Monday
7:38 PM: Stalemate
Nancy
looked around the room seeing the pall cast upon the faces around her.
“Listen,” all eyes turned to the General, “I need to go, but you have
your directive. Find this shooter.” He looked to Arnie, “Keep me in the loop.”
He stood, a second later the curtain wafted closed behind him.
Nancy
sat back with an exasperated sigh. “Guys, this is getting us nowhere. We’ve had
worse than this, there aren’t that many players. Our instructions are clear: we
are to work solely on finding the shooter.” She peered at each face, going face
to face―none looked back to her.
Turning to Arnie, “Come on Arnie, give us one of your famous shots in
the arm like you always do, we really need some help here.”
Arnie sat in silence, no wide smile forthcoming, puzzled, speechless. It
was obvious to Jeff that no shots in the arms were coming from Arnie’s
quarters.
Without thinking Jeff scooted
his chair forward, “Look, this can’t be that hard!” He held up his left hand
with his fingers splayed in display. “Who can be sending this guy? It has to be
somebody who wants this deal killed. I mean how many can that be?” Pointing
with his right forefinger to his left thumb, “There’s the Israelis. I know they
say that they are only passively interested in this whole deal, but I
definitely count them in. I mean, after all they took a shot at me, right?” He
pointed to his left pointer finger, “Then there’s the Iranians. Clearly they
hired whoever is the shooter, but he must not be an Iranian or they could
easily turn him off.” He pointed to his left middle finger. “There’s the U.S.
Government, there may be somebody at the Pentagon that doesn’t want this deal.”
“I don’t see that,” piped up Earl, “whoever this is was appointed from
within the little circle of players, I just don’t see a mysterious new player like
that.”
Jeff nodded, “Yeah, you’re right. So let’s just call this little piggy
the hit man.” Jeff picked up a pen from the table painting a little
mean-looking face on his left middle finger. “There, how’s that?” amusement
rose from the table. “So who else do we have?”
“There’s the ODS,” Earl suggested softly. Jeff pointed to his ring
finger nodding to Earl.
Arnie’s sudden deep ponder made everyone turn to him, “You know, we
don’t know much about those guys. I mean, who are they really? It sounds like
they really need this deal, yet I keep getting conflicting vibes.”
Raising her hand Nancy
started to speak, putting her hand back down with a deep frown.
“Nancy,
what is it?”
“I don’t know, but you used the term conflicting
vibes. It occurred to me that’s what has been bugging me about the meetings
I have attended with those guys. I mean for a deal that seems to be so
important I’m not getting the sense that everyone there is on board.” She
looked around the table, “I mean, does that make sense?”
Earl raised his hand the same way Nancy
did, Arnie nodded to go ahead, “I have been doing some analytics on ODS using
various sources. Compared to others in the arms dealer industry their track
record for clean deals is scarce.” Nancy
frowned but with an encouraging tint leaning toward Earl, “I mean usually those
guys just get everyone in the room, envelopes and papers are passed around then
everyone walks away. There seems to be too much ceremony in their deals. My
experience with too much ceremony is that means there are other side deals
going, that someone is trying to orchestrate things that are outside of the
view of the players at the table.” He stretched out his hands on the table, “I
mean, I’m only an analyst, but I can’t help but feel that ODS is making this
deal much more complicated than it needs to be, even for such a complicated
deal like this one.”
Sitting back, Jeff reflected on his meeting at the ODS office on Friday,
remembering the feeling that he had that something
was just not right.
Arnie folded his fingers together in front of his face in thought, “You
mean that there are two tracks going within the organization, like one team at ODS
is trying to do the deal while others are trying to either derail it or change
the outcome. You mean like instead of the weapons―” turning to Jeff
apologetically, “I mean the systems
may be going other places that we don’t know about?”
“Yes, exactly. I am not sure what the scenario is, but I would put money
on the fact that this deal is not what we think it is.” Earl sat back with a
satisfied grin.
“So who are the key players at ODS that could be the decision makers?”
“Well, Tom McAllister is the CEO,” Nancy
pondered, “he has been clued into everything. My sense is that he really wants
the deal.”
Nancy
turned to Arnie, “Arnie, I know it’s short notice, but can you get Tom over
here? We need to know what his drive is.”
Arnie stood up, walked through the curtain coming back two minutes
later, “He’ll be here in ten minutes.” Nancy
nodded.
“So what else do we know about ODS?” Arnie asked Earl.
