by Bob Graham
The president had stated that Iran could be the fuse of World War III. But all evidence suggested it would much more likely be along the Indian-Pak border or in the triangle of Israel, Palestine, and Syria. If the intelligence community would try as hard as Billington to get the administration’s attention on a possible Saudi nuclear bomb and its consequences, we’d all be a lot better off.
The BlackBerry rang. “Tony, this is John Billington.”
“Senator.” Tony was always pleased to hear his voice.
“What are you up to, young man?”
“Not feeling very young, that’s for sure. Believe it or not, I was just reading your op-ed in the Times. You seem to be the one voice of enlightenment these days. Other than that, it’s pretty grim.”
“Still trying to explain Afghanistan to the Philistines?”
“You must be tapping my phone. But you didn’t call about my problems.”
“True. I’ve got a favor to ask. A big one and I need to discuss it faceto-face.”
“Senator, honestly, I’m under water here, but if there’s something I could do—”
Billington plowed ahead, oblivious to Tony’s protests. “There have been some inexplicable developments here. For the first time, Tony, for the first time in my life, I’m feeling vulnerable. I’m scared.”
This was not standard operating procedure for John Billington. “What’s happened?” Tony asked.
“I don’t feel comfortable telling you on the phone.”
“Senator, I’m buried in this testimony, but as soon as I can break free—”
“I need your help and time is not on my side.” Tony was starting to get alarmed. This really wasn’t like Billington.
“Can you give me a couple of days, Senator, to put out some fires and clean things up here a little?”
“I think I can wait that long,” Billington replied. “But I need you down here as soon as possible.”
“I’ll be there,” Tony assured him.
Tony used the interoffice line to call Florence Wilkens, Ambassador Talbott’s assistant.
“Ms. Wilkens, I need a favor: personal leave on Friday and Monday. Could you clear it for me?”
“Mr. Ramos, I think that is doable.”
JULY 15
Washington, D.C.
With less than two hours before it was due, Tony tried to refocus on Ambassador Talbott’s Afghanistan testimony. He struggled to clarify the current American options: bad and worse. He pulled his BlackBerry from its holster and started to call Billington. “There’s no way I can go to Miami this weekend,” he said to an empty room. Then he remembered why he admired the man so much.
In October of 2002 the president’s war scream on Iraq was at full throat. He had enumerated a series of horrors necessitating armed intervention: an Iraq spy was collaborating with al-Qaeda in Prague, proving Saddam Hussein and bin Laden were in cahoots; Iraq was a training ground and source of supply for terrorists; the British had confirmed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the means to deploy them on forty-five minutes’ notice.
Billington had a different take. Certain close advisers of the current president had served in an earlier administration and considered it had shut down the Persian Gulf War juggernaut before it finished the job of toppling Saddam. They saw 9/11 as a pretext for settling old scores, and an inexperienced and persuadable chief executive as the means of doing so. Billington had also concluded that the information on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction was suspect and the Taliban and al-Qaeda posed far greater threats of killing Americans than did Saddam. Discarding his staff-prepared text, Billington took to the Senate floor and let it rip. “Turning our back on Afghanistan to fight a war of choice against Iraq will be the single greatest national security blunder since Pearl Harbor. Those of you who would grant this power to the president, you, too, will have blood on your hands.”
This passion from the usually mild-mannered Billington caused some stir on the floor and the press gallery, but not enough to keep seventyseven Senate votes from authorizing war in Iraq.
Tony’s cell rang. He glanced at the caller ID. Carol!
In the charmingly earthy lilt of the Upper South, Carol Watson asked, “Is this a good time to talk?”
“Does the question imply that you’re talking to me again?” Tony asked.
“I called, didn’t I?”
“You did. I’m just surprised.”
“In a good way, I hope.”
“In a very good way.” After the way Carol had severed diplomatic relations between them two months before, when she declared he’d blown her off for work for the last time, Tony had doubts he’d ever see her again. He’d become fascinated with her and the subtle ways she wasn’t like other women with whom he’d been involved, and the breakup hit him hard, harder than he’d even suspected it would. Up till now, she hadn’t answered his calls, texts, emails, tweets, not even a few letters. Had she, all the while, been missing him just as intensely?
Carol coughed. “Sorry. I woke up with a little chest cold. I thought about calling in sick, but I’ve got too much to do, so I came into work.” She went on as if they had just spoken the day before.
“Carol, all you serious distance runners are always complaining about something: a cramp, a strained knee, a twisted ankle. A little sneeze isn’t going to keep you down.”
“That’s what I love about you, Tony, always so sympathetic and understanding.”
“Carol, I’ve really missed you,” Tony confessed.
She worked for the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, the United States’ elite forensic accounting agency. They had met just before running in the last Marine Corps half marathon. Her blond hair was short, framing sparkling blue eyes and smooth white skin. Her tight Adidas outfit had accentuated her conditioned body as she lifted her leg to stretch against the concrete wall that separated the Iwo Jima monument from the traffic flow on Arlington Boulevard. Tony was intrigued and immediately set about to get to know her better. What he’d found so far was not the typical young Washington go-getter, willing to do just about anything or do in anyone to rise up the ladder. So he’d been playing it fairly cool with her, yearning to experience her on a deeper level, when she’d thrown him over. And now, inexplicably, she was back.
