“It says here on page 192,” said the senator, reading directly from the 854 typed pages Margaret and Ronald had pasted together from other peoples’ work, “that possibly within five and certainly within ten years there will be a terrorist attack on a major United States city involving either chemical or biological weapons. Do I read that correctly, Miss Smythe?”
He pronounced “United” yew-nigh-ted and “biological” by-oo-logde-ee-cal, which showed, thought Margaret, what sort of college--if any--the senator had attended. He looked almost presentable at the moment in his oversized and out-of-date wool suit, but Margaret wagered that earlier in Hasket’s life there had been dirt under his fingernails and chewing tobacco in his rubbery, hillbilly mouth. It was nearly unbearable that he was allowed to upbraid her, a magna cum laude graduate and the smartest person in the room, no matter what room she entered.
“Yes, senator,” she said and smiled.
“Miss Smythe,” said Senator Hasket, “is not that prediction the same one Colonel McClain of the preparedness task force make last October?”
She became more uncomfortable in her wooden chair. Ronald sat passively beside her, fingering his class ring and going through the motions of looking for an indefinite something in his copy of the report.
Thank you for all the help, you jackass! thought Margaret. “We depended on other reliable sources when doing this report,” she said. “We cannot be the primary source on everything.”
The senator put his reading glasses on his nose and peered closely at some other documents on his table. “You,” he said, “you were an art history major in college, Miss Smythe?”
“As an undergraduate,” she said. “At Harvard. Then I attended the Kennedy School of Government.” No one was counting, however, this was the third time in the morning’s session that Margaret had managed to name her alma mater.
“You then went to work for the Secretary of State,” noted Senator Hasket. “You were a Deputy Secretary of State at age twenty-three?”
“I learn quickly,” said Margaret, and told herself to quit fidgeting in her chair.
“You, Mr. Goodman,” said the senator.
“Yes,” said Ronald, startled to be brought back into the discussion
“Your uncle was my old, dear college friend, Senator Norman Tate?” asked Senator Hasket, who in reality had danced a jig the night Senator Tate--a man Hasket had in private described as a thief, a liar and a fool--was defeated in his last bid for re-election “Many were the nights he and I shared a glass of lemonade in the senate cloakroom. I must say, you strongly favor him, young sir.”
The senator pronounced “sir” see-rah, which infuriated Margaret as much as the blather he was lavishing upon Ronald.
“Thank you, senator,” said Ronald. “Uncle Norman was my mother’s favorite brother.”
You are such an asshole! thought Margaret.
“Now then, Mr. Goodman and Miss Smythe,” said the senator, “is there something in your report that is actually new?”
“The possibility of Serbian terrorists setting fires in our national forests in Section 12 A…” began Margaret.
“Please, Miss Smythe,” said the senator, “That is so twentieth century, as you young people say. That stuff is so old hat, it’s been in the newspaper. The Post ran with this back in ‘98.”
“What about militia fanatics armed with the anthrax virus?” suggested Margaret.
“That’s been a TV movie, a bad one with no fewer than two Baldwin brothers in it,” said Senator Hasket.
Ronald cleared his throat, for he saw his chance to pounce. “What about the possibility of a terrorist organization blowing up large dams?” he asked. “The successful destruction of a large upstream dam, such as Grand Coulee or, you know, Hoover, would result in the loss of billions of dollars of property and a major disruption in the regional electrical grid. I detailed all this in Section 14 C.”
The senator took off his spectacles and sucked on one of the ear stems for a pensive ten seconds. “I like this, son,” he said. “This is new. This is sexy.” (The senator’s staff was advising him to use modern slang.) “We could spend some serious money on this.”
That was my idea! thought Margaret, although she and Ronald had concocted this fantasy scenario together.
“I think,” said Ronald, “we should start a separate department within the DoD, a task force to prepare for the possibility of hydro-electric destruction.”
“Whose department gets it?” asked the senator, whose curiosity obviously was piqued when he heard the young man suggest the Department of Defense be in charge, rather than Ronald’s own NSA.
“The DoD has the technical experts in the Corps of Engineers,” said Ronald Goodman. “I expect someone from the NSA would be placed in a supervisory position to co-ordinate the program.”
Both Margaret and Senator Hasket, as much as they disliked each other on that morning, had the same thought. “Very good, sir,” said Senator Hasket. “I’m sure you’ll have some recommendations as to who that administrator might me.”
Both of them smiled at Ronald as they contemplated how much they loathed him.
As the senator predicted, the government did spend some money on the task force. By the end of the fiscal year 2007, the project had a budget of two million dollars, and Ronald and Margaret were appointed to manage it. Ronald and Margaret were, in fact, the entire department, a separate kingdom within the many small kingdoms that make up the national government. This kingdom of two was a fertile one and created thousands of copies of the reports it generated every three months. These unread reports floated everywhere through the security and military communities. Somewhere in the government’s computer files, if not in the minds of the nation’s leaders, Ronald and Margaret became America’s authorities on the subject of possible terrorist attacks on large dams.
