Another security breach? Something about those words struck a false note. Charlie silently played back the national security advisor’s words, listening to them with an inner ear. He could mean what Kolodenkova did. But I don’t think so. He’s talking about something else. Something he doesn’t want me to know.
“Sam, you’ve paid me twenty million bucks to —”
“What twenty million? There’s no record of any payment to you.”
Slippery sonofabitch. Even though he doesn’t know he’s on Candid Camera, the damned snake’s fundamentally reptilian instinct for self-preservation keeps him from saying a word I can use against him.
Charlie changed tactics, attacking from another flank. “Whatever. You want a girl — a woman — eliminated, and you want me to do it.”
“Now, Charlie, I didn’t say that.”
Precisely the problem. Sam had said little explicitly, although much had been implied “Spare me your pieties. We both know what you’ve been talking about.”
“I hope you haven’t misinterpreted me, Charlie. Nobody is talking about killing Ms. Kolodenkova. Although the president and I understand it’s a possible outcome, we would deeply regret it.”
Charlie felt like grinding his teeth. But for one irrelevant slip, Sam had said nothing incriminating. Bad news. Win, lose, or draw, Sam would sell him out. Selling people out was his job, and he went to work every morning with a smile. If Charlie couldn’t get his hands on something utterly damning, Sam would double-cross him. Again!
Another change of tactics. Make yourself vulnerable, he told himself. Sad and world-weary, and a little weak. He dropped his voice, turning his eyes away from Sam’s serpent stare. “How many people do you think I’ve sanctioned?”
Sam shook his head. “How would I know? Fifty or so, I’d guess.”
“Eleven.”
Sam’s surprise showed. “That few? From the stories they tell, I’d have thought —”
Ah! On the hook at last. “Eleven. Not counting self-defense and collaterals — bodyguards and such, which I regret. The number you mentioned, well, that’s about the number I’ve been asked to go after. And turned down flat. You see, Sam, the thing is…the very painful thing is that I despise it, and it makes me puke. Oh sure, I know it comes easy to some. And I damned sure know that it’s easy enough for people like you to order. But doing it…no, Sam, there’s nothing to be said in favor of that. There’s only what can be said against.”
“But still, you’ve —”
“I have, and it’s on my soul. When the time comes, the only alibi I’ll be able to offer the recording angel is that my targets were personifications of the greatest evil you can find this side of hell.”
Sam seemed genuinely astonished. “Uh…What can I say? I suppose I should say that I can respect that.”
“I suppose you should.”
To Charlie’s ears, Sam’s sigh of surrender sounded unfeigned. “Charlie, be reasonable. Do you think I’d be in this room if the nation wasn’t in jeopardy?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t have enough information to decide.”
Leaning back in his chair, Sam massaged his forehead to relieve what were, Charlie devoutly hoped, painfully throbbing sinuses. “Hmm…yes, I can empathize with that. Very well, let me try to give you a perspective. You know what happens when you build a better weapon? Of course you do. Your enemy builds a better defense. Or if you invent a better defense, then they invent better weapons.”
“You’re saying this is about weapons technology,” Charlie spat. “That figures.”
“Defensive weapons.”
Charlie couldn’t stop himself. “Aren’t they all?”
“Your cynicism does you no service. Now, do you want to hear this or not? Fine. Then please don’t interrupt. So teeter-totter back and forth — that’s the way it’s been since the end of World War Two. Atomic bombs through cruise missiles through Stealth aircraft — sometimes we have a little advantage, sometimes they have a little advantage. But little advantages aren’t worth much. Only fools pick fights without a winner’s edge. So we’ve got the arms race, and it never stops.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“What you don’t know — and what I will deny to my dying day — is that we can stop it, stop it dead in the water. Listen, Charlie, suppose, just suppose, we came up with something so advanced that it puts us years ahead. Suppose we were developing a leapfrog technology, a breakthrough that wasn’t just a new ball game, but was a whole new sport.”
“I wouldn’t believe it.”
