“What’s that going to do for the family finances?”
Clyde heaved a big sigh and ground his teeth. “Desiree’s getting special combat pay,” he said. “When she gets back, if things get bad, she can always go back to nursing full-time.”
“Well, back to the main story,” Town said, sensing he was wandering into a minefield. “How’d the FBI react to the news that Saddam Hussein is building a biological-weapons production facility in Forks County, Iowa?”
Clyde winced. “Well, they haven’t done anything dramatic, if that’s what you mean.”
“Anything dramatic?”
“Anything that would be obvious.”
“In other words, as far as you know, they haven’t done diddly.”
“Yeah.”
Clyde saw Town writing this response down in his notebook and thought about how lame it would look in a Des Moines Register story. “The local agent went to D.C. just to show this report to his higher-ups,” Clyde said. “I know they’re real interested.”
“But that’s not news. At least it’s not Iowa news. Iowa news is lots of new FBI agents coming into Nishnabotna and fanning out across the city, or something like that.”
“Well, I’m not sure if that’s the tack they want to take with the investigation,” Clyde said.
“What tack do they want to take, then?”
“Sort of a wait-and-see approach, I guess. They seem to agree that these guys are shady characters, but they don’t just want to swoop down and make arrests and file any charges—the way a cop would.”
“But FBI agents are cops.”
Clyde sighed again.
“Oh, yeah,” Town said. “You said something about their not really being FBI.”
“I don’t know how the G-men operate,” Clyde said, “but a cop is very organized and disciplined about gathering solid evidence that will stand up in court, and then filing charges and securing convictions. No one seems to have explained that to these guys.”
“Well,” Town said, sitting up in his seat and flipping way back to the very beginning of his notes, “the thing about the horses producing botulin antidote for the Army is definitely story material. The fact that the military only had two horses in the whole country for this purpose seems like a lack of preparedness on their part and would make a nice little exposé. And the fact that one of them got mutilated—by someone—makes the story even better because it dramatizes the vulnerability of the program.” Town stared out the windshield for a minute, chewing thoughtfully on his lip. “Would the Register run it? Well, I don’t know, I’m only a stringer. But I’m inclined to think they might spike the story, or at least put it on ice until the crisis in the Gulf has resolved, so it doesn’t look like they’re undermining the military effort. Of course, you’re going way, way, way beyond that story and into an incredible, amazing espionage thing. Which isn’t bad in and of itself, because amazing espionage stories really happen sometimes. But all you’re giving me in the way of evidence is the Tab Templeton story—which was already covered to death on the sports page—and a memo from the internal files of the Howdy Brigade, and this little black-and-white photo from an old wrestling magazine. Is that right?”
Clyde ground his teeth. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“And on top of that already amazing story, you have a whole ’nother story brewing about something fishy happening with the FBI. And the only evidence you have for that is that you talked to some FBI guys on the phone and ended up with a gut feeling that their heads were not where a cop’s head should be.”
Town said nothing for a while, letting all of this speak for itself. Clyde ground his teeth some more. “Okay, okay,” he said, “separately, each one of those sounds like a wild story. But together they reinforce each other.”
“Could you explain that?”
“The idea that Iraqis are up to some shenanigans here might sound pretty wild. But if they were, you’d hope that someone in the government would be worried about it. Like the CIA or something. And that might explain why the folks in Washington have been acting kind of funny.”
“From my point of view that makes it a worse story, not a better story,” Town said, “because I can’t break it down into bite-sized chunks. I’ve got to explain this huge tapestry of events. I’ve got to write a damn book.”
“I’m not used to dealings with the media,” Clyde finally said, “so I don’t know the drill. But isn’t it the case that sometimes a paper will send out an investigative reporter to dig for more information?”
Town drew a deep breath and let it out, and Clyde got the impression that, out of politeness and respect for Clyde, he was making an effort not to break out laughing. “The investigative-reporter thing is largely a Hollywood myth,” he said. “No one really does that. No one has the attention span. No one has the budget. Not that many people have the talent.”