The Threat

by David Poyer

  HELLGOD:

  //On the security issue: I’m going to have one of my people backcheck that. For peace of mind. Will not tell him why.

  281223Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //Fine on the backstop on security.

  //All right, an update. We’ve made progress. Brought concerned citizens aboard. All good guys. This is not for anyone’s personal gain or advancement. Correct?

  281223Z OCT

  BLUE DANUBE:

  //We all have more to lose than to gain from even discussing this.

  281223Z OCT

  HELLGOD:

  //What’s the code name? Valkyrie?

  281224Z OCT

  AMICABLE:

  //?? You lost me there, cowboy. Meaning what??

  281224Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //There is no name for this plan. Officially it will never exist. It is prepared solely in case P gets out of hand. A lot of guys have given their lives to draw certain lines in the sand. I won’t stand by and let a sleazy politician, a—Sorry. Out of rant mode now.

  281224Z OCT

  AMICABLE:

  //Continue report??

  281225Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //Overall concept of operations is G’s. It required a contact on the inside. Blue Danube is now with us. Welcome again. There is also another, who declines to participate in e-mail exchanges. G will handle him personally. All this very close hold. No printouts, no penciled notes. You do not discuss with others in the picture, other than by face-to-face conversation, or this channel. Nothing written down. And with no one else—not wife, not your aide, not your COS.

  281226Z OCT

  HELLGOD:

  //Has an Oswald been identified?

  281226Z OCT

  AMICABLE:

  //No, but I have a Ruby.;)

  281226Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //Ha ha. Now, what we need: BD, take a close look at your junior people. Go back and review your organizational security guidelines to identify those at risk. Those = our candidates.

  281228Z OCT

  BLUE DANUBE:

  //Assume this person is to be expendable.

  281228Z OCT

  AMICABLE:

  //The cartridge is fired, then disposed of.

  281228Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //Now you’re getting with the program. Felt some misgivings/reluctance in our last “conversation.”

  281228Z OCT

  HELLGOD:

  //No doubt here. I vote for executive action today.

  281228Z OCT

  AMICABLE:

  //My vote is no, if we’re voting. I’m no admirer, but this Republic has survived bad leadership before. Don’t pull the pin till you’re ready to throw the grenade!!

  281229Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //This is not an election for third-grade president, gents. G will make decision to implement, if such a decision is necessary. But A is correct—this is backup measure only.

  281229Z OCT

  AMICABLE:

  //Is Two officially aboard?

  281229Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //Friendly but in deniable mode.

  281229Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //Continuing to BD: we need an operator who will be motivated to act for reasons external to us, not attributable to us. Someone already close to the breaking point, or would appear to be, in retrospect, to an outside observer/investigator/historian. Our role only creating conditions for him to act. Then stepping aside.

  281230Z OCT

  HELLGOD:

  //We have resources over here we could help out with. My question: how ENSURE he acts? We can facilitate, but how do we push him to move?

  281230ZCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //All excellent questions, Hellgod. Let’s discuss offline. BD, research and report back. Nominate direct to me with as much detail as possible.

  281230Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //Good, but no nominations off the top of the head. Everything about this has to be airtight. Even looked at twenty years down the road.

  281230Z OCT

  BLUE DANUBE:

  //Will work up package.

  281230Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //Basically it for now. Remember to log out at end of chat.

  281230Z OCT

  AMICABLE:

  //If we’re done I’m out.

  ***LOGOFF***

  281230Z OCT

  SCHOLAST:

  //Out here.

  ***LOGOFF***

  281230Z OCT

  BLUE DANUBE:

  //Out Here.

  ***LOGOFF***

  281230Z OCT

  HELLGOD:

  //Done. & GHMOUA.

  ***LOGOFF***

  9

  OVER THE NORTH ATLANTIC

  Weeks later Dan strolled down the aisle of another aircraft, holding the orange juice that was supposed to stave off jet lag. This plane was much larger, much more spacious than the one he’d taken to Key West. It was the best-known aircraft in the world.

