Taking Morgan

by David Rose

  It had not started well. As they sank into black leather armchairs around a small round table in a discreet corner of the room, Adam had insisted that Gary tell him what her mission was, and whether it was he who had made the decision to assign her to Gaza. Gary had remained polite. But although he acknowledged that he was the leader of her Agency section, he had calmly refused to answer any of Adam’s other questions, and in so doing conveyed the impression of dealing with a troublesome insect. He kept saying the same thing: “That information is classified, and I’m not at liberty to disclose it.

  “The thing is this,” Gary went on. “We don’t actually know yet that Morgan has been kidnapped. There are a hundred things that might serve to delay an officer in her position, and all we know for sure is that she’s late in returning from Gaza to Israel. So the crucial thing now is that we don’t overreact. I know this is also going to be difficult for you, but that means your continuing to go about your usual business.”

  “That isn’t all you know,” Adam said. “I understand you’re also aware that she never checked into her hotel in Gaza.”

  “That’s not something I can discuss. Anything regarding our assets in the Gaza Strip is classified.”

  “Gary.” Adam’s voice remained perfectly even. “You’re giving me bullshit. Please don’t. Okay?”

  The CIA man visibly flinched: it seemed he was not used to be being challenged. He plowed on regardless. “Anyhow, carrying on as normal includes your preparations for taking on the government in United States vs. Mahmoud. You probably suspect that you and I take differing views about how to fight the war against terrorism. But like Voltaire said, however strongly I disagree with you, I will defend to the death your right to be wrong. And I promise you, I am passionate in my belief that everything we Americans do on behalf of our government must always be strictly legal.”

  “I’m sure you are, Gary. I’m sure you are.”

  For a glorious, solipsistic moment, the idea flashed across Adam’s mind that the whole situation was some kind of set-up: that Morgan’s CIA colleagues had mounted a stunt to distract him from his work. After all, he had been causing them plenty of embarrassment ever since 9/11, with cases involving alleged torture, secret prisons, and “extraordinary renditions.” It was Gary’s colleague Mike who brought him back to reality.

  “There is a further reason why we’re worried. She was carrying a GPS chip in the lining of her purse. It’s supposed to be hard to detect, and to enable us to locate her by satellite anywhere in the world. It’s been off our radar since Thursday. That may mean someone knew they had to look for it—and once they discovered it, had it destroyed. All the same, we do have to keep our cool. The more worried we make ourselves appear, the more we give the potential kidnappers an advantage should it come to trying to talk to them.”

  “Does that mean you’re just going to do nothing?” said Adam. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “On the contrary,” Gary said. “Sure: in public, we’re going to keep our mouths shut. But let me assure you, behind the scenes, we and our colleagues in DC, in Tel Aviv, Cairo, and throughout the Middle East are going to be working every line, every asset. If—and I do still emphasize that word, if—your wife has been abducted, that is not a trivial thing. We should know soon enough what’s really happened to her. And once we do, if she really has been kidnapped, we’ll be using every bit of diplomatic muscle America possesses to get her back. We do not take the abduction of one of our officers lying down.”

  “I am enormously relieved to hear that, Gary.” Adam could not keep the skeptical edge from his voice.

  “The really critical thing at this moment is that there must be no, I repeat no, publicity. If Morgan has been kidnapped, our best hope of getting her back safely is to preserve the deepest secrecy, so that when they do release her, her kidnappers do not lose face. We intend to make them very, very fearful of the consequences of failing to set her free, but no one can let that be known in public. I know your job means you are familiar with members of the news media, but Adam, I cannot stress this strongly enough. However hard it gets, you’ve got to maintain her cover, and to tell anyone who asks she is simply delayed by her business.”

  Adam folded his arms. “I get that. But what do I tell the kids?”

  Mike and Gary exchanged a look of bewilderment. This was a problem that apparently had not occurred to them.

