“Thanks, Sam. You’re the man,” Carlton said, raising his glass.
“Who’s going to be running this?” Stone asked. “I assume not you.”
“Right. I can’t be sure who’ll run it until I get his acceptance. Then I’ll give you the name.”
“Okay. I don’t need the name to get this rolling. Give me three days. Now dig in. The potatoes are getting cold.”
21
Carlton began the process of getting the right man by calling Quinlan. As usual, Quinlan did not answer. He treated his telephone console as a relic. At the age of thirty-six, he had brought to the West Wing his generation’s disdain for the landline telephone. He saw the smartphone as a pocketed bearer of apps and an indicator of status, and incidentally as a device for communication.
Quinlan picked up for POTUS, of course, and for most Cabinet members. Depending upon his mood and his interest in what Congress was doing, he usually picked up for calls from the majority leader of the Senate and the Speaker of the House. He also was likely to pick up a call from his harried assistant, who risked a profanity-peppered outburst if she called him for any reason less than what he deemed important.
The President nearly always picked up a call from Carlton, but the national security adviser had not yet gained pickup status with Quinlan. Carlton, however, did rate a personal and fairly prompt callback. So two minutes after Carlton called, his phone rang and CHIEF OF STAFF appeared in the identifier slot.
“What’s up?” Quinlan asked, in an undertone that carried a sense of interruption and an urgent need to get back to some vital task.
“It’s about what we were briefed on,” Carlton replied.
“When?” Quinlan asked, now sounding irritated.
“Immediately,” Carlton said, hanging up to prevent any dickering over where to meet. Five minutes later, Quinlan appeared in Carlton’s office.
“What the hell is this about?” Quinlan asked.
Carlton pointed to a chair in front of his desk. Quinlan, frowning, slumped into it.
“There has been one White House conversation on this matter,” Carlton began, leaning back in his chair. “It was between the President and me. This is the second conversation. There will be no more.”
Quinlan looked as if he were about to speak, but he remained silent.
“The President believes that Robert Wentworth Hamilton’s presence in Russia is an existential threat to the United States,” Carlton said. “Hamilton must be removed from Moscow.”
Again, Quinlan looked as if he was about to speak. Carlton held up his hand, traffic-cop style.
“This conversation has two parts,” Carlton continued in an even voice. “I’ve told you of the President’s belief about Hamilton.” Carlton stood, walked to the door, closed it, and returned to his chair. “Now we get to the second part. It’s between you and me, Ray. The President has no knowledge of what I am going to say. I am going to tell you what you are to do, and—”
“Wait one fuckin’ minute, Frank,” Quinlan said, half-rising from his chair. “I work for the President, not the National Security Council.”
“I am going to tell you what you are to do, Ray,” Carlton repeated, lowering his voice. “That is all there is to it. I am in charge of making something happen and also making sure that the President is not involved. It’s called deniability.”
Quinlan frowned but nodded. He was beginning to see that this was not a routine West Wing conversation.
“Look, Frank,” Quinlan said. “I’m just a guy the President found on Capitol Hill and decided to make his chief of staff. I’ve never been involved in black ops. I just—”
“Here it is, Ray. I am setting something in motion. The President wants you to play a role in it. If you do not do what I am going to tell you to do, your only alternative is resignation. It will be for reasons that will not be disclosed, but I assure you that you will be secretly smeared so that you’ll not get any invitations for any jobs or even a publisher for your memoir. I hope you understand this, Ray.”
Quinlan’s mouth opened and shut, but he remained speechless, as if he could not summon the words for a response.
Carlton waited for a moment, then went on: “This is an off-the-grid operation. You are being made aware of it because that is what I want, and I represent the President. No one else will become aware of this except the man I am going to ask you to call. I am going to give you a telephone number. Do not write it down. Tell the man to call that number. Here is the number: eight zero zero five five five seven eight two zero.”
Carlton repeated the number slowly and asked Quinlan to repeat it.
