Such appeared to be the case here. Bian knew this, and I, too, knew it; like Alice peering into a rabbit hole, we had just glimpsed the fool in a crazy hat, and clearly somewhere, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and a Cheshire Cat were pounding the drums. I stared at Phyllis's empty chair and wondered about the crazy queen's role in all of this.

Bian shifted in her seat. "Okay, I am starting to feel paranoid."

"Do you want out?"

"No. Do you?"

"Yes. But it's too late."

After a moment, she asked in a whispery voice, "What about Phyllis… can I trust her?"

"Absolutely not."

She stared at me. "Do you trust her?"

This was a different question and I replied, "Sometimes."

"Do you trust her this time?"

"Her agenda and ours might not be the same."

"Why?"

"Because there's bad chemistry between this administration and the CIA. You've probably read the gossip and rumors in the newspapers."

"I have." She took a moment to think about this.

I gave her that moment, then said, "You know about the hunt for blame over who failed to prevent 9/11, and you know the White House and the Pentagon laid it on the Agency's doorstep. Now the Hill is investigating how flawed Iraqi intelligence made it through the net.

The administration's already shoving the blame here. So is the Pentagon. Langley is pissed."

"This isn't part of some bureaucratic vendetta, is it?"

"I think everything we've seen is genuine. But now we need to consider why we were allowed to see it."

She stared at me without responding.

I continued, "I also think what we do about it, how this is handled-" The door flew open and I stopped talking.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Phyllis was back with a gentleman in her wake.

She informed Bian and me, "This is Don." Don seemed to have misplaced his surname.

He walked across the room and shook my hand. Then he shook Bian's hand as well, and I noted he held it a few seconds too long.

He was quite tall, about six foot five, trim, and moved with an athletic bounce in his step. About my age, very fit, with a full head of slicked-back black hair, and fairly good-looking, if you like the type.

Of course, his name wasn't Don.

And of course, this meeting never took place.

I asked Don, "Where do you work?"

He smiled and said, "Same place as you. The Agency. That's all you need to know."

Aside from administrative types and a cadre of appointed political overseers, Agency employees tend to be either analysts or operators. In general, analysts are fairly ordinary in appearance, bookish, intelligent-looking, and-no offense intended-they take their fashion cues from college professors.

Also, analysts have last names.

Don was attired in a blue wool and cashmere suit, severely tailored with a Savile Row cut right down to the Continental fanny flap, glossy black Italian loafers, and a thick, expertly knotted pink silk tie with a matching pink hankie in his breast pocket. Message to Don: Real men don't have to wear pink neckties.

That he spent too much on clothes, however, was the second clue. What gave him away was his overall demeanor-cocky and calculating. Also, he had icy brown eyes.

A lot of these operational types think they are irresistible to the ladies, and maybe I was a little piqued at the way his hand lingered in Bian's hand. I mean, this poor girl's fiance was probably at that moment fighting hand to hand with a bunch of blood-crazed jihadis in some Baghdad back alley, and Randy Don was trying to get into her drawers. Asshole.

Anyway, Don sat at the head of the table, and Phyllis returned to the seat behind her desk. Phyllis mentioned a few things about Don: Ivy League degrees in Arabic studies, career man, able to leap tall buildings with a little help, and so on.

She summed up by telling us, "Don has long and extensive experience with Iraq that dates back before the first Gulf War. He is a highly regarded expert who happens to be personally acquainted with Mahmoud Charabi." She waited a beat before adding, "He worked, occasionally, with Clifford Daniels."

Don acknowledged this introduction with a droll, disaffected smile. Probably, had Phyllis informed us that Don was a dickless idiot with a pea-size brain, his expression would've been identical.

Now it was his turn, and he looked at Bian and then at me. "I don't actually like discussing this with you. Okay? The Director ordered this… so…" He allowed a long moment to pass, then added, "I'll tell you as much as I think you need to know."

I very reasonably asked, "How will you know what we need to know, Don?"

"I'll know."

I smiled at Don. "So, if it's an embarrassment to the Agency, that's off-limits and you won't tell us about it?"

Don, of course, did not reply to this. He stared back with an empty expression and suggested, "Why don't we start with your questions?"

"Okay. Was there a pissing contest between the Agency and the Pentagon over Iraq?"

"There are disagreements between the Agency and the Pentagon over a variety of issues. Who controls intelligence? How much Agency effort should go to supporting soldiers, how much to politicians? That's where it begins." He offered us a reasonable facsimile of a smile. "It never ends."

"You forgot to mention Iraq."

His smile disappeared. "You need to be more specific."

"All right. Specifically, between the CIA and the Defense Department, were there differences of opinion over whether to invade?"

"Yes."

"Would you describe those differences?"

He smiled again, which of course meant, "Fuck you."

I smiled back and asked, "Were there differences over whether Saddam had stockpiles of outlawed weapons?"

"On that topic, even within the Agency… yes, there were… differences. Our general consensus was that there possibly were weapons, with a caveat of ambiguity."

"Say again."

He replied, "Buyer beware-that's what it means, Mr. Drummond."

"You're not blowing smoke up our ass, Don? According to news reports, the Director personally assured the President there were weapons."

"Maybe he did; maybe not. The Director, however, is not the Agency. Just a temporary figurehead."

"I'm still confused."

"So was he," he said, and he laughed. Don apparently enjoyed his own humor.

I did not laugh. "But the Agency is being blamed for the faulty intelligence?"

"By certain quarters-yes."

"Certain quarters? Like the American public?"

"Well… our friends in the press seem to have manufactured the unfortunate impression that the Agency was largely responsible. Then again, they have their own credibility issues, don't they?"

"Where would the press get this idea?"

He did not reply.

"From sources inside the White House? From sources inside the Defense Department?"

Don did not reply to this either. Regarding this line of inquiry, Washington has an amazing cornucopia of more than a dozen different intelligence organizations. To an outsider this might sound superfluous and maybe absurd-an insider knows it's insane. But they all are ostensibly indispensable on the basis that each does something different, or employs different collection means, or offers a unique perspective, or serves different masters with differing needs.

It's a little like medieval Venice with all those interlocking families sharing the same cramped turf, warily coexisting, sensitive to slights, and completely paranoid about their own territory, prestige, and existence. Bureaucratic drive-by shootings and political poisonings aren't out of the question.

Yet, despite this excess of riches, before the war, Tigerman and Hirschfield had decided to add one more, their own in-house intelligence hothouse, and Clifford Daniels was brought in from DIA as a founding member. The expressed mission for this small cell was to cull through the raw intelligence provided by other agencies, to question, to reinterpret, to determine if anything vital had been missed, misinterpreted, or overlooked. But there were critics who claimed the reason was to cook, customize, and massage the raw intelligence to justify an invasion, and a war.