XV
2/12/07 09:07 EST
Earnest Gusman brought Claudio Alexander Munoz and Claudio’s cousin Alfonso into the tiny Gusman apartment and closed the door. As was his habit, Earnest checked the street outside one more time before he spoke.
“Do you have the men I need?” he asked in Spanish.
“Yes,” replied Claudio. “Finding forty desperate men is not difficult in Colombia.”
“They are trustworthy?” asked Earnest.
“Absolutely not,” said Claudio. “They are thieves, mules, the filthy sparrows of the street, the same petty criminals I meet every day. They are worse than Alfonso.” Only the pockmarked Alfonso cracked a smile in response to his cousin’s words.
Earnest knew that he made Claudio nervous inside the small flat. Like all higher predators, Claudio did not enjoy being trapped in a confined space with two of his own kind. When Earnest stood upright, Claudio stood with him. When the other man walked about the floor, Claudio shifted his weight from foot to foot and felt for the gun in the back of his belt. Alfonso, the most dangerous criminal of the three, and the least vulnerable to thought, stayed put like a serpent coiled to strike.
“Corello wants everyone in Venezuela by the end of the month,” said Earnest.
“How can we travel?” asked Claudio. “We are not rich men.”
“I have pairs of tickets,” said Earnest, showing them two bundles bound in rubber bands. “The first will take them on an airplane to Caracas, the other will take them south on an autobus, deep into the forest.”
“We have forty-one men,” said Alfonso in his deliberate manner of speaking. “Forty-four, counting ourselves in his room.”
“I’m not going,” said Earnest. “Three others must also stay in Colombia. Better yet,” he said, turning face to face with Claudio, “you should kill them.”
“Everyone has a friend,” said Claudio. “I think therefore it is best to harm no one. That is my philosophy of living,” he glanced at Alfonso. “Others may disagree. The men we leave here won’t know where we are going; they will have no stories to tell.”
“Why Venezuela?” ask
ed Alfonso. “Aren’t there places to hide in this country?”
“Because this crazy Mexican Corello wants you in Venezuela!” erupted Earnest, fingering the air with his suddenly energized hands. “I will eventually have to go, too. Everyone will go sooner or later. Do you think I want to? We could all be killed in the jungle.”
His outburst brought another smile from Alfonso.
Claudio acted before one or both of the other men did something foolish. “Everything is fine,” he said and tried to pat Earnest’s chest in the seconds before the other man had paced away from him. “No one is going to be killed. Give us the tickets and a little cash. Everything is fine.”
“Will the Russian be there?” asked Alfonso.
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Earnest. “Everything on that end is set. Everything here is going to fall apart. I can tell.” He dropped into a chair and folded his arms across his chest, holding his fears within his bosom.
“There was to be some money,” said Claudio,
“Yes, for expenses while you travel, yes,” said Earnest. He opened his closet and took out a new aluminum suitcase he flipped open atop the shabby table. Inside were forty manila envelopes, each stuffed with $2,000 in large American bills. The sight of that much money treated so casually made the two criminals gasp.
“$498,000 more apiece when the job is done,” said Earnest. “That was the deal.”
“This is how they do business?” asked Claudio. “They throw money around like old candy wrappers?”
“Petrovski is a Russian, almost a savage,” said Earnest, calming himself down once he realized how ridiculous he must have looked. “Corello has spent his entire adult life in the United States; you know how they are in Babylon. They say there may be another quarter million for every man, provided the job is done well.”
“May I always work with savages,” laughed Claudio, and closed the suitcase in order to carry it with him. "We would walk to Venezuela for such money.”
“You are going now?” asked Earnest, his voice sounding more relieved than he intended. “Of course, I would like you to stay, but perhaps it is best if you go.”
XVI
2/19/07 14:51 PST
John Taylor had accepted wearing a fake beard to look like a Russian butler in a play. That was something an actor had to do. He was less enthusiastic about growing a real beard and dying it gray to play Vladimir Petrovski, former KGB agent.
“Petrovski is older than you, John,” Mondragon told him. “You have to look the part. You are too tall and too thin to fool any of his friends. You have to at least resemble photographs of his face, or you won’t fool anyone.”
“His picture makes him look unkempt,” said Taylor, looking into his bathroom mirror and comparing his growing whiskers to the ones in the old file photo Mondragon had given him. “Is that a Russian look?”
“Slovenliness has always been fashionable amongst the eastern Slavs,” said Mondragon, gazing over Taylor’s shoulder as the other man looked at his face. “Comb and scissors are alien concepts to them. Not unlike incest is in Arkansas.”
He turned Taylor about and fixed the other man’s tie. “You can’t make a tight Windsor knot and be Russian,” said Mondragon. “Big and loose is what you want. They’re a spiritual people; they don’t care about material appearances. A little to one side is good too. Think of Jackie Gleason in the Honeymooners; there was a man who could have tied a Russian tie. A touch of despair, a dash of disregard for order.”
Taylor fussed the cravat back into a straighter line and left the collar open.
“Good,” declared Mondragon. “You could be right off the streets of St. Petersburg.”
“Are we going to speak Russian all the time we’re around the Colombians?” asked Taylor. “You know I still make grammatical mistakes.”
