Man in the Middle.

by Brian Haig.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Like the other Sean Drummond novels, this is not a war book; it is a murder mystery--and a legal mystery--that happens to have a military backdrop, and that backdrop happens to include Iraq.

I thought long and hard before writing a novel that deals with an ongoing conflict. No novelist--no commercially ambitious author, at least--writes a political polemic. The political climate in America is pa.s.sionately divided, sometimes hysterically, which in my view is mostly for the good. In a healthy, functioning democracy, citizens are supposed to care, to partic.i.p.ate, to raise their voices--and war should definitely hold our interest.

I entered the Army just as we shifted from a large draft force to a lean, all-volunteer one. Other issues aside, what most worried me, and many others, was that America's army no longer would be reflective of a very diverse nation, and that the country no longer would regard us as citizen-soldiers, just as soldiers. Fortunately, this second fear never materialized. Americans never have lost their love and unique concern for our people in uniform, and those in power in Washington never have been tempted to regard our soldiers as fodder, as an expeditionary force, a term that sounds too ominously like an expendable one.

Most authors want their books to be enjoyed, read, and bought-- not necessarily in that order. This is doubly true for a writer with four wonderful children who demand food, clothing, housing, and, in the not too distant future, somebody to foot their college bills. It was not my intention to write a politically biased novel, and I hope it is not perceived as such.

So why risk a novel about Iraq? Quite simply, we are today at a crossroads over a country--and a region--about which most Americans know surprisingly little. I have met thousands of Americans who have visited Paris or Hong Kong or even Kenya; I have yet to meet one who can tell me about the lovely beaches of Yemen (actually, Yemen's beaches aren't that lovely).

In 1983, as a captain, I found myself laboring for the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an action officer working on Lebanon. We had put a Marine Expeditionary Unit into that country as an experiment in peacekeeping after a disastrous Israeli invasion. Lebanon, formerly the jewel of the region, by then was a scarred relative of its former self, a horrifying spectacle of what happens after a decade of vicious civil war. Long before we came, it was riven and rocked by religious conflicts, tribal compet.i.tions, family feuds, and by intruding neighbors who exploited the violence and stoked the hatred, often by terrorism. It was very, very different from modern Iraq; and it was not at all different.

Because of our all-consuming fixation with the cold war, every military officer of that era was an expert on the Soviet threat--or at least sounded like one. Yet, had anybody asked me to name a single difference between Sunnis and Shiites, a major source of intra-Arab friction and conflict yesterday, today, and likely for the foreseeable future, the long silence would have been deafening. Then one morning a suicide bomber drove a truck filled with explosives into a building filled with Marines, and I realized that Captain Haig was not alone in his ignorance--much of our civilian and military leadership had barely the foggiest idea about what we had gotten into. It was scary and confusing at first; ultimately, it was tragic. To this day, I am convinced that 284 fine Marines gave their lives because of our ignorance.

So here we are again, in a country we knew surprisingly little about, and once again their their disgruntlements, disgruntlements, their their feuds, and feuds, and their their conflicts have become ours. As then Secretary of State Colin Powell paraphrased to the President prior to the invasion, "Once you break the pottery, you own it." Yet we, meaning most Americans--meaning most voters--know very little about these broken shards our troops are attempting to glue together with blood, sacrifice, and courage into a functioning democracy. conflicts have become ours. As then Secretary of State Colin Powell paraphrased to the President prior to the invasion, "Once you break the pottery, you own it." Yet we, meaning most Americans--meaning most voters--know very little about these broken shards our troops are attempting to glue together with blood, sacrifice, and courage into a functioning democracy.

Thus, Man in the Middle Man in the Middle. I hope you find the novel fun, entertaining, and stimulating. As I mentioned, it is a mystery, but one that dances around some of the thornier issues regarding Iraq and, I hope, one that broadens your knowledge and interest.

I should also emphasize that the characters are all wholly fictional creatures, though many of you will recognize certain historical parallels and mysteries around which the plot is based.

That said, there are a number of people I must thank. First, for the loan of his fine and honorable name, Lieutenant Colonel Kemp Chester, a great friend, a crackerjack military intelligence officer, and twice over a veteran of Iraq. Another close friend whose name I borrowed, Christopher Yuknis, served brilliantly for nearly thirty years and was one of the smartest officers I ever met. And Jim Tirey, a dear friend who performed countless dangerous missions for this country, and has always been a personal hero of mine. I also borrowed the name of a West Point cla.s.smate, Robert Enzenauer, who actually is is a brilliant doctor, an officer in the Army Reserve, and who at great personal cost served for eighteen months in Afghanistan and Iraq. a brilliant doctor, an officer in the Army Reserve, and who at great personal cost served for eighteen months in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Also, Claudia Foster. The real Claudia was in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. She was a lovely young lady, smart, loving, and funny. Like so many, she perished and left behind a grieving family, who asked me to find a good place to fit her name into the novel. I hope I found it.

