An Enemy Within (3 page)

A motor cavalcade passed by, a Bradley front and rear.

‘And still they come,’ said McDermott, nodding at the new arrivals.

‘They say there’s going to be five thousand of them, sir,’ Bobby-Jo chimed in.

Joe Herman spat out a piece of gum he’d been chewing. ‘From the White House to the shite house, if you’ll pardon the expression, sir. These pencil pushers will have to shit in buckets – all the bathrooms have been looted.’

McDermott frowned. ‘Yeah, well, let them squabble among themselves as to who gets billeted in which palace. We got a modified shipping container if they’re not happy with a villa.’

For a second McDermott sensed an awkwardness between the three of them. Bobby-Jo stared at the ground. Herman was about to speak when a Black Hawk helicopter passed overhead drowning out any attempt.

The lieutenant eased their misery, saluting them both, and marching off. He was sure they’d wanted to talk about last night but he would have discouraged it. Better for him to discuss things with his sergeant, get a feel for the atmosphere, inform the men of his feelings via the sergeant.

He reflected on the mission, his unit’s first ‘kill’. Sure, they’d let loose with plenty of ammo from their M16s on their big drive north from Kuwait a month ago after the countless waves of precision bombing had softened their way into Baghdad.

The antics of some guys had troubled him, though. So hyped up they shot at anything that moved; dogs, cats, the odd donkey
or goat, even their own shadows as the convoy trundled through the Baghdad slums.

‘Let them know we’re coming, boys,’ the major had said. And so they fired, and fired some more. But, when they set up camp in the chaotic days that followed, no one threatened so much as a warning shot at the looters as they ransacked palaces, schools, and hospitals. It was not their concern, they were told. So they stood by, pitifully, and watched.

Like many others, McDermott was amazed no one appeared to have planned for such an event.

*  *  *

He was relieved to find his room empty when he returned. He closed the door to the muffled 7 a.m. call to prayer from the nearby mosque. Its chants fought a daily losing battle with the lion’s roar from the bulldozers and earth movers outside, constantly hungry for more detritus.

A copy of the
Washington Post
lay on a table. The war coverage was front page, several more inside. His eye caught a latest poll showing forty-five per cent of Americans believed Saddam was behind the 911 attack on New York. They also believed his regime was a base for al-Qaeda.

McDermott pondered the findings. Surely it should have been ninety per cent – give or take the doubters. Wasn’t this why they were all here? That, and Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction which, they’d been told, were just waiting to be found.

A loud rap on the door made him jump. Staff sergeant Dan Rath saluted crisply when McDermott swung open the heavy metal door with a clang. ‘Sir!’

‘At ease, Sergeant. I thought for a minute it was Saddam come to give himself up.’

‘Now that would be a result and a half.’

‘Pull up a chair – what’s the skinny?’

McDermott had the utmost respect for this man; his honesty, his experience, the discipline he commanded among the men.
He knew they feared a tongue-lashing if they fouled up. ‘The wrath of God’ was how he’d heard it called.

Wide-shouldered and a few inches shorter than McDermott, Rath was a solid family man, dependable. Just what a young lieutenant not long out of West Point leaned on.

‘About last night, sir. We never really got chance to talk about the civilian casualties…’

‘Yeah, well. It happens. We gotta keep sight of the main game.’ McDermott heard the words tumble from his mouth almost like an out-of-body experience. At the same time, a voice in his head asked him if he was really saying this. ‘You did well, Sergeant. The whole unit’s happy, the major’s happy…’

‘Yeah… maybe,’ Rath said, hesitant, rubbing his chin. ‘You heard the major sent word up the line?’

‘So he said.’

‘I wanted to say… well, it was your command, Lieutenant. You know I’m no glory seeker.’

McDermott smiled, a melancholy look. If he had been able to see his expression, he would hardly have recognised himself from only a few weeks ago.

The sudden brutal hard-ball of this conflict had already created a stranger within him.

*  *  *

In his office at the Pentagon overlooking the Potomac River, Gene Kowolski opened the file that had landed on his desk from Command Headquarters in Qatar. It was marked ‘highly confidential’.

