Chasm

by James Bruno

  “We’re all set to fly the first batch of Sudanese here whenever we’re given the go-ahead,” Menard, from Defense, added.

  Ferret cringed. He sat silently behind Goldman, taking notes. He didn’t like Tulliver. With his British suits, fifty-dollar haircuts and studied air of being always in control, the number two foreign affairs official in the White House struck Ferret as a vain self-promoter who practiced foreign policy as if it were a board game.

  “We’ve got communities in Florida, New York and the Gulf states ready to take them in,” Goldman interjected. “Of course, the church groups and nongovernmental organizations have been told only that they’ll be taking in war victims. The black congregations are strong on this resettlement, just as they were with the Haitians we brought in after we replaced Cedras with Aristide.”

  “State will do its usual effective job of indoctrinating the Africans into the ways of their new homeland? The last thing we need is for some of these characters to continue their deviant ways here,” Tulliver admonished.

  Goldman smiled reassuringly. Ferret loathed Goldman as much as he did Tulliver. Goldman was after that additional ambassadorship before retirement, and to get it he’d have to impress the White House crowd with his effectiveness as State’s CHASM director.

  “No problems thus far.” He nodded at Ferret. “Our staff is very skilled in retreading such people.”

  Ferret stiffened as everyone directed their attention to him. Something deep inside him told him to use the occasion to get something off his chest.

  “We have problems already,” he blurted, to Goldman’s astonishment.

  “Two Croats. They’ve absconded and are committing ghastly crimes, including m—”

  “We have two cousins who haven’t shown up for work,” Goldman interjected. “It’s by no means certain that these two Croats have ‘absconded.’ We’re checking into it. But not to worry.” He again flashed an avuncular smile.

  Ferret was not stupid. He knew a put-down when he heard one. But he had to let them all know.

  “These men are…are…evil. They’re killers. Nothing more. And they’re here. In our country.” The tone of his voice rose.

  Tulliver spoke up. “Joe, if there’s a problem, fix it. If you have CHASM proteges who’ve gone AWOL, well, track them down and read them the riot act.”

  “Like I said, we’re looking into it.” Goldman’s jaw muscles tensed. Brief eye contact with Ferret sent the latter an Arctic blast of rebuke.

  “We need to bring in some more assets whose positions have become untenable,” the CIA rep, Sarah Bramley began. “Assets” is CIA jargon for foreign spies they’ve recruited.

  Ferret saw right through the Agency. A cold war provision of law permitted the CIA to bring into the United States each year up to one-hundred of its foreign spies who had landed in dire trouble in their own countries. No visas, no immigration inspection. No questions asked. But one-hundred was a small number and Langley chafed under the limitation. Over the decades, CIA officials had tried every devious way imaginable to sneak scumbag “assets” into the country by whatever means. CHASM was to them a godsend.

  Ferret stopped his notetaking, his eyes became transfixed a thousand miles away. His brain blocked out the voices. His eyes did not see the lush office surroundings of the White House’s West Wing. Instead they saw brilliant, vibrant, contrasting colors running together in electric waves. He felt himself a figure in a van Gogh painting. A loud buzzing noise replaced the voices in the room. As the colors in Ferret’s mind reached a hallucinogenic intensity, the buzz turned into distant shrieks and wails, the death screams of countless victims of all the holocausts. The result of the collective hypocrisy of those who turned a blind eye. He sensed that he was on a precipice, about to join the ranks of the victims. In doing so, he would be liberated from these callous people, who would turn killers loose in their own society for the sake of a paper agreement and their own ambitions. Ferret would finally be free. Free.

  Lisa showed up at Tulliver’s office five minutes early. She wore her hair pulled back into a bun and sported an ankle-length black skirt with a gray, Scottish-cut worsted suit jacket over a plain white blouse. She had no make-up on.

