution do for Bill Cogburn if it passes?”
“That’s the assignment,” Andie said.
Casey read the resolution again. Nope. He didn’t miss anything the first time, besides the sponsor list. “I don’t know,” he said. “The supporting arguments here are nothing but the standard MeK lobby—renounced violence in 2001, broke the news of Iran’s nuclear program in 2002, dropped from the EU terrorist list in 2009. These are the same justifications they use in their own petition to State every couple of years. And they’ve been supported by Congress in the past. Wasn’t there a House resolution earlier this year arguing the same thing?”
“HR 60, back in January.”
“Well, what happened with that one? Did it pass?”
“It hasn’t been voted on yet,” Andie said. “It’s still making its way around the subcommittees. But it doesn’t matter what happens with that one anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Because none of the sponsors of that one are running for president, that’s why.” Andie sighed. “So there’s nothing more to this than trying to get some publicity.”
“Good or bad?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Andie said. “We’re still months away from the Iowa caucus, and just getting their names out there’s all the candidates are worried about right now—that and raising money. Plus, if MeK routinely makes the same arguments to get off the FTO list, there’s nothing really controversial about it, is there?”
“Meaning there’s no story to report,” Casey said.
“Right.”
Casey felt bad for Andie. Though his path to a full-time job with the Intelligence Watch Group was anything but typical, he could sympathize with Miss Jackson. No one likes to fail in their first job assignment, and Casey had learned to deal with that the hard way on the first day of boot camp. The difference was, in Great Lakes, he was expected to fail the first time—it was designed that way. Andie Jackson was on probationary employment, and she needed to impress her bosses.
“Look, Andie, not everything we work on at IWG is exciting. If your assessment is that there’s nothing significant here, then that’s good enough, because now our clients don’t have to waste time thinking about it.”
“That makes sense,” Andie said. “I guess I’m still thinking like a journalist and looking for what will sell newspapers.”
Casey could tell Andie wasn’t comfortable with his reasoning, despite the truth behind it. He didn’t like it any more than she did, but his aversion to mundane assignments had nothing to do with job security. He just hated working on things that bored him. And though he didn’t tell Andie, he could care less how Cogburn’s poll numbers were affected by a feel-good resolution that didn’t do a damn thing to keep the country running, which was the senator’s job. But he promised to help her, and Doc Borglund expected as much, so Casey picked up the copy of Senate Resolution 95 again and said, “Well, since we’re here, why don’t we see if we can find a story.”
“Find a story?”
“Yeah. You said there’s no story here because it just looks like Cogburn’s pushing the resolution to get get some publicity.”
“Probably.”
“Okay, but what if we change the question,” Casey said. “How about, instead of asking what effect passing this softball will or won’t have on the good senator’s chance of becoming president, we ask the question why Cogburn chose to support this particular group in the first place.”
“Because it’s easy,” Andie said. “Europe’s already forgiven them, so why not America? And the House is already asking for the same thing.”
“Okay, then forget about Cogburn’s name on the front page. Focus on the subject. I mean, why would England, the EU, and the United States House of Representatives pick these guys, who, by their own admission, are responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Iraq and Iran? Hell, they even assassinated a half dozen Americans in the Seventies. Why them?”
“You’re the expert. You tell me,” Andie answered.
“The only thing I’m an expert in is being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Casey said as he held up his bandaged arm. “But I can tell you what I think.”
“Which is?”
“We want to go to war with Iran.”
Andie raised her eyebrows. “War with Iran,” she repeated.
“Sure,” Casey said. “Not a war like Iraq or Afghanistan, but a proxy war.”
“You’re serious?”
“It’s not a new idea. Hell, that’s pretty much how the Cold War was fought. Only this one would be different.”
“How?” Andie asked. She had been a political reporter for years, and she’d heard all the rhetoric, but she was having a hard time buying Casey’s war theory.
“For one, the enemy’s different. But you can pretty much say that about any war. The real thing that makes this proxy war different than the Cold War is that we don’t want anyone to know we’re fighting it.”
“Unlike Vietnam,” Andie said.
“Or Korea,” Casey agreed. “The U.S. made no bones about telling the world that those were wars to contain the spread of Soviet Communism, and people generally supported that effort, if not the wars themselves. But now we’re over a decade into the Twenty-first Century, and we’ve been in heavy fighting in the Middle East since year one. The American public can’t stomach another war at this point. So we’ll fight with substitutes instead.”