And last, Donnie Workman. The real Donnie Workman was West Point cla.s.s of 1966, captain of the Army lacrosse team, a goalie with uncommon reflexes and nerves of steel. Goalies in all sports are a special breed; lacrosse goalies, though, are a cla.s.s of their own. Donnie was a constant presence around our house when my father was on the West Point faculty. He was a model for young high school lacrosse players like me, and in countless other ways an inspiration to any young man. Less than a year after graduation, Donnie stepped on a land mine in Vietnam. A man who we all thought was larger than life, who would one day become a senior general, and a great one, was gone in the blink of an eye--but never forgotten.

For those at Warner Books who have labored so hard to repair my bad writing and to package and sell my novels, I cannot be more thankful or admiring. Colin Fox, my editor, known to all his writers as charming and fun and enormously talented. Mari Okuda, who does the thankless task of copyediting and somehow makes it seem fun, despite all evidence to the contrary. Roland Ottewell, who performs literary alchemy in transforming my fractured ma.n.u.scripts into readable texts. And Jamie Raab and Larry Kirschbaum, the publisher and now departed CEO, and Rick Horgan, my former editor, who encouraged my writing, have made Warner a label any writer would be proud to have on his jacket cover.

Special thanks to Gerald and Trish Posner, who have done extraordinary research that was very helpful to the book.

And mostly, Luke Janklow, my agent and my friend, who, in both categories, is surpa.s.sed by none.

CHAPTER ONE

Lateness can be a virtue or a sin.

Arrive late to a party, for instance, and that's fashionable. Arrive late for your own funeral and people envy your good fortune. But come late to a possible murder investigation and you have a career problem.

But nearly every problem has a solution, and I turned to the attractive lady in the brown and tan suit who was standing beside me and asked, "Come here often?"

"Hey, that's very funny." She was not laughing, or even smiling.

"It's my best line."

"Is it?"

"You'd be surprised how often it works."

"You're right," she observed. "I'd be surprised." She placed a hand over her mouth and laughed quietly, or maybe yawned.

I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. "Sean Drummond," then added less truthfully, "Special Agent Drummond. FBI."

"Bian Tran." She ignored my hand, and was trying to ignore me.

"Pretty name."

"Is it?"

"I like your outfit."

"I'm busy. Can't you make yourself busy?"

We were off on the wrong foot already. In all fairness, sharing a small s.p.a.ce with a lovely lady and a fresh corpse does push charm and wit to a higher level. I directed a finger at the body on the bed. "It's interesting, don't you think?"

"I might choose a different adjective."

"Then let's see if we can agree on nouns--was it suicide or murder?"

Her eyes had been on the corpse since I entered the room, and for the first time she turned and examined me. "What do you you think?" think?"

"It sure looks looks like suicide." like suicide."

"Sure does. But was it made to look that way by him . . . or somebody else?"

Funny. I thought that's what I had asked her.

I turned and again eyed the corpse. Unfortunately, a tall, plump forensic examiner was hunched over the body, mining for evidence, and all I could see was the victim's head and two medium-size feet; the territory between was largely obscured.

But here was what I could observe: The victim was male, latefiftyish, neither ugly nor attractive, tall nor short, skinny nor fat, and so forth. An everyday Joe. A man with bland features and a gray brush cut, physically ordinary and entirely unmemorable.

It occurred to me that if you walked past him on the street or sat beside him on the subway, you would look right past or perhaps through him.

And there, I thought, was one putative motive for going either postal or suicidal--fatal anonymity. "How long have you been here?" I asked Ms. Tran.

"Thirty minutes, more or less." She was jotting notes in a small notebook. She shifted her shoulder and--accidentally, I'm sure-- blocked my view of her notebook. She asked, "What about you?"

"Just arrived. How about a little help getting oriented?" What I failed to mention was why I was here in the first place, which had something to do with the victim's phone being tapped by people from the FBI, who were working with people from the CIA, who had overheard a phone call from a distressed lady to the local cops, reporting a corpse.

