Keys to the Kingdom
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
PROLOGUE
ELEVEN WEEKS EARLIER ...
JULY 6
JULY 15
JULY 15
JULY 15
JULY 16
JULY 16
JULY 16–17
JULY 17
JULY 17
JULY 18
JULY 18–21
JULY 21
JULY 22–23
JULY 23–24
JULY 24
JULY 24–25
JULY 25–26
JULY 26
JULY 29–AUGUST 2
AUGUST 2
AUGUST 2
AUGUST 4
AUGUST 12
SEPTEMBER 1
SEPTEMBER 4–6
SEPTEMBER 7–8
SEPTEMBER 8
SEPTEMBER 8
SEPTEMBER 9
SEPTEMBER 9
SEPTEMBER 9–10
SEPTEMBER 10
SEPTEMBER 10–11
SEPTEMBER 10–11
SEPTEMBER 11
SEPTEMBER 11
SEPTEMBER 12
SEPTEMBER 12
SEPTEMBER 12–14
SEPTEMBER 14
SEPTEMBER 14
SEPTEMBER 15–16
SEPTEMBER 16–18
SEPTEMBER 19
SEPTEMBER 19
SEPTEMBER 19
SEPTEMBER 19
SEPTEMBER 22
SEPTEMBER 23
SEPTEMBER 22–23
SEPTEMBER 24
SEPTEMBER 27
SEPTEMBER 27
SEPTEMBER 28–30
OCTOBER 1–2
OCTOBER 3
OCTOBER 10
OCTOBER 11
OCTOBER 13
OCTOBER 16
OCTOBER 18
OCTOBER 20
OCTOBER 21
OCTOBER 24
OCTOBER 27
OCTOBER 28
OCTOBER 28–29
OCTOBER 29
OCTOBER 30
OCTOBER 30–31
TWELVE WEEKS LATER ...
JANUARY 20
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
FOR MY DAUGHTERS—
Gwen, Cissy, Suzanne, and Kendall.
EACH INSPIRED ME TO TAKE ON
AND SHARE THIS ADVENTURE.
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should
always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL
PROLOGUE
September 19
Mumbai, India
On General Post Office Road, across from the Chhatrapai Shivaji Terminus, a cluster of middle school girls in their blue-and-white uniform skirts and blouses from Anjuman Islam School, chattered about weekend plans as their teacher tried to hurry them along toward the train station. But Mamata Bakht, a head taller than the others and standing out from the crowd, had other things on her mind.
Lost in her own world, staring up at the beautiful, cloudless blue sky, she thought back to the school day. In algebra class, Ms. Patel had scolded her for not paying attention.
“Mamata, you are very bright, but you must apply yourself and not let your mind wander.”
“I am sorry,” Mamata had responded in a quivering voice.
“I’ll judge that by the results of your weekend homework assignment. I don’t want to have to speak about this to your grandparents.”
That would make things even worse. Bappa and Umma were very good to her and she was deeply devoted to them. And if they knew the reason she couldn’t concentrate on her studies was that she missed her mother so much, they would feel very hurt. They had explained to her that it would not be a good thing for a girl of her age and bright future to be living under the same conditions as her mother at this important time in her life. But no one seemed to be able to explain to her why Mamma couldn’t be here in Mumbai with her.
“Come along now, girls! The trains will not wait for you,” Ms. Patel admonished.
As the final strains of the call to Friday prayer from Jama Masjid, Mumbai’s oldest and largest mosque, faded away, they were suddenly replaced by the penetrating long and short bleats of an emergency vehicle. Their attention suddenly riveted, the girls and their teacher leaned into the street to follow the yellow ambulance with green-checkered markings as it weaved through the automobiles and trucks moving to clear a path.
“Ms. Patel, what is happening?” Mamata asked with alarm. So many things—even an unexpected noise—frightened her these days.
“There must have been an accident or possibly someone is having a heart attack,” the teacher responded. “The ambulance is speeding to help before it is too late. The authorities and our people understand the urgency of providing treatment. Girls, you are fortunate to live in such a modern city.”
Directly in front of them the ambulance, with topside lights ablaze, swerved left toward the cavernous Victorian building. They crossed the street with a thousand or more of the concerned or curious.
Mamata was shocked to see the ambulance slam through the line of nineteenth-century streetlights that separated the red-tiled open-air entrance from the station’s main terminal and jolt to a halt against a structural column, scattering two score of passengers lounging on green railway benches.
Treading carefully to avoid the shards of glass, she moved closer, near enough to see the backs of the two occupants splayed forward in the space between the seat and dashboard as a plume of white smoke billowed from beneath the vehicle, obscuring it in an opaque veil.
Then, a white strobe of light penetrated the haze and the earth seemed to explode. Mamata was instantly blinded. She heard the collapsing ceiling and cupola fifty feet above and the screams from her classmates. She crumpled under the fragments of steel, concrete, brick, and glass.
And then nothing.
ELEVEN WEEKS EARLIER ...
