Deadline Man

by Jon Talton

  Just a boring, integrated paper company with a subsidiary in the defense business. A company that’s reporting operations on its books that are actually closed. A company the Seattle newspapers haven’t covered very completely for years. The train rolls through the peaceful farms of the Willamette Valley, toward the mountains, and I read. I read to get the story, and I read so I don’t go crazy with grief over Pam and the gaping absence of Rachel and Amber, Melinda the professor and Melinda my oldest friend, and everything in my old life. I miss a warm body and a warm voice that might miss me. Grief over the deaths of newspapers. Instead, I walk to the bar car and drink a martini, then another. Back at my seat, I make myself read.

  Last year, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction released a report that showed ODS had over-billed the State Department for $50 million. It has a contract to protect diplomats in Iraq, but apparently didn’t fully staff and cover its obligations. ODS also over-billed the government for airfare and couldn’t account for government equipment it had received. I search through Olympic’s SEC documents. By law, it should have to disclose this to shareholders. There it is: Hidden in the fine print deep in the 10-K annual report. The scandals at Blackwater and Halliburton got all the coverage. This has never been in a newspaper.

  By the time we arrive in Klamath Falls, I begin to understand Amber’s worry over whom to trust. I read Justice Department budget documents related to an advanced electronic surveillance program for the FBI called “Going Dark.” It’s an advanced program designed to allow the bureau to get control over new technologies. That’s what the report says. An old editor of mine would have asked, “What does that mean?” The report is unclear. But when I scan through the pages, I find a list of contractors for the $234 million program, and there’s Olympic Defense Systems getting a nice chunk of change. Yet it’s not reflected in the Olympic International reports to shareholders or to the SEC. I find this again and again. ODS is bringing in much more revenue than Olympic declares—and its mills and distribution centers sit shuttered. Apparently nobody on Wall Street or at the rating agencies cares as long as the cash comes in.

  I fall asleep to the gentle rocking of the train, documents clutched in my lap. The next day passes and I barely notice the view across the bay to San Francisco, the ocean right by the tracks after we leave Santa Barbara, the long slog through the suburbs of L.A. My mind is on the story.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Thursday, November 4th

  This is not Europe. We don’t have fast trains most places in America. My train doesn’t even go to Phoenix anymore, which is the nation’s fifth largest city. Instead, it lets me out in the desert in a little crossroads called Maricopa. I begin to wonder if I should have gone all the way to Tucson and taken a bus back, when I hear a woman’s voice, asking me if I need a ride. I walk across the dusty, hard ground, feeling the intense sun on my skin. She’s somewhere over fifty, sixty pounds overweight, wearing a tight pink pastel T-shirt, and sitting in an ancient Chevy van with the top of the dashboard covered with paperwork of some kind. She’s the only taxi service into the city and the fare is $60. I peel off three bills and climb in. The only other passenger is a big guy with an eye-patch and a ball cap that reads, “When I have sex, it’s so good the neighbor has a cigarette.” He reads a comic book and doesn’t talk during the trip.

  It’s hot.

  It’s early November and blistering. The sky is an enormous vault of dusty blue without a single cloud. I have never been to Arizona: the land is flat, treeless, brown, everything the Northwest is not. To me it’s ugly, but I’m sure they think it’s God’s country. It’s that way everywhere. Don’t ask me to be in a tourist frame of mind, anyway. I have a lot of enemies. Time is one. I’m grateful the dash clock is broken. We drive out of the little crossroads and enter a morbid landscape of new, close-spaced, dun-colored houses. They look cheaply built and deserted. Faded sales signs hang limp in the air. She tells me the place has been killed by the real-estate crash. A huge Indian casino whooshes past and then we’re on the freeway, doing seventy-five. I keep checking the mirrors. Nobody seems to be following us. We’re swallowed up by a city of subdivisions and big-box stores, surrounded by bare mountains. The scenery runs from shabby to breathtaking. There seems to be no zoning.

