As a British citizen I can’t get top secret clearance in the US, but can be granted a limited access authorization if it can be shown, which it obviously has been, that a clearable US citizen isn’t available for the same job. This allows me to be read onto the relevant SCIs. The rest is NTK or need to know, which limits access to whatever is necessary for carrying out the task involved. Seethrough has smoothed the process through with his counterparts at Langley, and as Grace has reminded me, somebody loves me on the seventh floor. Clearance isn’t in itself secret, and may even lapse after a given period. But one’s accountability to it is for life. It’s a disturbing thought. I’m comforted by the paradoxical knowledge that at the highest levels of all, as exemplified by the Baroness’s dealings, there’s no such thing as clearance at all, nor any paperwork to support it. Or to deny it. Just conversations in quiet rooms, on benches in public parks, and words exchanged in chance meetings that quite probably never happened.
I have good intentions to go for a swim in the hotel pool, but instead collapse on the bed and sleep fitfully for an hour before waking with a sense of panic at not knowing where I am. When I come down to the lobby, Grace is already there, reading a copy of the Washington Post. I see her in daylight now and realise how blue her eyes are. There’s the same mixture of hardness in her gait, voice and manner, and softness when she smiles or laughs.
Grace lives alone in a neighbourhood called Adams Morgan, jokingly called Madam’s Organ by its inhabitants. An inordinate number of different locks on her front door protect a narrow house on four floors, small by American standards but huge by all others. There are Persian and Turkish carpets on the floors and Georgia O’Keefe prints on the walls. Above an elaborately hand-tooled saddle on a wooden stand in a corner of the living room hang several rodeo trophies. Among a collection of family photographs, there’s one of Grace shaking hands with the president and a second woman, another with the former president, another with the CIA’s director George Tenet, his Levantine features offset by a pink tie, and another with the former DCI, John Deutch. A miniature flag of the state of Colorado pokes up between them. I ask who the other woman is in the photograph.
‘Secretary of state,’ she answers, coming over to peer at the picture. ‘Stuck-up bitch. Know what she said to me? Said Massoud’s a drug dealer and we can’t deal with a drug dealer. Here.’ She passes me a tumbler, which prompts me to look at my watch. ‘Never too early for a sip of prairie dew.’ Her prairie dew of choice is a twenty-one-year-old single malt matured in port casks. ‘One of life’s small pleasures,’ she says.
I concur. We sit and cradle our glasses.
‘Massoud was never cash-averse, but he’s a man you can ride the river with. I sure hope we can shore him up before he has to give up his last patch of turf.’
‘What do you think are the chances of that?’ I ask.
‘Slim,’ she says. ‘Mighty slim.’ Then she recalls her last mission to Panjshir, and it’s obvious she was impressed, like so many others, by Massoud’s charisma, energy and humility.
‘We were fixing him up with a hotline to Langley and a box of tricks from the NSA so’s we could listen in on Taliban comms. All of a sudden there’s artillery causing a ruckus down the valley and turning his men into buzzard food. Took us up to the head of the valley so’s to keep us out of range, then heads back to the fight. Damn. Still found time to look after us later, making sure we were fed and warm. Son of a bitch slept on a bedroll just like a cowboy. Next day he’s directing the war again and busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.’
‘God, don’t make me laugh,’ I protest, clutching at my rib.
‘Been meaning to ask you if you’ve been in a fight recently,’ she says.
‘Just with my friends.’
‘You’re not your average gringo spook,’ she says, chuckling as she refills our shot glasses. ‘And I’ve met a few. Self-satisfied sons of bitches, most of them. You’re not a man who lives a life of quiet desperation.’
‘You’re not your average cowgirl,’ I say. ‘Cowgirls don’t quote Thoreau, for one thing.’
I ask her how she got into the spook side of life, and she surprises me by saying it’s the family business. Her father, she says, was friends with ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, founder of the Office of Strategic Services, the secret American organisation dedicated to espionage during the Second World War. I know that the OSS was a parallel entity to Britain’s SOE, and its daring and innovative founder became a prodigy of behind-the-lines derring-do, rather as David Stirling became a legend as the founder of the SAS. Years later her father, a dedicated cold war warrior, had ended up as head of station in a number of Middle Eastern countries, in the golden days, as Grace calls them, when the Company actually had reliable human assets in the region.
