Borderless Deceit

by Adrian de Hoog

  Outside, the sun was well past its zenith; inside, the Czar was still approaching his. Once more he leaned back. For longer than before, there was no motion while he reasoned. If Carson is out to ruin Rachel as a stepping stone to me, what have I done, what do I have that offends him? What in the records have I overlooked?

  The Czar raised himself. Confronting the screen, he began tapping. Zadokite Port required a new prism. This time he wanted it to go beyond facts and figures. Attendance records, employee appraisals, foreign travel, correspondence, memos, minutes of meetings, telephone logs, lists of e-mails sent and received, all this was good fodder, but something subtler had to be broken out. He wanted Zadokite Port to target instances of aberrant behaviour.

  The instruction given, Heywood watched. How Zadokite Port sifts, he mused as a list formed. And love the delivery speed. The titles in the index appearing on the screen were nothing if not promising.

  It took a while to work through the new material because much of it brought back memories and Heywood enjoyed reading it. Take that disarmament task force he’d run a dozen years before. The minutes of the meetings were all there, chronologically itemized. In retrospect they were too stark, too bleached, like skeletons on a desert floor. They barely hinted at the throbbing pulse of the debates. Carson had been a member of the task force at the start. How they had clashed! Heywood took a minute to relive it. Disarmament was his fief back then. He’d been under pressure from the top to forge new policies. “The other side will respond if we show them trust,” he argued to the task force. “Shall we make that our starting point?”

  The task force mumbled agreement. But not Carson. Puffing himself up, looking sour as a lemon, shaking his insolent head, he said, “Trust?” The tone was disparaging. “Never trust the other side, especially not with disarmament. The other side is driven solely by self-interest. Find out what that is, then go on. Trust them and you’re dead.”

  Heywood wanted to rebut, but Carson wouldn’t shut up. He presented a fluent analysis of geo-political trends, then overlaid it with the political dynamics of the world’s troubled regions. He drew lucent conclusions, why weapons of all kinds everywhere were being added to the already obscenely large stockpiles. The task force was captivated. A low-volume, sympathetic murmur rippled through the room. “Rubbish,” Heywood cut in to silence the unrest. Using Hannah’s way of expressing things, he added, “All that is quite abysmal and truly worthless rubbish. Your kind of thinking, Carson, was fine, oh, say, in about 1919. But let’s recall that the Paris Peace Conference led to seven decades of war, a legacy which is only now ending. In the era we are now entering we will pursue loftier aims. Our values have become our springboard.”

  But Carson wouldn’t back off. He couldn’t see that the chairman was doing his best to remain pleasant, taking the high road so to speak, not wanting to embarrass him. Instead of crooning – Well yes, Mr. Heywood, the impressive way you put it, I can see your point. – Carson adopted a hint of a smile, a tiny, secretive smile, an expression of disdain. Then he said: “1919, Irv, became problematic because of fuzzy thinking. There was a value back then too. The principle of self-determination. Everyone pursued it as a lofty aim. That principle is not that bad for addressing local matters – like planning a garden – but as a basis for world order it led to endless friction. Values as a springboard? Come on, Irv. In the real world, that kind of springboard always turns out to be pretty limp.”

  Heywood stiffened. The innuendo was intolerable. Was a rumour afoot that he sometimes helped his wife with the garden? And why the word limp? Was that directed at him? “Shall we deal with this off-line, Carson?” he said icily. “The Cabinet Committee has instructed us to engage in fresh thinking, which we should do. We’ll stage our little political philosophy seminar one-on-one when we have finished here. Would that suit you? Or shall I end the meeting now and reconvene another in five minutes without you?”

  Carson examined the silent face of everyone in the room, including Rachel who was there as a trainee-observer. He saw no head was moving, not even one throat being cleared, just an awful lot of squirming. And at the table’s far end, feeling on top, sat Heywood. Carson gathered his papers and departed, closing the door behind him with great gentleness, as if leaving the solemnity of a reading room.

