can handle."
"Well . . ." he replied, suddenly uncomfortable. Then he found the bright side, and confessed, "It is a big relief for me to learn this was not suicide, but murder. I was feeling . . . a little guilt."
"You're not off the hook. His murder was the direct consequence of your relationship."
"But I did not kill him." This topic obviously bothered him, and he had the gun, so he changed it and asked, "Tell me about this major. Why do you believe I kidnapped her?"
He had rested his Glock about two feet away on the desktop, I noticed. About twelve feet from me, and I began inching my chair in short, noiseless scoots across the carpet.
Actually, I was somewhat surprised that Mr. Charabi was revealing so much of his thinking to me. Of course, this did not mean he trusted me or enjoyed my company--this meant I was dead.
Instead of answering his question, I asked him, "Did Cliff ever tell you how he learned we broke Iran's code?"
"Why do you ask?"
"It was a tightly controlled CIA program. He wasn't supposed to know about it. It's . . . well . . . something of an embarrassment."
He laughed.
"To be truthful, a friend of mine has his ass in a sling over it," I told him with a wink. "I owe him a favor."
"You're saying your agency still does not understand how this occurred?"
Another short scoot. "Why are you surprised? These are the same people who never noticed Aldrich Ames's shiny new green Jaguar sedan in the Langley parking lot."
He seemed to relish this analogy, as well as the irony that Cliff-- and by extension, he as well--had picked the Agency's pocket. If I had to guess, he still harbored a grudge that the CIA had rejected his early overtures for a partnership, and later, that Agency people trashed his reputation around Washington and in the press. He obviously had a big ego; now he was being petty. He said, "Why don't I give you a hint? The CIA courier for this cell was a woman."
"Oh . . . and--"
He nodded. "And . . . yes. She was not especially attractive, but as Cliff liked to say, all ladies look the same in the dark." He shrugged. "Theirs was a most brief affair." He smiled and added, "I was given the impression from Cliff that her pillow talk was more intriguing to him than the lady herself."
I took a moment and considered this. The prewar intelligence circle of Iraqi experts in Washington was small, so it was not surprising that Cliff and this courier, whoever she was, were acquainted. And I recalled again what his ex-wife said about Cliff: If it couldn't outrun him, he laid wood on it. So in the end, this lady was both literally and figuratively screwed by Cliff. But that left a big open question: Why did she tell Cliff about the program?
But maybe it wasn't all that hard to figure out. It could have been as innocuous as her justifying her frequent absences to Baghdad, or as mundane as her bragging to her lover about her important work, or she mumbled in her sleep, or she sloppily dropped enough clues that Cliff put it together on his own.
Any or all of these explained how the leak occurred. They did not, however, answer how this courier got past her polygraph sessions. Because, if I believed Phyllis, anybody and everybody involved in this fiasco had been lie-tested so many times that the Agency would know the names of everybody this lady played doctor with in kindergarten, and everybody who hid the pickle in her thereafter. Money, sex, and drugs/booze--these sins are the source of most betrayals, and also these are the things Agency inquisitors show great interest in and never fail to ask about.
Well, also, there are ego, ambition, and power--consider Cliff Daniels and Don, aka Lebrowski--but if those were disqualifying evils, the only people left in D.C. would be janitors. Maybe.
Charabi broke into my thoughts and insisted, "I have answered your question. You will now answer mine."
"Okay. The major and I were investigating everything about Cliff Daniels, including his bosses, and including you. Plus we have Cliff's computer, and that's known inside the Pentagon. So Tigerman or Hirschfield contacted you and told you to find out what Major Tran and I know, and maybe to stop us. Damage control. Right?"
He laughed; I scooted another few inches forward. He seemed amused by my logic, and he