  The secretary asked her to take a seat. Lisa sat primly erect with both hands poised on the knee of a crossed leg. Despite her efforts at nonchalance, she was anxious as revealed by a nervous bouncing of her leg and a forced scrutiny of humdrum office art. She shuffled through the requisite New York Times, Washington Post and predictable, out-of-date news magazines on the coffee table in front of her. Here was a People magazine featuring ex-con Martha Stewart, dated April 2005. Just like at the dentist’s, she thought.

  Tulliver’s door swung open. A distinguished older man and a much younger one stepped out.

  “Rest assured Senator, we’ll keep Congress in the loop at every juncture,” a grinning Tulliver schmoozed. “We’re counting on the Hill to deliver. Peace is bipartisan.” He slapped the old senator on the back and flashed his perfect pearly-whites again.

  The old man stopped and wagged a finger in Tulliver’s face. “You’ve got America acting like it should be acting,” he drawled. “A superpower with principles. This is fine with the folks back home. No more Iraqs! The people just won’t support any more of our boys and gals getting shot and blown up.”

  Tulliver nodded agreement, then caught sight of Lisa. His eyes lingered a moment, as if to say, Ah, yes. Her. Get rid of this old fart, and on to more pleasant things.

  Lisa kept a stonily dour expression. But her wide, childlike eyes gave away her trepidation.

  The top half of Tulliver’s body was out in the hallway waving cheerfully to the departing legislator, though his feet remained anchored in his office. As his guests departed the West Wing office suite, Tulliver swung around with his hands clasped, still smiling.

  “Hi! John Tulliver.” He offered his right hand and motioned with his left for her to enter his office. He clenched her hand a second or two longer than protocol required.

  As was the case with all offices in the White House proper, his was cream-white, accented by a presidential-blue carpet and Federalist flourishes in the form of carved doors, wide, paned windows and a piece or two of pineapple-crested, 18th-century Goddard furniture. Otherwise, it displayed the usual trappings of the Washington power set: the obligatory ego wall of Tulliver in the company of various kings, prime ministers, saints and satraps; bureaucratic awards and diplomas from august institutions of higher learning, most of whose grads had surnames that did not end in a vowel. On the ponderous Pennsylvania oak desk, a framed photo featured the smiling visage of a generic, middle-aged WASP wife; another of two female teenaged trophy children.

  He gestured for her to have a seat on the standard GSA-issued cloth couch. He plumped himself down in one of those fat, dark leather chairs one normally associates with old money.

  His eyes quickly assayed the young woman before him. Lisa wasn’t sure but she thought she detected the slightest hint of disappointment on his face after taking in her well-wrapped form.

  “Lisa. First, welcome to the NSC. The Democracy shop is a perfect fit.” He shifted in his chair. “I make it a point to meet all staff after they’ve settled in. And, so…now we meet.” His voice changed from chirpily official to warmly intimate with the last three words.

  “It’s a dream job.” She smiled uneasily, her eyes moved nervously side-to-side. Stay cool, Lisa. Stay cool!

  “Tell me a little about yourself.”

  “Not a lot really. I’m from Wheeling, West Virginia, up in the needle point part of the state. Parents are working folks. I went to Cornell on a scholarship.”

  Tulliver nodded deeply, indicating that he was impressed.

  “Otherwise, it would’ve been WVU — West Virginia University for me.” She gave a forced laugh which she quickly stifled. “Ahem. I majored in political science. Maybe I’ll go back. To law school, that is.”

  “How is it that a bright-ey
ed, bushy-tailed girl from the Mountain State leaves kith and kin, to go off to college out of state and end up here, at the White House?” he probed.

  “To get out,” Lisa answered without hesitation. She paused, took a deep breath. “I mean, I had to go places, see things, that is…”

  “I understand,” Tulliver said with empathy. He leaned toward her and inched his chair forward. She could feel his breath on her cheek. He placed one hand on the armrest of her chair. Lisa became rigid. Tulliver’s gray eyes lingered on her face, then worked themselves, almost caressingly, down to her neck, her breasts, waist, legs, then up again.

