Читать книгу Homeland: Saul’s Game - Andrew Kaplan - Страница 15
ОглавлениеHart Senate Building, Washington, D.C.
28 July 2009
23:42 hours
“Wait a minute, Bill. This Saul, this genius master spy. This superstar. Mona Lisa and all that. You were going to fire him?”
“I came close, Senator. Damn close. Look at what happened: Our Middle East operations had been in trouble for some time. Abu Nazir’s IPLA knew every damn thing we were going to do before we did. We took a humongous risk and invaded Syria with a SOG team and came up empty. An operation he pushed, that was strictly on his dime. Not only that, we had our top asset in Syria dead, tortured; our network in Syria completely blown to hell. Abu Nazir had disappeared, and after years of work we were back to square one. He’s our Middle East Division chief! The buck has to stop somewhere. What would you do? It was a complete and total balls-up. You know how it works around here. Somebody’s head had to roll.”
“What about the girl, Bill? This female operations officer. He took a helluva risk with her.”
“That’s another thing, Mr. President. He put a female CIA operations officer into a hostile red zone completely on her own. Alone, with no backup. To handle an unbelievably dangerous operation without any support. What if she had been killed—or worse, captured? He put all our operations in the Middle East at risk.”
“What do you mean all?”
“Carrie Mathison was out of our Beirut and Baghdad Stations. She knew everything. I mean everything. Our assets, networks, codes, contacts, every one of us. Everything. What if the Syrians had captured her? What if they had turned her over to Hezbollah or the Iranians? Or the Russians? Think what they could have squeezed out of her. It would have been … well, I’m not sure how we would have recovered, but one thing’s for damn sure. A lot of very good people would have died. And as far as the war in Iraq was concerned, we could’ve quit right there. Game over. Do you blame me?”
“What did he say when you confronted him about her?”
“You want to know, Senator? He said, ‘She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.’ Like it was nothing. No big deal.”
“I’m wondering, Bill, she’d come up with this lead about a Russian. Didn’t you factor that in?”
“We didn’t know about it. Not then, Warren. I had called an emergency, early-morning meeting in my West Wing office. Me; the CIA director and deputy directors; David Estes, director of the Counterterrorism Center; Saul. But it was mostly me, yelling at him. And him, sitting there, looking like a rabbi who forgot his yarmulka.”
“What did he say?”
“That I was jumping the gun. That we had to wait for Mathison’s report.”
“ ‘We don’t even know if she’s alive!’ I said. At that point we didn’t. The SOG team barely made it back to Rutba. ‘We’re losing assets,’ I said. To hell with firing him. I wanted to punch him in the nose. And him. Just sitting there like a bearded Yoda, blinking behind his glasses.
“ ‘She’s operational,’ he said.
“ ‘How the hell do you know?’ Estes asked him. You know what he said?
“ ‘She’s good.’
“That was his answer. She’s good. Like it was a mantra. Do you believe this shit? We all looked at each other. I was on the verge of firing him on the spot. I swear I almost did it right there and then.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Two things, Warren. Two things every one of us should never forget. Remember Congressman Jimmy Longworth?”
“Longworth of Missouri. Who could forget Jimmy Longworth? You should’ve known him, Mr. President. Unbelievable character. What about him?”
“When I first came to Washington, I got into a pissing contest with one of the agencies. Jimmy stopped by my office with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two glasses and said, ‘Billy Boy, in Washington, if you learn nothing else, remember one thing. You can make life miserable for an Old Hand, but you never ever want to fire him.’ When I asked, ‘Why not?’ he said, ‘Because Old Hands know where the bodies are buried. You fire one of them, they’ll go. They won’t say a word. They’ll make damn sure they got their pensions nice and clear. Then six months later, you’ll find yourself talking to some smart-ass reporter from the Washington Post or maybe a grand jury on something that’ll bring down the whole administration including you. And you’re done for the rest of your life. That’s why.’ ”
“What’s the second reason?”
“My predecessor as CIA director. He told me something I never forgot. ‘Saul’s biggest problem is morality; but he’s not only ten times smarter than you think you are, Warren, with all your Harvard Phi Beta Bullshit and all, he’s also the smartest Jew son of a bitch you’ll ever meet. So after you finish yelling at him—and believe me, sooner or later everybody wants to—listen to what he says. Carefully.’
“So I stood up at the meeting and told Saul that he was going on administrative leave, effective immediately. And you know what?”
“What?”
“He just looked at me, Warren, with those glasses, and said he thought that was a good idea and just got up and left. We all sat there scratching our heads wondering what the hell just happened.”
“So that’s it? Then how on earth did we come to this mess?”
“Really, Bill. What happened?”
“Simple, Mr. President. He got the Aardvark report from the girl, Carrie. Twenty minutes later, he walked into my office. Then I got to meet the real Saul.”
