The Capitol Game (41 page)

“I suppose you have a good reason,” he said with a weak nod.

“The best. I gave my word. And it’s the only way my source will continue to cooperate. A lot’s at stake here, twenty billion excellent reasons to keep my source talking. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but people get killed or seriously hurt over a lot less. For now, the less who know my source’s identity, the better. That includes you.”

Nicky didn’t agree, but neither did he raise an objection. What would be the point? “This for real?” he asked, holding up the folder, pinching it between his fingers as if it were a ticking bomb.

“Quite real.”

“You know what it means?”

“I think I do. CG’s polymer wasn’t adequately tested. It means we have to call an immediate, drastic halt to the entire coating operation. Then a major fraud investigation against one of the most powerful and influential companies in Washington. Have I missed anything important?”

“How about a major scandal that will rock the capital?”

“Okay, we’ll add that to the list.”

Inside the folder Nicky was holding like a contaminated vial of germs were the summary pages of a report prepared by a
company called Summit Testing—the final results of a privately financed study, contracted and paid for by a company called Arvan Chemicals.

The report claimed that after four months, the polymer’s miraculous protective qualities somehow broke down, eventually dissipating to nothing.

One day the polymer could defeat nearly any bomb on the planet; the next it could barely stand up to a mild breeze.

“When did they start the coating operation over there?” Nicky asked. He was catching on quickly.

“About three and a half months ago. They’re shamefully behind schedule. But many hundreds of vehicles are now coated and vulnerable. The soldiers call them poly-plus roadies.”

“You know what it means to try to stop this?”

“Think what it means not to, Nicky.”

“Why don’t you help me think about that?”

“Thousands of soldiers are now rolling around Iraqi streets, thinking they’re impervious to the worst the jihadis can throw at them. They’re taking risks they would never contemplate otherwise. One morning they wake up and get a very nasty surprise.”

Nicky waved the report in the air. “How do I know this is reliable?”

“Yesterday I had a chat with the president of Summit Testing. The company’s credible. Its reputation within the industry is impeccable. They were hired, almost two years ago, by Perry Arvan to conduct a field test in Iraq. A private defense contractor agreed to serve as the guinea pig. Dozens of its vehicles were coated and sent into the most violent streets in Baghdad. For four months, no problems, everything worked great. Then one day the polymer broke down completely.”

“How?” Nicky asked. “Why?”

“They have a hunch. They aren’t entirely sure it’s right, though.”

“Let’s hear the hunch.”

“The reactive explosives in the polymer are nitrogen-based. It’s a rare occurrence, but they suspect ultraviolet rays from the
sun break down the reactive qualities. Starts out gradually, then accelerates quickly. Physicists could explain it better than me, but apparently it’s known to happen.”

It was suddenly clear to Nicky how volatile the summary in his hand was about to become. Senior people in the Defense Department had pressed hard for a quick, noncompetitive contract for CG. Nicky had heard rumors about shortcuts and favors. All big defense contracts generated plenty of nasty gossip, often spawned by jealous competitors, but in the strain of running a building that spends five hundred billion dollars a year, they were usually ignored as long as they weren’t too serious or perceptibly credible. This one just became all too credible.

Nicky swiped a hand through the gray stubble on his scalp. “So you’re asking me to take this upstairs based on a guess? To stop the biggest, most publicized defense breakthrough of the decade because of a hunch?”

“It’s no hunch that the polymer breaks down, Nicky. Let’s not argue, okay? You’ve got the report. It’s a stone-cold fact. The only uncertainty is what causes it.”

Nicky collapsed back against his desk. He pretended to read the file again and think about it. He wasn’t squeamish, nor was he cowered by CG’s reputation and power. In twenty years in this racket, he’d seen it all. He’d been involved in taking down some of the biggest giants in industry, been cursed at and threatened, once had bricks thrown through his car window. No, he wasn’t worried about the fallout.

What bothered him was Mia.

He’d been getting pestering calls for days, asking what she was up to. As large and fragmented as the Pentagon was, it had a small-town culture with gossips and nosy busybodies on every hallway. She was hassling CG, and vacuuming up contracts and background material from the procurement people. She was doing this all on her own. The question was, why? He considered three or four reasons and liked none of them.

But it really didn’t matter. He had no choice. None at all. Nicky finally said with clear reluctance, “All right, I’ll bring this upstairs
to the director. But I’m not happy, Mia. I don’t like being the caboose.”

“You’re doing the right thing,” Mia said, making an obvious effort to sound reassuring. “I’ll tell you everything when the time’s right.”

I
t took only six hours for the summary Mia put in Nicky’s hands to work its way up the chain to the very top. Three hours to be read, confirmed, and painfully contemplated by the director of the DCIS. An hour and a half to be viewed with undisguised horror by the undersecretary for procurement. Then another hour and a half for the director of test and evaluation to dream up a few lame excuses, none even remotely credible, before the procession of deeply addled senior officials marched into the office of the secretary of defense with the alarming news.

The president of Summit Testing fielded calls from every level. At one point, he even gathered the evaluation team that had spent six long months in Iraq. On the speakerphone, they defended their scientific judgment and recited their impressive résumés—two PhDs in molecular chemistry from MIT, three master’s degrees from a series of other distinguished academic institutions—and recounted how they arrived at the incontrovertible conclusion that the polymer was a star that quickly fizzled into a flop.

They explained that the study and pictures CG had bandied around town to such terrific effect in fact represented only their preliminary results. For three months and twenty-nine days the polymer had worked like magic. In jubilation they had prepared
their report and labeled it as the final; the polymer was the thing dreams are made of, with an album of astonishing pictures to prove it.

