The Weed Agency (22 page)

Freed from the monotony of staring at a computer monitor for a thoroughly unhealthy majority of her waking hours, Ava finally started enjoying living out on the West Coast.

It was on a park bench in San Diego, looking out at the U.S.S.
Midway
, that she sensed she just had to chalk up her tumultuous roller coaster ride of EasyFed as an adventure she had to take, just to determine finally that she in fact
didn’t
belong out here. She didn’t quite miss her old life at the Agency of Invasive Species, but she found she missed Washington.

Californians were relaxed, easygoing, and fun, but … too relaxed, she found. Sure, half the time you would walk through Palo Alto and bump into people obsessing with their cellular phones, but she realized that most of the tech-heads out here were missing part of the equation. They obsessed over what their gadgets could do—and often how lucrative they could
be—but rarely if ever talked about how they affected the world that used them. Something about the language of her industry—seeing people as consumers and market share—left Ava cold. They were people, and she remembered coming out of NYU with a fire in her eyes to use technology to change the world—and not just in unveiling a faster Web browser that would be overtaken by the competition within six months.

She stood up from the bench and resolved: She would return to Washington … as soon as she could find a decent-sounding job back there.

AUGUST 2001

“Condit’s been somebody we could count on,” sighed Wilkins as the morning news replayed the previous night’s catastrophically awful interview between the congressman and Connie Chung. Wilkins rubbed his head, turned off the small television in Humphrey’s office, and wandered toward the couch, wondering why Humphrey seemed so unperturbed about the nationally televised PR self-immolation of one of their better allies on Capitol Hill. “Why’s he doing this?” Wilkins asked Humphrey, seated at the desk and focused upon a stack of paperwork. “Can’t he see he’s making himself radioactive?”

“Why’s he doing what, precisely?” Humphrey asked, looking up with one cocked eyebrow, attempting to stifle a mischievous and largely inappropriate grin.

“Well, for starters, being dumb enough to bang an intern!” exclaimed Wilkins, falling to the couch.

Humphrey’s smirk now reached the status of an elite running back; he couldn’t stop it but could only hope to contain it. “Two years ago, didn’t we have almost precisely the same conversation?”

Wilkins rolled his eyes. “This is different!”

“Indeed,” Humphrey clucked. “As far as we know, Congressman Condit has never testified under oath about that poor girl. It is also different in that President Clinton knew that his position within his party made his resignation unacceptable to hundreds of powerful people. If he had stepped down, and Al Gore had become president, little or nothing would have changed in terms of policies—in fact, he probably would have won last year as a quasi-incumbent presiding over peace and prosperity. But enough powerful people had worked and struggled and sweated to put Bill Clinton in that office, and they weren’t about to see him depart over something they deemed as … insufficiently consequential as … ‘banging an intern,’ as you so eloquently put it.”

Wilkins shook his head. “Monica Lewinsky never went missing!”

“True,” shrugged Humphrey. “But what Congressman Condit is attempting is the same wait-it-out maneuver as Clinton. I use that strategy regularly—hunker down, delay in every way possible, and wait for your opponents and critics to become distracted. I like to think of it as one of the useful potions in my studies of bureaucratic alchemy, and I wish I could have trade-marked it. Clinton at least used it well. But with Condit, today it’s … well, it’s maddening to watch a perfectly respectable and well-regarded tactic used so
amateurishly
.”

Ava’s return preceded the discovery of that decent-sounding job; the tech bust that had left a deep chill of hiring freezes over Silicon Valley had struck most nongovernmental entities in the nation’s capital as well.

Ava found a nice one-bedroom a bit south of Dupont Circle—a seemingly near-ideal neighborhood suddenly in the national spotlight for the most macabre of reasons: some congressional intern who lived across the street had disappeared and become a bizarre, tawdry media obsession.

But she relished having Jamie and Lisa over for cheap red wine and a reconnection.

“I’m on New Hampshire Avenue now,” Ava said. “When you hit the TV trucks, you’ve gone too far.”

SEPTEMBER 2001

The federal offices opened up again. The National Guard Humvees started packing up.

There was an effort to get back to “normal,” but a lot of folks watched televisions that had been put in for keeping up on events or emergency information. No one really objected or claimed they were a distraction. The new, ominous news tickers ran across the bottom of the screen, little constantly flowing rivers of anxiety in all-caps Helvetica Narrow font.

Wilkins found himself sitting on the couch in Humphrey’s office.

