“Ed, find out what Sam here does in the Army — what his MOS is. Then let’s run down big brother Ernest’s background. I’m going to call Jerry and ask him to hold the director off on this report.” Art tapped the yellow pad. “Okay?”
“You got it,” Eddie answered with renewed purpose. “We’re getting warm, you know.”
“Let’s run with it then.”
The pillows were stacked up against the headboard with his favorite down one at the top. It cradled Bud’s tilting head. He wasn’t tired, yet, being more engrossed in thoughts that tumbled in his head than with the preliminary report from Granger lying on his outstretched naked legs. It was neat, and bound. He wondered how it was that all reports, no matter how rushed, always came attractively packaged. Was there an undersecretary for that?
He shook the mental cobwebs away. Content wise the report was solid. The plans, though incomplete, were thorough. The operation would hurt the Libyans, probably with few civilian casualties, though that was a minimal concern to Bud. Some still held with the belief that innocents in a hostile place were to be safeguarded at all cost. He had never been able to grasp the logic. But then he had the luxury of being a military man. It wasn’t a question of playing by some unwritten set of chivalrous rules, which more often than not tied the hands of those on the righteous end of the stick. It was a question of reality, and of the future good. The greater good. A hundred enemy innocents now, or two hundred American innocents later.
Still, with all the justification and the culpability, not to speak of the moral issues of correctness, Bud couldn’t come to reconcile himself with the belief that this would do much more than hurt those who stood in the light, albeit a light of “evil.” It was those in the shadows who struck without warning, and it was they who would walk away with blood on their hands but little, if anything, on their conscience.
Jesus, Bud! What do you expect?
The bottle of Evian on the nightstand was less than half full, and a long draw later it was gone. Bud realized that he’d rather it were a beer. Oh well — the sacrifices of public service.
Those who had precipitated this with their surreptitious bravado filled Bud’s mind before it could lock on to anything tangible. Who were they? Almost certainly the former DCI and DDI, but what about higher-ups, and what about those in lower ranks? Had the order, or even the general inference of authorization come from the president? Or, as Landau believed, were the former heads of the Agency the source of the turmoil? That would make the most sense, Bud agreed. The Iran-Contra fiasco had proven one thing: The odor of shit drifts upward rapidly. A chief executive could not expect, in the age of the media circus, to distance himself from scandal, even one that ignorance of was a truthful defense.
It was almost unfathomable. Executive underlings had done it again, only this time their actions had led to the death of a president — and not even the one they served under!
The pillows’ soft bulk caught Bud’s head. It bobbed backward, and then the rest of his body slid until he lay almost flat on the bed.
He could feel the coldness of the plastic report cover on his legs. A lift of his knee slid it off.
Was the military option the right one? You’re supposed to be answering questions. Bud.
Damn! he thought. In those thirty-five pages was a plan that would work, but would it work right? It was another question, but at the moment he had little else. Certainly not any perfect answers.
In the morning he might need to recommend a strike to the president, and, he knew now, it would not be with a ready conscience. The public would support it if it became a necessity, but the long-term results would be practically nil. Maybe that’s what bothered him the most. Even the experts and so-called authorities agreed that large-scale retaliation usually only fomented further acts of terror. Tit for tat, where our tit led to their tat. The experts, Bud reminded himself, said that negotiations were the best hope for preventing future occurrences, if they were meaningful and binding.
“But who the hell is the antagonist?” he asked aloud. Who was the protagonist and who was the antagonist? Right and wrong. Did prevention mean giving the terrorists what they wanted, if only in part? Was it good to look at an issue with irrational, evil persons and search for common ground? Was it right?
“No!”
Bud brought the backs of his hands up to his eyes, blocking out the soft light. If only the goddamn rogues had succeeded there would be no problem. Qaddafi would be gone. The source would be eliminated.
Bad analysis, Bud knew. It had been an easy out, the tainted blood option, but too slow. Too much chance of discovery, the exact nightmare they were living now.
Right target, wrong method, wrong avenue of decision. It could have been right, and legitimate, and successful, with only God being the final arbiter of its righteousness. Those involved would be called on the carpet in the hereafter. Time enough to convince oneself of absolution, Bud figured.
The last thought scared him, and enlightened him. He pulled himself up on his elbows, looking into the semidarkness of the hallway to the bathroom, and wondered if wrong could be manipulated into right.
Hadad’s eyes opened peacefully from a dream-free sleep. His education would contradict that thought, his teachers having told him, and the other medical students, that all people dreamed during sleep. He could break from that part of his past now, too. Allah had cleared his mind. Cleansed him, actually. Completely. It had to happen so that the purpose would be achieved with purity.
He reached to his left and slid the shade up in the porthole like window. Not much like a ship’s porthole, he decided, having spent weeks on a ship during his transit of the Atlantic to the medical college in Buenos Aires years before. That had been enjoyable and frightening, being on the sea the first time, especially since all that surrounded the converted freighter was endless water.
Through the thick upper-deck window he could see the first sheets of yellow coming from the sky over the buildings to the plane’s left. It was still dark inside the lounge where he sat, and quietness filled the aircraft like a void. All below were asleep, or silently praying, or, if infidels, they simply were contemplating the last few hours and those still to come.
He rolled sideways in the wide seat and pulled his fatigue coat up over his neck. One of his comrades must have covered him when the chill snuck up on the desert during the night. His arm came up and twisted toward the incoming light. Almost five-thirty in the morning, or was it? Yes, he had adjusted the time. Five-thirty it was. Hadad leaned forward and tried to twist and stretch the sleep from his muscles. Soon he would need to start what would be a long journey. Not in time or distance, but in change. Every journey had a beginning and an end, a truism that Hadad knew was false for himself. Arrival at the final destination was but his first step toward a reunion.