Chasing the Monkey King Page 7

  “So how was it that you were the one to sign off on it?” Zhang asked.

  “An excellent question, Wallace. There was certainly nothing in my background or job description that would seem to qualify me. At the same time, dealing with an investigation into the disappearance of our employees was, thankfully, something of an unusual if not entirely novel problem. Something Commerce doesn’t really have an office to deal with. But we had to be involved on some level, simply because they were our employees. So, for reasons unknown, they tapped me. Maybe they figured I’d keep my mouth shut. Poor judgement on their part.” She chuckled. “I take it you’ve already seen the public version of the report.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I hate to say it, but you probably know as much as I do.”

  “You mean they didn’t give you the full, classified version?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you have any idea why there was so much redacting, or what was contained in the classified annex that wasn’t included in the public version?” Severin asked.

  “Not a clue. Apparently I’m important enough to sign off on it, thereby concurring on its adequacy, but not important enough to actually know its full contents. Welcome to my world.”

  “Do you have any reason to believe it involved any sort of national security or espionage matter?”

  “Anything is possible in this town. But I really have no idea. And if I were in the know on such a thing, I’d have to pretend to not know anyway, right?” she said with a wink.

  “Your title at the Commerce Department was special assistant?” Zhang asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “What is that, exactly?”

  “Some would probably say office plant waterer. There’s no standard definition. For me, it meant that I was the high chamberlain—essentially, the senior policy advisor and cutout—to Byron Edwards, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Enforcement and Compliance. In layman’s language, he was the ranking political appointee of our division. Probably the hottest position in the world of U.S. international trade law enforcement.”

  “But Edwards no longer holds that position?”

  “No. Now he’s over at the Office of the United States Trade Representative. USTR for short. An outfit that barely has the budget to keep its building heated. Bunch of prima donnas who steal credit for other people’s work. Edwards should fit right in. He was never good for much more than reading talking points and looking pretty.”

  “Why did he get demoted?”

  “He wasn’t. He wanted the position. It’s a lesser job in an intellectual sense. But it gets your lips a little bit closer to the President’s butt. And the closer their lips come to the President’s butt, the cooler the USTR folks think they are—by association, anyway.”

  By now, Severin wore a wide smile. “Such irreverence.”

  “Well, I’m in the private sector now. So they can all bite me.”

  “You aren’t a fan of Byron Edwards?”

  She shrugged. “He’s an archetype of the male D.C. striver.”

  “What does that mean?” Zhang asked.

  “He’s a power-hungry, womanizing slime bag. A purebred egomaniac.”

  Severin nearly laughed. “You know, Tracy, at the end of the day, men are simple creatures with simple needs. All we want is total power and control over everything, constant reassurance that we’re great in bed, and immortality.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Really, just those three things.”

  “So you left government and now you’re with a consulting firm?” Zhang asked.

  “Yes. We lobby on behalf of various Chinese business and trade groups.”

  “The irony.”

  “Economic necessity. It’s what we do here in D.C., Wallace. Build up experience, connections, and clout working for the government—then go mercenary, selling our knowledge and influence to the highest bidder.”

  Severn nodded, pondering Fiskar’s seeming hypocrisy, and finished his martini. “Well, we’ve come this far, so I suppose we’ll ask you our little questions even if you didn’t get to read the full classified version of the report.”

  “Do I think the disappearance was random? Like the team just happened to catch an airport cab being driven by a Chinese serial killer or whatever?”

  “Or whatever.”

  She looked away, toward a painting behind the bar. “Well … .”

  “Let me put it another way. Do you have any reason at all to even begin to suspect that it wasn’t random?”

  She took a breath. “I don’t believe it was random. But I don’t have anything concrete for you. I don’t have anything specific to base that on. It’s just a gut feeling. A funny smell that I might just be imagining.”

  Severin nodded, thoughtful. “There was surprisingly little substance to the State Department report.”

  “Oh, I agree with you. A handful of superficial interviews. A few paragraphs of conjecture. It’s an empty document masquerading as a legitimate report. It screams we don’t really care. We just want this to go away.”

