Rubicon, page 8
He said this with utter conviction, as of a thing so obvious as to be self-evident.
“If we follow your logic to its ultimate conclusion, Attorney General Lopez, it would then be your position that should the Congress fail to appropriate moneys the president deemed necessary for the proper conduct of a war, the president could then do - what? Order the Treasury Department to collect what he needed?”
“No, of course not, senator; but in matters connected with the actual conduct of the war, the executive functions of government, the president remains free to exercise his powers as he sees fit.”
“Even if there happens to be a law passed by Congress that says he cannot?”
It is difficult to explain something obvious. Roth was nearly twice his age, but it was Lopez who wore the baffled smile of a frustrated parent.
“Lincoln suspended the law of habeas corpus, because he thought it necessary to save the Union.”
“A decision later overturned by the United States Supreme Court,” Roth reminded him.
“But only after the Union was saved, senator.”
Roth was not a man to be lectured to, especially on the Constitution or the history of the republic.
“Yes, Lincoln saved the Union; but I don’t think that is a claim the current administration is quite ready to make.”
“War is war, Senator,” replied Lopez, his eyes cold and distant.
“Yes, I know, Mr. Lopez; I was in one or two of them.” He started to turn the questioning over to the ranking senator on the other side, but then, suddenly, thought better of it.
“What you are really suggesting, Mr. Lopez, whether you are willing to admit it or not, is that in a time of war the president has nothing short of dictatorial powers. Your position is that the president has all the powers he thinks are necessary in a time of war, and that the war we are now waging - this war against terrorism - may go on for generations. I don’t think I need to point out to you that the absence of any and all legal restraint on what the president can do would do nothing less than change our form of government. Don’t you think there is more than a little irony, Attorney General Lopez, in the fact that the only way you can think to bring democracy to the world is to end it here at home?”
Chapter Eight
“You should have been there. You should have seen it.”
Charlie Ryan looked into the paper bag Hart had just tossed him across his desk.
“This is dinner? A hamburger and fries.” He motioned for Hart to take a seat. He began to unwrap the hamburger. “Where should I have been?” His eyes lit up as he took a bite. “Of course! Judiciary - Alvin Roth had Lopez up today. He hates him. Alvin hates most people, but he has a special hatred for Lopez. Hard to blame him. Lopez is like a lot of the others in this administration who think they’re the only ones who understand the threat the nation faces. They were never soldiers and they think they’re generals.” He put his feet up on the corner of his desk and loosened his tie. “Some guy in a cave somewhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan talks for a few minutes into a video camera saying he’s going to blow up America a week from Saturday and they’re ready to put the country on full alert. Everything scares them.”
Ryan gulped down the rest of the hamburger. He wiped the ketchup off his chin and laughed.
“What are you going to tell me, and why do I think that none of it is going to make me feel better? Start with why you think Caulfield was murdered.”
“Because for almost the whole time I’ve been on the Intelligence Committee, Raymond Caulfield was helping me, giving me information that he could not give to the committee, putting me on to things that no one outside the agency was supposed to know.”
Ryan was not entirely surprised.
“You always did seem to be better informed than the rest of us. But why? Why did he do it, and why you? Of course! He knew your father, didn’t he? That was how he knew he could trust you. That makes sense. But still, that was quite a chance he was taking, passing classified.... And you think that’s what got him killed?”
“I think he was killed because someone found out he was checking on Rubicon.”
“That was the name you brought up in committee, when you were questioning Townsend. The code name - what might be the code name.... Then Townsend lied. That’s why you asked him, to see if he would cover up.”
Hart scratched his head. He had not touched his hamburger, which sat, still wrapped, on the front corner of Ryan’s desk. He picked it up, started to unwrap it, and then put it down again.
“He probably never heard of Rubicon. He didn’t want to admit that Caulfield had held something back from him and was operating outside those sacred lines of authority of his.”
“Leave Townsend out of it for a minute, I want to make sure I understand this. You gave the name Rubicon to Caulfield - He didn’t give it to you?”
“That’s right; I gave it....”
“But where did you get it? Who gave you the name?”
Hart unwrapped the hamburger and began to eat. If there was anyone in the Senate he trusted, it was Charlie Ryan, fearless, willing to take on anyone he thought was wrong, no matter how many times that put him on the losing side when the issue came to a vote. Unlike so many of his colleagues, there was not a sanctimonious bone in his body: It was one thing to be gracious in victory, Ryan was gracious in defeat. There was no reason not to tell him, and, after everything that had happened, he knew he needed help.
