Code Word: Paternity, A Presidential Thriller (18 page)

Chapter
34

Bruce Griffith
bounded onto the platform as if he were campaigning, smiling and waving to the
reporters gathered at Creech Air Force Base, followed by Fisher, Karnow, and
Cantwell.
The timing is great,
he
thought
—this’ll get lots of coverage. Not
only are the president and the White House press corps in flight, off the radar
for sixteen hours, the president isn’t bringing home anything to celebrate.
Sorry, Mr. President—I tried to tell you, but you didn’t listen.

 
“First question!” Griffith made a show of scanning the room,
then chose the one he’d preselected for his pugnacity. “OK, Larry,” said Griffith, pointing to a
reporter in the second row.

“Mr. Vice President, the administration’s
response to Six-thirteen has had an ad hoc, make-it-up-as-you-go quality that
has disturbed and angered many people. Many victims suffered because shelter
and food were slow to arrive and distributed carelessly. Why were you so
unprepared?”

Griffith
stopped just short of licking his chops
before saying, “Larry, of
course
our
response was ad hoc! In the blink of an eye, about five hundred thousand
innocent people were smashed into a mix of dead, wounded, and homeless persons,
and in the desert at that! No government prepares at scale to deal with an
attack of this size. We certainly had plans, well-practiced plans, but never
rehearsed on this scale.

“I’m not
apologetic
that our response had an ad hoc quality, I’m
proud
that it did! Because, if it
didn’t, we’d still be standing around with our thumbs you-know-where, waiting
for someone to hand us a plan. The people led by these men with me have done a
heroic and, I’d even say, inspired job of improvising. They continue to do that
every day. I’m damn proud to be associated with their efforts!”

The vice president’s eyes sparkled. He
waved his arm as if painting a heroic mural on the wall behind the press, who
were scribbling furiously.

“But what about the slow arrival of food,
shelter, clothing, and other relief supplies?”

Griffith
devoured the question like a hungry man
eating breakfast.

 
“Slow? What’s slow when you’re working on this
scale? Remember, folks, when you include victims and survivors’ family members,
whom we’re also supporting out here, we’re dealing with a group about as large
as the whole U.S. Army. Even the entire supply chain of Wal-Mart doesn’t hold
enough food and bedding at one time to take care of that many! And even if it
did, it would take every eighteen-wheeler in North America
a month to move it here.”

Griffith
didn’t know whether that was true or
not, but he knew the press didn’t know, either. His stance challenged them,
Wyatt Earp ready to clear leather.

“So you’re saying that everything that
could
have been done to prepare for this
was
done, and everything that’s been
done since Six-thirteen was right—there are no lessons to be learned, nothing
to do differently?”

“No, not at all! There
are
lessons in this. First, we must
never again let ourselves get in such a position that a rogue state like North Korea
would have so little concern for our retaliation that they attack us. And, if I
may put on my other hat for a moment, my Homeland Security hat”—Griffith placed
an imaginary hat on his head—“we need to realize that we can no longer permit
our borders to be porous, and we are probably going to have to readjust the
balance between civil liberties and national security.

“I know that’s not a popular thing to say
in some quarters. But I think most people, whatever their feelings prior to
Six-thirteen, if they dealt up close and personal—day after day—with the
destruction, pain, suffering, and broken lives caused by this murderous attack,
would agree: when you balance the possibility of abuse against the
flesh-and-blood reality of Las Vegas, you give primacy to defeating new attacks
over theoretical concerns that American officials might abuse temporary
emergency powers.”

“Mr. Vice President, there are rumors
that you had a very persuasive conversation with the CEO of a food service
company that should best remain unidentified. Can you confirm that and tell us
what happened?”

Griffith
fought off the grin about to burst
forth, holding it to a modest smile. “Well, yes, I did. I won’t accept
business-as-usual responses in this crisis! Again, I suppose that comes from
spending a lot of time with the victims of this despicable attack. I felt that
particular company wasn’t giving its all-out support, which we sorely needed,
and felt the CEO probably didn’t understand our situation here. He needed to
see for himself. I made that possible and also gave him an overview of the
situation as I saw it. Armed with that new information, the CEO returned to his
company and led them in much-improved performance, for which I am most
grateful.”

