"Those are difficult, maybe impossible, things to disguise or hide. Lots of loose ends, lots of people involved, lots of moving parts that could spring a leak."

"But if it worked, n.o.body would be the wiser. Our hostages would be saved, and the Contras would kill more commies. What's not to like?"

"It was breaking the law."

"A slight technicality."

"I believe it's called theft of government property and criminal conspiracy. That's a ten-to-twenty technicality."

"Very good." I explained, "And yes, it did leak, and yes, the scandal nearly brought down Reagan's house."

"I'm sorry, does this have something to do with Daniels, Hirschfield, or Tigerman?"

"Bear with me."

"I'm trying." She added, "But you're very trying."

Indeed, I am. I explained, "Ollie and Bud were both very ambitious types, but in their hearts, and in their minds I think, the ends were n.o.ble and the means were justified. When they were caught, they were forced to resign. They're still testifying at congressional investigating committees."

"Am I now seeing the connection to Daniels?"

"If you're paying attention . . ."

"Well . . . spell it out for me."

"Bud and Ollie were two fairly average guys, over their heads in very important jobs, in a very complicated and treacherous world."

"I see."

"A lot of other senior officials were implicated, including the Secretaries of Defense and State. Several senior officials were forced to resign. A few were led off in handcuffs."

She shifted around in her seat. "You're implying that perhaps that scandal is a parable or a parallel for this case?"

I said nothing.

"You think this case goes that high? Spreads that wide?"

"I have no idea--yet."

"Then what are you saying?"

"Consider what we just heard from Theresa Daniels about what Cliff has been doing over the past decade, and whom he has been doing it with." I continued, "He may have been operating with permission, or even with orders, from his bosses--and from their bosses--including people in the White House. These things always begin small--like that Watergate security guard performing his nightly rounds and finding a piece of burglar's tape stuck on a door lock. At that moment in time, he had no idea he had the President of the United States by the b.a.l.l.s." I looked her in the eye. "We know that Clifford was a subject in an espionage investigation, and we now know that, for many years, he was connected at the hip to two senior Defense officials. My instincts are telling me this is much bigger than just Clifford, and probably much wider."

She replied, "We don't know that he broke any law."

"He did."

"How do you know that?"

I looked at her. "I want to be sure you know what we're getting into."

"I do know."

"Do you? Because, should there be other people with their hands in the same cookie jar, once we walk into Hirschfield's or Tigerman's office, the s.h.i.t could hit the fan. After that, there's no turning back."

"Well . . . how far are you from retirement?"

"Your problem's bigger than mine. I at least have a boss who might run a little interference for me." Or might not.

"I'm an Asian-American woman with a military academy degree, and fluency in three languages. Corporate quota hunters have sticky dreams about people like me. You, on the other hand, are an average white male with a law degree." She smiled. "Worry about yourself."

"I love America."

We lapsed back into thoughtful silence. I pulled into North Parking at the Pentagon. It was 6:15, well into happy hour, and I had no trouble finding a parking s.p.a.ce close to the building. I turned off the ignition, and we got out and began our trek up the long walkway.

"As a matter of interest," Bian asked as we walked, "Ollie and Bud? What happened to them?"

"Ollie was slick and managed to spin it to become a hero to conservatives. He was canonized, the good Marine doing his best for the nation he adores. It helped that it was heartfelt, I think. So he got the usual raw deal accorded to disgraced officials: a radio show and a fortune from books and the speech circuit."

"And Bud?"

"Yes, Bud. He went home one night and ate a bottle of pills." I allowed her a moment to think about that, then said, "Happy ending. He was discovered before it was too late. The point is, in Washington even well-intended people can do bad things."

"But there's a larger moral here, isn't there?"

I nodded.

"You're using this story as a parable. Cliff is one of those two guys."

Right again.

She said, "You're telling me he was swept up in something, something bigger than him, something more complicated than he could fathom."

"Eight points. Go for the full ten."

We walked in silence for a few minutes. Eventually Bian understood the real significance, and she asked, "But how did Cliff respond--like Ollie, or like Bud? That's the question, isn't it?"

"Good. There's a big prize for the extra credit."

