Murder in Foggy Bottom Page 13

  Secretary Rock, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Wick, and Eva Young climbed the movable boarding stairs, returned a greeting from an Air Force major, and entered the aircraft. In the cockpit, the three-man crew, Air Force veterans, went over their preflight lists while ground maintenance personnel readied the plane for takeoff.

  Already on board in the passenger cabin—actually a series of cabins created for specific functions: the Secretary’s bedroom, bath, and small private office; a conference room; a communications center manned by Air Force technicians; lavatories; a press center; and other designated areas—were three men. They’d removed their suit jackets and sat at the small conference table on which pads of paper, materials from the briefcases they’d carried aboard, and a pitcher of ice water and glasses rested. They stood and greeted the Secretary.

  “Please, sit down,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  As Rock went to her private quarters, Wick joined the men at the table.

  “The Secretary’s looking well,” Mike McQuaid, special assistant on terrorism to President Ashmead, said.

  Wick frowned. “She handles pressure well.”

  “How are you holding up?” Herbert Shulman asked. Dr. Shulman was the highest-ranking civilian in the Air Force’s Weapons Division, which reported directly to the Directorate of Special Programs, his area of particular expertise shoulder-launched missiles.

  “Just fine.”

  “This should be like a minivacation for you,” McQuaid said through a small laugh. “No press to coddle.”

  “I was thinking just that,” Wick said, standing. “Excuse me.” He retreated to the press center, where he sat alone. Usually, the seats were filled with journalists invited to accompany the Secretary on her many trips abroad. But this wasn’t travel as usual. Wick had spent the day fielding questions from the press about the purpose of this particular trip. Despite his programmed denials—“The Secretary is going to Moscow to congratulate the new Russian minister of foreign affairs, Mr. Orlov, and to establish a working relationship with him. That is the only reason for the trip!”—the press were convinced that Secretary Rock was heading for Moscow because of the aircraft downings, and they let Wick know they knew. Some had become testy, prompting a few angry responses from the assistant secretary. He was glad the day was over and that the plane’s press center was empty. With any luck, he’d be able to catch up on some of the sleep he’d missed since the attacks on the planes.

  Elizabeth Rock was also grateful for a few moments of solitude. She stood in the private bath off her bedroom and looked at herself in the recessed mirror. This bathroom had been the subject of controversy after she’d been confirmed seven years ago. She’d taken an active role in the renovation and decorating of her office at Main State, and of the aircraft in which she would travel the world. She’d chosen Italian marble for the aircraft’s lavatory and the bath off her office, the cost raising eyebrows among members of Congress already critical of the administration’s spending policies, and journalists writing about it. Shades of Pentagon-ordered nine-hundred-dollar toilet seats and hundred-dollar ash-trays, they said. The flap eventually blew over, and Rock, sixty-four years old, widowed at thirty, with a Ph.D. in political science and a succession of increasingly important diplomatic jobs on her résumé, had her wood-paneled office and Italian-marble baths to enjoy.

  As she leaned against a short wall, closed her eyes, and allowed her cheek to touch the cool marble, the 707’s commander taxied to the end of the runway and then applied full thrust to the engines. Rock knew she should take a seat and buckle up, but she didn’t move. No one would come looking for the secretary of state and insist she sit. A minute later, the Boeing four-engine aircraft was airborne and headed across the Atlantic on a new, important mission of many important missions.

  Before the planes had been shot down, she’d been mired in days and nights of diplomatic game playing, feting heads of state large and small, gregarious and dour, friendly and antagonistic. Strange, and wearying, this business of diplomacy, she sometimes thought. She’d read Isaac Goldberg’s The Reflex and jotted down one of his observations about diplomacy: “Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way.” Once, when she’d recited that line to a friend at dinner, he’d retorted with something Adlai Stevenson had said on the subject: “A diplomat’s life is made up of three ingredients, protocol, Geritol, and alcohol.”

