She inhaled and let the air out slowly. “Fuck you,” she whispered, her eyes flashing with anger. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Just a new friend who would like to give you that breakthrough moment to put you on the Sunday shows for a year. God knows you’ll need the help if you want a second term.”
“How dare you talk to a member of Congress like that!” She was growing a bit worried. Mr. Prince wasn’t bowing to her power in Washington.
“Let me be quite frank about this, Congresswoman. You are a flea. You were appointed to your seat when your husband died, never elected. You represent the Third District of Nebraska, some sixty-five thousand square miles of nothing, and it sprawls over three-fourths of the state. Challengers are lining up in your own party to bring you back home.”
She didn’t answer, just moved her wineglass around on the napkin.
“The one thing you have in your favor, the reason I’m here, is that you’re considered harmless enough to have become the lowest-ranking minority member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. A rubber stamp for others to use. That is where I want you to consider your efforts.”
“I cannot and will not discuss anything concerning that committee, Mr. Prince. For you to suggest such a thing to me is enough for a felony charge. You vastly underrate my status.” That was a lie. Her colleagues had made certain from the start that the new girl at the Capitol understood that she was only one of four hundred and thirty-five members of the House of Representatives, which was only half of Congress, which, in turn, was only one-third of the United States government. A very little fish.
The Prince smiled genially and waved away the rancor. “I would ask nothing of the kind. It’s just that something has come to my attention. What you do with the information is up to you.”
The food began to arrive, an appetizer of the famous stone-crab claws. The conversation stayed on hold while they ate, and resumed again over coffee.
“What, exactly, is it that you do, Mr. Prince? I’m still unclear on that.”
“I have a number of businesses involved with international commerce, Congresswoman. I run around checking on them, and I learn quite a bit that’s never on the record.” It was a non-answer, and he looked around the dining room as if he were concerned about being overheard. “Here’s what I have for you. Once again, something has gone wrong inside the CIA, and they’re covering it up. As a person of power, you can bring it to light.”
“What?” She was interested. Mr. Prince may be useful after all.
“There was an attack recently on the funeral of a Mexican military officer who had been killed during a botched drug raid. It was a CIA mission using foreign troops.”
She leaned back against the cushion, taking her coffee. “I remember something about that. Tragic, but so what?”
The Prince knew she was hooked. He explained how there were three CIA connections in the Mexican atrocity, which made her raise her eyebrows. Then he added the Berlin ambush, which also had three CIA links, with two of them having been involved in Mexico.
“They haven’t reported the one in Germany to us yet,” she observed, warming to the idea of knowing something that was being kept under wraps.
“In both cases, the attacker was a known CIA assassin by the name of Nicky Marks. Also, in both cases, another CIA hard case, name of Kyle Swanson, was the possible target.”
“What about these other men you mentioned — the late Colonel Castillo and Luke Gibson?”
“Both were also on the agency’s payroll. As I understand it, they were not directly involved. This is between Marks and Swanson. Marks is a very bad guy, but this Kyle Swanson is equally dangerous and just as dirty. My guess is that they might be rivals in drug trafficking on the CIA dime.”
“It does sound like more than a coincidence.” She finished off her coffee and put the cup down. “How do you know all this, when I don’t?”
The Prince laughed aloud. “I have to protect my sources, ma’am. Anyway, there it is. You run with it however you choose. Something is about to hit the fan over at Langley, and your committee might want to keep an eye on things. Put yourself on the map, Congresswoman. Get ahead of the curve. You can be a player.”
She wished she could see his eyes. “I must get back to the office now,” she replied. “Thank you for your kind donation, and for a delicious lunch.”
“My duty as a patriot, ma’am. I doubt that we will meet again, but I will be in touch. Best of luck.”
When she left the restaurant on Fifteenth Street Northwest, Veronica Keenan believed that her chances for reelection were a lot brighter than they were an hour ago.
8
Thousands of years before the birth of Christ, opium seeds bloomed in the warm, dry, welcoming lands of Mesopotamia. The poppy seemed almost magical in its dual gifts of being a pain reliever and a bringer of great pleasure. Once that genie of easy joy escaped, it would never be capped back in the bottle. Wars would be fought over opium and its derivatives, and thousands upon thousands of addicts over hundreds of years would pay or do anything to maintain their habit. In places such as the Wakham Corridor of Afghanistan, farmers of the twenty-first century planted the little flowers as their primary crop, and every spring their fields sprouted with the pink-and-purple blossoms that were the basic building blocks of the incredibly lucrative dope chain.
Farida Mashaal had had an excellent year with his four acres on the slopes of the Corridor, thanks to late rainfall that had cleared just in time for the poppies to dry. Using his own family and itinerant workers, he had gathered the harvest without a problem. The Afghan government’s army had reduced its impotent campaign of eradication, and the Taliban not only left him alone but even furnished extra men to help milk the rubbery drops of raw opium from gentle slices on the pregnant bulbs. So today he stood in his field beside a bearded man carrying an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and scribbling in a notebook. A battery-powered calculator made by Texas Instruments did the math.
“I make it probably very close to ninety pounds,” declared the Taliban taxman. “An excellent crop.”
“Allah be praised,” replied the farmer. “I can feed my family for another year.”
“Cash or product?” With the figuring done, it was time to collect the tax. “Four hundred American dollars or two bags.”
The ill-educated Afghan farmer did some number-crunching of his own, playing the futures market for this strange gold. Farida didn’t need a calculator because he had been doing these calculations for years and could feel the answers in his bones. Prices had shot up, almost doubling, in the past year, and raw opium of the purest, virginal kind was currently selling for about $150 per kilogram. There are 2.2 pounds in a kilogram, so his 90 pounds worked out to roughly 41 kilos. He grimaced as he did the multiplication—41 times $150—and the grimace gave way to a smile. His harvest so far would be worth more than $6,000, a small fortune for the humble farmer. A hundred dollars per cultivated acre.
“I will pay money this time.” His decision was not hard. He was betting that the price of opium would continue its steady climb. The farmer pulled a clump of hundred-dollar bills from a pocket of his baggy trousers and counted off four for the Taliban taxman, who made a note in his book.
“Do you still need our men for your harvest?”
“No. You can take them now, with my thanks for the assistance.”
“It is our wish for you to succeed,” said the taxman.
Farida remained silent. Of course you do, he thought. You support your crazy revolution by taxing me for something that is not yours, and your men in the fields spin tales of battlefield glory to recruit a few workers before the season is over. Just take the money and the boys and leave. The farmer gave a small bow and backed away. He had to load bags of his pasty product aboard his truck and get it to the village before nightfall. At least the Taliban could provide protection along to Girdiwal.