The Parnell Affair

by James, Seth

  It sunk in for Tobias, at last, the extent to which the world had changed since last night. Not since he'd investigated the drug cartels in Colombia in the '80s had he felt that moral danger lie around every corner. The jackhammer began to remind him of machinegun fire he'd heard in Bogotá.

  She knew she was impressing a point upon him, not testing his nerve or resolve but bringing it to life. The NOC officer in her had done so countless times with foreign agents in twenty years. She also knew no such technique would pass unnoticed, not past Tobias, and so she did not consider it manipulation.

  “I don't know if I've sown any seeds of doubt in their minds with the way I've handled things,” she said. “Maybe they never doubt. Maybe the first suspicion made procuring the documents impossible, even if they haven't destroyed them.”

  “I don't think they have,” he said. “They still have to make Congress grant them war powers and they may need their most definitive proof to sway any holdouts. As for the impossibility of our getting a hold of the docs, I don't know. It could be this whole thing happened solely because of your pass at John Wu. They didn't seem to react to my pass at that State Department woman who didn't think I was attractive. If they haven't warned everyone off me, I might still have a shot. But it's looking pretty grim.”

  “Undoubtedly the whole OSP has been warned that I was soliciting a leak of the Niger docs,” she said. “Getting any of them to leak now seems all but hopeless. That can't be our only way.”

  “If you want to stop the war, they pretty much are,” he said. “They're the only evidence we know about that proves the case for war was faked.”

  Sally did not look happy but, if anything, all the more determined. “Maybe I'll go to the DCI,” she said. “Lodge probably won't want to damage his relationship with the White House—anymore than it already is—but we do have an operative at the OSP. Some punk with his nose up the DDO's ass, but Lodge could order him to make a copy of the docs and bring them out. If it were any other building than the Pentagon—” she said but let her expression finish the sentence.

  “Wait, look,” Tobias said, wanting to buy some time for reflection before she tried some 007 infiltration of the Pentagon. “Let's take this one step at a time. I'll contact that guy at State I talked to before. If there's a general warning about me, he won't even say hello. If there isn't a warning out on me, I could try to get a meeting with the Secretary of State. He's said to oppose the war, had pushed for inspectors at the UN.”

  “Who have found nothing in Iraq,” Sally said, “and the White House and press are playing it as if that's proof that Iraq isn't complying with the UN resolution.” Sally closed her eyes and sighed. “I know, I know,” she said. “I need to take a few days to cool down. Christmas is Friday,” she said sadly. “Despite all the crazy things my life has asked of me, I've never missed Christmas with the girls.”

  Tobias wasn't sure what they could do at this point. He'd hit stonewalls before while pursuing a story but if they were ever this high they'd never been capped with barbed wire and machinegun nests. He wondered whether approaching any member of the OSP was now entirely out of the question: true, they must have been warned about Sally, but someone who had reservations before the warning would not lose them because of threats and cautions. If anything, he thought, misgivings a member of the OSP might have would be strengthened knowing others shared them. Another option was to recruit someone to their cause with so much clout that he or she could simply walk in and take the Niger docs. But who could he approach?

  Before anything, he had to know if his play at the UN had poisoned his name. He thought not; they wouldn't want a rumor spreading that the Niger docs were fake and couldn't warn people about him without saying why. To make sure, though, he called Gerald Hicman at State. If Gerald talked to him, then Tobias still had his name.

  Tobias still had his name. After the usual introductions, after it was clear Gerald felt no more than his usual unease about talking to Tobias, Tobias had to come up with an excuse for the call.

  “So, I'm just going through the list of people I'd talked to about the case for war,” he said. “Always like to keep in touch, see if anything new has come up.” Cold calls were standard procedure in his line of work; never knew when a source or potential source would decide to speak.

  “Glad to hear from you,” Gerald said, though not as if it were anything more than formality. “Haven't heard much lately, except from the news.”

  He sounded puzzled and Tobias didn't want to raise any suspicions. “Things cool down between the appointees and the Secretary?”

  “Oh, you heard about that?” Gerald said with a laugh. “About Thoblon.”

  “Only what you told me last time,” Tobias said.

