The Parnell Affair

by James, Seth

  “And so I say to you tonight, we must not wait for the enemy to attack us again. We must not lie prostrate before the threat of nuclear holocaust. A clear and present danger exists to the security of our country and it is the right of every sovereign nation to defend itself from mortal threats,” the President cried over the deafening response. Some members of Congress were on their feet as the call for Preemptive War was carried round the chamber on the shoulders of Applause.

  Not far from the those chambers, someone else was on her feet.

  “What the fuck was that!” Sally shouted, finally propelled out of her shock and out of her seat.

  “The Brit government?” Tobias said, looking at his notepad. “That merely describes how the forged Niger documents entered the US—brought by the UK foreign Secretary, which we already knew—it doesn't mitigate the fact that they're forged.”

  “This is total madness,” she said, pacing in front of the television, hand to her forehead. “How can he cite the Niger documents as a reason to go to war after we've proven they were forged?”

  Tobias looked over his head and then around the room, indicating the possibility of listening devices. It wouldn't be wise to admit her involvement in “his” story. Without a word, Sally sprang for the door, snatched her coat from the stand, and stormed out, with Tobias a step behind, throwing the remote on the couch and locking the door.

  Pounding down the stairs, Sally got a hold of herself. She waited in the foyer for Tobias to catch up before they left and walked toward the train station.

  “Are they insane, is that it?” she asked in a more reserved if no less aggravated voice. “If he'd gone out there and downplayed the forged Niger documents—or dismissed them entirely!—that would be one thing. That was what I considered the worst case scenario. But to stand before the nation and declare a known lie is true and to use that lie as the foundation for a war?”

  “What about those aluminum tubes?” Tobias asked, pen and notepad in hand.

  “Nonsense,” Sally said wearily. “I've seen the reports; it's old news. Wrong kind of aluminum; they can't be used in centrifuges. They'd burst under the pressure.”

  “Right,” Tobias said while scribbling. “And I've heard you say before that this idea of Saddam being tied to Al Qaeda is bogus.”

  “Howland said, 'terrorists,' not Al Qaeda specifically but we know what he means,” she said, eyes straight ahead unseeing. “And yes, it's nonsense. Saddam is exactly the sort of Muslim that Al Qaeda hates: he's westernized. He was educated in the west, was a one-time ally of the US, his orgies and use of alcohol are famous suspicions at this point, and he's a Ba'athist to top it off. The Ba'athists are socialist, secular, European-influenced, and have Christian participants. In Iraq, the Sunnis picked up the mantel and it took on a fascist quality, placing a plutocracy above the rest of the nation—and religion. Not exactly Al Qaeda's cup of tea,” she said, coming out of her inner thoughts and looking at Tobias. “They've threatened to kill him. It's as idiotic as suggesting the KKK has joined forces with the Black Panthers to bring down the US government.”

  Sally then stopped them in the darkest space between two street lights and checked their surroundings quickly. “I see it now, this silly syllogism they've created with that speech,” she said. “They say Saddam has ties to the terrorists and Saddam has nuclear weapons therefore the terrorists could have nuclear weapons. And thus they justify their war as an attempt to remove the premise that Saddam has nukes—to keep them away from Al Qaeda and out of our cities.”

  “And it only takes two bald-faced lies,” Tobias said, folding his notepad and slipping it into his pocket.

  “Two lies and an unending mantra of fear,” Sally said. “On every TV, in every newspaper, in every magazine, for a year and a half now: fear, fear, fear. Be afraid, be so afraid that even two obvious lies are justification for unprovoked war.”

  “Something must have happened,” Tobias said, turning toward the west, toward Capitol Hill, light falling on part of his face. “Why would Senator Snajder tell me to wait for the State of the Union? I haven't written anything on the forgeries for two weeks! Waiting, but why? He couldn't have anticipated this. Something must have happened.”

  “Going to see him?” Sally asked.

  “First thing tomorrow,” Tobias said, taking her hand and walking again.