“Gunther Kramer.”
Ryan spilled the coffee he had just begun to drink.
“The East German spy who died in l989?”
“The double agent who worked for the West; the agent who staged his own death when the wall came down and he knew he couldn’t go back to Germany -”
“The rumors you mentioned weren’t rumors at all. He’s still alive, living in Damascus. He found out about Rubicon and told you. What else did he tell you? What else did he know?”
“That there was going to be an assassination and that the code name is Rubicon.” Hart shook his head in frustration. “I was sitting across the table, as close to him as I am to you. A sniper, someone – I don’t know who – murdered him right in front of my eyes. Then – Christ, I don’t even know how it happened – I was shot….”
“You were shot?”
“Yeah, in the shoulder.” Hart’s hand went to the spot on his left shoulder where he had been hit. “Lucky – went right through me.”
“You were shot? And Kramer was killed – like Caulfield? Both of them knew something about Rubicon, and both murdered? When did it happen? Where were you?” he asked with a look of intense interest.
“In Hamburg, where I had gone to meet him.”
Ryan pushed the paper coffee cup to the side and leaned across the desk.
“How did you know about him? Why did you go to Hamburg to see him? Did Caulfield put you in touch with him?”
“No, it was Dieter Shoenfeld, the German publisher. He was Kramer’s half-brother. It’s a strange story. Dieter’s father was killed in the war; his mother re-married. Dieter wound up in the west; Gunther Kramer stayed in the east. I didn’t know any of this until Dieter told me, after Kramer was killed. I talked to him right after I got back, told him what I had learned. He was going to try to find out more, but now he’s disappeared. No one has heard from him in over a week. I’m afraid that….”
“Shoenfeld is someone you trust, someone you’re sure would tell you the truth?”
“Yes, absolutely; no doubt at all.”
“All right, let’s get this straight: Gunther Kramer finds out about Rubicon and is murdered in Hamburg. Raymond Caulfield learns about Rubicon and, if you’re correct, is murdered here, just outside Washington. And now Dieter Shoenfeld has disappeared and you think he may have been murdered as well?”
“I don’t know what else to think. I talked to Dieter’s secretary in Berlin. She did not know where he had gone, but they were having a board meeting in a few days and she was certain he would be there for that. He didn’t make it.”
Ryan drew his eyes together into a concentrated gaze. Something was puzzling him.
“Rubicon - strange choice for a code name for something like this.”
“That’s what.... Why? What is so strange about it? That it’s taken from Roman history?”
“Yes, you would think that...but maybe it isn’t so strange at all. What does Rubicon stand for, what do we mean when we say that someone has crossed the Rubicon? What did it mean when Caesar did it?”
“That there is no turning back, that it’s too late, that once you’ve taken that first step you can never change your mind. Caulfield said something like that. ‘Our worst nightmare,’ he called it. A sleeper cell, given a mission, years in advance, and then left alone, with no one to report to, no lines of communication that we might intercept. That would explain it: all the rumors, starting at the same time, about something that is going to happen, and no one with any idea who is really behind it. Though apparently Gunther Kramer found out.”
“He knew who was behind this? Why didn’t you tell me....? He was killed before he could pass that information on, wasn’t he? But he knew - you’re certain of that? Do you think Caulfield found out as well?”
“I doubt it. All he was going to do was run the name - Rubicon - through the computers over at Langley to see if it had been picked up in any of their surveillance.”
Ryan swung his chair around until he was sitting sideways to his desk. He wrapped both hands around his right knee and tried to think.
“If it is a cell like that, it’s even worse than Caulfield imagined. Someone who is a part of it must have infiltrated us.” He slapped his hand on the desk and jumped to his feet. “Don’t you see? It’s the only way to explain what happened, to connect two murders that far apart. Kramer is murdered in Hamburg. There have been a number of terrorist cells found there. Al Qaeda, or some other group, could have done it. But Caulfield is murdered here. And he isn’t murdered after making inquires on the Arab street – what Kramer must have been doing - he’s murdered after looking into something at the CIA. That means there is someone inside the agency who doesn’t want anything about Rubicon known.”
“Or some group within the agency that doesn’t.”
Ryan did not hear him. He was too worried about something else Hart had said.
