The Gun Runner's Daughter

by Neil Gordon

  Shauna McCarthy was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Her voice was brusque when, after a series of clerks, Dee reached her.

  “Mr. Dennis. Nice to talk to you. I’d like to offer you a job.”

  “Thank you.” Standing at his desk, he answered evenly.

  “Line prosecutor. Significant oral argument. The title is special counsel to the U.S. attorney. After the trial, we’ll see what’s available on staff. I suspect there’ll be something good.”

  “Thank you. I can be there in the afternoon.”

  McCarthy laughed. “Don’t do that. I’m on my way down. Tell me, have you ever been to the old Executive Office Building?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “You’re going today. We have a one o’clock meeting. Be at the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance by noon. We’ll see you there.”

  “Yes, Ms. McCarthy. Ma’am?”

  “Yes?”

  “May I ask what the case is?”

  “The sweetest arms export violation since Edwin Wilson did business with Qaddafi. The prosecution of Ronald Rosenthal, Mr. Dennis. I understand you’re interested in it.”

  A pause, and gratitude flooded Dee Dennis’s stomach.

  “I most certainly am, Ms. McCarthy.”

  “Good. Can you read U.S. v. Teledyne before the meeting?”

  “I already know it, ma’am.”

  Dee Dennis hung up, stunned. Slowly, realization was dawning on him, and with it his scalp pricked, his stomach surged. This was a front-page prosecution. No, it was more. If U.S. v. Teledyne was the precedent, that meant that Rosenthal was claiming covert government direction for his transaction. He was saying, in fact, that he had illegally sold arms to Bosnia at the behest of the Clinton administration—as had Oliver North said about the Reagan administration. That defense had never actually been tried, and with a spirited defense—and Bob Stein would doubtless be defending—it could be appealed to the Supreme Court. Then, coming suddenly to himself, David Treat Dennis opened his office door to the conference room and announced:

  “Girls and boys, meet the special counsel to the U.S. attorney. New York, Southern District, under Lady McCarthy herself.”

  And still, as his colleagues, taking notice at last, came to offer congratulations, Dee did not understand.

  3.

  From then on, for the rest of that day, things happened very quickly to Dee Dennis.

  When his taxi dropped him at the gateway to the White House compound, he stepped, somewhat self-consciously, into the stream of traffic moving up through the gate, guarded by white-gloved marines, to the old Executive Office Building. On the way through the gates he recognized Robert Reich, who, coming out, saw him, looked away, and then back, suddenly, with some curiosity.

  Inside a set of glass doors his name was checked on a computer by a young woman. With a nod, he was passed through a metal detector into a second room. Shauna McCarthy and two colleagues were here, flanked by a man and a woman, both in black.

  “Mr. Dennis. Nice to see you. These are deputy U.S. attorneys Daniel Edelson and Beth Callahan. They will be with you before the bench.”

  Dee had just the time to shake the hands of his new colleagues before a young man, no older than Dee and much smaller, approached, shook Shauna McCarthy’s hand, nodded to the others, and then Dee was following them, as if in formation, down a hallway.

  They continued straight, left, straight again, passing through an octagonal room from which three corridors parted in three directions. Then they turned left, went down a corridor, through a single oak door into a carpeted lounge.

  Here, Dee saw a long chesterfield occupied, to his surprise, by Sidney Ohlinger and Dee’s father. Ohlinger, a very tall, slim man with jet black hair, had remained seated, but Dee’s father rose to shake Shauna McCarthy’s hand as she seated herself in an armchair, then turned and winked at Dee. The three senior members of the party shifted their attention to an oak door.

  As the junior members of the meeting took seats, Dee, who felt his comprehension to have been lagging significantly behind his perceptions, was able to bring himself partially up to the present. He was in a conference room with the National Security adviser, the president’s counsel, and a U.S. attorney. And that was as far as he got before the door opened and Alexander Nelson, a White House aide whom he knew only from the newspaper, carrying a sheaf of papers, entered and began to talk.

