Ambler turned around and moved toward an arbitrary point in the crowd with a spurious but attention-deflecting air of purpose. Suddenly a man stepped in front of his path and looked at him with an expression of bewilderment. He spoke to him rapidly in a language Ambler did not understand. Something Slavic again, but different from the language muttered by the politician.
“I’m sorry?” Ambler placed a finger on his ear, miming incomprehension.
The man—red-faced, burly, and nearly bald—now spoke in laborious English. “I said, I don’t know who you are, but you are not who your badge says.” He pointed to it. “I know Jozef Vrabel. You’re not him.”
At the other end of the hall, Clayton Caston was quailing beneath his icy smile. “Undersecretary Whitfield?” he asked.
Undersecretary Ellen Whitfield turned to him. “I’m sorry?” She adjusted her gaze downward in more ways than one as she took in the diminutive auditor.
“My name is Clayton Caston. I’m with the CIA, Office of Internal Review.” Whitfield seemed distinctly unimpressed. “I’m really here with an urgent message from the DCI.”
Whitfield turned to the African dignitary with whom she had been speaking. “Will you excuse me?” she said apologetically. To Caston, she said, “How’s Owen doing?”
“I think we’ve all been better,” Caston replied tightly. “Would you come with me? It’s very important.”
She tilted her head. “Certainly.”
The auditor took her swiftly down a rear hallway to a room by a sign that read BILATERAL ROOM 2.
When Whitfield entered and saw that Ashton Palmer was already seated in one of the room’s white leather chairs, she turned to Caston. “What’s this about?” she asked evenly.
Caston closed the door and gestured for her to have a seat. “I’ll explain.”
He took a deep breath before joining them. “Undersecretary Whitfield, Professor Palmer, let me make a long story short—well, not so long, and not so much of a story. From time to time, a specialist in forensic and investigative auditing turns up things he wished he hadn’t.”
“I’m sorry—did I take an unwarranted home-office deduction?” said the silver-haired scholar with the high, distinguished forehead.
Caston colored slightly. “The intelligence communities in the United States are, as you know, something of a patchwork quilt. One division may be utterly oblivious of an operation authorized by another. So long as legitimate procedures have been followed, the nature of these operations is not my concern. The point about the clandestine services is that their work is—”
“Clandestine.” Whitfield nodded primly.
“Exactly. Including, often, to other clandestine services. But imagine that an analysis of open-source data points leads you to uncover an operation that is potentially explosive in its consequences—especially if the operation should come to be exposed.” He paused briefly.
“Then I’d think the person who exposed that operation should consider himself to be responsible for those explosive consequences,” Whitfield replied smoothly. Her lips were pressed tightly together. “That’s logical, isn’t it?” She was an elegant woman, but there was something deathly about her, too, Caston thought. Her chestnut hair softened her strong features; her dark blue eyes looked like pools of infinite depth.
“Is this something you’ve discussed with the DCI?” asked Palmer.
“I wanted to talk to you first,” the auditor said.
“That’s wise,” said Palmer. His eyes were watchful but unintimidated. “That’s very wise.”
“But you’re not getting me,” Caston went on. “My point is that if I have been able to connect the dots—align the data points—then so will others.”
“Data points?” Palmer blinked.
“They run the gamut, from—I’m speaking hypothetically here, you understand—airplane tickets purchased and trips made, to payments routed to foreign officials. They include accounting irregularities to do with the use of PSU resources—and many, many other items, which I’d prefer not to get into.”
Palmer and Whitfield looked at each other.
“Mr. Caston,” the professor began, “we both appreciate your concern, and your caution. But I fear you’ve become involved in matters that are rather above your head.”
“Top-level command tier decisions,” Whitfield put in.
“You continue to miss my concern.”
“Your concern?” Whitfield’s gaze was level, her smile disdainful.
“Which will be shared by the DCI, I have no doubt.”
