Ghosts of Havana (Judd Ryker #3)(8)
“Whoa, Ryker! Slow down.”
Judd dropped his diagram.
“Egypt is being run by the White House. No space for you to get involved there,” Parker said. “Why are you bothering with Angola? That’s not a country on my radar. Is there an opportunity coming?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Judd said, holding up his paper again. “Angola is a closed oil state. Same president in power since 1979. It looks calm, but I think there’s instability under the surface.”
“Are they approaching”—Parker grinned and leaned forward—“Minute Zero?”
—
Minute Zero was what had just happened in Zimbabwe. It was Judd’s concept, his label for the moment of great uncertainty after a shock hits a country. It could be a hurricane or a surprise invasion or the death of the president, anything big and unexpected that causes a seemingly stable political system suddenly to collapse. Minute Zero was when anything could happen next—and so it was the time to act, to shape events the way you wanted them to go.
In the past few days, Parker had become a big fan of Minute Zero, which thrilled Judd, but he had to admit, “Angola already had their Minute Zero and we blew it.”
“We blew it?”
“In ’75. After the Portuguese pulled out, anything could have happened. But we backed the wrong guy. He talked a good game about killing communists and even drove an old Cadillac around the battlefield. But our man was quickly wiped out with the help of the Cubans. And the same Marxist party has been in control ever since.” Judd waved his paper, “I’m trying to figure out our options today. If Minute Zero arrives once again in Angola, how do we avoid losing a second time?”
Parker grunted. “I don’t want you wasting time on Cold War history, Ryker. It’s a new age. Hell, we’re even making friends with the Cubans.”
“Yes, I know that, sir.”
“That’s what I’ve come to talk to you about, Ryker. I’m going to need your help with Cuba.”
5.
U.S. CAPITOL BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
TUESDAY, 10:00 A.M.
This hearing shall come to order,” announced the chair, banging down the gavel to quiet the room.
The dark wood paneling, the high vaulted ceiling, and the elevated seating for the members of Congress gave the appearance of a royal court. But the audience suggested something far less majestic. The seats were swarming with anxious bureaucrats in dark suits, pock-faced interns in ill-fitting button-downs, tourists in tacky, bright-colored T-shirts, and a small band of exhausted journalists.
In the middle of the hearing room, the epicenter for the action, was the committee chair’s seat, which was now occupied by a short woman in her early sixties, well-tanned, dark hair cut in a classic Washington, D.C. bob. Her face was leathery and a little too taut for her age, but the scars were professionally hidden behind her ears. Just behind the nameplate that read MS. ADELMAN-ZAMORA, the chairwoman loudly hammered her gavel again.
“This is a special open hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. I have called this hearing so the United States Congress and the American people can learn more about intelligence failings that have continued to hamper the global march of freedom and democracy.”
Brenda Adelman-Zamora scanned the room over the rims of her reading glasses before continuing to read her opening statement. “The Founding Fathers of this great nation wrote in our Declaration of Independence that ‘all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’”
She placed her paper down and looked straight into the television cameras. The nine-term congresswoman from Florida’s 22nd District was a political pro. Brenda Adelman had grown up on Long Island on the fringes of the powerful political machine of Rockland County. Witnessing the mass migration of her elderly Jewish relatives from New York to the Southern states, she, too, moved with her political ambitions—and built an impressive congressional career on the magic formula of the South Florida triple defense: Social Security, sugar subsidies, and Israel.
Brenda had been less successful in romance, however. She’d hastily married an ophthalmologist of Cuban descent. They quietly divorced after only a few months and the episode appeared to have had little impact on her life. The political benefit of a hyphenated last name was, however, substantial. Becoming a champion of democracy in the Caribbean bolstered her hawkish foreign policy credentials—and turbocharged her fund-raising capabilities across South Florida.
“Consent of the governed,” Adelman-Zamora lectured. “Those words have meaning. We as a nation believe in democracy and freedom. We defend these values at home and we promote these values abroad. This means we must fight against dictatorship and repression, wherever it may rear its ugly head. That is the destiny of the United States. Freedom and democracy are interwoven into our values and ultimately into our national security. And that brings us to our topic of this hearing this morning.
“A principal task of our intelligence services is to monitor and analyze the political forces of tyranny. We cannot defeat an enemy that we do not understand. We rely on the capabilities of the great men and women who serve our country in the intelligence services to look underneath every rock, to listen in the dark corners, to unearth the secrets of our enemies so that the march of freedom can resume. However, too often we have failed to foresee change coming.”