“Yeah, he changed jobs and we just made sure he was still a good security risk.”
“Yeah? What’s he doing now?”
“Classified, buddy. Couldn’t tell ya even if I knew.”
“Anyway, so now I get to affect the national science agenda, make sure important work isn’t ignored and that science in the schools doesn’t go the way of religion, music, and art.”
“God forbid. So how’d ya get on the FBI’s shit list?”
“Don’t you have that in your stinking file?”
“I’m trained as a field agent. I only trust reports when and if I can’t investigate myself.”
“Aw geez, Joey, I not only stuck my foot in my mouth, I managed to get it in up to my knee.”
A passing waiter gave Joey pause, then he asked, “Bill, I read what you said to the president, but I want to know why you said it?”
“I said it because I saw it happening all over again.”
“What?” Joey asked.
“Us, putting on the blinders. There were no less than three warnings leading up to the September 11th attacks. The first one was in the court papers of the Blind Sheik case back in ’95. You guys came a cat’s whisker away from nailing him for, and I quote the Justice Department indictment, ‘planning to hijack and crash a civilian airliner into CIA headquarters.’ Then there was the Al-Qaeda hijacking of the Air France A320 Airbus in Algiers that was foiled when the pilot realized they were going to fly the plane, loaded with fuel, into the Eiffel Tower. So he faked an emergency and landed in Marseilles.”
“Our hostage and rescue teams study the French paratrooper’s retaking of that airbus on the tarmac. It was a textbook example of overcoming terrorists who hold a plane.”
“That’s what gave that bastard Bin Laden the idea that his boys needed to learn to fly. The day after the dead hijackers were dragged from that plane onto the tarmac in Marseilles, Mohamed Atta, the asshole who led the attack, enrolled in flight school.”
“Hindsight is 20-20.”
“Awww bullshit! Bureaucratic insulation and turf wars blinded us.”
“Whoa! I thought you were a science guy, where’d all this political venom come from?”
“That’s the point, Joey boy. It ain’t political. It’s our lives we are talking here, our security. As far as science goes, the whole key is the exchange of ideas and experimental results good or bad. All the advances came from standing on the shoulders of scientists and philosophers who came before. If science were run like the FBI, the Secret Service, and the NSA, we’d still be treating disease with leeches and taking six months to cross the ocean.”
Bill paused and saw Joey appraising him. He wondered what he thought. “The final unbelievably stupid lapse of governmental oversight came in July 2001, two months prior to the attack. No less an event than Italy closing their airspace went unreported to anyone! Egyptian intelligence caught wind of a plot to hijack a civilian airliner and crash it into the G-8 summit in Genoa, killing President Bush and the other world leaders attending that little shindig.”
“Hey, that was under Secret Service’s authority.”
“That’s my fucking point! Did the Secret Service, the FBI, or the NSA ever tell the fucking FAA? You think those pilots in the airliners that hit the towers and the Pentagon would have gone along with a hijacking, thinking it was only a political exercise, if one asshole from the government had told the FAA, ‘Hey, the next hijacking might be with the intent to use your plane as a missile.’ Those pilots would have flipped the plane the moment anyone got up to rush the cockpit, whose doors, by the way, would have already been fortified. On top of this, if the public had been informed, those passengers on either of those flights would have stopped things from getting that far—like those brave souls on Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. Do you realize that the window of opportunity to hijack a plane and use it as a flying bomb lasted less than an hour? That was the time it took for the Flight 93 passengers to find out about what happened to the World Trade Center and say, ‘Let’s roll.’”
“Are you laying September 11th at the FBI’s feet?”
“The FBI and the rest of the agencies laid the welcome mat at the terrorists’ feet by keeping their tight-assed, ‘agency first,’ bullheaded, bullshit attitudes.”
“Come on, Bill, don’t hold back. Tell me what you really think!”
“Sorry, but that whole thing gets me started.”
“So now I see why Tate hates your guts.”
Hiccock nodded. “What about you, do you hate me?”
“Me? Nah. Look, even though I’m an agent for the FBI, I get your point. I’m not supposed to, but I do. Personally, I think you’re chasing fairy tales, but hey, it’s a free country.”
“So what’s the message you’re supposed to deliver to your old pal here, Joey?” Hiccock figured he might as well save his friend some anguish. He expected Joey to ask him to go away, to drop the whole thing.
“Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you. And if it happens I want you to promise me you’ll notify the bureau.”
“Gee, Joey, I appreciate your position and all, and I really would like to help out the old bureau there, but I got two problems with this.” Let’s see who can fake sincere better.
“Well, let’s see if we can work those out.”
“One, your boss is, like you used to say, a strunz-a-menz. And two, I work directly for, and report directly to, the president. Period. You got a problem with that, take it up with the Commander in Chief.” Having put the last nail in that coffin, Hiccock sat back and hoped it was over. It wasn’t.
“Then can I ask you something as an old friend from the neighborhood?”