“We only know three of their key players, really, though Nancy may know more.” Earl
turned to Nancy, “I know Tom McAllister, Shawn Roberts, though he says he
doesn’t work for ODS, then there’s a Harold Meyers who is the principle
congress liaison, at least he’s the one always seen around Capitol Hill, I
don’t know, but Nancy would know.”
All eyes turned to Nancy,
“This is kind of embarrassing to say, but those are the only people I have met
at ODS.” An elevated air of confusion arose in the room.
Arnie turned to her, “You mean that’s all you’ve met there? I mean Nancy, you know that I
trust you, but I’m a little surprised that you haven’t met more people there. I
mean they say that they have something like thirty four employees. You’ve been
to their offices, right, aren’t there other people there when you go?”
Nancy’s
face flushed in anger, she glanced sideways at Arnie, Jeff could tell that she
didn’t like being called on the carpet like this in public, but she just shrugged.
“That’s all that are ever there.”
“But I hear a woman’s voice when I go up the elevator, I met her.” Jeff
pondered.
“Yeah, I’ve met her. So okay, there’s a secretary there, but the other office
doors are always closed. I only ever go to that conference room, the coffee
nook and the bathroom when I’m there.” She shook her head in obvious amazement
that she never questioned this, “I can’t believe that I never opened those
doors or dug in more about who these guys are.”
Arnie reached across Jeff who pulled back, Arnie laying his hand on Nancy’s arm, “Don’t beat
yourself up, actually this makes it a whole lot easier if there really are only
two or three actually at ODS. I mean think about it, that really narrows the
list of people of interest right?” Arnie sat back looking around the room, “I
mean, am I right?” There was confused concurrence all around.
A man poked his head through the curtain, “There’s a Tom McAllister
here, says you called him?”
Arnie stood up, pushing through
the curtain, a minute later came back in with Tom behind him. Arnie pointed to
a chair, Tom sat down looking around the table nervously. He looked to Nancy then to Jeff,
noticeably more relaxed, looking behind him at the people standing against the
wall, looking uncomfortable again at the filled room.
Arnie leaned toward Tom, “You know Nancy and Jeff here, right?” Tom
nodded glancing to them again. “I work with them. We brought you here to help
us figure this all out. We need you to be forthcoming about what’s been going
on. You probably have already figured out that we have a matter of national
security here, and I need you to be totally forthcoming with us.”
“Yes, of course, but what’s so urgent?”
Tom noticed Nancy’s
intense expression, sitting back with a look of sudden anxiety.
“Tom, you know that I have been to your offices many times. Every time I
was there you told me that office doors were closed because that was company
policy.” He gave a nervous nod. “In your presentation to the Arabs on Friday
you said that you have thirty four people here and another,” she paused trying
to remember, “twelve stationed around the world. Wasn’t that what you told us?”
Tom held up his hands, “Well, Nancy,
you know our business well enough to know that appearances are not always what
they seem, that we need to market according to what people expect.”
“You mean you lie.”
“Lie is such loaded term―”
“In fact it’s just you and Harold and maybe some secretary.”
“We have our consultants, lots of them.”
“You have Shawn. I have never heard another name.”
“We have our advisory board, the congressmen, the senators.”
“Three congressmen. No senators. I have never heard another name.”
“We―” Tom’s expression turned wooden, he stared at Nancy. It was clear to Jeff that he was not
going to contradict her. He wasn’t going to try to defend himself.
The room was pitch silent. Jeff couldn’t hear a single sound, not even
the sound of his own breathing.
He looked to Nancy
seeing that she was deliberately letting the instrument of silence play on in
the room, its soundless melody accompanied by only the soft ringing in the ears
of everyone in the room.
Nancy
held the silence.
The silence held the room.
Finally she spoke, “And you have no money.” Tom answered by looking down
at the table. “And you really need this deal to happen.”
Suddenly a hopeful flash jumped to Tom’s face, “Yes, we desperately need
this deal. If we don’t get this deal the company is ruined.” He gave a long
deep sigh, “I am ruined.”
Tom was surprised to see a warm smile suddenly appear on Nancy’s face, “That means
we are on the same team, right?”
Nodding his head enthusiastically Tom nearly burst, “Yes! Yes! That is
if you want this deal, then definitely we are on the same team! Yes!” he looked
around trying to find encouragement in other faces but none had reacted to this
turn, he looked back to Nancy.
“What is the status of the export permits?”
