Kompromat

by Stanley Johnson

  The attorney general answered without a moment’s hesitation. ‘Totally massive. Lethal actually.’

  ‘Lethal to whom?’ Wilbur Brown asked.

  ‘To President Craig, of course,’ Dirk Goddard replied. ‘People have tried to argue the contrary, but in my view – and I’m attorney general – there’s no presidential immunity for crimes committed before taking office.’

  ‘You’re talking about violations of the Logan Act?’ Brown said.

  ‘You bet I am,’ the attorney general replied. He pulled down a thick, brown volume from a shelf. The page was already marked.

  ‘Listen to this,’ he said.

  ‘Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.’

  ‘Now, I’m a supporter of the president,’ Dirk Goddard continued. ‘He appointed me to the high office, which I now hold. But when I took up my job, I solemnly swore to uphold the Law and Constitution of the United States. So help me God. What we’ve just heard is a clear violation of the Logan Act.’

  ‘Nobody’s ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act, not for the last two hundred years or more,’ Bud Hollingsworth said.

  ‘They darn well should have been,’ Dirk Goddard countered. ‘Do you remember, back in 2007, when then-House speaker Lucy Wainwright went to Syria to negotiate with President Bashar al-Assad? Or 2015, when another House speaker, David Draper, invited Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Moses to address Congress without President Matlock’s permission? I would have used the Logan Act then, if I’d been attorney general. But that’s chickenfeed besides the deal that Candidate Craig was trying to set up with the Russians.’

  There was a long pause, as the two very senior officials tried to digest the full implications of what the Attorney General was saying.

  Wilbur Brown shook his head. ‘You’re a lawyer, Dirk. If you based your case on the evidence of that tape, you’d lose. The president would set the pack on you. They’d ask you where you got the tape. Did the Russians send it to you as their way of signalling that the honeymoon is over? Or if the Chinese sent it, which is another possibility, did they manage to bug the Russian Embassy? The government’s lawyers would query its authenticity every which way. They’d argue that it was in any case inadmissible because it must have resulted from an unauthorized surveillance operation, so the court would have to ignore it.’

  There was another long pause. Dirk Goddard, an honest man, looked truly crestfallen. He had always believed that Washington was indeed a “shining city on a hill” and, if what Wilbur Brown said was right, he was going to lose the chance to prove it.

  ‘Shall we tell him the good news, Wilbur?’ Bud Hollingsworth asked. ‘Will you go first? Or shall I?’

  ‘You go first, Wilbur.’

  Bud Hollingsworth took out a pen and doodled some stick-figures on the yellow legal pad in front of him.

  ‘Let’s take first things first. In my view, the conversation we just heard actually happened and this is an accurate recording. I can say this with total confidence.’

  ‘You mean it rings true?’ Dirk Goddard asked.

  ‘I mean more than that. I mean it is true. We have exactly the same recording ourselves.’

  The attorney general looked stunned. ‘You’re not telling me, after all these denials, you actually bugged Ronald Craig, after all?’

  Hollingsworth sighed. ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’

  He pushed the pad aside.

  ‘Let me explain,’ he continued. ‘You may not be familiar, Dirk, with the executive order that President Brandon Matlock signed on May 18th, 2016. President Brandon was worried that Ronald Craig’s personal security could have been compromised. I’ve still got the text on my iPhone. Only half a dozen copies of that executive order were ever produced and I was one of the recipents.

  ‘Let me read it out:

  ‘Whereas it appears to be possible, if not probable that Ronald C. Craig may unwittingly have been the target of an unauthorized attack by a hypodermic dart or some other intervention while visiting the Russian Far East.

  ‘Whereas it is necessary through a clinical examination to establish whether such an attack or intervention has indeed taken place, and to take all appropriate measures,

  ‘Whereas the implications for national security of the said event need to be fully evaluated,

  ‘Now therefore: I, President of the United States, have decided and determined that the said Ronald C. Craig should be immediately brought by federal marshals to the Walter Reed Medical Centre, Bethesda, Maryland, and that the said federal marshals are authorized to use all necessary means, including force, towards that end. Signed: Brandon Matlock, 44th President of the United States, May 18th , 2016.’