I see no reason not to tell her that my father was involved with SOE, and that I’d joined the army with the vaguely romantic ambition of following in his footsteps. ‘Wasn’t quite the army I thought it would be,’ I say. ‘I had a shot at becoming a proper spook, but made the mistake of committing what they call an indiscretion. As I am now,’ I say, ‘by telling you this.’
‘I appreciate your looseness,’ she says, meaning frankness, but it’s probably no coincidence that she’s plying me with whisky, probably the oldest tongue-loosening technique in the book. I try to work the conversation back to Afghanistan.
‘What will happen?’ I ask. ‘I mean if Massoud’s forced out.’
‘Like I said. Whole of Afghanistan’ll turn into a training camp for Obi-Wan and his hotheads. Won’t leave us with a lot of choice. There’s a plan,’ she begins, then catches herself. ‘I can’t talk about that, Tony. Hell, there’s always a plan.’
‘For America to intervene?’ It’s unimaginable.
‘Listen.’ She puts her glass on the edge of the table. ‘We know al-Qaeda’s trying to kill Massoud. Someone’s been guarding his shoes, for crying out loud, in case they try to put a dose of anthrax in them. If they get lucky, we lose our one ally on the ground. I don’t want to have to spell it out. We’ve been acquiring a target archive in Afghanistan for nigh on two years. We may have survived the millennium, but the system was blinking redder than a coyote’s ass in heat with all the threats cables we had coming in. Most of it single-threaded and too damn vague to be actionable, but all we need is for one of them to happen on US soil, trace it back to Obi-Wan, and you know the Pentagon’s going to go to work on the place.’ She retrieves her glass. ‘Strategic depth. You know where that gets us?’
‘Up shit creek?’ I offer.
‘And some,’ she says. ‘If we piss off twenty million Afghans, we’ll have a war, my friend.’
‘That’s a dark thought,’ I say. ‘It’s too bizarre. The most powerful country in the world invading the poorest?’
‘Darn right it’s bizarre,’ she says, emphasising the word as if to extract its full meaning and filling our glasses again. ‘Want to know how bizarre? We fund a ten-year proxy war against the Soviets to bury the ghost of Vietnam, and a million Afghans die in the name of freedom. Then the Wall comes down and freedom says, “Adios, amigos, we’re done here.” Afghanistan drops off the agenda faster than butter off a hot knife and the Afghans are left to slaughter each other with the same weapons the US taxpayer’s been kind enough to sponsor. Bizarre enough for you? Cut five years till the country gets taken over by a one-eyed mullah supported by our last remaining ally in the region, Pakistan. Said mullah gets it in his cracked head to play host to a tier-zero terrorist who’s declared a global jihad against guess who? America. Secstate wants to climb into bed with the one-eyed mullah, just to see how the cat jumps. “We can deal with the Taliban,” she says. “Massoud’s history,” she says. Meantime she’s fine if the Russians and Iranians send him all the guns he wants so’s to keep the Taliban tied up. Pentagon says, “Engage with Pakistan, maintain the strategic relationship; Massoud’s a lost cause.” Know why we missed Obi-Wan in the cruise strike? Know why we fired a hundred million dollars’ worth of missiles to carve up a pile of fucking rocks in the Afghan desert? Because the Paks warned him. Our dearly beloved allies. Jesus Christ, ours is not to reason why, but how bizarre does it get? Rest of the CIA thinks we’re obsessed with a hot-headed playboy who’s got a fatal kidney disease and what’s our fucking problem? No wonder they call us the Manson family. We could’ve nailed the sucker last year, but the White House won’t give the go-ahead in case we hit one of his Arab buddies who’s about to buy ten billion bucks’ worth of F-16s, and whose government is, you guessed it, the chief supplier of weapons to the Taliban. Massoud’s strongest ally? The Russians, his sworn enemies for ten years. How’s that for bizarre?’