The American Mission (24 page)

Marie was grateful to find that the entrance to C shaft was clear of debris and looked undamaged. Katanga was already inside, knocking down the timber joists in the section of the tunnel that in theory was directly below B shaft. There could be as little as a meter of rock above them, but the reality of the tunnel complex was likely different than the paper plans. Marie tried not to think about everything that could go wrong.

Katanga pointed at the land mine in her hand.

“We don't know what the explosive force of that charge is,” he observed. “If it's too strong, we could bring the whole tunnel down.”

“I know. We don't have time to do the math. It's either this or those boys die.”

“Okay, Chief. I hope you know what you're doing.”

“Me too.”

Katanga found a timber that was nearly as tall as the ceiling. Marie used the duct tape to affix the mine to the top of the timber. Katanga lifted the timber to press the business end of the mine flat up against the ceiling while Marie jammed broken pieces of wood underneath to shim it firmly in place. Without resistance from below, the explosive force of the charge would be spent driving the land mine back to the floor. There was also a risk, of course, that the charge would be too strong and the miners trapped above would be killed by either the pressure wave or stone shrapnel. Having made the preparations, Marie now had to make a decision. They could wait until the teams working on B shaft had worked their way in from the front, which could be many hours, or they could set off this charge and pray for a decent outcome. For a moment, she was racked with uncertainty.

“Make a decision, Marie,” Katanga ventured. “We will support you no matter what you choose and no man will hold you to blame for the outcome.”

“What would you do, Uncle?”

“I am not Chief.”

“You are my family. You are all the family I have.”

“If it were me in there, I would not want to wait while the air grew thick and foul. If it is fated to be my time, better a quick death than a long, slow one.”

“Evacuate the others.”

She waited a few minutes to give Katanga time to get the villagers outside to safety while she examined the mechanics of the land mine's new triggering system. Mputu had deactivated the pressure fuse. The timing device that would trigger the explosion was a switch attached to a cheap Chinese-made alarm clock. Marie set the timer for three minutes and scrambled down the tunnel.

They clustered together a safe distance from the tunnel entrance and waited. The minutes ticked off slowly, painfully slowly. Exactly
three minutes after she set the charge, they felt the rumble of an explosion and a few seconds later a fist of sound and dust leaped out of the tunnel mouth. Marie rewrapped the cloth around her face and went back underground. The others followed close behind their chief. They picked their way through the rubble and collapsed beams to the site of the explosion. A hole at least two meters wide had been punched in the ceiling. Katanga helped lift one of the miners up into the hole. No more than a minute later, they heard his whoop of joy.

“They're alive,” they heard him call.

The three men who had been trapped in B shaft were hypoxic. Another twenty minutes and they almost certainly would have been dead. Mputu's boy had been slightly injured by stone chips generated by the explosion. The two miners were untouched. All three would survive. It took them nearly half an hour to get the men through the hole in the floor and out to fresh air. Night had fallen and the cool evening breeze stood in blessed contrast to the stale air of the tunnels. Marie's ears were ringing. It took her a moment to realize that this was not a result of the explosion. She was hearing bells, the warning bells of the village.

“Oh dear God,” she said, sprinting down the footpath to where she had a clear view of the village below. Her knees went weak when she saw the orange glow coming up from the forest floor.

The village of Busu-Mouli was on fire.

J
ULY
16, 2009

K
INSHASA

O
n most nights in most embassies, the lights stayed on late in a few offices, including the CIA station, the executive office, and the political section. At ten on a Tuesday night, however, Alex was all but alone in the chancery. Spence was long gone and Jonah Keeler's office door, a monstrous piece of steel with a coded cipher lock and an elaborate system of dead bolts, was alarmed. At this hour, the only other person in the mission was the Marine guard on duty, alternating his time between the guard booth at Post One and patrols through the mission to sweep for unsecured classified material.

Alex was sitting at his computer, staring at a blank cable template and trying to think of how to begin. What he had seen last night at the airfield had persuaded him that he needed to take action. Consolidated Mining was dirty. The company was partnered with some of the most murderous thugs in history, the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. Alex could not bring himself to accept that Spence was part of this. Somehow, the mining company was misleading the Ambassador,
taking advantage of his commitment to U.S. security. At the same time, it was painfully clear that the Embassy was at least enabling Consolidated in its predatory behavior.

From his desktop, Alex could send a cable to any post in the world. This one had only one addressee, SECSTATE, WASHDC. On the template, the next line down was called the caption line. There were a variety of captions indicating special handling instructions for the message. NODIS or EXDIS captions, for “No Distribution” and “Executive Distribution,” meant that only a select few should be permitted to read these cables. DG channel meant that it was a sensitive personnel issue for action by the Director General of the Foreign Service.

