The Gun Runner's Daughter (5 page)

And now, on August 1st, riding a taxi to work through the morning rush, he read the page 15 item on the sealing of Falcon’s John Street office with a sudden spike of attention. Then he
closed the paper and stared out the window as the taxi turned and a fall of summer sun struck directly in his face, making his sky blue eyes glint, narrow, and then, like a light extinguished,
close.

David Treat Dennis, Dee.

The Treat was the maiden name of a distant paternal grandmother, the same as had lent her name to the often-noted Treat Street in Vineyard Haven, where old Alice Treat had lived and died,
centuries before. The same middle name as was inscribed on generations of tombstones, many actually rounded at the edges by the passage of time, in the little cemetery on Lambert’s Cove
Road.

As for David and Dennis, they composed a great-uncle’s name, and could be seen still on his tomb, not in Martha’s Vineyard, but in the World War I graveyard outside of Brest, peering
enigmatically across the Channel toward the country where the first David Dennis had decided to think big in 1653 and washed up, some months later, half starved, loose-toothed, and syphilitic, to
reinvent himself on an island off the coast of Massachusetts.

Little dreaming that generations later his namesake—one of his many namesakes—was about to be required to reinvent himself too.

That namesake didn’t yet dream that either.

2.

Dee entered Walsh’s office suite through a windowless conference room—the offices had been built to house classified material—where five or six suited people
stood over a table holding coffee and doughnuts. The table was covered with papers, from the
Washington Times
to
Defense News;
from the centrist, establishment
Foreign Affairs
to the far-left, muckraking
North American Review of Intelligence Affairs;
since the filing of Walsh’s final report, there was no longer any need for the attorneys here to avoid being
tainted by media coverage of the industry and now could—some, for the first time in years—read whatever paper they wanted. Without pause—although he was surprised by the lack of a
greeting—Dee hung his jacket in a closet and was pouring coffee somewhat self-consciously when his secretary approached. There was, Dee noticed suddenly, no noise in the room. In as quiet a
voice as she could manage she spoke.

“Mr. Dennis. You got a call.”

“Oh yeah?” Intensely conscious of the silence, Dee put down his half-poured coffee, looking at his secretary. “Who?”

“Shauna McCarthy.”

Dee absorbed the news, then without any delay turned and walked into his office, past the studied unconcern of his colleagues.

Shauna McCarthy was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Her voice was brusque when, after a series of clerks, Dee reached her.

“Mr. Dennis. Nice to talk to you. I’d like to offer you a job.”

“Thank you.” Standing at his desk, he answered evenly.

“Line prosecutor. Significant oral argument. The title is special counsel to the U.S. attorney. After the trial, we’ll see what’s available on staff. I suspect there’ll
be something good.”

“Thank you. I can be there in the afternoon.”

McCarthy laughed. “Don’t do that. I’m on my way down. Tell me, have you ever been to the old Executive Office Building?”

“No ma’am.”

“You’re going today. We have a one o’clock meeting. Be at the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance by noon. We’ll see you there.”

“Yes, Ms. McCarthy. Ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“May I ask what the case is?”

“The sweetest arms export violation since Edwin Wilson did business with Qaddafi. The prosecution of Ronald Rosenthal, Mr. Dennis. I understand you’re interested in it.”

A pause, and gratitude flooded Dee Dennis’s stomach.

“I most certainly am, Ms. McCarthy.”

“Good. Can you read
U.S. v. Teledyne
before the meeting?”

“I already know it, ma’am.”

Dee Dennis hung up, stunned. Slowly, realization was dawning on him, and with it his scalp pricked, his stomach surged. This was a front-page prosecution. No, it was more. If
U.S. v.
Teledyne
was the precedent, that meant that Rosenthal was claiming covert government direction for his transaction. He was saying, in fact, that he had illegally sold arms to Bosnia at the
behest of the Clinton administration—as had Oliver North said about the Reagan administration. That defense had never actually been tried, and with a spirited defense—and Bob Stein
would doubtless be defending—it could be appealed to the Supreme Court. Then, coming suddenly to himself, David Treat Dennis opened his office door to the conference room and announced:

“Girls and boys, meet the special counsel to the U.S. attorney. New York, Southern District, under Lady McCarthy herself.”

