by Vince Flynn
McMahon stared at Garret and thought to himself, God, this guy’s an ass. Director Roach saw the look on McMahon’s face and placed his hand on his friend’s arm. McMahon pulled away and leaned back in his chair, continuing to stare at Garret.
Kennedy was used to men challenging her intellect and continued to defend her opinion in a professional tone. “It is my job to know how these groups kill, Mr. Garret. If a group, such as Abu Nidal, had committed these murders, they would have simply gone down to one of the more popular dining spots in town, planted a bomb, and exploded it during lunch yesterday. They would have easily killed a dozen senators and congressmen, and probably a few cabinet members.”
“Why couldn’t it have been a domestic right-wing paramilitary group?”
“It’s possible, but as I said earlier, I don’t think those groups have the resources to conduct an operation like this.”
In a loud voice Garret half shouted, “If you’re so sure that it wasn’t terrorists, then who did it?”
McMahon leaned forward in his chair and placed both forearms on the table. At six foot three, 240 pounds, he looked like a bear ready to attack. Before Roach could react, McMahon was speaking. “Mr. Garret, we are all professionals here. There is no reason to get emotional and raise our voices. You asked for our opinions and Dr. Kennedy has respectfully done so. She has given us some very intelligent insight into a case where it is greatly needed. She is not trying to tell us exactly who did it, she is merely helping us narrow our search.” McMahon continued to stare at Garret as the chief of staff flushed angrily.
Mike Nance could not believe what he was witnessing. He had seen Stu Garret act like this in countless meetings during the last three years. It was a rarity to see anyone put him in his place, let alone an underling from the FBI. The tension in the room continued to build as McMahon refused to back down. Director Roach was sitting back in his chair, hand over brow, dreading what might happen next.
The president ended the confrontation. “ Everybody calm down. . . . We are all under a lot of pressure, sure, and I’m sure it’s only going to get worse. Let’s relax and discuss Dr. Kennedy’s theory.”
While the meeting continued, Bridgett Ryan sat in her cubicle across town at NBC’s Washington bureau and tried to look busy. Bridgett was a senior journalism major at Catholic University and was in the middle of a one-year internship with NBC. Her boss was Mark Stein, the network’s D.C. bureau chief.
Bridgett’s work schedule varied depending on her daily class load. This morning she had rolled out of bed at 9 A.M., found out about the murders, and instead of going to class, went straight to the studio. She’d been there for over an hour and a half and had done little more than pour coffee and scribble notes for Stein. She was sitting at her little desk outside of Stein’s office when the mailman came by and dropped a bundle of letters on her desk.
One of her daily tasks was to open and sort her boss’s mail. She pulled the rubber band off the stack and grabbed a large manila envelope from the bottom. It was addressed to Stein but contained no return address. She grabbed her letter opener, sliced through the top of the envelope, and pulled out the sheets of paper. After reading the first paragraph, her heart began to race. She started to read again from the top, and this time her hands began to tremble. She took a deep breath and read on. After finishing, she jumped up and threw open the door to Stein’s office. Ryan yelled his name and held the sheets of paper up in the air. “Mark!”
Stein, who was on the phone, looked up and waved her away. He swiveled in his chair and turned his back to her. He was talking to his boss in New York. “Carol, I need more video crews, damn it! I need more reporters. How in the hell do you expect me to get all this footage for you? It’s a goddamned zoo down here. We’re falling all over each other trying to get the story. It’s too big, we need more people!” Bridgett walked around his desk and waved the envelope in his face. Stein pulled the phone away from his head and placed his free hand over the receiver. “Bridgett, I’m busy! Not now!” Stein started to bring the phone back to his head, but Ryan was not to be deterred.
“Mark, this is really important!” She thrust the papers and envelope forward. “We just got this in the mail. It’s addressed to you and I think it’s from the terrorists!”
Stein grabbed the sheets of paper and started reading quickly. His boss could be heard in the background asking what in the hell was going on. When Stein was finished, he yelled into the receiver, “Carol, go to your fax, this is big!”
Garret had calmed down and was noticeably quieter. McMahon and Kennedy were discussing the latter’s theory when the door to the Cabinet Room opened and Jack Warch entered. He was the special agent in charge of the president’s Secret Service detail. “Excuse me, gentlemen, NBC is announcing that they have a letter from a group claiming responsibility for the murders.”
Warch proceeded to the wall behind the president and opened a large cabinet containing a bank of six television sets. He turned on the four to the left, which were pretuned to the major networks and CNN. The top right TV was carrying the NBC signal. He turned up the volume and stepped away. The familiar face of George Blake, the NBC news anchor, appeared on the screen.
