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He paused, put his hand on his hip, and, mimicking a light-on-his-feet photo analyst examining satellite downloads, lisped, “Well, that’s a 727 all right, Bruce, but it’s not the one we’re looking for. That 727 belongs to Rag-Head Airways. I have that tail number right here.”
“I take your point,” Castillo said, chuckling.
“Maybe Pevsner’d use the airplane himself, but, more likely, if he didn’t use it for parts he’d sell it to somebody ... the Chinese, or any one of the Holy Warrior organizations ...”
“How much of this fascinating scenario did you put in your file, Dick?” Castillo interrupted.
“I sent a satburst to Langley—the third one, I think—giving the nut of the scenario. I was in the commo room when we got the acknowledgment, so it should have been on the desk of the regional director for Southwest Africa when she went to work at Langley the next morning. Then I went to work writing what I would send when I got the ‘without diverting substantial assets, attempt to develop further’ response. It’s SOP; I expected that would come in as soon as she read the satburst.”
“Let me get this straight. You prepared more than a satburst? ”
“A six-page filing,” Miller said. “I even read it over very carefully to make sure I had all the big words spelled right.”
“I never saw anything like that. When did you send it?”
“I never sent it,” Miller said. “I never got the ‘develop further’ reply.”
“Why didn’t you send it anyway? If you had it, had done it?”
“I told you, because I never got the ‘develop further’ response. She wasn’t interested.”
“She wasn’t interested? Why not? You’re suggesting she just shot down your idea? Why would she do that?”
“If it was shot down by somebody at Langley, I suspect she was the shooter, but I don’t know that.”
“What we were supposed to get, Dick, were summaries to date, plus not yet evaluated raw data,” Castillo said. “Even if Langley didn’t have time to evaluate it, Hall was supposed to get it. And I read everything he got. There was no copy of your satburst, or anything from anybody about a Russian arms dealer.”
Miller nodded.
“Alleged arms dealer,” Miller said. “That may be it, Charley. You want my gut reaction, with the caveat that—as you may have suspected—I don’t like the lady?”
“Yeah.”
“Pevsner is smart as hell, and there’s no question in my mind—if no proof—that the agency has used his services. He doesn’t ask questions about what’s in the boxes loaded in his airplanes; all he cares about is the cash up-front.”
“Where are you going with this, Dick?” Castillo asked.
“If I strongly suspect the agency used Pevsner, Mrs. Wilson probably knew that the agency did. Okay. So if she passed my file upward, a couple of things could have happened. For one thing, I suspect the African section would have told her to send one of those ‘without diverting substantial assets, attempt to develop further’ messages to me. In her mind, if I would have looked into it further, there were only two possible results. One, I would have come up with zilch, which would have embarrassed her—one of her underlings was incompetent—or, two, I would have come up with something solid, which would have opened the Pevsner can of worms and pissed off the covert guys. Either way, it would be a speed bump on her path to promotion.”
“You don’t have a copy of your file, do you?” Castillo asked. “Your satburst and then what you wrote and didn’t send?”
“Of course not, Charley,” Miller said. “Maintaining personal copies of classified documents is a serious violation of security regulations. Anyone who does so is liable not only for immediate dismissal from CIA service but subject to criminal prosecution, either under the U.S. Code or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, whichever is applicable. You of all people should know that.” Miller paused, looked impassively at Castillo, then asked: “You want to see it?”
“If I go to my boss with this, I’m going to have to have it,” Castillo said.
Miller’s right eyebrow rose in thought and stayed there for thirty seconds but seemed longer.
Then he took a business card from his wallet, wrote something on it, and handed it to Castillo.
“If I’m going to risk sending my brilliant career down the crapper,” he said, “not to mention going to the slam, I might as well go whole hog and use e-mail. Let me have your e-mail address, Charley, and I’ll go home and send it to you. It’s on my laptop. It’ll be encrypted. That’s the key.”
Castillo looked at the card. Miller had written “bullshit” on it.
“Gringo at Castillo dot-com,” he said. “You want to write it down?”
Miller shook his head.
“Dick, once you do this, you might think about getting