  Air Force One was more than a plane. It was a microcosm of the political universe. It cocooned politicians and press, network people, guests and major donors, the staff, and the aides and agents and aircrews that enabled them all, thirty thousand feet up. The sea, drawing his eye through a window, seemed to belong to another planet, which they were transiting far above, in some separate dimension.

  He’d come to feel that way often in the past months. That he was leaving his old life behind. Rising above the Navy and even the military. Toward new prerogatives and new challenges. Like the one ahead: a seat at the first international threat reduction conference, in St. Petersburg. Sebold had assigned him as the Defense Directorate’s rep.

  The Tejeiro incident seemed to have started something. Maybe something good. He felt like a fully engaged gear in an engine running at full power. His work days started at six, the only time he could read without the phone constantly interrupting. He didn’t get home until eight, nine, even ten.

  After Key West, Sebold had called him in. The general had told his assistant to hold his calls. Then read Dan the riot act. He’d arrogated authority. Bypassed the chain of command. Ignored interagency coordination procedures.

  Dan had tried to point out that without a hand on the helm, nothing would have come out of what had looked like a ham-handed shootdown except bitter publicity and probably the ruin of the whole Central American drug initiative. Sebold had waved this away. “Positive action? What I expect from my staff. But you can’t operate on your own, Dan. The last guy to try that here was Ollie North.”

  “They gave him a mission. He tried to accomplish it.”

  “And damn near brought down the government. I like Ollie. Who doesn’t? But like Bud McFarlane said, a can-do spirit but not a lot of brains.” The general paused. “See, the actual issue is, there really isn’t any limit to what we can do from here. The black funding. The compartmentation. Just the fact we operate in the president’s name. So we’ve got to regulate ourselves, or there’ll be more Watergates, Irangates—and others I might mention, but we got the blanket over them in time. Am I getting through? Or am I wasting my breath? This isn’t the bridge of a ship. Or a cockpit, or a company of infantry.”

  “No, sir. I’m getting the picture.”

  “You’d be walking now if you hadn’t nailed Nuñez at the end of the day. That’s how serious I am.”

  “Yes, sir. And I appreciate your taking the time to counsel me.”

  “You’re on the fast track to flag, they tell me,” Sebold told him. “You wouldn’t want to screw that up.”

  Dan nearly laughed in his face. The only reason he’d made commander was the congressional. And that hadn’t been the Navy’s idea at all. But he’d kept his mouth shut and his face straight, and eventually the director had warned him one last time and let him go.

  * * *
<
br />   But nothing ever happened the way you expected. Certainly no one he talked to on a daily basis had predicted Don Juan Alberto Mendieta Nuñez-Sebastiano had a Get Out of Jail Free card in his pocket.

  The uproar after the raid had been immense, the signals out of Colombia contradictory. The foreign minister had excoriated the United States for interfering with innocent passage of Colombian nationals. The justice minister had taken credit for the intelligence leading to the raid, and insisted that his country’s most famous criminal be extradited for trial at home. Time and the Wall Street Journal praised Emiliano Tejeiro as a wunderkind who’d have driven the business renaissance of his country. De Bari was on the line with the elder Tejeiro for an hour, and left the teleconferencing room blowing his nose.

  The press called Dan at the office, at home, waylaid him on the street. On Meilhamer’s advice he said nothing, not even “no comment.” Thank God the Air Guard tapes showed neither interceptor had armed its missiles, and that all the AIM-7s and AIM-9s checked out for the mission had been signed back in.

  But as far as anyone knew, the Haitian operation had been legally flawless. Until Bloom stuck his head into Dan’s office and said, interrupting him while he was on the phone to Marty Harlowe in Burma: “They let him walk.”

  “What? Nuñez? Who let him go?”

  “Aristide. The Haitian government.”

  He said into the phone, “Marty, gotta go. Keep pushing this Wa Army thing. And find out where the Red Arrows are coming from. Okay?… Yeah. Bye.”

