Gambit

by Karna Small Bodman

  “As if we didn’t have enough on our plate,” the president said, “my wife says we should try to show up at that panda celebration at the zoo this afternoon. Says it would be a nice gesture toward China. What do you think?”

  His aide chuckled and replied, “It might be more entertaining than the reception for the Nut Growers Association.”

  “Are we still banning pistachios from Iran?”

  “What else are we going to ban?”

  “Good point,” the president agreed. “And on trade issues, what’s this problem with Belarus I keep hearing about?”

  “Last I heard they wanted to be sure we’d let them export musk ox.”

  “I doubt it would give much competition to the cattle boys. Go ahead and let them. What else have you got there?”

  “The most important project, in addition to our transportation disasters, involves the new tax bill. The joint committee on taxation just came out with a new estimate that your proposed tax cut would cost the government over two-hundred and eighty billion dollars in one year alone.”

  “It would cost the government? Bullshit! It would cost the American people two-hundred and eighty billion. They’re the ones paying the bill. The government doesn’t own all their money. Not yet, anyway. Those guys on the Hill need a new vocabulary. And get some decent economists who use dynamic econometric models instead of the static ones those idiots use to give us some new estimates. At least then we’ll get numbers that include how the behavior of taxpayers changes when we lower their rates, like creating more jobs and expanding the economy. Well, you know the drill”

  “I’m on it, sir. By the way, we’ve got a few congressional types coming over to meet with the economic team this afternoon. Maybe you could stop in, make a few remarks.”

  The president nodded.

  The door burst open and the press secretary rushed in, his face ashen. “Sorry, Mr. President. There’s been another crash.”

  “Oh no!” the president blurted as he jumped up from his chair. “Where? When?”

  “Just now out near Dulles.”

  “That close? What plane? How many people?”

  “It was just leaving, bound for Raleigh-Durham.”

  “Oh my God!” the president exclaimed, “Austin Gage was on board!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BRASILIA

  “This place looks like a set for a sci-fi flick,” Hunt said, gazing out the window of the embassy car transporting him and NSC staffer, Claudia Del Sarto, from the airport to the National Congress building.”

  “When they built this capital back in the 60’s, they wanted to be on the cutting edge,” Claudia explained, turning to point to a building that looked like a flying saucer with a crown on the top. “See that one? It’s the Nossa Senhora Aparecida.”

  “The what?” Hunt said, staring at the strange round structure.

  “It’s their metropolitan cathedral. Pretty impressive, don’t you think?”

  “Impressive? I guess. Everything is so sleek and modern …. and strange. Who designed this place anyway?”

  “They literally carved the city out of the jungle. The master plan was called Plano Pilot. It was put together by a guy named Luci Costa. Then a lot of the buildings were designed by Oscar Niemeyer, the architect who also worked on the United Nations building.”

  “Same guy?”

  “Yes. He was a Communist, you know.”

  “You’re joking!” Hunt said, as he gazed at the wide boulevards. “Where are the sidewalks? Doesn’t anybody walk in this town?”

  “They can’t. Not in most places anyway. Look over there at those apartment buildings.”

  “Pretty stark, I’d say.”

  “Very. Brazilians love to enjoy the outdoors, the good weather. And in Rio they have a lot of balconies everywhere so they can sit outside.”

  “But there aren’t any balconies or outside doors that I can see on those buildings,” Hunt said.

  “The word that went around is that Niemeyer was afraid that people would hang their laundry over their balconies. He thought that would make his buildings look shabby, so he wouldn’t let them put doors or balconies on them.”

  “And this was a champion of the people?” Hunt said with a laugh.

  “After a while he was more or less booted out because of his communist connections.”

  “Yeah? Then where’d he go?”

  “He moved to France and designed the Communist Party headquarters over there.”

  “Amazing. Well, he sure did a wild job with this place. Why in the world did they put their capital here in the middle of the jungle anyway?”

  “They were trying to develop the interior of Brazil back then. Get people to move out of Rio and Sao Paulo, places like that.”

  “Did they want to move?”

  “Of course not. In the beginning, all of the bureaucrats were given extra pay to live here, and they still hopped a flight back to Rio every weekend. That’s what my family did when we were posted here for a while,” she laughed, swinging her straight brown hair back off her shoulder.”

  “I can see why. After living with the beaches, the carnivals and all the rest, coming to this place must have been total culture shock. Even if it was their own culture, so to speak.”

  “Wait until you see this place at night,” she ventured.

  “Why?”

  “A lot of the streets have sodium lights.”

  Hunt chuckled. “So you end up looking all yellow?”

  “Remind me to wear extra make-up,” she quipped.

  “So did you like growing up here? Here and in Rio, I mean?” Hunt asked.

  “Sure. It was pretty exotic compared to the states. But I think I liked Argentina even better.”

  “Why?”

  “The men,” she said, flashing her violet eyes.

  “The men?”

  “Sure. The way they dance. The way they act. The way they treat a woman.”

