by Jon Talton
“This is a national security letter, friend.” I barely can get through the legalese when the agent reaches across and pulls it back. I can’t even see who signed it. “That means you are prohibited from discussing this request with anyone, on penalty of law.”
“Nice how that works.” I reach back to rub my sore neck and they both tense. I slowly put my hands back on the table. “You’re assuming there’s a connection between Troy and this missing girl…”
“Don’t play games,” Stu says. So there is a connection. These two aren’t so smart. I am about to tease them into discussing 11/11, then I think better of it. I try to take the letter but the other agent keeps his hand on it.
“I can’t keep it?”
“It’s a classified document.”
“What judge approved this?”
“You read the papers,” Stu says. “We don’t need a judge.”
“Just like the way you could seal the death reports,” I say.
“What a genius. No wonder you write a newspaper column.” He studies my face. “You have quite the nervous tick, columnist.” My eyelid is pinching madly.
“We’re going to want all your notes. And the names of your sources.”
“That’s not going to happen, but I’ll be happy to pass your request along to the newspaper’s lawyers.”
The preacher pulls out a hardpack of Camels, unwraps the plastic and tosses it on the floor. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it, blowing a long plume into my direction. It seems out of character with his clean-living face.
Stu says, “He doesn’t get it, Bill.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Another long, almost lewd drag on the cigarette. The end burns brightly. I have another new friend: Bill is his name. Preacher Bill. He laughs, his hands on his hips. “No, he sure doesn’t.”
I just keep staring at the table. I don’t want my face to give anything away. I need them to get out of here so I can get some help.
Suddenly Stu has his hands locked around my wrists. I try to pull back but it’s no use. He holds them tightly to the tabletop. I can’t help the testosterone rush of humiliation, that I am weaker than this guy.
“Look asshole,” he says, “we own you and nobody will help you. You will produce this material by tomorrow.” He keeps my wrists tightly in his grip, pulling my hands forward, palms down.
Bill speaks softly, dropping ash on the floor. “We have so many ways we can hurt you. Who knows what terrorist correspondence might be found on your computer? We know where you go online. We know who you call. You might disappear.”
“Snatch and grab,” Stu says.
Bill’s voice drops. “And you know what? You have no rights.” I make sullen eye contact with him. He has dark flecks in the whites of his eyes. “People like you,” he says, “people in the media. You hate America. You’re traitors.”
Before I can argue, my right hand convulses with pain. His cigarette hovers a millimeter above the seared skin. A whiff of burned flesh hits my nostrils. He lowers the cigarette again. I know what’s going to happen now, but can’t stop it. I twist and pull my body, dig my feet into the floor and push back, but still he holds my hands tightly to the table. The burning tip disappears into the same wound. I surprise myself by letting out a scream.
“We have so many ways to hurt you. Remember that.”
They leave me at the table with a blank business card, a handwritten phone number on it. That, and a second-degree burn on the top of my hand.
Chapter Fourteen
The managing editor is rubbing his beard. His long, painterly face seems even longer. He has tragic eyes, tilted slightly as if to keep the tears from flowing down his long, patrician nose. He used to have a great laugh, a fat man’s laugh, even though he’s a triathlete. I haven’t heard that laugh much since he took this job. Even so, he’s good at what he does, good at managing the egos and feuds endemic to any newsroom, even one with relatively little political knife work or hidden agendas such as ours. Often he sits back in meetings like a Zen master, saying nothing, letting the good people he’s hired work things out. Now I’ve told him everything but the eleven/eleven connection. I wish I could call Rachel. I wish the top of my hand didn’t feel like it was still on fire.
“And they didn’t let you keep this national security letter?”
I shake my head.
“And they didn’t identify their agency?”
“No.” I slide the card across the desk and he examines it.
I have a pair of reporters’ notebooks and several file folders from interviews with Troy Hardesty. I have my laptop in my briefcase. Nothing is safe at home. Yet while I’m shaken up and hyper, I feel safer now. My notes and sources are safe. I’m in the newsroom.
The M.E. shakes his head. “But you’re the business columnist. What problem could you stir up?”
My ego is briefly stung but I let it go. “Apparently I have.” I run through what I’ve found about Troy’s hedge fund, which isn’t much. It seems in good shape, delivering a good return to well-heeled clients for several years. I tell him there’s no obvious connection between Troy and the missing girl. Of course the key may be what I’m not saying: eleven/eleven.
“That one Amber Burke is hot to solve,” he says. “She’s a pistol, but she’s got a lot to learn. She wants to play cop.”
“You shouldn’t send her to the suburbs.”
The sad eyes in the long face perk up. “What? Are you fucking her, too?”
I hesitate just long enough. “I just tried to help her on this story.” Amber. I haven’t seen her in the newsroom and worry what the two federal goons might have done. I have already left three messages on her cell phone.
He says, “I bet you’re a big help.”
“You ought to be more concerned about her safety. These guys are out of control. Where is she?” He shrugs.
