Landfall, page 28
Kissinger supposed that the years had by now rendered him a bit Chinese when it came to these things.
With the assistance of his driver, the former secretary of state made it up the steps into the white brick house first used in its vice-presidential capacity by Nelson Rockefeller, his real patron, beyond anything Nixon had been. Kissinger’s ancient form, more or less spherical these days, huffed and puffed as it padded into the dining room. Cheney—eighteen years younger but not, with that heart, the actuarial favorite here—rose to greet him. They took possession of a pair of club chairs, off to the side of the room, for some pre-lunch conversation. This almost-monthly meal usually took place downtown in the EOB, and in recognition of the change of scene, as a kind of substitute for a house tour, Cheney pointed to a couple of paintings on the wall, abstract pastels selected from the National Gallery by his wife. Kissinger recognized them as the work of Helen Frankenthaler, thanks to his years in and out of Rockefeller’s many mansions: the governor had been a prodigious collector of both women and modern art.
Cheney had proposed today’s different location. With the president in Asia, the red-hot-center appeal of the White House, still potent for Kissinger, would be diminished.
“It’s a good thing they hadn’t acquired this place in Agnew’s time,” the former secretary mused, in his guttural growl, about Nixon’s corrupt veep. “He would have stripped away the copper piping before any of his successors got to use it.”
Cheney displayed his slanted smile. Three decades ago he and Henry had shared the Nixon and Ford years, sometimes locking horns toward the end. His memory preferred the moments when he’d had to separate Kissinger’s giant ego from Moynihan’s—two Harvard hot-air balloons in a continual belly-bumping contest.
When his guest arrived, the vice president had been looking over the typed pages of a speech he would be delivering tonight. He liked to have a good advance command of his text but tended to forgo any preening preparation before the office teleprompter.
Kissinger, pointing to the sheaf of papers, asked: “Is that going to be what Kristof recommended?” The New York Times columnist had declared the need for Cheney to give a “Checkers speech” telling the public whether or not he had asked the now-indicted Scooter Libby to leak the name of Joe Wilson’s CIA-agent wife.
“Kristof can’t be much of a student of the boss,” Cheney reflected. The “boss” of course meant Nixon. “He’s hoping for a confession, and the boss didn’t go in for that.”
“Well,” said Kissinger—the “w” sounding even now more like a “v”—“at least not until he was out of office.”
“My subject tonight is what you Ph.D.s, like Lynne, call ‘revisionism.’ ” The vice president located a key line in the draft and read it aloud: “What we’re hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war.”
Kissinger nodded, worrying his lower lip with an index finger.
“I have another one coming up next week at AEI,” said Cheney, referencing the conservative think tank. “I talk about shameless revisionism in that one.” The slash of his mouth, self-amused, seesawed in the opposite direction from the one it had traveled a moment before.
“Where is the speech tonight?” asked Kissinger.
“Down at the Mayflower. Frontiers of Freedom Institute, or something like that.” The White House had decided on a new rapid-and-sustained response to congressional criticism. It remained unclear whether Scott McClellan, the still-callow press secretary, would be up to such a task at each noontime briefing, but Cheney had decided, with tonight’s speech, to send a strong signal of the new approach.
Kissinger could hear Nixon’s morose voice in his head. It depends on who writes the history. “Maybe it’s still a little early in the war to be talking about revisionism?” he asked.
“Henry,” replied Cheney, “the participants—the legislators who voted for war—are already practicing it. Saying they didn’t have access to the same intelligence we did before they cast their vote. It’s a crock.” Bush himself had begun the counterattack at a Veterans Day speech last week in Pennsylvania—it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began—while his vice president laid the wreath at Arlington.
Kissinger nodded, apparently conceding the point, though Cheney knew from long experience that this didn’t mean he actually conceded it. “You’re talking about things like that piece by little Johnny Appleseed,” the secretary grumbled. John Edwards, Cheney’s opponent in last year’s vice-presidential race, had finally published his op-ed about his war vote, “I Was Wrong,” in Sunday’s Washington Post.
