“Okay, once you have the insurance he claims to have, make it happen. It has to look like an accident, no matter what. Understand?” the president whispered as he stepped back from the door of the elevator.
“You have my word, Mr. President,” Bascome stated, as the doors to the elevator closed. Bascome then grinned ear to ear, knowing that Jason Combs would soon be a memory.
Combs stepped up only to have Bascome block his way saying, “The president said to take the next elevator, and he’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Uhm…” Combs mumbled and looked past Bascome to the elevator.
He then sighed deeply and looked back at Bascome who then turned and walked away, saying rather cheerfully, “It’s been a pleasure, Jason.”
Combs watched Bascome as he walked away, wondering why the hell he would say that. Then the elevator chimed signifying it had returned. The doors parted, allowing Combs onboard while he went back to thinking about his Porsche.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The evening newspapers and television media led with the story of documents being found linking Senator Bains to influence peddling on the behalf of Kilauea Corporation. The documents dealt with the bidding for the new Pentagon computer systems two years ago. To counter the news stories, the senator held a press conference the next day denying everything reported, which was only given minimal coverage by the press. Then, the following day, there was a story of the discovery of leaked Kilauea Corp. memos asking Senator Bains to “take the lead” in helping convince other committee members to vote for Kilauea Corp. over the other bids. The memo also suggested there would be huge benefits to the supporters of Kilauea’s bid. That placed the whole uproar back on the front pages again.
Steven continued to have no comment and the senator continued to claim innocence, all while the usual hack political pundits continued to claim on all the weekend talk shows that she was dirty and that ethics hearings should be held to determine if she should be forced to resign or not.
Steven and Bill Richland reviewed the committee minutes that they had downloaded before Bascome could erase them and found no such records. The memos as represented by the reporter for the Washington Herald Star simply did not exist. Steven didn’t have to check memos at Kilauea Corp. because they didn’t use memos, only e-mail, which he would share when the time came to make things public. They would show that this was just another of President Starks’ underhanded games to try to control free speech in America.
In fact, Bill had already hacked into the reporter’s home computer and found that the minutes were part of an e-mail that originated from Bascome’s office computer at NSA (which used a Kilauea software program as its operating system) and that the memo was produced on the same computer. He wasted no time downloading all of it.
Bascome had made the documents look perfect. If only the software hadn’t printed the microscopically encoded date/time stamp on the title page, which the previous director of the NSA had insisted on being included in the program to protect authenticity. Bascome might have known about this, and had a better chance of getting away with his plot to frame the senator for crimes she didn’t commit, if only he had not blown off orientation when he first took office.
When Bascome had been appointed to the directorship of the NSA, he hadn’t asked anyone about any of the precautions in place to ensure that no one could get away with copying the files or memos of the agency. He chose to bypass the secretary who would have provided the information about the hidden date/time code, just as he had bypassed the meeting with the IT director and the orientation he had planned. He opted instead to spend his first few days and all of the subsequent days focused on the intelligence gathering portion of the agency and leaving the agency’s internal workings to his three deputy directors.
Steven and Bill began building a solid file on Mr. Bascome and his underhanded dealings. They included his banking practices, tax evasion, evidence tampering and his apparent sideline job of arranging the murders of witnesses to terrorism and his political dirty tricks.
Bill, having been the director of the FBI, assured Steven that Bascome had committed at least six major felonies as proved by the information they had uncovered so far. They hoped as they continued to build his file, they would find additional connections to Starks. They were pretty sure they had already found one with the banking records.
To battle the firestorm that Senator Bains was now facing, Bill slipped several pages of the original minutes of the committee to Senator Bains, who then released them to the press. The pages covered the minutes before and after the fake minutes. Although the pages with the fake minutes were stamped in sequence as far as time/date/page number were concerned, and they fit properly into the sequence, there was no microscopic date/page stamp present, like on the the authentic pages. In addition, the faked documents that the Times, the Star and the Post had used as the basis of their front page stories didn’t fit the conversation of the surrounding pages nor even the topic under discussion.
The pages that Senator Bains produced not only had the required time/date/page number in the right sequence, they also had the required microscopic date/page stamp that all official records contained.
When the rest of the media asked to see the official records, they found that they had been deleted the night before the story was broken by the Washington Herald Star. This revelation started another round of breaking news and a new criminal investigation of the reporter and how he came across the false records. Of course, he claimed that he couldn’t reveal his source and was promptly jailed until he was ready to talk. The FBI, which was charged with the investigation, failed to assign it to any agent. It therefore sat on the desk in the office of the director, buried under a stack of other papers that he wasn’t going to act on, per President Starks’ order.