“I’m thinking of scrapping it all and enlisting,” Wilkins said. “I know they don’t need any more forty-five-year-old career civil service employees, but maybe they need somebody to … I don’t know, fill out forms somewhere, to free up somebody else who can go and do something useful and find these—”

“Jack,” Humphrey interrupted. “As we speak, our very finest are arming themselves and preparing to bring justice, in its most lethal forms, to our enemies,” Humphrey said. “By the time any branch of the armed services figures out what to do
with you, the fight will be over. We should, however, think of how we can assist in the protection of our nation, in our own humble way.”

The momentary heart-to-heart over, Humphrey rose to his feet and purposely strode back toward the desk. “I ask you: What is the one form of aviation that this agency deals with all the time and enjoys virtually unparalleled expertise?”

“Caro says you fly to conferences more often than—”

“Er, no, not commercial flight. Crop dusters, Jack!” the formality returned. “Look at this!”

“And this!” Humphrey handed over a transcript of a presidential news conference:

“What are you thinking?” Wilkins asked when he was finished reading.

“Jack,” Humphrey said proudly, “our country needs us. It’s time to show how we can help our country. Hargis can make this happen.”

A few days later, Humphrey and Wilkins were wanded repeatedly by the U.S. Capitol Police as they headed into Rayburn House Office Building.

Hargis was aging but no less beloved by the voters in Kentucky’s Seventh Congressional District.

“I cannot believe that old coot!” Vernon Hargis fumed with a phlegmy gurgle. “Two days after the attacks—we could have lost this building!—Byrd is getting two million dollars for a new computer network at the ‘Robert C. Byrd Regional Training Institute’ at the Army National Guard’s Camp Dawson in West Virginia. Now he’s talking about turning the whole place into a National Counterterrorism Training Center!”

“Yikes,” exclaimed Wilkins. “Pretty crass to start sniffing around for pork at a time like this.”

“Crass?” grumbled Hargis. “I’m mostly pissed I didn’t think of it first!”

Humphrey cleared his throat.

“Congressman, I’d like to turn your attention to another facet of the terrorist threat that our agency may be able to
contribute to …” he began as he reached into his briefcase. “You’re familiar with the discussion of terrorists spreading chemical or biological weapons through the use of
crop dusters
.”

“Damn if I’m not having nightmares about it!” bellowed the congressman. “You look up, see some small plane, and then POOF—some toxic crap is making your hair fall out and you break into boils. Makes a man nostalgic for the simplicity of the old-fashioned mushroom cloud.”

“Indeed, Congressman, a threat like no other. What you may not know is that perhaps no other federal agency deals with crop dusters more than ours …”

“What about the Federal Aviation—eh, yeah. I see,” the congressman said.

“They’ve got a lot on their minds right now,” Wilkins said.

“Which pesticides and chemicals could be most harmful to human health, dispersal patterns, which types of crop dusters can do what—Congressman, this is our bread and butter. Let us help our nation during this darkest of hours by converting one of our facilities in your district into … the Agency of Invasive Species’ National Center for Crop Duster Security.”

Hargis didn’t say anything for a few moments, which was not like him.

“Maybe …” he said quietly. “Byrd’s already getting grief for what he’s doing with Camp Dawson. I’m going to need paperwork—some compelling stuff to show that this is worthwhile … How serious is this threat?”

“Florida crop dusters discussing their meetings with Mohammed Atta is insufficiently serious?” Humphrey exclaimed with a bit of indignation. “Congressman, you tell whoever needs to hear it that our familiarity with the mechanics of this activity and … the information available to us points to a serious and persistent al-Qaeda threat to American agriculture.”

Hargis’s eyes bulged. Wilkins wondered if Humphrey knew what he was implying.

“You’ve heard about something?” gasped the congressman. “Your pilots or pesticide dealers on the ground met with other terrorists or something?”

Humphrey played his hand carefully. “Congressman, at this point, I would be remiss if I ruled anything in or out. As you know, many Americans are reevaluating past interactions with slightly suspiciously behaving young Arab men.”

“Apparently the moment Mohammed Atta’s mug shot hit the airwaves, the FBI got thousands of calls from people claiming to have talked to him,” Wilkins added.

“Mundane interactions and unusual questions now take on a much more sinister light. Like everyone else, we’re trying to sort out fact from rumor. Our particular specialty, species that come in and wreak ecological havoc with crops and water supplies and such, well … it makes a chill go down one’s spine, the thought of the evil men of al-Qaeda focusing their energies in that direction. But … in light of the consequences, I don’t think we can dismiss any possibility, now can we?”

Hargis nodded. “Humph … I’ll use my utmost discretion.”