Q Clearance

by Peter Benchley

  Q Clearance

  for Wendy

  — for a thousand reasons^ of which she knows but one —

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  “On your knees, America!''

  No. Too mandatory. Too . . . military. A presidential proclamation should be forceful yet amiable, cooperative rather than coercive. Not dictatorial. Rule #1 in a democracy: Don't piss off the people.

  Timothy Bumham yanked the piece of paper out of his typewriter, crumpled it and aimed it at the wastebasket, then began again.

  " 'In God We Trust' has been a watchword for Americans since our forefathers. ..."

  No. Too wordy, too mealymouthed, too avuncular. Not . . . presidential. If the President wants the citizens to pray, he should tell them to pray.

  But what about that piece of parchment called the Constitution? It's none of the President's business who prays when, how or to whom. The law says he has to keep his sticky fingers off religion.

  So why are we bothering with a National Day of Prayer? Burnham was damned if he knew. Why bother with proclamations, period? Nobody ever reads them, let alone heeds them. The newspapers print them between the obituaries and the neuter-your-pet notices.

  Burnham wadded his second attempt into a tight paper ball and lofted a blind hook shot that missed the wastebasket by four feet. Clearly, presidential proclamations existed for the sole purpose of giving presidential speechwriters colitis. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet on his desk and gazed out the window. Two limousine drivers were pitching pennies against the curb by the West Basement entrance to the White House.

  The intercom on his telephone buzzed.

  "Yup?"

  "Mr. Burnham, there's a Mr. Renfro to see you. From DOE."

  Burnham sat up, confused. "He's here?”

  Nobody ever came to see the President's writers. People phoned them or sent them information, but when face-to-face meetings were called for, it was the writers who were summoned to the policymakers. Writers were, after all, tools, to be paid no more homage than an artist accords his brush or a carpenter his screwdriver.

  "What's he want?"

  "He won't say. He assures me it's important enough for me to interrupt you."

  Burnham imagined Dyanna defiantly tilting her pert little nose and her sharp little chin up at the peremptory Mr. Renfro, hoping for license to tell him to bugger off back to his warren in the Department of Energy.

  However, Burnham was eager for any diversion from his task of refereeing the struggle between Church and State, and he was curious, so he said, "Send him in." He swung his feet to the floor and rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter and faced the keys with what he hoped was an air of creativity. As the door to his office opened, he typed a garble of letters, then looked up as if resenting the interruption. "What can I do for you?"

  "My name is Renfro. Preston T. Renfro. I'm with DOE." Renfro launched what should have been a simple statement with the gravity of a formal announcement.

  How does he want me to react? Burnham wondered. Tachycardia? A frisson of delight? For, the appearance of the man denied the authority of the voice.

  Preston T. Renfro was a gray-looking person. He conveyed neither rank nor ruthlessness nor intellect nor any of the several other manifestations of power. He seemed to lack even vanity, for he was bald in a pattern that would have nicely accepted a hairpiece. He wore no jewelry except an inexpensive digital watch. His suit, shirt, tie and shoes were boringly compatible. He probably did some kind of solitary exercise two or three times a week, for his skin fit him well and he carried no obvious blubber. His face had no angles, no comers. It was roundish, a face that was unravaged by booze or tragedy or emotional tumult. He might have been a salesman, an insurance executive, a banker, a Bulgarian bureaucrat— one of those nondescript types who carries a poison-tipped umbrella with which to assassinate exiled dissidents on the Quai des Grands Augustins. Or he might be what he said he was, a something-or-other with the Federal Department of Energy.

  "You can leave it open," Burnham said as Renfro shut the door behind him. "I have no secrets."

  Renfro hesitated, assessing Burnham before he said, "Yes you do, Mr. Burnham. As of today, you do."

  A voice in Burnham's head said, Uh-oh: This guy is beginning to sound like a refugee from a rubber room.

  He wondered if Dyanna had thought to ask to see Renfro's ID. He said, "What do you do for DOE?"