  If the significance of the State of the Union Address was lost on Senator Snajder's secretary and confidential aide, it was not lost on his Chief of Staff—or himself. Tobias normally never let his temper get the best of him; he saw tantrums and outbursts as self-defeating. This morning, however, he intended to pry out of Senator Snajder exactly what had changed prior to the State of the Union, and acting as if the Senator had deliberately misled him—after all the years of handling him with kid gloves—might give him the leverage he needed. It also might end any future cooperation from the Senator's office, but Tobias thought the time had come to cash in on the good rapport he'd built.

  The reception secretary had looked up expectantly and smiling as Tobias strode into her office; the harmlessness of his habitual flirting made it all the more pleasurable somehow. This morning, he wasn't flirtatious. With a face like thunder, and without a word, he slammed the hall door and proceeded into the anteroom of the Senator's office, where a startled confidential aide paused in his telephone call. The secretary's cries of “excuse me” and the aide's “what the hell are you doing” brought the Chief of Staff out of his office, heroically shielding the Senator's door with his body.

  “Out of my way, Terry!” Tobias shouted at him. “Your boss has an earful coming.”

  “You can't just barge in here, Tobias,” the aide said, holding the phone receiver against his palm in one hand and leaning over his desk to grab at Tobias's sleeve with the other. “You know better than that: what are you thinking?”

  “Get your fucking hands off of me!” Tobias said.

  “Oh my,” the secretary gasped. “Whatever is the matter?”

  “Listen, Tobias, I know you're upset and I know why,” Terry, the Senator's Chief of Staff, said, covering the doorknob to his boss's office with both hands. His face had gone white.

  “You get away from there, Terry,” Tobias said.

  “Should I call security?” the secretary asked.

  “That's not called for,” a voice said from behind the door. “Terry, let go of the door now.”

  The door shook, Terry spun in a circle and then stepped back, opening it. Senator Snajder looked as if he'd been up all night with a cold.

  “I want to talk to you,” Tobias growled.

  “I know you do,” Bill Snajder said. “Come on in.”

  “This lot doesn't need to be listening at the door, either!” Tobias shouted, jerking a thumb at the aide.

  Senator Snajder's eyes blazed for a moment at being given an order so roughly—and in his own office!—but when the same expression raged over Tobias's face, he remembered its cause and relented.

  “Terry, why don't you take everyone down for a cup of coffee,” Bill Snajder said. “Give me an hour.”

  “You've got the Chamber of Commerce in forty minutes, Bill,” Terry ventured to say. “Should I—”

  “Thirty minutes, then,” Bill said. “Come on, Tobias. I know you're sore and you've got every right to be.”

  Bill stepped back into his office and held the door. Tobias strode through, took the edge of the door and slammed it out of Bill's hand.

  “Two goddamn weeks I've been sitting around not writing a fucking thing on this story because you said wait!” Tobias shouted. “I'd expect that kind of trick from some people, particularly these days, but from you—”

  “You don’t' honestly think I mislead you on purpose?” Bill shouted right back. “Jesus, Tobias, I know you're angry but give me some credit.”

  “Credit?” Tobias hollered. “I gave you two weeks on credit! Two weeks of the story going cold, two weeks of no follow up, all because you said it would
be straightened out in the State of the Union!”

  “Look, things changed,” Bill said, gesticulating with the resigned motions of an oncologist. “When I told you that, it was true—it was!”

  “What changed?” Tobias asked. He wasn't sure how long he could keep up the performance, or how long before it turned against him. “You had two weeks, you couldn't pick up a phone?”

  “Brother, I didn't know until the morning of,” Bill said with a sigh. “Come off it: you're not this mad. You're never this mad. You're sore as hell—and maybe it's a little my fault—but you came here for more than bawling me out,” he said before crossing to his chair and falling into it. “And my not landing one of these,” he said, brandishing a meaty fist, “on your chin and tossing you to the dogs downstairs should tell you I still hold you in high regard.”

  “What changed?” Tobias said, more temperate in tone but no more civil than before.

  “If you don't sit down, you're going to make me sore,” Bill said.