“They are done! We got them Friday afternoon, I personally drove to the
Pentagon to get the final signatures for the avionics and the planes. They are
in the safe back at my office!”
“What is the status of the payments?”
“I have already received them. They are in the safe as well.”
“For the avionics and the planes?”
“No, just for the avionics. The payment for the planes is still coming.”
“You received all three checks for the avionics?”
“No, we do not trust checks, they are in Bearer Bonds.”
“How much total?”
“There are three payments, six million in million-dollar Bearer Bonds,
two million in half-million dollar bonds, eight one hundred-thousand bonds for
Shawn’s company.”
“And you actually have the money.”
“Yes, when I showed the export permits to Amid and Hazim on Friday
afternoon they gave me the payment for avionics.”
Arnie finally chimed in, “Wow, that’s pretty trusting to give you over
eight million dollars in negotiable bonds with you showing them a piece of
paper.”
Tom became very animated, “Well, the export permit is not a single page
for sure. There are the signature documents and the notary sheets, for trust
there is my company’s reputation at stake.” He wrung his hands nervously, “There
is also the small matter that they would kill me and my entire family if I were
to double cross them.” With a terror-stricken grin, “So there’s lots of reasons
to be an upstanding citizen!”
Nancy
nodded her head slowly, “So you would have no reason to kill this deal.”
“Kill this deal! I can’t kill this deal! This has taken nearly two years
to engineer, I have everything―and I mean everything―riding
on it. I am totally freaked out that there is someone running around killing
people to dump this deal.”
“And nobody has approached you to pay you not to do this deal?” All
heads turned astonished to soft-spoken little Earl.
Tom shook his head emphatically, “God, if they had I’d be in the Bahamas right now, or maybe Brazil. Why the
hell would I hang around someplace where everyone is getting killed?”
“Okay,” Nancy
nodded slowly, looking around the room, “these are the answers I think we were
looking for.” She stood up extending her hand to Tom who stood with an anxious
glance around the room taking Nancy’s
hand shaking it tensely.
Nancy
turned to Arnie, “Arnie, we could really use this guy being alive tomorrow at
four, can we get him to our hotel?”
Arnie stood up nodding, “Tom, you have a wife right?” Tom nodded, “Okay,
we are going to put you two up tonight, will that be okay?”
Tom blurted out, “I’ll drive over to get her right now!”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s such a good idea, but you can call her and
tell her to pack for you and her for a couple nights, we’ll have someone go get
her,” waving with his hands to Tom, “come on, let me make the arrangements.” They
both disappeared behind the curtain.
Nancy
sat back down with a long loud sigh. “Jesus, we are still not close to our
shooter.” She turned to Jeff, “So who else ya got?”
“God, I don’t know, the list of suspects is back to the Israelis or the
Iranians.” He sat back with his right hand to his chin, “You know, the whole
thing at the embassy keeps rolling around my mind. I mean, it seems like when
the Iranians start complaining about somebody being too brutal that’s got to be
a bad thing. My guess is that they won’t call off whoever is doing all this
craziness because they think it might work. Their offering me the bribe is just
kind of doubling up. I keep thinking that there must be another way to do
this.”
“Do what?” came a voice from the room.
“That there must be some way to get the Iranians on our side. I know that
I don’t know the culture so it’s really hard to read people, but I kept getting
the impression that there could be some other solution.” Jeff lowered his head,
cupped his hands over his face in thought.
“God, I sure wish Sherlock Holmes could help us,” Nancy said with a half-laugh.
Jeff glanced at her smiling, remembering how he had come up with all
sorts of hints from Sherlock Holmes in Atlanta.
“Me too, there must be some other way.”
Jeff turned to Earl, “Earl, tell us about Iraq
and Iran.
What’s the deal?”
Earl’s expression showed his delight at being asked this question,
“Well, it’s pretty simple from the U.S. point of view, is that what
you mean?”
“That’s all that counts, right?”
“Yeah, sure, well during the war in the eighties, it was a brutal
stalemate. I mean really brutal. And I mean really a stalemate. The U.S. was
hopelessly out of the loop with no relations with either country, so all we
could do was watch from the sidelines. We tried to foment the Kurds with
weapons thinking that Saddam would get distracted, but all he did was turn
around and gas them. Killed tens of thousands of civilians.”
“But we liked the fact that it was a stalemate, right?”
“Oh yes, we didn’t want either side to win. We were quite happy that the
war was happening, though, other than the impact on oil prices, because it
meant that two of our enemies were so involved with each other that they didn’t
pay attention to anyone else, including us!”
