by Gil Hogg
An experience I hoped would be distinctly more pleasant was that of my afternoon with Carol Clark and Marie Ducane, which took place when Gerry flew to LA for a conference. We had the quiet and luxury of the Clark apartment (the children were staying overnight with friends) and plenty of time. I arrived for lunch with champagne and flowers, Marie tickled our palates with a salmon souffle, but Carol seemed to brood over the luncheon table, gulping the wine. We three had a shower together, and jumped into the king-size guest bed. The performance was fun, but not as much as it might have been if Carol had been more than woodenly cooperative. She managed, subtly, to dismiss Marie, the servant, soon afterwards, and the two of us remained in bed.
I was certain then that Carol was going to be a burden, and now that I had had the opportunity of sampling her charms on more than one occasion, I decided she was too demanding and dangerous. Also, she was too bony for my sexual taste, a skeleton of a woman compared with the pneumatic Marie. When it was time to say goodbye – I declined coffee and drinks – I went into the kitchen to say a word to Marie. I slipped a paper with my cellphone number on it into her apron pocket, and whispered, “Ring me, please. I like you very much,” and then I kissed her full lips and felt her hard nipples burning into my chest – until I noticed Carol, very pale, in the doorway, watching.
After this slightly unsatisfactory afternoon, I drove one of the company cars to Wakefield Park, Virginia for my appointment with Mrs Kershaw. I was the only human link for her with Harold’s demise, and I thought it was the appropriate act for a commanding officer. I found the Kershaw mansion, its Tiger Balm Gardens immaculate, with all fountains and water features pumping industriously. Inside the house, in the hugger mugger of plastic furniture and antiques, Mrs Kershaw was in good spirits. She had already received a call from Gerry Clark, and a bland note of regret from the Department of Internal Affairs. I explained that Harold had died in an accident, an explosion, in Afghanistan, and there had been no suffering. Mrs Kershaw sought no details, and did not seem concerned about recovery of the body.
“We always knew Harold’s work was dangerous,” she said, “although he never used to talk about it. So it’s not exactly a surprise, Captain Conway. He left us very well provided for, I think with this in mind.”
My memories of the Kershaw method of personal provision were only too clear, and to a degree I had adopted them myself. After a glass of fruit juice, Mrs Kershaw showed me out. “Did you know Harold was gay, Mr Conway?” she asked pleasantly, as we dodged the palms and fronds in the jungle of plants which lined the hallway to the front door.
“I hadn’t the slightest idea.” My picture of Kershaw, his home and wife apart, was quite the reverse; a tough man, who would have been likely to go for tough women, and be hard on them.
“Yes, after the children, we drifted, you know. Harold had his friends, and I have mine. It was all perfectly amicable. We were very close. Like brother and sister.”
As I threaded my way between the pools and the box hedges clipped into weird shapes, I reflected that I should suspend my judgment on everybody I knew, and expect surprises.
My other experience with the US widows of the attacks at the Campesino and Mariel was to attend a small memorial service at the Remembrance Chapel at Arlington Cemetery, at the invitation of the Secretary of State. Incredibly, this was not a public event but a sop to the widows, who were told that a public funeral would be held later when the events involving their spouses could be made public. The directors of the SCS, C3 and the deputy director of the CIA were present, and I was very much the centre of eyes as the sole survivor. Yarham, who had literally pulled the trigger on two of the dead, I excused, and I noticed that Mrs Kershaw was not present.
The event raised curious conflicting feelings in me. I sat at the front of the chapel, dazzled by the light on the stained glass, and soothed by the fountains of flowers arranged around the pulpit. I heard a rabbi and the ministers of two Christian denominations make sense of what I regarded as chaos, believing, as they had been told, that the events happened in Afghanistan.
I knew that only in films do goodies and baddies exclusively kill each other. In reality, as I had learned from Afghanistan and Cuba, men who bear arms are as much in danger of death from their friends as a result of accidents, personal quarrels, and service rivalries, as they are from the enemy.