Her smile faded.
“Quite simply, you’ve been sloppy. You’ve left a trail of digital spoor. What I have been able to find out, others will be able to find out. Such as any investigating domestic or international commission. And I wonder whether you factored that into your equations when you devised this harebrained operation in the first place.”
Whitfield bristled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I very much doubt you do, either. All this indirection is getting tiresome.”
“I’m talking about the termination of President Liu Ang. Is that direct enough for you?”
Palmer blanched. “You’re not making any sense—”
“Come off it. What I found out is what any competent investigation is going to uncover. You complete the operation, and our government is going to get blamed. Sure as shooting.”
“Quintilian, the Roman rhetorician, tells us that the unintended pun is a solecism,” Palmer said, with a hint of a smirk.
“Goddammit!” Caston snapped. “You rogue warriors are all the same. You never think ahead. You’re so caught up in your scams and gambits and subterfuges that the blowback always takes you by surprise. I’ve respected the interorganizational partitions, kept quiet to give you the benefit of the doubt. Now I see I was mistaken. I’m going to file my report with the DCI immediately.”
“Mr. Caston, I’m impressed by the seriousness with which you take your work,” Whitfield said, suddenly cordial. “Let me apologize if I’ve offended you. The operation you’re discussing is an Omega-level special-access program. Of course we trust your discretion and your judgment—your reputation quite precedes you. But we need you to trust ours as well.”
“You’re not helping me to. You talk as if you’ve been caught smoking in a no-smoking area. Fact is, your ‘special-access program’ is about as private as a Liz Taylor wedding. And my question to you is: What the hell are you going to do about it? Because I can’t help you unless you help me—help me make sense of this goddamn ball of wax.”
“Please don’t underestimate the level of calculation and planning that has gone into this,” the undersecretary said. “And please don’t underestimate the benefits to be secured by it.”
“Which are?”
She turned to the man seated beside her. “We’re talking about history, Mr. Caston,” said the silver-haired scholar. “We’re talking about history, and the making of it.”
“You’re a historian,” Caston growled. “That’s the study of the past. What do you know about the future?”
“That’s a very good question,” Palmer said with a genial if fast-fading grin, “but my studies do tell me this much. The only thing more hazardous than trying to change the course of history is not doing so.”
“That doesn’t add up.”
“History, especially these days, is like a race car. Dangerous to drive.”
“I’ll say.”
Palmer smiled again. “But even more dangerous if you don’t. We simply choose not to be a passenger in a driverless vehicle.”
“Enough with the abstractions. We’re talking about a head of state. One revered the world over.”
“Men must be judged by their consequences, not their intentions,” Palmer said. “And consequences must be assessed by the techniques of historical analysis and projection.”
“You’re saying you prefer a Chinese despot to a Chinese democrat?” Caston asked, swallowing har
d.
“From the viewpoint of the world, there’s hardly any question about it. Despotism—the traditions of autocracy, whether monarchical or totalitarian in form—has kept the lid on Pandora’s box. Weren’t you ever told, as a child, that if everyone in China jumped at the same time, the world would be shaken from its axis? Despotism, as you term it, is what has kept the Chinese nation from jumping. Despotism is what has kept the Chinese foot bound.”
Caston’s heart was racing. “What you two are doing—”
“Please note,” Whitfield said brightly, “we’re not doing anything. Oh no. Do you see us in that hall? We’re not even present at the scene of the prospective . . . incident. We’re here. As plenty of people can vouch for, we’re here with you, Mr. Caston.”
“Huddled in conference,” Palmer picked up, a small, steely smile playing on his lips. “With a senior officer of the CIA.”
“Again, that’s something plenty of people can vouch for.” The undersecretary flashed a brief, perfect smile. “So if we were up to something, the natural inference would be that you were up to the same thing.”
“Not that we expect anyone to be making such inferences at all,” Palmer said. “They’ll be making other inferences.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Caston started. “The U.S. government is going to be suspected immediately.”