Quinlan recited the number the way a sullen high school student would recite the first line of Hamlet’s soliloquy. Then he asked, “Do I have the right to know whose number is that?”
“No. All I can tell you is that I got this number from a person with whom I have had dealings over the years. I trust him and the man at this number. I trust you will do what I tell you to do. And I trust the man to whom you must give the number.”
“Okay. Who is the man? Christ, I’ve got to at least know his name.”
“Sean Falcone.”
Quinlan sprang from his chair. “Falcone? Is this some kind of fuckin’ joke?” he said loudly.
“He is the best man for the job.”
“You’re shitting me! Falcone?”
“What have you got against him? Jesus, after what he sacrificed for his country!”
“Frank, you’ve been drinking too much of Falcone’s Kool-Aid. He’s been trading off hero status for way too long.”
“Didn’t know there was a time-limit on patriotism.”
“Gimme a break. The press has sucked up to him ever since he got out of a Vietnam jail.”
“That was no jail. It was a goddamn torture chamber. But I still don’t get it. What did he ever do to you?”
“Nothing. I just don’t like him. He’s not a team player. He never contributed to either one of Oxley’s campaigns. Not a dime. And he didn’t even endorse him for the presidency. And he gets to be national security adviser? How many of our guys did he screw out of a big-time job?”
“He was the best man … person … for the job. And you know it.”
“There were better picks, Frank. Much better. And when things got too rough, what did he do? He bailed.”
“He resigned after six years. How many advisers have stayed on that job for that long?”
“I’m still here. And he should be here.”
“If you’ve got someone else in mind, give me the name. The clock is running.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Quinlan said. “Falcone should be the go-to guy on this. If it works out, no one knows. If it goes south, he gets the blame. Okay. Bring your buddy in on this. But, Frank, if he fucks it up, you’re going to go down with him. And President Oxley has no idea what you’re up to. I believe—”
“I don’t give a goddamn what you believe,” Carlton cut in. “Let me make this as clear as I can, Ray. I am designing this op—… this matter … so that if Congress or the Department of Justice ever decides to inquire, they will find Falcone. He takes the fall. He’ll realize that you were carrying a message from me, although you will not name me. He’ll understand that what he is being asked to do is important to the President. And he’ll know that deniability is essential.”
“Message carrier,” Quinlan sputtered. “I’m supposed to be a fuckin’ message carrier.”
“No, Ray,” Carlton shot back “You are part of a plan to protect the President. You and me. Please repeat the number.”
Quinlan did, in his now exaggerated surly tone.
“Fine. Take a walk to Lafayette Park,” Carlton said, opening his desk drawer, and removed a clamshell cell phone. “Use this to call Falcone so that, if the shit ever hits the fan, we can honestly say the call did not come from the White House. When you meet, give him this phone and tell him to dispose of it after he makes the call to that number. And tell h
im exactly this: ‘Remove the man from where he is.’”
22
When Carlton succeeded Falcone as national security adviser, Falcone had warned Carlton: “You have to politely inform the President that direct access is a condition of your taking the job, just as it was for me.” Oxley readily gave Carlton what he wanted.
Quinlan was outraged that Falcone had passed the direct-access baton to Carlton. Quinlan had had little to do with Falcone in the White House. He marked Falcone’s departure by putting him on the Quinlan enemies list, which even included some members of the Cabinet. Men and women in the West Wing may have served at the pleasure of the President. But they might not serve very long at the displeasure of Ray Quinlan.
* * *
Falcone was in his office on the top floor of a gleaming ten-story building of steel and glass at the foot of Capitol Hill. He was chief executive partner of one of the world’s largest law firms, Sullivan & Ford, soon to be Sullivan, Ford & Falcone. The firm had more than four thousand lawyers in offices throughout the world. Clients included more than half of the names on the Fortune 100 list of the world’s leading corporations.