  ‘To cut a long story short,’ Bud Hollingsworth went on, ‘as soon as that executive order was issued, Craig was picked up in Florida, whisked up to the Walter Reed Medical Centre in Maryland and subjected to a clinical examination as specified. We didn’t, as a matter of fact, find any evidence of a Russian bug, though we still believe that such a bug may still be in place, but not where we were looking.’

  ‘So?’ Dirk Goddard was looking for some light at the end of the tunnel.

  ‘I want to make it clear,’ the Director of the CIA explained, ‘that Wilbur and I were determined to act strictly in accordance with the law. The issue here is quite simple. I’ll read that paragraph again:

  ‘Whereas it is necessary through a clinical examination to establish whether such an attack or intervention has indeed taken place, and to take all appropriate measures . . .’’

  ‘The crucial phrase, of course, is that we had the president’s explicit authorization by means of an executive order not just to ensure that Craig was submitted to a clinical examination but to “take all appropriate measures.”’

  ‘I still don’t see how that helps us get the tape we just listened to into evidence before a court,’ the attorney general said.

  ‘Oh ye of little faith,’ Hollingsworth sighed. ‘Wilbur and I have heard every word of that conversation before. We have listened to it a dozen times, if we’ve listened to it once. How did we do that? Well, while we looking for the Russian bug, we planted a bug of our own in Ronald Craig’s posterior. I can tell you that our recording of that fateful conversation repeats word for word, phrase for phrase, the text we heard earlier.

  ‘The vital point is that while the tape you just played us would not be admitted in evidence, our own tape, properly sworn and notarized, undoubtedly will be since it was authorized under a specific presidential executive order.’

  ‘Mah, oh mah!’ The former senator’s Mississippi drawl was working overtime. ‘You two ole boys really have got it all worked out.’

  Dirk Goddard rose to his feet. What was he going to do? He had surely come to a fork in the road. Which path should he take? How did that poem go? The one less travelled by?

  ‘I’ll let you know my decision,’ he said.

  A last thought occurred to him. ‘So basically you’re telling me that the 45th president of the United States is at this very moment walking around with three bugs implanted on his person, like a bloody pincushion? The Russians put one on him, though not where we originally thought. We’ve put one on him, on his backside if I understand correctly.’

  ‘The left buttock actually,’ Wilbur Brown said.

  ‘And where is the Chinese bug?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure. Probably the right buttock, but that’s just a guess.’

  ‘You mean he’s literally talking through his ass?’ the attorn
ey general asked. ‘How long will they go on transmitting, these bugs? ‘Till the next election?’

  ‘Negative,’ Wilbur Brown replied. ‘All these systems use solar radiation. Subcutaneous insertion, which is what we have here, means that they have to rely on the initial battery charge without any recharge being possible. Realistically I would say that all three bugs must be approaching the end of their useful life.’

  ‘Let’s be grateful for small mercies,’ Dirk Goddard said.

  With Southern courtesy, the attorney general escorted them to his private elevator. ‘Thank you, gentlemen, very much for stopping by today. I’ll be in touch.’

  On the way down, Brown asked: ‘Would a criminal conviction under the Logan Act lead to impeachment? Impeachment, as we know from experience, can be a long process and is seldom successful. You have to have a majority vote in the House and a two-thirds vote in the Senate.’

  ‘A criminal conviction would be enough to force him to step down,’ Hollingsworth replied. ‘But I’m sure there would be a lot of people, Goddard included, who would be ready to launch a formal impeachment process if the president looked as though he wanted to cling to office.’

  ‘What does all this make us, Bud?’ Wilbur Brown asked. ‘Co-conspirators?’

