oath to protect the people and the Constitution of United States of America to the best of my ability and at the same time, and to one degree or another, keep a clear eye on what else is going on in the world. That said, what the deputy director authorized in the memorandum, I would very likely have done myself, but with, God help me, God help us all, a much softer touch. Having that much oil under our control is a guarantee we can’t be blackmailed over petroleum for decades even as we work toward finding other sources of energy. It’s insurance against something going catastrophically wrong, like having our entire oil supply shut down overnight by some cabal or unforeseen circumstance. The deputy director learned about the Bioko field and that the leases were owned by an American company and recognized how strategically important it was for us to control it. That the company and its partner were having legal problems in Iraq was beside the point. There was a very unstable political climate and it was his job to see that the oil was protected. He did it the way he thought it should be done, by supporting the side most likely to prevail that held the leases without overtly involving the United States government.”
The president came back to his chair, picked up his glass, and sat down.
“As you know, the position of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency is a political appointment. The deputy director’s chair is a career position, and the person occupying it is the one who in fact runs the Agency. He or she is where they are because they’ve worked their way up through the ranks and know how things work and where the all the skeletons are, and the skeletons behind them. I can tell the director what I want done and he can pass it on to the deputy director, but that directive doesn’t stop that person from covertly doing what they think is right or see fit. The trouble is, I can’t have that person making our foreign policy and in effect hiring gunslingers where the result is the kind of human ruin we’ve seen in Equatorial Guinea. It’s one thing to quietly back an insurrection that has merit and benefits, especially against a dictator like Tiombe, but you can’t bring in mass murderers like Mariano and give them carte blanche to pump up the music and burn people alive. There’s something terribly wrong in that kind of thinking. It’s got to change, and it will change, I assure you. It’s one of the reasons the attorney general is here, to get as much firsthand information as he can to help us find a way to bring the situation under control.”
Marten looked at him directly. “That was pretty much what Anne said when she gave me the film of the Memorandum and why she did what she did to find it and photograph it in the first place. I seriously doubt that even as a member of the Striker board of directors she had any idea that the company was involved in the war. She did know she was violating the law and at the same time betraying the Agency, her country, her company, and herself when she hacked in and copied the document. Believe me when I tell you the whole process devastated her. But she was looking for anything she could find that might slow down the war and stop the slaughter. Any one of us would have done the same thing, you included.”
“I understand that, Nick, and fully appreciate what she did. But what happens to her is not up to me.”
“You can put in a good word.”
“Yes, and I will.”
Marten took another drink, put the glass down, then stood and crossed to the fireplace to stare into it. “CIA practices aside, right now you need Abba’s unconditional trust and support more than ever, but you can’t let it appear that, other than leading the cause for humanitarian aid, the U.S. is soliciting it. Correct?”
Harris nodded.
“May I offer a suggestion?”
“Of course.”
“First, I would like you to promise me something.”
“What?”
“It has to do with a personal pledge I made in Lisbon.”
EPILOGUE
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22. 10:35 A.M.
Marten stood with a three-man survey team as they mapped the landscape of a forty-acre parcel of forest and meadow a private organization wished to turn into a park as a gift to the city. The day was sunny and warm with big puffy clouds overhead. The surveyors moved off and down a long grade, carrying their transits, tripods, bipods, levels, and other equipment, giving him a moment alone. As he watched them he realized there was really no need for him to be there at all. They were measuring raw land, nothing more. They certainly didn’t need a landscape architect looking over their shoulder; his work would come after theirs was completed and he had their drawings. It made him realize, too, that he had been pretty much doing this kind of thing since he’d come back from New Hampshire. Keeping inordinately busy. Working, then going home to work some more, meticulously poring over everything he had done that day and planning for the next, and on top of it sketching out ways the firm might expand into other areas of the new “greening” world.
He saw women from time to time and enjoyed their company, but with no real enthusiasm for a lasting relationship. One time Lady Clementine Simpson had come up from London to visit old friends from her days there as a university professor. She’d abruptly awakened him in the middle of the night with a sharp knock on the door, the same as she had several years before when she’d suddenly arrived to announce that her marriage was over and ask if she could spend the night. Two days later she went back to London; then she and her husband reconciled and they returned to Japan where he was still the British ambassador. This time she not only woke him but brought the proud news that she was pregnant. Discussion of that and its consequences lasted until five in the morning, when she’d suddenly stood up, kissed him, and told him she still loved him and probably should have married him, then abruptly left to catch the early train back to London.
Now, as he watched the surveyors set up near the bottom of the hill, he let his thoughts drift back to his conversation with President Harris in the private library at the heavily guarded farmhouse in New Hampshire.
“I guaranteed the Russian agent, Yuri Kovalenko, that the Bioko photographs would never be released, especially not to Washington’s security agencies, where, for any number of reasons, they might be leaked. If they were, he would be put in a very compromising position that could cost him his life. The only reason I’m not ashes in an urn somewhere is because of him. I gave him my word because I trusted you would back me up, not just because of our relationship but because I knew you were concerned the Russians might circulate the CIA video and wouldn’t want the photographs released, either. Without them there’s no evidence that Striker or Hadrian or SimCo was involved in the war, meaning the video alone would be nothing more than a clandestine record of the atrocities Tiombe practiced against his own people and of little use for either propaganda or blackmail.”
He remembered President Harris listening carefully and then telling him that he would do everything he could to see that Kovalenko’s life and reputation were not put in jeopardy but that he could not guarantee the photographs would not be brought forth if the matter went to trial. Marten told the president he was aware of that and in the pause that followed offered his suggestion.
“Mr. President,” he’d said, “you want the backing of Abba and his people. This other stuff comes out, General Mariano, the memorandum-all or part of it-and suddenly Abba’s not a friend but an enemy. World opinion of you and the U.S. will be ugly, maybe even provoke violence, and you’ll have the Russians and probably the Chinese stepping all over themselves to secure the Bioko leases. All the things you worried about when I told you about the photographs in the first place. Yes, you can go to trial against Striker and Hadrian and SimCo or-”
“Or what? Just forget about it? Is that your idea?”
“Hear me out.”
