Intelligence? What intelligence?

London, Monday 23 March

There I was, busy inventing new ways to twiddle my thumbs, when my phone started mooing like a Friesian cow.

I pulled it from my holster, pressed several wrong buttons, and killed the cow.

“This had better be good.”

“You bet y’ass it is,” said a promising voice that I immediately recognised as my old pal Max E. Mise, the legendary hack who’d written a column for the Beltway Bulletin since the days it enjoyed double-figure readership. “I need to pick your brains.”

“Pick away,” I said. “As long as it’s not via my nose.”

“We’ve got a problem,” Mise announced, in between mouthfuls of what to my well-trained left ear sounded like beluga caviar on a seven-inch blini.

“The false expenses claim?”

“No, this is political.”

“Great. So am I.”

He started breathing heavily. “I desperately need your services.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy,” I told him. “I’ve been straight for two years now.”

“No, you idiot. Some investigating. I’m too old, and way too fat, to cruise the corridors of power anymore, whoring for stories.”

“You always had a way with words,” I said, choking on my chamomile infusion.

“Words is all I got, ain’t they?”

“I don’t doubt it. Now stop buttering me up and give me the facts. Otherwise, get the hell outta my kitchen.”

Neither he nor I were in my kitchen, but this was the best Americanism I could think of in the circumstances.

“D.C. is abuzz with rumours,” buzzed Mise, Capitol-style. “Everyone who’s anyone, and they’re all someone, wants to know what the White House knew before 9/11.”

“What the White House knew about what?” I wha-ed.

“9/11,” Mise said like a newly gravelled driveway.

I sat up and lit a stogie. “I’m all ears.”

“And I’m all gizzard. So what? We need to know what the Bushies knew before nobody knows anything anyone knew and everything everybody knew passes its sell-by date and turns sour as Sean Penn.”

This was turning into a hack conversation par excellence.

“Have you been eating mushrooms again?”

“Get y’ass to Washington,” Mise ordered. “I booked you a seat on a friend’s jet.”

“Not that dilapidated bi-plane again?” I groaned. “Last time you put me on that we had to parachute out before we reached Wales. If I was the paranoid sort, I’d think you were trying to bump me off…”

Silence.

I yanked my quill from my suggestive quill-holder. “What’s the flight number?”

“No numbers. Just be at Heathrow at 0500 hours.”

“0500,” I repeated, the feather tickling my chin. “That’s a number.”

“Just promise me you’ll pack your toothbrush. You English and your teeth!”

“Sure thing, partner. But why the secrecy?”

A moment passed. And then another one.

“Are you still there? I’m a busy man. I have to go buy some toilet paper and …”

“This line isn’t bugged, is it?” Mise finally said.

“No. But I am.”

“What the hell, I’ll risk it. You’ll be flying on Air Force One. Heard of her?”

I inhaled a little too hard and collapsed a lung. “Holy Dentists! Harrison Ford’s plane?”

“This is top secret,” Mise bellowed. “Officially, she’s not in London.”

I flicked my stogie towards the toilet. “Nor am I. How did you swing this beauty?”

“Let’s just say it pays to have friends in high places.”

“Yes. And enemies in low places,” I added, but Mise had rung off.

Washington, Tuesday 24 March

“Pass the bill.”

I looked around me. “To who?”

“Me, you schmuck! Hand it over.”

“Oh, I thought you meant pass it on. You know, to someone else. I guess I’m still a novice when it comes to Washington etiquette, wot?”

“Eti-who? How’s that?”

“Can it,” I said, dreaming of tobacco smoke and forgetting my nationality. “And enough already of your inane chit-chat. Tell me what you know.”

I whipped out my reporter’s notebook and asked the waiter for a pen.

My interlocutor leant forward until he disappeared in the flower arrangement. “This is all strictly off the record.”

I howled with laughter and flicked on my recorder that I’d taped under the table like it was a gun and I was a mafia goon.

There was no bang and my source was still alive. It wasn’t a gun.

“I don’t want you to use my name.”

“No problemo. I don’t even know your name.”

“But I gave you my business card,” he protested. “Plus, I’m the second most powerful man in the nation – thereby the whole friggin’ world.”

“Under Superman?” I said, impressed.

His frown knocked over a candlestick. “You’re looking at this from the wrong angle.”

I hesitated. “You want me to get under the table? It’s filthy down there. I wore my best trousers.”

“Listen, you guys are asking the wrong question.”

“We are? What guys?”

“You hacks. The question ain’t ‘what did we know before 9/11?’ The question is ‘what did we know after 9/11?’”

I made a note of the distinction.

“And the answer is nothing. I think our record speaks for itself.”

“Well I don’t feel like listening to any records,” I said. “Tell me something concrete or you’ll find yourself set in some.”

This was the lamest threat I’d ever made, and my Mafiosi obsession, like my taste for light beer, was starting to get out of control.

“Alright. Here’s the deal: There’s no conspiracy. A truck load of incompetence, yes. But no conspiracy. This commission inquiry is a load of hooey. We had no intelligence about 9/11. None whatsoever. We’ve had none since either. We have what we call in the game “zero knowledge”. And I mean of anything. Just as we’d no idea all this was going to happen, we’ve no idea what to do once it did. Why do you think we’ve cocked everything up, gone into Iraq, turned the world against us? Because we knew and still know nothing. Why aren’t you writing this down?”

“I’ve forgotten how to write. I think there was something in my steak tartare.”

“You mean like a disease?”

“My brain has turned to jelly.”

“English jelly or American jelly?”

“English,” I said. “American jell-o. All we need is some ice-cream and we could throw a party.”

“I’ll order some,” said my increasingly anonymous source.

The next thing I knew I was back at my London desk, twiddling my thumbs again. My t-shirt read “I went to Washington and all I got was lousy intelligence”.