Q Clearance

by Peter Benchley

"These flowers symbolize power and success. Roses are for lovers. Lilies are for dead people. These are for people on the move."

  "They are?"

  "Uh-huh. I read it in 'Ask Beth.' "

  Burnham did not inquire as to what "Ask Beth" was. The explanation would be bound to include a numbing recitation of an entire chapter from her childhood, and he was on a detail for the Leader of the Free World.

  "Forgive me if I shut the door," he said. "This Q Clearance business is a bore."

  "Of course. I'll hold your calls."

  Not bad, Burnham thought as he crossed to his desk. The real reason he had shut the door was that he had to call the CIA, and he had never called the CIA before, and he didn't want Dyanna to hear him make an idiot of himself on the phone, and it never occurred to him that he could ask her to get the CIA for him. But he hadn't had to explain anything. Q Clearance said it all. Convenient. It could be used for playing solitaire or reading a book or taking a nap.

  He dialed the White House switchboard and said, "This is Timothy Burnham."

  "I know," said the operator.

  "You do?"

  "Sure. Your light just went on."

  "Oh. Can you tell me how I get hold of the CIA?"

  "Who in the CIA?"

  "Ah . . ." He had no idea whom he should speak to. He didn't think of the CIA as people. It was a creature that lived in an enchanted forest in Langley, Virginia, and emerged on misty nights to commit dark deeds that no one ever heard about until, eventually, a wizard named Seymour Hersh unearthed and exposed them in the pages of the New York Times. No one seemed to exist in the CIA: they existed only after they left, when they assumed the identity of "former CIA employee" and went on to play a role in real life as convict, corpse, author, turncoat, informer or unimpeachable source for 60 Minutes.

  "The Director?"

  "Ah . . . okay, sure." The Director! Wait a minute! He didn't even remember the Director's name. The Director was a professional nonperson, a computer genius who was said to be as smart as Einstein, as ruthless as Goebbels and as reclusive as Howard Hughes. The President had learned a lesson from the bad publicity that had accrued to Ronald Reagan from the appointment of bulldog Bill Casey. Winslow wanted a man who was squeaky clean, hard as nails and totally unconcerned about his image or his personal welfare.

  The Director's name almost never appeared in print. He refused to give interviews. He refused to testify before Congress—or, if he did testify, did so under such elaborate secrecy and with such intimidating mien that none of the solons dared violate his confidences. He had made it clear from the outset that he didn't give a damn for subpoenas or contempt citations. They could cite him for anything they chose, but he put them on warning that he would ignore any and all summonses and was prepared to precipitate a Constitutional crisis by forcing them to send federal marshals to Langley.

  Accused once of lying in a deposition to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Director issued a public statement that said, "Of course I lied. That's part of my job. I'm paid to keep the secrets. You can't keep the secrets if you don't lie."

  In public, the President's attitude toward the Director was that of an indulgent parent toward a naughty but prodigious offspring. In private, he considered the Director one of his greatest assets, a lightning rod that deflected unwanted static from the presidency, a vital bulwark of the independent Executive Branch.

  Burnham didn't want to speak to the Director, had no desire to get into a pissing match with a junkyard dog. The operator could give him the Director's number, but he didn't have to dial it. He'd locate a basement-level functionary who could give him the information he needed.

  But the operator didn't give him the number. She put him through.

  "Four-four-nine-one," said a voice.

  "Ah ... ah ... is this the ... ah .. . Director's office?"

  "Four-four-nine-one.''

  "This is the White House."

  "Who in the White House?"

  "Timothy Burnham."

  "Spell it."

  Burnham spelled it.

  "Hang up."

  "What?"

  "Hang up!"

  Before Burnham could hang up, the line went dead.

  Thirty seconds later, one of the lights on his phone console flashed, then his buzzer buzzed. He picked up the phone and punched the intercom button.

  "It's the CIA!" Dyanna said breathlessly.

  "Who in the CIA?"

  "He didn't say."

  Burnham punched the flashing button. "Burnham."

  "What can I do for you, Mr. Burnham?"

