Threat Level Black af-2

by Jim DeFelice

  “God, I forgot all about him. Did John call about the CIA review?”

  “He was going to e-mail you.”

  Blitz dropped into his chair behind his desk, grumbling to himself. He wasn’t sure exactly what to tell Howe, but he couldn’t let the poor guy hang out there, either.

  “Coffee?” asked Mozelle. She’d already figured out the answer: A fresh cup was in her hand.

  “Thanks.”

  “Where do you want to start?” she asked.

  “Better get Howe on the line,” he told her. “Might as well get that over with.”

  “Then you’ll want to talk to Keiger at State.”

  “All right.”

  Blitz opened his e-mail queue and began going through his messages. He was about three e-mails in when Mozelle buzzed through, indicating Howe was on the line.

  “Colonel, I’m sorry,” said Blitz immediately, without waiting for Howe to say anything. “The CIA is throwing a roadblock up.”

  “That’s why my clearance was pulled?”

  “It’ll be restored. They moved ahead before I could cut it off.” Blitz had decided to simply have interim clearances posted through his office; he scanned the list of his e-mails to see if he had received confirmation that this would happen.

  “What’s going on?” Howe asked. “Am I being screwed here? Because if I’m being screwed, I don’t want the job. The hell with it.”

  “Colonel… Bill. You have to calm down. This is unfortunately something that occasionally happens around here. I’ll deal with it. I promise you, I’ll deal with it. What happened was that the CIA launched a review, and as part of the standard practice, certain individuals who aren’t under immediate control — say, a military person still working in a certain area — the clearance gets—”

  “The CIA is screwing me?”

  “It’s not clear, precisely,” said Blitz, who wasn’t about to stick up for the agency. “On the one hand, the investigation has nothing to do with you. But on the other hand, they may be using it — may, I emphasize — they may just be trying to put pressure on. You’re in a bit of a unique position. It’s possible that they’re looking for you to genuflect.”

  “You know what they can do with that.”

  Blitz drew a breath.

  “Colonel, let me ask you a question,” he said. “You knew nothing about the Korea operation until the Pentagon contacted you, correct?”

  “That’s a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know anything about it, no.”

  “And you’ve already told several people everything that happened.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then there’s not going to be a problem. One of my aides will clear this up for you. As a matter of fact, it may already have been cleared up. In the meantime, you can just go about talking to the board members.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

  There were already two other lights lit on his phone, the next calls he had to make. Blitz decided to push on: Either Howe would stick with him or not. He couldn’t afford any more time on this today.

  “It’s important that NADT be headed by someone with your experience and abilities,” Blitz told him. “This isn’t a roadblock, this is a pothole. Please don’t get discouraged.”

  “Right.” Howe hung up, clearly unhappy.

  Blitz hit the Next button, moving ahead.

  Chapter 7

  Fisher had the cabdriver drop him off behind the department store that sat next to the diner. He waited for the cab to drive off, then went over to the Dumpster near the loading dock. The aroma mixed stale aftershave with week-old fish, and it got ten times worse when he opened the lid. But Fisher had given his nose for his country before; he took a step away, gulped semifresh air, then came back and began climbing up on the garbage bin.

  “Yo, dude, what you up to?” said a store worker, appearing from the back.

  “Stargazing,” said Fisher, putting his hands on the roof and pulling himself up.

  “Dude. Dude,” said the store worker below as Fisher got up to the top. The roof was covered with tar, and Fisher realized he’d have to try vouchering the shoes on his expense account. But there was nothing to be done; he walked out to the end of the roof, peering over the side toward the parking lot where he’d left his car.

  The car was there. If someone was watching it, they weren’t being obvious about it.

  “Yo, dude, you can’t climb up on our roof, man,” said the store employee, who’d climbed up after him.

  “You don’t think?” asked Fisher.

  “What are you doing, dude?”

  “FBI,” Fisher said.

  “Really. Like, whoa. Cool. You got, like, a badge?”

  “Sure,” said Fisher, without showing it to him. “I’m, like, with the roof-climbing division. We’re checking to see if there have been any UFO landings here.”

  “No shit, whoa,” said the kid. He turned his eyes toward the sky. “I think I saw a flying saucer the other week.”

  “You filed the report?”

  “Wasn’t me, dude.”

  Fisher went back to the spot where he’d climbed up.

  “Hey, dude, I think I’m stuck in this tar.”

  “I’ll send a helicopter.”

  On the ground, Fisher tracked around the back of the lot adjoining the diner, still looking to see if anyone was watching his car. Finally he went back inside, going up to the counter to order a takeout coffee. A man in the front booth near the window got up promptly and left; Fisher turned and watched him, trying to decide if he’d seen the man earlier or not. There was a problem in the kitchen about an order of hash browns after the eleven A.M. cutoff; by the time Fisher got his coffee, the man had driven off.

  Fisher took a sip from his cup and surveyed the area. Either the surveillance operation on Howe was pretty good or it was nonexistent.

  Or they had other places to watch.

  Fisher went back inside to use the restroom, checking again to see if there were any obvious henchmen inside; henchmen, in his experience, were always obvious.

