by C. S. Graham
“Respectable?”
“The word I was thinking of is lucrative.”
Jax laughed and said, “I like my job,” although that wasn’t exactly true. He had liked his job until last winter, when a little run-in down in Colombia with the ambassador and some sociopaths in Special Operations had earned him a transfer to Division Thirteen, which was the CIA equivalent to being taken out to the wood-shed.
“Dick was talking to me just the other day about a position he thought you might be interested in.”
Senator Richard Talbot was the man scheduled to become Sophie’s Husband Number Eight. Jax clenched his jaw, shook his head, and dredged up something he hoped would pass as a smile. “No thanks.”
Softly pouting, Sophie stretched back in her seat and tossed her long, mahogany-colored hair away from her face in an innately feminine gesture that brought virtually every male head in the room around to stare at her.
Sophie had an undeniable gift, a gift she had long ago learned to use to her advantage. The candlelight was kind, but the fact remained that she still looked startlingly good for a woman in her forty-ninth year. She had been blessed with what she liked to call enduring bones. Of course, self-absorption, the regular expenditure of staggering amounts of money, and a little nip and tuck here and there all helped.
Most people considered Sophie a serial trophy wife, but in that they underestimated her—or gave her credit for too much guile, depending on one’s point of view. Because the truth was that, at heart, Sophie believed in love and romance, in white lace and happily-ever-after. She honestly believed every time she married that she was in love with the man she’d chosen. More incredibly, she also believed each and every time that this marriage was going to be the one that would last.
Jax had stopped believing in anything by the age of seven.
Of course, Sophie might be a romantic, but she was also one smart lady. Every man she’d married—except for Jax’s father—had had serious Money. And Sophie always managed to finagle prenuptial agreements that kept her own growing fortune safe while leaving the man’s assets open to pillage and plunder.
But then, as far as Jax was concerned, any man stupid enough to marry a woman who’d already gone through that many husbands deserved to pay for his arrogance.
“You haven’t even heard what the position is yet,” said Sophie.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m still not interested.” Jax’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He reached for it. “Excuse me a minute,” he said, and slipped out of the dining room, to the foyer.
The call was from Matt von Moltke, head of Division Thirteen. “You need to come in right away,” he said, his voice, as always, gruff and abrupt.
Jax looked at his watch. “Now?”
“Now. And bring a bag with you. You’ll be flying out as soon as we’re finished with the briefing.”
“Flying where?”
“New Orleans,” said Matt, and hung up.
12
Washington, D.C.: 4 June, 8:45 P.M. Eastern time
Clark Westlake took the steps to the Executive Office Building two at a time. It was late, even by Washington standards. But when he’d suggested to Vice President T. J. Beckham that they skip their weekly intelligence briefing, Beckham had pitched a fit. The VP didn’t like being left out of the loop. So Clark was here to oblige.
Clark Westlake was forty-six years old, trim and good-looking, with a perpetual tan and only a touch of gray at his temples. Three terms in the House followed by a stint as CIA chief and his current role as Director of National Intelligence had brought him to first-name basis with that shadowy group of hyperrich, like-minded men who quietly ran the country. He confidently expected to be his party’s candidate for vice president in the next election. Not only was he photogenic, but his intelligence background made him look satisfyingly tough on defense and homeland security without exposing him to the kind of nasty innuendos and smear campaigns that could derail the political aspirations of a real combat vet.
Passing through security, Westlake flashed one of his famous smiles at the comfortably middle-aged woman who occupied the desk just outside the VP’s door. No hotties with implants for T. J. Beckham; the man was a poster child for solid middle-class values. “Hey, Susan. Shouldn’t you be home by now?”
The Vice President’s secretary returned his smile. “Shouldn’t we all?” She hit the buzzer under her desk. “Go on in. He’s waiting for you.”
Westlake didn’t like the sound of that. In addition to receiving a weekly intelligence briefing in person, the Vice President was also on the list of select officials who received the President’s Daily Briefing, or PDB, as it was called. A slim booklet delivered daily, the PDB summarized current world threat intelligence. Presidents like Carter and Papa Bush faithfully read their PDBs every day. Most didn’t. The current president was like Ronald Reagan: he rarely opened the thing. But newly appointed Vice President Beckham poured over his PDB like a schoolboy cramming for a quiz. Which meant he could sometimes ask Westlake some pretty embarrassing questions.
Westlake found Beckham standing in the center of his office, his hands wrapped in a near-professional grip around a putter, his concentration all for the ball he was about to tap into the cup.
“Clark,” he said, not looking up. “Come on in. You don’t mind if I keep practicing, do you? I’ve got a game with Bob tomorrow and I’m determined to be in top form.”
“You beat him last time, didn’t you?” said Westlake, going to lounge in a burgundy leather chair.
“Barely.” T. J. Beckham eyed the shot, then gave the ball a quick tap that sent it straight home. “Ha!” He moved on to the next ball. “So. What dire threats are the folks over at ODNI fretting about these days?”
