Man in the Middle

by Brian Haig

  My own service, the Army, is the oldest, the largest, the smartest, with obviously the most primo JAG Corps. The Marine Corps are also fairly good guys, primarily because they act and think like the Army, except they’re a lot more hormonal, with a truly monumental gift for blowing smoke up your butt.

  The Air Force, newest of the services, is like an orphan teenager with a fat trust fund—prematurely arrogant and totally obsessed with all the cool shit it can buy. Nobody likes them, but we all envy them.

  Last, our seafaring comrades, an overdressed yachting club whose main contribution to national security seems to be propping up bars and bordellos in strange and exotic ports.

  The other services might have a different take on all this—of course, it’s a well-known fact that their outlooks are distorted by their small-minded prejudices.

  But in fact, how each service does its job does tend to color its culture, traditions, worldview, and strategic perspective.

  The Navy, for instance, sees the globe as three-quarters water, with several largely irrelevant landmasses called continents populated by quarrelsome people who somehow become scared shitless the instant an aircraft carrier rolls up off their shore.

  For the Air Force the world is this really neat target range, conveniently dotted with cities and towns to drop stuff on—so long as it doesn’t interfere with happy hour.

  But for the Army, combat is neither a balmy voyage nor a fleeting glimpse from a cockpit window—it’s a destination, a commitment, a long, messy affair from which there are only two roads home: victory or retreat, with your shield or on it.

  The Marine Corps, as I said because it does essentially the same thing as the Army, thinks like the Army. But because its purse is controlled by the squids, it quacks like a duck. Get a Marine away from his naval overseers, however, put a few free drinks into him or her, and you’ll get an earful about the Navy. Message to my aquatic friends: They don’t really like you.

  The point is, the Pentagon is a large melting pot of pent-up passions, jealousies, and conflicting strategic visions, so to help things along, a joint staff, manned by officers drawn from the four services, are supposed to shelve their loyalties, and their career aspirations, to direct the services to work together cooperatively, rationally, and efficiently. This is like hiring the marriage counselor who’s fucking your wife to fix your marriage.

  As if there aren’t enough staffs, there is one more, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, or OSD, comprised largely of civilian bureaucrats—a mixture of career civil servants and political appointees—with a smattering of uniformed people to fetch the coffee and man the copiers. The purpose of this curious institution is to perform the constitutional function of civilian oversight. Bottom line here: Americans don’t want to wake up one morning in a banana republic run by guys in funny suits.

  All this aside, however, where it counts, on the battlefield, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines could care less who’s humping who in the Pentagon corridors—they willingly give their lives for one another, and they often do.

  Anyway, we had walked up a long stairwell and now we were in a long hallway on the fifth floor, the Pentagon’s equivalent of an attic. I mean, you can bet the Secretary of Defense’s nephew doesn’t work on this floor.

  Bian stopped in front a steel-encased door and began punching numbers into an electronic keyboard. A placard beside the door read “Office of Special Investigations”; obviously, this was a skiff, like a large walk-in safe.

  There was a click and she shoved open the door. We entered a well-lit, windowless office space, a warren of office cubes where about twenty people were performing various activities, from punching computer keys and chatting on phones to the happier few who were gathering their coats and calling it a day.

  A number of people looked up and waved or said hello to Bian; she seemed popular with her workmates, always a good sign. We walked directly to the rear of the skiff, where there was an office door; she knocked, and we entered.

  Mr. Waterbury was seated behind his desk, hunched over and scribbling on a form. We stood and waited, and he ignored us, pulling more forms out of an in-box and not looking up.

  I have a low threshold for self-important pricks, and after thirty seconds of this nonsense, I said to Bian, “I have better things to do. We’re outta here.”

  His head snapped up and he affected a surprised look. “What do—? Oh . . . Drummond, Tran . . . you’re here.”

  “Were you expecting somebody else?”

  “I’m a busy man. This is an important office.”