Steven Howard and his computer whiz kids, however, retrieved the original computer files from Bascome’s hard drive and posted the official committee minutes on the Internet, as well as to the Library of Congress where they had been before Bascome deleted them. Then Steven Howard set his lawyers on the newspapers again, citing yet another case of slander.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Racing across the desert towards Riyadh, at over a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, Heyman al-Ghazi ibn Fahd was safe in his convoy as he contemplated how the world would react when the third step of the Brotherhood’s plan was put into action. The Hamburg reaction had been all too predictable, with America shouldering the lion’s share of the relief efforts, despite their economic woes. The Americans were such fools giving away their money to the less capable.
The attack on Houston, coupled with the Starks administration’s refusal to allow the rebuilding of the oil refineries without major environmental changes in their design, had caused the American economy to go downhill rapidly. It seemed the American consumer had simply stopped needing new cars, new televisions or recreational vehicles, and they had even reduced the amount of groceries they were buying. They had finally begun acting like the rest of the world and did their best not to spend money. The future was far too uncertain to risk spending every last dime, especially when you had unemployment at an all-time high and everyone in the American media and the government, except for Starks and his cronies, predicting that the economy was only going to get worse.
And then there was more good news! The Iranian agents for the Brotherhood had assured him that no one suspects a thing. As an additional bonus, they informed him that no one in Iran had ever spoken to David Ashrawl and that they had not been the ones to kidnap and interrogate him. This news had confirmed that it was indeed the Americans who had kidnapped him, but what he could not understand was why no one was using the information. None of their American agents had heard or noticed anything to do with any of the information that Ashrawl must have passed on. The only thing they could determine was that he had been killed before he talked with anyone. So who had kidnapped him and why? That was Heyman’s question and concern. He
wanted an answer but had no idea who to ask for the first time in his life.
The scramble phone rang disturbing his train of thought. As usual, he let it ring several times before he answered. “Yes?”
“I have my report, Minister,” the voice stated calmly.
“Yes, what is it?” he replied curtly.
“Our ships for the initial stage have arrived as planned, and they are in port. The items of interest have been loaded and security procedures are in place awaiting the signal to sail,” the voice stated without any embellishment.
“This is good news! What of our other ships?” the minister asked.
“The six other ships are at sea awaiting the word to sail into the gulf where they will be placed according to plan. They will be held in a holding pattern to the southwest in an area that sees very little, if any, shipping. They will need twelve hours to sail into the gulf and take up station at the rendezvous point once the decision is made. They will wait for your order to move.”
“Yes, that will do! What of our men in Somalia?” the minister asked, although he knew they had been lost at sea. He just wanted to find out if his agent was making the full effort in his assigned duties.
“Yes…” the man’s voice trailed off before he took a deep breath and continued, “the freighter on which they were traveling was lost under suspicious circumstances off the coast of Yemen.
“Although there is no record of any naval vessels other than the King Fahd in the area at the time, there was a mysterious shadow spotted by a Russian satellite ten thousand yards away from the freighter just prior to its sinking. The shadow was listed as a ‘camera anomaly,’ but I asked my contacts in America if they knew of any submarine assigned to a black op in the region. They assured me that no American assets were within five hundred miles.
“I confirmed this through a second source at Norfolk Naval Command. It is my opinion that someone else is involved in the American war on terrorism. I’ve put several agents on the issue, and I hope to have something to report in a few days.”
“You are a good son! I am proud of your efforts, and soon you may come home if that is your wish. Be careful! If there is another group who may have taken an interest in our business, you may be under surveillance!” the minister cautioned his second oldest son, Hassam. His first son, born to his first wife, would have had this assignment had he not been killed in Afghanistan some years earlier fighting the Americans.
“Father, it was good to have seen you and mother last week. I want to thank you for that. I will do my best not to let you down!” Hassam stated, then the line went dead. The young man had a good heart, his father mused, if only he hadn’t been so careless as to approach the king’s daughter and then to actually touch the young woman.
He knew better. It had been his youthful emotions that had overwhelmed his teachings and upbringing. But their customs and religion did not allow for youthful indiscretions; and if he had not been the king’s nephew, he would have been beheaded for this transgression.
Al-Ghazi held no illusions about his son’s situation. It was his usefulness in the holy war against the West that was the reason he was still alive. After his transgression, he had been sent to Europe and America for school and training in the international banking field. He fit in well with the infidels, and he had provided dozens of contacts that continued to pay big dividends to the Royal family.
Once the king had decided that Hassam had suffered enough or had proven his worth enough, he would be allowed to return to Saudi Arabia. He would wed the daughter of the king in a quiet, private ceremony and then placed in “in country” exile with his new bride in some out of the way corner of the kingdom.