  Aberrancy even in the walk-out, Heywood had thought then and thought now. “It was in my power to eject him and quite properly I did.”

  What further aberrations was Zadokite Port laying bare? Ah, an item on Iraq. All good files nowadays have some Iraq in them.

  The Czar clicked to see the text – a memorandum from Carson to the PM’s foreign policy advisor. The bugger, Heywood thought. He’s bypassing the Service hierarchy. Done in secret. Deviant behaviour in itself. The subject was weapons of mass destruction. There are none, the text claimed. Important voices in the US Administration, even in the CIA, claim there is no proof of WMD. But they are overruled, partially because of an irrational hatred for Saddam Hussein and partially because well-connected corporations expect significant and lasting commercial gain from an invasion. WMD is the pretext for going in. However, post-invasion Iraq will be ungovernable for a long time. I advise we stay clear of it.

  Yeah, sure, thought Heywood, not too impressed. Even newspaper delivery boys have rendered that opinion. In fact, he’d said much the same thing himself back then to his neighbour Gerry. Yet, something about the note was special. Why the assertion that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction? An unusually categorical statement for an intelligence analyst. Why was Carson so sure when, before the war began, the open-minded, objective members of the CIA went no further than to claim they had no proof either way. And didn’t Carson’s raw data come from them…through the pipeline? If Carson was cocksure when they were not, did he have some other source?

  Heywood rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Find more Iraq stuff,” he ordered, and Zadokite Port obliged. It flew like Pegasus, hooves striking data mountains in promising locations, each kick liberating fountains of insight. I should have known, Heywood thought, watching more truth emerge. That Morsi Abou-Ghazi, he’s a caliph all right, a caliph in many places, Baghdad included.

  Morsi Abou-Ghazi’s intimacy with the Baathists went back years, prior to Kuwait, all the way in fact to Saddam’s spat with Iran decades before. Morsi always positioned himself as Iraq’s dependable source for weapon hardware of all kinds – conventional, chemical, nuclear – and he tirelessly helped Saddam’s clique to profit from the UN oil embargo.

  “So the Caliph got equipment for fabricating WMD in,” Heywood reasoned, “and then helped take it back out. Twice he received handsome payments which then got laundered by the Junker. Heywood kicked himself for not divining this side of things before. They would have known Iraq’s WMD capacity was gone. But how did this information get passed to Carson?

  Question: Did Carson travel to see the Junker and the Caliph?

  Answer: If he did, it wouldn’t have been on official time.

  Question: If not official, then how?

  Answer: As a tourist maybe. He’d have taken time off.

  Question: Has Carson recently been on vacation?

  More clicking of the mouse. Zadokite Port delivered an extract from attendance records. Ah, Carson booked off work during the spring about a year before.

  A spring vacation? Heywood weighed this. Don’t most people go on holidays in summer? Why in spring? And where to? Who or what might know?

  I would, Heywood realized with startling clarity, I own the capacity to know.

  Many databases had been erected under the Czar’s authority and one of them was passports. If Carson had travelled he’d have used one.

  The Czar didn’t need Zadokite Port to check out passports. He had access to that database anytime. Carson’s passport details appeared on his screen, including a photo of Carson. Strong, long nose, determined mouth, jutting chin – it reinforced what he’d always known, Carson’s outside disguised the ugliness within
.

  The Czar reviewed the data: when the passport was issued, when it was used, the places he travelled, how long he stayed. Every time the passport was swiped somewhere, information had trickled in.

  Promising stuff. Next he went to the database for travel claims. Thick fingers teased the keyboard. Such economy of motion; so vast the reach. More details arrived – the stated reason for travel, flights taken, hotels used, the taxi rides. The Czar stared at them for some minutes, then began nodding. He breathed deeply and locked his hands behind his head while in his mind a scene unfolded: Carson arriving in Berlin, catching a cab and checking into a hotel, then meeting up with the Pullach spooks, the pretext for the trip. The next scene played out in his head too, but it was better, for he gave it sound. In a dark and quiet corner Carson and the Junker are huddled around a candle. Heywood could hear the whispered secrets shared. They won’t find WMD in Iraq, Mein Freund. I know because I helped get them out. Some are hidden in a warehouse in Oman and what’s not there is already in P’yongyang.