  “You asked us to drop by. We’re here. What do you want?”

  He was used to doing the browbeating, so my directness threw him off and he looked confused for a moment.

  Anyway, Waterbury’s office was physically small, and the room and the top of his desk—like his mind, and like his personality— were neat and barren, devoid of any of the normal signs of human habitation. The lone ornamentation was a photograph of the Secretary of Defense hanging prominently in the middle of the wall. Upon closer examination, I noted that it was neatly autographed with a short inscription that, for all I knew, read, “To the biggest tightass in the building—don’t let up.” This, of course, is the kind of bureaucratic pornography people normally display to impress guests and underlings. In Waterbury’s case, I suspect he did it in the event the Secretary dropped by for a cup of coffee, unlikely as that might be. People who owe their jobs to patronage are always a little insecure; they turn ass-kissing into a high art.

  In addition to the desk, I observed three stand-up wall safes with Top Secret magnetic strips on the drawers, and to his rear, a large mahogany bookshelf filled with about a hundred precisely aligned regulations and manuals. George Orwell dreamed of rooms, and of men, like this.

  His eyes studied Bian, then me. He said, motioning at the absence of chairs, “I won’t offer you seats. I don’t believe in them.”

  “Then how do you get your ass to levitate like that?”

  “I meant I don’t encourage subordinates to relax in my office.”

  I knew what he meant. “I can’t imagine anybody relaxing in your presence, Mr. Waterbury.” I smiled.

  He obviously understood the underlying message and did not appreciate it, because he did not smile back. Lest you think I was screwing with Waterbury just for the fun of it, he was speaking to me in this really condescending tone. To borrow a metaphor, he was the lion back in his own hunting ground, informing the interloper who was the king of this jungle. To stretch that metaphor a bit further, I’m like a hyena—I scavenge where I like, am quicker on my feet, and my sound is very annoying. Also, it was fun.

  He came to the point and asked us, “Did you learn anything from Mrs. Daniels?”

  Bian started to reply, and I cut her off. “Like what?”

  “Answer the question, Drummond.”

  “Oh . . . well . . . she smokes Camels. About three packs a day. She has a thing for cheap gin. Her car and face need paint jobs, her house—”

  “I don’t care about all that. Anything relevant to Daniels’s death?”

  I stared down at him. “It will be in my report. When I get around to writing one, you can read all about it.”

  His eyes narrowed. He said to Bian, “Major, you do work for me, right?”

  “Yes sir, and—”

  “Then answer the question.”

  After a moment, Bian said, “We learned nothing relevant to Daniels’s death. She didn’t know why her husband died, or how.”

  He studied her face, then mine. He informed us, “I think it was suicide.”

  “It wasn’t,” I replied.

  “That’s your view.” He added, “I called the Arlington police and had a long conversation with Detective Sergeant Enders. The ballistics results came in. The gun belonged to Daniels.”

  “We assumed that—”

  “And a preliminary match was made between the splatter on the pistol and Daniels’s blood type.�
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  “We also assumed that,” I informed him. “If you’d be so good, keep your nose out of this investigation.”

  “This investigation is half mine. I’ll involve myself as I see fit.”

  I looked at him and said, “Major Tran informed me that you’re a former military policeman.”

  “That’s right. Twenty-five years’ service. Damned good one, if I say so. My commands always led in closure rates.”

  “Twenty-five years. I’ll assume then that you know the basic rule of criminal procedure—let the investigators do their job.”

  As you might expect, I work with the MPs and CID types a lot. As cops go, they tend to be excellent; for some reason the military concepts of discipline and obedience and the societal concepts of law and order are a marriage made in hell. Also, unlike cops in civilian communities, the military cop does not exist in a world apart, feels no disorienting distance from his community, nor is there a blue wall of silence that pops up whenever the poop hits the fan. Rank is rank in the Army, and the military policeman is well advised to remember it. You can give a speeding ticket to the Secretary of the Army, and I know an MP private who did. But there had better be an up-to-date calibration record at the MP station for the speed gun, which explains why the private was a sergeant when he first became my client before his court-martial.