“We don’t know who is behind this; we don’t know for certain what they’re going to do, who they are going to try to kill next, and we have…? How long ago did Gunther Kramer tell you this? Two weeks ago! Jesus, Bobby, we have to tell somebody about this, we need to....”
“Who would you suggest? Everyone knows about the rumors; and after today, Townsend and the CIA know about Rubicon. Who else are we going to tell? Besides, the rest of it is just speculation.”
“There’s got to be something we can do,” Ryan mumbled to himself. He paced back and forth. “You’re right,” he said finally. “All we have is speculation, and it doesn’t much matter that it’s the only thing that makes sense. But that doesn’t mean that all we can do is sit around and wait for someone else to get killed. I know a couple of guys over at Justice, couple of guys I worked with when I was U.S. Attorney - straight shooters, none of these political appointees who do whatever the administration tells them. One of them is a guy I went to college with. Let me talk to him, tell him what I know.”
Hart agreed. Never one to waste time, Ryan picked up the telephone and called his old friend from college.
“I’m meeting him for breakfast in the morning,” he announced after he hung up. “I’ll let you know what happens.”
Hart felt relieved, and grateful, that someone else, someone he trusted and respected, was also now involved.
“Thanks, Charlie. I don’t know who else I could have told.”
He began to get up. Ryan nodded toward the hamburger, now turned cold.
“Don’t go. You haven’t finished dinner.”
The sense of urgency all but vanished from Ryan’s clear green eyes. He had taken the first important step to deal with a problem. There was nothing more he could do about it tonight. He mind turned to other things, to politics and what was going to happen at the Republican convention.
“It appears that despite everything this is going to be another typical presidential election: one party nominates a candidate with no principles anyone has been able to discover; the other party nominates a candidate without any principles anyone in their right mind would want to support. You give us Prentice Alworth, we give you Arthur Douglas; they both spend the whole campaign telling the country that the other one does not deserve to hold the office; and the country has to choose between two honest men!”
Ryan shook his head in disgust. “Jesus, Bobby, you should have run - I would have voted for you.” A wry expression started onto his mouth and he started to laugh. “Of course, against Douglas, I might even vote for Alworth.”
While the Republicans held their convention, Hart stayed in Washington, pouring over all the intelligence reports he could get his hands on, looking for anything that would tell him who was behind Rubicon and what was going to happen next. He was working in his senate office with the television set on the last night of the Republican convention, when the face of Charlie Ryan suddenly appeared on the screen. He picked up the telephone and called Santa Barbara.
“Helen, turn on the television. Charlie Ryan is on
“He’s not giving a speech, is he?” she asked. “You told me he said they wouldn’t let him.”
“No, it’s some kind of interview with Charlie and the vice-president.”
He knew that Helen did not much care for politics and had a particular aversion to most politicians; but she had always liked Charlie Ryan. She liked the way he did not take himself as seriously as the other did; perhaps, she had suggested with what Hart thought shrewd insight, because there was not anything he thought he had to prove. She was excited that he was on television and said she would turn it on right away.
“Call me later, will you? Or I’ll call you.”
Ryan and the vice-president were being interviewed by William Griffin, the editor of a political journal that was must reading among neo-conservatives. The first question was for the vice-president.
“You’ve said you’re here to support Arthur Douglas, but Douglas has said that he does not agree with the administration’s policy on the war; that he thinks mistakes were made, that he thinks -”
“That isn’t what he said,” said the vice-president, who managed to seem irritated, impatient and bored all at once. “He said that he supported the policy of staying in Iraq until the Iraqis are able to provide adequate security for themselves. That is a sound policy - the only policy, as far as I’m concerned - unless we’re prepared to let the terrorists win, which is what the Democrats, and I’m afraid even a few Republicans, seem willing to do.”
Eager to stir up a fight, Griffin turned to Ryan.
“I think he means you, senator.”
Ryan did not change expression.
“No, I’m sure he doesn’t.” He paused just long enough to make Griffin and the audience wonder if that was all he was going to say. “Because if he did, I’m sure he’d say it to my face.” He turned to the vice-president, who, if he had ever been in a real fight, had not been in one since school. “You don’t think that, do you? That I’m in favor of - how did you put it? - ‘letting the terrorists win.’”
The vice-president turned red, and then immediately went back on the attack.
“No, senator, I’m not suggesting that is what you want, I’m suggesting that the policy you support would almost certainly have that effect.”