  All of it true; so much ceremony, disingenuous rhetoric, accommodation of those not deserving of being accommodated, speeches—always a speech to give, an award to bestow, or a plaque to graciously receive.

  But then there were those times when the froth of the job gave way to substance, when brokering a peace between a small country’s warring factions took hard-nosed skill and attitude. Those were the times when the stakes were high for America, and the secretary of state’s resolve matched that of others in the government charged with preserving and protecting the nation’s sovereignty and vital interests.

  This was one of those times.

  She returned to the conference room and rejoined the three men. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “I appreciate you joining me on this trip at the last minute.”

  “We’ve all had our bags packed and under the desk since it happened,” McQuaid said.

  “I know,” Rock said grimly.

  The Secretary turned to Dr. Shulman, the weapons expert from the Pentagon. “Why don’t you begin.”

  He adjusted half-glasses, consulted typewritten notes, and began the briefing with, “The fact is, Madam Secretary, that the three planes were caused to crash by missile strikes, Russian-made missiles, a type generically known as MANPADs.”

  “Which means?” Rock said.

  “Man Portable Air Defense Systems, shoulder-launched missiles.”

  “Go on.”

  She knew what MANPADs were because she’d been briefed more than once on the type of missiles used in the attacks. But she wanted to hear it again before the meetings in Moscow. It was as though that by hearing it repeatedly, some spark of understanding might emerge to help her understand how and why anyone would shoot down commercial aircraft carrying the most innocent of civilians—men, women, and children living ordinary yet important lives, lives that no other person had a right to take from them. Finding who was responsible for these inhuman acts, and bringing them to justice, had come to consume her, as it had everyone else involved in the investigation.

  Shulman continued.

  “Actually, Madam Secretary, our own Stinger missiles are the most common example of MANPADs; there are probably more of them in the hands of terrorist groups than any other type. Our estimate is that tens of thousands of Stingers have ended up on the world weapons underground.”

  “That’s a lot of missiles,” Rock said.

  “Yes, it is,” Shulman said. “We don’t know how many missiles have been used to bring down civilian planes over the years—Stingers, French Mistrals, Soviet SA-18s and 14s—they’re all available on the black market—but we know that some have.”

  Rock pulled a State Department report from her briefcase before he could continue. “This report goes back almost ten years,” she said. “The intelligence agencies and terrorism experts were deeply concerned back then that these MANPADs would be used to bring down civilian planes.”

  She consulted another piece of paper prepared for her prior to leaving Washington and read from it: “Twentyfive commercial planes attacked by missiles between 1978 and 1993. Six hundred people killed in those attacks.”

  The third man at the meeting now spoke. He was Tom Hoctor, third in command of the Central Intelligence Agency’s counterterrorism task force and Russian desk, and Max Pauling’s boss at the Company. “Most occurred in Third World countries, Madam Secretary,” Hoctor said, “and a few breakaway states from the old Soviet Union.”

  “We’re not a Third World country,” the Secretary said, lips drawn into a thin line, dark eyes that had
stared down dictators across negotiation tables narrowed. She turned to Shulman, the Pentagon’s weapons expert. “You say tens of thousands of our own missiles, the Stingers, have ended up on the black market. How many Russian SAMs do you estimate are in those same hands?”

  “Easily as many, Madam Secretary. Once the Soviet Union fell apart, any semblance of weapons control collapsed, too. If you had the right connections, you could buy Russian SAMs, and worse, as easily as buying cases of Russian vodka.”

  Hoctor added, “It’s compounded, Madam Secretary, by the situation in China, Poland, other countries who bought thousands of SAMs from the Soviet Union. They’re a good source of weapons to terrorists, too. Poland does a brisk business with Colombian drug lords, and we have information that China recently sold SAMs to an organized-crime syndicate in Sicily.”

  “I find it strange,” she said, “that no one has claimed credit for the attacks. Isn’t that what these terrorist groups want, after all, credit and publicity for their twisted aims?”