And still, as his colleagues, taking notice at last, came to offer congratulations, Dee did not understand.

3.

From then on, for the rest of that day, things happened very quickly to Dee Dennis.

When his taxi dropped him at the gateway to the White House compound, he stepped, somewhat self-consciously, into the stream of traffic moving up through the gate, guarded by white-gloved
marines, to the old Executive Office Building. On the way through the gates he recognized Robert Reich, who, coming out, saw him, looked away, and then back, suddenly, with some curiosity.

Inside a set of glass doors his name was checked on a computer by a young woman. With a nod, he was passed through a metal detector into a second room. Shauna McCarthy and two colleagues were
here, flanked by a man and a woman, both in black.

“Mr. Dennis. Nice to see you. These are deputy U.S. attorneys Daniel Edelson and Beth Callahan. They will be with you before the bench.”

Dee had just the time to shake the hands of his new colleagues before a young man, no older than Dee and much smaller, approached, shook Shauna McCarthy’s hand, nodded to the others, and
then Dee was following them, as if in formation, down a hallway.

They continued straight, left, straight again, passing through an octagonal room from which three corridors parted in three directions. Then they turned left, went down a corridor, through a
single oak door into a carpeted lounge.

Here, Dee saw a long chesterfield occupied, to his surprise, by Sidney Ohlinger and Dee’s father. Ohlinger, a very tall, slim man with jet black hair, had remained seated, but Dee’s
father rose to shake Shauna McCarthy’s hand as she seated herself in an armchair, then turned and winked at Dee. The three senior members of the party shifted their attention to an oak
door.

As the junior members of the meeting took seats, Dee, who felt his comprehension to have been lagging significantly behind his perceptions, was able to bring himself partially up to the present.
He was in a conference room with the National Security adviser, the president’s counsel, and a U.S. attorney. And that was as far as he got before the door opened and Alexander Nelson, a
White House aide whom he knew only from the newspaper, carrying a sheaf of papers, entered and began to talk.

“Ed, I have to tell you that the charge has been made that your prosecution represents a cabal.”

Dee had not heard the question in the statement, but his father answered immediately.

“Alex, whoever said that should use a dictionary. A cabal cannot represent a sizable plurality of a democratically constituted political party. May I add that it’s a plurality that
was very important in the ’92 elections.”

“Nonetheless, why shouldn’t the press see it that way?”

“Our defendant’s public image was established during Iran-contra, and it was uniformly negative. There is no sympathy for him in the press, either. This is not only the right thing
to do, Alex, it’s good media.”

His father was speaking, Dee realized, in sound bites: punchy concise statements. Moving on, Nelson asked, “What about Congress?”

The answer continued fluently, and Dee noticed that the name of the defendant was not mentioned. “Alex, that’s precisely what makes this prosecution so incredibly apt: our defendant
has no friends in Congress. Democrats remember his role in the October surprise. Republicans note that the Bosnian Muslim arms supply—alleged supply—is a Democratic initiative. This is
bipartisanship at its most compelling, Alex. Both sides have axes to grind.”

Sidney Ohlinger picked up the argument smoothly, in his lightly accented Bostonian speech.

“It’s not only good for Congress, it’s good for the executive. We all knew as far back as ’91 we’d be needing a way to show good, strong support for the embargo on
Bosnia. We are going to have very, very happy alliances in the G7, come fall. Without that, we bring this to trial, the press is going to be all about the defense’s claim that the White House
was directing him. With it, this is a president in control of his house, and nothing London or Paris has to say’ll make the news.”

Nelson nodded and moved swiftly on. “What about the Turks, the Saudis? It’s their Moslem brothers who are under fire. We already have blowback from the mujahideen over
Bosnia.”

Ohlinger spoke again. “That is the reason for which State is to be kept out: there is no official position on this. Meanwhile the president is free to use covert agencies to placate those
allies.”

“Feasibility?”