  She lets me out downtown. This is the oddest big city I’ve ever seen, hugely spread out but with a downtown more modest than Bellevue’s. Still, I’m a city kid and step out on the curb beside a skyscraper from the 1970s. Without the van’s air conditioning, the heat instantly hits me again. No one is visible on the sidewalk for blocks. In the distance, a low range of blue-brown mountains keep the southern horizon. A light-rail line runs up what looks like the main drag. I walk toward a pub to grab some lunch and see a small men’s store. There, I use my federal money to buy a suit, white shirt, dress shoes, tie and belt. Lucky for me I’ve always been able to buy suits off the rack with minimal alterations. Forty-two long coat. Fits great. I add a natty straw fedora and throw away the ball cap.

  The owner is named Barry and he wants to talk. Where am I from? Chicago, I say. He is, too. Good thing I know that city well enough to fake it. After lunch, I use his directions to take a light-rail train half a mile to a dry cleaner that Barry said could do alterations. I offer the woman an extra $200 if she can hem the pants while I wait: a full break and cuffs. Back on the train, I ride north, past skyscrapers and vacant lots until I am in shady blocks. There I get off and check into a motel, and finally unload my purchases and traveling bag heavy with files in a dim room with the air conditioning set on high.

  ***

  An hour later I pay the cab to wait. We sit outside a sand-colored three-story office building in Scottsdale. It is both new and drab. The heat hasn’t abated, so I keep the suit jacket off until I step outside and walk toward the front entrance. I grew up poor, so I like to wear suits. I love their design and feel. I love not dressing like every casual Microsoftie in Seattle. And a suit still gets you entree—fewer people will ask questions when you walk in a place where you shouldn’t be wearing a suit. My beard is coming in now and I’ve trimmed it neatly. The straw fedora is on and I keep my head down. No reason to attract undue attention from anybody’s security cameras.

  The glass entrance doors open with gold handles and give way to a tall atrium with elevators on each side. They have gold doors. Walk straight ahead and it’s the entrance to what was once a mortgage company. The name is still on the wall but the interior is dark and a discreet “available” sign is in the window. There’s no security desk or, as far as I can tell, camera. No one comes or goes as I wait. But the directory on the nearest wall confirms what I had learned from Olympic’s Web site, that the offices of ODS are on the third floor.

  I ride up and the elevator door opens with soft bell and a quiet whoosh. The atrium is deserted. An insurance office sits in the main space and behind a spacious reception desk, I see people walk around doing whatever it is they do. The ODS office is located down a hallway painted off-white with dark wooden doors every few feet and a drinking fountain set back in an alcove that also contains the doors to the rest rooms. Nobody is out in the hallway besides me. The carpet is thick and yet I can hear my footsteps. The place smells like icy air. I pass a real-estate attorney, another real-estate attorney, a CPA. I dated a CPA once. She was much more fun than one might have imagined. These offices have large windows beside the entrance doors. I am re-running the lines in my head that I will say when I reach the ODS office and open the door. My stomach is tight. I take note of the door to the exit stairs at the end of the hall. It is fortuitously located near the ODS suite.

  But when I get there, it’s just a dark door. No window. No gold plate with the company name. Just a suite number. I place my damp hand on the door handle and press it. It doesn’t turn. It’s locked.

  “Nobody’s there.”

  He has crept up on me so silently that I didn’t hear anything. I don’t like it and my
hand drops into my right pocket and finds the butt of the .357. But he looks benign enough. A medium-sized Hispanic man with dark skin and a white shirt with “Oscar” embroidered on the left side. He has a large set of keys dangling from his belt by a red carabiner. Maybe a janitor.

  “There’s never anybody there.”

  “Really? I was looking for Olympic Defense Systems. I have an appointment there at two…”

  He shrugs. “Whatever. But I’ve never seen anybody come or go. You tried the door? Locked right? Always is. They don’t want it cleaned. Not much to clean. It’s the smallest office on the floor. Just one room and a closet. Building manager says, never go inside.” He gives me a sly smile and jangles his keys. “I went in once. There’s nothing there. Not even a chair. Nothing.”