The caption line on the cable template on Alex's computer screen read in capital letters “DISSENT CHANNEL.” Alex had never sent a cable like this.
Hell,
he thought,
he didn't even know any FSOs who had.
For the better part of an hour, he had been sitting there looking at the blank template and trying to shape his thoughts into a coherent argument. He knew what he wanted to do. He also knew what he had to avoid. He wanted Washington to understand what was happening here and launch an investigation into Consolidated Mining and its activities in the Congo. He also wanted to protect Spence, to make clear that he was not accusing his ambassador—his friend—of complicity in what for all intents and purposes amounted to murder on a grand scale.

What he was doing was extremely perilous. In theory, officers could not be punished for anything they might send in through the dissent channel. It was protected communication between career diplomats and the political leadership of the State Department. In practice, some officers who had made use of this vehicle for “disciplined dissent” had been labeled whistleblowers, traitors who had violated the department's own unwritten code of omertà
.
Moreover, Alex's run-in with Diplomatic Security meant that his career was already on the bubble. Spence's patronage was one of the few tools Alex could rely on to hold off
the security goons who would take personal pleasure in stripping his clearances.

“Mr. Secretary,” he began. “A single American company, Consolidated Mining, has joined forces with the remnants of the militia responsible for the Rwandan genocide to plunder the rich natural resources of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The United States government is enabling these activities. Consolidated Mining's behavior is not only wrong and shortsighted, it is criminal. It is in our interest that the DRC develop as a prosperous, stable, and democratic nation. What is happening in eastern Congo cannot stay secret. Eventually it will be exposed to the world. If we do not change course and launch an investigation into Consolidated's operations here, we risk being labeled as accomplices to genocide in Africa's third-largest country.”

Alex wrote for another two hours, building and honing his argument until it was as clear and compelling as he could possibly make it. While he left nothing out, he was careful not to speculate. He wanted a reasoned argument, not a conspiratorial screed that risked being dismissed as a paranoid fantasy. It was just after midnight when he finished the final draft. He read it over one more time and decided that he was, in fact, satisfied.

All he needed to do now was hit the “send” button. Within hours, it would be printed and placed in front of the Secretary of State. There was no technical reason to seek anyone's clearance or authorization to send the cable. He moved the cursor to “send” and paused.

It was hard to know what impact this cable would have on himself and his mentor, much less on the situation in the Congo. As hard as he had tried to avoid it, it was certainly possible to read the message as accusing Spence of actively supporting Consolidated's corrosive actions.
Didn't he owe it to Spence to discuss it first?
Alex hesitated. It did not seem fair or right to simply blindside the one man who had consistently stood up for him in his darkest times.

He moved the cursor to a different option: “forward message.” He clicked the icon and entered Spence's e-mail address. “Let's discuss tomorrow,” he wrote in the dialogue box.

•   •   •

T
here was no message from Spence waiting on Alex's computer when he arrived at the office the next morning. In truth, he had not been certain what kind of reaction to expect. He had prepared himself mentally and emotionally for anger, accusations of disloyalty, or a reasoned effort on Spence's part to explain why Alex was simply wrong. What he had not anticipated was radio silence, no acknowledgment that Spence had even read the message.

Unable to concentrate, Alex spent most of the day working in a fairly desultory fashion. At about four, Mark Fong stuck his head in the office.

“Alex, I just e-mailed you the latest version of the human rights report. It's due today. Do you mind taking a quick look at it?”

“No problem,” Alex said, without much enthusiasm. “If it looks okay, I'll just send it in. No reason to bother the Front Office with it until it's in final form.”

“Sounds great. Let me know if you have any questions.”

The human rights report was a standardized yearly report that embassies all over the world prepared on their countries. The report on the Congo was particularly complex because the ongoing violence had contributed to massive violations of human rights in addition to a staggering loss of life. There was a new section this year on rape as a weapon of war that included gruesome stories and statistics. An hour later, Alex had made a few minor edits and the report was ready to send back to Washington.

The document was already set up in Cable Express. Once Alex had made his changes and checked that the format was correct, the message was ready to send. He slid the cursor over the “send” button and clicked.
Nothing happened. Ordinarily a dialogue box would pop up with a reassuring “Your message has been sent” and a cable number that made it easy to find the message in the database. Alex hit “send” again. This time, an error message appeared. It read, “Code 704.” Alex was familiar with some of the more common error codes for mistakes in formatting or addressing cables. It was a fairly arcane art even for experienced officers, and it was easy to make a minor error that would force the persnickety software to reject the message. Code 704 was a new one, however. Alex checked the formatting of the cable again, but could not find an obvious mistake.

He picked up his phone and dialed the commo room.

“Schefultowski,” said a gravelly voice. Drew Schefultowski was the Embassy's head communicator. He spent all day in a windowless room on the top floor of the chancery surrounded by computers and communications equipment. The commo room was the most sensitive part of the Embassy. There were parts of the facility that were off-limits even to the Ambassador.

Schefultowski had joined State after twenty years in the Navy. He drank too much, smoked too much, and had a generally curmudgeonly view of life. Alex liked him tremendously.

“Hey, Drew. It's Alex. I'm having some trouble with Cable Express that I'm hoping you can help me sort out.”

