by Steve Israel
And he sighed. Constantly. Sighing almost the way most people breathed.
The stomach pain flared with each step. Why did I take this job? It was so much easier when I did legal affairs at the CIA. Sure, there were a few failed coups. And that shitstorm when those Predators misfired into that school in Somalia. But on the whole, every day was a holiday compared to the crap I get here.
He reached the top step and looked down a darkened corridor toward the Vice President’s office.
In an anteroom, a few staffers sat at desks, straight and proper. One, without even looking at Pruitt, said, “The Vice President is waiting inside.”
And there he was, at the far end of the room. Leaning on his desk, his arms spread and his wrists locked. Vice President Richard Cheney. In person. Which, Pruitt thought, was more frightening than the way all the caricatures portrayed him. The editorial cartoons didn’t do Cheney justice. They didn’t capture that permanent sneer, the upturned lip that made it look like he was always on the verge of spitting from the side of his face; the uniform blue suit and red tie (which Pruitt was convinced Cheney wore to bed at night); the way he seemed to duck his chin beneath his collar, like a turtle retreating in its shell; the thinning white hair above the skeptical eyes. He was all the more frightening in person.
Out of the corner of his eye, Pruitt detected Karl Rove lurking in the back of the room. In this administration, the most indispensable talent was good peripheral vision.
The office was smaller than the Oval Office, and more functional. Cheney’s guests sat close to the door. The less they saw of the office, the better. Plush couches faced each other, and a large blue Victorian chair was reserved for the Vice President. Cheney’s favorite photograph, from the 2000 election, was prominently displayed on a mahogany table. There was President Bush, wrapping his arms around his running mate. That was the afternoon that Cheney, as head of the campaign’s vice presidential search committee, announced that the search was over. And he had found himself.
Cheney looked up from the stacks of papers on his desk then nudged his eyeglasses up the bridge of his nose. “What do you have for me this morning?”
“Nothing new. Nothing since last night. The last time you asked . . . sir.”
Cheney’s sneer seemed to dip, then clicked back to its usual place. “What about that report I sent you?”
“The Florida threat?”
“That one.”
“We checked it out. Turns out it’s a bunch of Quakers planning a war protest.”
“So?”
“Quakers. Elderly . . . Quakers. You know, the Quaker meeting house. Nonviolence. ‘Kumbaya.’ That sort of thing. They’re planning a peaceful protest against the war in Iraq.”
“Protesting Quakers. Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you? Put more people on them.”
“Sir, it’s a group of religious pacifists at a Friends meeting house planning a peaceful protest. We can’t spy on religious—”
Cheney gave him the death glare, and Pruitt felt his perspiration freeze-dry along with the inside of his mouth. Still, while Pruitt’s stomach was now grinding, he knew that the Vice President’s pacemaker had to be shifting gears as well.
“Are you the Department of Homeland Security or the ACLU? Because if you don’t have the stomach to do the job, we may have to look for people who will.”
Pruitt knew what the Vice President was doing. Psychological warfare in the biggest Washington war of all: bureaucratic turf. If you can’t do it, I’ll find an agency that can. And further marginalize your existence. And cut your budgets.
“Yes, sir,” he muttered, sighing.
“Now, item two. The Democratic Party had their convention up in Boston. Christ, if naïveté were a disease, then that convention was a telethon.” Cheney seemed to snicker. “Kerry came out of it with a bounce”—he waved a stack of polling data in the air—“and now it’s our turn. Our convention is in New York on the thirtieth. I think DHS should upgrade the terror alert.”
“But we have no credible—”
“There’s intel out there about a possible al-Qaeda attack against the World Bank, the IMF, and the New York Stock Exchange!” The Vice President waved another document from his desk. “If ever there was a time to raise the alert, it’s now. Today.”
“Mr. Vice President, there are no credible warnings of an imminent attack. Just media speculation. From unnamed sources. In this Administration. On Fox News.”
“Does DHS want to wait for the mushroom cloud over the New York Stock Exchange? Let me remind you of something,” Cheney said. This time his lip seemed headed straight for his right eye. “You’re supposed to be my guy at DHS. The only reason I agreed to Ridge’s appointment as Secretary was because I’d have a guy there to keep an eye on things. To protect the President’s agenda. But lately I think you’re going a little soft on us. Like Rice. And Powell. Are you going soft?”
Pruitt asked, “Is President Bush asking DHS to raise the alert?”
Cheney rolled his eyes. “I will remind you that the reason we have the color alerts at DHS is to insulate the President from the criticism that he is politicizing threat. Or scaring the American people.”
“Well, I—”
“And besides, the President has a different announcement. We’re asking Congress to create a National Intelligence Director. And a National Counterterrorism Center.”
“And where does that leave us over at DHS?”
Cheney’s sneer seemed to elevate to a quasi-smile. And his eyes sparkled. “That remains to be seen. If DHS won’t do the job . . .”
“I’ll speak with Secretary Ridge. I’ll let him know how strongly you feel about raising the threat level.”
“That would be advisable.”
Rove chimed in: “Don’t raise it too high. Has to be credible. Can’t look political. What color makes sense?”
