Oppo

by Tom Rosenstiel

  “Finding out who was Taliban and who was not was like spitting in the dark,” Jobe said.

  At the border, American military personnel were improvising, paying men five hundred dollars for every member of the Taliban they could identify. “Someone picked out this young Kuwaiti.” He was renditioned to Gitmo. A year later, the man who had pointed him out was discovered to be a fraud. An Afghan judge said his testimony could never be used in court.

  “The thing was,” Jobe said, “that meant the Kuwaiti kid in Guantánamo could never be brought to trial on that evidence. But by now he he’d been through the whole playbook of enhanced interrogation—sleep deprivation, light deprivation, waterboarding, all that. We were reluctant to set those guys free.”

  Instead, his jailers doubled down to get a confession. “The interrogations continued, and maybe intensified,” Jobe said. Another decade went by. Finally, Upton took up his case, Jobe explained.

  “Getting a Gitmo prisoner free is no picnic,” she said. “Not only do you have to establish the person’s innocence, prove his support of the United States, and persuade the State Department of those facts. You also have to satisfy the Department of Defense that if the guy were let go, he would remain a supporter of the United States and its allies in the future. That means you have to persuade people that this guy, who had suffered all this mistreatment in prison, would never do anything to support jihadists or our other enemies.”

  It was an almost impossible test to meet.

  “Upton did it for this guy. She really went to bat for him. It was a tragic case.”

  “Why is this bad?” Brooks asked.

  “The man has just been arrested on suspicion of helping jihadists,” Jobe said coolly.

  “Now, all these years later?” Brooks said. “How do you know?”

  “That’s what’s interesting. I found the letter and called one of my JAG sources. He said we weren’t the first people to call him about this letter.”

  “What?” Brooks said. “Someone else called him about this?”

  A trace of a droll smile was forming on Jobe’s beautifully sculptured face. “And this is the good part. The guy who called had to identify himself. He said he was vetting Upton for one of the campaigns. The military wasn’t all that helpful. Asked for the man’s employer.”

  “Don’t drag this out, Hallie. I’m so tired.”

  Jobe gave Brooks a pat on the hand across the table. “My source said the man who called him was named Dan Becker, and he worked for a company called Vigilas. Some kind of private investigation firm. My source was upset that private eyes were poking around. Said he didn’t think that’s how we ought to run our campaigns.”

  “What about you?” Brooks asked.

  “Apparently I am a beautiful black woman. Not just a private eye. And we’re friends.”

  That earned a look from Brooks. “You have that letter?” Jobe nodded and handed it over. Brooks began to read it; then she stopped, remembering something.

  “Vigilas. Wasn’t that one of the subsidiaries of Gray Circle?”

  She typed the name of the website they had found for Gray Circle, the one no one would know was there unless they were looking for it. Buried near the bottom of the “About” page was the reference she recalled to “our affiliates Vigilas and Canopy,” which provided additional services.

  It was not unusual for people in politics to be attacked for things they had done that were noble at the time they were undertaken. Nothing about Upton’s letter was dishonorable. Just the opposite. But it could be easily used as a weapon to harm her if it were framed the wrong way. A skilled consultant could twist the letter into looking like evidence of Upton’s poor judgment or, even more bizarrely, raise doubts about her patriotism.

  If Brooks were Upton’s consultant, she thought, she would want to get the defense of this Kuwaiti man out early, as part of the biography introducing Upton to a national audience—to suggest that Upton was a woman of unusual courage. That was a basic rule of political consulting. Framing and timing were critical. But that was not Brooks’s problem now.

  Who had hired Gray Circle, she wondered. When Brooks and Rena figured that out, they would have their blackmailer.

  Then another thought occurred to her. The blackmailer, whoever it was, didn’t have one thing on Upton. Maybe because it wasn’t clear there was one thing that was devastating enough on its own to destroy her.