Richard Northwood, the new director of the CIA’s Iraq Bureau, had instructed him to search for a hero, someone who could become the President’s golden boy. He hoped the contents he was about to read could provide one.

He took out a pair of reading glasses from his desk. They were new and he still felt ill at ease putting them on. But, since
using them, the blinding headaches that often drove him to distraction had mercifully stopped.

At the age of forty-two, he told himself he had done well to get this far without them. It wasn’t as if he really needed them, either. They just helped magnify the words enough to lessen the strain. And that was the way he liked to operate these days. No more beating himself up over some issue or another. Stress was what gave guys his age a heart attack.

His doctor had told him a couple of years ago that working at the frantic pace at which he did would end in a one-way street. ‘Anyway, you should be married with kids, snot and chicken-pox to worry about – it’s a great counterbalance.’

‘God forbid,’ he’d replied with a shudder.

Ostensibly known as Senior Special Advisor at the Pentagon, his talents reached much further. Some people believed he commanded the ear of the President himself, though no one dared ask him if it were true.

As architect of the media’s strict rules of reporting on the invasion and its aftermath, an office and staff awaited him in Baghdad. From there he would monitor events at first hand – a loaded broadside on hand for anyone transgressing his stringent controls.

He opened the thick folder, a profile of Cavalry Officer Matthew John McDermott, Second Lieutenant, attached to US Army Infantry.

Starting with McDermott’s early education, Kowolski noted it ticked all the right boxes; reports from each of his years in elementary school, ‘a serious, thoughtful boy who applied himself diligently’. That was a theme that ran through junior high and high school. The definitive clincher for what Kowolski had in mind came later.

It was a real gem; three years at the Joshua William Christian Brotherhood College in Pennsylvania, culminating in a general degree. ‘Hallelujah,’ he exclaimed.

Privately, Kowolski found it loathingly irksome that most of
the present White House administration came from such places. But the Joshua William ethos was perfect for this scheme: ‘From where Christian men and women will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values and all due deference to our Lord’s decree.’

McDermott was another product of the boom of the last decade of religious zealotry throughout the country. Rightist colleges like the Joshua William, Virginia’s Patrick Henry, Boston’s Gordon College and many others, had been encouraged by the present government in word, deed, and financial aid.

The place was full of them. Fundamentalists to the fore, Kowolski called them.

It reminded him of when he’d first become aware of the growing influence of such religious fervour. At a White House meeting several years earlier, to his astonishment, the group was invited to pray and ‘seek the Lord’s guidance’ in what they were about to commence.

He had stood with his eyes open, watching to see if anyone else in the assembly of bowed heads was of the same persuasion as himself. He had caught the eye of a particularly curvaceous brunette secretary who, he noted enthusiastically, was smiling at him.

Later, in bed with her after an afternoon of energetic sex, she admitted that working with a heap of ‘geeks’ and ‘Bible freaks’ was getting her down. Though she did not know it, a word from Kowolski to her boss got her transferred out of state and he never saw her again.

Kowolski might not have held the same beliefs as many of his fellow workers but he never let his own personal beliefs obstruct his work. He was a professional, unconcerned with the ideology, the policies, the foibles, of his masters. The irony of his life so far; the more he learned of politics, the more of a turn-off it became.

The cynicism was now almost complete; he simply followed orders with disregard for the morality of it all.

McDermott, he read, then applied to join West Point. Four years at the esteemed military academy, before joining his battalion less than six months ago after finishing among the top of his intake. In Iraq only a few weeks and he had already led a unit that took out fifteen of the enemy. Kowolski almost smacked his lips when he got to the company CO’s description of the action and the recommendation for honours.

‘You’re a hero, son. A goddam hero,’ he muttered to himself, closing the file.

*  *  *

That same day, working on a rush of adrenalin late into the night, Kowolski formulated his ideas, re-writing and editing it several times. He ended by typing, ‘All the world loves a hero. We will mould this man into a household name and ensure the ensuing hero-worship rubs off on the President.’