  “Lisa,” he breathed, as if he were about to divulge the greatest secret of the government. “I look at myself as a mentor to young people on the staff. At the same time, I’m very demanding. I will call on you to produce and I expect you to be responsive, to give as good as you get. And I want you feel free to consult me. That door is always open.”

  Lisa didn’t need this. She was going out of her way to keep men out of her life for the time being. And she certainly wasn’t attracted to this smarmy, middle-aged egomaniac. She’d been getting calls from Craig who had joined the Yuppie Army at Citicorp in New York. He spoke sweetly about wanting to get together. She put him off. Too many cobwebs of confusion lingered in her heart.

  “Thanks. You see much of your wife and kids in this job?” She glanced at the portraits on the desk.

  Tulliver looked deflated, as if he’d just been told, “root canal.”

  “Ah…Not as much as I wish.” He leaned back. He studied her for a moment, the silent scrutiny making her even more ill at ease. “Part of the job entails travel. Do you like to travel? I assume that you do. Otherwise, you’d be fat, dumb and pregnant in Wheeling.” He chuckled at his lame humor.

  “I never had enough money to go abroad. I’d love to.”

  He’d bagged his quarry. “I travel to Europe regularly, other places less frequently. I’ll be asking you to accompany me on occasion as my staff aide.” He stated this with measured authority, a kind of Ivy League command.

  “Oh. Great. Sure,” Lisa replied uncertainly.

  The door opened. It was Lt. Col. Haley.

  “Lisa, this is Dan Haley.” Tulliver made some distance between himself and Lisa.

  “We’ve met,” the Marine said jovially. He took a seat next to Lisa.

  “Lisa, I want you to work with Dan here on a special project.”

  The Marine looked warmly at the PMI. He held a number of folders in his arm.

  “You know that we’ve been catching some flak over our involvement in peacekeeping abroad. Some people on the Hill and in the media have attacked us for going too easy on the malefactors as we conclude one peace settlement after another. They complain that we set up these war crimes tribunals, but then don’t go after the bad guys because we allegedly don’t want to rock the boat. The less charitable among them charge the President with using foreign policy to make himself look good for the next election. And they charge Merwyn Fennimore and me of pursuing diplomatic successes to burnish our own image. It’s all hogwash, of course. But we need to respond. And that’s where you come in.”

  Haley removed some papers from a folder.

  “The Administration needs to get its message across more effectively. Better PR. Dan, here, is working with the President’s speech writers, the press spokesman and the other agencies to make sure that message gets delivered. I want you to work with him and the other players to draw up key points for that message. Let the world know how vigorously we’re pursuing justice as well as peace. Are you up to the job?”

  Lisa was flattered. It was a lot of responsibility for someone with her limited experience. But she was confident she could do it well. She would put everything into it. And maybe do some good in the process.

  “I am,” she replied.

  “Good, go at it.”

  As Lisa was half way out the door, Tulliver added, “And, don’t forget. The door is always open.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Gallatin had been to Washington only twice before. Once as a kid with his family on vacation. The last time ten years previous for a convention of insurance investigators. Even with this limited exposure, the place had struck him as unreal. A city where people park themselves for a while, then move on, whether as tourists, bureaucrats or politicians. Not a real place, like Cleveland, or Baltimore, or any city where things are produced and people finish their lives in the same neighborhood in which they grew up. The great monuments, the histrionics of national politics, the careful planning had Washington having more in common with Disney World than with any city in the real world.

  The nine-hour drive from Cleveland was good for him, enabled him to sort his thoughts, make him relax. He had always liked long road trips for that reason. They were therapeutic. Not long after Celeste died, he had placed Lauren with her aunt and uncle, jumped in his ‘69 Mustang convertible and drove west. The first thousand miles was of gently rolling plains, like a placid sea that beckoned and swathed. It was an endless horizon marked by broad fields of ripening crops, proudly erect silos and sturdy barns and farmsteads. This limitless expanse, which rushed at him through the windshield, had an alluring, almost hypnotic effect. The flatness of the land helped steady and pacify his soul. It carried him into the science fiction landscape of the Badlands whose towering, otherworldly rock formations lifted his mind further away from his pain. The abrupt majesty of the Grand Tetons confronted him with unassailable beauty to which he surrendered his growing doubt as to why he, or any of us, was here.