  Occasionally, however, one finds an individual who transcends these boundaries and traditions. I suspected that Waterbury was such a man, and I would bet he wasn’t fondly remembered by the military communities he oversaw.

  In fact, Waterbury told me, “I weighed into investigations whenever I felt it was necessary. My MPs appreciated it, too.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  We stared at each other a moment.

  Satisfied that he made his petty point, he informed me, “As I said, Enders and his detectives are leaning toward a ruling of suicide.”

  “Good. That’s exactly what we want them to conclude at this stage.”

  He looked thoughtful for a moment, then leaned toward me and said, “The position of the Defense Department is that we will subscribe to whatever determination the police—the proper civil authorities—whatever they decide.”

  “Why do I think you have something to add?”

  “You’re right, Drummond. You and Tran will confine your investigation to the possibility of a security leak. How Daniels died is neither the purpose of this investigation nor is it your business, nor will you interfere with or duplicate the work the civilian authorities are doing.” He finally came to the real point of this dialogue and said, “When you speak with Mr. Tigerman, you’ll contain your questions to that realm of inquiry.”

  “The question of Daniels’s death and a security leak are possibly related. You know that.”

  “That’s speculation. In the mind of the investigating detective, we’re dealing with a suicide, not homocide. Daniels was certainly a ripe candidate . . . a broken marriage, a foundering career . . . Who knows what else was going wrong in his life or his head?”

  It appeared that Mr. Waterbury had done a little research and investigation since we last spoke. Or maybe he knew all about Clifford Daniels all along, but he and the boys upstairs—actually, downstairs—had put their heads together and figured out how to handle this thing—and Sean Drummond.

  I said, “Why don’t I tell you what else? He had an order to testify before a congressional investigating committee.”

  “Irrelevant. I’ll reiterate—this investigation is not about his death.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “It also strikes me, Drummond, that I had better remind you that Albert Tigerman is not a suspect. Nor will he be treated like one. He is an important man, a busy man. He has agreed to meet with you out of courtesy.” He added, “You will have five minutes.”

  Bian protested, “Sir, five minutes is—”

  “Is more than enough. Choose your questions wisely. In fact,

  I’m coming with you. Step over the line, and I’ll gladly terminate the interview.”

  I said, “What are you afraid of, Waterbury?”

  “Deal with it, Drummond.” He stood. “Follow me.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Albert Tigerman’s office was located on the second floor of the E-ring—the outermost ring—which, within this building, is the equivalent of a beachside condo on the C™te d’Azur.

  Grand titles are the coin of the realm in Washington, and particularly among political appointees—many of whom paid a fortune for these jobs—the title at least has to sound impressive. It can get fairly confusing, and even annoying, as there is this bewildering array of deputy this and assistant that, with the ever-popular stringing together of two or more of these prefixes, and a flowering of suffixes on the caboose to tell you what the guy actually does. So you get things like the Deputy Assistant Under Secretary of Defense for Facilities Management and Building Restoration. Translation: janitor.

  I would limit everybody to one prefix, one suffix, and fire the rest. If it takes more than four syllables to describe your job, there is no job. Period.

  But the danger is, when you meet one of these clowns with a multisyllabic title, you don’t know whether you’re dealing with a superfluous taxmuncher or somebody who can really mess up your paycheck. Generally, the more prefixes, the less they can hurt you. Not always, though.

  Anyway, the office of Albert Tigerman, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, was located on the most prestigious wing, and on the most prestigious floor, a mere six doors from his lordship, the Secretary of Defense. If proximity is influence, this guy had his tongue deep in the boss’s ear.

  Waterbury gently eased open that door and we entered an anteroom where a pert, efficient-looking young assistant was hidden behind a large wooden desk covered by a forest of computers and phones.

