“Of course not!”
“Of course not. It comes from the world, Betsy. It comes from sources who are really out there embroiled in the fly-blown streets of shitty Third World cities all over the globe. And I’m not talking about noble James Bond types, either. I’m not romanticizing this. That information is gathered in any way possible. Any way. Up to and including killing people, or sending them to their deaths. Blackmailing them. Threatening them. Buying them off. Stealing from them. Defrauding them. Preying on their weaknesses for cute boys or cute girls. You ever seen war, Betsy? I have, and I can tell you it is like a fucking universe of total moral degradation. That’s the kind of environment that the information comes out of. And you sit there at the Castleman Building and pull it up on your screen like some kind of a fucking librarian and have no concept of how it got to be there. So don’t get high-handed and condemnatory with me. You wanted to work for the CIA. You got what you wanted. And whatever naughty things I’ve done to you don’t even register on my moral Richter scale.”
Betsy could find nothing to say to Hennessey. But she knew better than to challenge him. He could blend into the background when it suited his purposes. But when he wanted to command a room—or the backseat of a taxicab—he could do that, too.
They rode in silence for a few minutes. Finally she said, “Just tell me that it was worth it. Tell me that something good has come out of all this.”
Hennessey smirked. “Good?”
“Useful, then. Is anyone paying attention to the problems I was talking about?”
“We’ve been working on it,” Hennessey said. “Expanding on your ideas.”
“Expanding how?”
“Well, you assumed, and we agreed, that the Iraqis are using university classrooms to train their people. University lab facilities to do their research. University computers to store their data and send their E-mail. And all that is true.” Hennessey took another gulp of coffee and sat up straight, warming to the subject. “But you didn’t go far enough, and neither did we. Until now. And now it’s probably too goddamn late to do anything about it.”
Betsy was still nonplussed. She shrugged, waiting for the rest. Hennessey stared out the window at the Potomac for a minute and then continued. “Production. The sons of bitches may have set up a biological-weapons production facility somewhere in this country. Probably Forks County, Iowa.”
“Anthrax?”
“Botulin.”
“Figures. That would be easier to grow,” Betsy said. “You know, it makes sense in a way.” She thought about it for a while, then shook her head. “But I don’t buy it. Why would they do it on foreign ground?”
“Millikan and the task force agree with you. They refuse to believe the story. Millikan won’t go to Bush with this information.” Hennessey nodded at the notes. “Not unless we can back it up with something respectable. And I have to admit that what we’ve got is pretty tenuous. I believe it on even days and don’t believe it on odd days.”
“What do you have?”
“At this moment, Betsy, the linchpin of our national security vis-à-vis biological weapons is the random observations of a big, dumb-looking deputy county sheriff who just got the shit beat out of him in a local election and whose wife is a nurse going off to the Gulf.”
“Isn’t Marcus there? Can’t he dig anything up?”
“What’s to dig up? This whole operation is so far under the radar that there simply isn’t any objective evidence to support it. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: the deputy county sheriff has a sidekick. A Vakhan Turk nationalist and suspected terrorist who has been personally running a mole at Langley for the last three years. I almost have enough evidence to arrest this character, and I definitely have enough to arrest his goddamn mole. But instead I’ve got to play hands-off because I don’t want to blow the botulin thing.” Hennessey shook his head sourly. “Life is fucking crazy sometimes.”
“So what do we do?”
Hennessey threw up his hands. “I don’t know. If Millikan hadn’t cobwebbed me with this goddamn task force, I’d move our whole office out to Nishnabotna. But the fact is I am cobwebbed. The only person who has any freedom of action is this poor son of a bitch in Iowa.”
The cabbie took them to Arlington and dropped them off in front of a barbecue restaurant. Hennessey got out and said, “Thanks, Hank, good job.”