The Merchant of Secrets (2 page)

 When the elevator doors parted on the first floor,
Colin was waiting as promised. He saw me, and leaned forward in his gentlemanly
manner to open the heavy glass door leading outside.  As I passed through
the doorway I unintentionally brushed-up against his stomach and chest, but
lingered in that closeness a little too long and he sensed the attraction. Our
eyes met and our faces were close enough for a kiss but we hesitated,
 surrounded by lobby guards and more than a dozen cameras capturing our
every move, and decided to find a more discrete place, which would have been
just about anywhere, and we moved to the pub across the street from the office.

When we walked in, the pub was full of people watching
football intently, as if they were having a religious experience. They stared
upward at two large screens hanging above the bar and never saw us at all,
 so we felt completely alone and ducked- in to a table in the back corner.
The female bartender walked over to us. “Hi, what’re you two having?”

“The time of my life,” Colin answered playfully, blue
eyes twinkling.  “Give me a Scotch on the rocks, please.”

“Okay, and you?” she asked, grinning in my direction.

“I’ll stick with a glass of Merlot,” I replied.

“Playing it safe?” Colin teased, as he smiled.

“If I were playing it safe, I wouldn’t be here with you.”

“Yes, that’s right come to think of it. So now that your
guard’s down, what other daring thing can I talk you into?”

“Knock it off, Colin. We don’t want the F.B.I. crawling
all over our email accounts searching for evidence of an office romance.”

“Really, you think the F.B.I. would catch us?”

“Well look at us now.
Just the two of
us, drinking at a bar after work.
That’s
gotta
arouse some suspicion for anyone looking.”

He turned and looked at the crowd, “Okay,
there’s
a few people here from the office, you’re absolutely
right. It’s too dangerous. Let’s go back to my place in Georgetown.”

“Not so fast, wise guy. Seriously, I’ve been in New York
for a few days and I need to get caught up. What’s the
latest
?
I’ve read the reports. This movement in Tunisia is taking on a
surprising amount of momentum. The rebels are swarming into the streets and
taking over television and radio stations …?”  

“
Mulally’s
more concerned about
Egypt,” Colin said bluntly, referring to our Deputy Director, Michael
Mulally
who had 20 years in intelligence.  “Mubarak’s
been a great for the Americans and the U.K. 
for
many years, exiling or imprisoning the Islamic fundamentalists, many of whom
swear death to the U.S.A..  Now if civil war spreads to Egypt control of
the country will be divided between the Egyptian military and the Islamist
Brotherhood. He’s worried about the Islamic extremists getting too strong a
foothold in the region, crushing any fledgling democracies that pop up in place
of Mubarak and Ben Ali and creating worry within Israel that if they controlled
Egypt, they’d help finance the Hamas.  Don’t forget how the Taliban took
over Afghanistan in 1989 after the Americans abruptly left in 1989 and it
created a nightmare scenario. It’s important that the Afghan situation doesn’t
repeat itself in Egypt and Tunisia.”

“What’s the consensus on Mubarak’s hold on the situation?”
I asked.

“Mubarak met with POTUS (President
Of
The
United States), and assured him that just like Nasser, he would put
down the revolt.”

“
Yea,
and how many people would
his army slaughter doing that?” I asked.

“I
gotta
tell
ya
’… thirteen U.S. intelligence agencies with offices
throughout the Middle East, and they miss something as big as Tunisia?  I
wouldn’t be betting that they’re right on Egypt either,” Colin replied.

“I agree,” I replied. “We were blindsided, now we have to
catch up.”  

Colin took a swig of his drink, then put it down, and
assumed a more analytical posture.  “
Mulally’s
also a little concerned about the Iran-Pakistan oil pipeline
which’ll
give Iran enormous influence over Pakistan’s
energy, and hence over Pakistan’s economy and government.  We’ve got a lot
of people on the ground monitoring both those situations now, with the U.S.
sanctions in
place, that
should cut down on oil
exports from Iran by about fifty percent.” Just then a thunderous burst of
enthusiasm erupted over a touchdown
,  Colin
turned his shoulders and rotated his head to survey the excitement.  

