“You must come and see what is written on the wall here, it’s quite amusing,” Millikan said.
Aziz zipped up and went into the stall, squeezing in next to Millikan, who was standing there holding up a piece of crinkly French toilet paper on which he had written something with a water-soluble felt-tip pen. Aziz took it and read it.
It said: Are you going to fuck me over Kuwait?
Aziz shook his head emphatically no. Millikan exhaled and seemed to relax. He took the paper back, tore it up, and flushed it. Aziz said, “I want to write down that telephone number, it might be useful sometime… for some of my Iranian colleagues.”
They went back to the table where their assistants were becoming quite relaxed—the vodka had given way to wine. A dessert tray came and went, accompanied by coffee and tea and then cigars. By this point it was three-thirty in the Hotel Crillon.
“You’d best make sure our car is here,” Aziz said to his assistant, and then, turning to Millikan, “Please send my most sincere regards and admiration to your President.”
“And the same to your leader, my friend.” The two shook hands heartily and emerged to be greeted by Touvain, who had been lingering at a nearby table with cigarettes, coffee, and an existential novel. The Iraqi assistant could scarcely walk. Dellinger threw himself down onto a sofa in the hotel lobby and closed his eyes. Millikan walked Aziz outside, where he was picked up in an Iraqi stretch Mercedes, the heaviest passenger vehicle Millikan had ever seen on the streets of Paris.
The limousine door had scarcely been shut behind Aziz before he was on the cell phone to someone. Millikan, meanwhile, was already composing the cable to the President in his head. He wasn’t sure what it would say in every detail but, based on what Aziz had told him in the stall, knew it would include his favorite phrase: All is in order.
It was fifty-eight degrees in Paris, and the spring flowers were in bloom. Dellinger was there suddenly, showing no signs of intoxication. “A walk would be nice,” Millikan said.
Dellinger nodded significantly in the direction of the embassy.
Millikan raised his eyebrows. “No walk?”
Dellinger shrugged.
Five minutes later they were back in the secure room.
“What is it?” Millikan began.
“It’s probably nothing, sir.”
“Now, there is very little you can tell me that is going to disturb me. Aziz has confirmed that we have nothing to fear in Kuwait. He has confirmed that they are rearming to attack Iran again. My God, what would they have to gain in going into Kuwait? More oil? So what is it?”
“Well, sir, the Agency was giving a briefing on Iraq to our agriculture attaché to Baghdad, who was back in Washington for a couple of days. Nothing out of the ordinary—just a few analysts sitting around with the attaché sharing some of their recent findings with him.”
“So?”
“Well, sir, it seems that one of the analysts at the Agency told the attaché that the Iraqis are misusing the three-hundred-million-dollar Food for Peace funds to—in her opinion—buy or develop weapons.”
“What!” Millikan could hardly believe his ears; it had to be a mistake. “What was a military analyst doing in a briefing with an ag attaché?”
Dellinger looked stricken. “It wasn’t a military analyst,” he said. “It was an ag analyst.”
Millikan was still too thunderstruck to become enraged. “You’re telling me that some aggie took it upon himself, first of all, to stray into military affairs, and then to offer his own personal opinions about Saddam’s military policies to one of our diplomats?”
“Her opinions. The analyst in question is female.”
Millikan took a few deep breaths. “Pray continue,” he said.
“Well, when this attaché got back to Baghdad, he told the deputy chief of mission, who told the ambassador, who told Baker, who told the President.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Millikan said, and slapped the table so hard it sounded like a gunshot.
“While you were in the bathroom with Aziz, I was called to the phone and given a heads up. I don’t think it’s important. But I thought I would pass it on to you.”
That this had happened at the end of a nearly perfect day made Millikan want to scream. But he didn’t scream. In his dreams, before six o’clock in the morning, he was allowed to scream. After six o’clock in the morning, he didn’t scream.
But he was allowed to get pissed off. “You don’t think it’s important. The President has heard about it, Aziz probably rushed back to Baghdad because of it, but you don’t think it’s important. Goddamn it! Don’t those assholes know that we’re making foreign policy here? Can’t I have a single meeting with my colleague without having it ruined by the inexcusable behavior of some silly bitch of an analyst?”