Then he entered an email address few people possessed. When he pressed the send key he knew his message would automatically encrypt. Kowolski sincerely hoped for a response from CIA headquarters at Langley before he left for Iraq. Organising the visit of his country’s Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had taken up most of his time recently. Now, it was up to him to make sure Richard Northwood’s idea actually worked. A successful outcome would provide a massive boost to the President’s popularity. In turn, that would attract the tens of millions of dollars in donations so necessary as lifeblood of the re-election campaign.

The reply from Northwood came the following afternoon. It entered Kowolski’s inbox as a series of jumbled letters and punctuation marks. He held down the control button of his keyboard, pressed a sequence of numbers, then opened the message.

It read: ‘Looks perfect, well done. Better if not seen to have
come from you. Get someone within the ranks to suggest it (as his idea) to DR. Take it from there. Regards – Richard.’

Kowolski sank back in his chair. So the CIA’s new Iraq chief liked his plan. Good. This would call for all Kowolski’s guile, his political experience, so he should have been feeling pleased. When Northwood had come up with the idea of finding a hero, Kowolski could have justifiably protested he wouldn’t have space to develop it due to his already considerable workload. But, carried away with the junkie-like fix of the sophistry, the temptation proved too great.

His mind in top gear, he envisaged a strategy where the benefits outweighed the drawbacks. Or did they? Putting the hero McDermott alongside the President would bring the big bucks rolling in for the re-election campaign – that was a certainty. Kowolski had only seen McDermott’s service photograph. The kid looked the part, but you couldn’t tell a person’s character from a picture. Would he be up to what Kowolski contemplated? Could he cope with the adulation that would follow him everywhere? In Kowolski’s book, playing the hero in public called for far greater reserves of courage than the bravery they’d shown in action.

Rarely did Kowolski question his own judgement but, for a reason he couldn’t fathom, a disturbing unease began gnawing at him. The more he reflected, the more the cloud of doubt hovered, dark and heavy.

With a sigh, he opened McDermott’s file again. The young face below the closely-cropped head gazed out at him, the lively brown eyes encapsulating the keenness of youth, the lips slightly parted in something of a self-conscious half-smile.

Kowolski’s head was suddenly flooded with the famous Rumsfeld words from a press briefing on Iraq twelve months earlier. Commentators had scoffed, but Kowolski saw a lot of sense in his proclamation.

‘There are known knowns – things we know we know. Then there are known unknowns – things we know we don’t know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – things we do not know we don’t know.’

Kowolski figured his most disturbing ‘known unknown’ was the extent to which the Iraq conflict could affect any man. How would he himself handle it? He had no experience of a war zone, so how would he react? Would they come under fire? He’d been assured they’d be safe within the heavily-fortified Green Zone. But how many ‘unknown unknowns’ lay lurking?

His mouth dry, he poured himself a glass of water. He figured his subconscious was playing tricks, slightly off-beam with the big trip imminent.

Still, with such high stakes in play, could he afford the consequences if things went wrong? He knew he couldn’t. But it was too late to turn back now. The engine had been fired.

Strange for him, the sudden urge to murmur a prayer entered his head. But he felt awkward with himself, not sure what to say. It had been that long.

Failure in this mission would be catastrophic. His career and his reputation were all he had in life.

And without them, he was nothing.

*  *  *

Richard Northwood gazed out of the expansive window of his new, larger office at CIA headquarters in the Langley district of McLean, a town of 40,000 mostly affluent souls in northern Virginia.

Staring eastwards, he searched for inspiration beyond the vast neat-hedged lawn, hardly registering the dense forest beyond where black oak, dogwood, persimmon and ash buffered the constant roar from the George Washington Parkway.

He turned, catching his reflection in the bookcase against the far wall. The dark hair, greying at the sides, was trim, just short of military style. Although the onset of middle age had initially caused him a degree of consternation, he was now resigned to it in a begrudging sort of manner. Pushing his chin downwards as
he did most mornings in front of the bathroom mirror, he was pleased to see no sign of a jowl that might have detracted from the fine jaw line he knew still attracted admiring glances.