For a while after the service, at the request of the clerics, I sat in the lounge and had afternoon tea with the widows, fine-looking, vigorous women, and some of their healthy, restive children. There were quiet questions, mostly to find out how well I knew their husbands. Other than Carmelli, Harkness and Wayne, the wounded agent who went with us from the Campesino to Mariel, I didn’t even know the names of those who were killed, but I gave suitably warm and soulful replies. The widows, for the most part, wanted to be close, for a moment, to a survivor.
I thought that if the widows could see some integrity in the situation, and take some consolation, from what I alone knew was a virtually uncontrolled near-tragedy, I ought to support them. Here was the dilemma of the secret service. The women wanted to confirm that their husbands did not die in vain, but on an important mission for their country. The question they asked in different ways was, inevitably, You’ve told us it was important, now please tell us why it was important? With the deputy director of the CIA, Rachel Fernandez and Gerry Clark hovering near, I had to ask the widows to accept my sincere assurance that all I could say was that the occasion of the deaths was very important to the USA.
The bereaved women were impatient with the secretive attitude of the intelligence agencies which had employed their men, and I could see that they were wondering what could be so important about a raid in Afghanistan? Was something ignominious being covered up? Cuban Missile Crisis II was like a live cat trying to get out from under a blanket.
The dinner at Clark’s was the big professional event on my return, not only because I would receive well-deserved adulation, but I would hear about the next step in Operation Screwdriver. And I fancied that there would be a further, yet more exacting, mission for me. The National Security Agency, the CIA and the Administration had done an effective job of keeping the Cuban crisis off the front pages of the newspapers. They were following a policy which Gerry Clark described to me as Don’t frighten the horses. It occurred to me at the time that this might be a blunder, but the intelligence establishment is ossified in secrecy; suggesting it part with information is like asking a beggar to give up the coin in his fist. And the news stories had continued to appear, firmer each day and week, as the news media continued their unremitting search for answers. There were US and foreign journalists digging in Cuba, and the families of bereaved Americans asking questions.
I had not been in touch with Carol since the threesome, and I decided to behave like a normal guest on the occasion of the Disciples’ dinner. No more covert eye signals; no more fingers caressing a thigh under the dining table; no more slyly pressing my groin against an ass on the terrace. The evening was plainly business, and I therefore presented myself without the usual gifts.
It was Marie who met me at the door, eyes lowered, her markedly curved body camouflaged in a black pleated dress, and topped with a frilled blue check apron. I made no attempt to be personal with her in that shared quiet moment as I stepped into the hall, and was still wondering whether she would ring me. I was received by the other guests with obvious interest and pleasure, Reich, Rachel Fernandez, Bolding and Amory. Gerry, outshone by his employee, was quiet. Amory of course clung to my hand, and placed his other on my arm, while he looked up into my eyes like a girl on her first date. Rachel Fernandez, possibly as a result of her confidence at our earlier meeting, was a little softer than her usual self. And there was a new man there, General Rudolf Schmiesser, whom I had heard of as the new nominee to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Carol Clark did her formal duty as hostess, spending a few polite moments with each guest, except me. The talk was a
ll social chit-chat: plays, books, concerts, personalities outside the intelligence services, the stock market. The flow continued wearily during the excellent Tuscan-style meal, served unobtrusively by Marie. I thought that people were asking themselves how long they had to keep this up, when there were more important things to discuss.
We moved rapidly through dessert and coffee. Marie placed a decanter of brandy, and one of port, on the table. Carol excused herself in the final way she had – and received a murmur of thanks for her efforts. Marie closed the double doors, and I was alone with my cell of the Disciples, and Gerry Clark.
Bolding held his brandy balloon up. “Wolf, well named, a toast to you on your successful mission.”