“And the MeK is America’s substitute fighting Iran. Even though they renounced violence.”
“Exactly,” Casey said. “But they’re just one part. Remember, we’re just fishing right now. We don’t have to have any proof, just possibilities.” Casey thought about the file Jim showed him earlier in the week. “One thing Mujahideen e-Khalq has always been good at is getting information. What if MeK is the intelligence arm, and Jondallah and the Pakistani Taliban are the trigger-pullers?”
“Who?”
“The Taliban on the Pakistan side of the border.”
“No, I mean who is the other group you mentioned?”
“Oh. Jondallah—the ‘Soldiers of God.’ Actually, they changed their name a few years ago to the ‘People’s Resistance Movement of Iran’ so they wouldn’t be confused with the Pakistani Islamist group with the same name. Everybody still calls them Jondallah, though.”
“And they are?”
“They’re a Sunni group in southeastern Iran. But Jondallah’s not only a different religious sect than the rulers in Tehran, they’re also a different ethnicity—Baloch, not Persian,” Casey said. “What makes them unique from other dissenting groups in the country is that they’ve actually carried out attacks on the Iranian military, many of them successful. I think maybe there’s a connection between MeK and Jondallah that no one’s talking about.”
“Because they both want regime change in Iran,” Andie said.
“Well, Jondallah really just wants more rights for the Balochi in Iran, but yes, they both hate the Mullahs. And they complement each other operationally. See, Jondallah is Public Enemy Number One in the Islamic Republic, which means they can’t roam free throughout the country getting information on potential targets. MeK, on the other hand, has officially been out of Iran since the Eighties when they set up camp in France and eventually Iraq. But they kept a network of informants and sympathizers there to pass them intelligence.”
“How do you know that?” Andie asked.
“How else do they keep reporting on the Iranian nuke program? It’s just an inference on my part, but I’d bet your paycheck I’m right,” Casey smiled.
“You’re a funny guy,” Andie said, not smiling. “So how does MeK helping this other group make you think we’re fighting a proxy war with Iran?”
“Because Jondallah’s on the FTO list, too. Only, you don’t hear Congress calling for them to be taken off. And you want to know why?”
“I’m sure you’re gonna tell me, regardless,” Andie said. This time she did smile.
“Plausible deniability.”
“So we secretly support Jondallah, but keep them on the FTO list so nobod
y thinks we’re supporting them?”
“And Iran can’t raise a stink because we officially acknowledge that their most violent internal enemy is a bunch of hoodlums,” Casey said. “But to add to your question, how much support can we actually give them if we’re keeping this on the down-low?”
“Nothing while they’re designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” Andie said. “At least, no money or supplies or anything like that.”
“Right—especially if we don’t want to set off any alarms. However,....” Casey left the phrase hanging, wanting Andie to come up with the conclusion.
“However, if MeK is taken off the FTO list, U.S. dollars can flow into their pockets,” Andie said.
“And in our clandestine proxy war, MeK money becomes Jondallah money.”
“And that’s why Cogburn wants Mujahideen e-Khalq off the list,” Andie said with a conspiratorial smile. She liked Casey’s brand of fishing.
“There’s your story.”
Chapter 13
It’s fuckin’ Sunday, assholes, Casey thought as the doorbell summoned him from the dusty futon. He was sure he was going to find a gang of four or more Jehovah’s Witnesses outside coming to save his soul when he looked through the peephole. His annoyance at being pulled away from a videotaped episode of Justified disappeared as he let Susan in. Casey had seen Susan look worse before, but not by much.
“What’s up?” Casey asked as he shut the door.
Susan dropped her purse on the floor and sat down without saying anything. She brushed her hair back with her hands and turned to Casey when he joined her on the sofa. “Mari’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.” Casey didn’t know what else to say.
“She died about half an hour before her parents arrived.” The puffiness under Susan’s eyes evinced the tears that had already fallen that morning. While her eyes had remained dry since coming into Casey’s apartment, the words she spoke caused a single drop to escape, following the path others had already made. “Her mother thanked me for staying with Mari.” Susan’s voice wavered. “She...she said I was a good friend.”
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