There was a long pause before Drew answered.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Uh. Some weird code that I've never seen before. 704. Do you know what that means?”

“Listen, Alex. There's nothing I can do to fix this. You'll have to take it up with the Front Office.” Drew sounded distant and uncomfortable.

“What's this about, Drew?”

“Talk to the Ambassador about it, would you?” Schefultowski hung up.

Alex stared at the receiver, uncertain of what to make of the conversation. Whatever Drew was talking about, it did not sound like a simple technical glitch. A feeling of unease started to creep up his spine. Somewhere he knew the office had a Cable Express operating manual that should include a list of all the codes and an explanation of their meaning.

After a few minutes of rummaging through his office, he found what he was looking for in the bottom drawer of the safe. It was a bound manual of about a hundred or so pages. There was a picture on the cover of two vaguely attractive people bent over a keyboard who looked extremely happy about something. The appendixes included a list of error codes. Alex looked at 704 in disbelief. He checked the dialogue box on his screen again to make sure that he had the number right. He did. Code 704, the manual said, was for “accounts disabled by administrator.” Alex's authority to send and receive cables had been suspended.

His phone rang. It was Spence's extension.

Alex picked up the receiver.

“Spence?”

“Would you come upstairs, please, Alex. We need to talk.”

•   •   •

A
lex knew something was wrong the moment he walked into the Front Office suite. There was a distinct air of tension and Peggy would not make eye contact with him.

“You can go in,” she said coolly, without looking up from her typing. “They're expecting you.”

“They?”

“Yes.”

Inside the office, Rick Viggiano and Jonah Keeler were waiting along with Spence and the feckless Deputy Chief of Mission, Bob Jeffries.

“What's going on, Spence?” Alex asked.

“Why don't you sit down. We have something we need to talk to you about.”

“Okay.” Alex sat on the couch with Keeler. Spence and Viggiano sat across from them in armchairs. Jeffries stood behind Spence with his arms folded across his chest. Viggiano had a black legal briefcase crammed with papers that he set down next to his chair. A conspicuous bulge in his jacket indicated that he was carrying a gun. That was nothing out of the ordinary, at least not for Viggiano. Most RSOs stored their firearms in the safe in their office with a trigger lock securely in place. Viggiano would wear his piece to the swimming pool.

Spence did not waste time on small talk. “It is my opinion, Alex, that your behavior over the last few weeks has become increasingly erratic. Frankly, I was concerned for you. You have a history of instability, and I was worried that you were getting into something over your head. I asked Rick Viggiano to investigate. This morning he searched your residence.”

“He broke into my home?” Alex asked, incredulous.

Viggiano scoffed. “Broke in with the extra key in the admin office if that's what you mean.”

“I'm sure you understand,” Spence said pedantically, “that your residence is not your personal property. It belongs to the Embassy and we have blanket authority to search it when the Chief of Mission deems it necessary.”

“That's a pretty technical defense for what seems a clear violation of privacy.”

“And why is privacy so important to you?” Viggiano pressed. “Got something you want to hide, maybe?”

“No, that's not the point.”

“Oh, that is precisely the point.” The former cop pulled a thick buff-colored folder out of his briefcase and laid it on the coffee table between him and Alex.

“Okay, I'll bite, Rick. What's in the file? More notes from my shrink?”

“Secrets,” Viggiano replied. “But not your secrets . . . our secrets.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Take a look.”

Alex picked up the folder and opened it. Inside was a half-inch stack of documents. He flipped through them quickly. It was a mix of State cables, Defense Attaché reports, and CIA HUMINT, or human intelligence, reporting. The lowest level of classification that he saw was confidential. There was at least one document that was Secret/NOFORN. The NOFORN stood for “No Foreigners,” meaning that it was sensitive enough that it could not be shared even with America's closest allies. Most of the documents seemed to have something to do with either Russia or China.

“I found this in your house,” Viggiano said, clearly relishing the moment. “This file was taped to the underside of a dresser drawer in your bedroom. You know, I wouldn't have taken you for a boxers guy. I would have thought tighty-whiteys. You are aware, aren't you, about the rules governing the handling of classified information and the consequences for willful mismanagement of the same?”

The muscles in Alex's neck and shoulders tensed and a sudden rush of adrenaline pushed up his heart rate. Alex did not understand what was happening, but he knew that he was in some serious trouble.

“I know the rules, Rick. But I've never seen this file before. I don't know what's going on, but if you found this file in my house, then it's a plant. Somebody put it there.”

“Now who would want to do something like that?” Viggiano asked innocently.

“I honestly don't know.”

“What about these?” Viggiano pulled a small, brown leather bag out of the briefcase. He untied the drawstring and emptied it onto the table with a dramatic flourish worthy of a TV detective. The pile of brilliant crystals on the table could only be one thing. Diamonds. Alex was no expert, but it looked like there was an easy half a million dollars
in stones, some raw and some cut and polished, sitting on the coffee table.