"From what we now know about Cliff, he was not like Bud. His life suggests Cliff was durable, resilient, a survivor. More Ollie than Bud. Right?"

I nodded.

"So you believe he was murdered."

I asked, "Do you have a firearm?"

"What does that--"

"Do you have a firearm?"

"Yes . . . in the safe. At work."

"Start carrying it."

CHAPTER TEN

Bian flashed her Department of Defense building pa.s.s and got us quickly past the security checkpoint and into the fluorescent bowels of the beast. Every time I enter this building I feel a flutter in my stomach; it's called panic. In civilian life, only two things are certain, death and taxes, whereas the career military officer faces a third, worse certainty: an a.s.signment inside this building. I had so far managed to avoid this fate. So far. Yet, like bullets on the battlefield, I knew that somewhere inside the Pentagon was a desk with my name on it.

"My office is upstairs. Fifth floor," Bian informed me. "Mr. Waterbury asked me to check in before the interview."

"Let's not, and just say we did."

"He'll notice. He's sharper than you think."

"Fooled me."

She chuckled, and we kept walking.

In the eyes of the great American public, the Pentagon is a huge and confusing labyrinth that somehow burns through some four hundred billion dollars of taxpayer cash per year.

The building, however, in nearly every human and architectural sense, is amazing. There actually are tours, and the guides will inform you this is the earth's largest office structure, comprising some 6,636,360 square feet, occupying 29 acres, able to house about 23,000 workers, in varying levels of comfort and discomfort.

In short, it is a gigantic memorial to function over form, and incredibly, the entire thing was constructed in a sixteen-month span of hyper-frantic activity during the heyday of the Second World War, at the amazing price of less than fifty million bucks.

I once cited this remarkable statistic to a defense contractor pal. He laughed and commented, "Morons. We're gettin' ten times that just to refurbish the bas.e.m.e.nt. And we stretch it out for years."

Other interesting esoterica--the building boasts some 284 rest-rooms, the world's largest collection of white porcelain bowls under one roof, over 2,000 freestanding commodes, and half as many wall-mounted urinals. Regarding this inviting statistic, I'll restrict myself to one useful observation: You would be an idiot to buy a home downstream.

In fact, three of the four military services have their headquarters within these walls; the Marine Corps has its own sandbox within walking distance uphill. The underlying spirit behind this shotgun marriage is that proximity will force the services to work together in neighborly harmony. The official term is unification, and it would seem to make sense, because after all, the four military services perform the same basic mission, the same rudimentary purpose--laying waste to nations that p.i.s.s us off. And why it makes sense is exactly why it doesn't work: We're all vying for the same taxpayer bucks, pool of human talent, and opportunities to strut our stuff.

Bian and I walked past a wall on which were hung, in a neat, orderly line, the official seals of the United States Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. The message here--all for one, one for all, e pluribus unum e pluribus unum.

Maybe the tourists believe this.

My own service, the Army, is the oldest, the largest, the smartest, with obviously the most primo JAG Corps. The Marine Corps are also fairly good guys, primarily because they act and think like the Army, except they're a lot more hormonal, with a truly monumental gift for blowing smoke up your b.u.t.t.

The Air Force, newest of the services, is like an orphan teenager with a fat trust fund--prematurely arrogant and totally obsessed with all the cool s.h.i.t it can buy. n.o.body likes them, but we all envy them.

Last, our seafaring comrades, an overdressed yachting club whose main contribution to national security seems to be propping up bars and bordellos in strange and exotic ports.

The other services might have a different take on all this--of course, it's a well-known fact that their outlooks are distorted by their small-minded prejudices.

But in fact, how each service does its job does tend to color its culture, traditions, worldview, and strategic perspective.

The Navy, for instance, sees the globe as three-quarters water, with several largely irrelevant landma.s.ses called continents populated by quarrelsome people who somehow become scared s.h.i.tless the instant an aircraft carrier rolls up off their sh.o.r.e.

For the Air Force the world is this really neat target range, conveniently dotted with cities and towns to drop stuff on--so long as it doesn't interfere with happy hour.

But for the Army, combat is neither a balmy voyage nor a fleeting glimpse from a c.o.c.kpit window--it's a destination, a commitment, a long, messy affair from which there are only two roads home: victory or retreat, with your shield or on it.

