Blink of an Eye

by William S. Cohen

  Oxley’s penchant for pursuing the facts and acting according to the dictates of the law had not been playing well with the American people. The arguments he had heard from Sean continued to ricochet inside his mind. But he had had a meeting with Ray Quinlan and gone over the four options with him. And his words now were echoing in Oxley’s mind: “Evidence be damned. This is no time to be a lawyer. The American people need a warrior.”

  What if we were wrong and Iran had nothing to do with bombing Savannah? How could he—the leader of the free world—hold his head high in the howling winds of hate that would blow through an America turned lawless?

  Love it or leave it. That was the simple chant that danced across his mind. Teasing him. Haunting him. So simple. But it was also so much more complicated. “To love one’s country, one’s country had to be lovely.” Isn’t that what a wise man had once said? Would it be lovely for America to strike out blindly against its known enemies? How lovely would it be for millions of people to die?

  He had to choose. He could not refuse to attend the joint session and allow Congress to declare war. The Constitution gave that power to Congress. Yes, but it was the commander-in-chief who was to urge the Congress to exercise this power. Congress could not lead the nation into war. It could only support its commander’s war cry and express its collective support to follow him into battle. That was clearly what the Constitution said. He could not yield this power to Congress. The Founding Fathers never contemplated having 535 commanders-in-chief.

  Whatever happened tonight, he could ignore the action of Congress and try to appeal to the Supreme Court to validate his claim that only the president could declare war. But an appeal to the Supreme Court—being a lawyer instead of a warrior—would force a constitutional crisis. On a less lofty level, it would also probably give the election to Stanfield, who would hammer out a theme of vengeance against Oxley’s plea for restraint.

  Oxley stared out the tall windows facing the wide lawn that even in October still lay like an emerald carpet behind the Oval Office. His thoughts were flooded with doubt. But a leader was not permitted to doubt. He had to be strong, resolute, convinced that his option, his exercise of might, was right.…

  54

  FALCONE WAS sitting at his desk, staring at the photos and wondering what to do. He looked at his watch: 9:32. In less than eleven hours, President Oxley would be addressing a joint session and America would be at war—or on the verge of war.

  Out of the corner of his left eye, he saw a fluttering on the television screen. A banner reading IRAN AND THE SAVANNAH BOMB was running along the bottom of the screen while a pretty face was saying: “GNN correspondent Ned Winslow has obtained a document showing that the two Iranians removed from the doomed cruise ship Regal were members of the IRGC. Tonight at six Eastern Standard Time.”

  “Jesus!” Falcone exclaimed. Stanfield must have had that document and was timing the leaking of it as a prelude to President Oxley’s speech before Congress. Falcone picked up a phone and said, “Mae. Get me J. B. Patterson.”

  Three minutes later Patterson was on the phone. Falcone pictured J. B. in his office. He always seemed to be in pain, the pain of striving, his long face strained and unsmiling. Yet, he looked like a poster image of an FBI agent: dark suit, white shirt, blue or crimson tie, tightly knotted.

  “Sean, what can I do for you?” he said cheerily.

  “It’s about the Iranians taken off the Regal.”

  “We’re making progress.”

  “What have you got? And what does Ned Winslow have?”

  “Winslow? Right. DHS leak. We’ve got two agents at GNN’s Washington office right now, determining details about the document.”

  “What is the document, J. B.?” Falcone asked, knowing that a conversation with J. B. was Q&A. He rarely, if ever, voluntarily proffered information. Agents were trained to testify in court, and the training included warnings to limit your answer to the exact question that was asked.

  “A DHS report on the two subjects,” Patterson said.

  “Well, interesting, J. B. Does the document support or refute Stanfield?”

  Patterson paused a few seconds to prepare a response. “I can’t answer that authoritatively, Sean. Perhaps you should see it. I will send you an agent with a certified copy of the document.”

  “Thank you, J. B. One more thing. I need to talk to a digital photography specialist. Somebody who can get as much out of a digital image as possible.”

  “I’ll call the lab personally, get the director, find the best man, and call you back,” Patterson said, audibly glad to finally say something positive.