Only a few days after the “final” report was finished, and only two days before the crew was scheduled to climb on a freedom bird and fly home, did the word “final” turn into “disastrously premature.” The first bad news hit. Two coated vehicles were destroyed by roadside bombs.

The wrecks were hauled back to the compound and rigorously inspected. The remarkable defensive qualities were entirely and mysteriously gone. History. The polymer was now nothing but a ridiculously expensive paint job. Over the ensuing weeks, as more of the polymer-coated test vehicles became casualties, the examinations continued. More wrecks hauled into their yard, more head-scratching, more disappointment as the team realized all those months were a waste. You see, they said, not all the vehicles deteriorated at the same pace, or even the same way.

There were variations. Some coated vehicles degraded quickly; a few lingered months longer. Some vehicles exhibited a patchwork, a quilt of polymer with all its amazing qualities intact, intermixed with large dead spaces. Others seemed to turn off uniformly as if flipped by a big switch. Why remained a mystery. The answer was complicated and elusive. There were too many variables, too many unanswerable questions: how long a vehicle remained under cover from the sun; how thick the coatings were; how the intensity of the sun fluctuated with the seasons.

All these things could be factors, or maybe none of them at all. It was impossible to say.

The team remained in Iraq another two months, until the last of the coated fleet was completely defenseless. There were no visible signs of degradation, they said; the polymer gave up no clues as to its virility. Worse, there was no safe way to test for the degradation of the polymer they were aware of.

Aside from flinging an explosive against the vehicle and watching it either burst into a fireball or shrug it off, you couldn’t tell
whether the polymer was effective or not. A vehicle could survive the worst you throw at it one minute, and be a death trap ten seconds later.

That troubling unpredictability meant the polymer was dead on arrival.

The old, now disproved “final” report was stuffed in a drawer, never meant to see the light of day. Few copies had been produced. Distribution was strictly controlled. Aside from Summit’s own file copies, only Perry Arvan had received, or even laid eyes on, the fool’s gold, to the best of their knowledge.

And no, nobody from the Capitol Group had ever called Summit to discuss or confirm the results.

All attempts to locate Perry Arvan proved disappointing. His telephone service was disconnected. Ditto for his water and electricity and heating oil. His home was vacant and had been for a long time. According to New Jersey’s DMV, his cars had been sold off months before. There had been no use of his charge cards or his local bank for nearly five months.

Eventually his oldest son was located, in Pennington, New Jersey, where he lived with his wife and three children. Yep, Dad’s been gone for months, he confirmed—right after the company was sold, he and Mom flew south, leased a nice yacht with a small crew, and vowed not to set foot back on American soil until they walked every lovely beach on every neglected island in the Caribbean Sea. Last time they called, they were in Saint Martin, inching their way south toward Trinidad and Tobago. Dad was fine, Mom slightly sunburned but having a blast; his father hinted that this was likely his last call for a long while.

Oh, yes, he could definitely see how his father’s long jaunt seemed a little peculiar, Perry’s son offered, very agreeably. Then again, Dad had the company he spent forty-five years building stolen under his feet by some big greedy corporation in D.C. If he wanted to vanish for a while, to put it all behind him, who could blame him? Plus, after forty-five years of unrelenting work and crushing responsibilities, why not steal away for a prolonged,
sun-soaked hiatus where the most pressing issue was which rum to try next?

Do you happen to know the name of the boat? the head of DCIS asked with a grave edge. Nope, they never mentioned it. Where did they rent the boat from? You know what, they never mentioned that either.

As they spoke, the son silently congratulated his father on whatever it was he had pulled off. Three Pentagon bigwigs were on the phone line, peppering him with questions. Perry’s son wasn’t naïve. Their voices crackled with apprehension and accusation.

A scam of some sort, and whatever it was, it had to be huge.

Run, Dad, run, he thought to himself.

The call came at the worst possible moment. After two prolonged days of nearly constant drinking and occasional golf under the baking Bermudan sun, Mitch Walters’s back was killing him. He had valiantly teed off that morning, but after the fourth hole he gave up and limped off the course, kneading his lumbar, heading straight to the hotel’s massage parlor. A large black masseuse with fingers like power drills was just working his way down the lower vertebrae. Two other CEO types were getting the kinks worked out on nearby tables. To his right was Paul Merrill, the thirty-two-year-old, hyper-brilliant founder of a software firm, now on the
Forbes
list as one of America’s ten richest men. On his left, Carl Jorgenson, a hedge fund guru, also worth billions, just not as many as Merrill, was groaning quietly.

Briefly wondering who might be calling, he positioned the phone to his left ear and grunted, “Mitch Walters” into the receiver.

“This is Thomas Windal.” Very abrupt—no hello, no warm greetings.

It took a moment before Walters registered that this was the Pentagon’s undersecretary of procurement. “Uh, hi, Tom. How’s everything up there?”

“Bad. Awful, Mr. Walters. This call represents your official notification.”

Mr. Walters, not Mitch, he noted.

Walters slapped away the hand of the masseuse and sat up. “About what?”

“As of this moment, the polymer contract is suspended. We now enter a thirty-day period. That’s how much time you have to show that the polymer is effective or the suspension becomes permanent.”

Windal’s tone was flat, distant, cold, and officious. In part this was because he was getting his distance from what looked like an impending disaster, and from its author. In larger part, the head of the DCIS and two stone-faced senior agents were standing three feet from Windal’s desk, ensuring the legal niceties were strictly adhered to.

Walters felt like somebody had just driven a nine-iron into his groin. “Jesus, Tom, what’s this about?” he roared into the phone.

“A courier will drop off the official notification before close of business, Mr. Walters. The details will be noted in the notification. We’ll talk through our lawyers from now on,” Windal coldly announced before he hung up.