  “Before they marry you though,” Hunt added.

  “Well, there is that, yes. They’re a pretty complicated bunch, though.”

  “Complicated?”

  “You know the old description of an Argentine?”

  “No, what?”

  “That they’re really Italians who speak Spanish and want to be British, but act French.”

  Hunt burst out laughing. “So why didn’t you stay down here?”

  “Reality got the best of me, I guess. Besides, deep down inside, I love America too much to stay away for long.”

  Hunt glanced over at the attractive woman and wondered about her personal life. He’d only known her a few months since she had joined the NSC staff. He knew she was smart as hell and spoke a bunch of languages. Then again it was obvious that she was single and had a great bod. But he’d decided a long time ago never to mess around with the staff. Too dangerous. Too much trouble. No, he kept the pretty ones at arms length.

  Besides, he still felt conflicted over Cammy. A picture of her with wisps of strawberry blond hair framing her face flashed through his mind. He thought about how he might call her when he got back to D.C., ask her for lunch or a drink or something. He could try to explain why he hadn’t been able to contact her before, see if she believed him this time.

  Trouble was, it would probably sound like a pretty lame excuse. She couldn’t know how dangerous his mission had been. How he had that awful sense that he might never get back, that he might be a target of one of the groups he was investigating for selling nuclear material on the black market. It was too critical to their bottom line as well as their survival to let some guy like him nose around and try to put them out of business.

  He knew the risks. That was one of the reasons he hadn’t wanted to get too involved. He didn’t want to ask her to wait for him like some soldier in a sappy movie, going off to war and asking his best girl to sit by the mailbox for a bunch of months. He’d seen those movies and didn’t always like the endings.

  Their driver pulled up in f
ront of two tall sleek buildings that looked like a pair of Washington Monuments cut off at the top. They were flanked by two saucer-shaped structures. One facing up. One down.

  “That thing over there looks like an upside-down bathtub,” Hunt said, grabbing his briefcase and getting out of the car.”

  “I don’t think modern art is exactly your thing, colonel,” Claudia said, sliding her long legs out of the other door.

  “You’ve got that one right.”

  They began a series of meetings with key lawmakers, men suggested by their ambassador as being quite plugged in to Brazil’s aerospace industry. Men who could brief them about Brazil’s major players as well as their products and profits. They spent hours asking about the formerly state-owned company that had been privatized and was now touting a new missile defense system that had been added to their latest models at great expense.

  They were told that the CEO, while ambitious and a bit devious at times, was mostly a straight-up guy who was marketing his planes aggressively, but could never be accused of shady dealings or contacts with terrorists.

  They continued their discussions with the director of Brazil’s transportation system, the head of their drug enforcement operation, and they finally retired to the American embassy for a secret meeting with the station chief, otherwise known as the CIA’s man in Brazil, Chase Osborn.

  “So how did you come up with this theory about the aerospace company?” Hunt asked the agent.

  “When the first two planes were shot down, we had a contact in Sao Paulo who said he thought it rather strange that the company was suddenly advertising the hell out of their onboard missile defense system. It all seemed just too timely. Too pat. So we started to check them out.”

  “What did you find?” Claudia pressed.

  “We found out that some time back, their CEO had made contact with the Russians, inquiring about their Tor-M1 air defense systems,” Chase said.

  “The ones the Russians sold to Tehran a few years ago?”

  “Yep. Same ones.”

  “But that’s a completely different type of system.”

  “We know that. But it put this guy on our radar.”

  “At least you can see things on your screen,” Hunt said with a shake of his head.

  “Yeah. We know about the no-radar-detection problem with the plane crashes. Anyway, we kept an eye on this guy, trying to figure out where he was getting his new anti-missile system for his planes because if he was playing around with Russia, or even with Iran, we wanted to know about it.”

  “And?” Claudia said, raising her dark eyebrows.

  “Turns out that he paid a military contractor to adapt some of their stuff to fit on his planes,” the station chief explained. “Thing sends out some chaff to confuse a heat-seeking missile. But it’s a pretty basic version, if you ask me. Nothing dramatic or top secret. Nothing that we couldn’t do, except I don’t think we’d want to bother, because first, he spent a ton of money on that modification. And second, from what we know about those attacks, his system wouldn’t have prevented them anyway. At least we don’t think so.”

  “So we’re back to square one,” Hunt said, raking a hand through his hair.

  “Afraid so, colonel,” Chase said.

  A hard knock on the door interrupted their conversation. An aide burst in waving a print-out. “We just got word. There’s been another crash in the States.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Hunt blurted. “Where?”

  “Dulles Airport.”

  “Oh my God!” Claudia said, holding her hand to her mouth.

  “How many people on board?” the station chief asked.

  The aide read through the advisory. “Uh … let me see … oh no!”

  “What?” they said in unison.

  “It says here that there were fifty-three people on board, including the crew. But one of those killed was Austin Gage, the national security advisor.”