Jeff turned to Nancy,
“Who was that General we had in here?”
“General Thompson, very smart man.”
“I’ve got the weirdest idea! Can we get him back here?”
“I’ve got his cell number. You want me to call him?” a voice piped up.
Nancy shot Jeff a knowing smile, looking to the man who spoke up, “Yeah
Bobby, see if you can get him back here, apologize, tell him it’s urgent.”
Bobby got up pushing through the curtain, the room fell silent.
“How does Bobby know the General?” Jeff smiled curiously.
“He used to work at the Pentagon, he was one of the General’s aids.”
“Now, that is convenient!” they
laughed together.
A minute later Bobby came back in, “He’ll be back here in twenty
minutes.”
Jeff suddenly realized that he hadn’t eaten all day, including breakfast
when he only had coffee, “Nancy,
I really need some food, I haven’t eaten all day.”
“Oh god, Jeff, I’m sorry, I should have thought about that.”
“No, it’s fine, it’s been a pretty busy day, right? But I’m gonna pass
out if I don’t get some calories quick.”
“It’s not like Atlanta,
we don’t have a kitchen here.” She signaled to Bobby, “Bobby can you order us
out a pizza,” paused, “no never mind, I have a better idea!”
She stood up, “Okay everybody, I think this is all we can do right now.”
Everyone stood up starting to file through the curtain. Nancy stood up, tied the curtain back, waved
to Jeff, “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”
Jeff followed her out of the room into the ops room that was packed with
activity. She signaled to Ted who walked over. “General Thompson is going to be
here in a few minutes, can you have him meet us over at O’Malley’s, we really
need some food and beer, we’ll be in the back room.” Ted nodded turning toward
the front door.
“Come on,” Nancy
pulled Jeff by the elbow, soon they were in the blue Mustang driving in near darkness.
Ten minutes later they were standing at the bar in O’Malley’s, the bartender placing
a perfectly-topped Guinness in front of Jeff, “Yes, I remember you, pour you another,
right?” Jeff nodded, he instantly started glugging the tall glass in his hand, Nancy did the same.
“I thought you don’t drink while on duty?”
She laughed, “Duty shmooty, after today I need a drink!” they both
laughed.
When their second glass arrived Nancy
leaned to the bartender, “Tell Millie we will be needing menus in the back
room, and that we are expecting two more.”
The bartender nodded. Nancy
pulled Jeff by his elbow, his full ale nearly sloshing out of the glass, a few
seconds later they were pushing through split swinging half-doors sitting down
in a very small room with only one table and six chairs.
Jeff laughed, “Let me guess, the auxiliary conference room?”
“Beats the hell out of the ops house, don’t you think?”
They tipped their glasses together with smiles taking another drink just
as Arnie poked his head in, “Hey guys, we’ll be right with you,” they both
raised their glasses to him.
“Bring us two more!” Jeff called out, Arnie nodded.
“Boy, you like your ale, will you be okay on an empty stomach?”
“People have praised me for how well I hold my liquor! You have!” they
both laughed.
A few minutes later Arnie and the General joined them, Ted stood on the
other side of the door as guard facing into the bar, his broad shoulders
visible over the half-doors.
They spent a couple minutes going back over the events of the day, Nancy said that Jeff
called the meeting.
The General turned to Jeff expectantly, “Yes, General, is that how I
should address you?”
“We’re friends here, you can call me
Robert.”
“Well Robert, I understand that you are a real expert on middle east
politics, the Iraq and Iran
deal, right?”
“I am the expert on those two
at DOD, but you can’t quote me!” he laughed.
Pausing not sure what that meant Jeff continued, “Well this is my little
take on what’s going on here. We are going to sell something that will end up
in Iraq
so that Saddam can spy on the Ayatollahs. The Ayatollahs are very unhappy about
this, so unhappy that they hired someone to try to stop it, only the guy they
hired is not a thinker but a doer, result is we’ve got a couple dead
congressmen on our hands and everyone else worried about our own hides.” The
General nodded. “So the Iranians are unhappy about the guy they hired, now trying
to open up other avenues to kill the deal.”
He leaned into the General, “And you know about my payola,” the General
nodded. Jeff looked to Nancy,
she sipped her Guinness, Jeff smiling at the foam on the tip of her nose. He reached
over to wipe it with his finger, everyone laughed.