  Bloom said, “Get this: We didn’t dot all our T’s and cross our I’s going in to get him. Their judge said it’s a bad bust. The Don left this morning. Private jet to Honduras.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Dan shouted, clutching his head. Ihlemann, at the front desk, looked startled. She was due any day and spent most of her time with her feet up on a chair, alternately cranky and dazed. “The colonel, the police guy—Desrolles. What the hell is this?”

  Desrolles, reached after a couple of calls, was smoothly regretful. Yes, he’d thought all legal requirements had been taken care of, all responsible officials notified. That was his job as liaison. Unfortunately some preconditions to the raid had been overlooked, both in the Ministry of Justice and in Key West. Haitian law, like that of the United States, did not permit troops to kick down doors. A tainted arrest could not proceed to prosecution. True, Colombia had requested extradition. However, Don Juan did not hold a Colombian passport. He was a naturalized citizen of the Cayman Islands, which had obtained a court order in Port-au-Prince for the release of their national. His government, the delicately accented voice imparted sadly, had no alternative.

  “How much did he pay Aristide?” Dan wanted to know. Bloom covered his hands over his eyes, mouthing Hang up, hang up.

  “I don’t believe I heard you correctly, sir. Are you speaking about the democratically elected president of Haiti? Which your administration has urged to respect the rule of law?” When he didn’t answer the colonel went on. “You achieved your goal, Mr. Lenson. You caused Don Juan and the other leaders to lose much respect. As well as increasing their costs of doing business. They are very angry now with the U.S., with your president—possibly even with you. I would step very carefully in pursuing these men.”

  Dan slammed the phone down. Bloom said, “That was pretty goddamn unwise. Insulting him.”

  “They took money to let him go.”

  “Absolutely. Shook him down and waved bye-bye. But it wasn’t Dickie Desrolles’s decision. And look at the plus side—Haiti needs the bucks.”

  Something else occurred to Dan. “The mechanic—the guy who worked on his plane, gave us the flight plan. Brave as hell—”

  “Found him this morning. In Bucaramanga.” Bloom looked back to where Ihlemann was eating at her desk again. Eased the door closed. “Head, arms, and legs severed with machetes. Suicide, the local cops say.”

  “Oh no. How did they find out about him?”

  “Somebody talked who shouldn’t have. But Dickie’s right about them being mad. Now they have to make things right. But again, look at the plus side.”

  “There’s no plus side to this, Miles.”

  “Sure there is. Now Tejeiro wants the cartel’s balls on his rearview. He fired the guy at the Foreign Ministry who protested, and replaced him with a hard-liner. And another thing: One of the boys we picked up in Haiti’s starting to sing.”

  Bloom told him again, as if he still had to, that this was totally close hold and shoe-shakin’ secret. “One of the second-rankers broke under joint FBI-DEA interrogation. He’s giving chapter and verse on operations. He also mentioned something about Washington.”

  “As in, D.C.?”

  “He heard Nuñez talking to Francisco Zuluaga—his moneyman—during the flight. ‘Habrá un viento muy caliente en Washington este primavera’—‘There’ll be a hot wind in Washington this spring.’ And they both laughed.”

  Dan turned that over. “What’s Zuluaga say it means?”

  “Zuluaga’s not talking. According to the agenda it was what the heavies were getting together to discuss. Viento de la primavera—spring wind. Or maybe metaphorical, like a springtime wind.”

  “If it’s on the agenda, there’ll be supporting documentation.”

  “Not in the documents or on the hard drives. Believe me, we looked. Had the best computer forensics guy in the business go through them. He found evidence about the flight plans and so forth, though. That helped back up our presentation to Tejeiro about how his son died.”

  They’d discussed it for a while, then called the office of the White House counsel to see if there was anything they could do after the fact. A staffie was happy to pee on their hopes. Once the Baptist was out of Haiti, he was in the clear. The U.S. had no extradition agreement with the Caymans, but that didn’t mean Nuñez was limited to that country. Taking advantage of the slowness of Latin American legal procedures, using cover identities where he had to, Nuñez could stay on the move indefinitely. Bloom suggested putting a price on his head. The staffer said that might be possible. He’d look into it. Sooner or later the guy would go back to Bucaramanga. Until then, he was at large.

