The Network

by Jason Elliot

  We walk south a few blocks, hand in hand, to the zoo, where we seek out the animals we know from the Just So Stories. They stand inches from an elephant, peer wide-eyed at the snakes in their glass enclosures and make faces at a white-cheeked gibbon.

  The penguins steal the show.

  It’s cold and we make for the diner for a top-up of hot chocolate. It’s only when we’re on the way home again that I realise one of the girls has lost a mitten. There’ll be hell to pay but there’s no time to retrace our steps. A renewed feeling of dread replaces that of joy as we return to the house.

  ‘Typical,’ snarls their mother from the far side of the front door. ‘I can’t leave them with you for a single afternoon without something going wrong.’ I do not know what drives this cruelty. I don’t contest it because the girls are looking up at me, wondering whether they should say goodbye, and their faces waver between smiles and expressions of concern.

  ‘By the way,’ says their mother, ‘there’s riding camp for two weeks in August. You can see them for the last week of the month and we can do make-up time the following summer.’

  ‘I only have three weeks with the girls this summer. It’s my only chance to have a proper holiday with them. I can’t fly them to England for just a week. I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  There’s a tightening of her jaw and a renewed look of contempt.

  ‘Fine. If that’s how selfish you want to be. I shouldn’t have expected anything different from you. We can make things difficult too.’

  I have no reply to this, so I kiss the girls goodbye, and they step beyond the threshold under their mother’s arm and disappear. Then, as I’m walking back to the taxi, the door opens again and the two of them race out to me for a final hug.

  There is a strategy, I’ve discovered, to manage the feeling of devastation I experience when I leave my kids. I put my mind on something different and force it to stay there until the feeling subsides. There’s a radiating sensation of grief in my chest which I know will pass if I let it run its course. I need in the meantime to get back to another world where my feelings cannot be allowed to run riot. As the taxi rolls back to the hotel past the manicured lawns of the perfect homes of Chevy Chase, I force myself to the meeting I’ll be having later with Grace. I wonder what level of clearance she’s been authorised to read me onto. I’ve had top secret clearance since Seethrough reinstated me with the Firm, but it doesn’t mean I’m automatically cleared for what the Americans call an SCI or sensitive compartmented information, or for SAPs – special access programmes, like the Predator missions, the very existence of which is classified.

  As a British citizen I can’t get top secret clearance in the US, but can be granted a limited access authorization if it can be shown, which it obviously has been, that a clearable US citizen isn’t available for the same job. This allows me to be read onto the relevant SCIs. The rest is NTK or need to know, which limits access to whatever is necessary for carrying out the task involved. Seethrough has smoothed the process through with his counterparts at Langley, and as Grace has reminded me, somebody loves me on the seventh floor. Clearance isn’t in itself secret, and may even lapse after a given period. But one’s accountability to it is for life. It’s a disturbing thought. I’m comforted by the paradoxical knowledge that at the highest levels of all, as exemplified by the Baroness’s dealings, there’s no such thing as clearance at all, nor any paperwork to support it. Or to deny it. Just conversations in quiet rooms, on benches in public parks, and words exchanged in chance meetings that quite probably never happened.

  I have good intentions to go for a swim in the hotel pool, but instead collapse on the bed and sleep fitfully for an hour before waking with a sense of panic at not knowing where I am. When I come down to the lobby, Grace is already there, reading a copy of the Washington Post. I see her in daylight now and realise how blue her eyes are. There’s the same mixture of hardness in her gait, voice and manner, and softness when she smiles or laughs.

  Grace lives alone in a neighbourhood called Adams Morgan, jokingly called Madam’s Organ by its inhabitants. An inordinate number of different locks on her front door protect a narrow house on four floors, small by American standards but huge by all others. There are Persian and Turkish carpets on the floors and Georgia O’Keefe prints on the walls. Above an elaborately hand-tooled saddle on a wooden stand in a corner of the living room hang several rodeo trophies. Among a collection of family photographs, there’s one of Grace shaking hands with the president and a second woman, another with the former president, another with the CIA’s director George Tenet, his Levantine features offset by a pink tie, and another with the former DCI, John Deutch. A miniature flag of the state of Colorado pokes up between them. I ask who the other woman is in the photograph.