Uncharacteristically, Tony didn’t know what to say next, so he settled for, “Uh, what is it you, uh, want to talk about, Carol?”
“I just got handed a case from Justice,” she explained. “There seems to have been a kickback deal going between the Saudis and a British defense contractor. A lot of the action is in your part of the world. Could you fit me into your schedule, say, at three?”
“I don’t know anything about a Saudi-Brits deal,” Tony replied. “There’s no reason I should have been briefed in. Maybe you should be talking with Benjamin Brewster; he’s paid to stay up to speed on the Saudis.”
“If I wanted to talk to Benjamin Brewster, I would have called him. I want to talk to you.”
“I can’t argue with your taste. But I don’t understand why Justice is investigating a corruption case when we don’t have a dog in the fight?”
“I don’t either. That’s what we need to figure out.”
He liked the word “we” but hoped her renewed interest was not limited to his knowledge of the Arabian Peninsula.
“So what about this afternoon?” Carol persisted.
Florence Wilkens, Ambassador Talbott’s executive assistant, stuck her head into Tony’s office. “Mr. Ramos, Congressional Liaison is on me for the final draft of the secretary’s testimony. If we don’t get it to the committee by four, somebody will have some explaining to do, and that would be you. When can the secretary expect it?”
Tony was torn. He wanted to burnish his already good relationship with Ambassador Talbott, and he knew how important this testimony was. But if he put Carol off now, that would definitely be the absolute end between them. He couldn’t get her deep-blue eyes
out of his mind. He could hear her gentle breathing on the phone.
“I’ll meet you at three,” he told her. “How about the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.”
“You got it,” Carol replied.
Tony wondered just what “it” was. Punching off his BlackBerry, he turned to Ms. Wilkens. “Ma’am, it will be on your desk before three.”
At twenty minutes before three, Tony removed his tie and left his suit coat draped over his chair back. He took the elevator to Secretary Talbott’s office and laid the eighteen pages on Wilkens’s desk. She looked up, acknowledged Tony with a nod, grabbed the file, and disappeared into the secretary’s adjoining office. “So much for collegiality,” Tony muttered.
The Lincoln Memorial is just down the 23rd Street hill from State. Although Washington is a thousand miles north of Hialeah, Tony thought the summers were more oppressive. He attributed it to the lack of ocean breeze and to traffic congestion. And the overabundance of hot air.
Carol sat about halfway up the memorial’s steps, on the side so that the marble temple shaded her from the sun while she waited for Tony. From her vantage point, she could see the buses unloading tour groups at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and families who had come to honor a relative. There were always several visitors with sheets of paper, rubbing a name from one of the granite panels. She remembered attending the funeral service of a Tennessee National Guard sergeant, the husband of a close friend from high school, who was killed in Iraq. He had left two young children, traumatized by their loss and fear of the future without a father. How many more granite walls would America erect?
As he crossed Memorial Circle, Tony observed Carol for a few moments before she spotted him. In her short black skirt and long-sleeve linen blouse he found her just as provocative as in her Adidas. As she leaned down to secure a file from her brindle folder, he recalled the small image of a rose tattooed on the outer slope of her left breast. If he were slightly closer, he could probably spot it now. It was one of the many riddles about Carol. Why would a woman as seemingly traditional and reticent about sex as Carol have a rose provocatively adorning her breast? Tony had thought he was close to being ready to ask her about it when she threw him over.
Tony had had only two serious relationships with women. When he was on the tour, he had traveled and lived with a Swedish pro. They made quite a contrasting pair in mixed doubles: he left-handed, she right; she composed, he always a threat to explode over a missed line call; he a dark African-Hispanic-Cuban mix, she golden blonde and snowflake white. Their lovemaking was as competitive as their tennis. The relationship ended with Tony’s professional tennis career.
Three years ago there had been a Hill staffer who lived next to him on Seventh Street. Tony thought this might be the one, but he lost out to her boss and she was now the first lady of an Indiana congressional district.
He didn’t know what to make of Carol. She was cute and smart and resourceful, but very insecure and wary in social settings. Tony rather liked the lack of predictability; every occasion with Carol had been a new discovery, as with the rose.
She smiled when she saw him. That was a good sign. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi, yourself,” she replied.
“Let’s find a bench.”
They walked back toward Constitution Avenue, by a row of elm trees that shielded them from the noise of the constant traffic. Carol sat on one of the railway station–style wooden benches scattered throughout the Mall. Tony took his place next to her, stretching out his arm behind her back. He pulled in close till he could feel the cup of her bra pressing against his chest wall.
Carol arched, separating herself from him. Surprised and visibly stung, he betrayed a look that she picked up on. She removed Kleenex from her purse and dabbed her nose. “I don’t want you to catch my cold.”
Was that the real message?
“Carol, if you don’t want to do this ... ” He hoped she got the double meaning of his message.