The Marine Corps, as I said because it does essentially the same thing as the Army, thinks thinks like the Army. But because its purse is controlled by the squids, it quacks like a duck. Get a Marine away from his naval overseers, however, put a few free drinks into him or her, and you'll get an earful about the Navy. Message to my aquatic friends: They don't really like you. like the Army. But because its purse is controlled by the squids, it quacks like a duck. Get a Marine away from his naval overseers, however, put a few free drinks into him or her, and you'll get an earful about the Navy. Message to my aquatic friends: They don't really like you.

The point is, the Pentagon is a large melting pot of pent-up pa.s.sions, jealousies, and conflicting strategic visions, so to help things along, a joint staff, manned by officers drawn from the four services, are supposed to shelve their loyalties, and their career aspirations, to direct the services to work together cooperatively, rationally, and efficiently. This is like hiring the marriage counselor who's f.u.c.king your wife to fix your marriage.

As if there aren't enough staffs, there is one more, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, or OSD, comprised largely of civilian bureaucrats--a mixture of career civil servants and political appointees--with a smattering of uniformed people to fetch the coffee and man the copiers. The purpose of this curious inst.i.tution is to perform the const.i.tutional function of civilian oversight. Bottom line here: Americans don't want to wake up one morning in a banana republic run by guys in funny suits.

All this aside, however, where it counts, on the battlefield, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines could care less who's humping who in the Pentagon corridors--they willingly give their lives for one another, and they often do.

Anyway, we had walked up a long stairwell and now we were in a long hallway on the fifth floor, the Pentagon's equivalent of an attic. I mean, you can bet the Secretary of Defense's nephew doesn't work on this floor.

Bian stopped in front a steel-encased door and began punching numbers into an electronic keyboard. A placard beside the door read "Office of Special Investigations"; obviously, this was a skiff, like a large walk-in safe.

There was a click and she shoved open the door. We entered a well-lit, windowless office s.p.a.ce, a warren of office cubes where about twenty people were performing various activities, from punching computer keys and chatting on phones to the happier few who were gathering their coats and calling it a day.

A number of people looked up and waved or said h.e.l.lo to Bian; she seemed popular with her workmates, always a good sign. We walked directly to the rear of the skiff, where there was an office door; she knocked, and we entered.

Mr. Waterbury was seated behind his desk, hunched over and scribbling on a form. We stood and waited, and he ignored us, pulling more forms out of an in-box and not looking up.

I have a low threshold for self-important p.r.i.c.ks, and after thirty seconds of this nonsense, I said to Bian, "I have better things to do. We're outta here."

His head snapped up and he affected a surprised look. "What do--? Oh . . . Drummond, Tran . . . you're here."

"Were you expecting somebody else?"

"I'm a busy man. This is an important office."

"You asked us to drop by. We're here. What do you want?"

He was used to doing the browbeating, so my directness threw him off and he looked confused for a moment.

Anyway, Waterbury's office was physically small, and the room and the top of his desk--like his mind, and like his personality-- were neat and barren, devoid of any of the normal signs of human habitation. The lone ornamentation was a photograph of the Secretary of Defense hanging prominently in the middle of the wall. Upon closer examination, I noted that it was neatly autographed with a short inscription that, for all I knew, read, "To the biggest tighta.s.s in the building--don't let up." This, of course, is the kind of bureaucratic p.o.r.nography people normally display to impress guests and underlings. In Waterbury's case, I suspect he did it in the event the Secretary dropped by for a cup of coffee, unlikely as that might be. People who owe their jobs to patronage are always a little insecure; they turn a.s.s-kissing into a high art.

In addition to the desk, I observed three stand-up wall safes with Top Secret magnetic strips on the drawers, and to his rear, a large mahogany bookshelf filled with about a hundred precisely aligned regulations and manuals. George Orwell dreamed of rooms, and of men, like this.

His eyes studied Bian, then me. He said, motioning at the absence of chairs, "I won't offer you seats. I don't believe in them."

"Then how do you get your a.s.s to levitate like that?"

"I meant I don't encourage subordinates to relax in my office."