  He called fifteen minutes later. “Found the man, Sean. Turned out I had signed a citation for him six months ago. Well, I sign a lot of citations for people in the lab. He wrote our handbook on the use of digital image processing in the criminal justice system.”

  “I assume he’d be at the FBI Lab in Quantico.”

  “That is correct.”

  “I’ll be sending a White House helicopter for him in ten minutes. What’s his name?”

  “That urgent? Perhaps I—”

  “Yes, urgent. Name?”

  “Knox. Tony Knox.”

  “Get word to him, J. B., that he’s wanted for a sensitive White House assignment. Then have him call me on a secure line so I can sketch what I want done. And he can figure what he needs to take with him.”

  “Are you talking about evidence, Savannah evidence?” Patterson said. “I am obliged to ask.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Well, the proper way to handle—”

  “The chain of evidence will be maintained, J. B. I was a prosecutor once. And handing it off to Knox makes it solidly FBI.”

  “Point taken, Sean.”

  Falcone arranged for the helicopter to fly to the FBI complex on a large swath of ground at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, about thirty-five miles south of Washington. Knox called him ten minutes later and began a rapid flow of questions.

  “You have many questions, Mr. Knox,” Falcone interrupted. “And I have only the situation to present to you,” Falcone said. “We have some printouts of images that were attached to an e-mail. They were taken by a smartphone that was lost in the … explosion in Savannah. They may contain very important information. This is an extremely sensitive matter, and speed is of the essence.”

  “Understood,” Knox said crisply. “Please forward the e-mail to me so that—”

  “Sorry, Tony. I have to hold the e-mail and attachments tighter than a gnat’s ass. Whatever work you do will be done in the White House, or, more accurately, in the adjacent Executive Office Building. You’ll have access to our photography and communications facilities. But bring what you need with you. When you disembark the helicopter, you will be escorted to my office. If I am not here, you will deal with my deputy, Anna Dabrowski. All understood?”

  “All understood,” Knox said. He sounded youthful and eager.

  Falcone spent the next ten minutes meditating how to arrange a leak. Music Man popped into his mind, and then Midas, in one of those word associations that seem inexplicable. Then he called Rachel’s cell phone.

  “This is Sean,” he said. “I must see you. Urgent.”

  “Here at the Hay-Adams?”

  “Not today, regretfully,” Falcone said. “So glad to reach you. Providential. See you in Lafayette Park. Right in your backyard. There’s a bench by the fountain.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rachel said. She only needed three of the minutes to check the battery on her wireless mini-recorder, slip it into a side pocket of her slacks, open her blouse, attach the lavalier microphone to her bra, and button up. She donned a black Burberry funnel-necked belted coat and put on black ankle-high boots.

  *

  “MAE, I’m stepping out,” Falcone said over his shoulder as he rushed out, his black raincoat on his arm. “Be back in half an hour or so. Please track down Phil Dake and tell him to stand by
for a call from me. It’s going to be another long day.”

  October can bring spring days to Washington, and this was one of them. He felt he was escaping from prison when he passed through a guard station on Pennsylvania Avenue and crossed the broad pedestrian-only walkway to Lafayette Park. Along the sidewalk fronting the park was a clutter of cardboard and wooden signs and a stout, bewigged woman who for the last four years had stood a daily vigil protesting nuclear weapons. Falcone gave her a thumbs-up as he hurried into the park.

  “Beautiful woman, beautiful day,” Falcone said when, scaring off a squirrel, he reached the bench where Rachel sat. Rachel looked up and smiled warmly. “It is so good to be seeing you again,” she said.

  “Some day, if this is ever over, I hope we can have that drink. But—”

  “Yes. Always ‘but,’ always duty,” she said. “I assume it’s about Savannah.”

  As Falcone sat down next to her, he recognized a Secret Service agent about to sit down on a bench about twenty feet away and say something to his right wrist.

  “There’s not much time, Rachel. I’m going to talk fast and carelessly. If you or an invisible colleague has a recorder going, so be it. I’m beyond caring.”