  Heywood swivelled his chair towards the window. The outside light was blinding, but it didn’t bother him. Because with still greater luminosity he was convinced he had just put his finger on a smoking gun. Case closed. All done. Tomorrow the formal investigation could begin. He looked at his watch. Not that late yet. Why not go home to celebrate? Imagine the surprise on Ivy Crescent if he returned now.

  Home already, darling? A blessedly short Sunday in the office.

  IT, sweet. It’s efficient. And the results are brilliant. Can I help in the garden?

  But wait. Think ahead. Are all loose ends tied up? Is the package covered in neat ribbons?

  The investigators, the Czar knew, were accomplished second-guessers. They’d start with tiresome rounds of questions and seek endless clarifications. A week would go by before they’d get around to hanging a fresh lock on Carson’s door. By then he would have put his hard drive and many other sources of information through a thorough rinsing. By then he would be antiseptically clean. Gotta go higher, the Czar thought. Convince the Head, get Carson sidelined by fiat. The Czar knew, if someone is released from duty pending an investigation, no matter the eventual findings, the stain will be permanent. With Étienne on side Carson’s disfigurement would be certain and eternal. One good memo would initiate the long-awaited sacrificial rite.

  Heywood pondered the keyboard for a while, then began a slow tapping. When daylight faded – a signal that impatience on Ivy Crescent was now inevitable – he felt he was still only beginning.

  “…so he’s been busting his ass,” Jamie was saying. “The case for the Head. For four days he’s been spinning it out. Draft after draft. A potboiler, I guess. All about national security. He’s thinking it’ll get you arrested. You know the guys who do that, handcuffs first, then some banging of your head against the cruiser hood to get your mind attuned. A year goes by. Finally the chance to explain your side to the judge. Irv knows, when it’s national security, justice doesn’t mind skating backwards. I’d say he’s seeing your future with glad eyes.”

  She had taken on a yoga position, cross-legged, back straight, arms on her knees, thumbs and fingers touching lightly. But there was nothing transcendental in her eyes; they were blitzing out bad news.

  “You’ve been checking in on him?” I said.

  “Couple of times a day. He’s so steamed up he doesn’t notice I’m peeking.”

  “What’s the line of argument?” I knew when witch hunts start they must run their course and was resigned this one could affect me a long time.

  “You sure you want to know? Here and there it’s pretty trashy.” Ruefully she added, “I feel responsible for some of it.”

  I shrugged. Deep down hadn’t I known all along that this was foreordained? I thought back to the day when my computer blipped. “Why did you do it, Jaime? I mean, give him Zadokite Port. For a long time I didn’t know what it was. When I finally checked on Heywood I saw it was some kind of function he had to get through firewalls. But he wasn’t using it much. All he had was a bunch of e-mails snitched from the account of the Legal Advisor.”

  “I sort of liked those kooky legal e-mails,” Jaime said sheepishly, thereby confirming she had lifted them. “Hilarious huffing and puffing about American double standards. I hung them in a Zadokite Port ante-room, sort of as a decoy. The real Zadokite Port stuff was stashed further back. Tougher to get at. I wondered whether you would suspect there was more. When will Carson come looking, I thought? I watched everyday.” She continued the yoga pose, but started grinning. For her it had been a game.

  “What’s he got then, Jaime? And what’s he making up?”

  “He starts with badmouthing your career. Stuff from your personnel file, you know, the fact that you’ve done the intelligence thing twenty years but were never good enough to get beyond it. And he plays up the fact that you always sucked up to the Yanks, constantly narrowing your horizons instead of broadening them like everybody else. He concludes you’re your own worst enemy. Quarrelsome and eccentric, more so than most. That was this morning’s version. Yesterday it read: Stroppy and splenetic. Counterproductive in the extreme.”

  I laughed. “That’s par for Heywood, judging people who won’t kiss his ass.”