  Instead, whoever was trying to blackmail Upton was trying to come at her with several things. The blackmailers were now inside Upton’s life. And they were just going to keep coming and coming.

  She thought about Peter. She shuddered to think what he and Sam Reese might be up to. When he dashed off like this, he didn’t ask permission or explain his plan. She worried that her partner—the soldier that the army no longer wanted, the loyal American increasingly brokenhearted about his country—was becoming more ruthless. She feared for him a little. But at the moment, she was glad he was doing something. She just hoped it wasn’t illegal.

  Thirty-Seven

  “Your real name, to start,” Rena said.

  “Sara Bernier.”

  “Born?”

  “Paris.”

  “Date of birth?”

  Bernier resisted even on some of the basics. Rena took it as a sign she had at least some training for this kind of encounter. Fight your interrogator over simple things. Stop them—in effect—at name, rank, et cetera.

  Rena also knew, however, that the gulf between training and the real thing was vast. Most people who undergo questioning—during a deposition, by police, or in other circumstances—do so for the first time. For the interrogator, however, it’s their job.

  In the front passenger seat, Reese’s operative typed on a laptop, checking Bernier’s answers.

  “What service did you work for?”

  “Pardon?”

  “In France? Which government service?”

  Bernier didn’t answer at first, and Rena explained her predicament to her in a little more detail. “Sara, this is a legal situation, now. You appear to be engaged in an extortion scheme against a United States senator. That is a crime in the District of Columbia, a violation of D.C. statute, and because Senator Upton is a federal elected official, it is also a federal crime. If you lie to us now, given that we are acting on her behalf, you are compounding that crime.”

  Rena wasn’t sure if his last statement was strictly true as a legal matter, but Bernier was pissing him off, and he figured she wouldn’t know.

  Still he didn’t give her a lot of time to think. “Again, if you prefer, we can drive you to the police now and explain what has occurred and you can be arrested, and your company and your client charged, and you can file your suit against us. What did you say you would allege? Kidnapping?”

  He waited a couple of beats. “But remember, we’d be bringing you to the police to ensure that you didn’t flee. Not really much of a kidnapping, is it?”

  He watched her think. Reese watched her, too.

  “Or, as I said, you could just answer some questions. And when we’re done, you can go. That wouldn’t be much of a kidnapping, either. And just to be clear, Linda in the front seat up there is recording our conversation, so there’s a record. Should we talk? Or go to the police station? Whichever you want.”

  Bernier thought about it longer than Rena expected.

  And slowly said: “What do you want to know?”

  “So, to be clear, you’re agreeing to talk to us?”

  Bernier nodded.

  “Please say it so Linda can record it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks. I was asking what government agency you used to work for.”

  Bernier muttered, “DGSE.”

  The General Directorate for External Security, the French military spy agency. She had to guess they knew this already, that Rena was testing whether she would lie to them.

  “When did you begin to work for Gray Circle?”

  Bernier
didn’t answer.

  “Okay, Sharon, let’s go to the police station,” Rena said to the driver. “But I’m still not sure between Capitol and Metro.”

  Then, to Bernier, Rena said: “Sara, Capitol police will be more protective of the senator. So you’ll have the presumption of being some kind of terrorist threatening her. But Metro D.C. cops will mean more publicity. And we’ll be there longer. It’s kind of a mess at Metro. Processing takes hours. But we’ll get a lot of publicity. The local TV stations and the newspapers monitor the activity there. So this will be a story on the six o’clock news and the wires and the Tribune. We’ve got our version of the story ready.”

  “I think you have made your point, more than once, Mr. Rena.” She pronounced it Reeena.

  “It’s Ray-na,” he corrected her. “As in ray gun. Or X-ray.”

  He wanted to irritate her.

  They had reached that point in the interrogation now.

  “I will answer some questions,” she said.

