WALTERS: “He’s a dumb jerk. Always was. Any administration that would make him secretary of defense is blind or stupid. They really scraped the bottom of the barrel with that clown.”
BELLWEATHER (after a short, derisive laugh): “True enough, but don’t piss in a gift horse’s mouth, Mitch.”
WALTERS: “Think he buys it?”
BELLWEATHER: “Beginning to. We’re not quite there yet. Probably halfway, though.”
WALTERS: “What’s he doing about Jenson?”
BELLWEATHER: “She’s toast. He’ll get her off our ass in the morning.”
WALTERS: “Jesus, that’s great. Just great. You really played him.”
BELLWEATHER (sounding quite boastful): “Yeah, isn’t it? What did you do for the cause last night?”
WALTERS (sounding annoyed and whiny): “Jackson had me slaving all night. Destroying evidence, concocting stuff to pin this mess on Wiley.”
Mia waved a hand and the agent abruptly shut off the tape.
If there were doubts about what Jack was offering, they instantly disappeared, but those doubts gave way to a thousand questions and suspicions.
Mia’s old boss demanded, “Where did you get that?”
“We don’t answer anything until we have a deal. But you’re probably wondering, so I’ll tell you. It’s a sampler, a small taste from a huge banquet. Jack has thousands of them. He’s unearthed one of the biggest frauds in history, and has a fabulous library to prove it.”
Rutherford II unfolded his veiny hands and began rubbing his jaw. “How do we know your client didn’t commit any criminal activity?”
“He didn’t, but you don’t. It doesn’t matter. Jack gets all the immunity the whistleblower act affords. He’s free from prosecution for anything related to this case.”
“It may be the law, but that’s ridiculous.”
“And it’s nonnegotiable,” Mia shot back. “No immunity, no deal.”
The inspector general was a lawyer himself, he knew a smart lawyer when he saw one, and Mia was certainly very smart. And smart lawyers always have a backup. He took a stab and asked, “And if we say no?”
“This is only hypothetical and should by no means be construed as a threat,” Mia responded quickly, obviously prepared for that challenge.
The faces on the other side of the table grew uneasy-of course she was about to threaten them.
“But I imagine,” Mia continued, “that my client has already made arrangements to ship all his files and tapes to some very reputable news organizations. The New York Times and Washington Post come to mind. As you know, both adore big government scandals.”
She paused to inspect the faces across the table. They hadn’t accepted their defeat yet, but they definitely didn’t like what they were hearing.
Mia cleared her throat and turned up the heat a little more. “Again, I don’t want to be too specific at this point, but the tapes will sound even more dramatic on TV. Think of a full hour of 60 Minutes. A three-hour special in prime time isn’t out of the question, or maybe six weeks of one-hour specials. There’s so much to cover, so many embarrassing avenues to go down. Believe me, everyone in this room has an incentive not to let that happen.”
“Like what?” Margaret Harper asked.
“For instance, you might not like to be blamed for failing to stick up for an honest, hardworking agent when you ordered her off this case.” Harper suddenly looked away. In light of the tape she just heard, she suddenly felt ill. How would that look splashed across the front page? Did Mia mention 60 minutes? Mia redirected her eyes at Rutherford II. “Or here’s another bomb. The office of the inspector general was thoroughly infiltrated by the Capitol Group. Only this afternoon one of your employees was arrested for pilfering my files and providing certain very sensitive papers to a private investigating firm working for the Capitol Group. And he wasn’t their only paid plant. Would you care to hear more specifics?” Mia asked very nicely.
Nobody wanted to hear more.
“Believe me,” Mia continued, “I’ve listened to less than a tenth of the tapes. Half the Pentagon directory gets mentioned in one way or another, none flattering.”
“Oh, man.” The inspector general was now rubbing his eyes. A migraine that seemed to have come out of nowhere was splitting his head open. “How bad is it?”
“Nixon and Watergate come off like a bunch of kids playing with matches in the woods compared to this.”
“Who’s implicated?”
“Who isn’t? A lot of people sound absolutely terrible. But at worst most were only stupid, gullible, and careless, not crooked. There’s plenty of those, too, but you know the press and the great American public. They might not be discriminate in their judgments.”
The faces on the other side of the table conveyed a mixture of terror, shock, and disbelief.
Mia decided to push them across the brink and said, “The congressional inquisitions alone will last months. Enough of their own members and staffers are implicated, they’ll need to put on a large public lynching just to tamp down the outrage. And I’m afraid it’s not just the polymer. The Capitol Group has dozens of other Pentagon contracts. Jack’s tapes picked up lots of nasty tidbits about corruption related to other deals.” She paused for a moment to underscore her client’s generosity. “He’s throwing those in free of charge.”
The inspector general asked, “Why are you bringing this to us? Why not your FBI friends here?”
Graves pushed forward in his chair. “It was part of the original bargain when she first came to see us,” he announced from the end of the table, evidently very much on her side. “She fed us a few cases that were important to us. That investigating firm she mentioned, it employs about a dozen Bureau alumni. All retired or otherwise separated, but it’s somewhat embarrassing for us.”
“And the rest is for us?” Harper asked, her eyes moving from Mia to Graves. They were down to bargaining the particulars now.
“She was very demanding on that point,” Graves admitted. “Mia insisted on a clear division of spoils. You’re going to need plenty of perp walks of your own to counter your humiliation.”
“That’s what she said?”
“More or less. Remember, she was a DCIS agent at that time. I’ve heard a few of those tapes. She’s not bluffing. It’s uglier than you can imagine.”
“So the deal is, we get to clean our dirty laundry, you get to launder yours?” Rutherford II asked, suddenly warming to the subject.
“The esteemed members of Congress belong to us, too,” Graves insisted with an uncompromising look.
“Sure, no problem,” answered Rutherford II quickly, actually more than happy to concede that point. Congress funded the Pentagon and Rutherford admitted, “We have no interest in pissing off any of our congressional supporters.” Then the two officials swiftly broke into a comfortable negotiation about indictments and courts and jurisdiction and other legal matters.
It didn’t escape the notice of either Harper or Rutherford II how generous Graves was being. The big foot of the FBI was growing soft, they thought before the truth dawned on them-as Graves said, he had already listened to a bunch of the tapes. The spirit of intragovernmental generosity had nothing to do with this. There were more than enough indictments to keep everybody busy for a very long time, enough that he was worried about overload at this point.
“So we have a deal?” Mia asked at the first pause in their conversation.
Harper and the inspector general exchanged looks. The looks weren’t all that hard to read, the decision not at all hard to make.
Mia calmly placed a paper on the table and slid it across to the inspector general. Rutherford II lifted it up and Harper leaned over his arm; they read it together, a short, precisely worded agreement that listed all of Mia’s conditions, from the ten percent reward, to Jack’s amnesty, to Mia’s permanent separation from the DCIS. The IG scrawled his signature and handed the agreement back across the table.