  “Very melodramatic. And is that man talking to his wrist recording us?”

  “He’s a bodyguard I didn’t ask for.”

  Rachel nodded, “And the urgency?”

  Falcone told her about the draft pages Phil Dake had given him and his belief that Dake had received the material about The Brethren from the Mossad.

  “Interesting,” Rachel said. “You deduced the Mossad taps and bugs? Dake did not tell you?”

  “He did not give me anything more than I have told you. Dake never reveals his sources.”

  “I remember Dake,” Rachel said. “An interesting man who knows many secrets, doesn’t he? I think I would like to see him.”

  “Perhaps you will. I would like to make a proposition.”

  Rachel smiled and said, “That is a phrase I have heard many times. What do you propose?”

  “Senator Stanfield has set in motion a situation that almost certainly will result in the United States attacking Iran with nuclear bombs. It could set off the Armageddon that Israel rightfully fears.”

  Rachel nodded, waiting for him to go on.

  “I believe that you and Dake and I can stop Armageddon,” Falcone said. “Let me first give you my motivation,” he continued, speaking rapidly. “By getting information to the right people at the right time, we can prevent the war. And—”

  “And you will leave it to Israel to stop Iran’s nuclear bomb.”

  “I suppose that is the logical result, from your viewpoint. But I believe that the reality is that by not attacking Iran now, we—our country, your country—allow something like a normal process to take place. Stop Iran’s bomb-making, yes. But not with bombs. The world does not deserve a nuclear war.”

  “Please, Sean,” she said. “I have always trusted you, and I trust you now. What is the ‘normal process’ you talk about?”

  “I believe, not spiritually but practically, that important parts of the world are moving toward a normal, intuitive faith in reason. The Middle East is changing before our eyes.”

  Rachel did not answer for more than a minute. Then, suddenly, she stood and said, “I can’t talk anymore, Sean. I can’t even listen. I must leave.”

  Surprised, Falcone started to rise and said, “But I believed, hoped to—”

  “Goodbye,” Rachel said. She waited a moment, then threw open her coat and unbuttoned her blouse.

  The moves startled Falcone, who thought she had gone crazy. Rachel laughed, held up the lavalier microphone, and rebuttoned the blouse.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s talk.” She sat down, closer to Falcone.

  “Attractive accessory, Rachel,” Falcone said, smiling back. “Here’s what I want: names, times, places. What I want to do is produce, in the next few hours, evidence for the President that will save him—and make it unnecessary to attack Iran.”

  “So what you want me to do is give you intelligence information I am not empowered to give you,” Rachel said.

  “Yes, for the good of your country and mine.”

  “Sean, your idealism was always beyond belief. Why not let Oxley go through the motions of blaming Iran? It will not necessarily bring war. Besides, from what I know of the surveillance, you don’t get a connection between The Brethren and the bomb.”

  “I’m counting on Dake and luck. Let him at those transcripts, those surveillance reports. License numbers. Comings and goings to Parker’s house. I’m hoping to get enough to stall the process.

  “I want to at least put enough doubt in the President’s head to make it impossible for him to link Iran to the Savannah bomb. What we know about the bomb already shoots down Stanfield’s story about the bomb being on the cruise ship. I’m going to tell you what is known only to me, the President, and a couple nuclear scientists.”

  After hearing Falcone tell about the Savannah River bomb and the Flanagan photos, Rachel said, “Amazing. Your own bomb. But Iran is still not exonerated. All you know is that the bomb was not on that cruise ship, as Stanfield claimed. Iranian operatives could have somehow found the bomb and set it off.”

  “Correct. But I have seen two documents that make me think you can help lead me to the people who did do it.”

  “The Dake document, yes,” she said. “And?”

  “And a cable that ‘Velvet’ sent, saying she had warned Midas about The Brethren.”

  She did not show surprise. “Well, interesting. We must change that code. But I can’t see how my reference to Midas—”

  “Rachel, who is Midas?”

  She did not answer for nearly a minute. Her gaze was toward the White House, which shimmered through the arching waters of the fountain.