I’ll see if I have something in a nice orange, Pruitt thought, and left the office.
THE TOWEL ATTENDANT
MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2004
Flesh. Hassan tried so hard not to notice, but it was impossible. Flesh encircled him at the main pool of the Paradise Hotel and Residences at Boca. Fleshy breasts taunted him from low bikini tops, and fleshy thighs sloped from bikini bottoms. There were stomachs, taut and flat, but also undulating bellies, soft and bloated from the breakfast buffet. There was deep brown flesh, and bronze flesh, and pallid white flesh, and flesh turned red from the hot sun. Creases in the flesh ran in all directions, plunging into and swooping out of swimsuits, leading Hassan’s eyes to forbidden places. There were also the fleshy remains of the seniors who migrated to Florida from all points north. The nanas and poppies and grannies and grampses who flocked there to roast in the sun. They became so brown and shriveled that they looked like walking beef jerky with New York accents.
And how these people positioned themselves! Sprawled on chaise lounges with their knees high in the air and their legs spread wide. They splayed their arms across each other’s bodies, or sometimes wedged themselves into a single chaise lounge, interlocking their perspiring bodies in a helix position, flesh on flesh.
It wasn’t easy being a celibate terrorist and pool towel attendant at the Paradise.
This is the test of my worthiness, Hassan thought. They promised me seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Then they send me to the Paradise Hotel and Residences and tempt me with flesh, and try to break me with the constant calypso music over the loudspeaker, turning my mind into steel drums.
Hassan was feeling the strain. How could he concentrate on leading his sleeper cell with these pounding headaches? Not to mention that stabbing pain in his groin. Maybe a hernia, he had read on WebMD. But the Paradise Hotel didn’t offer health insurance to part-timers, and the budget
guys at the Abu al-Zarqawi Army of Jihad Martyrs of Militancy Brigade declined his request for more money for medical expenses. They did, in their infinite mercy, make one suggestion: “How about a forged Medicaid card? That we can do.” So Hassan filled out the paperwork and emailed it to Tora Bora. Every week for the past six weeks a functionary had promised him, “Hand to God, it will only take one more week, Hassan.” Meanwhile, the groin pain was getting worse.
“This is my test. I will not fail,” Hassan coached himself every day. From early morning, when he dispensed fresh towels poolside, to the evening, when he limped from chair to chair, swiping off clumps of towels saturated with sweat and chlorine and sand and suntan oils and God knows what else. And in the hours in between, he stood guard in the towel hut, battling the infidels all day about . . . towels. What was it with these people and their insatiable demand for towels? He would dispense the maximum two towels per guest, and then fight with each guest about the two-towel maximum. He would point to the massive sign with the huge red words: TOWEL LIMIT: 2 TOWELS PER GUEST. THANK YOU, and still they would demand three towels or four or even more. No wonder they won’t give us back our land, he thought. Look how they fight for an extra towel!
Of course, it didn’t matter to Hassan that the Americans who visited the Paradise never took any land from his people. To him, they were all Zionists. The Italian Americans, the Irish Americans, the African-Americans, the Hispanic Americans. If they were American, he was sworn to destroy them. He had even said so, in the video that awaited his final act. He took an oath to destroy them, to annihilate them, to consume them in a wrathful, unmerciful, apocalyptic fireball.
But until then, he had to keep them dry.
His reward was nearing. Within months, God willing, his task would be complete. The sleeper cell would be activated. Azad, Achmed, Pervez, and he would be roused from their long hibernation. Azad would be freed from his job at Bozzotti Bros. Landscaping; Achmed liberated from the humiliation of cleaning planes of the mess left by first-class infidels; and Pervez would serve his last Happy Meal as a McDonald’s counterman. They would attack. Then Allah be praised, Paradise wouldn’t be the name of the hotel where he worked, but the afterlife he had been promised. Paradise, where he would meet the seventy-two virgins. In the flesh.
He closed his eyes, imagining the virgins, imagining away the pain in his head and groin.
NICK
TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2004
Scooter Libby would do almost anything for his boss, the Vice President. Anything. He would fabricate and obfuscate. He would offer half-truths and untruths. He’d even go to jail, for God’s sake (though he knew the prospects of such a thing was unlikely as Cheney would always have his back). But sitting in the rear seat of a White House pool car with Karl Rove for a long drive on the foliage-lined Baltimore–Washington Parkway, winding through the Maryland suburbs, was really testing the limits of his patience. The air conditioner fought against the heat outside, and Rove had just asked, for what seemed like the tenth time, “Where are we going?”
“I told you, Karl. An undisclosed location.”
“I know that. But where?”
“If I told you where, it would be a disclosed location.”
“I’m Senior Advisor to the President,” said Rove. “You can tell me.”
“I’m Chief of Staff to the Vice President. I can’t.”
“I’ve told you before, Scooter, Senior Advisor to the President outranks Chief of Staff to the Vice President. Technically.”
“Maybe in the Office of Management and Budget flowcharts. But not in the Vice President’s mind.”
That was the big debate in the Administration. In the labyrinthine staffing structure that Cheney built, who outranked whom?