When Falcone’s executive assistant, Ursula Breitsprecher, did not answer by the third ring, Falcone knew that in her console phone’s caller ID slot she had seen a name or number that he would want to answer personally. He saw no ID on his console, and he wondered if this was coming from what he knew as a disappearing phone. On the day he became national security adviser, a polite young man from the NSA had dropped by his office, given him five such phones, and told him they were untraceable. He remembered bequeathing three phones to Carlton.
Falcone picked up his console phone and said, “Falcone here.”
“This is Ray Quinlan.”
“Ray!” he said. “What a surprise.”
“For me, too, Sean,” Quinlan said from his bench in Lafayette Park. “I need to see you. Four o’clock in the bar at The Hay-Adams.” He closed the phone and returned to the White House.
Falcone told Ursula he would be leaving shortly for the day and asked her to call a town car. She came into his office to report that the car would be out front in ten minutes. He knew that she could have told him that on the intercom. But he realized that she wanted a moment in his presence. There was a bond between him and her, a boss and his assistant, and it had always been business only. They knew a lot about each other from personnel files: birthdates; for both of them, blanks in the next of kin line; in his file widower, which he preferred over unmarried; for her the choice was unmarried, he thought now, glancing up, his eyes meeting hers.
She was as slim and elegant as she was when the Berlin Wall fell and she was a teenaged ballerina in the Leipzig Ballet. She had traveled alone to what had been West Germany and called an aunt who invited her to Philadelphia. She learned English, worked her way through the University of Pennsylvania by teaching dancing, and married a graduate student. They went to Washington, where both of them found jobs at the Environmental Protection Agency. In a couple of years they had drifted apart and agreed to divorce. He passed the Foreign Service examination and began a State Department career; she registered with a staffing agency that specialized in placing smart non-lawyers in law firms. All Falcone knew about her love life was the office rumor that she was having an affair with a South Carolina congressman. He found himself wondering if that was still going on.
They smiled at each other, each one wondering why, when in fact there was nothing to smile about.
Falcone closed the thick yellow folder on his large mahogany desk, embellished with lion’s heads and knightly emblems. Ten minutes later he was emerging from the Sullivan & Ford Building and getting in his regular town car.
He decided to get to The Hay-Adams a little early to think about what the hell Ray Quinlan—presumably President Oxley—wanted. He knew that North Korea’s little man had sunk another South Korean coastal patrol ship, and serious saber rattling was underway in Seoul. China was causing trouble again over the Senkaku Islands, the Japanese name that President Oxley preferred. But he knew little more about that issue than what he read in the New York Times and the Washington Post. And he didn’t think this was a crisis beyond what Carlton and Oxley could handle. Carlton seemed to be a solid man, as Falcone’s Irish mother used to sing: “As I walk the street, each friend I meet says, ‘There goes Muldoon—he’s a solid man.’”
When, as a kid, he asked her who she was singing about, she said, “A man like your father. His folks may come from Italy. But he’s a solid man.” And that became Falcone’s standard for who to trust, who to help, who to be. A solid man.
Maybe there was a need to get another voice into the White House debate over how to handle the current crisis. But that would be a call to an old China hand or some former ambassador to Japan. That couldn’t be why Quinlan called; a call like that would come from Carlton. So what can this be about? Falcone thought. And on a disappearing phone. A moment after that thought, Hamilton? flashed through his mind. But, as far as he knew, Quinlan had not been read into the Hamilton matter, as his lawyerly mind phrased it.
* * *
Quinlan’s choice for the meeting was a bar beneath the elegant lobby of The Hay-Adams. The bar tried to live up to its name, Off the Record—a recognition of Washington geography: From the plush, low-lit bar to the White House was a brisk nine-minute walk across Lafayette Square. Although some journalists went there to hear politicians and agenda pushers hold forth off or on the record, the bar had a tradition of discretion, symbolized by its underground location.