  She looked up, and Waterbury said to her, “Please inform Al that we’re here for his six-thirty. He’s expecting us.”

  “I know.” She lifted the phone, punched a few numbers, and said, “The OSI people are here.” She listened and hung up. “He’ll be a few minutes. Please have a seat.”

  I mentioned to Waterbury, “Wow . . . chairs. This guy’s a managerial pussy.”

  He tried to ignore me.

  Bian, I noted, had retreated into a sort of meek silence. From my dealings with her this seemed out of character, though I thought I knew what was behind it. She was using me as a foil for the idiot she worked for, which was politically shrewd, and possibly even entertaining for her, and probably dangerous for me.

  Well, whatever her reason, she wasn’t in a talkative mood, and I wasn’t being paid enough to chitchat with Waterbury. What would we talk about, anyway—how many people you can fit inside a boxcar?

  So the three of us were seated, somewhat awkwardly, on a stiff leather couch with a coffee table to our front. Neatly organized on that table was a thick stack of magazines I quickly browsed through for something to kill the time. Unfortunately, they all had such interesting titles as Foreign Affairs, the New Republic, Orbis, the Economist, and such. I wondered, did the man inside the office actually read this stuff? Probably yes—and probably Albert spent his weekends watching C-SPAN and gardening, and his children rode horses and played squash, and his wife was on a first-name basis with all the helpful salesladies at Bloomingdale’s. My lower-middle-class snobbery aside, I didn’t think Mr. Tigerman and Mr. Drummond drank the same brand of beer.

  So, with nothing better to do, I spent my time reviewing what I knew about this man we were about to meet. Before we departed my building to drop in on Theresa Daniels, Bian had made a trip to the powder room, and I had made a trip on the Internet to see what I could discover about our presumptive host. I located his official CV on the Defense Department Web site and, a few entries later, a more enlightening article from Washington Insider that fleshed out the juicier personal parts.

  Chronologically, he was born in the year 1946, i
n the city of Boston, on the better side of town, to a wealthy family. What followed was a prototypical northeastern rich boy’s passage to adulthood: St. Paul’s prep, Yale, Yale Law, then a fast-track partnership at a top New York firm. Not exactly a Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches tale; his was the more archetypal American riches-to-riches struggle. I love this country.

  Anyway, over the proceeding thirty years, Albert had bounded between Washington jobs when Republicans were in power, and back to the New York money mill when not. Along the way, he acquired a venerated reputation as a defense intellectual.

  Regarding this term—“defense intellectual”—for the life of me, I wouldn’t recognize one if he pontificated on my lap or blew a brilliant opinion in my ear. For one thing, war is hardly an intellectual exercise; it’s visceral, not cerebral, a contest of wills settled by pounding the crap out of each other until one guy screams uncle.

  But, from the best I can tell, you get to be a defense intellectual by attending a lot of windbag conferences and writing scholarly articles that employ big theoretical and largely abstract expressions to describe small ideas. The battlefield lab work is left to somebody else.

  But, well . . . shame on me for being so small-minded toward my host. I’m sure Albert’s heart was in the right place. I might feel better about him, however, if I thought he could distinguish an M1A1 tank from an M1A2 as their treads crushed his shiny Beemer in the Pentagon parking lot.

  Also, according to a number of articles I had read, Albert Tiger-man and his boss, Thomas Hirschfield, were now in a bit of a jam because they were publicly credited with being the intellectual and bureaucratic forefathers of a war that had run a little longer than they predicted, gotten a lot messier than they had foretold, with casualty lists that were large—with no end in sight.

  As Bian mentioned, this was Albert’s second time in the Pentagon, in both incarnations working with and under his longtime mentor, Thomas Hirschfield.

  Tigerman’s door opened, and I looked up. A pair of Air Force generals walked out, thick briefing binders under their arms, and they ignored us, as military folk tend to do toward civilians, which I wasn’t, though I was dressed like one. The assistant waited two beats, then said, “You may now enter.”