“Yeah,” said Cheney. “Of course, the translation of ‘I Was Wrong’ is ‘They Were Wrong.’ ”
“That goes without saying,” Kissinger replied. “And there’s an argument for letting it remain unsaid. Think of the uncountable hours the boss spent letting the antiwar movement get under his skin. You’ve already lost the battle for public opinion. You now need only to worry about losing the war.”
Cheney, determined never to apologize for the uncomplicated relief he’d felt last year after telling the self-cherishing Senator Leahy to go fuck himself, gave Kissinger a look to indicate that he would take this recommendation of restraint under advisement.
For his part, the former secretary decided to change the subject. “All the Europeans have been calling Condi about that other Post piece—not Edwards’s, but the thing about the black sites.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No,” said Kissinger, almost offended at the suggestion that he would need to depend on Condoleezza Rice to know this. “The Europeans tell me this.”
The vice president picked up a phone. He asked an aide to go into his briefcase and bring two copies of “the Zelikow memo” to the dining room.
“What is this?” asked Kissinger. “The latest from Condi’s eyes and ears in Iraq?”
“No,” explained Cheney. “A little project Zelikow is working on back here, along with Bellinger, Condi’s legal guy, and Gordon England—whom Rumsfeld lent out, reluctantly, from DoD. An attempt to regulate the interrogations and renditions.” The vice president turned to the sixth page of the document, which contained a passage he read aloud and found especially distasteful: “ ‘There is a risk that some intelligence may be lost when enemy captives are ultimately placed in a less coercive regular detention system. As in our prior wars, this risk should be recognized, but accepted as necessary to maintain the integrity of the system and our common, fundamental values.’ ” He looked up at Kissinger and said, “If you accept that risk, you put everything at risk.”
It was difficult to tell if Henry was nodding assent or nodding off. A Navy steward’s tinkling of a small bell revived him. The lunch plates were on the table. Once there himself, Kissinger asked Cheney about his recently resigned chief of staff: “Do you miss Libby?”
His host answered, unhesitatingly, “Yes. The indictment is crap. The president ought to pardon him, sooner rather than later.” He looked closely at Kissinger, attempting to discern whether his guest believed, like the prosecutors, that Scooter had lied in order to protect him. Kissinger, opening his napkin, appeared all at once expressive and inscrutable, like a stone gargoyle atop an Oxford college. “The boss was never the same after Haldeman left,” he finally said.
“I don’t change much,” replied Cheney.
Videoconference between 2206 Kalorama Road, Washington, D.C., and the Republican Palace, Baghdad
“Did I get you out of bed?” Rumsfeld asked from a secure connection on the second floor of his seven-bedroom home. A slice of moonlight glinted on the computer screen. The house’s shutters were open far enough to reveal the pool and gardens below.
“I don’t sleep a lot these days,” replied Allie. It was 8:30 p.m. in Washington; 3:30 a.m. in Baghdad. She had, an hour ago, gotten a message on her new BlackBerry requesting that she arrange a video call with the secretary of defense for sometime tomorrow afternoon. She’d decided that now was as good a time as any, and after a quick relay of messages Rumsfeld had agreed. A soldier from the Republic of Georgia, the easternmost piece of Rumsfeld’s New Europe, had just run her from the Rashid to the Republican Palace.
“I’m seeing trail mix on your desk,” said the smiling defense secretary. “Is that a midnight snack or an early-morning breakfast?”
“Just a craving,” Allie replied.
Rumsfeld seemed intrigued by the wording. “How’s the work going?” he asked.
“They’ve got me involved mostly with the tribunal. I’m with some very good people. When it starts back up, I think you’ll be seeing something much tighter, much better arranged, than the opening session.”