  Tobias stepped up to the desk between them and set both palms at either end of it, leaning over. “Two weeks of nothing,” Tobias said, “and then the President of the United States goes on TV and with sixteen little words about uranium in Africa calls my story, me, and The Observer a pack of goddamn liars. I have every right to be sore.”

  Bill sat back and nodded. “I'd take it personal, too,” he said.

  “What changed the morning of?” Tobias said, still standing.

  Bill heaved a sigh and settled his hands on his paunch. “They called us down to the Hart building,” Bill said. “The Deputy Director Intelligence had a lot to tell us but the parts you can't get away from, no matter what you think about uranium from Africa, are two confessions. Two highly-placed al Qaeda figures, recently captured—”

  “Khalid Sheikh Kahtani,” Tobias said and sat down. “Captured around Christmas.”

  “That's one,” Bill said. “The other was taken earlier last year.”

  “Abu Zubahd,” Tobias said.

  “Check,” Bill said. “They both confessed, Tobias. The both said they'd had contact with Saddam Hussein through his intelligence service and that Weapons of Mass Destruction had been discussed.”

  “Bullshit,” Tobias said, mind racing. “There's no way in hell.”

  “I've seen them,” Bill said, leaning his elbows on his desk. “I've read the interrogation reports; it's true, they were talking to Saddam.”

  “And the committee bought this?” Tobias asked. “Bill, Al Qaeda hates Saddam, hates the way he lives, hates that he used to be backed by the US, and hates most of all his not following their brand of Islam.”

  “Enemy of my enemy, pal,” Bill said.

  “No, no,” Tobias said. “Listen, Bill: that'd be like the Klu Klux Klan allying with the Black Panthers because they hate the US government.”

  “That's just talk,” Bill said, leaning back and waving away what Tobias had said. “Who says they wouldn't? We've got it on paper, these guys confessed. Whether you think it's possible or not, it happened.”

  “After forging the Niger documents,” Tobias said, throwing his hands up, “you think the Administration would hesitate a moment to forge confessions?”

  “Can I walk into the committee hearings and say the same thing?” Bill asked. “Jesus, Tobias, there's a whole bunch of people between the interrogators and the Deputy Director of Intelligence: if these confessions didn't happen, somebody would say something.”

  “Sure they would,” Tobias said. “Just like they talked about the forged Niger documents.”

  “Look, believe it or don't believe it,” Bill said, “the President of the United States went on national television and told the country Saddam has nukes or is trying to make them and he's talking to terrorists. How can I vote against that?”

  “You know this whole thing is bullshit and you're still going to vote for it?” Tobias asked resignedly.

  “That phone call Zack was making when you steamed in,” Bill said, “he's trying to find out if I can vote against war powers and have a chance in hell come next November. But with these confessions? I'm a little worried myself.”

  “That goes for the rest of the Senate, too?” Tobias asked.

  “Those in districts who can vote against war powers, when it comes up, and still expect to win their districts, will vote against,” Bill said.

  “And what good is that if it still passes?” Tobias asked.

  “Best we can hope for,” Bill said. “The country and the TV press are in one of those flag-waving, freedom-fry moods. We'll word the bill so the onus for invading is all on the President.”

  “Saddam doesn't have nukes,” Tobias said.

  “Does he need them?” Bill asked. “What if he gave them, I don't know, nerve gas. We know he has VX nerve gas: we sold it to him in the '80s when he was fighting Iran.”

  “God Christ,” Tobias mumbled and stood up and faced the door.

  “Hey, give me a reason to doubt the confessions,” Bill said to Tobias's back.

  “Like I gave you a reason to doubt the Niger docs?” Tobias said over his shoulder.

  “Not enough,” Bill said. “Not now.”

  “Their impossibility isn't enough?” Tobias said, mostly to himself.

  “Not these days,” Bill said. “Hey, listen, I know you're getting the short end of the stick here, but could you not use my name, if you write this up? Not that this highly sensitive, top secret material isn't being leaked to every TV news program in the country as we speak.”