  “Ed, I have to tell you that the charge has been made that your prosecution represents a cabal.”

  Dee had not heard the question in the statement, but his father answered immediately.

  “Alex, whoever said that should use a dictionary. A cabal cannot represent a sizable plurality of a democratically constituted political party. May I add that it’s a plurality that was very important in the ’92 elections.”

  “Nonetheless, why shouldn’t the press see it that way?”

  “Our defendant’s public image was established during Iran-contra, and it was uniformly negative. There is no sympathy for him in the press, either. This is not only the right thing to do, Alex, it’s good media.”

  His father was speaking, Dee realized, in sound bites: punchy concise statements. Moving on, Nelson asked, “What about Congress?”

  The answer continued fluently, and Dee noticed that the name of the defendant was not mentioned. “Alex, that’s precisely what makes this prosecution so incredibly apt: our defendant has no friends in Congress. Democrats remember his role in the October surprise. Republicans note that the Bosnian Muslim arms supply—alleged supply—is a Democratic initiative. This is bipartisanship at its most compelling, Alex. Both sides have axes to grind.”

  Sidney Ohlinger picked up the argument smoothly, in his lightly accented Bostonian speech.

  “It’s not only good for Congress, it’s good for the executive. We all knew as far back as ’91 we’d be needing a way to show good, strong support for the embargo on Bosnia. We are going to have very, very happy alliances in the G7, come fall. Without that, we bring this to trial, the press is going to be all about the defense’s claim that the White House was directing him. With it, this is a president in control of his house, and nothing London or Paris has to say’ll make the news.”

  Nelson nodded and moved swiftly on. “What about the Turks, the Saudis? It’s their Moslem brothers who are under fire. We already have blowback from the mujahideen over Bosnia.”

  Ohlinger spoke again. “That is the reason for which State is to be kept out: there is no official position on this. Meanwhile the president is free to use covert agencies to placate those allies.”

  “Feasibility?”

  The attention turned now to the U.S. attorney, who, in a much lower voice than previously, spoke. To Dee, she seemed the perfect ammunition to pull out now. “Mr. Nelson, this is a case that cannot be lost. Defendant’s second in command has turned State’s evidence in return for limited immunity. It will be very, very difficult to overturn this evidence: it is eyewitness, memorialized, irrefutable.”

  “What have the courts done on this kind of prosecution?”

  “The text of this trial was practically written by U.S. v. Teledyne. Covert direction by an administration—or a portion of an administration—was ruled inadmissible by Shelby Highsmith. We will be delighted to argue this issue before the Supreme Court.”

  “How prepared are you?”

  “We have our witness in protective custody. We are ready to announce as soon as tomorrow.”

  She paused to let her meaning sink in. Then, softening her tone, she went on.

  “What’s perhaps more important is that internally, I know of no other occasion where a perfect confluence of values has existed all the way from the White House to, sir, the line prosecutor.” She paused, and Dee felt a flash of heat in his head as Nelson’s attention turned, for a full second, on him. Then Nelson was speaking again, dryly this time.

  “Nepotism, counselor?”

  “Sir, David Dennis has wo
rked statutory arms export administration, on which he wrote for Yale Law and which he prosecuted in open argument under Walsh, since leaving law school at Harvard. He is anybody’s choice for this job.”

  “Okay.” With a short, humorless nod, Nelson rose now. “Ed, keep me informed.”

  In the room, as the door closed behind Nelson, there was a sudden lightening of mood, as if these six people had all been instantly released from the same deep anxiety. Slowly, as he stood, it dawned on Dee that for these people, their careers had depended on these slow minutes. For McCarthy, he thought, this was very probably the first time she had ever been to such a meeting. It could be the only time: if this case were to go wrong, it would be, for her, a brutal, unforgiving life turn, as determinant of one’s future as a tragic accident—which it could well be. Watching his superiors gather themselves for departure, Dee marveled briefly at the courage with which these people had put their careers on the line.

  And only then did it occur to him that, without ever asking him, they had done the same with his career, too.

