The Third Target (17 page)

A few minutes later, the point man unlocked and opened another door, and then we were standing in a nondescript vestibule of some sort
 
—white walls, black marble floors, a high ceiling, and a small surveillance camera mounted over the entrance to an elevator, whose door was already open as if waiting for us to arrive. One of the men patted me down and then four of them escorted me into the elevator, and soon we were ascending.

When the door finally opened, I stepped out and couldn’t believe where I was.

I was standing in the second-floor private residence of the White House.

The president of the United States stepped forward.

“Welcome to the people’s house, Mr. Collins. I’m Harrison Taylor. It’s an honor to meet you.”

“It’s an honor to meet you as well, Mr. President,” I said, shaking his hand.

For all my years working in the media, I had never actually met this president. Years before, I had interviewed several of his predecessors, but as a foreign correspondent for the
Times
who spent most of my time abroad, there was no particular reason for me to have met this one. At six feet four inches, he appeared even taller in person than he did on television, and he was certainly a distinguished-looking Southern gentleman. Slender, even lanky, with jet-black hair graying at the temples, a firm jaw, and piercing blue inquisitive eyes, Harrison Taylor was the great-grandson of a famous governor of North Carolina. He himself had made a fortune building a software company in the Research Triangle just outside of Raleigh before selling the company for a half-billion dollars, winning a Senate seat, and later winning the governorship in a landslide. Now this policy maverick
 
—a fiscal conservative but social liberal
 
—was president of the United States.

But he was in serious political trouble. The U.S. economy was
stalled. His immigration reform agenda had likewise stalled in Congress. His foreign policy was in disarray. And his approval ratings were drifting ever downward and were currently in the dangerous midthirties. He had ridden into the Oval Office on a wave of populist sentiment and had benefited from a late-breaking scandal in the Republican nominee’s campaign, but more recently he had struggled to find his political sea legs, and I found it striking to see up close how much the last several years in office had worn him.

“Of course, you know Jack here quite well,” the president said, turning to Jack Vaughn, the former chairman of the Senate intelligence committee who was now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“I do, indeed, Mr. President,” I said, shaking Vaughn’s hand. “Good to see you, Jack.”

“Good to see you, too, J. B.,” Vaughn replied. “So glad you’re okay.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Bet you’re wishing now you’d followed my advice, eh?”

“Now, now,” the president interjected. “There’ll be no ‘See, I told you so’ speeches in this house, Jack. Not today. This is going to be a friendly conversation. Mr. Collins wasn’t exactly expecting this meeting, but I’m grateful he’s here. So let’s be on our best behavior. Fair enough?”

Jack smiled. We both nodded.

The president led us from the foyer by the elevator to the Yellow Oval Room. I had seen pictures but had never had the privilege of actually standing in the distinctive room before. It was here that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had famously been relaxing when he was told by aides that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Most of the chief executives who followed Roosevelt tended to allow their First Ladies to use the parlor for their own meetings, but I had read somewhere not long ago that President Taylor liked to use it for more personal and in-depth conversations with visiting heads of state.

The room was certainly less formal, and thus perhaps less
intimidating, than the Oval Office. But it was still more exquisite in real life than in any of the pictures I’d seen. The walls were painted a lovely pale yellow, and the couches and chairs were all upholstered with a fabric that was paler still. The room featured a high ceiling, a marble fireplace on the east wall, and two candelabras, one on each end of the mantel. Two large couches faced each other perpendicular to the fireplace. Below our feet was a thick, rich carpet
 
—pale yellow, of course
 
—with an intricate design of flowers and swirls of red and blue and green and a half-dozen other colors.

But what really caught my eye was the door to the Truman Balcony. Ever the politician, as soon as the president saw me admiring it, he marched right over, opened the door, and invited Jack and me to step outside.

A bit embarrassed that I was acting more like a tourist than a hardened, grizzled foreign correspondent, I nevertheless accepted the invitation. I’d seen this view in movies, of course, but it was quite something to be overlooking the South Lawn of the White House, the Washington Monument in the distance, the Potomac River beyond that. It was a stunningly beautiful sight, surely the most beautiful in Washington. What’s more, the gleaming green-and-white Marine One helicopter was idling outside.

“We just got back from meetings at Camp David,” Jack noted.

“Discussing what?” I asked, fishing for a story.

“You,” the president said.

I couldn’t help but chuckle, sure he was kidding.

He was not.

“Look, J. B., we need to talk candidly,” the president said.

“What about?” I asked warily.

“Your stories on Jamal Ramzy and ISIS,” he replied. “They’ve made a lot of waves in this city. They’ve got European leaders on edge. I’ve gotten two calls from Lavi in Jerusalem. He’s getting heat from his cabinet. You’ve created a firestorm.”

Vaughn added, “Everyone’s trying to figure out what ISIS is up to, what their next moves are, what their next target is.”

“Especially now that you’ve taken out Abu Khalif’s chief rival,” I noted, hoping to get some insight into the president’s decision to assassinate Zawahiri.

“Everything we say here this evening is off the record,” the president said. “Is that understood?”

“That would be a shame,” I replied. “People are eager for your thoughts on the strike on Zawahiri. Why not go on the record with me right now?”

The president smiled one of those pitifully fake political smiles. “I’m afraid I can’t make any news for you on that, Mr. Collins,” he said. “I’ll make my thoughts known to the American people at the appropriate time. But this is a very delicate moment. And that’s why I’ve asked you here today. So are we agreed all this is off the record?”

What choice did I have? “Of course, Mr. President.”

“I have your word?”

“You do.”

“Good, now let’s go back inside. You survived Homs and Istanbul. I don’t want you catching pneumonia outside the White House.”