“You might as well tell me now. I’ll know when we get there.”
“Then why keep asking?”
Rove grumbled then mustered a smile, a malicious, settling-of-the-score smile. Libby wondered whether Rove was planning his demise behind that smile, right there next to him, right there in the backseat of the White House pool car. The roadkill of individuals who had gotten in Rove’s way littered America’s political landscape. Congressmen, senators, governors. Enemies real and imagined. Past, present, and future. Direct threats and potential threats. Libby shifted his body toward the backseat window, staring as the car passed communities named Landover and Greenbelt and Laurel.
Rove realized their destination: the National Security Agency. In Fort Meade.
(He could tell by the road sign that read: NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY. FORT MEADE. For terrorists and traitors who felt awkward pulling off and asking for directions to the place where America’s most vital secrets were hidden, the road signs were helpful.)
After producing their IDs at several checkpoints, they pulled into a remote underground garage tucked into the massive black-glass complex. The tires squealed as they turned from one level to the next, descending deeper and deeper into the concrete bowels. Libby thought of the parking garage scene in All The President’s Men, when Deep Throat leaked Nixon Administration abuses to the Washington Post. Deep Throat. Nixon. Watergate. Those were the days. When a two-bit break-in could turn into a constitutional crisis. Iran–Contra. Abscam. Child’s play. Christ, if only the Post knew about this! They could all go to jail!
In a far corner of the lowest level, the car came to a stop, only a few feet from an elevator.
“Follow me,” Libby ordered.
They approached the doors, and Libby pressed a button. “Fingerprint scan,” he said. The doors parted. Once inside, the elevator rattled through a short descent. The doors hissed open, and Rove found himself face-to-face with a group of uniformed NSA Police nodding politely at Libby.
“Welcome to COG,” Libby said.
“What?”
“Welcome to COG.”
They were in one of the underground, undisclosed, undercover outposts of a Cheney-inspired project called COG (Continuity of Government).
Here is where the Vice President would be whisked to ensure the survival of the government if the White House fell under attack.
On the other hand, his boss, the President,would stay at home. At the White House. Under attack.
It was a small suite with all the essentials of a standard bunker: sleeping quarters, food rations, and emergency communications equipment. Knowing he might need to spend weeks or months riding out the survival of the United States, Cheney added a few personal comforts: the entire works of Rush Limbaugh (propped on a small coffee table), his favorite hunting rifle, and a list of major Republican National Committee donors who would be prioritized in any search and rescue operations as the nation emerged from its apocalypse.
Libby led Rove through a narrow corridor that led to another locked door posted with a sign that read: RESTRICTED. COG LVL 1.
“This is what the Vice President wanted you to see,” Libby said, fishing through his pocket for a plastic card, which he waved in front of the door to the sound of a soft buzzing.
They entered a massive room, brilliantly lit and frigidly air-conditioned. Rove saw endless rows of giant cubes, encased in glass and metal. Glittering black walls of computers whirred and blinked red and green lights. Technicians dressed in black uniforms strolled casually down narrow aisles, stopping occasionally to inspect a cube, as if price checking at the supermarket. Rove thought he wasn’t in the top-secret, undisclosed location of the Vice President in 2004, but on the mother ship of some alien fleet.
“What is this?” Rove asked.
“The Vice President’s reorganization of the intelligence community. His name is NICK. Stands for the Network Centric Total Information Collection, Integration, Synthesis, Assessment, Dissemination, and Deployment System.”
Right there,
deep in the bowels of the NSA, where no one would notice, NICK noticed everyone’s business. So clandestine that even President Bush could not be briefed on it. You couldn’t find NICK in any federal budget (unless you had the fortitude and the magnifying glass to find a three-point italicized typeface entry within the “Supporting Projections Tabs” of the Department of Agriculture, Office of the Deputy Secretary for Public Nutrition, Office of the Assistant Deputy Secretary for National School Lunch Programs, Division of Compliance, Assistance to State and Local Governments, Education, and Outreach, Misc.). The leadership of Congress was vaguely informed about NICK—just enough of a dose so they would feel as if they were in the know without knowing anything at all. The last thing the country needed was one of those pesky federal judges deciding that the constitutional right to privacy was more important than the nation’s need for security.
NICK was one of the most potent defenses in America’s anti-terrorist arsenal. Programmed to follow tens of millions of lives in real-time, assessing patterns of behavior, and predicting threats against the nation. NICK was the ultimate voyeur, with an insatiable curiosity and a ravenous appetite for data. He would hunt it, sniff it, taste it, chew it, swirl it around his hard drive, and digest it. And if it left a bad taste, creating the slightest irritation, indigestion, or queasiness, NICK would spit it right out in an alert to dozens of law enforcement agencies.
NICK performed investigative triage in a country on threat overload. Everyone was either suspicious or a suspect, a patriot or a Democrat. America was a population of tipsters, snitches, and informants. The limitless American vision that had built a continent, forged a democracy, defeated the Nazis, peered through the blackness of space, and landed a man on the moon was now reduced to peaking through window shades and checking over shoulders for Muslims in our midst.