  4.

  “Play your cards right, Deedee,” Edward Treat Dennis was saying with the slight slur of his second bourbon on the rocks, “and you’ll end up on the ’96 campaign. Good election experience, boy, win or lose.”

  Dee leaned back in his chair, away from the table, watching his father in the dining room of his childhood home in Georgetown. At the table was also his mother, her face the mirror of his father’s pride. For a moment the familiarity of the room, the low globes of the light over the table, the carpet underfoot, passed through him like a swoon.

  He watched his father’s pleasure with a wide smile.

  “How’s it good if I lose?”

  His father’s face shifted, briefly, in incomprehension, and then cleared. “You can’t lose the case. I mean the election. Good experience, whether Clinton wins or loses.”

  Dee considered that, attentively. So, it didn’t matter what happened to the president. That, he thought, was an interesting lesson on the loyalties associated with his new job. It had been a day filled with lessons. His father was still talking.

  “It’s the fact that Ohlinger is in that makes the case so damn strong. The national security adviser is a cabinet-level position. I was surprised Nelson even showed up, with that kind of credentials. That’s what they mean when they call him hands-on.”

  “Ohlinger seems committed.”

  “Committed? He was in Tel Aviv a year ago, telling them there was no proxy position in the Balkans, not after Iran-contra. Know what they said?”

  Dee shook his head.

  “Said Israel could not stand by, like England and France, while ethnic cleansing was being carried out.” A short laugh. “Especially not when there’re profits to be made. Boy, when those guys turn on their own kind, you see real venom. You know Ohlinger’s and Rosenthal’s daughters are best friends?”

  “Yeah?” Dee showed interest now: he knew Martha Ohlinger. “Who’s Rosenthal’s daughter?”

  “Name’s Allison. Didn’t you know her brother? Paul? Kid who killed himself? A fag, I heard, right?”

  And in a fluid movement the warm, kind dining room turned, for Dee, into a prison.

  In a fluid movement the best, most challenging, most exciting day of his life turned into the worst.

  Later, he would remember the feeling as a vertiginous drop.

  Later, he would remember it. But even at the time, as a realization, a memory, opened in him like a wound, still, in a far part of his mind, Dee observed that this was what it felt like when a life, a whole life, was ruined.

  Dee excused himself and went through the living room to the hallway bathroom. By the time he got there, he could feel his shirt damp with sweat. In the wood-framed mirror over a bouquet of dried flowers, he watched himself, his pupils dilated, his sky blue eyes wide. Moments passed before he was again master of his expression. Then he turned out again abruptly and went back to the table.

  Edward Treat Dennis was sitting back over an empty plate now, observing his son appraisingly as he sat down. “You want my opinion, Deedee? You wanted to, you could think big. You could think very big indeed.”

  After such a day of facing the unprecedented, nothing any longer seemed too hard to say. And obscurely, he knew that there was only going to be one chance to say what he was about to. The next time his mother left the room for the kitchen, he took a deep breath, and spoke.

  “Dad. Am I qualified to do this case?”

  His father switched to scrutiny in a second, and Dee regretted squandering his rare moment of approval. “What’s that mean?”

  “I mean, with you and Rosenthal both owning property on the island. Isn’t that a conflict?”

  His father answered with a short laugh. “Why, you do his daughter?”

  It took Dee a moment to realize his father was joking, and it was a moment of real fright. By then Edward Dennis was talking again.

  “Boy, if every lawyer recused himself on the grounds of real estate investments, there’d be no one to prosecute that shyster.”

  Slowly Dee realized his father didn’t have any idea about him and Alley.

  This meant, he realized, that his father did not know how much danger he was in.

  And then, as quickly as the moment had come, it was, inevitably and irreparably, too late.

  5.

  Never in life would he have connected that sixteen-year-old girl with Ronald Rosenthal.

  Dee flew that night after dinner to New York and took a cab to the Yale Club, where his father kept a room.