  ***

  Back at the motel, I start making calls to the East Coast: analysts at defense industry think tanks, my trusted Wall Street research people, a finance professor at Wharton who is an expert on corporate structures. While I wait for return calls, I read the Phoenix paper. It’s the typical Gannett piece of crap, full of stories based on one source or press releases, “news you can use,” boring features. Stuff that mostly screams “Don’t read me.” It’s a pretty product, with color, graphics, boxes, and assorted doodads. But there’s not much worth reading. Too bad Wall Street loved Gannett and every other chain followed its lead. It doesn’t surprise me that Olympic Defense Systems would have something down here. It’s the kind of town where the press wouldn’t ask tough questions. You could get away with anything. What that is, though, I don’t know. I’ve hit another Olympic dead end. There’s only one other possibility here, based on my digging through the corporate reports, but it’s getting too late to check it out today.

  I had a friend years ago who worked with me, then came to Phoenix for a job at this newspaper. His wife wanted sunshine. He completely dropped off the national radar, and he was a fine reporter. I consider calling him, but decide against it. Instead, when I get back to my room I call another old friend and colleague. We’ve known each other going on thirty years, and we talk every year. His wife answers and we chat. When she hands him the phone, he gives his characteristic greeting.

  “Fitz happens!” Then he gives a high cackle that I know is totally out of keeping with his sturdy, six-foot-six body, handsome coffee brown face, and position in the world. I circle slowly around the real reason for my call. Then he says he wants to call me back. He does so in fifteen minutes. It’s on a secure line. The kind of communications available to Lt. Col. Tony Fitzgerald of U.S. military intelligence.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Friday, November 5th

  At precisely nine a.m., a black Dodge Ram pickup pulls under the portico of the motel. He has driven hours to reach Phoenix from Fort Huachuca, but the truck looks immaculate. I am standing there wearing the same outfit I wore when I walked off the ferry, today enjoying the dry, cool morning. A light cloud cover mutes the previous day’s intense sunshine. The truck is an extended-cab job, jacked up so that the door handle is at my eye level. The tinted window rolls down and Fitz is behind the wheel wearing a white polo shirt and jeans. I use the steel rung step to lift myself up into the cab and settle into the passenger seat.

  “Turned into a goddamn hippie.” He indicates my beard.

  “Long story.”

  Fitz’s close-cropped hair is going gray and he’s wearing wire-rimmed glasses that give him an unaccustomed professorial look. In my mind’s eye, we’re both young and wearing green.

  “So you want to go to prison?” His voice is a low rumble above the truck’s diesel chant. I show him what I had printed out that morning at the motel business center: a page from the state corrections department on the Arizona State Prison Complex-Cortez Peak and a Mapquest route to get there. It’s a private prison operated by another subsidiary I had never heard of: Olympic Correctional Services. Fitz studies the map and hums to himself. I look in the back and see a red cooler and a long black duffel. The cooler has ice and water. The shapes inside the duffel feel like firearms.

  “You came prepared.”

  “Always out front,” Fitz says. I lean over and check the map. The prison “complex” is more than out in the middle of nowhere. The writer and editor in me itches against the jargon word “complex.” What the hell does that mean? Sounds like a psychiatric disorder. I’d have a complex if I were in prison, too. I wish this were my biggest care in the world.

  Fitz slips the truck into gear and we roll. Half a mile to the freeway—eight clicks, Fitz would say—then we drive west. It takes a long time for the suburban sprawl to fall away and be replaced by desert.

  “So how the hell did you get in with ODS?” He’s the kind of driver who looks at you as he steers casually with one hand.

  “Another long story.”

  “Well, I’m not surprised you were supposed to be dead. My friend, you have fallen down the rabbit hole of the hidden defense budget. Everything down looks up and you can’t believe your own eyes. The world has changed since you left the Army. Now almost half of national security has been privatized, and it’s not just wiring barracks showers that electrocute soldiers. It’s everything. And ODS is the best-kept secret of all.”