  "Who is this?"

  "You called us."

  "Is this the Director?"

  The voice stifled a laugh. "Hardly."

  "How come you made me hang up?" Burnham wasn't peeved, merely curious.

  "An elementary precaution. I could call back through the White House switchboard and verify who you were."

  "Oh." Burnham's impulse was to tell this man that he had been assigned to write the President's toast to the pasha of Banda and that he needed background material on the pasha. But before the first word could escape his lips, he sensed that that gambit would sound too routine. The upper echelon of the Central Intelligence Agency would take umbrage at being treated like a Stop 'n' Shop for White House writers. Instead, he said, "The President is meeting today with the pasha of Banda. The NSC briefed him on Banda. He found the briefing inadequate."

  "What did he expect?" The voice chuckled, and Burnham knew he had chosen the right tack.

  "He feels there are things he hasn't been told."

  "He's right."

  "He told me to call and ... get your input." Whoever you are, Burnham thought.

  "He told you to?"

  There was only the slightest emphasis on the word "he," just enough to make Burnham swallow and wonder whether this disembodied voice would insist on verifying that, too. "Absolutely. He's not without instincts, you know. He didn't get to be President by being . . . gullible."

  "No, no," the voice said quickly. "Of course not."

  Good, Burnham thought. He's on the defensive. Now flatter him. "He said to me, 'Check with them. If anybody knows this fella, they do. They're well wired.' "

  "He's right. Okay. You got it."

  "Thanks. It's E.O.B. one-o-two." He was about to hang up, when a question occurred to him. "By the way, how come you didn't have any input into the original briefing?"

  The voice paused. "The President knows where we are. He has our number. If he wants help from us, all he has to do is ask. If he wants to rely on . . . amateurs . . . that's his business."

  Offended vanity. Burnham couldn't believe it. The CIA was like a teenager who hadn't been asked to the prom till the last minute. Suppose this pasha was a Libyan thug bent on putting a bullet in the President between the coq au vin and the cherries jubilee?

  The voice must have read signals in Burnham's silence, for it said, "If this guy was dangerous, we'd ring a bell. But he isn't. He's a punk."

  "Right. If I have any questions, who do I ask for?"

  '' Four-four-nine-one.''

  "Okay, four-four-nine-one. Over and out." Burnham hung up, unfolded and smoothed the papers Cobb had given him, and began to read the NSC draft of the toast.

  It was a predictable four hundred words of vapid bushwa: a welcoming paragraph that included a light reference to the similarities in the climates of summertime Washington and year-round Banda; a paragraph detailing the history of the fruitful relationship of mutual respect and cooperation between the Republic of Banda and the United States (the word "history" being almost hyperbole in itself, since the Republic had been carved out of the jungle barely thirty months ago); a paragraph predicting an even more fruitful relationship in the future (but never mentioning oil); a paragraph praising the pasha's contributions to the community of nations, and, finally, a paragraph praising the pasha personally and ending with the obligatory toast.

  Nothing here to get excit
ed about, Burnham decided. He wondered what the President had objected to.

  The door opened. Dyanna spoke softly, as if she were entering a temple and didn't want to disturb the priests. "Mr. Burnham, your mail is here. Your . . . special mail." She crossed the office and handed him a large manila envelope on which the Department of Energy's return address was prominent in the top left comer.

  "How did it come? An armored car? A state trooper?"

  "No, sir. Regular interoffice mail, with the other junk."

  ' 'They send James Bond over here to threaten my life if I ever open my yap about what's in it, and then they put it in the mail?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Look at this!" Burnham pointed to a printed notice on the bottom of the envelope: " 'If found, return immediately to the Department of Energy. Do not open or read.' Why don't they for crissakes slug it 'Please forward to the Russian Embassy'?"

  "Yes, sir." Dyanna backed out of the room and closed the door, to leave Burnham to read his Q Clearance mail.

  Though the envelope had been slugged with no classification, each document within was marked top secret—q clearance ONLY in bold black letters.