All raised their glasses and drank to me, and I thanked them. By this time both C3 and the CIA had independently verified the carnage at the Campismo Mercados, and the fiery melt-down at the launching site. The CIA was embarrassed about its lost field agents, but quick to claim credit for their part. The NSA and C3 were preening themselves as leaders of the enterprise. The White House and the Senate Defense Committee were deeply impressed by my decisive action.
And there was no doubt about the horrible reality of the threat. The name Gomez had given me, in the unguarded moment when he intended I should die, Malmuni, was real, and had been traced to an Iran-trained rocket engineer who fitted the profile of the person who would be needed to build and command a site. Covert photographs had been obtained by the CIA of the Al Qaeda dead at the Campismo, and matched with known terrorists with technical training. In particular, a Saudi scientist, Ayoub Sabri, who had worked in Iraq, filled the likely specification for the scientific brains on the project. There was therefore independent evidence to substantiate my report, and no doubt about its veracity.
“What I’d like to know, Roger, is how you brought the CIA onside,” Reich asked. “That was an incredible piece of conciliation and persuasion.”
“When Carmelli and Harkness were killed, I said to the surviving agent, Burton, that we should talk to the local CIA, who Carmelli had wanted to keep out, and join forces. When I got intelligence of the countdown… ”
“Who gave you that, Roger?” Rachel Fernandez asked.
“Dolores Martinez, my local contact.”
“How did she know?” Fernandez pressed.
“She was in touch with Gomez. When I got this message, I met with the local CIA, explained that we had to act immediately, proposed a two-stage attack – one at the ranch, two at the site, and that’s what we did.”
“Why didn’t they push you aside and do it themselves?” Schmiesser said, puzzled.
“Carmelli might have wanted to do it himself, but he was dead. We had to have a leader. It was a time for quick decisions. I supplied the arms and the plan, and I venture to say I was the only person capable of seeing the project through. Nobody was thinking departmental politics. They were thinking, how do I save my country?”
The Disciples all sat back as though they had suddenly remembered that a lot of agents in the field were actually motivated by patriotism, and might, in an extremity, be expected to put their country ahead of personal aggrandisement.
“It’s a great achievement,” Reich said. “You know, Roger, we didn’t expect such a rapid development. OK, you coped splendidly, but we were looking to that little Cuban problem to, shall we say, deal with some of our problems at home. A Cuban missile crisis like the sixties, which we thought we would have, would have put the stoppers on the President’s second term, and consigned his doveish advisers to the ashcan of history. Now the Cuban situation has gone away, and thank God for your efforts, but our problems haven’t been solved. The President is squaring up for his second term, with General Madison at his shoulder preaching righteous mumbo jumbo.”
Despite my complete understanding of the chronic paralysis of the communication nerve in the intelligence services, I asked the obvious question: “Why didn’t you let the crisis hit the headlines?”
Reich opened his eyes, and swept a knowing glance past Amory, Bolding and Rachel. “Roger, you’re a superb man of action, but this is a political judgement. The President and Madison would have looked like heroes, wouldn’t they? Decisive action to save the country. The very action we all know they’re not capable of. Oh no, we couldn’t let them have that coup. We have to keep it completely under wraps.”
I wondered whether I should express any dissent in a forum crowded with such enormous egos. The devil in me shook my head in quiet disagreement. “On the contrary, the situation could have looked like inability to protect the nation, only averted by quick thinking on the ground. My thinking on the ground.” It was a point I thought I could rub in without seeming too arrogant.
“Nobody is doubting the crucial nature of your intervention, Roger, but we are talking here about news management in the USA, not your undoubted courage and decisiveness in Cuba!” Reich replied, colouring.
“Of course you can spin the facts one way or another, but would a president who came within seconds of having his two principal cities annihilated by terrorist attack, ever be trusted again?” I said mildly.
A silence fell around the table as the large brains of my listeners pondered this alien line of thought. They were considering whether they might have missed a trick.
Reich came to first, twirling his wineglass by the stem. “An interesting and dangerous speculation, Roger. One can never be sure of micro-management of the news. Leave that aspect to us, and now we need to talk of other matters.” He looked at his watch.