Hiccock picked up his right index finger and started wagging it at him. “Don’t start with that …”
“C’mon, from one Boulevard Blade to another.” He then gave the secret club gesture, making a fist but with the thumb between the index and middle fingers. Hiccock could not believe Joey was actually invoking schoolyard ethics but his face softened. “Here’s my card, Bill. I’m the head of the San Francisco office now, so call me personally, please. Despite my asshole political boss, us worker bees actually do know what we’re doing, you know.”
Hiccock was about to decline, but then flashed on the fact that with his three science degrees, he didn’t know diddly-squat when it came to investigations. A lifeline to an experienced agent could be a good thing. “Deal.”
Joey smiled. “So I heard you got married … to a doctor, no less.” Hiccock took a deep swallow from his drink and proceeded to relate the ballad of Billy and the head doctor.
Three drinks later, there was a lull in the conversation. Joey fingered the edge of his glass as Bill swirled the last bit of liquor around the ice cubes.
“You’re right, you know,” Joey said. “We really blew it.”
“Forget the fact that on September 10, 2001, the whole country cared more about some congressman’s zipper than Bin Laden’s attack on the U.S.S. Cole. We stopped appreciating how good we had it and that there was someone out there who wanted to take it all away from us.”
“But we were supposed to be the guardians, the ones on watch while others slept. Hell, we got seduced too.”
“Bullshit, you got declawed, de-balled, and defanged by politically correct, political bullshit that took the war out of warrior, the police out of policeman, and the secret out of secret agent.”
“So you really think you’ll get these fuckers, Bill?”
“Think is the operative word. I’ll leave the guns and the bombs to you guys. I just want to make sure they don’t get away with this because I didn’t think, didn’t consider every possibility.”
“So is that how a brain guy fights crime?”
“Nope, that’s how a dumb guy tries to get out of something he has no right being in the middle of in the first place.”
∞§∞
Joey’s FBI sedan, probably borrowed right out of the Washington D.C. motor pool, was pul
led around first. Bill was waiting for the valet to fetch his car when his cell phone rang.
“Mr. Hiccock, Carly Simone.”
Hiccock was glad to hear from her, but his radar was bristling a bit. “Nice to hear from you, Carly. What’s up?”
“Can I get 10 minutes tomorrow? Something’s come up and I would like to run it by you.”
“I can do that, around three maybe?”
“Fine, I‘ll be there.
“I will be too!”
His Ford Expedition pulled up. He threw the car jockey a five spot. He rolled down the driver’s side window and opened the moon roof; it had turned into a warm and clear evening. He hoped the fresh air would diminish the slight buzz he had going. He was starting to have sssssdsecond thoughts about refusing a personal car and driver. As head of a presidential commission he was entitled to one, but his blue-collar upbringing made him think it was a little too much. Then, a sobering thought crossed his mind. If the cops stopped him right now, it would mean a DWI for sure. There was little doubt Tate would make a federal case out of it. His brief career as a special investigator for the president and, to a lesser extent, a mole for Joey from Gunhill Road would be even briefer. He instinctively slowed down and put his hands at the prescribed ten and two o’clock positions on the wheel and made doubly sure he obeyed all traffic laws.
Pulling into his spot, he shut off the engine and took a deep breath. He was home safe and sound, promising himself he would never do that again. As Hiccock stepped away from the car, his head turned to the sound of a branch snapping. He was startled by a man coming toward him from the bushes. Instinctively, Bill ducked low and, extending his right leg, swept the man’s legs out from under him.
As he fell to the ground, the man protested, “Hey, what the … ahh. Owww.” Hiccock was about to stomp on his face when the “Ow” caused him to hesitate.
“Ow? What kind of mugger are you?” Bill’s fists were still poised to punch his lights out.
“I’m not a mugger. I need to speak with you.”
“Why did you jump out at me like that?” He grabbed the man’s shirt pulling him halfway up, with his arm cocked, ready to clock him, for emphasis.
“I’m not too good at all this cloak-and-dagger stuff,” the man explained nervously, his hands up protecting his face.
Bill sized him up as no real threat and extended his hand. “Here, let me help you get up there, Mr. Bond.”
“Wendell, Wendell Simmons.”
“What’s so cloak-and-dagger that you need to ambush me from my own bushes?”
Rubbing his knee, Wendell looked around. “Inside?”
Twenty minutes later, Wendell was holding a bag of frozen peas on his knee as Hiccock attempted to restore his own equilibrium with strong black coffee. Wendell was a short man who seemed better suited to be an air-conditioning and refrigeration repairman than the research scientist he claimed to be. Seated across from him, Hiccock couldn’t help but imagine this late-forty-something balding man in a blue uniform shirt with “Chuck” or some such name embroidered on it, his shirt pocket holding a dial thermometer and an AC current tester. That image faded as Wendell got deeper into his story. Was this man offering Hiccock the smoking gun evidence he needed? If so, the Intellichip explosion was indeed a case of sabotage.
“My job was to ensure the formula’s integrity as we ramped up to higher volume production runs.”
“Did you work in quality control?” Bill inquired, remembering his brief series of courses in chemical-industrial techniques.
“That was the first flag that something was amiss. I was a technician before I became a project manager. I didn’t have any latitude on the rules. I followed them because I knew they meant scientific repeatability and safety. Then, suddenly I’m meeting with the CEO, who is not a chemist I might add, asking me to fudge results.”
