A Knife Edge

FORTY-EIGHT

Two weeks after I arrived back in Washington, I took the bandages off my hand. I removed them in the bathroom down the hall from the briefing room at the Pentagon. I didn't want anyone there thinking I was incapacitated in any way. I checked myself in the mirror. “You've still got it,” I said to my reflection as I straightened my tie, and indeed my face was looking less like a ruined piece of fruit with every passing day. If an attempt was going to be made to put things right, I didn't want to be sidelined. Butler and I, to use a euphemism I never liked much, needed closure.

Apparently, this Pentagon briefing I'd been summoned to had followed two others with the President, the SecDef, the SecState, the Chief of Staff, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the heads of CIA and the FBI, the British Ambassador, British military attachés, various military ops personnel, and so on. A course of action had been decided on and now, presumably, the talking was done. Everyone was in a hurry.

I'd seen yesterday's Post, and a couple of reports on CNN revealed that a chunk of the detail was already in the public domain: A renegade British SAS soldier had apparently run amok and killed a number of his own countrymen, as well as U.S. personnel and Pakistanis. He'd also destroyed several millions of dollars' worth of C-17 aircraft. The press wanted to know why coalition forces were conducting operations inside Pakistan. Parallels were being drawn with the CIA operating in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. As yet, the media didn't know why all this had happened, but I was sure everyone in the briefing room knew they'd find out eventually. Someone somewhere would get sick of not being able to sleep or eat with the pressure of The Truth burrowing into them like a tick and would then breathe the clues to “the wrong person.” The trail would eventually lead back to the disaster at the Transamerica and Four Winds buildings in San Francisco, and forward to the reality that Pakistan intended to leave India a black smoking hole in the ground, and perhaps set off a global nuclear war in the process. In all of this, the murders of Hideo Tanaka and Ruben Wright wouldn't rate a mention.

In the words of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Henry Howerton, Operation Warlord had been a cluster fuck of monumental proportions, rivaling the disastrous Tehran hostage crisis of three decades ago. Rumor had it the President was sitting in his office with the door locked, sucking his thumb.

At the moment, though, the media was diverted from the investigative angle by the political fallout: The revolutionary Pakistani government was demanding an apology as well as financial compensation and reparations, and had moved every unit in its Army up to the border with India; the United Nations General Assembly was screaming about U.S. and British imperialism and laying blame for what appeared to be snowballing into a global catastrophe; the Russians and Chinese were exerting the usual pressure for loans and trade deals if a full censure in the UN Security Council was to be avoided.

All this made me think back to the original JOPES where the political situation in Pakistan had already been likened to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. Someone who got paid a lot more than I did should have read the signs and pulled way back, maybe taken a different approach.

In the briefing, intelligence assessments held that Butler and Dortmund had snatched Boyle and simply driven off on the Ski-Doos — not to Afghanistan as planned, but to India. From there, the trail had gone cold. Why? Because, the experts believed, Butler was out scouting for a buyer for Boyle's secrets. No one in the briefing room asked what those secrets might have been — if you didn't already know, you weren't supposed to know. I wondered how many of the people sitting at that table actually did know about Boyle's meltdown bug.

I figured that with twenty years in the military serving all around the world, Butler's little black book of contacts would be around the size of the Yellow Pages. General Howerton, along with everyone else in the loop, was no doubt hoping like hell Butler wouldn't find that buyer in the People's Republic of China. Or, for that matter, North Korea, Iran, or Syria.

If this was, in fact, what Butler had done, I wondered when it was that he'd decided to abduct Boyle and sell the guy and his technology to the highest bidder. Perhaps when someone told him how valuable Boyle was. I could think of only one person who would have spilled those beans. Giving Butler an added push toward this insanity might have been the conclusion that it was only a matter of time before he was nailed for Ruben's murder. To hide, he would need a lot of money. The motto of his own SAS regiment was “Who dares wins.” If the intelligence assessments were true, as operations went, the one he'd conducted on his own behalf to get rich quick was as big and as daring as they came.

There was in all of this gloom, though, at least one bit of sparkling news, and the media was all over it — the story of a Hellfire missile launched from a Predator drone that had hit a group of al Qaeda terrorists fleeing from a village on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. One of the men believed killed was Bin Laden's right-hand man, al-Zawahiri. Bin Laden was missed in the attack, but al-Zawahiri was a major scalp, and the administration would take whatever it could get. At least the rumor about Bin Laden lying low and maybe running a curry take out somewhere in London had been dispelled.

The hope that all the talking had been done was an example of wishful thinking on my part. I sat at the table for two hours listening to speculation and rebuff. Nothing concrete was decided on because no one knew where Butler and Boyle had gone. It was a waiting game. But at least with Butler out of Pakistan, the threat of all-out war with nuclear weapons had receded, though Islamabad had announced that the first test in its renewed program would be the detonation of a bomb with a very large yield. India threatened to do the same.

As far as locating Butler and company went, the CIA's Willard F. Norman reassured General Howerton and the SecDef in his peculiarly squeaky voice that everything possible in terms of stones not being left unturned was being done. There was a little more speculation about motives and the mental states of both Boyle and Butler. I was also questioned about my captivity and, of course, about Bin Laden and my impression and observations of the man. My impression was that he had a kind face and warm eyes. My observation was that I wished I'd somehow managed to get the guy's autograph — it would fetch a fortune on eBay. I thought it wise to keep these impressions and observations to myself. Instead I told them all I could remember was that his fingers smelled of horse shit. The briefing was called to an end, and I went home.

In and around my apartment block, a couple of things of interest had happened in my absence. Kim's 38th Parallel had reopened to again do battle with Summer Love for take-out supremacy. The vegan joint, though, was hitting below the belt. Stuffed in my letterbox was the usual flyer promising that no animal products were used in its cuisine, either as ingredients or in the cooking process. Admirable though that was, I bet it all tasted like warmed up papier-mâché. And, besides, I like eating animal. I figure if you weren't supposed to, they wouldn't be made of meat. I turned the flyer over. On the flip side, it was personally signed by Summer — the woman with the mop and the sensational, though hairy, legs — with the invitation to give her a call. Her cell number was included plus a coupon for a veggie burger. Summer was going all out. I stuck it on the fridge.

Meanwhile, inside said fridge, the resident mold had invited over quite a few buddies. I announced the party was over with the aid of a brush and a spray that made me feel like my sinuses were bleeding. In the middle of this cheery domesticity, the phone rang. “Vin Cooper,” I said.

“Agent Cooper, there's a car with a driver headed your way. It'll get to you in ten. Don't keep it waiting.” Dial tone. General Howerton. Man of few words. I glanced at my watch and wondered what had happened in the three hours since I was last at the Pentagon.