  “Give it time,” McQuaid said. “Someone will.”

  They continued to brief her for almost another hour. Toward the end of the meeting, the Secretary fell silent, her eyes on the tabletop, her mouth moving almost indiscernibly as she processed what was on her mind. She looked up, slowly shook her head, and said, “No matter how successful we are in bringing whoever did this to justice, they’ve won, haven’t they?”

  The men said nothing.

  “They proved their point. The dislocation is complete. No matter what security is put in place, no matter how diligent we are, they’re able to kill us. We fortify our embassies, ring the White House with concrete barriers, run luggage through sophisticated electronic machines, issue warnings about travel to foreign hot spots, do every damn thing we’re capable of doing and they still . . . kill us.” A rush of air came from her. “They didn’t go after an enemy, someone in government whose policies are contrary to theirs. They went after the easiest targets, people who didn’t give a damn about their politics or grievances, didn’t give a damn about them at all, just Americans who happened to be flying to visit a parent or attend a graduation or—”

  She realized she might shed tears, which she would not do, not in anyone’s presence.

  “Excuse me,” she said, forcing a smile. “Time for dinner, and this secretary of state is hungry. Thanks for all your insight.”

  While Hoctor, Shulman, and McQuaid joined the Secretary’s staff and security people in the press center for dinner served by Air Force personnel, Secretary Rock retired to her private quarters to take dinner alone, which included a glass of Rombauer chardonnay, her favorite, which was flown in from the boutique California vineyard especially for her, and was always on hand when she traveled.

  Later, as the plane continued its flight over the Atlantic Ocean, the Secretary and Tom Hoctor sat in the conference room. Hoctor, a small, wiry man with a quick, wide smile, bald pate, narrow face, and a right eye that drooped slightly at the outside corner, filled Secretary Rock in on what initiative was under way in Moscow to identify the source of the SAM missiles that had downed the three U.S. commuter planes. Her request to be briefed about this had been debated at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Hoctor’s boss was against it for security reasons, but he was overruled by the CIA director, who instructed Hoctor to inform the Secretary before arrival in Moscow. Rock and the CIA director had forged a good working relationship, something that could not be said for the previous Secretary and director. Establishing rapport with the heads of other agencies was one of Secretary Rock’s strong suits, an attribute President Ashmead appreciated.

  “I’ve met Mr. Pauling,” she said.

  “So he told me,” Hoctor said.

  “Yes, an awards ceremony. We got to talk a little afterwards. An impressive man.”

  Hoctor saw what he thought might be a mischievous glint in the Secretary’s green eyes, and smiled.

  “I appreciate being brought up to speed,” Rock said, ending their meeting. “I think I’ll try to catch a nap before we arrive.”

  “Good idea, Madam Secretary.”

  “If a nightcap will help you sleep, ask one of the cabin attendants.”

  “I appreciate the hospitality.”

  A few minutes later, a snifter of cognac in his hand, Tom Hoctor leaned his head back and smiled. That damn Pauling, he thought, able to generate a gleam in even the sixty-four-year-old eyes of a female secretary of state.

  17

  The Next Morning

  Blaine, Washington

  The main house on the Jasper ranch in Blaine, Washington, was large and sprawling. The central portion, constructed of twelve-inch-thick concrete blocks, had once been a stable. Over the fourteen years since Zachary Jasper had purchased the spread from its previous owner, he’d extended the basic structure through a series of haphazard additions, giving the house a modular look, boxes tacked on to other boxes without apparent concern for architectural niceties. Outbuildings had been constructed, too, seven in all—a barn; a new stable for the ranch’s half-dozen horses; a woodworking shop; a bunkhouse accommodating a dozen people; a cabana of sorts next to an in-ground concrete pool Jasper had poured himself; a one-story clapboard building in which the ranch’s arsenal of weapons was stored, maintained, and secured; and the most recent project, a two-story log building containing eight apartments, four up and four down.