  “I see; I thought news had traveled real fast,” Gerald said. “Here's the next installment for you.” There was a pause as Gerald leaned over to close his office door; he spoke more quietly and with more pleasure when he returned. “So you know he and the Secretary were at odds because Thoblon wouldn't cooperate with me—or anybody else. Well, the day before the secretary went to the UN, he told Thoblon he wanted his resignation on his desk by the time he got back.”

  “Whoa,” Tobias said.

  “Yeah,” Gerald laughed. “Big whoa. Here's the kicker. Thoblon didn't comply. He was appointed by the President, confirmed by Congress: he can't be fired. So he wouldn't leave. The Secretary couldn't believe it. Hauled him into his office, bawled him out—nothing. Took all his work away, took his secretary, limited his access to the building to just his office and the front door—Thoblon wouldn't budge.”

  “Good Christ,” Tobias said, thinking he could do something with this story if nothing else.

  “I know; amazing,” Gerald said.

  “What could he be thinking?” Tobias asked.

  “Who knows?” Gerald said. “Nobody could believe it. But last night, after weeks and weeks of holing up in his office like a squatter, he packs up his office in the middle of the night and, apparently, slips his one-line resignation under the Secretary's door.”

  “He left in the middle of the night?” Tobias asked.

  “Yup,” Gerald said. “Incredible. Though, maybe sentimental.” Tobias asked him what he meant. “Christmas is the day after tomorrow,” Gerald said. “Thoblon always goes home to Alabama. Some big Christmas Eve party at his Masons lodge or something. Wouldn't shut up about it last year. Probably didn’t want to come back to find the locks on his office door changed.”

  Tobias agreed, thanked Gerald, and hung up. It was all the confirmation he needed. Clearly Gerald would never have spilled so juicy an office rumor if Tobias's name was under general suspicion. That night, as Tobias rolled up to his building, Sally appeared out of nowhere. The sudden return of last night's possibilities must have flushed his face, Sally smiled but shook her head and indicated she wanted to walk somewhere. Tobias dropped off his bike and they left.

  After walking several blocks, in a circle, and then taking three cabs, they ended up in a little greasy-spoon diner near the hospital. Though it was Tobias's old neighborhood, he'd never been there. As small as it was, a resident could have lived eighty years in the neighborhood and missed that diner every time. The winter darkness—complete even at their early hour of six o'clock—concealed the place all the more.

  “So I have bad good news,” Sally said after their coffee came. Tobias must have looked worried. “Not as bad as last night,” she added. “When I got to work this morning, I found all the intelligence material we'd sent to the OSP had been returned by courier last night.”

  “That's bad good news?” Tobias asked, shaking his head.

  “On the sheet we use to keep track of who signs for custody of a given piece of intel, I noticed everything CIA sent to the OSP—not just from my department—had been returned. My guess is that the Niger docs are no longer at the Pentagon. That's good news: breaking into the Pentagon could have been tough. The bad part is that—if we're right and they
came from State—”

  “Oh shit!” Tobias said, coughing into his coffee cup.

  “What?” Sally asked.

  “I know where they are,” he said breathlessly. “I even know what state they're in: Alabama.”

  “What? How?” she asked.

  “I called that guy Gerald Hicman over at State today; the INR guy Senator Snajder sent me to a few months ago,” he said. “I figured if he's willing to talk to me then no warnings have gone out about me. Anyway, he gave me a little office gossip. Seems the Secretary had it up to here with Jon Thoblon, demanded his resignation, but Thoblon wouldn't budge—until the middle of last night when he packed up his office and left.”

  “Oh my god,” Sally said, her eyes lighting up. “He would have received back the Niger docs late yesterday evening.”

  “He must have been squatting at the State Department, waiting for them to return,” he said.

  “Or maybe my pitching woo at Wu did some good after all,” she said: “they were worried enough that they immediately moved the Niger docs. Although, maybe Thoblon had been camped out at State waiting for them anyway, unless he had no idea of ever leaving, no matter the Secretary, and only broke his sit-in because they felt the Niger docs were in danger. Funny. And now that he has them, he's taking them out of state—no pun intended—to keep them safe until Congress votes on war powers.”