  "Work for them." Renfro took a wallet from his hip pocket and flashed a DOE pass at Burnham. It looked genuine. "Like you do."

  "I see." Burnham recognized the gambit of a routine power game. He decided to trump. "The thing is, I don't work for DOE. I work for the President."

  "Let's not split hairs." Unbidden, Renfro sat in one of the two chairs before Burnham's desk, laid his briefcase across his knees and folded his hands on top of it. "You may work in the White House complex, but you're employed by DOE. You're paid by DOE, you're insured by DOE, and after the FBI finished with you, you had to be cleared by DOE."

  "Could DOE fire me?"

  Renfro paused. "A good question. I don't know."

  Turkey, Burnham thought. You know as well as I do that DOE can't touch me. The President had me hired, and he could have me fired, but without a direct order from the President DOE has no choice but to pay me, insure me and carry me on its rolls as a high-level staff member detailed to the White House.

  None of the President's writers worked for the White House, not technically. They weren't on the White House staff. In fact, almost everybody Burnham knew who worked in the White House didn't work for the White House: They all worked for some other agency or department or bureau.

  They had to. Congress authorized a budget for the White House that accommodated 314 employees. The truth was that the great lumbering beast known as the Executive Office of the President employed 1,520 human beings, all of whom had to be paid and insured by somebody. Every President threatened to cut the White House budget. Most Presidents did make cosmetic cuts. But all Presidents quietly restored those cuts by fishing in the federal bureaucracy for slots to fill wit* their own people, who, thenceforth, never set foot inside the department that paid them, never met their nominal boss never performed a single function related to their "job descriptions."

  Burnham's friend McGregor, for example, was officially one of two special assistants to the Secretary of the Treasury. When the Secretary resigned so as to be able to devote every waking hour to preparing testimony rebutting a federal grand jury's indictment of him on 114 counts of insider trading, a new Secretary was nominated and confirmed. McGregor wrote the President's remarks for the new Secretary's swearing-in ceremony and was, according to custom, invited to attend the ceremony. He went through the receiving line, and when he came to the new Secretary, he shook hands and said, "How do you do, sir? I wrote the President's remarks swearing you in. I hope you liked them. I'm your special assistant. You will never see me again. Goodbye."

  The Secretary, who had been prepared to say "Thank you" to some banal politesse, stopped at "Th . . . " and looked as if he had been slapped in the face with a wet haddock. Another well-wisher stood before him, hand extended, but the Secretary ignored him and bent toward the President and whispered as he pointed at McGregor's back, "Who was that?"

  The President looked, squinted, glared and then said, "A flake. I'm plagued by flakes."

 
When Burnham was hired, the job lottery placed him in the Department of Energy. Like McGregor, he was a special assistant to the Secretary. Like McGregor, he had passed not one day, not one hour, doing anything for his employer. He had never laid eyes on his boss. He had been in contact with only one person at his parent agency, a secretary in the personnel office who fielded questions about W-2 forms and insurance claims.

  There was one difference between Burnham's situation and McGregor's: the issue of national security. For years, the Department of Energy had been custodian of the keys to nuclear weaponry. As successor to the Atomic Energy Commission, DOE oversaw the research, development and construction of the flatware for the Last Supper. Let the Pentagon decide where to hide the missiles; DOE determined the content of the message each one would deliver. Only DOE knew how much to take from Column A to mix with so much from column B to make an explosion that could turn an entire continent into a memory.

  All of which had affected Burnham not a whit.

  Until today.

  "Why are we talking about firing?" Renfro asked. "Nobody's firing anybody. Quite the opposite." With a dyspeptic smile, he opened his briefcase and pulled out a white envelope which he passed to Burnham.

  It was Burnham's biweekly pay envelope: In the upper left comer, "Department of Energy, Washington, D.C. 20585." In the central window, "Burnham, Timothy Y., E.O.B. 102."

  Burnham said, "So?"

  "Open it."

  It was just a check, two slips of paper, one with his name and the amount payable from the U.S. Treasury, one with all the withholding information.