In the weeks since that chaotic afternoon, she’d regularly been seeing Fadhil’s widow and daughter. The loose blouse she had on now was a present from Rukia, who continually urged her to get back to America with her own as-yet-unborn girl. Allie, you forgive me, but is crazy for you to be here. In between such importunings, she listened to Rukia’s tales of the reprisals visited upon the other Shia families of Dujail, not just Fadhil’s, after the assassination attempt in ’82. Inside one of her Velcro-fastened pants pockets Allie now carried a relic she had been unable to refuse: a bloodstained two inches of rope acquired years ago by a friend of Fadhil’s father on a visit to his own son in Abu Ghraib.
“And yourself, sir?” asked Allie, archly casual. “How are things in your world?” She knew, of course, that he wanted something.
Rumsfeld ignored the question, choosing instead to enter his mental landscape of categories and classification: “The trial: where would you say it belongs on the spectrum of ‘clear, hold, and build’? We’ve been hearing a lot of that phrase.”
“Yes, I know,” said Allie. She’d noticed it not just in Rice’s testimony but in Bush’s Veterans Day speech. “I’d say it’s ‘build.’ Saddam was ‘cleared’—or cleared away—in ’03. By showing the justice behind that action, this tribunal won’t just consolidate it. The trial will offer the Iraqis a better judicial world than what they’re used to.” She noticed Rumsfeld’s right eyebrow go up: the twinkle below it crumpled, like a piece of spun sugar, into skepticism.
“I’m still trying to get the president to stop at ‘hold,’ and to stay even there only temporarily.”
“Yes,” said Allie, “I know.” She wasn’t inclined to elaborate on the assessment she’d just given him.
“I’m hoping that your latest observations over there will strengthen the case you were making to him in Crawford. He’d be glad to hear from you—a personal debriefing, perhaps. Don’t you think it’s maybe time for your strange R&R over there to come to an end?” The twinkle was back.
“He told you he’d enjoy hearing from me?”
“Yes, he says he’s also getting reports from your friend Mr. Weatherall in Louisiana.”
She stared at him for a second. Her hand involuntarily seized a piece of carob from the trail mix.
“No, Allison, you haven’t been surveilled. The president briefly mentioned to me a friend of yours in New Orleans that he nicknamed ‘Weatherman.’ It didn’t take much more than a little flipping through the Federal Directory to figure out whom he was talking about.”
Rumsfeld’s twinkle seemed to be twinkling. Allie couldn’t tell whether the delight was simple self-congratulation or something truly sinister. All he added, neutrally, was: “I’m now guessing why you were in New Orleans when the hurricane struck.”
“Would you like me to brief the president before or after my leave begins?”
“Leave?”
“Yes. Pre- and post-natal. I’ll need a few months.”
He said nothing. Allie wondered whether the admission of her pregnancy, which there would soon be no concealing, had even been necessary. The fact of it might already have come to Rumsfeld through his cherished deductive capacities, or from the surveillance he denied having undertaken.
“Anytime before New Year’s would be all right,” the defense secretary finally replied.
“I’ll be home by December eleventh.”
“No need to say more,” Rumsfeld added. “ ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and all that sort of thing.”
“I might remind you that those kinds of standards don’t apply to civilians—leaving aside whether they should apply to the military. Which, by the way, they shouldn’t.”
Realizing that this was genuine frost, not banter, Rumsfeld offered what seemed to border on an apology. “I really don’t mean to pry, Allison.”
“You already have, sir. And you’ve probably leapt to several incorrect conclusions.”
“Perhaps incidentally incorrect. But correct in the main. And ‘conclusions’ are what I’d actually like to speak of. If we don’t bring this war to our own conclusion, the other side may bring it to theirs.”
“I take it you mean the Democrats, not the Sunnis.”
“That’s right,” said Rumsfeld.
“I’ve seen the Murtha story,” Allie informed him. An old-school Pennsylvania House Democrat, a bemedalled Vietnam combat veteran, had just turned against the war in a speech rebutting Cheney’s of the night before. He’d come close to calling the vice president a draft dodger, and had capped things off by introducing a resolution to withdraw troops from Iraq.