Taking a drink from his ale, Jeff continued, “So I figure that the
Iranians don’t want to call off this hot-dog because his killing everyone might
work after all, but just to make sure they double-up by paying me five million
dollars. One of the Iranians let it slip that’s what they are paying this
murdering guy, so they really want
this deal to go away.”
Jeff took a long thoughtful drink of his ale. “So I’ve been thinking
that there must be another way for us to manage this. I mean, what if there was
something else in this deal for the Iranians, what if we could manage something
that would still be in the best strategic interests of the United States?”
The General sat back pensively, “Okay, but what do you have in mind?”
“Well, I’m not sure. I’m kind of thinking this through out loud. But we
have an analyst, this guy Earl, who gave us a nickel tour of the Iraq-Iran
thing. Something that came out was the word stalemate,
the U.S.
likes it when there is a stalemate between those two countries, right?”
Robert nodded, his expression telling that he knew where Jeff was going
with this. “So only Saddam having UAV’s would be a bad thing when it comes to
this stalemate, right?”
Robert took a long drink from his ale, nodding again, Jeff smiled, “So
the definition of a stalemate, assuming that we are going to actually deliver
the systems to Saddam―”
“Oh my god, Jeff, that’s brilliant!” Nancy screamed so loud that Ted turned around
looking over the split doors to the table, “Jeff, that’s so brilliant!” She
looked enthusiastically to Arnie and the General.
Jeff held up his hands, “Yeah, but wait, the only way it would work is
if we can meet with the Iranians to tell them what we are proposing so we can
get them to call off their little pit bull.”
The General emptied his glass to the bottom, set it down, turning back
and forth between Arnie and Nancy pointing his thumb toward Jeff, “Where did
you get this guy?”
Robert sat back looking at Jeff with a smile, “And he’s a civie, right?”
“Yes, he’s civilian,” Arnie smiled, “but he is amazing, believe me. I
couldn’t begin to tell you the stuff he’s come up with.”
The General sat back crossing arms with a far-off look. “This solves two
problems.” He turned to Nancy,
“I told you before that I had a lot of reservations about this deal, I damn
near didn’t sign the export permit on Friday. But this feels so much better.
And if you guys can use this to get that maniac from running around killing
everybody, then this is the definition of a win-win.”
Enthusiasm welled through Jeff’s body, he turned to the General, “So you
think we can get the approvals in time to have this meeting with them
tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, that’s pretty short notice.” He turned to Nancy, “When is the deal
happening?”
“Tomorrow, at four in the afternoon.”
“Can you put it off to Wednesday?”
She
looked to Arnie shaking his head concerned, “We’d really rather not, we’re all
losing a little sleep over the killings.”
“This decision is above my pay grade, sorry, but I have to take this to
the Joint Chiefs.”
“How long will that take?”
Robert looked at his watch.
“Those old farts are all in bed, but I can try to convene a meeting after lunch
tomorrow, maybe in the morning if I can pull a stat. But there’s no way we
could get the paperwork done by tomorrow.”
“But if we had the verbal approval, we could do the meeting with the
Iranians, right?” Jeff asked eagerly looking back and forth between Arnie and
Nancy, back to the General.
“Yeah, once I get the approval it would be guaranteed that the deal
could be done, but you know this is complicated, it could take maybe a month to
get the paperwork in order for the export permit.”
“But none of that would matter, a month. Hell, it’s going to take me
four months to finish producing the gear, who knows how long it will take for General
Avatonics to make the planes.”
Nancy shook
her head slowly turning to Jeff, “Jeff, there is so much to work out in these
deals, you only have to think about shipping your gear once you get the export
permit. There’s a lot of logistics that goes with it. And politicking.”
Jeff’s hands waved in front of him expressively, “But don’t you get it?
It doesn’t matter. All we need is the call from the General tomorrow. Then I
can get the meeting again so we can get this all done!”
Robert nodded with a small smile turning to Jeff, “Look, this is all
fine, and this is a wonderful idea that you have come up with,” pointing to Nancy, “but she is the
lead of this, you need to follow her. You must do everything she says.
Everything.”
Jeff nodded, “Okay, everything she
says, I promise,” turning a sly smile to Nancy, back to the General, “So you’re going
to the Joint Chiefs tomorrow, and you think you can call us by early afternoon
with the green light?” The General nodded.
Jeff held out his hand to the General, “So we have a deal?”
The General shook Jeff’s hand warmly.
“Yes, we have a deal.”