  Dan tried to tell himself Bloom was right. They’d embarrassed the cartel. Cost it money, and the cloaking device. You couldn’t obsess over a loss. Not at the pace the Eighteen Acres operated at. The cookie had crumbled, and it was on to the next battle. He wasn’t happy. But he couldn’t think of anything else he could do.

  * * *

  Which brought him to now, over the distant blue Atlantic. The president was up front. Then came the senior staff compartment, the medical compartment, and so forth. Dan was in the middle, between the actual VIPs and the media gang aft. Blair was up in the conference room, a Defense prebrief, she said. There were no dining rooms on Air Force One. You got your meals on trays. So he was sitting down to catfish and garlic green beans and whipped garlic potatoes with Telfair Freck in an otherwise empty row of high-backed luxury seats.

  Freck was the chairman of the House Military Caucus. Sandy Treherne had come through on her promise to put him in touch with somebody willing to talk about stepping up funding on threat reduction. She’d warned him Freck was no admirer of De Bari’s. He was one of the most conservative members of the House. A perfect voting record as rated by the Christian Coalition. But if Dan wanted to mobilize support for his ideas, he had to talk to as many people as possible, on both sides of the Hill/Executive divide.

  Freck was ponderous, grizzled, an athlete long run to fat. Like most everybody else on the plane, he was dressed casually, in his case canvas slip-ons and a lavender velour track suit the size of a small concession tent. He gestured at the seat beside him. “So, you’re the fella from the NSC.”

  “Dan Lenson, sir.”

  “Navy man. Old flame a’ Sandy’s. Nice to meetcha.”

  “Not a flame, sir. Just went to school together.”

  They both said how great Sandy was, straight-
shooting gal, the usual cautious prelude to a Washington conversation. “I’m really glad you agreed to talk with me,” Dan opened.

  “I’m not one of those who thinks everybody over there’s evil personified. Though I’ll say this, between us: I’ve never known Bob De Bari to actually give a hoot about another human being.”

  “He knows how to create that impression, though.”

  “Course; that’s how he got where he is. An’ I know you folks who work for him probably think even less of him than we do on the Hill, all that woman chasing, the cocaine thing, the organized crime. His wife more than him maybe on that last—but tar rubs off.”

  Dan said, “We serve the office, not the man.”

  Freck sniffed the fish on the end of his fork, then rammed it home. Said around it, “Knew him back when he was in the governor’s mansion. Exactly the same. Secretaries. Staff girlies. Anything with titties and ass, after it like a dog in heat. And the way he’s failed to support the boys who defend our country, that’s a shame too.”

  “Well, sir,” Dan said, “I wanted to talk to you about something along those lines. About helping to make America safer.”

  Freck ate with the tolerant air of a man who’d listened to thousands of lobbyists make their cases. When Dan paused he said, “The Cicero Foundation did a study on that. Said State, Bert Sola, I think, really fucked that program up. Wasted millions and got nothing back.”

  “Well, they never actually got the funding that was—”

  “I been thinking the way to make something happen there might be to set up some kind of private foundation, private outfit. Let folks loose on it who’re used to getting results. Sort of privatize it.”

  Dan couldn’t see how such a thing could be done but was willing to give it a hearing. The old man had been in government a lot longer than he had. “You think so?” he said, playing wide-eyed.

  Which Freck seemed to respond to; he leaned forward. “Know a bunch of fellows who take on things like that. I forget what the outfit’s called. BSA, PSA something. Forget what it stands for.”

  “It’s like a think tank?” Dan said, still trying to figure out how you could do it privately. Did Freck mean with foundation funding? “Like Rand? SAIC? CNA?”

  “None of those,” the congressman said. “BSA, that’s it. Major General Froelinghausen. Skip. He retired four-five years back.”