28

On Friday, Bill Harris drove all the way to Virginia Beach so that he and Paige could meet with Congressman Mason, who was spending time in the district. Paige had asked Kristen to join them, but Kristen begged off.

The meeting was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. Saturday morning. Paige was surprised at the nondescript nature of the storefront space the congressman rented for his district office. Mason was a moderate Republican who had been in Congress for nearly thirty years and knew how to work the system. He was gracious and low-key with a reputation for good constituent service.

When Paige met him that morning, she was struck by how tired and haggard he looked. She’d only seen him on TV and in campaign flyers. He looked so much older in real life. His hair was thin and dark, the product of a poor coloring job, his eyes were red, and he had tiny goose pimples on his cheeks. Republicans were having a tough time in Washington these days, and the despondency of that fact seemed to be written all over Mason’s face.

He expressed his condolences to Paige and Bill and offered them coffee. A couple of staffers sat at the table while the congressman filled the air with small talk about how moving the ceremony at Arlington had been and how much Patrick’s sacrifice meant to the nation.

Bill Harris seemed truly grateful and humbled by the words. “Thank you, Congressman,” he said. “That means a lot to me, sir.”

Paige wanted to skip the sentimentality. “Congressman, would it be okay if Mr. Harris and I met with you privately?” She fired a quick glance at the staff members, who looked like they had been caught in some horrendous crime. She didn’t mean to embarrass them, but she wasn’t sure about the protocol for something like this.

“Of course,” Mason said. “But I can assure you that my staff would keep everything very confidential.”

Once the room was clear and it was just the three of them, Paige pulled out the folder of documents from the Patriot and the research she had compiled and began filling the congressman in. She showed him the picture of the president’s cardboard figure in the Sana’a prison cell and the copies of the president’s speeches. She went through her understanding of how the failed mission had advanced the president’s Mideast policies. She slid the thumb drive across the table with the video of Philip Kilpatrick meeting with John Marcano. She explained how the SEALs had been working for the CIA on the night of the mission and how the president had called off the Quick Response Force. The only thing she didn’t give the congressman was the picture of Admiral Towers sacrificing a sheep.

Through it all, Congressman Mason took plenty of notes and asked polite clarifying questions. When Paige finished, he studied the documents she had placed in front of him and watched the video while an uncomfortable silence blanketed the room.

“Where did you get all of this?” Mason asked.

“I can’t really say,” Paige responded. “An inside source. He seemed credible.”

“There are some disturbing things here,” Mason said carefully, weighing each word, “but at this point it would be quite a stretch to think that the president authorized a mission knowing it would fail. Or even that she kept relevant intelligence from the men in charge of the mission. I mean, that meeting on the park bench might just be the president’s chief of staff and the CIA director getting their heads together on how best to communicate the CIA’s intelligence to the president. Or maybe the president had some questions and sent her chief of staff to get the answers. Who knows?”

Paige shrugged as it became obvious that Mason wasn’t impressed by her inside information. He must have read her expression, because he changed his tone into one of political resolve.

“But I can assure you of this,” he said. “I will look into it. And if there’s anything here, I’ll make sure it gets brought to light. I go to bed every night and wake up every morning thinking about the men and women serving this country and families like yours who have lost a loved one. This information here—” and for good measure, the congressman tapped the documents on the table in front of him—“will be my top priority.”

“I really like that guy,” Bill Harris said as soon as they got outside. “I think he’ll get to the bottom of it.”

Paige kept her misgivings to herself.

“You cannot sue the president of the United States.” This was the advice Wyatt Jackson received from Wellington Farnsworth after the young associate completed all of his research. “The president has absolute immunity while in office from a suit like this.”

Then it got worse. Members of the military couldn’t bring any lawsuits against government officials for things incidental to military duty. Otherwise, civilian courts would be interfering with military discipline and affairs.

Wellington wrote a memo reducing all the bad news to a mere eight pages, barely a tweet for a guy like him. Part of the memo was dedicated to United States v. Stanley, a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court case that was, in the view of Wyatt Jackson, one of the most ridiculous decisions he had ever read.

In Stanley, some soldiers sued the Army for using them as human guinea pigs in an experimental chemical warfare program where they had secretly been administered LSD. But the Supreme Court threw the suit out. Servicemen could not sue, the Court said, because it might undermine “the unique disciplinary structure of the military establishment.” The dissenting justices criticized the majority opinion, claiming that the government had “treated thousands of its citizens as though they were laboratory animals, dosing them with this dangerous drug without their consent.”

Wyatt wasn’t all that concerned about the Stanley case. The Supreme Court had changed a lot since 1987. If he could get his case reviewed, he was pretty sure he could carve out an exception for cases when service members were sent on a doomed mission solely for political purposes. And even if he couldn’t, he would make a good name for himself trying.

But Wellington’s memo didn’t end there. The state secrets doctrine would prevent any lawsuit that might reveal confidential information vital to the security and defense of the country. Anything having to do with the CIA was generally covered. Plus, they didn’t really have enough information to file suit yet. At most, they had a few pieces of intriguing evidence and a lot of speculation from an anonymous source.

Wyatt reviewed the memo carefully while sitting on the pullout couch in his RV, chewing on an unlit cigar. He pulled up the cases cited by Wellington and read every one of them. He popped a beer and paced back and forth in the RV, walking in tiny circles as he played out the scenario in his mind.

He took Clients outside and played a game of fetch using an old, grungy tennis ball while he enjoyed a smoke. Then he picked up his cell phone and called his young associate.

“I want you to draft a lawsuit on behalf of the estate of Troy Anderson against Philip Kilpatrick and that CIA guy, Marcano. Refer to the president as an unnamed coconspirator.”

Wellington began to sputter out reasons why such a suit could never succeed. But Wyatt had made up his mind.

“I want you to allege, on information and belief, that the president knew the mission would fail but authorized it anyway so she could blame Iran. Attach those draft speeches as exhibits and a still photograph of the Marcano and Kilpatrick meeting. Put in that stuff about the president not authorizing a Quick Response Force and anything else to make her look bad. I want to file it Monday afternoon.

“And I’ll need you to come out and take care of Clients on Monday night. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be in New York City.”