  Hunt closed his eyes and swore. Everyone was silent for a moment, the aide gripping the page and standing mute. Hunt finally took a deep breath. “The bastards! The God damned bloody bastards! Austin Gage was one of the finest men I’ve ever known. He dedicated his life to our country, to his family, to everything we admire and try to be. God damn it. We’ve got to find these guys and nail their asses to the cross.” His face was red, the muscles of his neck straining as he raised his voice. “I mean it. This cannot and will not go on,” he thundered to his stunned audience.

  Claudia put her hand on his arm, a gesture meant to calm him down. It was futile. Hunt got up from his chair and pulled out his encrypted cell phone. He dialed a number and waited, his face contorted in fury. “Stock? I just heard. What the hell …”

  “Hunt,” the deputy national security advisor answered, “I was just about to call you. Tragic situation here.”

  “God damned tragic. What the hell was Austin doing on that plane anyway?”

  “He was on his way to Raleigh-Durham to see his daughter. She had been in an accident. She’s in the hospital.”

  “Oh Christ! Daughter’s in the hospital, Austin’s in the morgue. Where is his wife?”

  “We’re getting a hold of her right now,” Stockton Sloan explained. “The president is convening an emergency cabinet meeting within the hour. All hell is breaking loose around this place.”

  “In contrast to this place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Seems that we’ve run into a dead end down here. I need to get back.”

  “I agree. We could use you up here. How soon can you leave?”

  “Claudia and I will catch the next plane back. At least the international flights haven’t been targeted.”

  “Not yet.”

  Hunt checked his watch and motioned to Claudia who nodded and rushed to his side. “I’ll get our people here to reserve space. If there’s anything leaving soon, we’ll head straight to the airport which would put us in D.C. in ten to twelve hours. I’ll call you when we land.”

  “You do that.”

  “Uh, Stock?”

  “Yes?”

  “Does this mean you’re the new national security advisor?”

  There was a slight pause. “Not sure about that.”

  “Why not? You’re the deputy for God’s sake.”

  “There may be some things other than succession at play here.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  A bank of grey clouds cut off the sun that usually streamed through the triple windows behind the president’s desk in the Oval Office. A rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance and the president muttered, “Just what we need right now, a damn thunderstorm in the middle of an arrival ceremony, along with all the other disasters around here.”

  “Quite right, sir. We may only have a few minutes before the rain starts, and the president of Mongolia’s entourage is lining up at the Dip Entrance. By the way,” he added, “your state gift is out there too.”

  “State gift? What is it this time?”

  “A pair of yaks!”

  “Yaks? On the South Lawn? What do they think this is? Noah’s Ark?”

  “I have to admit the press corps is having a field day out there.”

  “Christ Almighty! Whatever happened to crystal bowls and hand towels?”

  “Maybe they took a cue from the Chinese when they gave us the pandas. At least the live ones go to the Zoo, the children come look, and next thing you know everybody knows where their country is.”

  “I suppose. So now what? I go out there, shake hands with the president and go pet some yaks?” the president scoffed.

  “Could be worse,” the chief of staff observed.

  “How?”

  “Remember years ago when that guy from India brought a baby elephant, and they had it all decked out in some heavy jeweled blanket or something? That was in August. It was a hundred degrees and the little thing died.”

  The president looked up from his schedule and rolled his
eyes. “Well, I hope these animals are in better health. Guess we’d better get outside and get it over with. We need to refocus on the Dulles crash, not some guy whose people live in yurts.” He glanced over his shoulder at the windows. “Storm’s moving in. All we need now is some yak to be struck by lightening.”

  The president, chief of staff and assorted secret service agents went outside, walked down the colonnade next to the Rose Garden, moved inside the main building, down a long hall and turned right into the Diplomatic Reception Room.

  Stepping outside again, they could see the line of black limousines off to the left, dozens of reporters and photographers on the right, and a large group of well-dressed guests sitting on rows of white garden chairs.

  “Where’d we get the audience?” the president asked as he headed toward the lead limo.

  “We couldn’t find enough Mongolians, so some of those are staff from the OEOB,” his aide muttered.

  “Good thinking.”

  The president went through the arrival ceremony, made his brief welcoming remarks, gave the president of Mongolia a chance to make his statement and then stood back while the man talked on, through a state department interpreter, for a full fifteen minutes. “I didn’t know we had that much to discuss,” the president whispered to his aide.

  “We don’t, but it’s his one moment in the sun, uh, so to speak,” the aide said under his breath. Just then a crack of thunder drowned out the Mongolian’s last line. The yaks bolted from their handlers and started to run toward the back lawn. The reporters started to laugh, the photographers jerked their cameras around to record the scene as six secret service agents fanned out to try and trap the frightened animals.

  The aide leaned over and muttered to the president, “I can just imagine the HPS on this one.”

  “Headline, picture, story?” the president answered. “I don’t even want to speculate!” He turned and said, “Let’s get out of here,” motioning to the official party to head inside just as rain started to pelt the guests who now looked flustered, obviously wondering where they should go.