The president viewed Faith with obvious distaste. “Colonel, as I understand it, the Chinese military are in the process of setting up shop in Haiti. And so far this information is known only to us, the Chinese and that man… the president of Haiti.”
“DuPaar,” the chief spook supplied.
“DuPaar, yes. To no one else?”
The CIA chief nodded. “As far as we know.”
The president gave him a quizzical look. “Meaning?”
The head of the CIA shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “We had to employ some nonstandard assets to ascertain exactly what the Chinese were doing.”
The president’s thick eyebrows furrowed. “Tell me in nonjargon.”
“The people who sniffed the whole thing out… They were no longer with the Agency.”
The president drummed long fingers on the desktop, a sign he was making a choice. He was known to demand quick decisions. He had insisted Congress pass a budget larger than all previous budgets combined in a period of time shorter than it had taken him to choose a puppy for his children.
He pushed back from the desk, turning to his chief of staff. “OK, Jack, what do you think?”
The SecDef had almost gotten used to the president’s habit of seeking advice from those least qualified to give it. As far as he knew, Robert’s sole qualification to comment on foreign policy was a semester spent in Spain in college.
Roberts rubbed his chin a moment as though in thought, a process the SecDef had not considered possible. “As I see it, a Chinese presence in Haiti presents a possible crisis, one we need to keep secret until we have it solved. A confrontation with the Chinese isn’t something we need, with the off-year elections coming up.”
The president turned to the SecDef. “Your thoughts?”
“Mr. President, the military stands ready to have unmanned aircraft destroy any and all Chinese installations should diplomacy fail.”
“Bomb a small, poor Caribbean country back into the Stone Age?” the chief of staff sneered. “First, Haiti is still in the Stone Age, and second, how do you think that makes us look to the rest of the world?”
Fear of foreign opinion had been a major weakness in American foreign policy since World War II, the SecDef thought. But he said, “Diplomacy isn’t my job.”
Roberts shrugged. “Simple enough. The president meets with the Chinese, either has them withdraw or issues a joint statement of their peaceful intentions and our belief in that.”
The SecDef spoke up. “Maybe you missed the part about the Chinese military.”
Roberts was also the administration’s spinmaster, much loved by the media. It had been he who had convinced the public-at least its more gullible segments-that increases in corporate taxes would not be passed along to the consumer. “Besides, meeting with the Chinese makes you look presidential. You can count on the uptick in the polls. But not if word leaks out beforehand. If the public knew the Chinese have slipped troops into Haiti…”
The president nodded. “So be it. I want a joint meeting with the presidents of Haiti and China for their assurances the Chinese mission is peaceful and to declare that America will not interfere. For the moment, we’ll keep a lid on the fact the Chinese presence is military in nature. No sense in getting all those conspiracy-loving neocons stirred up. And…”
Why did the SecDef think of Neville Chamberlain, Munich and “Peace in our time”?
“After the meeting, I’ll want to address the nation concerning the peaceful intentions of the Chinese…”
Roberts was studying his BlackBerry. “That isn’t going to be easy, Mr. President.”
The president paused in midphrase. “Oh? Why not?”
“Next week is your ‘Friendship Initiative,’ the visit to Venezuela and President Chavez. When you return, you have a major address to the AFL/CIO convention in Detroit before you leave to talk with the president of Iran. A week later, the Russian president comes here to commend your decision to cancel the Eastern European missile- shield program…”
“OK. OK. I get the picture. Work it in somehow. ASAP. In the meantime, we must be certain to do nothing that could be considered hostile to either Haiti or China. I…” He looked at the pained expression on the CIA director’s face. “What’s bothering you, Jerry?”
“Mr. President,” the CIA director said slowly. “There’s a couple of things you need to know.”
The president’s confidence seeped away like water into dry soil. He despised surprises. “Like what?”
“Like this Chinese-Haitian thing. We had an asset keeping an eye on things, until he disappeared. Then one of our best handlers recruited a former agent, the one I told you about a few minutes ago, to find out what was going on, and he did. Unfortunately, the Chinese know about it and are trying to kill him and his wife, who went to Haiti with him.”
“I would think we can convince the Chinese to lay off by not opposing whatever they are doing in Haiti.”
“Possibly so, yes, sir, if we can convince them before they succeed. Unfortunately we, the CIA, are protecting him and his family right now.”
The presidential eyebrows arched. “You are conducting a mission in the United States?”
The director was studying the presidential seal in the blue carpet. “Well, sort of. Just providing protection for the man’s family. We did sort of promise him that.”
The presidential scowl was obvious. At his level of politics, promises were obstacles easily overcome or circumvented. “You know your agency is prohibited from conducting operations, any operations, on U.S. soil. Providing domestic protection is the FBI ’s job.”
“Yes, sir. But you see, we’re also providing protection for this, er, asset out of the country. He’s trying to find out exactly what the Haitians want in exchange for letting the Chinese pretty much do as they wish.”
The president thought that over a second. “Since we are now welcoming them, it no longer matters, does it?”
The CIA director, thankful the conversation had taken a turn in a direction other than his, nodded. “I wouldn’t think so. As a matter of fact, this asset, this former agent, could become an embarrassment if what he knows became public too soon.” He looked over at the chief of staff. “Even you would have a hard time hushing up an on- site report of exactly what the Chinese are up to.”
“He’s right,” the president agreed. “Jerry, since you are providing protection to this man and his family, there should be no problem picking them up. We can detain them under the Patriot Act until I have a chance to calm the nation’s possible uneasiness about all this.”
The SecDef started to point out the present administration had a bill before Congress to repeal that law, the series of statutes enacted in the wave of panic following 9/11 that gave the federal government more police powers than it had enjoyed since the laws Lincoln had had enacted at the outbreak of the Civil War. Some of the similarities-suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the prohibitions against search and seizure-were frightening.
He thought better of it and instead said, “Mr. President, do I understand you are planning to arrest and detain American citizens because they gained knowledge this country asked them to obtain but which now becomes politically inexpedient?”
“Of course not!” the chief of staff snapped. “We’re simply continuing to perform promises made to these people. The only difference is we can protect them far better in a facility of our choosing.”
“And if they decline your offer?”
“Then we’ll have to act in the best interests of the country.”
Somehow, the SecDef doubted if these unnamed “assets” would see it that way.
Cemetery of Terra Santa
Faful wondered if the four men were really Bedouins. He, like several other laborers of the excavation crew, had grown up a nomad in the Western Desert, immigrating to the city and a more settled existence when he was fourteen. These men who had appeared at the dig had removed guns from under their flowing dishdashas, robes with sleeves tied back with cord, over which they wore the vestlike aba. The head cover was the traditional kaffiyeh, bound with bright camel-hair rope. The flowing tails of the headdress were drawn across faces, leaving only the eyes showing, as though the men were in a sandstorm.
But under the dishdashas they wore saronglike skirts, something typical of nomads of the southern Arabia Peninsula, not Egyptian Bedouins, who went bare legged.