“I would like to caution you one more time that this letter is from a group that is claiming responsibility for the murders of Senator Fitzgerald, Senator Downs, and Congressman Koslowski. We have no proof that they are actually the group that committed the murders. The letter was received by mail at our Washington, D.C., studio just moments ago. It states the following.” Blake looked down and read from the fax paper:
“ ‘In 1776 the founders of the United States of America sent a Declaration of Independence to the King of England. In that Declaration, Thomas Jefferson wrote “that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive . . . it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” We are invoking this right to rise up and alter the course of our government. You have had your chance to correct America’s course, and you have failed.
“‘Senator Fitzgerald, Congressman Koslowski, and Senator Downs were killed as a warning to the president and the remaining members of the House and Senate. Your days of deficit spending and partisan politics are over. During the last twenty-five years, you have spent money we do not have on federal programs we do not need. Every year you have promised the American people that your number one priority is to cut spending and balance the budget. Despite these promises the federal budget has continued to grow.
“ ‘You have had the time and the opportunity to bring spending under control and you have done nothing. You have shown that your own personal greed and the goals of your political parties are more important to you than the economic security and future of America. As a result of your selfish and incompetent leadership, we are now burdened with a national debt that is more than five trillion dollars. A national debt that is growing at a rate of more than a billion dollars a day and is projected to reach ten trillion dollars by the end of the century. If the national debt is not confronted, it will plunge our country into economic chaos.
“ ‘The time to act is now. We are directing the president to withdraw his budget that is before the House, and with the help of the Office of Management and Budget and the General Accounting Office, to construct a balanced budget using zero-based budgeting. This budget will contain no new or raised taxes and will cut all unneeded federal programs. It will introduce means testing to control the growth of Social Security and Medicare and will adopt the military cuts as proposed by the Joint Chiefs without political interference. After this budget is passed, the president will submit a national crime bill that will focus on keeping violent criminals off the streets and in jail. The president, the House, and the Senate shall also implement a two percent national sales tax to be used solely for the reduction of the national debt.
“ ‘If you are incapable of restoring the limited form of government that the framers of the Constitution intended, q
uit and go home. We will be watching your actions closely. This is the only warning we will give. If you do not respond to these demands, you will be killed. None of you are out of our reach—not even the president.’ ”
7
AS THE NEWS ANCHOR SPOKE THE WORDS “None of you are out of our reach, not even the president,” all eyes in the room turned from the TV to President Stevens . . . all eyes except those of Special Agent McMahon. McMahon had turned away from the group and was clutching his digital phone, waiting for someone to answer on the other end.
“Special Agent Jennings.”
“Kathy, this is Skip. Get someone down to NBC’s studio on the double. Call ahead and tell them we’re coming to seize that letter as evidence, and until we get there, I don’t want anyone touching it. I’m sure half their damn newsroom has already put their fingerprints all over it.”
“I’ve already got Phillips and Reynolds on their way over, and Troy is on the phone trying to get ahold of whoever is in charge.”
“Good.” McMahon paused for a second. “Listen, let’s gamble on the chance that they sent more than one of these. Call the post office and find out when the other networks and major papers get their mail delivered. Send some people over to CBS, ABC, and CNN. Hopefully we can get our hands on one of these before it’s been opened.”
“Anything else?”
“No, call me if you find anything out. I’m on my way back to the office.” McMahon hit the end button on the phone, placed it in his pocket, and spun back around.
“What was that all about?” asked the president.
“Just trying to see if we can get ahold of one of these letters before it has a dozen different sets of fingerprints on it.”
“Can we take this seriously? I mean, isn’t it quite possible that someone sent this trying to take responsibility for the murders even though they didn’t commit them? Doesn’t that type of thing happen all the time in these cases?” The president was visibly shaken by the letter and more precisely the mention of his office.
“Yes, sir, it’s quite common to get letters and phone calls from groups who did not perpetrate the crime, but not this early. It usually starts days or weeks later. These murders were committed less than eight hours ago.”
Garret, trying to reassert himself after being embarrassed by McMahon earlier, jumped to his boss’s side. “That doesn’t mean that someone couldn’t have written that letter and dropped it off this morning, after hearing about the killings. I mean, Mr. McMahon, we have to keep our minds open about this.”
McMahon desperately wanted to get up and leave. He needed to be back at the Hoover Building running this investigation. “Mr. Garret, anything is possible at this point.” McMahon turned to the president to ask permission to leave, but before he could do so, Garret blurted out another question.
“How do we know it’s not meant to confuse us? Maybe someone killed them for a different reason, like wanting to scuttle the president’s budget or wanting to damage this presidency. Maybe they sent this letter to make us look in the wrong places.”
McMahon glared at Garret for a brief moment and told himself to keep his temper in check. “Mr. Garret, we know very little so far. That is why we need to investigate. I will take all of your theories under advisement and keep an open mind.” McMahon turned from Garret to the president. “Sir, if you don’t mind, I really need to be out in the field coordinating this investigation.”