  ‘Patriots. It makes us patriots,’ Bud Hollingsworth countered. ‘That wasn’t one of his aides, or potential Cabinet nominees, trying to do a shady deal with the Russians, a deal with immense geopolitical implications. That was the man himself. Negotiating with a foreign power with no authority to do so. If ever there was a time to invoke the Logan Act, this is that time. The man crossed a red line, Wilbur. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘What if Craig knew all along he was being bugged?’ Brown asked. ‘Knew we planted one on him ourselves, quite apart from any devices the Russians or the Chinese might have succeeded in installing. He might be testing our loyalty. He really might. And then we would look stupid.’

  Hollingsworth laughed. ‘You’re getting carried away by your imagination.’

  There was a lengthy pause as they each thought about what had just been said.

  Then the two men looked at each other. They weren’t laughing any more.

  ‘The President could terminate us overnight,’ Hollingsworth said.

  ‘Overnight?’ Brown countered. ‘You must be joking! He’d fire us without notice or warning of any kind. We’d probably see it on the news first.’

  The Director of the FBI shuddered. Deep down, he knew he’d probably handed the election to Ronald Craig, back in the fall of 2016 when, with just days to go, he reopened the inquiry into Caroline Mann’s emails. But that fact by itself wouldn’t necessarily save him. Not with a man as ruthless as Ron Craig. How did the old saying go? No good deed goes unpunished!

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  After all the excitement of that mad dash to Helsinki, Melissa Barnard decided to have a quiet weekend with her daughter, Fiona, and her partner, Michael Kennedy.

  The Kennedys lived in a whitewashed fisherman’s house set above the harbour in a small village called Goleen on the South-West Coast of Ireland. On the Saturday before Easter they went to the pub for lunch.

  It was a bright, sunny day, warm enough to eat outside. They were sitting there, at the table, while the seagulls swooped overhead, when a motor-boat came round the headland and made for the quay.

  They recognized Jack Varese, of course. The whole world could recognize Jack Varese. The young woman with him, Melissa realized, was Rosie Craig.

  Melissa rose. ‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed. ‘Can I introduce myself? I’m Melissa Barnard, Edward Barnard’s wife. This is my daughter, Fiona, and this is her partner, Michael Kennedy. What are you two doing here?’

  ‘The same as you, I imagine.’ Varese smiled. ‘Looking for a quiet weekend before World War III breaks out. Rosie’s father’s just been firing missiles at Syria, he’s thinking about bombing North Korea and we’re all wondering whether the Russians or the Chinese will retaliate. How’s Edward? I haven’t seen him since he got bitten by a spider in Australia. Has he recovered? Do you mind if we join you?’

  ‘Things were getting pretty hot in Washington,’ Rosie Craig explained as they sat there in the sun. ‘Quite apart from the geopolitics, I’m in the middle of a turf war with Bert Rumbold, so I said to Jack, “Let’s get the hell out of here”. We just flew over in Jack’s plane and parked it at Shannon. We’re staying at a hotel down the coast. They suggested we pop up here for lunch. Lent us the boat, so here we are!’

  What a charming young woman, she was, Melissa thought. Yet there was an inner steel there too, by all accounts. Before coming to Washington, she had run a multi-billion dollar retail empire, and you needed more than a pretty face to do that.

  Rosie Craig was fascinated to learn about Michael Kennedy’s work.

  ‘I grew up here,’ Kennedy explained. ‘Went to Trinity, Dublin, and then worked as an international maritime lawyer in London before coming back to Ireland.’ He waved his hand at the little harbour. ‘With the internet, you can work anywhere nowadays. This is heaven on earth. Mind you, I travel a lot. I’m going to be in Yellowknife next week. We’re trying to push through some new international rules to protect the Arctic. It’s a free-for-all at the moment and as the Arctic opens up with global warming, it’s going to get worse.’

  Michael Kennedy couldn’t have found a better audience.

  ‘I’ve a personal stake in this,’ he told them. ‘Back in 1979, my father died in the Bantry Bay disaster, not far from here. An oil-tanker caught fire and exploded. He was on it. I was a kid at the time. Better rules could have prevented that accident. Forty years on, we still haven’t got the standards we need.’