I could see that Amory, Bolding and Fernandez were not so dismissive. They were measuring the depths of their predisposition to keep events secret, and thinking that they might have been submerged in those depths.
Bolding tossed his silver mane. “We should get away now, Otto.”
“Why don’t you join us in the car, Roger, and we’ll finish this off?” Amory said to me, baring his teeth in a leer.
We said our goodnights to Gerry Clark, and from the doorstep, I could see a long-wheelbase black Lincoln waiting below. Clearly, the intention was to exclude Gerry, at least at this point. And there was no driver for the Lincoln, either. He got out, into another car, handing the keys to Rachel Fernandez. We were able to sit comfortably in the Lincoln with the rear seating arranged conference-fashion in facing seats.
Rachel, behind the wheel, pulled slowly away, and obviously intended to cruise for as long as it took us to confer. I was about to hear the last stage of Screwdriver. I had wondered what it might be, knowing that as far as it involved me, it was likely to be hazardous. Whether it would also be unlawful – in the US – I couldn’t be sure. I had therefore taken a risky precaution. In my pocket, no bigger than a silver dollar, was a highly sensitive digital recorder with a tiny chip, capable of storing hours of conversation. It was standard issue for senior agents in C3. If I was caught with the device I would never be trusted again, but I wasn’t entirely sure I could accept the mission, and even if I did, I wanted an insurance policy.
General Schmiesser, who had contributed little during dinner, led the talk by common consent. He was hunched down on the seat, his neck retracted below the level of his wide shoulders, his skull resting in a hollow. He looked like a frog. His eyes did not blink but moved about, quivering. “The problem we have is Madison, Roger,” he began with utter directness.
“General Madison?” George Madison was the Secretary of State for Defense.
“Yes. You know him by repute.”
Madison had something which few at the top of the political tree possess, a blameless reputation. A lifelong civil servant, he had amassed no great wealth. Absence of attacks in the media confirmed that he had contented himself with one wife, and apparently lusted after no other women or men, except perhaps in his heart. He was respected for a high intellect which had placed him at the top in most of his military career since West Point. He was a devout Christian with a quiet charisma which projected his clear views of right and wrong. His do
minating influence on a liberal president was well known, and obvious in practice. In a former age, he might have appeared as a Christian warrior or a crusader. In this age, his enemies branded him a Christian fundamentalist. His alleged lack of sympathy for either the Arab cause, or Israel, evoked a deep unease in the capitalist heart of the USA.
“He’s a dangerous man. A crypto-president. A threat to America. His creed is more important to him than common sense,” Schmiesser said passionately. “Without him, this president will melt like a tub of lard in the oven.”
“There’s never been such a subversive influence in high office in America at a time when we have to defend ourselves against all comers,” Reich said.
“Except maybe the Kennedys,” Fernandez observed as she wheeled the car along smoothly.
Reich added, “And Madison’s a maverick. You don’t know what he’s going to do in the name of justice. When a hoodlum robs your home and beats you up, and you land a couple of blows in retaliation, Madison is the guy who insists on the hood’s right to sue you for damages.”
There was an acceptance of this verdict in the car. I had the chilling feeling that we were steering toward treason and murder. “What do you want me to do?”
“Get rid of him,” Schmiesser said. The others nodded agreement.
It was no use me complaining that this was murder, or against the law. I knew a few corpses more or less made no difference to the Disciples. If in their view it was necessary to commit what the statute book described as a crime, their views were a sufficient justification. They considered themselves guardians of a way of life. If the end was considered just, the means could be found, whether the target be high or low. I was the means.
I realised I might use the recording I was making to protect myself in an unusual extremity, but I could not wash my hands of my predicament by sending the recording of this conversation to the Attorney-General. I probably wouldn’t live to see the result, which would be no more than the slightest unnoticeable tremor in the vast US establishment, where I suspected the fingers of the Disciples reached everywhere.