I feel my eyelid start to twitch. “So we’re writing about this for tomorrow, right.”
He leans back and studies me.
“Have you filed your column?”
I nod. I found a new report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis that showed strong per-capita income growth in Washington state. He seems pleased. Sometimes it’s amazing what will make editors happy.
“I’m glad you’re giving Olympic a break.”
“We broke that story. The Times is following us now. We ought to have a reporter on it. But I’m talking about the national security letter. I can’t remember reading about one being presented to a newspaper reporter.”
“I think that’s the point.”
“So let’s do a story.”
Then he rubs his beard again. “I want to talk to Kathryn.” That’s the executive editor, who spends much of her time traveling to attend panels of distinguished editors. “And probably to the publisher.”
My hand stings like hell. “Are you kidding me? This is prior restraint. This violates the First Amendment, and that’s just for starters…”
“Look.” He says my first name. “There’s a lot going on right now. It’s not easy letting people go.” His voice is soft and professorial.
I interrupt. “The paper for sale. Consultants. Layoffs. So?”
“So I need to talk to Kathryn and…”
“I know, the publisher. I can’t believe you’re backing down. This is the Seattle Free Press, not some Gannett info-mercial. What’s the goddamned I-Team working on right now? Give them to me and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
I know I am too worked up, but I don’t stop. “So they’re going to sell the paper? Let’s at least go down swinging. You have a staffer facing a national security letter! I’d say that’s news. This is a major First Amendment issue. I’ve never known you to back down.”
Wham. His hand slaps the desk and he bends forward like a striking snake. “You’ve never been very smart about some things. That’s why you’re a columnist instead of running a major newspaper, which you could hav
e done. And you don’t have the market cornered on being the incorruptible journalist. This newspaper has been very good to you.”
“No question.”
“There’s a big story running tomorrow, out of the Washington bureau.” His voice is back to humanities professor level. “It’s an exclusive on a report about how badly the CIA screwed the pooch in the lead-up to 9/11.” Hearing the date makes me wince. “It’s got incredible detail, stuff nobody has had. The Obama administration is trying to suppress it—just like back in the days of W. So I’ve had to go to the mat for this story, been in meetings all week. The bureau is terrified they’re going to get scooped by the Washington Post.”
He leans back in his chair. “I didn’t have any choice. The CIA director has been demanding that Sterling not run this story, saying it would be a grave threat to national security.”
There were those words again.
“Good,” I say. “Our bureau was the only major news organization that challenged the intelligence on the run-up to the war. We reported first on the lack of body armor. We’ve beaten the New York Times over and over.”
“And it’s made us some very highly placed enemies.”
I can’t believe I’m hearing this.
“Don’t forget that Jim Sterling is a sometime hunting buddy with the former vice president.” He sighs, “There are going to be big changes. There’s a lot up in the air. I need to discuss this with the head shed, and until I do I want you to do nothing, say nothing.
“What about my notes, my sources? They’re demanding them.”
“Tell them to wait.”
“They used a damned cigarette on me.” I hold up the back of my hand. “I want to call the cops. Call the lawyers. This is assault. Police brutality.”
“I understand.” He looks at his Blackberry, showing me how busy he is. “Wait. And don’t tell your little fuckbuddy Amber anything. I mean it.”
***
I walk back through the newsroom and one of the assistant city editors tells me that Amber is covering a news conference at the Ferry Terminal. At my office, I find a vase of red roses on my desk, with a note from Amber. Curious reporters stop by to ask and I smile for the first time in hours. A woman has never sent me flowers. I could end up in a cell at Gitmo, but I think about sex. Sex with Amber.
I pen a note of apology to the Kiwanis Club. Then the business editor tells me I am supposed to meet with the consultants. This goes badly. They ask why a newspaper needs columnists in an age when everyone has a blog and readers would prefer to see their own opinions in print. It’s true that many people think they can be columnists, and they can, for a couple of weeks. Few people can keep a column fresh week after week, year after year, not to mention doing it with graceful or compelling writing. Most blogs, meanwhile, are boring, and the bloggers would have little to talk about without real journalists breaking news. And few people anywhere can do what I do, as a business columnist. Of course, so-called citizen-journalists are cheaper than real journalists, but you get what you pay for.
I say all this. The consultants grimly make notes. They talk about the Web, stickiness, page views, and eyeballs. I talk about the need for quality journalism, however it is delivered. It’s more difficult to take a laptop into the bathroom to read, I say. They don’t smile. Good journalists are the antithesis of the corporate mammal. They don’t see the world as a salesman does, and everyone in America today seems to be selling something.
Back at my office, the roses seem a little faded. My hand throbs and all of me wonders what the hell to do. But there’s a column deadline at one p.m. Wednesday and I need to push ahead. Dig deeper. I slide the chair to the computer and start filling out Freedom of Information Requests to the Defense Department on Olympic Defense Systems. The new administration has been better on FOIAs than its predecessor, so this is definitely worth a shot. Then I go on Lexis/Nexis and start downloading every document I can find on ODS. If I can’t write about Hardesty or 11/11, at least I can keep ahead of the competition on the story I broke. Olympic International shares closed today up another five percent.