We went back in. The president sat in an ornate wooden armchair near the fireplace. When Jack retired to one of the couches, I took my place on the other, directly across from him. A steward served us all coffee and then stepped out of the room. Two Secret Service agents took up their posts by the doors, but other than that we were alone, and the president turned his attention to me.

“Look, Mr. Collins, things are very sensitive at the moment because . . . well . . . because the Israelis and Palestinians are about to sign a final, comprehensive peace treaty and create a Palestinian state once and for all.”

“Good
 
—my sources are telling me the truth,” I said, moving
quickly, not wanting to let the president box me in. “That’s a story I’ll be happy to print.”

“You already have this?” the president asked, his face not quite incredulous but trending in that direction.

“There are a few more people to talk to, but yes, I’m getting close to running with it,” I replied. It wasn’t entirely true, but I rationalized that it wasn’t a complete lie, either.

“No. You cannot print that yet,” the president stated. “The key to success is absolute secrecy.”

“I’m sorry, sir; I can’t promise that,” I noted calmly.

“You have to,” he replied. “We agreed this conversation is off the record.”

“And it is,” I said. “But that doesn’t apply to original reporting I’m already doing.”

“It absolutely does,” the president insisted. “This is a matter of national security.”

“And a matter of enormous public interest,” I countered.

“Mr. Collins,” Vaughn interjected, “you just gave the president of the United States your word that nothing that was said in this conversation was on the record.”

“And I will honor my word,” I said, doing my best to stay calm. “But I walked in here with sources already telling me the deal was done and the treaty was about to be announced, and I’m sorry
 
—I’m not obligated to ignore information I had before I walked into this room.”

The president and CIA director looked like they’d just been hit with a two-by-four.

“J. B., listen to me. A leak at this moment would be devastating,” Vaughn said, clearly looking for a way out of the impasse. “But I’ll make you a deal.”

He glanced at the president, then looked back at me. “We’ll leak the final details of the treaty and the behind-the-scenes story of how it came together once everything is ready. We’ll give you an exclusive
one-day jump on your competitors. You have my word. But you need to sit on this for the moment. The secretary of state is just crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s with leaders on both sides and with King Abdullah of Jordan. But we need a little more time. A leak, especially right now, could destroy everything.”

“How much time do you need?” I asked.

It was a good offer
 
—an excellent one, actually, especially since I was bluffing. I’d gotten a lead on the treaty story from Yael, and I was fairly certain I could get more out of Ari Shalit in the next few days in exchange for doing him the favor of getting the WMD story out. But I didn’t have anything else at the moment, and the president and CIA director were offering me an exquisite gift on a silver platter. Why not take it, especially since the peace process was neither my beat nor even of particular interest to me. I wanted the chemical weapons story. I wanted an interview with Abu Khalif. And to get either or both, I was going to need to stay focused.

Vaughn again looked at the president. “Two weeks, maybe three, tops,” he said at last. “Like I said, the negotiators are ironing out final details. But I think we could see a White House signing ceremony before Christmas.”

“That’s less than a month,” I said.

“Exactly. That’s why we have to keep a lid on this thing,” the president said. “We are engaged in the most delicate, high-stakes high-wire act in the history of modern diplomacy. My predecessors haven’t been able to get it done. There was many a night I didn’t think I could get it done either. But we’re there. So do we have a deal?”

I looked into the president’s eyes and then into Vaughn’s. Why was this so easy? Why were they giving me so much, so fast? They wanted something else. I decided I’d pocket one story and brace myself for whatever was coming next. “Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

“You won’t write any stories on the peace treaty until we give you the go-ahead?”

“You’ll give me a true exclusive, including the first journalist’s look at the treaty itself, and no one else gets the story before me?”

“Yes,” the president said.

“Then yes.”

We shook hands, and then the president dropped the hammer. “Now, we need to talk about your other story.”

“Which one?”

“I understand you’re about to run a story that al Qaeda has captured a cache of Syrian chemical weapons.”

“Well, ISIS
 
—not al Qaeda
 
—but yes,” I said.

“That’s a problem as well.”

“How so?”

“It could trigger a wave of panic right at the moment when we’re trying to help Arabs and Jews make some very hard, very painful concessions,” Vaughn said.

“I’m asking you not to print it,” the president said. “Not yet. Not until after the peace treaty is signed, sealed, and delivered. I’m willing to make a deal on that as well, but I really have to insist you not publish anything before the end of the year.”

I was floored. The story was basically finished. In less than forty-eight hours, possibly sooner, I’d have my third confirmation. The story was ready to go, and it was going to be huge.

“Well, gentlemen, I appreciate your concerns, but I’m afraid we’re going to move forward.”

“And risk blowing up this peace deal?”

“Sir, if this deal is the real thing, surely it will have to be strong enough to survive a newspaper story that doesn’t fit your ‘peace in our times’ narrative,” I replied. “And anyway, it’s ISIS that’s going to try to blow up your peace deal, not me.”

“It’s not just about public relations,” the president said. “The larger problem is that the facts aren’t there.”

“Actually, yes, they are, sir,” I responded. “I have confirmation
from high-ranking officials in three different governments, including your own.”

“It’s a mirage.”

“With all due respect, it isn’t. I’ve personally seen satellite photos, drone video, listened to phone intercepts, read intercepted e-mails. Believe me, Mr. President, the story is solid.”

“I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong,” the president said. “Jack?”

I looked into President Taylor’s eyes. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t look frustrated with me. Nor did I feel like he was necessarily trying to spin me. In fact, he genuinely looked like he was trying to help me. But the man was a politician and thus, by practice if not by definition, an actor. He knew how to persuade people, and I’d been “handled” by enough people in Washington over the years to have become even more cynical than I was already naturally inclined to be. I turned to Vaughn and braced myself for the pitch.