Robert Baer - Blow the house down

"Communism lasted seventy years. As a threat, it was around for less than four decades. A smoke-cured ham has a longer shelf life than that. Islam is more than thirteen hundred years old. It's about something. It has a God. It has true believers, not a corrupt nomenklatura, not apparatchiks."

David couldn't remember anymore if his father had written that or only said it, but my God, he'd heard it all ten thousand times if he'd heard it once. The same song and dance. The portentous tones, like Moses shouting from the Mount. The portentous pose, like Horatio at the bridge, like the little Dutch boy at the dike. (Rhymes with kike.) If ever there was a stuck record, Oliver Wendell Channing was it. But he had to give one thing to the old son of a bitch. All on his own, he'd plugged himself into that primeval muck, the Middle East. He had a Rolodex that wouldn't stop. But he didn't have a clue what to do with it. His daddy's trust fund was just fine.

"You're dying, Father." David could remember the moment, the time, the place exactly. The wine steward was just walking away from the table; their waiter just circling back to them. A hush seemed to have fallen over the dining room of the Harvard Club as if some wraith were floating through. The wraith, in fact, was across the table from him.

"Of course I'm dying," his father had answered, collapsed into his suit. "That's why I've asked you here."

"What?"

"Death, David. A last meal, father and son. Everything in-"

"Set things right?"

"I couldn't wait for my own father to die, but we're…"

At long last, the old man had handed him the opening he had been looking for forever, and he had no intention of letting it slip from his grasp.

"Dad, your Don Quixote act never worked for me. All your books- well, they go in the bonfire."

Oliver Channing started coughing, spitting something into his napkin.

"You never understood a fucking thing about the world," David Channing said, not paying attention. "All those people you fell in love with are savages and will always be savages. All the obscure languages you learned-golden keys to empty rooms. You never had an idea what to do with all those people you collected."

Oliver Channing wanted to fight back, but all he could do was muffle the coughs with his napkin. He stopped for a moment, pulled the napkin away, and saw blood. He thought he had days left. Maybe it was just hours.

"That's all going to change," David said. "I'm going to make something out of your life."

David Channing could remember folding his napkin, could remember that he was half out of the chair. He could see the wait staff bearing down on them with platters of food when his father finally said it: "You win." And thus the Genius was his-the still center of the turning dance.

Channing took the fax and studied the chemical formula one more time, then folded it and fed it into the shredder tucked beneath the desk. His ear still hurt where his wife had hit him.

New York City

O'Neill was as good as his word. An FBI agent was waiting for us at immigrations. You couldn't miss him. The loose linen jacket didn't even pretend to hide the Glock and shoulder holster. With only a hello, he walked India and me through immigrations, customs, and out of the terminal to catch a taxi.

Both of us were exhausted. India had cried halfway across the Atlantic, until there was nothing left inside her. A death in the family, I told the stewardess when she asked. Wasn't that right?

India fell asleep in the taxi heading into the city. I woke her when we got to the Mercer, walked her inside to the lobby, and told her I'd be back for her in a couple hours. She didn't protest, didn't say anything. She must have done something like this a hundred times with her father, wait for him to make a meeting, never asking who or why.

I looked at the address twice, 9 Pell Street, and again at the number above Joe Shanghai's, a downscale Chinese restaurant in the downscale part of Chinatown. O'Neill had sent word with his FBI baby-sitter that I was to ask for him at the "receptionist." Easier said than done. I pushed my way through the noon crowd waiting to get in and waved my hand back and forth to get the attention of the young Chinese girl behind the register.

"I'm here to join Keith." It was the name I'd been told to ask for. She looked at me dumbly. I figured she didn't speak a word of English.

"Keith!" I yelled. "Here?"

"Keith? Upstairs. Sixth floor." A flawless Brooklyn accent.

I hit the steps. A lawyer's office took up the entire second floor. Above that, the building was all apartments. The place was eerily quiet after the hubbub down below. I got to the fifth floor and that was it. No sixth, but there were stairs to the roof and the door wasn't locked, so I opened it and walked out. O'Neill grabbed my shoulder from behind.

"Three buildings that way," he said, pointing across the roofs.

I heard him slap a padlock on the door I'd just come through. No one could get out on the roof now unless he'd brought along an axe or a sledge hammer.

Three buildings down, just as advertised, we clambered back inside. Again, O'Neill locked the door behind us, then led me to a third-floor apartment. The place was bare except for a table in the living room with four chairs around it. I looked in the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open. Cabinet doors were open and empty, too. The whole place reeked.

"What are we doing here?" I asked.

"NYPD," O'Neill said, sitting down at the table. "I still have friends there."

"That wasn't an answer."

"Somebody's all over me," he said.

"Like?"

"It doesn't matter."

"You sound like me. You'll tell me if you want. Did you get the meeting set up?"

He nodded. A surprise. I thought I'd run that well dry, too.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"We'll go down together."

"I'm not going."

"Don't tell me you got something more important to do."

"July eighth was my KM A."

"Kiss-my-ass day. Twenty-five years in the Bureau. And I took it. I retired August twenty-second."

"What the hell do you mean? You were in Beirut just-"

"On my own hook."

"All the bitching about the embassy?"

"It's called creative reality, Max. I paid for the fucking bodyguards, too."

"I don't get it. Why?"

"Because someone had to tell you face-to-face, you stupid CIA fuck, that your ass was in the wringer."

"You flew to Beirut on your own dime just to do that?" I still didn't get it. I was sure O'Neill had a heart, but it wasn't of gold.

"Maybe I started to believe you, too. I told you, you're making me as crazy as you are. And goddammit, if you have to know the truth, bin Laden's going to hit us. Out or in, I'll never let it drop."

"Wait a minute. My immunity, how did you-"

"J left, Max. My friends didn't. I've got a few favors I can call in."

This was a showstopper. O'Neill was the one guy I'd really walked through this stuff-months of explanation, of cajoling and convincing, down the drain.

"Don't sweat it. You have the paper. You'll do just fine."

He pushed a stuffed manila envelope across the bare tabletop. I could make out the outline of one of those plastic CD cases on top.

"Your e-mail. Too bad I never got past the lobby at the Albergo. Those photos make the place look almost civilized. I take it the docs are there."

"No one's going to understand this stuff on its own. I need a live body to back me up."

"You want the truth? I was forced out. They don't want me there, no matter what I have to say. I'm not invited to this game."

The wheels had started to come off the previous summer, O'Neill said, when his briefcase was stolen at a retirement seminar in Orlando-"from the goddamned conference room with a dozen agents sitting around. That was one hell of a miraculously lucky thief. Amazingly, the fucking thing popped up a few hours later with nothing gone."