  I tell him that’s what happens when newspapers cut back on investigative reporting, but he doesn’t seem interested.

  “Makes no sense for Olympic to be running a private prison.” He shakes his large head. “Makes no sense unless it’s a black site, in country. They’ve got terror suspects out there, and nobody knows it. Sons of bitches…”

  I make no comment. The floor of the truck is solid under my feet and even with the clouds the sky is an endless vault of light, but I feel as if I am sliding deeper into darkness.

  “So, since we’re talking about secrets, ever heard of something called Praetorian?”

  “That’s a secret,” he says solemnly. Then, a perfect comedic beat and his cackle laugh fills the cab. “Praetorian started out CIA. It was a brass-plate operation that claimed to be in the shipping industry but was really involved in satellite surveillance. North Korea. Iran. Iraq. All the places we couldn’t go. This was years ago. Then the CIA closed it. Fast-forward to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Praetorian shows up as an ODS outfit.”

  “They’re part of Olympic? You’re sure?”

  “No doubt. But now it’s not about high-tech shit. It’s bad-asses, mercenaries. I ran across them in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each one making two-hundred K a year when the average grunt getting killed has to put his family on food stamps. Lot of former military. Well trained. Very well equipped. Word was, under the old administration they were running the vice president’s special executive assassination squad. You didn’t hear that from me.”

  I tell him about Craig Summers and how I know him. It takes awhile and ends up being a briefing on the whole train mess my life has become since that meeting with Troy Hardesty.

  For a long time, Fitz stays silent. He chews on his lower lip and scans the road, subtly checks the mirrors. “Every organization has its assholes. We had ours at Abu Ghraib, and they had orders from DOD—top assholes always get off. But Praetorian is all asshole, all the time. Ask me, I think they’re trained killers.”

  We take an exit off the freeway and turn south, bumping onto a wide dirt road that runs between irrigated fields, some bright green and some brown and fallow. We’re in a flat basin marked off by bare, rugged mountains We drive toward the closest range and after ten minutes the agriculture disappears, replaced by scratchy vegetation, some cactus, rough, short bushes.

  “The thing is, a lot of these contractors are on hard times,” Fitz says. “The new administration and Congress have been a lot tougher. Lots of contracts have been canceled, tasks have been returned to the military where they always should have been. Money’s tighter. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty still there. Plenty in black ops, in DARPA”—the Defense Department’s research outfit—“but
there’s less growth in the budget, a lot less. And you know how that affects a business, being a big-time business columnist. When the growth slows down, the shit hits the fan.”

  “Profit margins shrink.”

  “Exactly.”

  “If only they could create their own housing bubble,” I joke.

  He raises his eyebrows. “They could, with the right political connections—and an event.”

  “You mean a terrorist attack. New York, Washington…”

  “Hell, if I wanted to scare the hell out of Americans I’d set off a suitcase nuke at a shopping mall right here in Phoenix.”

  “Sometimes you scare the hell out of me, my brother.”

  The road becomes even less improved, but Fitz barely slows and his shocks are so good we hardly feel the rutted ground beneath. Foothills bend down to meet us, marked by the stands of majestic saguaros. Behind us is a long dust trail. Ahead, empty country with a road curving to the left, seeming to peter out into trackless badlands. I begin to wonder if we’ve taken a wrong turn.

  Suddenly we’re on blacktop. It’s as if the truck is riding on glass. The road is wide, new, looks barely used. A dry creek passes beneath a bridge of clean, unscarred concrete. Craggy low buttes and mountains with fantastic shapes surround us, but the only sign of man is this perfect, empty road. Fitz pulls off. I can see him watching the rearview mirror, checking to see what might be behind us as the dust dissipates. I crane my neck. Nothing.

  “Anybody asks, we’re geologists,” he says. “From the university.”