  The number of people living at the ranch fluctuated from month to month. Three women had resided there with Jasper over the fourteen years; the most recent, June, who at twenty-four was half his age, had been with him for three years. Her predecessor, a teenager, had borne him a son, and had taken him with her when she left five years earlier. The first “Mrs. Jasper” had been legally married to him when he moved the family to Blaine. They’d had four children together, three daughters and a son, Zachary Junior, who’d returned to live with his father when turning eighteen.

  As of this morning, there were thirty-one residents of the ranch, many of them families that had responded to Jasper’s marketing of the ranch as a bastion of white Christian values, with future plans to expand into the neighboring states of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming: “We will be the ten percent solution,” Jasper said in his brochures. “One day, one tenth of the United States will be free of the mud people, the Jews and the blacks and the other minorities who are destroying our precious United States of America.”

  Jasper’s stated goal of establishing a white Christian homeland in the Pacific Northwest was not limited to printed material. He held daily meetings with those who’d responded to his message, at which he slipped into the role of preacher, quoting the Bible to substantiate his beliefs and demanding adherence to his philosophy. This morning, over a big breakfast cooked by the women in the commune, he pontificated to others at the large, round kitchen table, including a young couple who’d arrived a week earlier with their eleven-year-old son, and who were staying in one of the apartments in the log house.

  “. . . and you’ve taken the first important step to creating a proper environment to bring up your youngster,” he said, patting the boy’s arm. “The way this country is bein’ run into the ground by the Niggrows and Jews and other non-Americans, there won’t be much left for your son by the time he’s grown up and startin’ his own family. The Zionist Occupation Government has this country in a greedy stranglehold, make no mistake about it. The antiwhite federal government and the mongrels won’t let decent young white men like your son be heard. See, it’s like this—and listen close to what I’m saying— Eve was seduced by the serpent and bore a son by him, Cain, who slew his brother, Abel. After that, Adam, the first white man, passed on his seed to another son, Seth, who became the father of the white race, God’s chosen people. Cain’s descendants are the Jews, who come from the seed of Satan. You read the book of Genesis while you’re here, see that I’m right.”

  The boy turned to his father and said he wanted to go swimming.

&nbs
p; “You listen to what Mr. Jasper has to say,” his father said sternly. “You heed his words. And there’s plenty of chores to do before you think about swimming.”

  The mother shifted in her chair, avoiding Jasper’s eyes. She hadn’t wanted to leave their trailer home in Southern California, pick up what roots they had to come to live in this place, with these people. But her husband hadn’t asked her opinion or their son’s. He’d been fired from a job as an automobile mechanic for initiating a fight with a black mechanic whom he perceived to be receiving preferential treatment. Two days later they were on the road, heading to, as he told his wife and son, “a place where the damn niggers don’t matter and don’t get special treatment.”

  “You go on out and take your swim,” Jasper said to the boy, who eagerly left the table and disappeared through the screen door. “Make no mistake about it,” he told the parents, “we’re in a war, and we’re getting ready for it. Luke 22:36 says, ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.’ ”

  Two other men sat at the table during Jasper’s speech to the newly arrived couple. One was Jasper’s son, Zach, a surprisingly thin young fellow, considering his father’s girth. The other, Billy Baumann, was a squarely built man of approximately forty, bare-chested, with sculptured pectorals and abdominals, and hard arms. He wore camouflage fatigue pants with flap pockets, and high black lace-up boots.

  “You see,” Baumann said to the couple, “Zachary is doing a remarkable thing in the interest of bringing Jesus Christ back into our lives and breaking the hold the Zionists and minorities have on this country. We’re affiliated with dozens of groups across the country, good, God-fearing white people like us who are tired of laying down like beaten puppy dogs. We’re getting ready for the grand fight, which will come. You can count on that and be a part of it.”