The victim was what is termed in the intelligence business a target of interest; was was being the operative tense. Now he was an object of mystery, and in every mystery there are five basic questions. Who died was obvious, as was where, leaving the three questions I was sent here to figure out--when, how, and with any luck, why. being the operative tense. Now he was an object of mystery, and in every mystery there are five basic questions. Who died was obvious, as was where, leaving the three questions I was sent here to figure out--when, how, and with any luck, why.

n.o.body informed me me why and in this business, don't ask. If you need to know, they'll tell you. Irritating, certainly, but there are valid and important reasons for this rule. The fate of our nation might depend on it, so you have to swallow your curiosity, avoid speculation, and get on with it. why and in this business, don't ask. If you need to know, they'll tell you. Irritating, certainly, but there are valid and important reasons for this rule. The fate of our nation might depend on it, so you have to swallow your curiosity, avoid speculation, and get on with it.

Anyway, suspicion of espionage--that was my guess. I mean, the FBI and CIA don't even like or trust each other. They are the Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, except in cases of espionage, when the c.r.a.p lands on both their doorsteps. Then you have two prima donnas sharing the same small stage, and we all know what that gets you.

Also worth noting, with the country at war--in Afghanistan and Iraq--espionage had become a more noteworthy matter than during the cold war, where spies mostly just gave up other spies, like homicidal incest. By all the spook thrillers and Hollywood flicks you'd think that was what the whole cold war thing was about. In truth, it was little more than the waterboys at a pro football game snapping towels at each other's b.u.t.ts. Entertaining, for sure: Ultimately, however, the successes were never as great, and the failures never as dire, as they sounded. The more serious stuff would be handled by the millions of armed troops glaring across the inter-German border; the genuinely serious issues by a pair of gentlemen with briefcases who could turn out everybody's lights.

Post-9/11, however, was a new world. Times change--espionage today meant falling towers, crushed nations, and soldiers' lives.

About that latter point, you can bet my interest was more than pa.s.sing.

Which brings us to me--a newly promoted Army lieutenant colonel by rank, attorney by trade, Judge Advocate General Corps by branch, temporarily a.s.signed to the CIA, though neither Ms. Tran nor the local cops were supposed to know any of that. The CIA is really into disguises, covers, and concealment. Inside the United States, usually this means we're impersonating other federal agencies, and you have to get your act straight. CIA people tend to be intelligent, clever, snide, and arrogant, and you have to suppress that. Feds tend to be intense Goody Two-shoes, wholesome, nosy, pushy, and obnoxious, so I was good to go on three out of five. I think it's fairly obvious which three.

Anyway, Ms. Tran had returned to ignoring me, so I asked her, "Are you going to help me out or not?"

"Why should I?"

"I'll make it worth your while."

"Will you? How?"

I smiled. "Afterward, you can take me to lunch, dinner, Bermuda, whatever."

She replied, without visible enthusiasm, "Let me think about it." Apparently she became distracted by something on the other side of the room, and she wandered away.

I should also mention that, at the moment, I was a.s.signed to a small and fairly unique cell inside the CIA t.i.tled the Office of Special Projects, or OSP. About the only thing special special about this cell that I can see is it gets the stuff n.o.body else wants--this job, for instance. In my view, it should be called the Office Where All the Bad s.h.i.t Gets Dumped, but the spooks are really into smoke and mirrors, so nothing is what it seems, which is how they like it. about this cell that I can see is it gets the stuff n.o.body else wants--this job, for instance. In my view, it should be called the Office Where All the Bad s.h.i.t Gets Dumped, but the spooks are really into smoke and mirrors, so nothing is what it seems, which is how they like it.

Anyway, this office works directly for the Director of Central Intelligence, which has advantages, because we don't have a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through, and a big disadvantage, since there's n.o.body else to pin the screwups on, so it's a bit of a high-wire act.

Also, there are large and significant cultural differences between the clandestine service and the Army, and I was experiencing a few adjustment difficulties. I've been warned, in fact, that if I remove my shoe and speak into the heel again, I can look forward to a long overseas trip someplace that really sucks. These people need to lighten up.

Nor is it unusual for Army officers to be loaned, or, in military parlance, seconded to other government agencies. The idea, as it was explained to me, is we each bring something different to the table-- different specialties, different mind-sets, different wardrobes--and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. In an organization, the term for this is synergy, and in an individual it's called multiple personality disorder. I'm not really sure about the difference, but there it is.

But for reasons I have yet to understand, the Agency requested me, and for reasons I fully understood, my former Army boss was happy to shove me out the door, so you might say it seemed to work out for everybody; except perhaps me.

But Phyllis Carney, my boss, likes to say she looks for "misfits, mavericks, and oddb.a.l.l.s," for their "willingness to apply unorthodox solutions to ordinary problems." It's an interesting management theory, and I think she's started looking into a new one since my arrival.

Ms. Tran now was poking her head inside the victim's closet. I approached her from behind and asked, "Anything interesting?"