“Exactly. We’re counting on it,” Whitfield said. “I’m sorry, these geopolitical calculations aren’t the usual province of an auditor. All we require is your discretion. You’re not paid to have opinions about events of this complexity. But all the eventualities have been explored by our finest minds—or perhaps I should say our finest mind.” She gave Palmer an admiring glance.
“Wait a minute. If the U.S. is suspected—”
“Suspected, yes, but only suspected,” Palmer explained to the auditor. “The State Department used to call its two-China policy one of ‘constructive ambiguity.’ Well, constructive ambiguity is exactly what we’re aiming for here. Blame but not absolute knowledge, suspicion without hard evidence. Guesses piled upon guesses—but mortared by suspicion into a very strong wall.”
“Like the Great Wall of China?”
Palmer and Whitfield exchanged glances again. “Nicely put, Mr. Caston,” said the silver-haired scholar with the high, distinguished forehead. “Another Great Wall of China—yes, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s the best way to confine a tiger. And, as history shows, there’s just one way to wall China in.”
“Get the Chinese to build the wall themselves,” Caston said slowly.
“Why, Mr. Caston,” the scholar said, “it seems you’re of our party without knowing it. We both understand the ascendancy of logic, don’t we? We both appreciate that ordinary intuitions, including moral intuitions, must capitulate before the clean force of reason. Not a bad place to start, I’d say.”
“You still don’t convince me,” the auditor said. “Maybe the world is messier and less controllable than you know. You think you’re the masters of history. From where I sit, you’re a couple of kids playing with matches. And it’s a goddamn flammable world out there.”
“Trust me, Ashton and I have done a very thorough risk assessment of the whole situation.”
“This isn’t about risk,” Caston said levelly. “That’s what people like you never understand. It’s about uncertainty. You think you can assign a probability metric to future events like this. For technical reasons, we do that all the time. But it’s bullshit—nothing more than a convention, an accounting conceit. Risk suggests measurable probability. Uncertainty is when likelihood of future events is simply incalculable. Uncertainty is when you don’t even know what you don’t know. Uncertainty is humility in the presence of ignorance. You want to talk about reason? Start with this: You’ve made a basic conceptual error. You’ve confused theory and reality, the model with the thing you’re modeling. Your theories never left space for the most basic and elemental factor in the course of human events: uncertainty. That’s what’s going to come back and bite the whole goddamn world in the ass.”
“And you state that as a certainty?” Palmer retorted. For the first time, his air of equipoise slipped, but he swiftly regained it. “Or just a risk? Perhaps you forget the Heraclitus principle: the only thing constant is change. To do nothing is to do something, too. You speak of the dangers of acting, as if there were some null-set alternative. But there is none. What if we were to decide to let Liu Ang live? Because, you see, that’s an action as well. What would our responsibilities be then? Have you performed the risk assessment of that situation? We have. You can’t step into the same river twice—nothing ever stays the same. Heraclitus understood that five hundred years before the Common Era, and it remains true in a civilizational order he couldn’t have begun to conceive. In the event, I trust our logic is clear enough by now.”
Caston snorted. “Your logic has more holes than a showerhead. The simple truth is, you’re putting the nations on course for open warfare.”
“The United States has always performed best when it was on a wartime footing,” Palmer said, the voice of disinterested scholarship. “Panics and depressions—these things always happened in times of peace. And the Cold War—in fact, a period of endless small-scale skirmishes—was what secured our global preeminence.”
“Americans do dislike the notion of dominating the globe,” Undersecretary Whitfield said. “In fact, there is only one thing they like less. And that’s the prospect of someone else doing it.”