The attention turned now to the U.S. attorney, who, in a much lower voice than previously, spoke. To Dee, she seemed the perfect ammunition to pull out now. “Mr. Nelson, this is a case
that cannot be lost. Defendant’s second in command has turned State’s evidence in return for limited immunity. It will be very, very difficult to overturn this evidence: it is
eyewitness, memorialized, irrefutable.”

“What have the courts done on this kind of prosecution?”

“The text of this trial was practically written by
U.S. v. Teledyne.
Covert direction by an administration—or a portion of an administration—was ruled inadmissible by
Shelby Highsmith. We will be delighted to argue this issue before the Supreme Court.”

“How prepared are you?”

“We have our witness in protective custody. We are ready to announce as soon as tomorrow.”

She paused to let her meaning sink in. Then, softening her tone, she went on.

“What’s perhaps more important is that internally, I know of no other occasion where a perfect confluence of values has existed all the way from the White House to, sir, the line
prosecutor.” She paused, and Dee felt a flash of heat in his head as Nelson’s attention turned, for a full second, on him. Then Nelson was speaking again, dryly this time.

“Nepotism, counselor?”

“Sir, David Dennis has worked statutory arms export administration, on which he wrote for Yale Law and which he prosecuted in open argument under Walsh, since leaving law school at
Harvard. He is anybody’s choice for this job.”

“Okay.” With a short, humorless nod, Nelson rose now. “Ed, keep me informed.”

In the room, as the door closed behind Nelson, there was a sudden lightening of mood, as if these six people had all been instantly released from the same deep anxiety. Slowly, as he stood, it
dawned on Dee that for these people, their careers had depended on these slow minutes. For McCarthy, he thought, this was very probably the first time she had ever been to such a meeting. It could
be the only time: if this case were to go wrong, it would be, for her, a brutal, unforgiving life turn, as determinant of one’s future as a tragic accident—which it could well be.
Watching his superiors gather themselves for departure, Dee marveled briefly at the courage with which these people had put their careers on the line.

And only then did it occur to him that, without ever asking him, they had done the same with his career, too.

4.

“Play your cards right, Deedee,” Edward Treat Dennis was saying with the slight slur of his second bourbon on the rocks, “and you’ll end up on the
’96 campaign.
Good
election experience, boy, win or lose.”

Dee leaned back in his chair, away from the table, watching his father in the dining room of his childhood home in Georgetown. At the table was also his mother, her face the mirror of his
father’s pride. For a moment the familiarity of the room, the low globes of the light over the table, the carpet underfoot, passed through him like a swoon.

He watched his father’s pleasure with a wide smile.

“How’s it good if I lose?”

His father’s face shifted, briefly, in incomprehension, and then cleared. “You can’t lose the case. I mean the election. Good experience, whether Clinton wins or
loses.”

Dee considered that, attentively. So, it didn’t matter what happened to the president. That, he thought, was an interesting lesson on the loyalties associated with his new job. It had been
a day filled with lessons. His father was still talking.

“It’s the fact that Ohlinger is in that makes the case so damn strong. The national security adviser is a cabinet-level position. I was surprised Nelson even showed up, with that
kind of credentials. That’s what they mean when they call him hands-on.”

“Ohlinger seems committed.”

“Committed? He was in Tel Aviv a year ago, telling them there was no proxy position in the Balkans, not after Iran-contra. Know what they said?”

Dee shook his head.

“Said Israel could not stand by, like England and France, while ethnic cleansing was being carried out.” A short laugh. “Especially not when there’re profits to be made.
Boy, when those guys turn on their own kind, you see real venom. You know Ohlinger’s and Rosenthal’s daughters are best friends?”

“Yeah?” Dee showed interest now: he knew Martha Ohlinger. “Who’s Rosenthal’s daughter?”

“Name’s Allison. Didn’t you know her brother? Paul? Kid who killed himself? A fag, I heard, right?”

And in a fluid movement the warm, kind dining room turned, for Dee, into a prison.

In a fluid movement the best, most challenging, most exciting day of his life turned into the worst.

Later, he would remember the feeling as a vertiginous drop.