  ‘Secretary of state,’ she answers, coming over to peer at the picture. ‘Stuck-up bitch. Know what she said to me? Said Massoud’s a drug dealer and we can’t deal with a drug dealer. Here.’ She passes me a tumbler, which prompts me to look at my watch. ‘Never too early for a sip of prairie dew.’ Her prairie dew of choice is a twenty-one-year-old single malt matured in port casks. ‘One of life’s small pleasures,’ she says.

  I concur. We sit and cradle our glasses.

  ‘Massoud was never cash-averse, but he’s a man you can ride the river with. I sure hope we can shore him up before he has to give up his last patch of turf.’

  ‘What do you think are the chances of that?’ I ask.

  ‘Slim,’ she says. ‘Mighty slim.’ Then she recalls her last mission to Panjshir, and it’s obvious she was impressed, like so many others, by Massoud’s charisma, energy and humility.

  ‘We were fixing him up with a hotline to Langley and a box of tricks from the NSA so’s we could listen in on Taliban comms. All of a sudden there’s artillery causing a ruckus down the valley and turning his men into buzzard food. Took us up to the head of the valley so’s to keep us out of range, then heads back to the fight. Damn. Still found time to look after us later, making sure we were fed and warm. Son of a bitch slept on a bedroll just like a cowboy. Next day he’s directing the war again and busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.’

  ‘God, don’t make me laugh,’ I protest, clutching at my rib.

  ‘Been meaning to ask you if you’ve been in a fight recently,’ she says.

  ‘Just with my friends.’

  ‘You’re not your average gringo spook,’ she says, chuckling as she refills our shot glasses. ‘And I’ve met a few. Self-satisfied sons of bitches, most of them. You’re not a man who lives a life of quiet desperation.’

  ‘You’re not your average cowgirl,’ I say. ‘Cowgirls don’t quote Thoreau, for one thing.’

  I ask her how she got into the spook side of life, and she surprises me by saying it’s the family business. Her father, she says, was friends with ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, founder of the Office of Strategic Services, the secret American organisation dedicated to espionage during the Second World War. I know that the OSS was a parallel entity to Britain’s SOE, and its daring and innovative founder became a prodigy of behind-the-lines derring-do, rather as David Stirling became a legend as the founder of the SAS. Years later her father, a dedicated cold war warrior, had ended up as head of station in a number of Middle Eastern countries, in the golden days, as Grace calls them, when the Company actually had reliable human assets in the region.

  I see no reason not to tell her that my father was involved with SOE, and that I’d joined the army with the vaguely romantic ambition of following in his footsteps. ‘Wasn’t quite the army I thought it would be,’ I say. ‘I had a shot at becoming a proper spook, but made the mistake of committing what they call an indiscretion. As I am now,’ I say, ‘by telling you this.’

  ‘I appreciate your looseness,’ she says, meaning frankness, but it’s probably no coincidence that she’s plying me with whisky, probably the oldest tongue-loosening technique in the book. I try to work the conversat
ion back to Afghanistan.

  ‘What will happen?’ I ask. ‘I mean if Massoud’s forced out.’

  ‘Like I said. Whole of Afghanistan’ll turn into a training camp for Obi-Wan and his hotheads. Won’t leave us with a lot of choice. There’s a plan,’ she begins, then catches herself. ‘I can’t talk about that, Tony. Hell, there’s always a plan.’

  ‘For America to intervene?’ It’s unimaginable.

  ‘Listen.’ She puts her glass on the edge of the table. ‘We know al-Qaeda’s trying to kill Massoud. Someone’s been guarding his shoes, for crying out loud, in case they try to put a dose of anthrax in them. If they get lucky, we lose our one ally on the ground. I don’t want to have to spell it out. We’ve been acquiring a target archive in Afghanistan for nigh on two years. We may have survived the millennium, but the system was blinking redder than a coyote’s ass in heat with all the threats cables we had coming in. Most of it single-threaded and too damn vague to be actionable, but all we need is for one of them to happen on US soil, trace it back to Obi-Wan, and you know the Pentagon’s going to go to work on the place.’ She retrieves her glass. ‘Strategic depth. You know where that gets us?’