Sam drove a fist into his palm. “Believe it! It’s still got four or five years of work to go. Then we deploy. Hell, we don’t have to deploy. All we have to do is announce!”
“They’ll still catch up.”
As sanctimonious as a radio preacher, Sam grinned back: “That’s the beauty of it. They’ll ask their scientists, and the answer they’ll get is: Why bother? We’ll be at least a decade ahead, and picking up speed. They’ll know they can’t overtake us. It won’t even be worth trying. If… and it’s a big if, Charlie…if we can finish our research and productize the results before they find out what we’re up to.”
“You’re saying the Irina girl —”
“You wanted to know what she stole. Now, I’ve told you. At least I’ve told you as much as I can.”
“This is all true? You’re not lying?”
“It is all true. I am not lying.”
Charlie knew it was so. He’d been watching Sam closely, baiting him to falsehood, then teasing him back into honesty. If he read his man right, Sam was telling the truth — although not the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. His dissimulation was clear to anyone who knew the signs: eyes a little hooded, smile a little false, voice a little off pitch. Yeah, Sam was holding something back — something more important than whatever gizmo a rookie FSB girl had in her hot little hands.
Charlie ran a quick mental audit of Sam’s repulsive rise. A Yalie and a Bonesman, he’d begun as a White House intern, just another newly hatched snake in a den of vipers. Then upward: a congressional aide, the Finance Committee, of course, because Sam liked to be near the piggy bank. Back then the gossip mongers whispered that Sam’s career was almost derailed by his viciously uncontrollable temper. However, Sam managed to rein it in, not by the traditional Washingtonian expedient of prescription pharmaceuticals, but rather through sheer force of will. Accordingly, just before his party got booted out of power, Sam was awarded a sinecure with one of the so-called independent agencies. Once his boys were back in control, Sam reemerged as undersecretary of something or another in the Commerce Department. He devoted his tour of duty to making sure he was in the room whenever deals were cut and campaign pledges were vowed, those two activities being more or less synonymous. Thus did Sam become what the insiders call an “honest broker,” getting the “broker” part right, if nothing else. Pacts, contracts, agreements, and negotiations — the exchange of services for good and worthy remuneration, some small portion of which was fairly due and owing to the middleman who arranged the trade.
But money wasn’t quite enough for Sam, he wanted power too. The week after the World Trade Center went down, Sam popped up, now in the State Department. Ah, Foggy Bottom! One and a half percent of the federal workforce. Half a percent of the federal budget. All the power in the world.
Sam’s definition of heaven.
Becoming a ranking official in the department that controlled, among many useful assets, the Central Intelligence Agency, sated Sam’s hunger. For a while. Just long enough for him to maneuver his predecessor as national security advisor into making an appalling blunder, good-bye, farewell, so nice to know you, why, yes, Mr. President, I would consider it an honor.
Now Sam was one of the most powerful people in Washington, face-to-face with the president every day of the week. That was the good news. The bad news was that he had to spend every minute of the day looking over his should
er, scanning the ranks of his underlings, ever watchful for ambitious young upstarts who might do unto him as he had done unto others.
Great power, like great wealth, is harder to keep than it is to get.
One slipup, one misstep, one botched job, and he was history. Welcome to Washington. Enjoy your stay, however short it may be.
Charlie warmed at the thought.
Sam, old son, you’re running a cover-up. I don’t know what you’re hiding, but anything that would make you risk bringing me back into the game has to be major-league trouble. So then, you insect, let me tell you: if blowing the lid off Whirlwind is what it takes to clear my name, then may God have mercy on your sooty soul, for surely I shall have none.
Looking candidly at Sam, his face a mask of disingenuousness, he said, “All right, I think I have to buy what you’re saying.”
“Charlie, I am a man of my word,” Sam lied.
“I know you are,” Charlie lied back. “That’s why I’m willing to take on this mission…” pause, count to three, then drop the hammer, “if you meet my price.”
Sam’s eyes turned to slits. “Price?” he growled. “What do you mean price? I’ve already given you twenty million dollars plus the head of your asshole son-in-law.”