  She was not as worn down yet, or as frightened, as Rena wanted, so he went at it gradually, one question at a time, so incrementally that the information would seem trivial. Breaking it up like this, Rena knew, also tended to make a subject lose track of time. When did you leave the French security service? When did you go to work for Gray Circle? Who recruited you there?

  They showed Bernier the pictures of her with François Gui and Ari Belmondo, and the picture of her on the Gray Circle website.

  Slowly, she told them a story. Some of which had to be true, Rena figured, because they’d already revealed they knew some of it. How much of what she said was the truth? Rena watched and listened.

  In the army, he had been regarded as among the most skilled interviewers in military intelligence. He was careful, intuitive, and extraordinarily patient. And he was in his element now.

  But Bernier was good at being false with people. That was her job. She had a daredevil spirit, typical of those who operated undercover, and she was still more in control of herself than she pretended. She was also, he sensed, not as smart as she believed herself to be—or as she needed to be today.

  She was certainly beautiful, and Rena could see that she used her beauty to keep people at a distance, making herself appear more formidable. But he also saw that once she no longer had that shield of mystery, she felt vulnerable. That was her secret, and they’d unlocked it.

  Rena listened and asked questions that went back over the vagaries until more detail was filled in. He pretended to be easily confused—so she had to explain things more than once. That began to expose her fear—that she was not smart enough for this. And that was important for what was to come next.

  “How long have you known Wendy Upton?”

  She would know they could get Upton’s side of the story, if they didn’t already have it.

  “About two and a half weeks,” she said.

  That meant some fifteen days before Upton was threatened—long enough for a cautious Upton to be swayed into a relationship with Bernier, but not long enough perhaps to have second thoughts about it. That had all the earmarks of the timing of a honey trap.

  “Where did you meet?”

  “At a reception.”

  “Where? What reception?”

  “For a youth group, Young Statesmen of America.”

  “How did you meet there?”

  “We were introduced.”

  Despite her growing discomfort, her short answers were a sign she still was exercising some control.

  “Who introduced you?”

  Bernier gave the name of a GOP donor.

  “And how do you know him?”

  François Gui had introduced her to him, she said. The donor was a client of the firm, she allowed, to whom she’d been introduced as a health care consultant.

  “So Gui recruited you to get close to Upton?”

  She had made a mistake. And she recognized it. She nodded.

  “Should I take that as a yes?”

  Bernier didn’t answer verbally.

  “What did Gui tell you to do?”

  No answer again.

  Softly, with a menacing gentleness, Rena said: “What did Gui tell you to do?”

  “To talk to Upton about health care legislation.”

  Rena shook his head as if he were disappointed. “Sara,” he said.

  “To win her trust, too. As any lobbyist would.”

  “You mean to seduce her? To sleep with her?”

  Bernier stiffened. “To win her trust. If I could, to be her friend.”

  “Were you told to try to sleep with her, to become her lover?”

  Rena’s voice had become so quiet, the words were barely more than air passing between them, and he leaned closer so Bernier could hear.

  Her eyes now registered some new emotion, something close now to true panic. This had gone further than she’d expected, and for longer. This man Rena had used her short, elliptical answers against her, and she had lost track of time. They had long ago left the city and were well on their way now toward the Chesapeake Bay to the east. They had been driving more than an hour, perhaps closer to two.

  After a deep breath she said, “You don’t understand. You only see how this started. I’ve been honest with you. I was sent to meet her, to become her friend. That’s all.” She stopped and looked into Rena’s eyes. “But . . . then. Look, you know her. You work with her. Wendy is—how to put it—extraordinary. An extraordinary person. You recognize you will meet someone like her, someone so different than everyone else, only a few times in your life. You know you are in the presence of someone special, someone who—makes you want to be better.”

  Rena let silence hang between them and waited to see if Bernier would fill it. He wanted to know if she was inventing this or struggling to articulate something true. The best way was to say nothing, to watch. When people lie, silence becomes a kind of insufferable weight, in its own way unbearable, because they don’t know if the lie has worked. “What I’m trying—I don’t know how to say it, but—I have feelings for her. It’s not an op anymore. Not for me.”