  Burnham didn't understand any of the documents. One was an interminable paper—in technical language pocked with the misuse of the word "parameters"—that seemed to have something to do with the properties of fission. One was a succession of mathematical formulae, none of which was remotely familiar to Burnham, whose math education had stopped with basic trigonometry. Two were speeches by DOE officials that had been delivered to scientific gatherings and were therefore (or so it seemed to Burnham) matters of public record and should not have been classified at all. And one spelled out the specific benefits offered by his medical plan for reimbursement for purchases of prescription drugs.

  Burnham turned on his shredder. It hummed hungrily. He fed it first the technical paper, page by page, enjoying his alchemical power to change secrets into strands of trash, then the two public speeches and the medical-plan advisory. He paused, as if to let the machine digest its main course before he fed it its dessert of mathematical formulae.

  There was a shy knock on the door, and Dyanna poked her head into the room and said, "Would you like some coffee?"

  Burnham smiled. It was against Dyanna's nature to offer to perform domestic services for him. He imagined her sitting at her desk refereeing a battle between her self-respect and her curiosity. Clearly, curiosity had won in the early rounds. Well, what the hell . . . Secrets were only fun if they could be shared. "Sure," he said. "Thanks."

  The coffee was already in her hand, already sweetened. She crossed to his desk and handed it to him, trying dramatically not to let her eyes stray to the shredder or to the paper still in his hand.

  "What do you make of this?" Burnham handed her the sheet of formulae.

  "I shouldn't ..." Dyanna made a show of demurring.

  "If you can understand it, you deserve to see it. Anyone who can read this garbage should be Q Cleared automatically."

  Dyanna plucked the paper from his hand and ran her eyes down the page. Burnham could see a mist of bewilderment cloud her eyes like cataracts.

  "Golly," was all she said.

  "My sentiments exactly." He took the paper from her and held it above the shredder, to which he spoke as if it was a performing seal. "Ready, Smiley?"

  "It has a name?"

  "I think 'Smiley' fits, don't you? He eats the secrets so the bad guys can't get them. And we give him the secrets, so we're Smiley's people."

  Burnham enjoyed his little joke. Dyanna, who thought he was speaking Dutch, nodded politely and said, "Why, yes."

  "Don't forget to buy Smiley his begonias. We'll put top-soil in his mouth there, and plant the begonias, and all the doo-doo will go right down into the basket."

  The outer door to the office swung open, and Dyanna looked grateful for the distraction.

  A short young man with a crew cut and a set of pectoral muscles that threatened to pop the buttons on his drip-dry shirt was holding an envelope. Dyanna reached for the envelope, but the man shook his head—no—and gestured at Burnham. Dyanna ushered him into the office.

  "Mr. Burnham?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm from Langley. May I see your identification?"

  Burnham showed him his White House pass.

  The man proffered a slip of paper for Burnham to sign, acknowledging receipt, then surrendered the envelope.

  Burnham said, "Since when do you characters pack heat on your home turf?"

  "Beg pardon?"

  Burnham pointed to a prominent lump beneath the trouser leg on the man's right calf. "Either you've got a compound fracture of the tibia, or else you're wearing an ankle holster."

  The man stopped breathing.

  "Don't worry," Burnham said. "My lips are sealed."

  The man left quickly. Dyanna looked at Burnham and said, " 'Pack heat'?"

  "This Q Clearance is great." Burnham grinned. "Whole new perceptions flood my brain. I feel . . . cosmic."

  Dyanna's eyes were as big as golf balls.

  Burnham opened the CIA envelope and turned toward his desk. He expected to hear Dyanna leave, and when he didn't, he stopped and looked at her.

  The siren song of secrecy had captivated her. Her hands fluttered, trying to appear busy, and her mouth worked, trying to form words.

  Burnham went to her and took her by the elbow and gently led her to the door, saying, "Sorry."

  Dyanna mumbled something apologetic.

  Burnham sat behind his desk. The CIA document was three pages long, single-spaced. It was described as "A Psychiatric Profile of Babar Sumba Emir, Pasha of Banda."