Gotchya! You are now recorded on videotape for all posterity. “The twenty mil was for the privilege of speaking to me. Sending Carly’s ex-husband to hell was — and I believe I used the words explicitly — a ‘down payment,’ an ‘option.’ If you want to exercise that option, it’s going to cost you.”
“In your dreams.”
“Nice seeing you again, Sam. Well, not really.” Charlie stood. “I’ll walk you to the door.” Go ahead, he thought, call my bluff.
“Sit down,” Sam whispered, soft and lethal. “Have you forgotten who you’re dealing with?”
“Not for a second.” Read that one any way you want.
“Then stop playing games and finish this negotiation. If you don’t, I’ll —”
“You’ll what?” Cold, hollow, a wind from a burnt-out star, Charlie’s voice was void of anger, void of any recognizable emotion. “What can you do to me, Sam? What can you do that you haven’t already done?” He whispered sharp as the Reaper’s sickle harvesting souls, “Dupe me into killing an innocent man? Turn me into a jailbird? Disgrace my good name? Fire me after more than thirty years of loyal service? Take away my pension? Keep me from my wife’s deathbed? Come on, you slug, tell me what you can do that’s any worse than what you’ve already done.”
Honest hate is diamond, crystal clear and incandescent. Charlie spilled his hoarded gems before Sam’s scheming eyes, and in this he was, at last, fulfilled.
Sam had three choices: lie, stonewall, or tell the truth.
Pick one of the above.
He’d been in politics long enough to know lying was a risky business. If the special prosecutor smelled an inconsistency, he’d be on you like a Doberman. As a rule, stonewalling was better. Assert national security, executive privilege or, worse comes to worst, the Fifth Amendment, and he might get steamed, but he wouldn’t get an indictment. Sam stonewalled a lot. Hey, it worked.
But not this time. This time he had to tell it straight. Charlie was a thunderstorm, lightning in his heart, you could hear the electricity crackle. Back in the old days he’d hurt people, important people, there were stories about broken bones, and the fire in the dangerous bastard’s eyes chilled Sam’s blood.
Nonetheless, he couldn’t help taking a certain satisfaction in the fact that Charlie had showed his true sentiments — the hallmark of an amateur negotiator.
I know my weaknesses, Charlie, do you? Yes, Sam was grimly aware that he had them — worst of all a dangerously combustible temper. When he lost it, his judgement suffered. Then, invariably, he made mistakes — big ones, bad ones, the kind that would spell the end of any politician’s career. That’s where I’m vulnerable, Charlie. Now let’s talk about you. What’s your weakness, buddy? Easy answer: self-confidence. Charlie was the most cocksure sonofabitch Sam had ever met. It wasn’t arrogance or pride that made him so. It was…the word left a bad taste in his mouth…it was bravery — bravery and its galling handmaiden, honor.
If there was a chink in Charlie’s armor, it was that he thought the angels were on his side, and behaved like he was under heaven’s protection.
But he wasn’t. A year and a half in prison proved that point. To say nothing of those other episodes in Charlie’s past, bodies buried deep in unmarked graves, no tombstone engraved: here lies yet another victim of Charles McKenzie’s gallant, albeit mule-headed, courage.
He’s right most of the time. No problem. He thinks he’s right all of the time. Big problem. So what’s the best way to bargain with a grandstander like that?
Obvious answer: make him believe you think he’s in the right. But don’t make it easy. Make it like pulling teeth. Turn it into Charlie’s personal victory. The only way to win was to make the self-righteous prick think Sam had lost.
Now, Sam smiled to himself, let the bargaining begin.
Dropping his shoulders submissively, he looked down as though unable to meet Charlie’s stare. “I suppose it wouldn’t do any good if I said I was sorry.”
A carnivore’s growl: “Not one damned bit.”
A moment’s shamefaced silence seemed called for. Charlie would be expecting it, and Sam was eager to please. He chewed his lips before murmuring, with apparent reluctance, “I believe I see the issue. You want a presidential pardon; that’s what this is about, correct?”