“What policy is that, Mr. Vice-President? Suggesting that we better figure out a way to get out of there before we cause ourselves any more damage? That isn’t a policy, Mr. Vice-President. You give me too much credit. It’s the only remaining alternative we have. And as for letting the terrorists win, every day we stay there we increase their numbers. I may be wrong, but I’m not sure the best way to win a war is to make more soldiers for the enemy you are trying to defeat.”
“If Iraq goes, we lose the Middle East,” replied the vice-president with a look of unyielding belligerence.
“Just when was the Middle East ours to lose? Did you really think that all we had to do was have elections and there would be peace and democracy all through the region?”
“If we don’t remake the Middle East,” insisted the vice-president, “we’ll be fighting terrorism for the next hundred years, and it won’t be in the Middle East – it will be right here at home. Is that what you want, senator? Is that what you honestly think we should do?”
“It’s the attempt to remake everything, this war you started, is what has led to all the trouble,” Ryan fired back.
The vice-president lurched forward until his head was down between his shoulders. He glared at Ryan.
“Are you saying that democracy would be a bad thing for the Middle East?”
“No, I’m saying that you can’t impose it. We’ve tried. Look what it brought us.”
“What you and people like you don’t seem to understand,” said the vice-president, “is that America has interests and responsibilities all across the globe. We’re not some small republic, like we were at the beginning, two hundred years ago. This is a war of civilizations, senator: radical Islam on one side, America and the West on the other. It’s the most important war we’ll ever fight, and we have to use every means within our power to win it.”
“You’re wrong. We’re not some empire that imposes its will on others. The only lasting influence we can have is the force of our example. The real question, Mr. Vice-President, isn’t whether we can remake the Middle East, the real question is whether this country can survive the kind of endless war you describe in which we become no better than the people we’re fighting against.”
When it was over, Hart walked into David Allen’s office next door.
“Did you see that? Every once in a while someone does something and you remember what it is supposed to mean to be a member of the Senate. Charlie Ryan is everything a senator should be. Actually, he’s everything a president should be. But I’m afraid that’s never going to happen. And now, after he has damn near called the vice-president a liar and a fool on national television, he may not even get reelected.” Hart exchanged a glance with Allen. “I’m not sure I want to get re-elected if I have to listen to Arthur Douglas lecture all of us from the White House about the need to fight with the same unshakable resolve both terrorism and taxes.”
“If we follow your logic to its ultimate conclusion, Attorney General Lopez, it would then be your position that should the Congress fail to appropriate moneys the president deemed necessary for the proper conduct of a war, the president could then do - what? Order the Treasury Department to collect what he needed?”
“No, of course not, senator; but in matters connected with the actual conduct of the war, the executive functions of government, the president remains free to exercise his powers as he sees fit.”
“Even if there happens to be a law passed by Congress that says he cannot?”
It is difficult to explain something obvious. Roth was nearly twice his age, but it was Lopez who wore the baffled smile of a frustrated parent.
“Lincoln suspended the law of habeas corpus, because he thought it necessary to save the Union.”
“A decision later overturned by the United States Supreme Court,” Roth reminded him.
“But only after the Union was saved, senator.”
Roth was not a man to be lectured to, especially on the Constitution or the history of the republic.
“Yes, Lincoln saved the Union; but I don’t think that is a claim the current administration is quite ready to make.”
“War is war, Senator,” replied Lopez, his eyes cold and distant.
“Yes, I know, Mr. Lopez; I was in one or two of them.” He started to turn the questioning over to the ranking senator on the other side, but then, suddenly, thought better of it.
“What you are really suggesting, Mr. Lopez, whether you are willing to admit it or not, is that in a time of war the president has nothing short of dictatorial powers. Your position is that the president has all the powers he thinks are necessary in a time of war, and that the war we are now waging - this war against terrorism - may go on for generations. I don’t think I need to point out to you that the absence of any and all legal restraint on what the president can do would do nothing less than change our form of government. Don’t you think there is more than a little irony, Attorney General Lopez, in the fact that the only way you can think to bring democracy to the world is to end it here at home?”
Chapter Eight
“You should have been there. You should have seen it.”
Charlie Ryan looked into the paper bag Hart had just tossed him across his desk.