JULY 6
New York Times
“Over the Horizon”
BY JOHN BILLINGTON
While America’s attention has been focused on the president’s decision to return combat troops to Iraq and the pending decision on whether to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, more ominous threats have gone largely unnoticed and unattended.
In the last decade and a half, a nuclear arms race has accelerated in South Asia. China, India, and especially Pakistan have substantially increased their arsenals of nuclear weapons of mass destruction; in the case of Pakistan, from less than 20 in 2000 to an estimated 40 to 60 today.
During the same period, the accumulation of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction has escalated in Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries such as Iran and Syria. Through superior intelligence and the assistance of a regional ally, the United States seized tons of materials in the Red Sea intended for additional WMDs. This shipment was interdicted, but many others have made it through porous borders.
Surrogates of nation-states and even surrogates of other terrorist organizations are becoming more restive, unwilling to supinely comply with dictates of their former masters. Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based paramilitary organization which has now become a political party and vacillates between being part of the governing coalition in Lebanon and being its primary opposition, is the premier example of this greater independence.
The potential danger of this independence is captured in the reality that no nation-state would be so irrational as to deliver a weapon of mass destruction bearing its home address, real or virtual. The United States has a policy of nuclear annihilation should a nuclear weapon be detonated here or against an ally or U.S. interest abroad. While it maybe an oxymoron, a “rationa
l state” that decides to use a weapon of mass destruction would try to keep its hands clean by leaving the dirty work of delivery to a surrogate. Thus WMDs will likely be transferred to groups such as Hezbollah that in turn will exercise a significant, if not singular, role in the decisions of when and against whom to use them.
Add to these what I consider to be the most dangerous risk that can still be contained—the emergence of Saudi Arabia as a nuclear state.
The congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks left several secrets unanswered. The top three are Saudi Arabia’s full role in the preparation for and the execution of the plot; the kingdom’s willingness and capacity to collaborate in future terrorist actions against the United States; and why this and the prior administration conducted a cover-up that thus far has frustrated finding the answers to the first two questions.
Now, there is an even more ominous unknown. Does Saudi Arabia have the bomb? One of America’s leading journalists on intelligence has estimated that Israel has up to two hundred nuclear devices. Iran continues to reject international efforts to halt its nuclear weapons program. Given Saudi Arabia’s hostile relations with both nations and its economic stake in protecting oil production, it is hard to imagine that the kingdom has not directed a portion of its newly acquired, vastly enlarged petrowealth to becoming a nuclear state. A recent publication has suggested the Saudi nuclear aspirations might have been facilitated by renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist, Dr. A. Q. Khan. When that is achieved it will be impossible to frustrate the nuclear ambitions of other Middle Eastern states such as Egypt and Turkey, an escalation of nuclear capability that will destabilize an already volatile region.
In 1914 the fuse for World War I was ignited at Sarajevo with the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The set pieces for World War III are now in place in Central Asia and the Middle East. Avoiding another such calamity—this time with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons—should be the highest priority of American foreign policy. The United States should take prompt action to prevent this potential conflict from becoming a reality.
John Billington, a retired U.S. senator (D-Florida), was chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
JULY 15
Washington, D.C.
All right, Tony thought, let’s end this thing.
As he had tens of thousands of times since he took up the game at the age of eight, Tony bounced the ball three times with his right hand, paused to assess his prey, tossed the ball directly over the center line of his body, grunted, rotated, and snapped. The ball rocketed toward the ad court, clipped the net, and ricocheted wide.
“Let,” Mark Block cried.
It couldn’t have been any later than 7:20, but already the wet heat of Washington pressed down. Tony wiped his face on his T-shirt sleeve and repeated his ritual. This time the ball caught the corner, and, lunging, Mark got a racquet on it. Tony set up, coiled, and whipped a topspin forehand down the line that Mark could only wave at.
Game, set, and yet another match.
“Congratulations,” Mark said with no hint of sincerity, “that’s only twelve straight points. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m gaining on you.”
Tony laughed. “Which is why I’ve had such trouble sleeping. Good game.”
They shook hands across the net.
Mark Block played a fair game. Reports—mostly of his own—had him doing well in the tennis tournaments at the Potomac Racquet Club. But he was doing more for his post–congressional staff reputation as a partner in a tony K Street law firm defending the affluent from charges of white-collar crime. Of course he was nowhere near Tony’s league in tennis, but few were. Once a week they met at a public court on Capitol Hill and, for a little exercise and the pleasure of his company, Tony ran him around a bit. Today had been somewhat different: three or four times Tony had cursed himself for lapses in concentration and general sloppiness.
Courtside, they toweled off and guzzled their water bottles.
“Amigo, what’s happened to you?” Mark asked. “Where’s that McEnroe fierceness they used to write about? Today you were like an absentminded professor. Play like that next time, and you’re going down.”
“Play like that next time and I’ll deserve to.” Tony clapped him on the back. “And think what a nice boost to your confidence that would be.” Tony was a few years past the days when he used to smash racquets on the court and launch into tirades at the umpires, but this morning he was distracted. Maybe it was the testimony he was writing for his boss, Ambassador William Talbott. Maybe it was his increasing obsession with the alluring Carol Watson. Whatever, he wasn’t doing a good job of keeping it together.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Mark added. “Billington wants to talk to you; says it’s urgent.”