Westlake studied the tall, lanky man before him. Beckham habitually wore baggy gray trousers, red suspenders, and a red bow tie. He looked and sounded like a pharmacist from some old-fashioned corner drugstore in the wilds of Kentucky—which was exactly what he’d been when he ran for Congress nearly thirty years ago. Westlake had never understood how the man won his seat—or how he kept winning, year after year. It was a sad commentary on the state of the nation that such a man had been elevated to the position of vice president.
He hadn’t been elected, of course. President Bob Randolph had chosen as his running mate Chuck Devine, an old-school party boss with the instincts and demeanor of a Soviet commissar. Then the unthinkable had happened: two years into his second term in office, Chuck Devine had dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of sixty-four.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. The ongoing war in the Middle East combined with endless tax cuts for the rich had sent the deficit soaring and the economy tanking. Middle-class America was starting to feel the pinch, and the normally docile sheep on Capitol Hill suddenly started worrying about how a too-close association with an increasingly unpopular lame duck president was going to hurt their chances for reelection.
And so they had rejected one after another of President Randolph’s proposed nominees. Some were seen as too cozy with the oil or defense industries; others were described as too friendly with the likes of ex–Enron chief Kenneth Lay or slimy lobbyists like Jack Abramoff. In the end they had settled on T. J. Beckham largely because they could choose no one else. Beckham was the Gerald Ford of the twenty-first century, an easygoing, affable man who played golf with the press corps, smiled a lot, and was confirmed as vice president largely because he had achieved the unimaginable: over the course of a political career that spanned nearly three decades, he had made no real enemies inside the Beltway.
Clark Westlake cleared his throat. “There are a few things we thought you should be aware of, sir,” he said, and launched into a discourse on the repercussions of the rise in Chinese fuel consumption and the situation in Somalia.
Beckham kept putting. He putted through Westlake’s witty retelling of the latest sex scandal to rock the British government. But when Westlake started talk
ing about a new Iranian missile test, Beckham looked up.
“What did you say this missile is called?”
“The Kowsar, sir. The Iranians are claiming it has a new kind of guidance system that can’t be scrambled. And that it’s invisible to radar.”
“Is it?”
Westlake shrugged. “We don’t know for sure yet. But Iranian radar isn’t particularly advanced. It’s more likely the Kowsar can evade Iranian radar but not ours.”
Beckham gave his golf ball a soft nudge that sent it rolling into the cup. “So what’s the significance?”
“The Iranians are claiming the Kowsar as their own development. But sources suggest the missile is actually Russian-made. Acquired either from China or the former Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan.”
“And?”
“The Revolutionary Guard is holding maneuvers this week. They’ve code named the exercise ‘Great Prophet.’”
Beckham lined up another ball. “We hold maneuvers and test missiles all the time.”
Westlake laughed. “Yeah. But we’re the good guys.”
“The Iranians might argue with that.”
Westlake studied the VP’s craggy, half-averted profile. It was the kind of stupid remark Beckham was always coming out with. How did you answer something like that? “Our concern is that the timing of the maneuvers and the missile test is not coincidental, sir. There are indications the mullahs are gearing up their defenses against a possible retaliatory strike.”
Beckham slowly raised his head, his jaw going slack. “You mean, a strike from us? In retaliation for what?”
“A new terrorist attack on American soil.”
Beckham went to stand before the window, the putter dangling forgotten from one hand. “Is there any indication such a terrorist attack is imminent?”
“I’m afraid so. There’s been a lot of chatter lately.”
“What kind of chatter?”
“Much of it’s in code, sir. Plus we’re still having problems getting good linguists. We know the Iranians are behind something that’s going down soon; we just don’t know what.”
Beckham breathed a long sigh that came out sounding both worried and, oddly, annoyed. “These are dangerous allegations, Clark. Dangerous and troubling.”
“Troubling, sir?”
The Vice President kept his gaze on the darkening scene outside the window. “My contacts in the intelligence community tell me you’ve been cherry picking high threat information. Creating the image of a threat that isn’t really there.”
Westlake was startled into giving a quick laugh. What the hell kind of contacts did T. J. Beckham have in the intelligence community?
Beckham kept his back to the room. “I still remember Colin Powell’s speech before the UN. You remember the one, don’t you? The irrefutable evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there, the meetings between Saddam Hussein’s people and al-Qa’ida that never actually took place, the yellow cake from Niger that didn’t exist outside of evidence forged by some murky foreign intelligence service. Like most of my fellow Americans, I sucked it all in. I believed it, and it was all lies. Lies, or a mistake. I’m not sure which is worse—or if it even makes much difference to the tens of thousands of young Americans who have been injured or died for it all. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.”
Clark Westlake held himself very still. “What are you suggesting, sir?”
Beckham swung around. “I’m suggesting that there are forces in this country that want war with Iran the same way they wanted war with Iraq, and for the same reasons. Not because either one of those half-assed desert states presents any real threat to this country, but because war is profitable, or because it fits in well with their own hidden agendas, or because they have some crazy idea that the end of the world is upon us and all they have to do to see God is ignite some final biblical confrontation in the Middle East.”