She turned around and faced me. "There are three cops, a forensics expert, and four detectives here. Why me?"

"Update me, and I'll get out of your life."

For the first time she looked interested in what I had to say. "Is this because I'm an attractive woman?"

"Absolutely not." Definitely. Definitely. I said, "You look smart and you take notes. Like the girl I sat beside in second grade." I said, "You look smart and you take notes. Like the girl I sat beside in second grade."

"When was that? Last year?" She smiled at her own joke.

Which brings me to the here and now: 10:30 a.m., Monday, October 25, Apartment 1209 in a mammoth complex of rental units, mostly cramped efficiencies and one- and two-bedrooms, on South Glebe Road. There was no sign in front of the building that advertised, "Cribs for Swinging Singles," though I was aware it had that reputation.

The apartment was small, essentially one bedroom, an efficiency-style kitchen, closet-size living room, and an adjoining dining room. A Realtor's brochure would characterize it as cozy and intimate, which is code for cramped and uninhabitable. The furniture was spa.r.s.e and looked new, and also cheap, the sort of c.r.a.p you rent by the month or pick up at a discount furniture warehouse. I observed few personal, and no permanent touches; no books, no artwork, few of the usual trinkets or junk people sprinkle around to individualize their living environment.

You can usually tell a lot about a person from their home. Especially women who tend to think that how they dress, and how they decorate, are reflections of their inner selves. More often it reveals who they'd like to be, though that contrast can also be telling. Men aren't that complicated or interesting--they're usually a.n.a.l or pigs; usually shallow pigs. Anyway, I judged the inhabitant here to be fairly neat, not showy, highly organized, and thrifty. Or, alternatively, broke, with the personality and interior complexity of an empty milk carton.

I knew the victim's name was Clifford Daniels, a career civil servant, and I knew that he was a.s.signed to the Pentagon's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, or USDP, part of the Secretary of Defense's civilian staff.

I also knew this to be a singularly important office in the vast labyrinth of the Pentagon, the equivalent of the military's own State Department, where strategies for world domination are hatched and war plans are submitted for civilian approval, among other dark and nefarious activities.

Also I knew Clifford was a GS-12, a civilian rank roughly equivalent to an Army colonel, and that he had a Top Secret security clearance. Regarding those facts, I considered it noteworthy that a late-middleaged man in a serious profession such as he, working in a sensitive and prestigious office such as his, would choose to live in a complex nicknamed the "f.u.c.k Palace."

I should mention one interesting personal touch I observed as I pa.s.sed through his living room: a silver frame inside which was a studio-posed photograph of a mildly attractive, middle-aged lady, a smiling young boy, and a frowning teenage girl.

This seemed incongruous with Clifford's living arrangements, and could suggest that we had just stumbled into his secret nooky nest, or he was divorced, or something in between.

Finally, we were just inside the border of the county of Arlington, which explained all the Arlington cops, homicide d.i.c.ks, and forensics people trying to get a fix on this thing.

Were this suicide, they were wrapping up and about to knock off for an early lunch. If murder, on the other hand, their day was just starting.

As I mentioned, the smell was really rank, and I was the only one without a patch of white neutralizing disinfectant under my nose--or the only one still breathing.

At least I looked manly and cool while everybody else looked like character actors in a stunningly pathetic milk commercial. But in my short time with the Agency, I had learned that image is all-important: The image creates the illusion, and the illusion creates the reality. Or maybe it was the other way around. The Agency has a school for this stuff, but I was working on the fly.

Anyway, Bian Tran was staring at her watch, and she sort of sighed and said, "Okay, let's get through this. Quickly." She looked at me and continued, "I spoke with the lead detective when I arrived. It happened last night. Around midnight." She said, "I think your nose is already telling you that. Am I right?"

After five or six hours at room temperature, a body begins purging gases, and in a small and enclosed s.p.a.ce such as this, the effect was worse than the men's room in a Mexican restaurant. Whatever Cliff had for dinner the night before was revolting.

She noted, "Statistically, that's the witching hour for suicides. Not the exact hour, per se. Just late at night."

"I had no idea."

"About 70 percent of the time."

"Okay." I was looking at the window. Unfortunately, we were on the twelfth floor of a modern high-rise and the windows were permasealed. I would either have to breathe slower or get her to talk faster.

She said, "Think about it. Exhaustion, mental defenses are worn down, darkness means gloominess, and if the victim lives alone, a mood of depression and isolation sets in." I must have looked interested in this tutorial because she continued, "Spring. That's the usual season. Holidays, though, like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year's are also fatally popular."

"Weird."