“If it’s urgent, why didn’t you tell me before the match?”
“Because knowing how you feel about Billington, you would have abandoned me and my vain hopes of beating you and rushed to call him.”
Tony nodded his agreement, then asked, “What’s a former senator, safely retired back to Florida, got to say that’s urgent?”
“Beats me,” Mark replied.
Tony recalled the first time he’d heard Mark’s voice, authoritative, with a hint of Brooklyn. Tony had been at his desk deep in the State Department when a call came through from a Mark Block, a staffer for Florida Democratic senator and former governor John Billington.
Billington he knew. In fact on Tony’s fifth birthday, the then-governor had given him what turned out to be the greatest gift of his life. On that day—June 4, 1980—he and his family and nearly three thousand other anxious Marielitos had been crammed for three days in a brutally hot hanger at Trumbo Naval Air Station in Key West awaiting their fate. Nerves frayed. Tempers flared.
Then a gray-haired man in a blue suit arrived and climbed up on a chair. “Mi nombre es Gobernador John Billington,” he’d announced in a clear, steady voice, and not an hour later Tony and his family were on a school bus bound for their new lives as Americans.
“We’re putting together a team to investigate the intelligence community’s handling of 9/11,” Block had said, explaining the reason for his call, “both before and after. The senator wants the INR’s perspective, and your name keeps coming up.”
“We screwed up too?” Tony asked.
“Not that I know of,” Mark responded with a chuckle. “In fact, INR is one of the few organizations the senator is impressed with. The agency and the bureau are doing their usual cover-your-ass act. He likes what he’s heard about your energy and smarts. He’s also looking for imagination and a willingness to take some chances.”
Tony smiled and recalled why he had chosen to go with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. With his top ranking in Georgetown’s Foreign Service program and near-proficiency in Arabic and Pashto, he’d had offers from all the big intelligence and defense agencies after he completed his Army ROTC commitment. What he liked about INR was that with just three hundred professionals, it was leaner, more adroit, and more cerebral. And it tended to get it right on the big issues like the collapse of the Soviet Union and Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. They were academics, but no Tom Clancy caricatures.
“And,” Mark continued, “it didn’t hurt that you grew up in Hialeah.”
Tony appreciated the comment. Hialeah was a dark-blue, blue-collar town. Some yahoos looked down their noses, more so since Hialeah was four-out-of-five Cuban. If you grew up there, you had to be tough.
“Which leads me to ask,” Mark said, “how you got from Hialeah to the INR.”
With an intensity undiminished by time, Tony traced his sojourn from Guanabacoa to Miami. The Ramos family had waited for years to escape the oppressive tyranny of Cuba. Finally, the spring 1980 opening of the port of Mariel and the willingness of cousins exiled in Miami to pick them up on a chartered boat gave them their chance. It was a daily struggle for his father, a for
mer shortstop, now a home siding salesman; his mother, a housewife turned sewing machine operator; and Tony and his younger sister to keep the family together, make the transition to America, and keep its hopes alive. “After I was okay in English,” Tony continued, “I got pretty good at school. A Jesuit priest urged me to apply to Georgetown, where I got an Army ROTC, not a tennis, scholarship. That’s how I got from Hialeah to Washington.”
“That’s the kind of story Billington respects.” Mark paused, and Tony could sense him skimming his CV. “I see you graduated near the top of your class in Middle Eastern area studies. With your Arabic and special operations experience, those are the skill sets we’re looking for. And bringing home the NCAA tennis singles title shows a lot of discipline. I’d like to set up an interview for Friday, okay?”
Trying to disguise his excitement, Tony replied, “Okay.”
At 10:15 Friday morning Tony arrived at the senator’s hideaway in the Capitol, one of seventy offices secreted throughout the Senate wing. Ranging from cubbyholes to ornate suites, they were assigned depending on that truest acknowledgment of status in the upper chamber, seniority. As seventeenth in years of Senate service, Billington had a room that overlooked the east lawn, decorated with furniture from the Senate storeroom and landscape art of his state.
“Mr. Ramos, have a seat,” the senator greeted Tony.
“Thank you.” He sat on the end of the sofa closest to Billington’s desk.
The approving smile and tilt of the head indicated the senator was intrigued with Tony’s athletic grace and presence. “Mr. Ramos, before we go to the subject of our meeting, may I ask if you had a relative with your name who played infield for the Havana Sugar Kings? As I recall, you look a great deal like him.”
Impressed but not flustered, Tony replied, “Yes sir. That was my grandfather in the old Florida International League. I’m surprised you would remember that.”
Billington placed his hands behind his head and stretched out in the desk chair. “My father loved baseball. When I was growing up, we had season tickets to the Miami Sun Sox, and he and I drove in from the farm to almost every home game. The Sugar Kings were the dominant team in the league. Dad especially liked your grandfather’s grit and hustle.”