Falcone decided to wait at the bar instead of in a booth. He ordered a Grey Goose vodka and remembered how he had met his predecessor here on his first day as national security adviser. And now he was having another drink with a guy who hated his guts. Well, that’s Washington. Where Harry Truman said you could only trust your dog.
Quinlan came in and sat with his back to the red-velvet wall at the two-person table farthest from the door. Falcone picked up his glass, walked over, and took the seat opposite Quinlan. A red-vested waiter promptly appeared and Quinlan ordered a Yuengling draft.
As the waiter walked away, Quinlan said, “I’ve got something to give you. I can’t tell you who got me into this. But he thinks you will guess who sent me. First, I guess I should thank you for meeting on short notice.”
“You are more than welcome, Ray,” Falcone said. Knowing there was no point in chatting, he added, “What’s going on?”
Quinlan splayed his hands on the table, looked down at them, then raised his eyes to Falcone, and said, “I’m supposed to give you a phone number to call and you take it from there.”
“A phone call to whom?” Falcone asked.
“The phone number comes from someone who figures that you will know,” Quinlan replied. “He says … Christ, Sean. I’m not good at this cloak-and-dagger shit. The guy with the unmentionable name, the guy who said you would guess the identity of, told me to give you a phone number to call.”
Falcone nodded. “Okay, Ray, I kind of understand. This is a setup that has little to do with you and a lot to do with me. When I was national security adviser, I had a couple of situations like this one.”
Quinlan, looking relieved, said, “I know I’ve been a pain in the ass to you, Sean. But here we are. Somehow, Carlton—hell, you know it’s Carlton, right?—Carlton says this is helping the President. But—”
“I’ve got an idea,” Falcone interrupted. “Let me tell you. I assume that the word ‘deniability’ came up when you were told to give me a phone number. I also assume that if I take that number, I am taking the whole thing. Right?”
“I guess so, Sean. This is a new thing to me.”
“Well, not to me, Ray. My guess is that it involves Hamilton.”
“I think so,” Quinlan said. “I just got briefed—by your buddy Taylor. And Carlton said Hamilton is in Moscow, and—”
“Hold it, Ray. Don’t talk about it. I know the background.”
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Over Falcone’s shoulder Quinlan saw the waiter coming back and said “Thank you” when the waiter placed the glass of beer on a coaster. It had a cartoon of a donkey and an elephant trying to wrest a gavel from each other.
Quinlan took a sip, put down his glass, and said, “Sean. I don’t know what the hell I’m getting into. Carlton and I got the asteroid briefing together. Jesus! A killer asteroid! But there are secrets inside secrets. I’m sure Carlton knows more—much more—than I do.”
“That’s just as well, Ray. Just give me the phone number, finish your beer, and that will be it.”
Quinlan took out a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote 800 555 7820 on the back of the coaster. “Oh,” he said, “and I’m supposed to give you this”—he took the cell phone from his pocket—“and you’re supposed to get rid of it. And I was to tell you exactly this: ‘Remove the man from where he is.’”
“Okay. Thank you, Ray. I think you’ve done something damn important.”
“What have I done?”
“When they write the history of this time, Ray, they’ll say that President Oxley saved the world. And you helped.”
23
Quinlan left first. Both men knew that there was no point in leaving together and perhaps inspiring chatter about mysterious doings in the notoriously secretive Oxley White House. Falcone lingered for a few minutes and then walked up the stairs, rapidly crossed the lobby, and got out the front door before the doorman reached it, relieved to see no one he recognized. He was in no mood for small talk.
He decided to walk to his Pennsylvania Avenue apartment, mulling over exactly what he was getting himself into—again.
As soon as he entered his penthouse suite, he loosened his tie, stripped off his suit jacket, and, carrying it over his right arm, went into the kitchen. He pulled a chilled martini glass from the refrigerator and headed for a well-stocked bar in the living room. He poured a double vodka, draped his suit jacket over the headrest of an Eames lounge chair, and sat down.
Final Strike--A Sean Falcone Novel Page 11