  “Why would they want that?” Severin asked. “And why would they want the signatories to be people who’d keep quiet?”

  “They didn’t want it to rock the boat. It was a sensitive time with respect to trade agreement negotiations that were underway with the Chinese. Negotiations being spearheaded by Byron Edwards.”

  “For what trade agreement?”

  “A deal that would protect our soybean exports to China by setting annual export quantities and prices. Long story short, China was threatening to slap punitive tariffs on our soybeans in a thinly veiled retaliation for our imposition of punitive tariffs on unfairly priced Chinese steel exports to the U.S. The tariffs we slapped on Chinese steel were a result of what’s called an antidumping investigation. Incidentally, it was an antidumping investigation of Chinese sorghum syrup exports to the U.S. that Kristin Powell and Bill Keen were working on when they disappeared.”

  “What’s an antidumping investigation?” Severin asked.

  “In layman’s language, it’s an investigation into unfair, anticompetitive pricing by foreign companies. Where prices on imported foreign goods are set so low that it seems they’re intended to destroy a U.S. industry.”

  Zhang looked perplexed. “Let’s see if I’m tracking,” he said. “One: at the end of an antidumping investigation of Chinese steel exports to the U.S., the Commerce Department determined that Chinese companies were exporting steel at anticompetitive prices and slapped tariffs on Chinese steel. Two: In retaliation, China threatened to slap tariffs on U.S. soybean exports to China. Three: you were in the process of negotiating a trade agreement to protect U.S. soybean exports to China.”

  “There’s more to it, of course. But, essentially, yes. You’ve got the idea. Now then, if anything had derailed the soybean agreement negotiations, the very powerful U.S. soybean lobby would have gone completely ape shit and threatened to cut off campaign contributions to every senator from a soybean producing state. After changing their underwear, each of those senators would have then threatened every executive branch loser they could find a phone number for with budget cuts, permanently stalled careers, and un-anesthetized castration. Byron Edwards would have been the first one in line to lose his testicles.”

  “So, bottom line,” Zhang said, “because of the soybean agreement negotiations, everybody was walking on eggshells with the Chinese?”

  “Which is why the powers that be, including Edwards, wanted the State Department investigation into the disappearance of Powell and Keen to just go away?” Severin added

  “That may not be an entirely unreasonable way of interpreting the facts,” Fiskar said.

  “Was the soybean agreement really so important?” Severin asked

  “At the big picture level, it was huge. China is our second-largest trading partner when it comes to trade in goods. In the past 12 months alone, the U.S. goods trade deficit with China has run ove
r $300 billion. To put that into perspective for you, that’s just a hair below the entire annual GDP of Denmark. A lot of money coming out of our wallets. Now, over that same period, the U.S. exported around $120 billion in goods to China. And guess what? About $13 billion of that total was accounted for by the humble soybean.”

  “So soybeans are big time,” Zhang said.

  “They are, indeed. And as you can imagine, for Byron Edwards personally, the soybean agreement negotiations represented career life or career death. Failing to get an agreement finalized would probably have doomed him to a life of overseeing Department of Education school desk booger removal programs left over from the Carter Administration. Getting it signed, on the other hand, made him a political appointee superstar. All of a sudden all those senators up on Capitol Hill owed him a favor. Thanks a million, old boy. You saved our vegan soy bacon. The next time a white hot political appointee position opened up—in this case, a slot at the Office of the United States Trade Representative—Edwards was automatically put on the short list. Those were the stakes. So to hell with the disappeared Commerce investigators. Nothing was going to get in the way of Edwards cutting the soybean deal before the end of the term. No. It was his big chance. And time was short. So to hell with everything else.”

  “So what became of the sorghum investigation of YSP?”