  “Tell them she’s sick, delayed, whatever; that she can’t call them because of the time difference with America. I’m sure you’ll come up with something,” said Gary. “But just make sure that whatever you do say, it isn’t the goddamn truth. Once they start talking to their friends at school, you might as well put it on the front page of the Post.”

  Mike put a hand on Adam’s arm. “And trust us, Adam.” That phrase again. “This will come out right. We’re on the same side, working for the same ends. Please, my friend, trust us.”

  Adam left the Hamilton in a daze. He hadn’t eaten, but stumbled back to his office without purchasing any sustenance. “Trust us.” That’s what his own domestic representative of the CIA had been telling him for years, since the day their first Harvard spring when she had casually mentioned she was going to spend the summer as a CIA intern, and that if that worked out, planned to make the Agency her career. To say that Adam, already one of Harvard Law’s most vocal liberals, found this difficult would be an understatement, and if they hadn’t both been walking around Cambridge in a permanent erotic haze, they would probably have broken up over it. But the idea of losing her had been unbearable, and he had overcome his doubts.

  Still hungry, Adam spent the afternoon at Joe Bright’s cluttered law school office near Union Station, trying to spot the questions that might come from the Supremes next day and rehearsing answers to them. The whole time he was fighting to suppress the fears and anxieties that bubbled inside his stomach. Meanwhile, he tried to banish another thought that kept on trying to barge its way in: that if the government was correct in its assessment of his client Ahmad Mahmoud, that would mean that Adam was trying to win freedom for a man who probably held beliefs very similar to the kidnappers who had deprived his wife of hers.

  Lawyers about to appear before the Supremes are required to wait for their moment in oak-paneled anterooms to the side of the great, marbled court. Adam, soon joined by Professor Bright, arrived early next morning, before the first ten o’clock docket—an argument about the constitutionality of Alaskan fishing licenses. He had hoped to steady his nerves. But it meant that when he walked out into the arena at eleven, ready to slay the Department of Justice lions, he had no idea who might be sitting in the public seats behind the bronze barrier that divided the room. The first person he saw, leaning gently forward in his seat, was CIA Mike from the Hamilton Hotel. Adam caught his eye and Mike raised his palm, mouthing the word “later.” Adam’s body jerked involuntarily. He could feel the perspiration breaking out at the back of his neck.

  Then he saw Nuha, Ahmad Mahmoud’s sister. She was wearing a new, smart suit, but looked exhausted. Adam’s focus returned. Whatever he said, whatever he did for the next sixty minutes had to be for his client. The clerk read the name of the case and docket number and Adam walked to the lectern. He surveyed the crescent of judges. He was ready.

  There was nothing very novel about the arguments Adam tried to present in his introductory speech. This, he told the court, was a case about the limits of executive power, and whether it was acceptable for an administration to change the constitutional rules that governed a person’s liberty. But the central legal issue concerned the statute under which Mahmoud had been convicted.

  “The government has only asserted that the charity to which he gave money, Zakat Relief, is a front for terrorism,” Adam said. “It has offered no evidence to support this proposition, and it bases its claim on information which it says is classified. The result is that Mr. Mahmoud has not been able to answer the case made against him, for the simple reason that he d
oes not know what it is.” As one of the newest recruits to the Supreme Court bar, Adam had already been taught a lesson by older hands: that although advocates were supposed to be allocated a five-minute speech before answering the justices’ questions, in practice, they were often interrupted much sooner. “I’ll give you ninety seconds,” Joe had told him the previous night. In the end, he got seventy-four. As Adam had expected, the first intervention came from the court’s leading conservative thinker, the ferociously intelligent and intimidating Justice Antonin Scalia.

  Adam had just reached his first rhetorical flourish, a citation of Magna Carta, when Scalia cut across him. “We are all well aware of the ancient great charter,” the justice said. “But are you seriously proposing that every time the government wants to bring a case that links an individual to an organization, it must start by proving that organization’s alleged character from first principles? What if I were charged under the RICO statutes of involvement with the Mafia—would the government have to establish that the mob is not in fact concerned with the welfare of children and the elderly?”