“Keep it simple,” advised Mondragon. “The Colombians are uneducated men. They won’t know Russian from Cantonese. Just stay away from Spanish and English when any of them are present. If you run out of vocabulary and have to speak gibberish, do it loudly, with authority. Now, let me hear you ask about the torpedoes. Remember: when you are emphatic, gesture with the whole fist and don’t point the index finger.”
XVII
2/20/07 08:20 AST
Taylor, Mondragon, Col. Method, Eddie Harris, Abe Wilson the Machinist and Kenneth Greeley, the former Army aviator, stood in the rain at “the heart of the matter,” as Mondragon called the three large metal buildings outside Montecual, Venezuela, when the first of two buses carrying Claudio Munoz, his cousin Alfonso, and the thirty-eight other Colombians arrived in the compound’s muddy courtyard.
“Remember,” Mondragon had told the Americans, “every one of you, other than John and I, are Germans, disgruntled East German technicians. Keep your distance from the Colombians when you aren’t instructing them. Grunt a few guten Tags and auf viedersens, and don’t be afraid to speak a little bit of English to each other. Ed, Col. Method, and I can speak Spanish directly to them; the rest of you, don’t even try it. Here they are, look like you know something they don’t.”
“Holla,” Col. Method called to them as he would to a mustering squadron of soldiers, “I am Comrade Maximilian Schell,” he told them in Spanish.
“Maximilian Schell?” Taylor whispered to Mondragon.
“They are thugs from Cartegena and Cali and Bogota,” said Mondragon in Russian. “What do they know of European film stars?”
“Welcome! Welcome, comrades!” Mondragon shouted in Spanish to the confused Colombians. “We are overjoyed to see you here.”
He and Col. Method led the forty men into a large metal building that had been made into a barracks and contained forty small beds set against the structure’s two longest walls.
“This will be your home for the next six months, my friends,” Col. Method explained. “Each of you, choose a bed. The dining hall is over there.” He pointed in the direction of the middle building. “We eat at 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 hours.” As perfect as his Spanish was, he did not realize the Colombians had no concept of military time. “Put your belongings in the foot lockers below your beds for now. Mr. Petrovski wishes to say a few words to you.”
Erin Mondragon brought Taylor to the space in the middle of the building amidst the two rows of beds. The forty men muttered among themselves that this was the Russian they were being paid to serve.
“My friends,” said Mondragon, his right hand on Taylor’s shoulder, “this is Vladimir Ivanavich Petrovski, a former general in the KGB. I regret to inform you he does not speak our tongue.”
John Taylor murmured “hello” in Russian, and Mondragon translated the greeting for the group. To the Colombians a general was a terrifying man to meet; to them generals ruled the police as well as the army and sometimes held sway over the entire government. In their country, generals sent their sort of people to prison.
“KGB is what they call the secret police,” Claudio whispered to his cousin Alfonso.
“He looks tough, for an old fellow,” admitted Alfonso. “How many men do you think he has killed in his time?”
“More than you and I could count together,” confessed Claudio, much impressed by the Russian’s disorderly grandeur.
“Today,” said Taylor in his very bad Russian, “we are in this place assembled...” He struggled to recall the vocabulary “...to do work. Every man doing his work... will be said to have done his work.”
Mondragon stepped forward and translated this as: “Comrade Petrovski tells us everyone that does his duty shall have an extra quarter million dollar bonus."
The men cheered and applauded the Russian’s generosity. Thereafter they were led to the building that served as a mess hall, where Bill Thorpe, a retired chef, and his wife Jessie had prepared a late breakfast. While the hungry men threw themselves upon their food, Mondragon explained to Taylor that Thorpe and his wife once owned a steakhouse in Sacramento, a smoke-filled old-style restaurant that had red leather booths and a jukebox that
played any song as long as it was recorded by Frank Sinatra, a place that served ice-packed martinis and bacon-wrapped filets to men of a certain age like Erin Mondragon.
“Mr. Mondragon used to eat there three times a week,” Thorpe informed Taylor. “The people from the older, more established families were our best customers.”
“Why did you decide to quit the place?” Taylor asked
The suggestion that he had quit his steakhouse of his own volition upset the cook. “We were forced out!” he told Taylor in no uncertain terms. “I would never have quit. The new people in Sacramento!” he said with obvious disgust. “The poor ones wanted to eat garbage at McDonalds; the rich ones--from the new computer economy and the state government--they were too good for a steakhouse. We still had some old customers to get us by. That didn’t get us by the no smoking ordinances and the big spike in property values. Finally, what happened to Mr. Mondragon in a big way happened to us in a small one: the city re-zoned our whole neighborhood so some realtors could sell some yuppies some old buildings they could turn into townhouses. We sold out when we could still make enough money to cover our legal bills.”
The forty Colombian street toughs were not used to eating sit-down meals of nutritious food and were making noises more commonly heard in the barnyard than in a restaurant as they slurped down their ham and fried plantains. Two of them got into a fight over a desirable piece of meat, and Col. Method and Thorpe had to rush to their table to settle the dispute.
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