  “What the hell would I write?” Tobias asked.

  Sally would never get a cell signal in the vault at Langley and wouldn't want any conversation with Tobias recorded on her office land-line, so, impatient to hear what Senator Snajder said, she and Tobias had agreed beforehand to meet for lunch. A long drive for her, both ways, for disappointing news. Tobias related his conversation as he picked at the coleslaw in its tiny stainless steel cup that served as an appetizer in the roadside diner.

  “Part of the trouble now is time,” Tobias said. “War powers will be out of committee this week, I've heard, and before the full Senate next week. This morning, someone in the office told me that the 4th Infantry Division entrained their heavy equipment. The 101st is already in Kuwait. Even if we believe these confessions to be mere forgeries, we don't have the time to find a leak—and I don't know where to begin to look, either.”

  “Snajder said the DDI briefed the SSCI?” Sally asked. Tobias noticed a strange formality about her mannerisms, subtly different from her usual demeanor; the effect of her work attire, he wondered.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “That was yesterday,” she said, setting aside her coffee and gathering her purse. “He would have returned late to the office. And I know for a fact,” she said with a light in her eyes, “he's been in meetings all morning.” She stood up.

  “Whoa, where are you going?” Tobias asked.

  She leaned over, kissed his cheek, and said, “He isn't in his office—but perhaps his briefing and notes are.”

  Tobias grabbed her hand before she could walk away. “You can't honestly—”

  “What are they going to do?” she asked, grinning much the way Tobias used to. “Fire me?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Or arrest you.”

  “Don't know that I care anymore,” she said, holding his hand at arm's length.

  “I care,” he said. “If you're arrested, particularly.”

  “We've done some pretty, let's say, morally ambiguous things,” she said, “for the good of the country. Not you and I. Well, I have, as part of my job. It's something you could never print in the paper but occasionally, an assassination is preferable. To a war, say. Turning a blind eye to drug smugglers because they support your enemy's enemy might be politique—yet cold comfort if you think of babies born heroin addicts.

  “But this war, they're starting for no reason at all,” she said, looking out the windows at the passing cars. “Unless
it’s something as banal as money. And everyone you talk to—you specifically, but everyone I talk to as well—knows that we're being lied into it. You can see it in the screaming red faces of TV pundits, in the laughing eyes of politicians, quivering in the voice of the guy holding forth at the counter over his tuna melt. They all see the lies and are perfectly content to let them stand in for the truth, even at the cost of war. I'm sure they all tell themselves they have very good, very smart reasons for going along with it.

  “No one's supposed to do what I do unless they love their country. And yet, Operations is crawling with guys who joined because they want to be James Bond or Steven Segal. They were a joke before the Howland Administration took power. They cheered when they heard they were going into Afghanistan, every one with a movie quote in his mouth, every one chomping at the bit to do something ugly and, if questioned, firing off 'just doing my job' as his defense. They can't stand the truth about themselves, either. But that's not why I joined. Iraq is a civil war waiting to happen; I came from a long line of veterans and I don't want people like my family losing their lives in a war so someone can realize their oil-field-wet-dreams; I didn't volunteer to put my hands in my pockets and 'just do my job' as someone harms my country from within and every bit as badly as any foreign nation could with bombers and missiles. We may not be able to stop them but it won't be my fault: I will not be their accomplice by letting their lies pass unchallenged or standing idly by.”

  She dropped Tobias's hand and left.

  It had to start down pouring as Sally drove back to CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. A cold, clinging rain—that would turn to snow fifty miles north—that chilled the windshield from without, making her breath a fog that clouded her vision, necessitating the car's heater as well as wipers. She didn't want the heat, though. She'd shrugged out of her coat as she drove and set all the windows open a half inch, despite the rain dotting the interior. Though driving at terrific speed—for the weather—and weaving between cars, Sally's mind flipped through her memories of Duke Updike's—the Deputy Director of Intelligence's—office, his secretary's; where was his safe in relation to the door, to the desk, could she contrive a phone call to keep his secretary, Marjorie, busy?