Robert Baer - Blow the house down

I told Appleton that since we were early, I'd wait outside until everyone showed up. He shrugged his shoulders and went up. Probably figured I was going to have one last smoke.

Five minutes later Don Sherley came rolling down the street, briefcase in hand. From the time he came into view until the time he got to where I was, he checked his watch twice: a man in a hurry.

He didn't see me as he turned into the building.

"Don," I said, grabbing his arm.

He didn't recognize me. It had been at least ten years since we'd last seen each other.

"Max Waller," I helped.

"Of course." He flashed me a pained smile. "Good to see you."

"I need a minute." I still hadn't released his arm.

"I don't know if we should be talking before the meeting."

"Just a minute," I said, letting go of his arm.

He relaxed.

"I'm delighted you found the time to attend," I said. "But maybe in the meeting you should let me talk-you know, give me my fifteen minutes and not say anything. In fact, why don't you keep quiet the whole time."

"Excuse me?" He tried to back away a step, but I grabbed his arm again and held it tight.

"I know about your accounts with the fiduciary agent."

"What are you talking about?"

"The accounts you have with Michelle Zwanzig."

"You're crazy."

I pulled out a transfer from UBS to the Institute for a Fair Peace and shoved it in his face.

"Don, I have more. Think the IRS might like to take a look into your accounts?"

In fact, I didn't have anything on Sherley. It was another bluff. Still, I couldn't help but think Channing had somehow, somewhere bought Sherley off. Channing would never trust anyone he didn't own.

I was right. The color faded from Sherley's face. "How did-" He grabbed for the paper, but I pulled it away at the last moment and held it an inch from his grasp.

"Don, a truce is all I'm asking for. Let me take the meeting where it needs to go, you keep your mouth shut, and the paper disappears. It really shouldn't be a problem."

There were five people in the living room when I walked in. A man with a bad comb-over and a bulging stomach stuffed inside a summer-weight three-piece suit sat in a straight-backed dining-room chair, reading a magazine. Appleton was in an armchair in the corner of the room, his eyes half closed. Sitting on the sofa was Mary Beth Drew and a woman I recognized from the general counsel's office. We'd crossed swords years ago, but I couldn't remember why or her name. Sherley was standing at the window, looking out.

Bad Comb-Over stood up, walked over to me, and extended his hand while simultaneously tucking his card into my shirt pocket. "Jeff Forrest, Department of Justice." He seemed to be the only one happy to be there.

I was looking around for someplace to sit when Mary Beth materialized at my elbow.

"Max," she whispered, pulling me halfway back out into the hall, "this better be good. I heard you have it papered."

"It is."

"I don't see anything."

"Didn't bring it."

"Oh, fuck," she said, loud enough to make a couple heads snap up. "He's going to crucify you."

"Sherley?"

"I don't know who told him. It was out of the blue. He insisted. But he's toast. Trust me."

"Who?"

"We've got one chance," she said, turning back into the room without answering my question. She sounded like O'Neill. "You'd better make it good."

I didn't know how "I" had turned into "we," but there was no time to figure that out, either.

Officially, this was Chuck Appleton's show. The FBI borrowed the condo we were meeting in, which meant they owned the chair, but it was clearly Forrest who'd come to listen.

Forrest looked over at Sherley to get things going, but Sherley was absorbed examining the carpet. He motioned for Forrest to start. I sat down on an ottoman.

Forrest cleared his throat. "All of us appreciate your coming here, Mr. Waller. We're sure you've had a tiring several months. So let's get under way."

"In 1984 I was assigned to Beirut when Bill Buckley…" I began, looking toward Sherley to make sure he hadn't changed his mind about staying out of it.

Across the room from me, Mary Beth made a tight, circular motion with her index finger: Speed it up.

I ignored her. With or without the paper, I had to have history and context on my side. They had to know about my hunt for Murtaza Ali Mousavi, how he'd grown up in south Tehran, his hatred for the U.S., his capacity for slaughter, how the Quds Force was still in the terrorism business. I had to leave it all in, even the fact that Mousavi might or might not be dead. The meeting would mean nothing if they didn't understand that Mousavi wasn't a one-man act, that he represented a faction in Tehran that

would stop at nothing. They had to understand how the whole business tied into Nabil, how the Middle East had turned into a grotesque carnival of violence, revenge, and slaughter. Only then could I get to Beckman and Channing. The paper was worthless until they bought off on the story line. Context was everything. It always is.

I was as far as Bir Shiva prison when the DOJ attorney stopped me.

"This is fascinating, but could we move on to financial aspects of the case?"

It was then that I heard a noise and looked to my left to see Vince Webber walk in from a bedroom. Mary Beth's "he." Webber had been listening the whole time.

"With your permission," he said, nodding toward Forrest.

"Of course."

"I believe that before we continue, we need to establish Mr. Waller's bona fides. We need to know whom he represents before we are able to evaluate what Mr. Waller has to tell us."

Webber had been looking directly at Forrest. Now he turned his gaze to me. "I'm sure Mr. Waller will appreciate this. It is standard operating procedure at the Agency."

"Naturally." The DOJ attorney was settling into the role of the Greek chorus.

Webber opened an envelope and pulled out what looked like a cable.

"Mr. Waller, maybe you could help us out here. From September second to September seventh of this year, you were a guest at the Beau Rivage Hotel in Geneva."

I nodded.

"The Swiss cantonal police tell us you paid in cash, nearly five thousand dollars. Where did you get this money?"

"You apparently already know where I got it."

"We do. Yuri Duplenski. What is his profession, if I may ask?"

"A businessman."

"No, he's not. He works for the marketing arm of the Russian Ministry of Defense. He's a Russian official."

"So?"

"So, it seems to me that you have some sort of financial tie to the Russian government. We believe this needs to be clarified before we proceed."

"We?"

Webber waved his arm around the room. "Yes, we. The same people who are meant to believe you've uncovered some mysterious plot."

I caught Mary Beth out of the corner of my eye. She seemed to have rolled up into herself like a porcupine under attack.

"Yuri Duplenski is a friend," I said.

"Ah, then when you were an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, did you report contact with him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"He wasn't recruitable."

"Wasn't the regulation then, as it is now, that you report all contact with suspect intelligence officers?"

I thought about Oliver Wendell Channing and his thousands of unreported contacts, the ones his son was now making money off of. But it didn't matter. Webber wasn't waiting for an answer.

"Let's move to the Biqa'. Who did you see there?"

"A member of the Kuwaiti royal family."

"We know. Were you aware that he has been soliciting funds for Hamas and Islamic Jihad?"

"Half the Gulf is."

Webber nodded at the DOJ attorney, who chimed in on cue, "We're considering an indictment against the party in question."