“This is dinner? A hamburger and fries.” He motioned for Hart to take a seat. He began to unwrap the hamburger. “Where should I have been?” His eyes lit up as he took a bite. “Of course! Judiciary - Alvin Roth had Lopez up today. He hates him. Alvin hates most people, but he has a special hatred for Lopez. Hard to blame him. Lopez is like a lot of the others in this administration who think they’re the only ones who understand the threat the nation faces. They were never soldiers and they think they’re generals.” He put his feet up on the corner of his desk and loosened his tie. “Some guy in a cave somewhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan talks for a few minutes into a video camera saying he’s going to blow up America a week from Saturday and they’re ready to put the country on full alert. Everything scares them.”
Ryan gulped down the rest of the hamburger. He wiped the ketchup off his chin and laughed.
“What are you going to tell me, and why do I think that none of it is going to make me feel better? Start with why you think Caulfield was murdered.”
“Because for almost the whole time I’ve been on the Intelligence Committee, Raymond Caulfield was helping me, giving me information that he could not give to the committee, putting me on to things that no one outside the agency was supposed to know.”
Ryan was not entirely surprised.
“You always did seem to be better informed than the rest of us. But why? Why did he do it, and why you? Of course! He knew your father, didn’t he? That was how he knew he could trust you. That makes sense. But still, that was quite a chance he was taking, passing classified.... And you think that’s what got him killed?”
“I think he was killed because someone found out he was checking on Rubicon.”
“That was the name you brought up in committee, when you were questioning Townsend. The code name - what might be the code name.... Then Townsend lied. That’s why you asked him, to see if he would cover up.”
Hart scratched his head. He had not touched his hamburger, which sat, still wrapped, on the front corner of Ryan’s desk. He picked it up, started to unwrap it, and then put it down again.
“He probably never heard of Rubicon. He didn’t want to admit that Caulfield had held something back from him and was operating outside those sacred lines of authority of his.”
“Leave Townsend out of it for a minute, I want to make sure I understand this. You gave the name Rubicon to Caulfield - He didn’t give it to you?”
“That’s right; I gave it....”
“But where did you get it? Who gave you the name?”
Hart unwrapped the hamburger and began to eat. If there was anyone in the Senate he trusted, it was Charlie Ryan, fearless, willing to take on anyone he thought was wrong, no matter how many times that put him on the losing side when the issue came to a vote. Unlike so many of his colleagues, there was not a sanctimonious bone in his body: It was one thing to be gracious in victory, Ryan was gracious in defeat. There was no reason not to tell him, and, after everything that had happened, he knew he needed help.
“Gunther Kramer.”
Ryan spilled the coffee he had just begun to drink.
“The East German spy who died in l989?”
“The double agent who worked for the West; the agent who staged his own death when the wall came down and he knew he couldn’t go back to Germany -”
“The rumors you mentioned weren’t rumors at all. He’s still alive, living in Damascus. He found out about Rubicon and told you. What else did he tell you? What else did he know?”
“That there was going to be an assassination and that the code name is Rubicon.” Hart shook his head in frustration. “I was sitting across the table, as close to him as I am to you. A sniper, someone – I don’t know who – murdered him right in front of my eyes. Then – Christ, I don’t even know how it happened – I was shot….”
“You were shot?”
“Yeah, in the shoulder.” Hart’s hand went to the spot on his left shoulder where he had been hit. “Lucky – went right through me.”
“You were shot? And Kramer was killed – like Caulfield? Both of them knew something about Rubicon, and both murdered? When did it happen? Where were you?” he asked with a look of intense interest.
“In Hamburg, where I had gone to meet him.”
Ryan pushed the paper coffee cup to the side and leaned across the desk.
“How did you know about him? Why did you go to Hamburg to see him? Did Caulfield put you in touch with him?”
“No, it was Dieter Shoenfeld, the German publisher. He was Kramer’s half-brother. It’s a strange story. Dieter’s father was killed in the war; his mother re-married. Dieter wound up in the west; Gunther Kramer stayed in the east. I didn’t know any of this until Dieter told me, after Kramer was killed. I talked to him right after I got back, told him what I had learned. He was going to try to find out more, but now he’s disappeared. No one has heard from him in over a week. I’m afraid that….”
“Shoenfeld is someone you trust, someone you’re sure would tell you the truth?”
“Yes, absolutely; no doubt at all.”
“All right, let’s get this straight: Gunther Kramer finds out about Rubicon and is murdered in Hamburg. Raymond Caulfield learns about Rubicon and, if you’re correct, is murdered here, just outside Washington. And now Dieter Shoenfeld has disappeared and you think he may have been murdered as well?”
