“That reminds me of a guy I met once,” I said. “Years ago-very clean-cut, well spoken, an obvious Ivy Leaguer-who told me he’d gone to college in New Haven. Are you being coy that way, too?”
He allowed a theatrically embarrassed chuckle, and said, “Okay, I work for the CIA. I was wondering if you’d be interested in having a conversation. It might help you put this case to bed.”
He left it hanging there. Ron raised his eyebrows at me questioningly.
“You mean down there?” I asked.
“It would be friendlier face to face.”
I tried looking at the possible angles, but had no idea where to start. “I’ll have to get back to you,” I hedged. “I’m not my own boss here.”
“Not a problem,” Snowden answered smoothly and gave me a phone number. “Call me any time.”
Tony Brandt swiveled his chair around so he could stare out the window, two fingertips of his right hand just grazing his lower lip. It was at moments like this that I knew he missed his pipe the most.
“Frazier didn’t tell you anything?”
“Supposedly, Philpot-if that is his name-didn’t tell him anything. Frazier asked who the guy was, hoping for a little buddy-buddy breach of confidentiality. All he got was a one-liner about how the Agency had been looking for someone, but that our John Doe wasn’t him-that they had no idea who he was.”
Brandt’s eyes stayed fixed outside. “And you’re not swallowing that.”
“Not when Snowden tells me he can put the case to bed. They’re obviously reading from two different playbooks-one says to stiff us, and the other to scratch our ears till we roll over and go to sleep.”
“Then why go to Langley? Won’t they just shovel you more bullshit?”
I turned both my palms heavenward. “What else have we got? A virtually dry-cleaned body, a near-sterilized car, and not a single murmur from all the inquiries we sent out. Ron told me this morning we’re not even getting crank calls for the picture we put in the papers. That’s a first. I’m not saying Snowden’s going to spell everything out like he’s implying. But I am hoping he’ll let some thing slip.”
Brandt finally turned back to face me. “We can’t afford to fly you down.”
I don’t often travel beyond the three states surrounding Vermont, but when I do, I’m amazed at my small world’s insularity. There are just over half a million Vermonters-not quite as many, it seemed, as were crowding the Boston-New York-DC corridor the day I drove south. Like the sole contemplative member of some gigantic herd, I began to wonder if I was even remotely in control of my choice of destinations, or merely being influenced by some massive migratory urge. Trucks, cars, pickups, and upscale four-by-fours by the thousands, along with their apparently transfixed drivers, seemed as drawn by the same irresistible magnetism that was pulling me along.
And that was just the most immediate contrast. Beyond the traffic was the scenery, slowly changing from farmland to mall to suburb to something that eventually looked like a city without end, punctuated now and then by a sudden upthrust of taller buildings, appearing like some cataclysmic collision between tectonic plates.
Which may be, in fact, what makes the approach to downtown Washington as unique as it is, at least from the north. Where Hartford, Springfield, New York, Baltimore, and all the rest have recognizable city centers projecting a sense of purpose, DC is essentially flat, lacking the glass-and-steel towers most other urban clusters erect to justify their existence.
From the outskirts, there is only a gradual sense that the gritty, commercialized, outlying carpet has yielded to something more focused. Trees appear alongside avenues, traffic becomes leavened with buses, taxis, and the occasional limo, and the buildings-increasingly pompous by the mile, if no taller-cease being either residence or business, and become that third, more mysterious creature: the government office, where things indefinable, arcane, and even faintly menacing are allowed full leash.
I headed west of the city, to a cheap but survivable motel in suburban Arlington that Tony Brandt had recommended. It was within walking distance of a Metro station, and thus all of DC, allowing me to move without the hassle of looking for a parking place.
This convenience had nothing to do with my trip’s stated goal, of course. CIA headquarters are in Langley, Virginia, northwest of Washington, and far from any subway system. My desire to reach downtown was purely sentimental, for the city, whatever its faults, does one thing remarkably welclass="underline" it honors the dead, sometimes with admirable emotional flair. From soldiers to politicians to leaders of various causes, all seem to be remembered on a sliding scale of tastefulness. My appointment with Snowden wasn’t until the next morning, and by leaving home well before sunrise, I’d purposely given myself enough time to visit two of Washington’s less-touted memorials.
The air was hot and muggy, even late in the afternoon, so it was with some relief that I dropped off my bag at the motel and immediately sought refuge in the Metro’s air-conditioned depths, bound for Judiciary Square station.
On my way to pay homage to a few specific dead, I pondered once more the man whose death had stimulated this trip.
The mystery surrounding most killings, of course, is not in discovering who did it. By and large, that’s as challenging as following a trail of blood from one room to the next, where some distraught friend or family member is found holding the weapon. The mystery is in the why-why this person? Why now? Why this sudden rage?
If we actually do have a situation where the culprit is not in the immediate vicinity, then we’re usually faced with two alternatives: a series of leads that takes us to someone we can then present to the State’s Attorney, or-on very rare occasions-a dead end that grows more hopeless by the day.
The investigation I was facing, however, followed neither of those norms. While apparently a dead end, it also seemed to be growing in scope. Invited to a city renowned for its lack of clarity, I had no illusions that the CIA would lift the veil from my eyes. Which left me wondering what I was being drawn into-and why.
Although quiet, smooth, and remarkably clean-attributes for which the Washington Metro was justifiably famous-the subway ride to Judiciary Square was long and predictable, and by the time I arrived, my mind had been dulled by the blurred succession of trains, stations, and thousands of blank faces sealed behind glass. The familiar discomfort of being in close quarters with so many withdrawn people had begun to envelop me.
I half fled for the exit, toward fresh air and open space, climbing flight after flight of stairs, dogged by the memory that Washington’s subway system had supposedly been designed to double as a bomb shelter. When I finally reached the foot of the last steep escalator and looked up the sun-bleached exit shaft, I saw the sweltering swatch of flame-blue sky with the same relief I’d felt upon entering the Metro’s air-conditioning earlier.
The illusion of returning to the land of the living was just that, however, since the escalator delivered me to the heart of my destination-the broiling hot, dazzlingly bright National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. From a cool, muted subterranean world of stone-faced commuters, I’d ascended into a three-acre, oval frying pan made of white-hot marble, in which, at the moment, I was the only human being.
The memorial, with an imposing bronze plaque at its center depicting an officer’s shield superimposed by a single rose, extends out in a series of widening topographical parentheses, made variably of colonnades, trees, and shaded walkways, and finally, at its outermost edges, of two pathways banked by a continuous, curved, knee-high marble wall, inscribed with the names of over fourteen thousand law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.
Only a few years old, the memorial reflects several standard monument styles-from archways to statuary to a shallow pool of running water. But the most effective is an homage to the style of the Vietnam Memorial, wherein a seemingly endless list of names is arranged as randomly as the ways in which those officers were slain.