When the appreciative laughter subsided, Griffith continued: “And
that reminds me of a thought I had earlier, regarding the speed of our
response. I guess I got off onto some other aspect. Anyway, someone commented
about lack of speed in our response. I want to make another point about that.

“I’m well aware of the saying ‘when you
want it bad, you get it bad.’ When it came to, say, temporary housing, we
certainly wanted it bad. I had a choice. I could insist on rigorous contracting
and quality control measures in order to avoid or at least reduce fraud, waste,
and abuse. But that would take more time, too much time in my judgment. I
decided to minimize processes in order to get tents and trailers here as
quickly as humanly possible. As a result, we’ve had to discard some because of
shoddy or unsafe workmanship, and, as sure as I’m standing here, there is
someone listening on TV or radio that is cheating the people of Las Vegas and the nation.
I say to that person and others like him, shame on you! If I catch you, you’ll
bitterly regret your scamming at the expense of these sufferers. But I won’t
let fear of the few like you delay us in getting aid to those who so
desperately need it!”

The vice president performed for about
forty-five minutes. His delighted press pool preened and lobbed targets into
the kill zone of his rhetorical missiles. It was a win-win, with the media
getting video that spread virally across blogs and cable and talk shows, and Griffith getting the
opportunity to sound on top of things—decisive and inspiring.

Later it would be clear that on this day
the tide of American opinion turned against the president’s strategy.

***

Siebersdorf
, Austria

Erika van Bruntland sighed and shifted in
her chair. She was balancing the good of her organization, and her career, with
an unwelcome truth in the report before her.

Erika was short, florid, loved Dutch
beer, was addicted to
Gauloises
cigarettes, and fought a losing battle to follow the instructions of her keen
mind to take better care of herself. That keen mind was now wrestling with a
problem for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safeguards Analytical
Laboratories, which she headed.

Entitled with perfect bureaucratic
opacity, “Forensic Analysis of Certain Plutonium Isotopes,” the report
contained a sensational and potentially deadly conclusion: the isotopic
signature of a sample of the Las Vegas
fallout, obtained independently by the IAEA, matched that of a plutonium sample
taken by the IAEA from piping at Yongbyon. That sample had been taken in 1990
by inspectors observing a strict protocol and chain of custody, with the
permission of the North Koreans. The IAEA’s Yongbyon sample was genuine and
unadulterated—unchallengeable, unless one alleged the IAEA was knowingly part
of a U.S.
deception. The lab had also compared the IAEA’s Yongbyon sample to that alleged
by the United States
to be a sample from Yongbyon. They matched. The U.S.
accusation of North Korea
had a credible scientific basis.

The problem, she knew, was that the IAEA
director-general didn’t want to point to North
Korea, because that might set the stage for the country’s
nuclear destruction by the United
States. The fact that the UN
secretary-general was South Korean made his predicament even worse.

Unfortunately for the director-general,
the U.S. government had
asked the IAEA to gather and analyze a sample of the Las Vegas fallout, and he felt unable to
refuse. Also unfortunately for him, the manager responsible for the analysis
was van Bruntland.

 
It
wasn’t that she cared much for the United States or its policies; it
was that she cared for science and truth and fairness and had courage.
Somewhere in her DNA was the readiness to risk all to do the right thing that
had motivated some of her countrymen to protect Dutch Jews from the Nazis. Van
Bruntland had slow-rolled the lab work and report, but she had not yielded to
pressure to “overlook” the agency’s own Yongbyon sample.

I’m
going to play this absolutely straight,
she thought.
Even so,
I’m going to make some of the bigs furious.
She felt her stomach jump.
I’ve got my pension, but I’m scared.

Van Bruntland closed the cover with a
snap, heaved herself to her feet, and left her office, telling her secretary
she was going to confer with her boss.