  “It is a beautiful, solid-looking building,” she said. Then, as if released from a spell, she turned to Falcone and said, “I cannot give up Midas, for reasons that are not pertinent to our talk. But the names, the surveillance on members of The Brethren, they are obtainable.”

  “On your authority?”

  “Yes. I need only go to the embassy and take them to a secure room. We are a surprisingly loose bureaucracy at a certain level. But let us talk some more,” she said, grasping his right hand. “I understand your frustration, your rage, all the emotions that I see in your eyes. Go over this for me.”

  “Thank you, Rachel,” Falcone said, looking down at their clasped hands. “Here is what I know. Or think I know. Israel has been keeping General Parker under surveillance because Israel believes that The Brethren’s yearning for Armageddon is ultimately not in Israel’s interest.”

  “That is true,” Rachel said, nodding. “One of our more emotional—and influential—officials believes that The Brethren’s agenda threatens Israel. He also believes that pro-Israel does not mean pro-Jews. He does not trust fundamentalists. A substantial investment in surveillance was ordered. The principal target was the easiest, General Parker. Bugging, tapping, fairly rigorous surveillance.”

  “And you picked up names. And when someone found out Dake was looking at The Brethren as the subject of a book, the Mossad decided to feed him some information.”

  “Yes. Dake was not keeping his work secret. He couldn’t. He had to talk to people, tell them what he was doing. I’m supposed to be one of the Mossad’s leading experts on America. I knew enough about Dake to realize that he would be a good outlet for beginning a general erosion of The Brethren’s power—and their idea of hastening Armageddon.”

  “So you set up the passing of some information to Dake?” Falcone asked.

  Rachel nodded and mischievously waved at the Secret Service agent, who looked flustered and went back to pretending to read the Washington Post.

  “So, don’t you see the sense in revealing more now?” Sean said. “Giving him transcripts, surveillance reports? Obviously no harm would be done
to Israel. It may even be good for Israel. Eroding Brethren power, as you say.”

  “Very slick, Sean, making me an accessory. But it’s not that simple. I’m not just going to hand you the names so you can pass them off to Dake.”

  “I’m not proposing that, Rachel. I want you to meet with Dake and give him the names so that he doesn’t feel like he is being used.”

  “He is not a fool, Sean. And neither am I. He’ll know he’s a messenger in some kind of Israel-U.S. game.”

  “But he won’t care, Rachel. He’s a journalist. He’s not worrying about geopolitical strategy. He just wants material that no one else has, material that he will put in a Post story and then in a book. That’s the game, Rachel.”

  She stood, and Falcone, doing the same, said, “You’ll be hearing from Dake. And things, I hope, will move fast.” He told her about Oxley’s decision to go to Congress.

  “Thanks for that little bit of news,” Rachel said. “It’ll be in a Velvet cable in a few minutes.” And the Savannah River bomb, Falcone thought.

  She reached out to shake his hand, then changed her mind, embraced him, and kissed him full on the lips. “Just to give your bodyguard something to wonder about,” she said, pulling back.

  “Goodbye,” she said and turned down the walk that cut through the park, toward the Hay-Adams. Each of them wondered when they might meet again.

  55

  BACK IN his office, Falcone had a brief handshake meeting with Tony Knox, whom Anna took off to the White House photography suite in the nearby Executive Office Building. The agent sent by J. B. had come and gone, and an envelope from the FBI was on his desk. Before opening it, he called Dake, who answered on the first ring.

  “Thanks for calling back,” Dake said. “I just wanted—”

  “Phil. Something has come up. How soon can I see you where? I suggest where we met and had scrambled eggs.”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Make it half an hour.”

  He opened the FBI envelope. The cover note—“Here is. Will keep you informed”—bore the signature of J. B. Patterson, director of the FBI. Patterson always formally signed any sensitive document that circulated outside the Bureau. There was an inherent formality about the FBI and its documents, unlike the CIA, whose unsigned analyses would sometimes have a relaxed tone, as if imparting information to an interested colleague. When he read an FBI report, he could easily imagine an FBI agent speaking clearly and convincingly from the witness stand in a federal court.