“I don’t know what else to think. I talked to Dieter’s secretary in Berlin. She did not know where he had gone, but they were having a board meeting in a few days and she was certain he would be there for that. He didn’t make it.”
Ryan drew his eyes together into a concentrated gaze. Something was puzzling him.
“Rubicon - strange choice for a code name for something like this.”
“That’s what.... Why? What is so strange about it? That it’s taken from Roman history?”
“Yes, you would think that...but maybe it isn’t so strange at all. What does Rubicon stand for, what do we mean when we say that someone has crossed the Rubicon? What did it mean when Caesar did it?”
“That there is no turning back, that it’s too late, that once you’ve taken that first step you can never change your mind. Caulfield said something like that. ‘Our worst nightmare,’ he called it. A sleeper cell, given a mission, years in advance, and then left alone, with no one to report to, no lines of communication that we might intercept. That would explain it: all the rumors, starting at the same time, about something that is going to happen, and no one with any idea who is really behind it. Though apparently Gunther Kramer found out.”
“He knew who was behind this? Why didn’t you tell me....? He was killed before he could pass that information on, wasn’t he? But he knew - you’re certain of that? Do you think Caulfield found out as well?”
“I doubt it. All he was going to do was run the name - Rubicon - through the computers over at Langley to see if it had been picked up in any of their surveillance.”
Ryan swung his chair around until he was sitting sideways to his desk. He wrapped both hands around his right knee and tried to think.
“If it is a cell like that, it’s even worse than Caulfield imagined. Someone who is a part of it must have infiltrated us.” He slapped his hand on the desk and jumped to his feet. “Don’t you see? It’s the only way to explain what happened, to connect two murders that far apart. Kramer is murdered in Hamburg. There have been a number of terrorist cells found there. Al Qaeda, or some other group, could have done it. But Caulfield is murdered here. And he isn’t murdered after making inquires on the Arab street – what Kramer must have been doing - he’s murdered after looking into something at the CIA. That means there is someone inside the agency who doesn’t want anything about Rubicon known.”
“Or some group within the agency that doesn’t.”
Ryan did not hear him. He was too worried about something else Hart had said.
“We don’t know who is behind this; we don’t know for certain what they’re going to do, who they are going to try to kill next, and we have…? How long ago did Gunther Kramer tell you this? Two weeks ago! Jesus, Bobby, we have to tell somebody about this, we need to....”
“Who would you suggest? Everyone knows about the rumors; and after today, Townsend and the CIA know about Rubicon. Who else are we going to tell? Besides, the rest of it is just speculation.”
“There’s got to be something we can do,” Ryan mumbled to himself. He paced back and forth. “You’re right,” he said finally. “All we have is speculation, and it doesn’t much matter that it’s the only thing that makes sense. But that doesn’t mean that all we can do is sit around and wait for someone else to get killed. I know a couple of guys over at Justice, couple of guys I worked with when I was U.S. Attorney - straight shooters, none of these political appointees who do whatever the administration tells them. One of them is a guy I went to college with. Let me talk to him, tell him what I know.”
Hart agreed. Never one to waste time, Ryan picked up the telephone and called his old friend from college.
“I’m meeting him for breakfast in the morning,” he announced after he hung up. “I’ll let you know what happens.”
Hart felt relieved, and grateful, that someone else, someone he trusted and respected, was also now involved.
“Thanks, Charlie. I don’t know who else I could have told.”
He began to get up. Ryan nodded toward the hamburger, now turned cold.
“Don’t go. You haven’t finished dinner.”
The sense of urgency all but vanished from Ryan’s clear green eyes. He had taken the first important step to deal with a problem. There was nothing more he could do about it tonight. He mind turned to other things, to politics and what was going to happen at the Republican convention.
“It appears that despite everything this is going to be another typical presidential election: one party nominates a candidate with no principles anyone has been able to discover; the other party nominates a candidate without any principles anyone in their right mind would want to support. You give us Prentice Alworth, we give you Arthur Douglas; they both spend the whole campaign telling the country that the other one does not deserve to hold the office; and the country has to choose between two honest men!”
Ryan shook his head in disgust. “Jesus, Bobby, you should have run - I would have voted for you.” A wry expression started onto his mouth and he started to laugh. “Of course, against Douglas, I might even vote for Alworth.”
While the Republicans held their convention, Hart stayed in Washington, pouring over all the intelligence reports he could get his hands on, looking for anything that would tell him who was behind Rubicon and what was going to happen next. He was working in his senate office with the television set on the last night of the Republican convention, when the face of Charlie Ryan suddenly appeared on the screen. He picked up the telephone and called Santa Barbara.