“For openers,” Charlie snapped, chin jutting and fists balled. “After that, I want an apology.”
Sam sighed all the sadness in the world. “Presidents don’t apologize. It fucks up their approval ratings.” To which, he wistfully added, “Always excepting Bill Clinton.”
“It doesn’t have to be public, Sam. Just a private word from the White House to make me feel —”
Behold! Sam crowed silently, a negotiating position!
“Oh, Charlie,” he shook his head with artful sorrow, “everyone knows the official story. Drugs and drink. The voters like the story, the voters believe the story, so that is the story. Take my advice: let it lie, just put it behind you, and let it lie.”
Charlie seemed distracted. He squinted at his watch, then flicked his eye toward his bookcase. Sam asked himself, He’s worried about the time; why the hell is that?
“You know me well enough to know I’ll never let it lie.”
“I’m afraid I do.” He tilted his double chin at the ceiling, his face a mask of premeditated hesitation. “So then,” he whispered, “you won’t settle for anything else?”
God’s voice on judgement day, “No, I will not.”
Relishing the moment, Sam played his high card. “You want a pardon, very well then, you’ll receive a pardon. Guaranteed.” Charlie blinked in confusion. Sam was delighted. He’d found the soft spot in his opponent’s defenses, and he could drive a big fat wedge straight through it. “But there are terms. There are conditions. You’re going to have to compromise.”
“I am not a compromising man.”
Ain’t it the truth. “Sorry, Charlie, but this is not a negotiation.” Of course it is. “My first offer and my last offer are the same offer. No wheeling and dealing, take it or leave it. Understand?”
“Speak your piece. I’ll listen. That’s the only promise I’ll make.”
Puffing out his cheeks and blowing as though resigned to an inevitable and unwelcome fate, Sam did what he did only when there was no alternative: sucker-punched his opponent with the truth. “The president won’t pardon you because he thinks you’re guilty as sin. He thinks the whole Kahlid Hassan mess was exactly what the spin doctors said it was — a rogue agent gone berserk.” Sam waited for the light to dawn. It only took seconds. “Hell, Charlie, what can I say? The orders I gave you — the president didn’t know about them. When he found out, he went ballistic. So…Jesus, I’m sorry…when I sai
d the White House would back you every step of the way…” Sam let his voice trail off into silence.
“You lied?” Ancient war drums in those two words, an armored legion on the march.
“Uh, no.” All his years of practiced dissimulation went into his phrasing. No actor upon the stage could sound more sincerely ashamed. “Not exactly. It’s more like I goofed. You see…Christ, I hate this…the boss said something, and I took it the wrong way.”
“ ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ Is it one of those deals, Sam?”
Charlie was buying the story. Sam heaved an inner sigh of relief. “Don’t I wish. The thing is I had a few drinks under my belt…” Three stiff ones, although there was no need to mention that. “…and simply got it wrong. I blew it, and I admit it. I hope you can accept that — maybe not forgive me, but at least understand. Nobody’s perfect, and —”
Between clenched teeth, and savagely slow: “I went to jail because you misinterpreted the president?”
Tell the truth. The truth is the only thing that will convince him he’s in the right. “You went to jail to cover my butt. If you want to kill me for that, go ahead.” Sonofabitch! The homicidal prick was taking him seriously! He raised his voice, speaking more rapidly. “But the pardon, Charlie, I can promise it to you free and clear. Hell, I’ll even get your pension reinstated.”
“I thought you said the president won’t —”
“Correct. But I will.” Charlie gave him a narrow, cagey look. Sam hated it when he did that. “The thing is…Charlie, understand this is one hundred and ten percent off the record…the thing is, the veep’s ticker’s worn out. He barely survived the reelection campaign. The docs give him a year unless he slows down. So…” Deep breath, make him think it’s really hard to confess. “This fall, after congress’s summer recess, he’s resigning. The president plans to appoint me as his replacement.”
Whirlwind Page 5