  “Shit,” Tobias said, drawing out the word. He leaned back smiling. “All the way to Alabama. He has a house there. Goes down every year at this time for some kind of Christmas Eve Masons' meeting.”

  Sally shook her head as she swallowed her coffee. “No,” she said. “I know what that is. Not the Masons.”

  “Not the—” Tobias began.

  “No, not the Klan,” she laughed. “Much older. Never mind.” She smiled with so much sultry pleasure in her eyes, Tobias wondered if she were about to change the subject: she didn't. “So he took the Niger docs home,” she said, “and he'll be out of the house all night tomorrow?”

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” he said, sitting forward and lowering his voice.

  “What did you think I'd do with this information?” she asked, still smiling.

  “What we'll do,” he corrected. She rolled her eyes. “Hey, I survived enough gun battles—and being kidnapped by the FARC once—in South America not to be thought of as some wilting flower.”

  “I don't think that,” she said.

  “Anyway, I could just throw a big chunk of money at his cleaning staff—” he began.

  “That's not a sure thing, either,” she interrupted. “And we don't want them stolen. Better to do it my way: in, out, and use a digital camera. That way the docs become evidence of an ongoing crime that the Administration is concealing. If they remain in his possession”

  “If you think you can do it,” he said. “But I'm coming, too.”

  There was no mistaking her small smile now. “Good,” she said. “Actually, I need you. In more than one way.” She reached for his hand across the table with her left hand, while her right withdrew her cell phone. “We need a cover for leaving town and this phone call to Joe is long, long overdue.” Tobias indicated his willingness to give her some privacy, imagining what she was about to do for the benefit of the NSA eavesdroppers as well as her husband and herself: she tightened her grip on Tobias's hand.

  “Hi, Joe,” she said a moment later. “I have to tell you something, partly to explain why certain people thought I was snooping around and partly because I just have to tell you.”

  Joe recognized the professional tone to her voice, despite being roused from sleep by her call, but he noticed something behind it as well. “I don't ask for any explanations,” he said. “Tell me what you will.”

  “When you recognized that strong feelings were growing between you and Ms Fromsett,” Sally said, taking a breath before driving on with words she'd practiced many times, but never felt real before now, “you told me, even asked my permission, before anything—god, I don't know what to call it—extramarital happened between you. It's taken me a lot longer to get to that place but I have. You remember that journalist who came to the house, Tobias Hallström?”

  “Yes,” Joe said, his voice concealed nothing of what he felt: hope that the long, sad and lonely episode in his wife's marriage might finally end but also his own sadness at truly and with finality losing his wife.

  “Well, I'm falling in love with him, Joe,” she said. They shared a silence, as at the passing of a friend, each breathing deeply and audibly over the phone, keeping tears at bay with a bulwark of other happiness. “I wanted to tell you before anything too extramarital happened,” she said with a smile in her voice and only a little crack. Then she sighed and a different voice said, “I think my sneaking around with him is what misled some officious person in the Administration into thinking I was snooping: Tobias knows how preoccupied I've been with the Niger documents. He's done a little asking around about them. I told him to stop, that we should just step aside and let others take the lead. Hopefully things will calm down now. Anyway, I wanted to tell you.”

  “I'm glad that you did,” Joe said all but inaudibly. “I'm glad. I really am, though I can't help feeling a little sadness as well. There's a little sadness in your voice, too. That's only natural. I wish you all the happiness in the world; you certainly deserve it after all this time sacrificing for others.”

  “You've been a wonderful husband, as I've always felt,” she said softly, “even as our marriage ended. I'm sorry I can't be in Paris for Christmas: tell the girls I'll call them Christmas morning. Tobias and I are going to drive down to Florida tonight; well, start tonight. We wanted to spend the holiday somewhere warm.”

  “I see,” Joe said; only Sally would notice the question and perhaps reproach in his voice: he knew she had any eavesdroppers in mind and he did not for a moment believe she was not still running her operation, despite the danger it posed. He knew, however, that he could do nothing but assist her in this small way, by playing along. “I'll tell them to expect your call. Goodbye, Sally,” he said lingeringly.

  With funeral quiet, she said, “Goodbye, Joe.”

