The Pinocchio Syndrome. David Zeman

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ WashingtonNovember 25

      Karen Embry was waiting for a news conference to be given by the director of the CIA.

      The director was a political appointee who had played a crucial fund-raising role in the president’s narrow election victory. His background was in business and advertising. He had not expected to end up on the hot seat in his new job, though he was aware of the embarrassments suffered by the intelligence community over the past decade.

      But the Crescent Queen explosion changed all that. The public held the CIA responsible for not anticipating the terrorist threat and taking steps to prevent attacks. The agency’s fecklessness was one of the key issues cited by those who wanted a new administration in Washington.

      So the director was on the defensive today as usual.

      Karen had arrived at CIA headquarters a half hour early, and she studied her notes as other journalists set up video cameras and joked with each other. She had dressed carefully for the news conference. She knew the director liked women. She wore a fitted blazer with a short skirt. Her legs were her best feature, along with her eyes, and she knew how to show them off.

      The director began the news conference with some routine details about the population of terrorists in European jails. His voice was hard to hear, and his syntax was slightly garbled as usual. Evasiveness had become part of his persona, like the character in Proust who became deaf when unwelcome things were being said to him.

      He droned on as long as he dared and finally threw the session open to questions. Karen was the first reporter to raise her hand.

      ‘As you know, sir,’ she began, ‘the intelligence community has not gotten to the bottom of the Crescent Queen disaster.’

      This statement was not a surprise. But it was a sore point with the director.

      ‘All I can tell you about that,’ he replied carefully, ‘is that we’re investigating. We will bring those responsible for the attack to justice.’

      ‘All the major known terrorist organizations have denied involvement in the attack,’ Karen said. ‘Isn’t that true, sir?’

      ‘Yes, but we suspect their denials are in bad faith,’ the director replied.

      ‘The intelligence services haven’t been able to prove that any terrorist group had either nuclear weapons or the missiles to deliver them, isn’t that true?’ Karen asked.

      ‘That’s true.’

      ‘Have you considered the possibility that someone else was behind the attack?’

      The director raised an eyebrow.

      ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

      ‘If we suppose for the sake of argument that none of the known terrorist groups was behind the incident,’ Karen said, ‘wouldn’t it be possible that someone else built and delivered the bomb, knowing that the existing terrorist groups would fall under suspicion?’

      The director did not know how to answer.

      ‘We have no evidence that such a scenario is the correct one,’ he said.

      ‘But if it were,’ she pursued, ‘how would you proceed?’

      The director was thrown. His professional role was to sift through data and find the most clear and obvious answer. He had no time for unlikely hypotheses, and didn’t really know how to deal with them.

      ‘All I can tell you is that we’re investigating all possibilities,’ he said. ‘The very fact that an outlaw organization possessed the technology to use a nuclear weapon’ – he pronounced the word nucular – ‘against innocent civilians is a monstrous thing, a totally unacceptable thing. I guarantee you we will find out the truth behind the Crescent Queen disaster, and those responsible will be punished to the full extent of the law.’

      Karen waited while he answered a softball question from another reporter. Then she raised her hand again.

      ‘The wire services are reporting an outbreak of illness in southern Tennessee that has features in common with last week’s outbreak in Iowa,’ she said. ‘You’re familiar with that, sir?’

      ‘Yes, I am.’ The director had been informed as a matter of routine about the outbreaks in Iowa and Tennessee but had not given the matter much thought, since it was outside his field of expertise.

      ‘Do you consider the outbreaks to be a public health concern?’ Karen asked.

      ‘Certainly. The public health people are looking into it.’

      ‘But not a terrorism concern.’

      ‘We have no reason to suspect that.’

      Karen pushed an errant lock of her dark hair away from her eyes.

      ‘Let me ask you hypothetically, Mr Director – suppose that terrorists possessed a chemical or biological weapon capable of affecting large groups of people in a short period of time. Do you think the radical terrorist organizations would shrink from using such a weapon on a mass scale?’

      ‘I couldn’t say for sure,’ the director replied. ‘But I would not like to find out. I want to be sure that none of the terrorist groups ever develops that capability.’

      ‘Do the outbreaks in Iowa and Tennessee put thoughts like this into your head?’

      The director thought for a moment.

      ‘They would if the disease we found there could be linked to any known toxin or pathogen.’

      ‘And it has not?’

      ‘No, it has not.’

      ‘Are you saying, sir, that it is the same disease in both locations?’

      ‘No, I’m not,’ the director replied with some irritation. ‘I’m only relating what I’ve been told by the public health authorities.’

      ‘You’re saying that neither disease presents symptoms associated with known pathogens or toxins?’

      ‘To my knowledge, neither. That’s correct.’

      ‘What if a toxin or pathogen as yet unknown to the authorities had in fact been used?’

      The director shrugged this off. ‘You’re talking about a hypothesis for which we have no evidence. It’s hard for me to comment about such things.’

      He made a point of calling on other reporters for the next several minutes. Karen let him get away with it, for she was confident he would look at her sooner or later. He had noticed her beauty.

      When his eyes darted to her she pounced. ‘You’re aware, Mr Director, that Vice President Everhardt’s illness is baffling the physicians at Walter Reed,’ she said. ‘Are you concerned that a man so important is ill, and nobody knows why?’

      The director was taken off guard.

      ‘I don’t know that to be true,’ СКАЧАТЬ