I learn more about the defense subsidiary from Securities and Exchange Commission filings, research reports, and the lawsuit over night-vision goggles. I make a few calls to West Coast analysts—New York has long gone home. I am ingratiating, charming, persistent, skeptical. ODS has benefited by several no-bid contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Conspiracy Grrl reported, Olympic International’s top executives have also been a big donor to both parties. The defense unit is clearly a cash cow. No wonder the private equity boys would love to buy Olympic and break it up.
I check Conspiracy Grrl and am relieved that she has nothing else on Olympic. She writes about electronic voting and election fraud. I am tempted to click on the Passion Page and find out what’s new with her and Mr. EU. But I fear it might bring the IT and human resources Nazis down on me.
After the third phone call, Heidi Benson comes on the line and refuses to let me speak to any executives. Last Sunday’s column was, she says, “beyond the pale.” I warn her that I will keep writing on this with or without her help. She screams at me and hangs up.
In between my column work, I brood about my pals from the government. Now I know they call each other Stu and Bill. And somehow Troy Hardesty and Megan Nyberg are connected. Not only that, but there’s another strand, Heather Brady. Who the hell is Heather Brady? I run her through the newspaper’s computerized morgue, but only get a teenage soccer player from Shoreline. I go down to the street and walk to Pioneer Square, using a pay phone to call the number on the business card: it rings once then beeps, nothing more. I walk back to the newsroom, waiting for a call from the ME. He doesn’t call. I resist the temptation to check on my Hardesty files.
Chapter Fifteen
Monday night, I meet Amber in a tavern called the Siren, which sits on a homely stretch between port and the railroad yards. I used to catch up a source from the Longshoremen’s union here, and it is enough out of my usual routine to provide a measure of safety. Even so, it’s not that far from the unmarked brick building. I take a circuitous path, on obscure streets up and down hills, through the warehouse districts; no headlights follow me. Movies stoke my worries: what exotic devices have they planted on me, so that my every sigh can be recorded from geosynchronous orbit? They promise to hurt me if I don’t hand over my notes, and there’s no way I am going to comply.
There’s an old adage for young reporters: it’s not the big investigative story that gets you sued, but the police blotter brief that misidentifies a suspect. So the routine, the banal, matters. Even so, I can’t figure out their obsession with my reporting on Hardesty. I went through my notes and there are no dramatic revelations, no obvious connections with Megan Nyberg or Ryan Meyers. Still, I didn’t feel safe with them sitting in my files in the newsroom or at home.
I checked out a box on the wall in the business news department. It’s connected to the old pneumatic tube system. Years ago, it was used to send typewritten pages to editors or the printers in the old back shop. The process is all computerized now, the printers long retired. The old tube system remains. But the dusty old box with pipes coming into it is too small for the files. Maybe I could put them in one of the empty desks. No, that won’t do, either. Who knows when the building services people will start carting away cubicles at a newspaper likely to close.
The cubicles were still intact on the third floor, where I emerged from the stairs minutes later. This was the old Mirror newsroom, then the features department before it was decimated by cuts and moved upstairs. Only one row of overhead lights illuminated the room. Almost all of the third floor had been redone in the big remodel, too, with one exception: the Governor’s Library. It’s a rectangular room with a high ceiling, entirely lined with mahogany bookshelves. In the middle is a thick wooden conference table with red leather chairs around it. At one time it was the personal library of the newspaper’s founder, Eugene Forr
est, who also served as Washington governor. He had it built specifically by the newsroom—he wanted to be close to his reporters, and he rarely used the executive suites on the top floor. It’s still sometimes used as a backup location for news meetings, although it has had its share of newsroom romantic assignations. I have never used it that way, but I walked back through the shadowy old newsroom and into the Governor’s Library.
The room was empty but the lights were on. The chairs were disheveled at all different angles. On the far wall was the door to the governor’s private, hideaway office. The door has a darkened window in its top half. The office is preserved as it was on the day he died, and the family only opens it to the public—mostly employees—once a year. Even his smoking jacket is hanging on a coat rack. I scanned the library. Five shelves down and too high for most people to easily reach, I found a row of books by Churchill, their jackets yellowed and tops dusty. I slid the files behind them and pondered some of my history at this newspaper. It was only when I emerged back into the barely lit big room that I started to feel creepy chills up my back, like a kid who’s afraid to look behind him. Without waiting for the elevator, I walked quickly to the stairs.
***
The tavern is dark and blue collar. On the bar rest large hands that forge, repair, manufacture, haul, and fish. Scratch the surface deep enough, and this is still a blue-collar town, a seaport. I find Amber at the far end of the bar, and for a long time, we hang on each other like teenagers. She is long-limbed, a thoroughbred. I wonder what she sees in me. God, I need to feel her close against me.