“And what about the American guy who shot the innocent
people in Lahore (Pakistan)? I guess the investigation is going nowhere? That
would be a shame to drop the investigation. That shooting cost us a lot of
diplomatic levering power,” I said. 

Colin swiveled back
around .“
Well
the diplomatic cost can be remedied in exchange for money.”

“Oh come on, Colin. The Pakistanis are impassioned
people. It’s too simple to suggest that they’ll be consoled easily with
money.  They’re angry that we’ve treated them disrespectfully. And the
Islamists will never be consoled. They hate us.”

“Money goes a long way in a country that can’t provide
electricity for many of its citizens. Anyway,
Mulally’s
more concerned about the
Haqqani
tribe capitalizing on this incident to incite
further distrust of America within Pakistan, and to use it to increase its own
popularity at the expense of the West.  He’s concerned about the
Haqqani
gaining more influence in Pakistani Parliament.
That’ll be tougher to reverse. Once they’re in power, it’s difficult to change”
Colin responded, referring to the network of pro-Taliban mafia that brutally
control their own interests in Pakistan including the all- important trade
routes through Pakistan to Afghanistan that were essential for NATO to get
armaments, food and health care to its troops.  “And those supply routes
had been in place since the Reagan era to haul weapons into Afghanistan for the
mujahedeen, and we’ve never had much difficulty in over 20 years.  Now the
Pakistani military wants to scalp the U.S. and United Nations on fees for
allowing cargo trailers to use their damn route.” He shook his head from side
to side and tightened his lips.

(A few months later, the leader of the
Haqqani
network was killed in a drone strike and the U.S.
labeled the
Haqqani
organization a terrorist group
which made it
difficult  for
their organization
to raise money.)

“It’s anybody’s guess really if Pakistan is a friend or
enemy,” I conceded. “It seems to change with the wind. But
 
passage
through Pakistan isn’t necessarily vital to NATO. There are
other routes. When they closed the route in the past, the U.S. borrowed
airstrips elsewhere,” I replied.

“Yea, airstrips in Russia!
That’s just what we need…to be depending on Putin to give us access to
Afghanistan,” Colin said sarcastically.

”Putin’s removed the Russian spy base in Cuba, maybe
there’s hope for him?”

 “Anyway,” Colin said, it’s not my problem right
now. I’ve been temporarily put on the Gavin’s team.”

Gavin’s team was assigned to monitoring the situation in
Egypt but Colin couldn’t talk about it, except to say that the State Department
was giving last rites to a dying regime while the patient was still insisting
he wasn’t sick. The aging general who was emerging as the successor to Mubarak
had no experience in politics and nation building which concerned everybody in
Washington. But most of Colin’s work as far as I knew was focused on Iran.

The paradox is that while the community is very tight
socially, at work everything is compartmentalized so that even though two
people  might
work for the same organization; even
share an office without one knowing what the other does. There’s a code of silence
that extends to the cafeteria, to the copier room and everywhere else. You just
don’t ask anyone what they’re working-on unless that person is on your team and
such was the case with Colin and me. I had no knowledge of the “Flame” and “
Stuxnet
” malware programs in Iran until I read about them
in the Washington Post one morning, sipping coffee at Starbucks. He never told
me anything about it. 

Colin tossed the remaining liquid down his throat, pushed
his glass aside and changed the subject. Looking at me with puppy-dog eyes, he
began to open up about his personal life, beginning with the story of how his
marriage had ended just before he moved to the U.S. and mentioned his desire to
move on with his life.  It was a bland summation of the last ten years,
giving the impression that he was avoiding some painful dialogue to move onto a
happier topic.

“When did you decide to come here?”