“As of tonight he’s the latest media hero,” Rumsfeld said. “You won’t be hearing much about his old willingness to take bribes—are you old enough to remember the Abscam investigation?—or the suspicions surrounding all those Purple Hearts he collected.”
“Why not let him pass his resolution?” Allie suggested. “Have the Democrats force you out of Iraq and then blame the collapse on them.”
“For one thing,” Rumsfeld replied, “he can only pass it with Republican votes, which he won’t get. And for another, passing it would permanently weaken the presidency. Fighting against that is the biggest bond Cheney and I have—ever since the days of Nixon and the War Powers Act.”
“The imperial presidency.”
“Long may its scepter wave! You know why Cheney and I have credibility on this? Because we both served in Congress and know you can’t run a war out of there. The president needs to perform a withdrawal on his own terms, not with Nancy Pelosi prodding him in the back with some rolled-up congressional resolution.”
“Clear, hold, clear out,” said Allie. “Before the Sunnis or the Democrats force Bush’s hand.”
Rumsfeld appeared puzzled by the sarcasm in her tone. “What happened to ‘zero’ being your preferred troop level? You don’t sound very fervent about finding a quicker way to get to that.”
“You mean, am I going ‘wobbly’ on you?” She could count on his remembering Mrs. Thatcher’s spine-stiffening words to the current president’s father in advance of the Gulf War. “Or to put it more precisely: Are you worried that I’m wobbling on my wobbliness?”
“Are you?” asked Rumsfeld.
Allie decided to say nothing more than “I’d be happy to give the president my most recent impressions.”
The secretary sent another quizzical look across the six thousand miles between them. He appeared to be wondering how the formerly “known known” on his monitor might be turning into a less-certain isotope of her former self. “Happy Thanksgiving, Allison. We’ll be glad to have you home before Christmas.”
Once his image left her screen, Allie pushed a button and let the Georgian soldier know she’d be ready to leave in five minutes. She decided to do a quick log-in to her e-mail, where she again found YOU AND ME AND MUCH MORE, the subject line of something from Ross at neah.gov, the boldface indicating that after five days in her in-box it remained unopened. For the first time, however, she noticed that the document contained 146KB of text, which suggested even more than “much more.” But still she didn’t open it.
From the other Velcroed pocket of her pants, the one not occupied by the bloody relic, she extracted a letter that Dr. Asefi had sent to her from Kabul via Washington. It had arrived this morning and she now reread it:
Dear Madame O’Connor:
Greetings to you—and a puzzle for your entertainment!
Here are eighteen pieces of a torn watercolor. If you can fit them back together you will see the picture of a pretty girl in a pink dress. Separately they look like rose petals, do they not?—but they are even more lovely whole.
Quite apart from those oil paintings that you heard about, these pieces come from a large case inside our humble National Gallery. There are many more thousands of such little pieces, created by the Taliban (such artists without knowing it!) when they tore up all the drawings and unframed watercolors with human faces that they could find. Most of these were never, I admit to you, very good, but if I might, I would invoke what the English especially like to call “the principle of the thing.” I ask with all humility—having received permission of Mrs. Morris to put the question to you—if you might be able to direct us to someone inclined to help in the restoration of these pictures. Mrs. Morris mentioned that you are providing similar assistance to treasures (I hesitate to call these rose petals such) that were found in Iraq.
With the greatest respect and good wishes,
Mohammed Yusef Asefi, M.D.
P.S. We are learning many things from Iraq!
She knew what the postscript meant. Since Afghanistan’s September parliamentary elections, too successful for their taste, the Taliban had imported a tactic from the Iraqi insurgents: the suicide bomb. It was one of the few forms of cruelty they hadn’t used previously. Last week one such explosion, in Kabul, had killed eight Afghans and a coalition soldier.
