There were many photos of Pflug on the Scepter Web site, in many valiant poses. There was Pflug as T. E. Lawrence, standing by a sand-pitted jeep, squinting out over a dusty steppe; swashbuckling Pflug, at the helm of a storm-tossed sailboat, squinting out over the merciless waves; Pflug as master of the universe, leaning insouciantly on a Bloomberg terminal, squinting out over a chaotic trading floor. There was Pflug the corporate pitchman, touting Scepter’s services to a clutch of rapt executives; Pflug the inspirational leader, exhorting a roomful of fresh-faced young suits; and Pflug the expert, lecturing some plump Rotarians about homeland security. In all of them, he looked tall and lean and, if not exactly handsome, then at least rugged, tough, and daring. The vanity was unabashed and amusing.
The small portions of the Scepter site not devoted to Pflug himself were given over to a lot of drivel about the equivalence of commerce and war, the competitive advantage of knowledge, and the value of timely intelligence. It was unoriginal and sometimes incoherent stuff, heavily laced with- though not redeemed by- Pflug’s musings on warfare, strategy, and tactics, all of which were mangled paraphrasings of Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and Vince Lombardi. I read that Scepter was an intelligence firm for the new millennium but otherwise had no clue of what it did. Neary scanned the screen and shook his head. He laughed outright when we got to the other stuff.
The other stuff came mostly from a lengthy article, published a couple of years back in an irreverent monthly magazine, on the qualifications of some of the experts engaged by the cable news channels to provide color commentary on the last war. One of those so-called experts was Jeremy Pflug, and there was apparently much less to him than met the eye.
Starting with his academic background. Under the reporter’s close inspection, Pflug’s Ivy education became a freshman year in New Haven and a bachelor of arts from a West Coast diploma mill, the same fine institution that later awarded him his graduate degrees. The language skills consisted mainly of high-school Spanish, and- according to an unnamed source- the ability to bargain with hookers in French and German.
Pflug’s claims of military service were slightly more legitimate. He had in fact been in the navy and had achieved the rank of lieutenant commander. But his service with Special Forces teams might more accurately have been termed service of Special Forces teams- as his primary duties had been those of a supply officer.
His CV stretched the truth even thinner when it came to his career after the navy. His experience as a war correspondent amounted to six months as a mostly unpaid stringer for a now-defunct news service. His beat was Singapore- not exactly downtown Beirut, as the author of the magazine article pointed out. His claim to have been a CIA analyst was even more tenuous. In fact, Pflug was a temp at a DC consulting firm that was hired by the Agency to analyze administrative costs. Similarly, “bond trader” was Pflug’s spin on his nine months as a trader’s assistant at a second-rate broker-dealer in Baltimore. The article, apparently, marked the end of Pflug’s career in broadcast.
The subscription services and the Brill database confirmed some of what was in the article but shed no light on Pflug’s company, Scepter Intelligence. As it was a privately held firm, there was no information available on its other officers, its revenues, its employees, or its clients, and what little we did come across was a rehash of what was on their Web site:
Offices in Washington, New York, and London. Practice areas include financial services, technology, media, and energy. Strategic and tactical engagements.
Neary leaned back in his chair and stretched. “I’ve got to get this guy to work on my rA©sumA©,” he said, laughing. “A little tweaking, and it can read like I was attorney general.”
“Or even postmaster general. But who is this guy, and what does he actually do? And what’s his interest in Danes?”
“Assuming it is his interest,” Neary said.
“As opposed to…?”
“As opposed to a client’s interest.”
“Another fucking cutout… great.” I shook my head. “So who’s his client, and what the hell does he want with Danes?”
Neary smiled. “First things first,” he said. “Let’s start with who this guy is and what he does. What was the name of the magazine reporter?”
I looked down at my pad. “George L. Gerber, out of LA,” I read.
Neary’s fingers were busy again and he was quiet for a moment, reading his screen. “There we go. Think it’s too early to call out West?” But he was already working the phone.
It wasn’t too early for George L. Gerber. He was awake and alert over the phone speaker, and there was a prickly hint of Brooklyn in his voice. But he was pleasant enough, until we told him what we wanted to talk about. Then there was silence on the line, followed by some very careful questions about who we were. We gave him answers, and he said he’d call us back. Neary started to give him his direct number, but Gerber stopped him.
“I’ll find the number for Brill in New York,” he said. “If I can’t reach you there, I don’t want to talk to you.” Five minutes later he was on the line again.
“So what’s your interest in him?” Gerber asked. There was still plenty of caution in his voice.
“We tripped across him in a case we’re working,” Neary said. “We’re looking for some background on him and thought you might help us out. You’re the closest we’ve come to a Pflug expert.”
“You got that right,” Gerber said, with a bitter laugh. “But if you read my article, you already know the important stuff- that he’s a lying, self-aggrandizing creep. I don’t know what I can add.”
“What can you tell us about Scepter Intelligence?” I asked. “You didn’t say much about the company in your piece.”
“Besides Pflug, there isn’t a lot to say about Scepter. I mean, Pflug is Scepter.”
“Their Web site sure makes it sound that way,” Neary said. “Of course, it makes it sound like a lot of the civilized world depends on Pflug, just to hold things together.”
Gerber didn’t laugh. “I wasn’t joking, Neary. He really is the company. I mean, from everything I learned, Pflug is the only employee of Scepter Intelligence.”
Neary looked at me and I looked back, and we were quiet for a while. Gerber helped us out.
“The Web site’s a Potemkin village, and all the offices- in DC and New York and London- they’re just serviced space. For a few hundred a month he gets a respectable address, a phone number, a receptionist, a place to get mail, and a decent conference room when he needs to have a meeting. As far as I could tell, the company mainly exists in Pflug’s condo, out in the northern Virginia burbs.”
“So he does all the work?” I asked.
“He’s more like a contractor. He gets the gigs and hires on whatever help he needs- day labor, specialists, even other companiesfor however long he needs them. He manages them and slaps a big markup on every job.”
“What kinds of jobs, George?” Neary asked. “What’s he selling, and who’s he selling it to?”
Gerber snorted. “He calls it private intelligence and opposition research and a few other pretentious euphemisms, but what it is, is spying- dirty tricks, creeping and peeping, buying and selling secrets, smear campaigns- all that good stuff. Pflug’s a corporate spook, and despite what a creep he is- or maybe because of it- he’s a good one.” Neary looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
“And his clients?” Neary asked.
“He keeps that a secret,” Gerber said. “And the people and companies that buy his services tend not to talk about it much.”
“You never ran across any of them doing your research?” Neary said.