  “It was never completed, meaning we never sent a team back to redo the on-site examination of YSP’s personnel, facility, and records over in China. Normally, a company sends us data, business records, and detailed responses to our investigative questionnaires, and then we send a team of investigators to the company to check what they’ve sent us against the in-person testimony of their company officials, their original business records, and so forth. In other words, the investigators go over to make double-sure a company isn’t bullshitting us, giving us false information, or whatever. But in the case of YSP, because of the circumstances, we based our findings on the unverified, uncorroborated data and investigative questionnaire responses their American attorney submitted to Commerce. In other words, we took what they gave us on faith.”

  “So you let them off easy?”

  “I can’t say that with any certainty. I mean, YSP was assigned an uncommonly low tariff rate. In fact, I think we might even have given them a zero tariff rate—the holy grail of antidumping investigations. Whatever the case, it was the lowest tariff rate assigned to any Chinese sorghum syrup company by far. But we’ll never know whether the on-site part of the investigation would have changed the results because the information Powell and Keen’s report would have contained vanished right along with them.”

  “Is it common for the on-site part of the investigation to turn up information that leads to a higher tariff rate for the company being investigated?”

  “Very. Companies make major accounting mistakes. Companies manipulate data wherever they can argue that there’s wiggle room. Companies sometimes even commit outright fraud, cooking their books and so forth. Often, we can sniff that out during the on-site part of the investigation.”

  “So then why didn’t Commerce send another team and re-do the on-site part of the investigation?” Severin asked.

  “Ostensibly—and I’m paraphrasing Edwards here—it was because we didn’t have enough time before the statutory deadline for the final case results, didn’t have spare personnel, and didn’t have the budget for it. But I know for a fact that that’s a lot of bull.”

  “So you think Edwards didn’t want to give his investigators a second chance to find any dirt on YSP?” Zhang asked. “That he didn’t even want to see the findings of the on-site part of the investigation out of fear that it might paint YSP in a bad light?”

  “In so bad a light that it would force Edwards to take firm action in the sorghum case, which could, in-turn, antagonize the Chinese and torpedo the soybean agreement. Yes. That’s exactly what I think. Mind you, it’s a guess on my part. He didn’t trust me enough to share his secret motives.”

  Severin wondered whether Fiskar’s martini had gone straight to her head for her to be talking so openly.

  Fiskar looked thoughtful for a moment. “And I’ll tell you something else that may be meaningful, or may mean nothing. Just before Powell and Keen disappeared, the director of their office asked for a closed-door meeting with Edwards. Nobody knows what they talked about. But the rumor is that, just before asking for the meeting with Edwards, the office director received an email from Powell and Keen in China.”

  “An email saying what?” Severin asked.

  “Nobody knows. Whatever it said, Edwards kept it under his hat, and presumably ordered the office director to do the same. But my hunch is that something unusual was afoot.”

  “Any theories?”

  “Maybe the investigators found something that would have rocked the proverbial boat. I wish I had a clue.”

  “Sounds like we need to talk to Edwards,” Zhang said.

  “He won’t talk to you unless you have some way to compel him. There’s nothing in it for him. All talking to you might do is get him dragged into something he surely wants no part of.”

  “What about the office director? What did you say his name was?”

  “Her name. And I didn’t. It’s Elaine Danielson. Been there for 30-plus years. You stand a better chance with her. But I’m sure she’s been briefed to keep her mouth shut.”

  “Why would she care?” Zhang asked. “Edwards doesn’t work there anymore.”

  “No, but she’s an institutional woman. Living for her pension. Going along to get along. If they put the fear of God in her, she isn’t liable to open up.”

  “So why are you talking to us?”

  “Like I said, I’m out of government. Plus, Byron Edwards can kiss my ass.”

  “You aren’t golfing buddies?”

  “He’s just another Beltway ass-clown. One of your dime-a-dozen political appointees who got his job not because he knew anything about the work of the agency, but because he helped out on some other ass-clown’s election campaign. That’s D.C. for you.”

  And his womanizing burned your fingers once too, didn’t it? Severin thought as he finished his martini, guessing at the origin of Fiskar’s apparent hatred.