  ‘Up shit creek?’ I offer.

  ‘And some,’ she says. ‘If we piss off twenty million Afghans, we’ll have a war, my friend.’

  ‘That’s a dark thought,’ I say. ‘It’s too bizarre. The most powerful country in the world invading the poorest?’

  ‘Darn right it’s bizarre,’ she says, emphasising the word as if to extract its full meaning and filling our glasses again. ‘Want to know how bizarre? We fund a ten-year proxy war against the Soviets to bury the ghost of Vietnam, and a million Afghans die in the name of freedom. Then the Wall comes down and freedom says, “Adios, amigos, we’re done here.” Afghanistan drops off the agenda faster than butter off a hot knife and the Afghans are left to slaughter each other with the same weapons the US taxpayer’s been kind enough to sponsor. Bizarre enough for you? Cut five years till the country gets taken over by a one-eyed mullah supported by our last remaining ally in the region, Pakistan. Said mullah gets it in his cracked head to play host to a tier-zero terrorist who’s declared a global jihad against guess who? America. Secstate wants to climb into bed with the one-eyed mullah, just to see how the cat jumps. “We can deal with the Taliban,” she says. “Massoud’s history,” she says. Meantime she’s fine if the Russians and Iranians send him all the guns he wants so’s to keep the Taliban tied up. Pentagon says, “Engage with Pakistan, maintain the strategic relationship; Massoud’s a lost cause.” Know why we missed Obi-Wan in the cruise strike? Know why we fired a hundred million dollars’ worth of missiles to carve up a pile of fucking rocks in the Afghan desert? Because the Paks warned him. Our dearly beloved allies. Jesus Christ, ours is not to reason why, but how bizarre does it get? Rest of the CIA thinks we’re obsessed with a hot-headed playboy who’s got a fatal kidney disease and what’s our fucking problem? No wonder they call us the Manson family. We could’ve nailed the sucker last year, but the White House won’t give the go-ahead in case we hit one of his Arab buddies who’s about to buy ten billion bucks’ worth of F-16s, and whose government is, you guessed it, the chief supplier of weapons to the Taliban. Massoud’s strongest ally? The Russians, his sworn enemies for ten years. How’s that for bizarre?’

  There’s not much to add to this, except that it’s consistent with Afghanistan’s mysterious power, despite being one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, to affect the affairs of the world so disproportionately.

  Grace sighs heavily, pours another pair of whiskies, and her mood recovers. A businesslike tone enters her voice. ‘We need to talk about those Stingers.’

  She retrieves a laptop computer and brings up a collection of photographs, with which I’m half-familiar from my earlier session with H, onto the screen. The photographs are labelled to show the pressure-release valves on the weapon-round containers, which need to be opened before the missiles are removed. They also show the panel on the weapons where the lot and serial numbers are to be found. These need to be listed, she says. If there are really as many missiles as we’re all hoping, I’ll need to allow sufficient time for finding and photographing the serial numbers.

  Once I’m in Afghanistan, a member of the TRODPINT team will advise on the situation on the ground before I move to the target. He’ll meet us before and after the operation and pass on a progress report to his American handler based in Pakistan. Another trusted source will brief me before we get inside the country.

  She pulls up the documents on the screen, and I notice some of the security caveats on the Defense Messaging System headers. NODIS means that the distribution of the information is strictly limited. FGI means the document contains sensitive information concerning a foreign government. X5 is one of many declassification exemptions, meaning it all stays secret longer than the assigned number of years.

  The photographs appear in turn. The first is of a thin-faced handsome young man with dark features called Abdul Sattar.

  ‘Speaks English, Pashto and Dari,’ says Grace. ‘I need you to check in with him before and after the operation. I need third-party confirmation that you came and went, that’s all. I wouldn’t trust him with more than that. Nothing operational. We’ve had him signed up for a year but you can be sure he knows some bad people.’

  The second is an older man in his forties, with softer features and an oval-shaped elfin face.