  Never in his life would he have connected that sixteen-year-old girl with Ronald Rosenthal: he’d had no consciousness of who her father was when he knew her, no curiosity, no possible interest.

  In those days the world was a given: winters at school, summers on the island; in those days the three months a year on Hancock Beach, sailing in Vineyard Haven, riding at Sarah Wright’s stables—they were far more immediate interests than the professions or social standing of his friends’ parents.

  Dee dropped his bags in his room, then at the stand-up bar in the club ordered a scotch and a thin Dunhill Panatela. In Washington Dee would have recognized about everyone around him. Here he was anonymous. Not, Dee thought, gazing around him with a kind of wonder, for long. With the thought, he felt his heart beat.

  What was it his father had said? You wanted to, you could think big. You could think very big indeed. Well, he was doing that, wasn’t he? Turning to the bar Dee smiled to himself, ruefully. He was thinking damn big, but the celebrity he was considering was rather different from that of his father’s aspiration. The celebrity he was considering was one that would start if, the very next day, he announced to Shauna McCarthy that Ronald Rosenthal’s daughter had been for two adolescent summers his lover, his first lover, and that remaining on the case, the best case any young lawyer could hope to have, could be considered as a serious enough breach of ethics to result in his removal from the bar.

  Then, not for the first time, but stronger than ever before, a sense of disbelief swept over him, sudden amazement at the swift, absolute fatality of what had happened.

  What was so astounding was the logic of the thing. Each step in its occurrence had, at the time, seemed so opportune, so immensely lucky. So used was Dee Dennis to opportunity, to success, that he hadn’t thought for a moment to question it. Now he saw himself as not only blind, but also complacent. Now he saw that each step of the way had had a dual meaning, one in appearance, one in truth, and never in life would it have been possible to know how radically the two would diverge.

  The offer from the U.S. attorney? He had been taught the legal territory of arms export control and administration by Lawrence Walsh himself. For a nuts-and-bolts understanding of Rosenthal’s crime by statute and paragraph, through years of congressional wrangling and presidential meddling in the relevant acts of Congress, few lawyers in the country were up to Dee. His father’s involvement? Yes, he kn
ew that neither his father nor Sid Ohlinger should be directing the Justice Department from the White House. He also knew that Watergate—with its many political innovations—was twenty years old. Who could doubt that this was business as usual? Who on earth could doubt that this was the chance to think very, very big indeed?

  And who could have foreseen that at the same time, these unimpeachably deserved, so long anticipated opportunities could carry the germ of their own utter explosion?

  For no matter how well he might have known the law, no matter who was his father and how big he might think, that David Treat Dennis, deputy U.S. attorney, had once been the childhood lover of Allison Rosenthal, daughter of the defendant in the federal trial he would argue in open court, was hard to reconcile with opportunity.

  As was it hard, very hard, to reconcile that fact with the sudden anonymity that had cloaked him in its protection since he’d entered this bar.

  To the contrary. Standing before the high wooden bar in the Yale Club, his back to the room and face toward a mirror, hidden behind rows of bottles, a vivid cascade of realization came across Dee. To the contrary. Anonymity was the antithesis of the attention that would be paid him when this fact became known, attention not just by the New York tabloids, but by the national press, which already had reporters permanently assigned to the trial.

  It was an attention that would raise the interest of many, many people indeed. And, in the middle of this delicate prosecution, which was being directed, no matter how quietly, illegally by a presidential administration, it would not be a welcome interest—not at all. Dee Dennis knew exactly how unwelcome that attention would be.

  The U.S. attorney would take perhaps ten minutes to replace Dee and remove his name from her Rolodex.

  The White House, in its turn, would listen to the dim noise of these events in New York just long enough to order someone to order someone to make sure that the name of David Treat Dennis had nowhere been written down, only whispered, and then softly close its doors.

  And as for Edward Treat Dennis, on whom those White House doors—noiseless, well-oiled hinges on carpeted floors, with the cream of the U.S. military standing white-gloved, armed guard outside—would also close, his interest would be long-lived indeed.