  After that, the next fifty-eight minutes felt like being an involuntary passenger on an intellectual helter-skelter. Some of the time, Adam seemed almost irrelevant, a pig in the middle of a ferocious legal contest that had already lasted for years, between Scalia and the liberal Justice Breyer on the opposite side of the dais: two great jurists fighting yet another battle in their years-long war of attrition.

  And then, just when it seemed almost over, the words he had been hunting for to seize the justices’ full attention came tumbling from his mouth. He started citing the very case that Ronnie had mentioned two nights earlier, when the Civil War Supreme Court had decided that the powers assumed by Abraham Lincoln to intern the Union’s enemies had been unconstitutional. “No doubt those wrongfully interned after Gettysburg were regarded as enemies of the United States, just as my client is now,” Adam said. “But the requirement to test such propositions has not been diluted by the passage of the years, nor by the possibly even greater scale of our present jeopardy.” He sat down, and for more than a second there was silence.

  At last the ordeal was over. Adam knew the press would be waiting for him outside on the white marble steps, and he resolved to say nothing, other than that he had made his client’s case and would be awaiting the response from the Supremes. But first, as he gathered his papers and turned to leave, there was Mike, dressed as on the previous day in an anonymous, chain store suit.

  “Hey Adam. I’m just checking in. How’s it going? Are the kids all right?”

  “Is there news? Have you had confirmation she’s been kidnapped? Do you know anything more?”

  Mike touched his arm. “I’m sorry, buddy. Nothing more to tell you yet. But anyway, you did great. Morgan would’ve been proud of you.”

  To Adam’s amazement, Mike gave him a toothy grin and winked, then placed an index finger in front of his lips. “Shhh. Don’t tell Gary, but not all of us in my business feel the same way about these issues. Like I told you yesterday, you, me, Morgan: we’re on the same side.”

  Before Adam could reply, he was gone.

  Ronnie had known that like her husband in days of old, Adam would return from his high judicial combat feeling frayed. Tonight, she had said, she would bring over the ingredients and make dinner at the Coopers’ house. That way, he could drink without having to worry about driving home. While she prepared a cassoulet, he had a gin and tonic and, over dinner, most of a bottle of Cabernet. Finally the children disappeared again. Ronnie and Adam sat in the conservatory dining room, staring at the debris of the meal.

  “If the way to my heart was through my stomach, I would be madly in love with you,” said Adam. “And I may have wrecked the case, but if Mahmoud still has any prospects at all, they’re thanks to you.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it,” she said. “You haven’t wrecked anything. You’ve had a normal day in the United States Supreme Court, is all. And as for the kids, I haven’t done anything that any friend worthy of the name wouldn’t have.”

  “That’s actually not what I meant—grateful as I am. No. I was talking about when you pointed out the relevance of that Civil War case the other night. I cited it in front of the justices, and to be honest, it was the highlight of my argument.”

  Ronnie had been to the hairdresser. In place of her usual jeans, she was wearing a short and clingy cream knitted dress, and in the fading evening light, her eyes were dark, mysterious pools. He stared at her unashamedly as she crossed her firm, tanned legs, beaming with a pleasure that was entirely unfeigned. Still smiling, she pressed his right hand with her own.

  “Now, Adam Cooper, you really have made my day—no, my week, my year! I’m thrilled that you used it—and even more that it worked.” Still covering his hand, Ronnie paused. “And thank you for being generous enough to mention it—I used to know too many hotshots who liked to claim that the ideas they got from their colleagues were all their own. But Adam. Don’t you think it’s time we started to talk about what’s going on here? I know this is a difficult time for you. I think it’s pretty awesome that you managed to get the case ready and stand at that lectern at all. But it can’t help to keep it all in. Let me be your rock. I know what it’s like to lose someone. Talk to me, Adam. Even if you just want to vent.”