  Jack Varese chipped in. ‘Watch this space,’ he said. ‘Rosie’s going to win her battle back in Washington and a lot of the things you care about are going to happen.’

  ‘My father will listen to me.’ Rosie Craig replied. ‘I know that. But there are other ways of getting to him too.’

  With that cryptic message, the golden couple jumped back into their boat and chuntered back up the coast.

  ‘Pity Rosie Craig didn’t run for office instead of her dad,’ Michael Kennedy said. He was clearly smitten. They all were.

  Melissa followed through on Michael Kennedy’s line of thought.

  ‘Maybe she will run for office one day,’ she speculated. ‘If the US president for some reason has to stand down, doesn’t the vice-president succeed? That would leave a vacancy. Rosie could step in there as vice-president, then next time round she could stand in her own right. Finally, a woman president!’

  ‘But why would the president step down?’ Fiona Barnard asked. ‘He’s only just been elected.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Mabel Killick, the prime minister, was sitting in her study in Number 10 Downing Street with her two closest aides, Giles Mortimer and Holly Percy. They had moved with her from the Home Office when she succeeded Jeremy Hartley as PM in the aftermath of the Referendum. What an extraordinary turn of events that had been, she reflected. First, David Boles, the justice minister, ruthlessly assassinates his Fellow Leave campaigner, Harry Stokes. Then, he plunges the dagger into his own breast, leaving Andromeda Ledbury as the only possible rival. Well, Mickey Selkirk soon did for Andromeda, the PM reflected. Maybe Andromeda had been too trusting. She had confided some of her most personal thoughts to that clever-clever duo, Molly and Tanya, from Selkirk News, only to see those thoughts splashed across the front page next day!

  Bad luck, Andromeda, she thought. Best keep your gob shut. But good luck, too, since Andromeda’s withdrawal from the race meant she, Mabel Killick, veteran home secretary, was the last one standing when the music stopped.

  Good old Mickey Selkirk, she thought, setting those two young newshounds on Andromeda like that. Hand on heart, she hadn’t had much to do with Selkirk before the Referendum. She hadn’t had much to do with the Leave campaign at all. She had been a Remai
ner then, a ‘shy’ Remainer as they called it. She hadn’t played a big part in the campaign. But she was an out-and-Out Brexiteer now. Last October, when she had only been prime minister for a few weeks, she had told the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and, by golly, was she going to deliver!

  ‘Quite soon it will be a year since we moved in here,’ she said to Giles Mortimer and Holly Percy. ‘We ought to have a celebration when the times comes.’

  ‘I’ll put the champagne in the fridge,’ Giles Mortimer said. He would be even more handsome, Mrs Killick thought, without that great black beard.

  The two aides glanced at each other. The PM obviously had something on her mind.

  In the good old days, you could fiddle around finding the cigarette packet, and a match or a lighter, then take a reflective puff or two, before coming to the point. But now they had banned smoking in offices and that applied to Number 10 as well. So Mrs Killick took the plunge without faffing around on the diving-board.

  ‘Remember that COBRA meeting I chaired?’ she began. ‘The one I set up to discuss the so-called Referendum dossier Edward Barnard brought back from Russia?’

  The two aides nodded.

  ‘Of course we remember, Prime Minister,’ Giles Mortimer said. He glanced at his colleague. ‘As a matter of fact, Holly and I have sometimes wondered whatever happened to the enquiry you set up. I imagine Dame Jane Porter, the head of MI5, reported to you but we weren’t invited to that meeting, as I recall.’

  There was a hint of reproof in Mortimer’s voice as though he felt disappointed, if not actually wounded, to have been excluded for such a key encounter.

  ‘You can’t be everywhere, Giles,’ the PM said sharply. ‘Though I know you think you ought to be. But you’re right,’ she continued, ‘Dame Janet did report to me. She said that the documents in the dossier were authentic. The narrative they portrayed was what actually happened: the run-up to the PM’s Bloomberg speech, the PM’s manuscript additions to the manifesto, late in the day, indicating his personal commitment to the Referendum. Those were all genuine, verifiable documents.’