“After what al-Qa’ida did to this country—”
“Al-Qa’ida?” The Vice President swiped one hand through the air. “Al-Qa’ida had nothing to do with Iraq, remember? Until we smashed the place and unleashed the fires of hell over there, Iraq was a secular state.”
“But Iran—”
“Oh, yes; Iran is different. It definitely is run by a bunch of religious nuts. But they’ve never been allied with either al-Qa’ida, or the Taliban either. I wish we could say the same,” he added dryly, “although everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten that shining example of American stupidity.”
A heavy silence fell upon the room, broken only by the distant honking of traffic out on the street. Everyone knew the United States had supported the Taliban after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, just like the CIA probably had more to do with the formation of al-Qa’ida than Osama bin Laden. But it was considered bad form in Washington to mention it. Clark rose slowly to his feet. “The threat of an Iranian-directed terrorist attack on this country is real, sir. Real, and imminent.”
Beckham shook his head. “No. I don’t believe it. Those Iranian mullahs might be a bunch of reactionary fundamentalist bastards, but they’re not stupid. Any state that launches a terrorist attack on this country risks immediate destruction, and the Iranians know it. If we attack them, they’ll hit back at us with everything they have. But they won’t strike first. And you know it.”
The two men faced each other across the length of the room. “What do you think this is? Deliberate scare mongering?”
“Actually, yes. You people fooled me once before, and a lot of innocent people are now dead because of it. I won’t be fooled again.” He raised one bony finger to point at Clark across the room. “And make no mistake about this: I’m prepared to go public with my concerns if need be.”
It was no idle threat, and they both knew it. The idiot still had considerable influence on the Hill and with the press.
Clark Westlake held his jaw tight, his breath coming quick and fast. “If there’s nothing more, sir, I’ll excuse myself.”
“Of course,” said Beckham stiffly. “Thank you for the briefing.”
“I’ll make sure the President is aware of your concerns,” said Westlake, and left.
The outer office was dark and quiet in the gathering gloom. Susan was no longer at her desk.
13
New Orleans: 4 June 8:05 P.M. Central time
Tobie was spooning Pet Promise Wild Salmon Formula into Beauregard’s bowl in the kitchen when the doorbell rang.
For an instant she froze. Beauregard meowed, weaving impatiently in and out through her legs. Food was very important to Beauregard. He’d been a scrawny stray when she found him, and he was determined never to be hungry again. She set the cat’s food on the floor and hurried across the two front rooms to the door.
Through the tall windows opening onto the gallery she could see dark shapes silhouetted against the light cast by the street lamp. She flipped on the outside light and the shadows became three men neatly dressed in well-tailored suits, with short hair and cleanly shaven faces. Tobie slipped the security chain in place and opened the door.
“Miss Guinness?” A tall dark-haired man in his late thirties held up a badge he flipped open to show the ID beneath. “FBI. We’re investigating the death of Dr. Henry Youngblood. May we come in? We’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Oh God,” Tobie whispered. “Henry.” She slipped off the chain and opened the door wider. “Are you sure he’s dead?”
“I’m afraid so, miss.”
The FBI agents were big, powerful men, all well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and the kind of flat stomachs that spoke of a lifetime of crunches and bench presses. They filled her small living room of cottage-sized furniture in a way that made them seem out of place and vaguely intimidating.
“We understand you were working with Dr. Youngblood on his research project,” said the man who had shown her his badge. Agent Lance Palmer, he said his name was.
“Tha
t’s right. Since January. Why?”
It was one of the other agents who answered her, a lean, sandy-haired man with prominent cheekbones and wire-framed glasses. “We think this project he’s been working on might have something to do with his death.”
Tobie sank into the slat-backed rocking chair she kept beside the fireplace, her splayed fingers gripping the rocker’s worn wooden arms. “The firemen found his body?”
“As soon as they were able to get into the building.” Agent Palmer came to sit on the tattered camel-back sofa opposite her. “We’re particularly interested in a session you did recently with Dr. Youngblood. A session that was used as a demonstration for a funding proposal.”
“I’m not sure I know exactly which session you’re talking about. Dr. Youngblood was applying all over the place for funding, but I don’t remember him saying any of the sessions we did were directly related to a proposal. Usually he thought the less I knew about the targets, the better.”
Palmer leaned forward, his hands clasped loosely between his knees, his gaze hard on her face. “The target for this particular session was a room. An office, to be precise.”
Tobie glanced down at the empty hearth and tried to remember. But all that came to her was the image of exploding light and the stink of wet burning timber. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”
The lean man with the glasses came to stand with one arm resting along the wooden mantel beside her. “During this particular session, you drew a picture of a plane. An old World War II transport called a Skytrooper.”
Tobie was about to say I’m sorry again, then paused. “Wait. I think maybe I do remember that session. Was that for a funding proposal?”
The men exchanged quick glances. The older one, Palmer, the one Tobie had come to think of as being in charge, said, “Did you discuss the session with anyone else besides Dr. Youngblood?”
It struck Tobie as a peculiar question. “No. Why would I?”
“Did Dr. Youngblood ever discuss your session with anyone?”