white, young versus old, the establishment against the new order. A messy foreign war was one more than we could handle."
I had the sense this was more than casual banter, and she confirmed that, asking, "What if we find that Clifford Daniels did something really bad? Something really stupid?"
"Like what?"
"I have no idea. But look what he was involved with. As you mentioned earlier, consider where he worked, and who he worked with." She took back my beer and drained it. She handed me the empty can. "This case makes me nervous."
"This case is making a lot of people nervous. We'll find what we find, and let the chips fall where they may. It's not our job to calculate or curb the political fallout."
"Are you sure you're right?"
Before I could answer, my cell phone went off. I pulled it from my pocket and answered. It was Phyllis, who, without any preamble, informed me, "Get over here right away."
"Where's here?"
"My office. The decoded transcripts have arrived." She drew a heavy breath. "It's . . . it's worse than we imagined."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bian trailed behind me in her car, a cute little green Mazda Miata-- Maseratis for poor chicks. I turned on the radio and listened to the
8:00 p.m. news update.
The newscaster spooled off the results of the latest poll for the upcoming presidential election, just over a week off and picking up steam fast. This poll, like the ten polls that preceded it, showed a nation more or less evenly divided, and an election too close to predict.
A smug blabberperson for the President came on the air and described the poll numbers as a stunning victory for his camp, because after nearly four years his boss had only managed to piss off half the electorate.
The contender's equally self-assured spokesperson used his equal time to proclaim a signal triumph for his man, as, even after two years of energetic campaigning, half the electorate still did not realize what a complete stinker he was.
Though it's possible I paraphrased their words incorrectly.
What I thought it showed was a margin so thin that the smallest political fart could blow the election either way. I wondered if the big guy in the Oval Office had yet been notified about the death of Clifford Daniels--probably yes and probably, somewhere in the White House basement, unsmiling people were burning the midnight oil.
The next news item was casual and succinct: A car bomb went off in Karbala, a Shiite city south of Baghdad, with sixty dead and more than thirty wounded. Somewhere else, north of Baghdad, three U.S. Marines were killed by a roadside bomb. Then we rushed into the weather--chilly and wet for the foreseeable future--which accorded with what I could see through the windshield, and with my mood.
Regarding the discussion a few minutes before, it struck me that I, too, had become inured, even blase, toward these recurrent reports of death and destruction in Iraq. It's a little like Chinese water torture-- either you ignore the incessant drumbeat or it drives you nuts.
But for Bian, who had served there, who had lost soldiers there, whose fiance was serving there, her emotional investment was bigger--for her, detachment wasn't an option. Nor was it for several hundred thousand other families and loved ones who would spend the next few days cowering each time the doorbell chimed, fearing the sight of a Jarhead officer on their doorstep, delivering the tragic news that one of the dead Marines shared their surname.
Anyway, when we arrived, Will and John were lounging in Phyllis's office. As was a third gent, whose mother must've been acquainted with Will's dad--their resemblance was scary.
Phyllis introduced us to this new gentleman, whose name was Samuel Elkins, from the NSA Office of External Support, whatever that means.
Samuel--not Sam, he stipulated--spent a few moments explaining to Bian and me what he did for a living. Who cared? He eventually suggested, "Why don't we all sit, and I'll go over what we found."
We all sat.
In the middle of the conference table were two imposing stacks of paper, about three inches thick each. A third stack was in front of Phyllis, which, from the bent and misaligned edges, had already been read and digested. But before Bian or I were allowed to indulge our curiosity, we had to go through the usual obligatory self-congratulatory claptrap.
Samuel summed it up, telling us, "The point is, you were lucky. The code on Daniels's computer is one we're familiar with. The patent belongs to a company named