  “Don’t pooh-pooh it too much. There’s others who think that description fits you. Ready for insight into your attitude?”

  She sat down before my laptop and punched in a code. Seconds later she was scrolling through a file list, then opened one up. “Listen to this, dude.”

  When I heard how Heywood borrowed from the annual evaluation files, my expression hardened. Years before he had insisted that his personal comments on my contribution to something he was working on be appended to that year’s routine appraisal document. Jaime began reading out loud.

  Mr. Pryce’s input to what I was asked by Cabinet to complete was subjective: it derived from a personal agenda, and was therefore irrelevant. He also embarrassed me as the senior officer in charge of an otherwise excellent task force. He appeared to be resentful, spoke up too much and wasted time.

  I recalled these sentences. At the time I considered them laughable. All the same I was forced to take formal note by signing a short statement that I’d read them. I had been unable to resist jotting down some marginalia. Crazed and crazy, I wrote. Mr. Heywood’s next incarnation will be as a bedbug.

  “I’ve taken a peek at your appraisal file,” Jaime admitted. “Irv’s a slick quoter. Accurate down to the commas. This is what he adds to that stuff now.”

  What I heard was classic Heywoodian humbug. Absurdities filed away years ago were now brought forward as long-established truths.

  Files show that Mr. Pryce for many years had been incapable of suppressing his personal views. Other material corroborates that his failings were pointed out to him, but rather than expose himself to counselling and show a willingness to acquire a capacity for anger management, he attacked those who offered remedy. While it was made clear to him that his resentment, demonstrated by the habit of undermining senior management, was professionally unbecoming, he showed no remorse. He belittled the well-meant guidance offered, calling it lunatic – “crazed and crazy” – and he maligned it further by voicing an incantation from an exotic religion – “reincarnation as a bed bug.” His habit of claiming that others are what he himself is – “crazed and crazy” – indicates a serious irrationality. The root cause (see below) of this psychological instability can be found in his lust for power.

  As she read, Jaime dropped her voice progressively and when she arrived at lust for power the tone was deep and mocking. She tilted her head towards me when she finished, laughing at her own antics. “Mirror, mirror on the wall…Tell me, Carson, see yourself in this?”

  “A farce,” I said, stone-faced. “Lust for power? That’s Heywood describing himself.”

  “Well, it’s just a small part. There’s better.” She scrolled some more. “Wanna hear another accusation? Abuse of
Trust. He claims you spend most of your time kowtowing to the Yanks.”

  Once more Jaime adopted a deep, surrealistic voice.

  For the past dozen or so years Mr. Pryce has been point man for exchanging intelligence information with the Americans. This routine administrative function with low payback was considered in line with his abilities. Part of the arrangement is custodianship of a dedicated data exchange channel vulgarly known as the pipeline. He has always been secretive about what passes through the pipeline and he abuses the security designation process. He draws on the “Need to Know” clause, then claims only he meets it.

  An inquiry into the events of last January 23 when the Service network was destroyed by a complex computer virus showed the attack gained entry to our network through the intelligence channel.

  “And so on and so forth. Blah, blah, blah. We know the Benedictus – Radu story by now. This is what he thinks it all means. If I read it right he might even try to get you extradited.”

  Incontrovertible proof has been found that a cover-up for the plague’s real origin was carried out by Mr. Pryce. His computer imprint has been identified on Mr. Corioanu’s false death certificate in Zurich and the algorithms which allowed the falsification process to take place have been located in Mr. Pryce’s decrypted files. Such falsification may well be a criminal act under Swiss law and deserves full investigation. For the Service, however, at a minimum, Mr. Pryce’s abuse of the trust placed in him to safeguard data exchange through the intelligence channel deserves strong censure.

  Assessing how this would damage me, I buried my face in my hands.

  “Sorry about that,” Jaime said lightly. “Guess I overdid things. It’s just that when I discovered what you’d done with the plague I was all lah-de-dah and had to run out to tell someone. So I went to Irv. Wish now I’d gone to you.”