Nelson Demille: Wild fire

Yeah, I had mixed feelings about the guy, mostly negative, but… well, if he hadn’t killed Harry, and if he hadn’t been prepared to kill a few million other Americans, including Kate, me, and anyone else who got in his way, plus a couple hundred million innocent men, women, and children… well, he was a complex man, and it was going to take me a while to figure him out.

We also passed by the wood chipper, and that sort of brought me back to reality. The big things-like nuclear Armageddon-were a little abstract. It’s the small things, like the wood chipper, that make you understand evil.

Well, we helicoptered back to New York City, and by the time we got to 26 Federal Plaza, there were about a dozen people there from the office, including, of course, Tom Walsh, and another dozen from Washington, all waiting for us with open notebooks and tape recorders.

Tom Walsh greeted us warmly by saying, “What the fuck was I thinking when I sent you two up there?”

I replied, “What were you thinking when you sent Harry up there?”

He had no answer for that, so I asked him, “Whose idea was it to send me up there alone on that assignment?”

No response.

I informed him, “I’ll tell you. It was Ted Nash’s idea.”

“Nash is dead.”

“He is now, and I’m not.”

Kate said to Walsh, “But it could have easily gone the other way.”

Walsh looked at both of us, and I could see he was trying to figure out if he was supposed to be clueless, angry, or blameless. He couldn’t seem to decide, so he went to the men’s room.

I could see that there was still a lot of confusion about what had happened and what our status was-heroes or felons-but I also sensed that one or two guys from Washington knew exactly what this was all about, but kept it to themselves.

We were debriefed in Walsh’s office by two-man relay teams for hours, but Kate and I held up pretty well as we gave the interviewers an hour-by-hour, blow-by-blow account of everything that had happened since we walked into 26 Federal Plaza on Columbus Day morning and spoke to Tom Walsh-including talking to Betty at Continental CommutAir and Max and Larry at the car-rental desks, then checking out Madox’s jets at the general aviation office, then the decision to go to the Custer Hill lodge instead of state police headquarters, and on and on.

I could see that the FBI people were partly impressed by our initiative and good investigative techniques, and somewhat troubled by our total failure to follow orders and becoming fugitives. I hoped they were learning something.

Also, I could sort of tell, as the night wore on, that Kate and I were the only ones there who weren’t worried about something.

Interestingly, most of the FBI interviewers seemed unhappy that Bain Madox-the mastermind and prime witness to this conspiracy-was dead, and that I killed him. I said, of course, it was self-defense, though it was actually self-gratification. I mean, it was a stupid thing to do, and by whacking him, I complicated the investigation into the conspiracy. I wish I had it to do over again; of course, I’d do the same thing, but I’d first remind myself that I wasn’t acting professionally.

Also, unless I was imagining things, at least two of the FBI guys from Washington did not seem that unhappy that Madox was not able to talk.

On the subject of Kate killing CIA officer Ted Nash, none of the FBI guys commented or pressed the questioning, which was odd but understandable. They weren’t going to touch that subject unless or until they heard from someone higher up.

I had a little fun watching Tom Walsh squirm, and more fun sitting in his office with my feet on his conference table as Kate and I were debriefed. At about 3:00 A.M., I expressed a strong craving for Chinese food, and an FBI agent went out and found an open place. Hey, it’s not every day you’re the center of attention, and you have to milk it a little.

There was a lot to unravel here, and I had no idea where this was going to go, or how high up the Project Green conspiracy reached. And, of course, neither Kate nor I would ever know.

At dawn, two FBI agents drove us back to our apartment and told us to get a good night’s sleep, even though it was morning.

Back in our apartment, we stood on the balcony and watched the sun rising over lower Manhattan, both remembering the morning of September 12, 2001, when we’d watched the black smoke blocking out the sun not only for us, and New York, but for the whole country.

I said to Kate, “As we know in this business, every act of violence, and every murder, is revenge for the murder before it, and the excuse for the murder after it.”

She nodded and said, “You know… I wanted to get out of this business… go someplace else… but now, after this, I want to stay here and do what I can…”

I looked at her, then back at lower Manhattan, where we could once see the Twin Towers rising into the sky. I said to her, or myself, “I wonder if we’ll see the alert level go to Green again in our lifetime.”

“I doubt it. But if we keep working at it, we can keep it from going Red.”

Bottom line, the FBI in Los Angeles and San Francisco found the pilots and co-pilots, and found the suitcase nukes in their hotel rooms. In fact, one of the co-pilots was sitting on one of them, watching TV, when the FBI opened the door to his room.

Bottom, bottom line, I got stuck with a three-thousand-dollar bill from The Point, and as Kate predicted, the accounting office didn’t want to hear any explanations, plus, Walsh wouldn’t go to bat for us, so Kate and I are eating out less often for a while.

We need to go to FBI Headquarters in D.C. to be fully, fully debriefed, give statements, and write reports.

Regarding the Executive Board of the Custer Hill Club, the only news so far-reported in small items in the print media-is that the deputy secretary of defense, Edward Wolffer, has taken a leave of absence; Paul Dunn, the presidential adviser on matters of national security, has resigned his position; and General James Hawkins has retired from the Air Force.

These three events, taken by themselves, did not seem remarkable, and caused no stir in the ever-vigilant news media. Meanwhile, Kate and I are waiting for more startling news about these guys, such as their arrests. But so far, Dunn, Wolffer, and Hawkins have not made the front page, or the 6:00 news, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we never heard another thing about them, despite what Kate and I told the FBI. Maybe they lost those notes.

As for the fourth member of Madox’s Board, CIA officer Scott Landsdale, no news is not necessarily good news. This guy is still out there somewhere, and Scott is either going to go scot-free or, if he’s in big trouble, no one is ever going to hear about it. I mean, should we trust an organization that gets paid to lie?

On another, perhaps related subject, the war with Iraq seems on track, and I’m taking Madox’s inside information and betting on the week of March 17, which my bookie says is a long shot at three-to-one odds. If I can triple my thousand-dollar bet, I can cover The Point. As for oil futures, my broker says that post-war Iraqi oil will flood the market, and prices are going down-not up, as Madox said. I have to think about who to trust-my stockbroker or Bain Madox. That’s a tough call.

One thing we did not have to do in Washington was explain how or why Kate killed a CIA officer. On that subject, the head CIA guy in the ATTF told us that the dead man found in the Custer Hill lodge remained unidentified, and that the CIA officer named Ted Nash, whom we once knew, had died in the North Tower on September 11, 2001.

I wasn’t about to argue with them about that, and neither was Kate.