It was not completely his son’s fault. The king’s daughter had dropped her veil and spoken with him, which had brought great shame to the king. That was the other reason that Hassam was traveling the world and the king’s daughter was locked in the women’s compound, never to seen by her father again.
Once the West has fallen, surely the king would forgive Hassam and allow his return. Surely, Hassam’s role would be rewarded, and the king will forgive his impetuous daughter, then they could marry and provide the family with grandchildren. Yes, life will be sweet after the West is crushed.
EPILOGUE
Jason Combs, the president’s chief of staff, floored his Porsche as he burst onto I-95. He headed south, weaving through traffic at over a hundred miles an hour, for what he hoped would be a relaxing run after having a very stressful evening. His stress was due to the fact that he was an accomplice in the murder of a prominent American businessman and his family in a staged terrorist attack for political purposes.
As he drove, he wondered how he had let it get this far out of control. If anyone were to find out, it would mean personal disgrace and prison. He had no delusions that Starks and Bascome would do all they could to frame him for the whole thing. Starks wouldn’t even consider pardoning him. He’d expect Jason to fall on his sword for the good of Starks’ presidency. He could hear Starks now: “I had no knowledge of what Mr. Combs was doing regarding this situation.”
It was fortuitous that he had the “insurance policy” of the papers and recordings of their meetings. If Starks tried to blame him, he could leak the information and use it to bury Starks and Bascome.
Bascome acted like this was just another annoying issue at the office that had to be dealt with. The man was at best amoral and, at worst, an outright criminal! He was the one who coldly suggested that we kill the man and his family as if he was suggesting having Chinese takeout for dinner. How many other people had Bascome suggested be killed when he wasn’t around? Did he recommend that they kill him?
As he raced passed Richmond, the capital city of Virginia, he glanced at the clock and saw it was a few minutes after midnight. What Jason failed to notice was the Mercedes that was keeping pace with him several car lengths back and to the right. Jason was so engrossed in thought, he was driving on autopilot. He couldn’t help but wonder if he could somehow untangle himself from this mess.
While trying to think of an exit strategy, it occurred to him that he was the one who started the whole thing. He was the one who had willingly brought Hassam and his money into the mix, all because he wanted to win. In hindsight, that was a huge mistake. He should have let Starks fail. Starks didn’t deserve to win! If only he could have seen it back then, but it was too late to change it now. Starks was the president, and Jason would have to live with it. Jason was every bit as deep in the shit as Starks but without the protection of the Oval Office.
Jason was jolted out of his thoughts when the Mercedes pulled up alongside of him and honked his horn, challenging Jason to a race. Jason almost laughed, but then decided the guy needed to have his doors blown off. He signaled him that he’d love to race him.
The two cars slowed to around fifty and evened up their bumpers before they both gunned their engines, racing off into the darkness side-by-side. After the first quarter mile, Jason had taken a slim lead only to have the Mercedes slip past and begin to pull away. Jason knew he had the better car. It was a Porsche for Christ’s sake!
Jason down-shifted and roared ahead just as they caught up to a clump of traffic. To avoid the other cars, the Mercedes slipped into the emergency lane to pass. Jason did his best to weave through the traffic, costing him valuable time and allowing the Mercedes to keep a few car lengths ahead.
As long as Jason continued to weave through the traffic and the souped-up Mercedes had the clear path down the emergency lane, Jason was in danger of the lesser car beating him. That simply could not tolerated. Sensing that the Mercedes was about to extend his meager lead, Jason cut across two lanes of traffic, forcing other drivers to take evasive action to avoid being hit or to avoid hitting the car in front of them when they jammed on their brakes.
Jason slipped into the emergency lane in front of the Mercedes by a car length as the speedometer reached one hundred and seventy miles an hour. Jason kept his foot
buried in the gas pedal, and the Porsche slowly added speed. The Mercedes fell farther behind with every passing second. Soon, it was a good seventy yards back, choking on Jason’s dust.
The Mercedes’ driver didn’t panic, though. He hit his nitrous oxide switch, and his car leapt forward, closing the gap in a heartbeat. Once they cleared the traffic, they slipped back into the driving lanes while doing a hundred and eighty miles an hour, with the Mercedes drafting off Jason and preparing to slingshot around him to take the lead.
Jason countered the telegraphed maneuver by dropping into the final gear, overdrive, and keeping the gas jammed hard to the floor. After several minutes of a neck-and-neck battle, Jason noticed out of the corner of his eye that he had started to pull away from the Mercedes, and a smile broke across his face knowing he was about to claim his victory. It was then that the Mercedes lurched forward and swerved towards him. The sudden move startled him, and he overreacted, jerking his steering wheel to the left in an attempt to avoid a collision.
Reprisal!- The Eagle's Sorrow Page 25