  Outside, he went back to his car. He was just reaching for the door when he noticed there was something on the pavement underneath the back.

  “Shit,” he yelled as he threw himself down.

  As he hit the ground the ground, the car exploded.

  Chapter 8

  Howe’s conversation with Blitz had left him even more frustrated and angry. He drove around for a while, debating with himself whether to just go home and say, “The hell with everything.”

  This was exactly what he hated about Washington: bullshit political games. Why in the world did he think NADT would be different?

  Belatedly, he remembered he’d told McIntyre to meet him for lunch. He made it to the restaurant only ten minutes late; McIntyre didn’t appear concerned at all, and claimed he hadn’t even noticed the time.

  “Drinks?” asked the waitress.

  “I’ll have a beer,” said Howe. It was clear he wasn’t getting any real work done today.

  “Not for me,” said McIntyre. “Can’t,” he explained to Howe when she left.

  McIntyre and Howe had not been close before Howe saved his life, but the former NSC aide was well known as an after-hours partyer, and the few times that Howe had lunch with him McIntyre had at least two drinks. He had also been more than a little full of himself, smarter than nearly everyone he dealt with and quick to admit it. But now he seemed humbled — not shattered so much as sobered.

  “Are you really sick?” Howe asked.

  “I was stressed. I’m dealing with it. I’m better than I was a few weeks ago, and I was better then than a few weeks earlier than that.” He took a sip of his seltzer. “I don’t know if there’s an okay. I take an antidepressant, and I’m not supposed to drink alcohol, so I don’t.”

  He shrugged.

  “You were depressed?” asked Howe. “Like suicide?”

  “No,
it’s more like being, I don’t know… anxious? Super nervous? Like you have this adrenaline rush but no energy. And edgy.” McIntyre shrugged again. “The doctor has all these metaphors. Basically, he calls it post-traumatic stress because of what happened in Kashmir. I killed somebody.”

  “You had to,” said Howe.

  “No. It was a mistake, what I’m talking about. It’s not in the, uh, reports. It was a kid. I’d take it back but I can’t.” McIntyre took another sip of his soda. “You can’t change things.”

  Howe saw no obvious signs of distress. If anything, the man sitting in the booth across from him seemed more analytical, more reasoned, than the one he’d known as a member of the NSC.

  “You think you could hold down a job at NADT?” Howe asked.

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  Howe looked up as the waitress arrived. He hadn’t planned on offering McIntyre a position; he’d thought yesterday after talking to him that he wouldn’t because of McIntyre’s psychological stress or problems or whatever. But if Howe was going to take the job at NADT, he needed somebody exactly like him to help.

  So he wasn’t bailing out, then.

  “What exactly are you thinking?” asked McIntyre.

  Howe told him that he was looking for someone who would have a pretty high rank, preferably a vice president, who could deal with the political end of things.

  “Me?”

  “Is it the sort of thing you’d be interested in?” Howe asked.

  “Well…”

  McIntyre said nothing else for a while. Their sandwiches came; they ate in silence.

  “I think the situation you were in, it was a tremendous jolt,” said Howe. “I don’t blame you for getting sick. I might have myself.”

  “No.” McIntyre shook his head gently. “No. You and I are different. It’s okay, you can say it.”

  “I don’t know,” said Howe honestly. “If uh, if I had to kill someone face-to-face — I don’t know.”

  “Well, I didn’t really have to kill him, did I? Because I screwed up.”

  Neither man spoke for several minutes.

  “I think you can do the job,” said Howe finally. “I think you’d do well.”

  “I might be able to do it, for you,” said McIntyre. “For you. Because there would be a lot of people with their knives out. A lot.”

  “Like the CIA?” Howe explained that his clearance had been mysteriously pulled.

  “Interesting,” said McIntyre. “But… it might be just routine. Depends on who’s running the investigation. Or it could be an excuse.”

  “How do you tell the difference?”

  McIntyre smiled. “You can’t.”

  “What’s the best way to get it restored?”

  “Well, if the professor says he’s on it, he is,” said McIntyre.

  “He doesn’t play politics?”

  “Oh, he plays politics. He plays pretty damn hard. But if he says something like that, he means it. Besides, he sees you as one of his people.”

  “He does?”

  “Sure. And there’s a possibility this was aimed at him. All sorts of games go on, Colonel. You wouldn’t believe.”

  “That’s why I need somebody like yourself. You. Assuming I get the job.”

  “Blitz wants you. That should be enough. His stock is pretty high right now. And he’s always been tight with the President. Have you talked about filling out the board?”

  “No.”

  “There are a number of vacancies. You’d want some input.”

  “I haven’t a clue who should be on it.”

  “People who like you.” McIntyre laughed, but Howe could tell he was being serious.

  “How do I get them on the board?”

  “You do need me, don’t you?” A little bit of the old McIntyre peeked through, a broad grin appearing on his face. Then the humbler version returned, his eyes cast toward the table. “I’ll talk to some people for you and get the lay of the land.”