  "A check!" Burnham said. "Is this a voucher that I see before me, its PICA toward my hand?"

  "What?" Renfro was bewildered, and bewilderment made him feel a loss of control, and loss of control made him fearful, and fear made his eyelids flutter.

  Burnham tossed the check onto his desk and said, "Thanks for coming by, but next time, why not just drop it in the mail?"

  "You mean"—Renfro fought to keep his voice from slipping into the high tenor range—"you don't see anything extraordinary about the check?"

  "Nope."

  "Like, for example, the amount?"

  Burnham glanced idly at the amount of the check, but it looked reasonable. "What do I know? I put it in the bank, and I spend it, and when I spend too much the bank sends me a naughty-boy slip and I give them ten dollars."

  Renfro sensed that he was being teased, and he hated to be teased because he didn't know how to respond to teasing— "Shove it!" being unacceptable in the corridors of DOE. But then it occurred to him that Burnham was simply being candid. He leaned forward and pointed at the check and said, "May I?"

  "Sure."

  Renfro plucked the check from Burnham's fingers and, pointing at the maze of boxes on the stub, began to speak in a low, calm voice, the voice one would use to instruct a wayward but not malevolent child.

  "As of close-of-business today, you will have been with DOE for three years and six months, as a GS-15 step 8. Your base salary has been fifty-seven thousand, five hundred dollars per annum, paid biweekly at the gross salary rate of one thousand, one hundred and five dollars and seventy-seven cents per week, or two thousand, two hundred and eleven dollars and fifty-four cents per check, minus, first. Federal withholding tax of ... "

  Burnham's mind bid adieu to the torrent of statistics, and his voice hummed an agreeable "Mmmmmm" in tones modulated to convey concentration, fascination and comprehension.

  "Now!" Renfro stabbed a particular figure, and Burnham's mind raced to refocus. "At close-of-business today, time-in-grade moves you from GS-15 step 8 to GS-15 step 9! Congratulations!"

  At a loss for an appropriate response, Burnham said, "Right."

  "Don't you see?” Renfro waved the check before Burnham's face. "Fifty-nine thousand, eight hundred dollars per annum, paid biweekly at the gross salary rate of . . . "

  Burnham snatched the check back from Renfro, and his eyes traveled down to the last box on the stub, the one that showed the net amount. The true, after-tax, in-the-pocket, spending-money increase for two weeks' work was $48.17. He looked up at Renfro and said, "You do this for a living?"

  "Do what?"

  "Scurry from department to department, conducting . . . circumcision ceremonies to celebrate a lousy forty-dollar raise? You could've called, for a quarter."

  Renfro stiffened. "Mr. Burnham, the money is just a symbol. Elevation to GS-15 step 9 carries with it a great deal more than a raise in pay. As of close-of-business today, you will be in the—how should I put it?—in the stratosphere of DOE. You will have"—and here he lowered his voice in what could have been reverence or secrecy or both—"you will have . . . Q Clearance."

  Burnham didn't know what to say. Was this good news or bad news? Did it mean anything, or was it but one more of the totemic badges that gave bureaucrats the incentive to go on?

  He gazed at Renfro, suddenly seeing the man as more than a man, as an incarnation of many things grand and grave: of the ant colony that was the federal government, of the paranoia and insecurity that hung over Washington like sour gas, of the entire federal budget deficit.

  "Lucky me!" he cried. "Does this mean that I get to tear a piece off the President's niece?"

  Renfro gripped the edge of Burnham's desk so hard that his fingernails left dents in the varnish. "How could you?" he gasped. "How could you joke about Q Clearance? It's . . . no . . . joke!"

  "If you say so," Burnham said pleasantly. "But dare I ask what the hell it is?"

  "Of course." Renfro made a busy motion with his tie. "Of course. Code Q is the security classification used for atomic energy documents. A government employee may be cleared Top Secret—I imagine everyone in the White House complete is—but without a Q Clearance he can't see any paperwork or receive any information about atomic energy. Q Clearance gives you access to all materials pertaining to atomic energy."