  Rena watched, and Bernier tried to see out the front windows, to place where they were. They had turned off the highway and were on a county road now.

  “You’re her genuine lover? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Bernier didn’t answer. And they drove awhile longer in silence.

  In a mile or so they turned onto a smaller country lane and then down a dirt road until the car slowed down and stopped.

  “Where are we?” Bernier asked.

  Reese answered: “Someplace where we can take a break, get something to eat. There is a house here, a cabin, on a creek. It belongs to a friend of mine.”

  “Am I a prisoner?”

  “Not at all. We’ll take you back anytime.”

  “And go to the police?”

  “And go to the police,” Reese said.

  “But I’ve answered your questions. You said I could go home.”

  Rena, without looking up at her, said: “You’ve answered some. We have a few more. But if you want to stop, we can call the police and both tell our stories.”

  AS THEY WALKED TO THE CABIN, Rena texted Brooks asking what more they had learned he could use.

  Thirty-Eight

  1820 Jefferson Place

  Washington, D.C.

  They had brought their computers into the conference room—Brooks, Wiley, Lupsa, Conner, Robinson, and Liu.

  Being together helped them coordinate and work faster as they combed through the fragments of Upton’s life that could be used to harm her. Had any of the campaigns potentially threatened by her candidacy—or any of the consultants they’d used—ever hired Gray Circle? Could they link any of the PACs that subsidized those campaigns, or their contributors, to Gray Circle or to its subsidiary Vigilas? It was a wide net.

  We live in a surveillance society now. True privacy has been destroyed. Everything about a person be can be collected—and s
old. But it is corporations doing the surveilling, not governments, and if you have the skills, you can turn it around and use all that to learn about the corporations themselves. Surveillance can work both ways.

  Conner and Brooks were poring through court filings and government records, looking to see if Gray Circle’s name ever surfaced in a lawsuit involving any of the companies or people associated with any of the campaigns. Robinson and Liu were hunting campaign filings, including Federal Election Commission files, checking whether any political campaign had ever used Gray Circle. Most likely, they’d be hidden inside a payment from a campaign to a law firm and the law firm to Gray Circle, obscured, buried. But maybe someone had been careless. Lupsa and Jobe were looking at anything they could find about Vigilas and Gray Circle everywhere else. Smolo was looking for any signs that Vigilas and Gray Circle were in Tucson. Wiley was helping everyone.

  Only Rena had not been dragged into the vast digital ghost trail. He was with Bernier.

  Randi Brooks was searching for Vigilas, Gray Circle, and its other subsidiaries in congressional subcommittee transcripts. There were dozens of such hearings a year, and she didn’t know how many years she might need to go back.

  Around 3 P.M. a reference in a document caught her eye. In testimony before the Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight, a Senate Finance subcommittee that Upton chaired, Brooks saw the name Amadeus Corp.

  She had seen that name somewhere else, she thought. She went to the Grid, where all their findings were compiled. She blearily entered the name Amadeus.

  And there it was.

  In a filing buried in State of California disclosure documents, a statement that Amadeus Corporation had once hired Vigilas in a lawsuit challenging a decision by the California State comptroller.

  The filing was obscure—and by itself meaningless. But not when combined with what Brooks had just discovered in the Senate subcommittee transcript.

  Amadeus, the Senate transcript showed, was a subsidiary of Valerian Investments. Four years earlier, the Senate subcommittee Upton chaired had investigated Valerian in connection with the complex tax evasion scheme called basket trading. Basket trading was the technique Brooks had learned about from her Senate friend Judy Worthington and flagged into the Grid. It was a trick used by Wall Street banks and private hedge fund investment firms to avoid paying taxes. Basket trading was complicated and highly technical, which is why it had gone undetected for so long. It was the accounting tax fraud scheme that Upton had tried to shut down.