  NINE

  Roughly four hours later, after making several unsuccessful attempts to contact Byron Edwards at his new office at USTR and finally being told by his blunt and rather rude secretary that she could think of no worthwhile reason they should speak with him, Severin and Zhang were shown into the large corner office of Ben Holloman, the American attorney for the Chinese sorghum syrup company YSP, a newly-minted partner of the Manhattan-based law firm of McElroy, Steen & Duff, and one of the last two people known to have seen Powell and Keen alive. Holloman was also one of the few American witnesses interviewed by State Department investigators. His secretary indicated that Holloman would be with them shortly, that he was just finishing up a teleconference, and that he was very sorry for making them wait.

  They took seats in the two expensive looking, extraordinarily comfortable leather chairs that faced Holloman’s empty desk. Behind it, a floor-to-ceiling window framed a corner of the Herbert C. Hoover Federal Building—the sprawling Classical Revival-style building of quarried limestone that served as headquarters for the Commerce Department. The higher ground of Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac and in full autumn glory, could be seen in the distance beyond it. Behind the chairs they sat in, another glass wall looked out on an open area where Holloman’s secretary sat at her desk watching them.

  “I’m surprised they let us wait in his office instead of a conference room or something,” Zhang said. “I’m sure he has all sorts of sensitive or proprietary client information in here. Think of the liability.”

  “Maybe the conference room is in use. Anyway, his secretary is watching us like a hawk. We’re fish in a tank in here.”

  “Tracy Fiskar was certainly interesting,” Zhang said.

  �
�Yeah?”

  “The contradictions. Her claim that unfair trade practices are such a huge threat to the U.S. economy. Seemingly an important issue to her. And yet in practically the same breath, she tells us she’s now a lobbyist for the Chinese.”

  “Wasn’t it F. Scott Fitzgerald who said that the test of a first-rate intelligence is a person’s ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still be able to function?”

  “I’ll take your word for it. And maybe I should give Fiskar the benefit of the doubt and assume she’s lobbying on behalf of ethical businesses.”

  “Yeah. You should definitely try to rein in all your redneck xenophobia.”

  “I’m Chinese-American.”

  “That’s what makes it so weird.”

  “Shut up.”

  “By the way, Wallace isn’t your real name, is it?”

  Zhang gave him funny look. “You’ve known me for, what—15 years? And you’ve just now decided to ask if Wallace is my real name?”

  “Is it?”

  “No.”

  “So what is it?”

  Zhang looked reluctant. “It’s Wei.”

  “Like Little Miss Muffet eating her curds and whey?”

  “See, I knew you were going to say that. No, like W-E-I. It means great.”

  “Great?” Severin said with a grin. “Great Zhang. Yeah. So great that you’re living in your parents’ basement.”

  “Please. At least I’m not named after a fictional Ukrainian masochist.”

  “The hell are you talking about?”

  “The name Severin. They didn’t make you read Venus in Furs in comparative lit class at UW?”

  “Venus in Furs? You trying to tell me you’re a pervert?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I’ll grant you, Wei is catchy. But I think I’m going to just keep calling you Man Pretty. You are a pretty man, after all. Such pretty, pretty hair.”

  Turning to his left, Severin noticed that the wall was half taken up with various framed proclamations of Holloman’s greatness. A giant, gilded diploma from the University of North Carolina School of Law, indicating that Holloman graduated with ‘highest honors’ and as a member of the Order of the Coif. Various certificates of appreciation. One from the U.S.-China Friendship Society. One from the District of Columbia Bar Association, recognizing his contribution to some sort of panel convened to address contemporary law practice ethics issues. A portrait of him shaking hands with the previous Senate majority leader. Another of him shaking hands with the Chinese ambassador to the United States. Cover pages of law review articles he’d authored. A picture of him in a bar association journal article bearing the headline Rising Stars of International Trade Law. The wall was Holloman’s monument to himself. He’d probably have one of those ridiculous Versace watches, a fake tan, manicured nails, and perfect hair. Severin was ready to dislike him. But he’d do his best to hide his personal feelings for the man as he worked to establish the rapport that was so important to successful witness interviews.