  Amazing, Burnham thought. Everybody thinks that the CIA has been emasculated—look at Iran, look at Nicaragua, look at Jamaica—but they keep on truckin'. They've got shrinks in the bedrooms of the palace in Banda. How do you con a pasha into lying on a couch and telling you about his mother and his dreams and his terror of spiders?

  The answer was, Burnham discovered, you don't: What the paper didn't admit, but what was quickly clear, was that the paper was a long-distance psychiatric analysis of the pasha, conducted by two Freudians in a room in Langley, Virginia. They had never spoken to the pasha, never met him, never even seen him. The grist for their analytical mill came from field reports, newspaper accounts, rumors and top-secret cables from American Embassy personnel desperate for guidance about dealing with a head of state of an emerging nation that promised to provide America with a significant percentage of its oil needs well into the twenty-first century, whose behavior could be described by the most charitable of Pollyannas as "disturbingly eccentric."

  Burnham knew nothing about psychiatry, but he supposed that long-distance shrinkage, when applied to a person of intelligence and subtle character, would be useless.

  In this case, however, it was probably quite effective, for very little actual analysis was necessary. The mass of intelligence about the pasha pointed to a conclusion for which a Ph.D. was wholly unnecessary: The pasha was a certifiable madman.

  The man claimed to be a direct descendant of Buddha. His documented youth as a banana-picker had, he said, been lived by someone else. He had been jailed for stealing a box of ballpoint pens, had escaped by setting fire to the jail and hiding in a cistern while the building (and twenty-four other prisoners) burned to charcoal around him. Emerging from the ashes, he was dubbed a phoenix by a rum-soaked English missionary who saw the hand of God in everything from kwashiorkor to pink gin, and Babar Sumba took the opportunity to discard his mortal past and to declare himself a creature born of the fire. People flocked to him, first out of boredom and curiosity, then for amusement, then for excitement, for his answer to all problems was to set them afire. ("Pyromania has been a compelling force in the pasha since early childhood," the report read.)

  When Banda became independent, Babar Sumba was one of three candidates for the presidency of the new Republic. He disposed of one of his oppo
nents by dousing him with gasoline and setting him afire. The other withdrew.

  Then an Amoco team discovered oil, which Babar Sumba interpreted as divine affirmation of his leadership. Being president was no longer enough. Nor did he want to be a king or a sheik or a sultan; the world was full of them. So he decided that he was pasha—not a pasha, but the pasha.

  He hired a chic American architect to begin work on a palace of Carrara marble and gold leaf. He decreed a "Miss Banda" contest and took all twelve finalists as his wives. (One rebelled, so he had her smeared with jellied gas and touched off in front of the other eleven.)

  He had no opponents. Somehow, though, the goon squads he dispatched into the highlands always unearthed a dissident or two for him to bum. The fact that the goon squads had been told that if they didn't locate a dissident, one of their number would be sacrificed undoubtedly sparked their zeal.

  A year ago, the pasha's wives had begun to bear children. (As he read on, Burnham's eyes bugged and he couldn't suppress a gasp and a bubble of nausea.) As luck had it, of the first eight children born, five were female. The pasha was displeased. Male children were prized. One male could service a dozen females. A surfeit of females was worse than a redundancy: It was a burden on the economy and on the social structure of Banda. Worst of all, a majority of female children in a litter of eight might reflect badly on the genetic divinity of the pasha.

  By blind lottery, the pasha selected four of the five female children and ordered that they be burned alive.

  Burnham put down the paper without reading the medical jargon diagnosing the pasha's psychosis. Who cared what they called it?

  The President shouldn't have him in the house.

  He called four-four-nine-one at the CIA. "A punk!" he shouted. "You call that man a punk? He is a fucking maniac!"

  "To each his own. We can't run the world."

  "We've got to advise the President not to see him."

  "What's this 'we' stuff? You tell him what you want. I'm not in the principle business."

  "All right, I will." Burnham paused. Principles. What would Sarah say? Was this a question of principles? Deciding not to entertain a psychopath? It was basic morality. Morality and principles weren't necessarily the same thing.