“When the Americans decided to establish the U.S. Cyber
command at Ft. Meade,” he answered, “our Ministry of Defense decided to keep a
few people over here to coordinate UK and US programs,
they
offered me the job. But when I got to Ft. Meade, I didn’t like living in that
location so much, it was too far from D.C.,
  so
I
transferred to northern Virginia.”

The British Ministry of Defense has worked closely and
collaboratively with the U.S. Department of Defense for decades, going back to
the days when Winston Churchill moved into the White House for months during
World War II, so that he could closely coordinate the alliance with President
Roosevelt. It was common to work side by side with the British.

Smiling at me Colin said “I think I made the right
choice”. Eyes can be more powerful than words, and the way we were looking at
each other said it all. “We’re not supposed to get involved with our office
mates you know,” he said with a wry smile.

“Strictly, absolutely, forbidden.”

He turned his face toward the window for a pensive moment
so that all I could see was the thick chestnut brown hair gathered messily on the
back of his head.  After finishing his thought, whatever it was, he then
turned back around. “Well I guess we just can’t call this “getting involved.”

“What do we call it?” I asked.

“Stopping for a drink on the way home,” he replied,
staggering to his feet with an air of indifference to the dangers of the
relationship.  He smiled as he pulled me up too, holding my hand firmly in
the grip of his as we pushed through the door and across the street to the
parking lot. He led me to the passenger side of his car where instead of
reaching down for the latch

to
open the door, he gripped my
right arm and swung me around so that we were face to face.  His hands
held firmly to both sides of my waist as he gently pressed my back against the
side of the car and stood so close that I could feel the warmth of his body
heat and smell his cologne.   As his eyes looked directly into mine
then glanced lower to my lips, he slowly leaned his whole body into mine and we
kissed. The touch of his skin was electrifying as he wrapped his strong arms
around me. Then we drove to Georgetown.   

CHAPTER 4

After a few weeks Sara decided to embark on the next
chapter of her life in a large sprawling house she purchased in Great Falls, Virginia
located between Washington D.C. and Leesburg. The area had been largely ignored
for decades, considered too far from Washington for a feasible commute into the
city until a Frenchman decided to turn an old country house into a restaurant,
growing fresh herbs and vegetables in a large private garden, and cooking fresh
fish pulled from the Potomac River which he prepared with creamy sauces, and
served with a variety of well cooked vegetables, salad and French bread. In the
winter he would cook beef, pork, lamb, or make a venison stew.  Word of
this new French country restaurant spread, and the congressman, senators,
supreme court
justices, and cabinet members began migrating
to the small farmhouse in the Virginia countryside to appreciate the French food
and the privacy of dining, where they wouldn’t be hounded by the press.
Discretely located along an unlit narrow road off of route 123, the restaurant
became the perfect romantic spot for secret liaisons without spouses or the
press finding out. It was also discreet enough to hold an occasional 
meeting of  intelligence  agents,  as the isolation of the
restaurant allowed  sentries  sitting in black sedans along the road
with their headlights off  to see cars coming up the lonely road. Before
each car arrived at the restaurant, the agents already had the identity of the
person getting out of it.  

The nineties changed all that. A burst of
internet-related companies popped-up overnight
from  the
grassy fields lining the Dulles Access Road, turning the rolling green Virginia
countryside into a grey corridor of glass and steel.
Newly
minted high-tech multi-millionaires who were lucky enough to cash-in their
stock options before the bubble burst, now needed space to build their castles.
Great Falls was the perfect location for their unrestrained opulence, and the
town was put on the map, and that little French restaurant in the countryside,
was now surrounded by homes.

My life was very different from Sara’s. I was raised by
my maternal grandparents with boundless tenderness and affection in a brick
house painted white, where every
night  dinner
was on the table at 6:00 pm and there were  slumber parties, birthday
parties and church on Sunday. Yet despite all of the love and comfort a child
could want or need,  there came a time when the double generation gap
caused enough friction that it became clear the time had arrived for me to try
life on my own.