“And did you?”
“Most of the stuff was budgetary. But then he hit me with a doozy. He wanted me to increase the amount of suspension in the formulation originally intended for a plant in Arkansas.”
“And why was that strange?”
“That amount of suspension wasn’t necessary, because the load was being delivered in a matter of days. We suspend to decrease the possibility of unintended combustion or impurities affecting the batch during shipping.”
“So this level of suspension was better suited for something that would take how long?”
“Months—like the shipment was going real far. We had already registered the shipment with the ICC for interstate travel, but to me it seemed as though this batch was going outside the country.”
“And the amount of suspension you added to the batch in the Intellichip building should have inhibited it from exploding that night?
“Absolutely. That formulation was stable and would have remained so until the suspension was intentionally stripped at the point of delivery.”
“How would that have been done?”
“Lots of ways. Any low-boiling-point liquid would destabilize the suspension.”
“Like Freon?”
“That would do nicely.”
“That’s an incredible story,” Hiccock said as he sat back from the edge of his chair. “And you were an engineer on this project?”
Wendell nodded. “The head of the project. Thank you for not calling the cops.”
“Mr. Simmons, why are you risking so much to help?”
“Heather Simmons … you wouldn’t know her or recognize her name …” He stared down at the floor. “She was twelve, asleep, safe in her bed, when the windows … the windows imploded, that’s the term. Her carotid artery was severed. By the time I came to, she was so white … and the sheets soaked red …” He looked up at Hiccock, tears in his eyes.
∞§∞
General Nandesera felt a pain in his back. It was his first consciously aware moment since he sat down three hours earlier to review the final operational plans for Samovar. The lactic acid in his muscles made him stiff. His body was used to the military regimen. Sitting still had been an acquired talent –one that he struggled to conquer every day that he sat and thought rather than stood and fought. It had been a while. The last time he actually fought was Afghanistan in ‘89. Overall, he was pleased with the report he had read. His assets were in position. The retribution for the American cruise missile strikes deep within his country would soon be rained down on the imperialist giant that felt it could kill without consequences. The General was about to sign an order making America pay dearly for those punitive attacks carried out towards the end of the last century. All that was needed was an exact position and time in which to execute. That, he was hoping, would be provided by the new “eyes and ears” center supplying the much-needed intelligence. As an old soldier, he would have much preferred hard human intelligence over electronic eavesdropping, especially when the eaves one was dropping in on were public media outlets.
Alone in his office, he signed the order without fanfare or ceremony. As he removed his reading glasses, he sat silent for a moment. Very quietly, his nation had just gone to war with the United States of America, which was already under attack by somebody else; he didn’t know who, maybe the North Koreans, but he knew those events were the perfect diversion and cover for Samovar, his Master Plan.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Connections
“YOU’RE TELLING ME that the CEO of Intellichip was illegally exporting chemicals from Mason Chemical to Iran?” said Reynolds. “I don’t believe it!”
“I don’t know if I do either but there are two separate issues here. The illegality aside, if the mixture in the building that night was going overseas, and it was heavily suspended, then it couldn’t have spontaneously combusted or been accidentally ignited by the employee. It had to have been sabotaged. On the other hand, Wendell could just be a disgruntled employee of Intellichip. I think the FBI should check out his story, whether he actually did lose a daughter on the night of the explosion and so on.”
“Let’s just say I don’t want that factory to blow up again, this time in our faces. Besides, Tate strong-armed an old friend of mine to grovel for the FBI. They don’t want to be left out of my loop.”
“It’s your call. You know, Bill, your FBI pal probably wrote a report that found its way to Tate’s desk already.”
“Then they better have a good infirmary in the old FBI building there, because if Joey wrote a blow by blow of everything I said, Tate’s going to have a coronary.”
“Now why doesn’t that surprise me? Listen, you aren’t in the pristine realm of science now. You are into an area populated by power-hungry men. Being right isn’t always as important as surviving the political shit storms around here.”
Bill was confused. Reynolds was the last guy he expected to give fatherly political birds-and-bees speeches. “Thank you, Ray, for that insight. I’ll try to remember to always have my umbrella out.”
“Look, whether I like it or not you are now part of my team. I have a vested interest in your survival and Tate knows it. Be careful!”
Bill knew that Reynolds was covering his bets, straddling both sides of the loyalty issue. After all, he, the dumb political guy, could be right. Reynolds was making sure there wasn’t anything more than a few feathers left in his potential serving of crow. Or was he keeping a murky access road open for his boss, President Mitchell, to take as an escape route? Hiccock was stunned to catch himself in the middle of such political calculations and reverie. Maybe this place is rubbing off on me.
“How’s it going with the wife … ex-wife?”
“Fine. She’s onto something.”
“Has she found the common tie yet?”
“No, but this is either two-dozen, separate one-in-a-billion coincidences of individual schizophrenia or …” He paused as the scientist in him demanded more empirical data before even speculating on a conclusion. His last words hung awkwardly for a moment. “That’s all I am prepared to say at this time.”
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