“No, it’s just, I’ve got a flight to Zurich tonight. And in case you’ve got anything, too, I don’t want to pick it up and complicate my own condition. You know, you can get a bacterial super infection on top of a virus, and then you could have real problems.”
Tony had to admit, this sounded just like the Carol he had come to know and love. “Zurich? Why there?”
She seemed to soften and moved a little closer. She fanned through the first twenty or so pages of her file. Strangely, Tony felt increasingly comfortable. After the months of no contact, this seemed something like a return to normalcy. At least, it had that potential.
“Here’s what I’ve learned so far: In the mid-eighties, the Saudis were sweating the war between Iraq and Iran. The royal family was convinced the kingdom needed to beef up its air force. They decided they were too reliant on our birds. So they negotiated tough with the Germans and French, but finally ended up with the Brits’ BAE Tornados.”
“How much did the Brits stick them for?”
“Thirty-six billion pounds for seventy-one fighter jets and replacement parts.”
“Wow. The king must have really felt Saddam Hussein breathing down his neck. I don’t know the exchange rate then, but that’s got to come to around a billion dollars per?”
“A little less, but more than twice what the Saudis would have paid for our F-15.”
“OK. So where does Switzerland fit in?”
“The big deal leaked out five or so years ago. The British Serious Fraud Office was mucking around with some BAE files and realized the company had been making under-the-table payments to several of the princes in the Saudi royal family. It started with toys—a gold Rolls Royce here, a Mayfair apartment there. Then it turned to cash, and that’s where the Swiss come in. Zurich-Alliance was the bank where the pounds changed hands under the protection of the Swiss bank secrecy laws. The Serious Fraud folks had verified that BAE Systems had forked over about two billion pounds when they had the rug pulled out from under them.”
Tony stiffened, “Two billion pounds? Hell, that’s better than a five percent payoff. And you say they might have found even more if what?”
“If Prime Minister Tony Blair hadn’t stepped in and shut them down. He slammed the door on any more snooping around, saying it was a threat to one of Britain’s most important strategic relationships.”
“Sounds like he learned his national security politics from The West Wing.”
“I know. The Guardian newspaper broke the story. It was a hell of a stink. It was one of the things that eventually forced Blair into early retirement.”
“I’m getting the feeling this wasn’t the end of the story.”
“Not quite. The guys who came in after Blair managed to deepen the cover-up, even convincing the House of Lords to keep a blanket over the scandal. But the action went on; only, the stage shifted here. This past February, Justice announced it was starting its own investigation. At first, they were looking to the FBI to do the full job, but gave up on its forensics accounting capabilities and called in our office.”
Tony leaned back on the bench and recalled a late-night session during the 9/11 inquiry. In the Capitol’s fourth-floor secure room, committee members were questioning an FBI agent. Where did the money come from to support the hijackers? Billington pressed for more details on bank records. The besieged agent spluttered for a while, then finally said that the FBI was restricted in its access to the accounts. The senator blew up, stormed out of the room, got the attorney general on the phone, and demanded he get somebody competent on the case. The AG wasn’t happy, but the following week the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, the TFI, was brought in. Almost overnight they had a team on the case and were smelling smoke. But by this time it was November 2002; the final report had to be voted on in early December, and the clock ran out.
“So, how can I help?” Tony asked.
“Well, for starters, is there a history of foreign contractors bribing members of the Saudi royal family
?”
“A long one. It even has a name—facilitation payments. Considered standard operating procedure. The Brits must have really wanted that contract. Do we know who got the money?”
“No, but I intend to find out.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Since I got the file last week I’ve been reviewing the intelligence traffic from ’90 to ’92. One of my colleagues has done a FinCEN search.”
“What in the hell is that?”
“It’s a network of national financial crimes enforcement agencies. This has given us a map of the relationships among the relevant parties, like the Saudi defense minister in the late eighties and the princes who were on the take.”
Tony perked up. “You’re into my bailiwick now. What’s your confidence level in FinCEN?”
“Very high. And for the raw data we rely on SWIFT.”
“You could lose your mind keeping track of the Washington acronyms. And SWIFT would be? ...”
“When I first learned about it, it was ‘Need to Know’ and I couldn’t have told you. But then the New York Times broke the story on SWIFT, so it’s public knowledge. Don’t ask me what the letters mean, but it’s a massive computer system that tracks all the wire transfers throughout the world. It’s really impressive.”
Tony shook his head. “It still doesn’t add up. Justice didn’t give a shit about the Saudis’ role in 9/11. What’s with the sudden awakening?”
She reached for another Kleenex and shrugged. “Isn’t that odd?”
“OK, next question: The Swiss protect secret bank accounts like Coca-Cola protects its secret formula. What makes you think your trip to Zurich will get you more than a nice fondue?”
“You’re right. It used to be near-impossible to get Bern’s cooperation. But since the scandal over Swiss banks setting up schemes for U.S. gazillionaires to avoid our taxes, not to mention the revelations about aiding the Nazis in stealing Jewish property, they want to play nice. So they’ve given us the green light to look at BAE’s records at Zurich-Alliance.”