  For the second time that day, Adam felt a rush of perspiration. “It’s probably not what you think.” He was mumbling. “It’s kind of hard to talk about.”

  “This isn’t the first time Morgan’s been late back from a business trip, is it? I seem to remember she was two days late last time she went, in February. And okay: you weren’t about to make your first Supreme Court argument then, though you were pretty busy. But to do it now? Has it occurred to you that maybe she’s trying to send you some kind of message—as in, husband, go fuck yourself?” Ronnie gave his hand a squeeze. “When I’ve seen you together lately, it’s been obvious that things haven’t been good. You used to seem so close. Outsiders never really know what goes on in a marriage, but to me it looks obvious that something’s changed. You might have at least half of a British stiff upper lip, but talking does sometimes help. And if I’ve got this totally wrong, I apologize.”

  Adam swallowed. “You haven’t got it wrong. I just don’t seem to be able to figure out what Morgan wants from me at the moment. It’s like everything I do or say is somehow selfish or inappropriate. So, I think I’ve tried to make it easy for her to travel again, but she says the way I talk about it, I’ve made her feel guilty. When I say we really need to work all this out, she’ll admit we have our problems. But then she’ll say that they’re all my fault, because of my attitude, not just recently, but going back years.”

  “Oh Adam. You don’t seem like such a selfish bastard to me. You’ve spent most of career fighting for the rights of the underdog. I’d say that’s quite admirable.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose Morgan would deny I’ve taken on some unpopular causes in my professional life. But when it comes to family life and childcare, she says I’m just as unreconstructed as her dad, who assumed her mother would follow him anywhere. But listen. This is beside the point. The problems in our relationship aren’t the reason why she’s not home. I’m certain she’d be here now if she could be.”

  Ronnie touched the inside of his elbow and leaned toward him. Her smell was intoxicating. “You’ve been together a long time, haven’t you? And your paths have grown very different. How has it been between you in the bedroom?”

  Had it been anyone else, Adam would have been appalled. But there was something about the combination of Ronnie’s alluring physical presence, her unqualified admiration, and the alcohol in his bloodstream that kept him talking.

  “It used to be fantastic. I guess sex was the glue that kept us together, even when times were tough. But lately, not so much,” he said glumly. An unpleasant memory flashed across his mind.

  “It didn’t even happen at all on t
he night before she left for this trip. I kind of wanted it to say goodbye, but she turned me down.”

  “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but mightn’t there be a rather obvious explanation? Are you sure she’s not seeing someone else?”

  “No. No.” He shook his head. “That’s just not Morgan, and anyway, she wouldn’t have the time.”

  “So why wouldn’t she fuck you the night before she left?”

  “She said she felt tired; she said she was tense about the trip. I guess she knew I was worried and she was too, about having to go to Gaza.”

  Ronnie’s mouth was open. “Where? Where did you say she was going? You know half my family lives in Israel, right? Oh my God. Gaza. Why has she gone there, of all the world’s Godforsaken places?”

  The spell was broken. “Oh shit. I shouldn’t have said that. Please, please, keep that to yourself. Promise me, Ronnie—if it gets out, it can only increase the level of risk.”

  “What are you saying? You know she is in trouble? Have you been told, like, officially?”

  He could hardly avoid telling her more, and if anyone deserved to know at least some of the truth, it was Ronnie.

  “Kind of. But you really have to promise me, you won’t tell anyone what I’m about to say.”

  “Is there anything my relatives can do to help?”

  He touched her wrist. “It’s sweet of you to offer their help, but no, that includes your family.”

  Ronnie nodded. “You can trust me with your life. And hers.”

  “She was in Tel Aviv, but she had to go to Gaza last Thursday. She never came back through the border, and no one’s heard from her since. It looks like she’s been kidnapped.”