The auditor took a shaky breath. “But the prospect of global war—”
“You act as if any possibility of conflict is to be shunned, and yet, as a historian, I must report a paradox you seem blind to,” Palmer cut in. “A nation with a habit of shunning war actually encourages war—encourages acts of belligerence that lead to its own defeat. Heraclitus saw that, too. He said, ‘War is the father of all, king of all. Some it makes gods, some it makes men, some it makes slaves, some free.’ ”
“Are you hoping to be made a god, Professor Palmer?” Caston asked witheringly.
“Not at all. But as an American, I don’t want to be made a slave. And slavery, in the twenty-first century, is something imposed not by manacles of steel but by economic and political disadvantages that no lock can ever open. The twentieth century was a time of American freedom. Through inaction, you would seem to prefer a new century of American servitude. You can sermonize about the unknowns. I’ll grant the unknowns. But that doesn’t justify passivity in the face of aggression. Why be overtaken by events when you could help shape those events?” Palmer’s voice was a soothing, professorial baritone. “You see, Mr. Caston, the course of history is too important a thing ever to be left to chance.”
Ambler studied the Slovak’s face: confusion was steadily, irreversibly hardening into suspicion, like epoxy exposed to the air. He glanced at his badge: Jan Skodova. Who was he? A government official? A business colleague—or rival?
Now Ambler smiled broadly. “You’re right about that. We were on a panel together. Switched badges as a joke.” A beat. “Guess you had to be there.” He thrust a hand out. “Bill Becker, from EDS, in Texas. Now, how do you know my new friend Joe?”
“I am also a businessman from Slovakia Utilities. Where is Jozef, then?” His eyes gleamed like anthracite.
Goddammit—there was no time.
“Hey, you got a card?” Ambler asked, and pretended to fumble for one of his own.
Warily the Eastern European withdrew a card from the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket.
Ambler glanced at it quickly before pocketing it. “Wait a minute—you’re the cable guy from Kosice? Joe was telling me about you.”
A flicker of uncertainty appeared on Skodova’s face; Ambler pressed the advantage. “If you ain’t busy, maybe you could come with me. Joe and I were just talking in that little private lounge out back. Had to nip out here to wet my whistle, but I ain’t one for crowds. Seems to me you
and I just might be able to do business. You know about Electronic Data Systems?”
“Jozef is where?” The question was polite but pointed.
“I’ll bring you to him,” Ambler said, “but first I promised I’d snag him a bottle of slivovitz.” As Jan Skodova followed him, he borrowed a bottle of the plum brandy from a gently protesting bartender and then led the Slovak businessman through a corridor that led to a series of small rooms. Ambler stepped into the first one where the door was ajar, indicating it was unoccupied.
Jan Skodova followed Ambler in, looked around, and said testily, “Please explain.”
“He was just here a moment ago,” Ambler said, shutting the door behind him. “Musta had to take a piss.”
Less than a minute later, he left the room alone. Skodova would be unconscious for at least an hour or two. The operative had propped him in a chair, slumped forward on the table, his shirtfront drenched with the brandy, the remains of the bottle nearby. Anyone who entered the room would draw the obvious conclusion and select another place to meet. It was not perfect, but it would do. It would have to.
Now Ambler swept through the crowd quickly, clockwise and then counterclockwise, alert to anything beyond the usual range of human anxiety, resentment, envy, vanity, and pique. He glanced at his watch. It was now a quarter to five—fifteen minutes before the president’s big speech at the conference’s plenary session. Already, Ambler saw, people were beginning to file into the Congress Hall, whose doors were along the wall opposite the stairway. At a doorway to the rear of the hall, cameramen—dressed far more casually than the conference participants—began entering with their outsized equipment. His heart began to race. He caught a glimpse of a woman in a simple button-down shirt and jeans, her auburn hair tousled, and again he felt that tiny, fluttering bird within his breast. Hope.
This time, it almost took wing.
It was Laurel. She had done exactly what she said she would do, had arrived on schedule and secured the equipment. You’ll need me, she had said. Christ, that was an understatement. He needed her in so many ways.