  ‘Name of Hamid Karzai. Comes from a good southern family,’ she says as if she’s talking about Tennessee rather than Kandahar. ‘He was press officer for Mojaddedi in the jihad years and deputy foreign minister in Massoud’s government till he had a bust-up with Massoud’s intelligence chief and rode out of town. Seems he was pretty cut up about the way he was treated and hitched himself to the Taliban for a year or two. Plans took a bath when his father was killed by the Taliban last year and now he’s trying to take the fight back to them in the south. He’s switched on and some of us have got money on him. He’ll talk your ear off, but you can trust him.’ His brothers, she adds, have Afghan restaurants in San Francisco, if I ever get to craving a qabli pilau while I’m Stateside.

  It’s Karzai who will receive the money that we’ve been asked to deliver. The tactical details are our business. Once we’re inside Afghanistan, Grace will liaise with London as and when.

  ‘Wish I could be there with you,’ she says. Then the steely look comes back into her eyes. ‘I’m counting on you, Tony.’

  It’s after ten now. The effect of the whisky is pleasant and has anaesthetised the day’s earlier worries. I’ve enjoyed our talk and wish it could last longer. We walk to her front door.

  ‘There’ll be a car for you in the morning,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks. You’ve been good to me. I’ll miss all the cowboy talk.’

  ‘Wait a second,’ she says. Her hands move to her belt buckle, which she undoes hastily and begins to slide her belt out of its loops. A few seconds later I see in her outstretched hand a woven snakeskin pouch which contains a Leatherman multi-tool. ‘Take this with you,’ she says. ‘Darn useful where you’re going.’ It’s obviously precious to her and she looks at it thoughtfully for a moment before she hands it to me.

  ‘The Company’s lucky to have you,’ I tell her. We embrace. ‘Give them hell.’

  ‘Adios, amigo,’ she says.

  The streets are quiet and I decide to walk and think things over on the way. I realise the secret world into which I’ve been allowed sits more comfortably with me now. For a month it’s as if I’ve been in conflict over the need for secrecy and the urge to find expression for what I know. But now the two are less at odds. The work is bringing me confidence, and I’m feeling buoyed up by Grace’s frank expression of faith in me. Her gift was not a calculated act, I decide. I take it out of its pouch and look it over. It’s an expensive version, well made and virtually indestructible, although only the Americans could design a multi-pu
rpose tool without a corkscrew. I pocket it again and turn it over in my hand as I walk.

  In the lobby of the hotel I announce I’ll be checking out in the early morning and have a brief conversation with the concierge, from whom I’ve earlier asked a favour. I’m tired and it’s time to get some rest. But as I head for my room I pass the lounge and my attention is momentarily caught by the sight of two women perched on stools at the bar. They’re hard to miss. The blonde is wearing a dress that’s open from her shoulders to the small of her back, and the black woman sitting next to her is wearing equally black leather trousers that look as though they’ve been sprayed on her extravagantly long legs. As I’m looking, she catches my eye and smiles, then turns back to her friend.

  I think involuntarily of Tintin’s inseparable companion Captain Haddock, in one of his difficult moments, tormented by the contrary promptings of the angel above his right shoulder and the devil above his left.

  ‘You’ve got a flight early in the morning,’ says my angel.

  ‘You’re all alone and far from home,’ counters my devil, ‘and you can sleep on the plane. Life is short,’ he adds with a wink.

  ‘You should be tied to a mast until those sirens are out of earshot,’ protests the angel.

  The devil wins.

  I cross the lounge and order a top-up of whisky at the bar. A pianist is coaxing mellow jazz from a grand piano, and a dozen guests are drinking at low tables from white leather chairs and couches. The barman pours the whisky with a dextrous flourish and twirls the bottle in his hand as he replaces it on the mirrored shelf.

  I turn towards the women nearby as if I’ve only just noticed them. They are both strikingly beautiful and look at me in unison. The blonde has eyes the colour of fresh lime juice and a finely sculpted face, from which she brushes a tributary torrent of topaz-yellow hair. The black woman, whose hair is drawn back from her perfectly oval face, has the smouldering look of a tigress, and is wearing saffron-coloured lipstick as if she’s pressed her lips against the soil of a volcano in her ancestral home.