  Chapter 9

  “I’m taking you at your word that it wasn’t you,” Fisher told Jack Hunter as they surveyed the bombed-out hulk of the car.

  “I’m glad you can laugh at a time like this,” his boss told him. “I’m glad you can laugh.”

  “I ain’t laughing,” said Fisher.

  The bomb had obliterated the car and shattered the windows of the diner. Two people inside had been cut by the glass, one severely. Fisher had lost his entire cup of coffee and crushed a half package of cigarettes. Otherwise he’d suffered only a few nicks and bruises.

  “This is government property they destroyed,” said Hunter. “This really pisses me off.”

  FBI agents and the local police were scouring the woods across the street and checking the surrounding area looking for evidence. Fisher theorized that someone had watched and waited for him to come out before pressing a remote control to detonate the bomb. Because of that, he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that the attempt was related to Howe or even the case he was working on: Too many people with access to explosives hated his guts.

  But it seemed sensible to him to assume that it was related to Howe, and that the retired colonel was the real target; under that scenario he was a kind of consolation prize. Maybe the person watching thought he had spotted the bomb and worried that it might yield clues about his identity. Or maybe they just like to see things go boom.

  “Look at this damage,” Hunter practically moaned.

  “Shame,” said Fisher. “Less and less diners to go around.”

  The crime scene people had already set up shop, and now two in their white baggy suits asked Fisher and Hunter to move off to the side so they could finish taking their samples.

  “At least we know the E-bomb’s real,” said Fisher.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Has to be.”

  “Don’t give me that shit, Fisher. How do you figure that? Where’s your proof? This?”

  “I have to prove one and one is two?”

  “By your math, one and one is a hundred and twenty-seven.”

  Fisher ignored the obvious reference to his expense chits.

  “We have to get some security people on Howe,” he told Hunter. He’d already tried calling the colonel’s cell phone but it was apparently turned off.

  “I’ll talk to the White House about it,” said Hunter.

  “We don’t have anybody we can send?”

  “Jeez, Fisher, what the hell do you think? I have an army of people working for me?”

  “Better do it quick,” said Fisher. “If they were willing to blow me up, they must already have an idea where he is, or at least where he’ll go.”

  Chapter 10

  Howe started to drive back to his motel after lunch with McIntyre, but then realized that he was near the house Alice Kauss had called her dream home the night before. Recalling the conversation — and mostly recalling her — he turned down the street that led to it, turning to the right and then into the cul-de-sac where the house sat off to the side. He stopped the car and looked at it.

  It wasn’t a spectacular house. Oh, it was big — much bigger than anything he’d ever lived in — but it wasn’t ostentatious: no elaborate drive, none of those really fancy pillars at the front, no copper on the roof. It was nice, definitely; the little porch at the front was just big enough for a small bench, a good place to read the paper on a Sunday morning, drinking a cup of coffee.

  Not a bad life.

  Over a million bucks, though? Sheeeesh.

  Could he afford a place like this if he took the job?

  Undoubtedly, but why would he want it? Alice had told him it was about 3,200 square feet. He’d be lost.

  He drove around the cul-de-sac at the end of the block, then up and through the rest of the subdivision. Howe had grown up in a rural area, next to a farm. The word subdivision in his youth had a tinge to it; usually it meant a farmer had been forced to sell off his land to make ends meet. Things were changing now
. The family farm was a thing of the past, even where he’d grown up. Soon it would all be subdivisions.

  So, living in a condominium was better?

  Howe hadn’t heard back from Blitz or his aide about his security clearance, and figured that he might not for a few days. His best bet, he thought, was to get his personal affairs straightened out: find a place to stay, then go back home for a few days, visit with his relatives and friends. Once the job got going, who knew when he’d get a chance to get away again?

  It was only two o’clock, but Howe was near the real estate office and decided he’d take a chance that she might be there. Her car wasn’t in the lot, but he’d already driven up and decided he might as well go inside and see if she’d be back before four.

  “I’m not sure,” said the receptionist, peering at him from over her eyeglasses. “She didn’t show up for work today, and she hasn’t answered her phone. It’s very unlike her.”

  “Where does she live?” he asked.

  * * *

  He drove by the apartment twice. Alice ’s car was in the lot. As far as he could see, there was no one watching it. He went back out onto the street and drove to a gas station nearby before trying her again.

  The answering machine picked up on the second ring.

  “It’s Bill Howe again,” he said. “I was wondering if maybe you’d want to push up our appointment this afternoon? But I guess you’re not around.”

  He hit End, then called over to the motel to check for messages. Someone from the FBI had called; it wasn’t Fisher but undoubtedly it was related to their talk. Howe took down the name and number but figured he’d talk to Fisher about it first. The only other call was from a newspaper reporter from his hometown, apparently referred by his mom.

  He reached into his pocket for Fisher’s card to call him. He thought about mentioning Alice and the fact that she wasn’t around, then realized that would be silly.

  Why did he think something had happened to her? More than likely she was inside sleeping, catching up after last night.

  Or she was in there with someone else. But hadn’t she been giving him the impression she was unattached?