  Finally, as he stood on the dizzying palisades of Oregon’s coast, Gallatin found resolution, or at least a culminating comprehension as to why we live and why we die. Each crash of each wave on the ageless boulders below was an utterly unique event with its own shape and form, making its own impact on the land, some greater than others. But all, cumulatively, over the ages, lent shape to the earth, just as each life, great or humble, helped shape humanity. Celeste not only had brightened his life with her existence; she had also lent her beauty to the world, making it a better place. Gallatin could see this clearly now. His bitterness and regrets were, from that point onward, tempered by newly found serenity – Celeste’s presence within him till the day he died.

  The low, craggy, brooding Shenendoahs gave Gallatin a mildly unpleasant feeling. As he traversed West Virginia’s hulking heartland of bleak forests and impoverished hamlets, he imagined trolls lurking behind trees and in ditches warning him to neither stop nor to proceed, Go back. Go back, they called out in muffled yelps.

  His mind shook off the trolls as the undulating West Virginia landscape gave way to the lowlands of northern Virginia with its colonial towns and surfeit of memorials to Civil War bloodletting. As he entered the Washington, D.C. suburbs, Lauren preoccupied his thoughts. It was for Lauren, after all, that he was doing this.

  He had exactly one week to poke around the vast federal bureaucracy for information on the Brankos. That’s all the leave his employer would give him. He rubbed his forehead with one hand as he contemplated the daunting task ahead of him. To start from scratch in developing leads in a strange city with so little time…He concluded that he must be nuts.

  Gallatin checked into a reasonably priced boarding house on Capitol Hill. His body, weary from the long journey, told him to sack out, relax. But his heart told him not to waste a minute. So, he used the first weekend in the nation’s capital to devise a plan of action and to familiarize himself with the city’s layout.

  Early Monday rush hour traffic awoke Gallatin before his alarm went off. In the dream he had been having up till then, he was back home, fixing breakfast for Lauren and…Celeste. He sat up in the small bed, rubbed his face with both palms and shook his head in an effort to dispel the vestiges of the dream scene. He felt like having a drink. But, no. He had a task to accomplish. A task that would salvage his daughter from her psychological isolation cell. He realized that the odds were about a
s long as they could be. But what choice did he have? He was convinced that the Branko cousins were responsible for the firebombing that killed Adnan and Leah Suleijmanovic and maimed their sole remaining child. They therefore must be caught and punished.

  His first stop was the office of the Honorable Ernest T. Calloway, Representative of the tenth district of Ohio. The broad, high-ceilinged corridors of the grandiose Rayburn Building bustled with young aides, attaché-toting lobbyists, rubbernecking tourists, shapely young secretaries and the occasional distinguished-looking legislator. The latter were usually a dead giveaway. They had an air of patrician command over their fellow human beings, which was assisted by the constant numbers of those in the other categories who hovered around them like pilot fish, seeking favors, decisions or simply attention. As he trod down the marbled halls, Gallatin chuckled to himself. Washington: Land of the Serious Suck-up, he thought.

  “Hi. I’m Mike Gallatin.” He stood before a pleasant-faced receptionist, of the young, shapely variety. “I was wondering if I could have a few minutes time with your chief of staff concerning an investigation I’m carrying out.” He produced his business card.

  The receptionist grinned broadly, welcomed him to the office of Representative Calloway and asked him to have a seat in one of the studded leather chairs near the doorway. A fat man in a stretched, gray suit sat in the next chair. He too was smiling. Plastered on his leather portfolio bag was a bumper sticker which declared: “Stay Healthy: Eat More Pork. National Association of Hog Raisers.”

  “Hiya,” he said, nodding at Gallatin. “Crazy town, isn’t it?”