Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

"Right. So your thinking is that I should make the call?"

"Well, it is your department, Dick. I mean, DEA is under your roof."

"Sure, but there might be a, a legal thing, a problem there."

"What kind of problem?"

"If I were to call him and say, 'Get back,' it might be construable as an offer, and I'm hardly in a position, oath-of-office-wise, to do that. There's another dimension. We've been kicking Peruvian butt for, for, for years over the extradition thing. Finally we're getting some cooperation and then bango, the top law-enforcement officer goes and, and in direct contravention of the convention notifies the, the perpetrator and doesn't tell GOP-"

"Government of Peru. I mean, it wouldn't be very bilateral of us, would it?"

"You're saying I should place the call?"

"Not necessarily. But I am saying we need to think through the who-makes-the-call situation."

"All right."

"There is the argument that it would carry more weight coming from you."

"Dick, I'm right down the hall from him, if you see what I'm saying."

"A hundred percent. Basically you're saying you're not sure you want to be in the tent on this."

"Well, I'm already in the tent, Dick. You've already put me in the tent."

"Right, well, I thought you'd want to be."

"But the essence of the thing is, is the deniability thing, as far as he is concerned."

"Absolutely."

"So I don't know if it makes sense for me to make the call."

"Well, I think that's, that's a feasible position. We can always fine-tune down the line. As the thing tracks."

"Why couldn't your man call? The one who brought this to you. Say, 'Look here, this is DEA, turn your butt around and, and, and get back here so, so…'"

"So we can arrest you the moment you set foot on U.S. waters."

"I see your point."

"And we'd still have the open-line problem, John. You can't keep a satellite conversation private. Hell, some, some, some, some kid ham operator in Detroit was listening in while Reagan was on Air Force One giving Cap the go-ahead on Grenada."

"Why couldn't he just talk in generalities? People do it all the time, when they don't want… Husbands and wives do it. I do it."

"Sure, but if some specifics get in… I'm not even sure the whole fact of talking to him wouldn't open us up to misprision. You might want to run that by Boyden."

"Jesus. This is…"

"Anyway, you see my point."

"I don't like this, Dick."

"I don't like it either, John."

"It's like, I don't know what it's like, a combination tar baby and can of worms."

"Right. It resonates that way for me, too."

"You know he was a contributor?"

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah. He was a delegate from Virginia."

"There's something else."

"What?"

"His company holds a contract with NASA."

"Oh hell."

"They make something for the shuttle."

"God. You know how he feels about the shuttle."

"Yes, I do."

"The shuttle is, it's, it's an American symbol. He'd feel awful if-he'd feel betrayed ."

"I think we all would, more or less."

"Yeah, but for him it would be personal."

"It's not an easy call, John. I'm certainly glad it's not my call."

"Frankly, Dick, I see this more as your buck than my buck. At least from an administrative point of view."

"Sure, it's just, it impacts on up the chain, as you say. There's always, we might let nature take its course, though that might open us up to misprision. Again, I'd want to run that through Boyden."

"Look, never mind Boyden. You're saying, suppose the decision was to say, in effect, to hell with it, it's a Peruvian problem, let them handle it?"

"Right."

"Well, that's, that's certainly an option."

"Trouble is, parsing it out, ultimately it still ends up being our problem."

"How?"

"Well, he's going to be caught, I think we can take that for granted-"

"Wait a minute, I'm not sure I'd take that for granted. I mean, if he's done all this that you say he's done, I'd say he's, he's very, he's certainly capable, in a, a horrible sort of way."

"Sure, but, I mean, he's not in Kansas anymore, John."

"He killed people in Kansas?"

"No no, that's, I mean, where he is is a bad place. Even their military doesn't go in there if they can help it. Or if they do it's just for a quick in-and-out photo op, so they can say, 'We're on top of this.' This river he's on, they just floated twenty decapitated bodies down this river past a military base where we have a few people, just to let us know they knew we were there. It's a very bad place, the Huallaga. It's one of the worst places there is."

"I'm aware of that. I read the newspapers."

"Right. Sorry, didn't mean to, it's just, I don't see how he can't get stopped, by someone, whether it's the authorities or the other side, the Senderos or the dopers. And it'll get out. My God. Symbol-wise, we're talking Disaster City. The Latinos are unbelievably sticky about this sort of thing."

"This sort of thing? This sort of thing has happened before?"

"Not per se-"

"I've certainly never heard of this sort of thing happening before, unless you want to go back to the 1850s, the filibusters, whatsisname, the one who became President of Nicaragua. Walker."

"Right, Walker. It's just, historically, there's a heck of a lot of bad blood under the bridge, and you know, you just know, someone down there is going to stand up and say, 'This is a CIA thing, a JUNC thing, this thing was approved all the way, all the way on up.'"

"It is certainly not an approved thing. It's an outrageous thing, a, a, a, a vile thing."

"Right."

"And frankly it's, it's incredible, that he would get this-to this extent up the river without being caught."

"We did catch him. One of our men caught him, John."

"Well, he didn't catch him. He's, he's tooting his merry way up the Amazon. I don't see how he caught him, Dick. If he caught him, he, he'd be behind bars, consulting with Alan Dershowitz."

"Right, sure, I meant he caught him in the sense that-"

"I don't see that, Dick. I just don't see that. Here you say this guy started killing people in New York City last year ."

"He's rich, he's got resources, he's-"

"He's a lunatic, Dick. The man is, is a cross between Ross Perot and, and, and Charles Manson."

"John, with all due respect, and believe me we're grateful, the appropriations support we've been getting from your shop is absolutely magnificent. I just don't think we ought to work ourselves into a shoot-the-messenger mode."

"All right, all right. Okay. Look, we better get a working group on this. But we better get some input from various, I guess we need more input than what we have now."

"Right. Can always use more input. Absolutely."

"But I want a tight loop."

"Absolutely. Tight."

"We want Bill, then? Well, we might as well have Bill in. I mean, he's already in the damn loop."

"We're bound to want his satellite again at some point."

"What about State? Do we want them?"

"My problem with that would be, they always viewfinder from the host country POV. They're just going to take the Peruvian angle and run with it. Or leak. Jim is, well, Jim is doing a superb, superb job, but, well, let's face it, John, Jim leaks."

"Uh-hum. There's another Jim problem. Jim and him are, you know."

"Right. The buddy thing."

"Right. If we loop in Jim, the first thing he's going to do is pick up the phone and-well, okay, Jim's out, for the time being. Anyway, this is just the option-formation stage."

"Fine, good. You probably want to get Ray in the tent."

"Ray-?"

"AsSecDef for SOLIC."