  "What do I want with a Q Clearance?"

  "So you can have access to materials pertaining to atomic energy. On a need-to-know basis, of course."

  "That's that, then. I don't need to know any of it, and I don't have any of it."

  "You will. It will be sent to you."

  "Why? I don't understand half the crap DOE sends me now. Why do I want more?"

  "What you want has nothing to do with it. It's what you must have, now that you're a GS-15 step 9."

  "But I don't need it."

  "Of course you do."

  "Why?"

  "Because you're a GS-15 step 9, working for DOE."

  "I don't work for DOE. I've never set foot in DOE. I work for the White House."

  Renfro sighed. "I thought we'd settled all that."

  "I don't even write speeches on energy. I don't know fission from fusion. All I know about nuclear is Hiroshima."

  "You will."

  "You mean they'll send me everything? Like where all our missiles are and what they're targeted on and the launch codes and the . . . the boom factor?"

  "The boom factor?"

  "Beats the shit out of me," Burnham said. "Sounds good, though, doesn't it?"

  "I see. Another joke." Renfro squared his shoulders and set his jaw, reminding Burnham of John Houseman on the Smith, Barney commercials. "There are certain things you would have to request specifically and prove your need to know. But basic. Top Secret, Q-classified atomic-energy materials will cross your desk."

  "Really?" Burnham was mildly interested. "How many?"

  Renfro's smile vanished. "You know better than that. I'm not at liberty to—"

  "Okay. Forget how many. What are they called? If I'm Q Cleared for Category 7, what's higher? Category 8?"

  Renfro blushed. "Really ..."

  "You mean there's stuff so secret that no one can even know how secret? Even the names are secret? I know: They're not called secrets; they're called . . . fizmins! So you say to some guy, 'Can you keep a fizmin?' and right away he knows you're okay."

  "I don't find t
his at all—"

  "Now"—Burnham stared contemplatively at the ceiling— "the stuff only the President can see, those are superfizmins. The problem is, if only the President can see them, then nobody's cleared to tell them to him or type them out for him, so he has no way to get them."

  Annoyed and impatient, Renfro drummed his knuckles on the desk top.

  "Tell me who can know I've got Q Clearance," Burnham said.

  "Only someone else who's Q Cleared."

  "Like you."

  Renfro nodded.

  "How high are you cleared?"

  "You're out of line."

  "Sorry. I don't mean to be nosy. The thing is, how can anybody know how high he's cleared? All he knows is what's below him. He doesn't know anything about what's above him. Right?"

  Renfro hesitated, then said uncertainly, "I suppose."

  "I mean, say I'm having lunch in the Mess with some of the guys, and the talk turns lightly to nuclear energy, and one of the guys says, 'I wonder what goes into that there neutron bomb.' And since I know all about those things—being Q Cleared and all—I say—"

  Renfro blanched. "You don't say a thing!"

  "Take it easy. This is just for instance. I say, 'I happen to know it's made up of two brindles, a gristen and a pint of phwork.' "

  "You wouldn't—"

  "Just an example. I told you, I don't understand any of this crap anyway. Now, if he says, 'Yeah? No shit?' then I know he isn't Q Cleared. Easy. But suppose some other guy at the table says, 'Not only that, but they launch it with a twelve-volt pismo, which are manufactured at Pismo Products in White Plains.' Well, no question: Here's a guy with more than your garden-variety Q Clearance."

  "This is all very—"

  "The point, Mr. Renfro," Burnham said sharply, "is this: How do I know who I can talk to? How do I know who's got Q Clearance? Is there a secret handshake? Will he be wearing a code ring?"

  "Don't be ridiculous."

  "Well? Is my wife cleared?"

  "Of course not."

  "So what happens if we're talking about this and that, and all of a sudden I spill something to her."

  "Be reasonable. What classified material would be likely to come up in a . . . nuptial . . . conversation?"