  She closed her phone and met Tobias's eyes. Upon her face was something he'd never seen in her: fear. Not fear of some impending action, but the delayed unbridling of an emotion long suppressed. He guessed at how many times—particularly those last few months—she must have rehearsed that conversation, loaded as it was with years of emotional toil. The fear melted away, however, the longer they sat silently together; her hand warmed and the color returned to her cheeks. It's quite a thing to be chosen by a woman like you, he thought: but there's no time for reflection now.

  “So, we're going to take a little trip,” he said.

  “Yes,” she breathed, only half listening to his words, though seemingly preoccupied with the lips that said them.

  “We'll need to pack and I'd like to stop by the office,” he said.

  “Hmm?” she murmured and then returned to the present. “Yes, of course. We should pack and get moving. I'll need a few things from home. Why don't we take separate cabs to go pack and then I'll meet you—where?”

  “At the paper,” he said. “There's someone there—who always works late because he can't be bothered to show up before eleven—who can probably pluck Thoblon's address out of his memory. Plus—and I blame you for this—I don't want to get a map off the internet from my apartment in case my connection is tapped. See what you've done to me?”

  “I'm so proud,” she said.

  They spent several warm minutes in the cold outside the diner before walking to the hospital to find taxis.

  Armed with directions, Thoblon's address, as much cash as they could take from the ATMs, and a few tools of Sally's—to say nothing of the will to perform the necessary—they went to National Airport and rented a car. Sally's car may have had a tracer on it somewhere and so, while they knew Tobias's rental of a car would be known via his credit card, their exact mov
ements would be more obscure in a rented car. He had no worries about claiming the rental on his expense sheet this time.

  They drove through the night, driving in shifts while one slept or tried to sleep or feigned sleep. During Sally's driving shifts, she went through the routine of shaking surveillance, though she spotted none. It was time for professionalism, for exacting and single-minded prosecution of their mission. Tobias had never before taken part in the theft of anything for a story, though he naturally knew that things had been stolen by others and sold to his paper. The effect was more bracing than troubling, though he sensed he was crossing a line journalists should never cross: if he were to label himself afterward, what label could he use now? And yet the specter of a corrupt government deceitfully manipulating a country into war with forged documents so forcefully intruded upon his thoughts that he could not declare even burglary a crime if performed in pursuit of the truth.

  Twenty-four hours later, after a brief—and uncomfortably distracting—pause at a roadside motel (sleeping in shifts, while one watched the parking lot), they reached Alabama. Dropping their rented car in a strip mall’s parking lot, they took to the woods behind it. Sally had used the online maps to determine a covered and concealed route to Jon Thoblon's house that would take them through some wooded and hilly terrain. She brought a knapsack with them and once deep within the woods, they paused to don the dark clothing it contained. Tobias added a black woolen jacket he rarely wore to the dark trousers he had on: Sally changed into a dark blue running suit. She had also brought a pair of nylon stockings, to be used over their heads. It was thought that this precaution—along with a nearly OCD use of a large lint brush over their outer garments—would keep them from leaving any hairs behind, which could be used for DNA identification. They left the masks rolled above their brows as they hurried through the woods.

  Night had fallen and with it the peculiar stillness, like expectancy, always found in a dark wood. The silence made an unbearable din out of the crunching leaves beneath their feet and a gale of each breath. Tobias had joked about their appearance and mission as they'd changed, likening both to the French Resistance: in the speechless infiltration to Thoblon's house, the similarities lost all humor. He had no doubt that if caught in the act, the Administration would not hesitate to try them for treason, convict from the bench, and execute them without mercy. The question of why he was there echoed through his mind again and again as they ran on, like the tolling of a bell. And then the thought occurred to him, could he turn back? Could I ask her to? Pushing aside for a moment what she wanted and what he expected of her, he wondered if he wanted to turn back or, if not, why he pressed on. Another mile ended, another mile began and Tobias answered himself as his subconscious usually did, with music. Perhaps it was the December chill in the air, though hardly cold in Alabama. Led Zeppelin's No Quarter overwhelmed the crunching leaves and labored breath. “They carry news that must get through / they choose the path where no one goes / they hold no quarter / they ask no quarter.”