“Why . . . yes . . . of course.”
McMahon leaned over, whispered in Roach’s ear, then rose and left the room.
The small conference room in Congressman O’Rourke’s office contained the same furniture it had when O’Rourke had taken over the previous year. O’Rourke saw no sense in following the ageold Washington tradition of getting rid of perfectly good furniture and buying new stuff at the taxpayers’ expense. O’Rourke, his brother Tim, Susan, and several staffers were sitting around the color TV watching George Blake continue to read the letter sent by the group claiming responsibility for the murders of Koslowski, Fitzgerald, and Downs.
O’Rourke sat without movement or emotion, staring at the TV, while the others shouted comments back and forth. His hands were pressed together in front of his face, forming a triangle. After Blake read the letter for the fourth time, Nick Swenson, one of O’Rourke’s young staffers, turned to his boss. “Well, Michael, you don’t have to worry about them killing you. It sounds like they’re right up your alley.”
O’Rourke glanced over at the blond-haired Swenson with a neutral expression. Inside, however, O’Rourke was far from emotionless.
Tim O’Rourke looked at his brother from across the table. “Michael, what do you think about all of this?”
O’Rourke slowly brought his hands down. “I don’t think our country will miss the likes of Fitzgerald, Downs, and Koslowski.”
Tim frowned and said, “Michael, that may well be true, but please don’t say that in public. They were senators and congressmen, and no matter what you think of their politics, you can’t go around saying they deserved to die.”
“I didn’t say they deserved to die. I only said they won’t be missed.”
“The press won’t bother to make that distinction. They’ll put on the front page of every newspaper, ‘Congressman O’Rourke Says Koslowski, Downs, and Fitzgerald Deserved to Die!’ ” Tim held his hand up and punctuated every word.
“I don’t care what the press does.”
“I know you don’t care what they do, Michael, but there are other people in this office who care about their careers and their future in politics.”
Michael leaned in a little closer to his brother and in a lower voice said, “I’m not entirely comfortable with assassins running around our capital, but if it takes killing a couple of corrupt dinosaurs like Koslowski, Fitzgerald, and Downs to bring about some change, I’m all for it.”
Tim O’Rourke sat back and frowned at his older brother. The source of Michael’s severe dislike for the political hierarchy of Washington was deeply rooted. Ten years earlier, when Michael was a senior at the University of Minnesota, his life couldn’t have been better. He was captain of the nationally ranked hockey team, he had a great group of friends, a wonderful girlfriend, and he was on schedule to complete his history major. There wasn’t a gray cloud in Michael O’Rourke’s life.
Michael was about to learn, not for the first time, just how quickly life could change. On a cold winter night, after one of his hockey games, his parents loaded two of Michael’s three brothers and his little sister into the family Suburban and started their two-hour drive back to the O’Rourkes’ hometown of Grand Rapids in northern Minnesota. About forty minutes from Grand Rapids, the large Suburban was hit head-on by a drunk driver who couldn’t keep his car on the other side of the yellow line. Michael’s sister, Katie, and his brothers Tommy and little Seamus survived the accident, but his parents didn’t. The loving parents of five children were dead— killed by a thirty-four-year-old man with six previous drunk-driving convictions.
The deaths of his parents shattered O’Rourke’s life. After graduating in the spring he joined the Marine Corps as his father and grandfather had done before him. After returning from the Gulf, he blew his knee out on a low-altitude nighttime training jump with his recon platoon. Several of the lines on his main chute fouled, and with no time to pop the backup, O’Rourke thudded to the ground at twice the normal speed. The same knee he had injured in college buckled under the impact and crunched like an aluminum can. The young lieutenant underwent a complete reconstruction of his knee, and his career as a United States Marine was effectively ended. O’Rourke left the service and joined Senator Olson’s staff in Washington. Senator Erik Olson was a close friend of Michael’s deceased parents. Michael looked at Washington through idealistic eyes and saw the new job as an opportunity to do something that would make a difference. Over the next five years Michael became one of the senator’s most effective aides. He worked hard and fought not to fall
into the trap of Washington apathy, but as time progressed, the behind-the-back dealings of the nation’s power brokers wore him down. Washington politics was a disgusting game that only a certain breed could play. Anyone with honor and integrity was worn down and spit out by the political machine of party politics.
Right about the time Michael was ready to quit and head back to Minnesota the congressional seat in his home district opened. Senator Olson encouraged him to run, telling him if the system really bothered him so much, he should try to do something about it. Michael took on the challenge, and with the backing of his grandfather and Senator Olson, the young O’Rourke won the barely contested seat easily.
That winter, before Michael had taken office, tragedy struck again. The death of another person close to him had forced O’Rourke to look at Washington in a different light, and any joy he felt over his recent victory vanished. His two-year term as a freshman congressman became a two-year sentence in a town he despised more and more every day.