“Helen, turn on the television. Charlie Ryan is on
“He’s not giving a speech, is he?” she asked. “You told me he said they wouldn’t let him.”
“No, it’s some kind of interview with Charlie and the vice-president.”
He knew that Helen did not much care for politics and had a particular aversion to most politicians; but she had always liked Charlie Ryan. She liked the way he did not take himself as seriously as the other did; perhaps, she had suggested with what Hart thought shrewd insight, because there was not anything he thought he had to prove. She was excited that he was on television and said she would turn it on right away.
“Call me later, will you? Or I’ll call you.”
Ryan and the vice-president were being interviewed by William Griffin, the editor of a political journal that was must reading among neo-conservatives. The first question was for the vice-president.
“You’ve said you’re here to support Arthur Douglas, but Douglas has said that he does not agree with the administration’s policy on the war; that he thinks mistakes were made, that he thinks -”
“That isn’t what he said,” said the vice-president, who managed to seem irritated, impatient and bored all at once. “He said that he supported the policy of staying in Iraq until the Iraqis are able to provide adequate security for themselves. That is a sound policy - the only policy, as far as I’m concerned - unless we’re prepared to let the terrorists win, which is what the Democrats, and I’m afraid even a few Republicans, seem willing to do.”
Eager to stir up a fight, Griffin turned to Ryan.
“I think he means you, senator.”
Ryan did not change expression.
“No, I’m sure he doesn’t.” He paused just long enough to make Griffin and the audience wonder if that was all he was going to say. “Because if he did, I’m sure he’d say it to my face.” He turned to the vice-president, who, if he had ever been in a real fight, had not been in one since school. “You don’t think that, do you? That I’m in favor of - how did you put it? - ‘letting the terrorists win.’”
The vice-president turned red, and then immediately went back on the attack.
“No, senator, I’m not suggesting that is what you want, I’m suggesting that the policy you support would almost certainly have that effect.”
“What policy is that, Mr. Vice-President? Suggesting that we better figure out a way to get out of there before we cause ourselves any more damage? That isn’t a policy, Mr. Vice-President. You give me too much credit. It’s the only remaining alternative we have. And as for letting the terrorists win, every day we stay there we increase their numbers. I may be wrong, but I’m not sure the best way to win a war is to make more soldiers for the enemy you are trying to defeat.”
“If Iraq goes, we lose the Middle East,” replied the vice-president with a look of unyielding belligerence.
“Just when was the Middle East ours to lose? Did you really think that all we had to do was have elections and there would be peace and democracy all through the region?”
“If we don’t remake the Middle East,” insisted the vice-president, “we’ll be fighting terrorism for the next hundred years, and it won’t be in the Middle East – it will be right here at home. Is that what you want, senator? Is that what you honestly think we should do?”
“It’s the attempt to remake everything, this war you started, is what has led to all the trouble,” Ryan fired back.
The vice-president lurched forward until his head was down between his shoulders. He glared at Ryan.
“Are you saying that democracy would be a bad thing for the Middle East?”
“No, I’m saying that you can’t impose it. We’ve tried. Look what it brought us.”
“What you and people like you don’t seem to understand,” said the vice-president, “is that America has interests and responsibilities all across the globe. We’re not some small republic, like we were at the beginning, two hundred years ago. This is a war of civilizations, senator: radical Islam on one side, America and the West on the other. It’s the most important war we’ll ever fight, and we have to use every means within our power to win it.”
“You’re wrong. We’re not some empire that imposes its will on others. The only lasting influence we can have is the force of our example. The real question, Mr. Vice-President, isn’t whether we can remake the Middle East, the real question is whether this country can survive the kind of endless war you describe in which we become no better than the people we’re fighting against.”
When it was over, Hart walked into David Allen’s office next door.
“Did you see that? Every once in a while someone does something and you remember what it is supposed to mean to be a member of the Senate. Charlie Ryan is everything a senator should be. Actually, he’s everything a president should be. But I’m afraid that’s never going to happen. And now, after he has damn near called the vice-president a liar and a fool on national television, he may not even get reelected.” Hart exchanged a glance with Allen. “I’m not sure I want to get re-elected if I have to listen to Arthur Douglas lecture all of us from the White House about the need to fight with the same unshakable resolve both terrorism and taxes.”
