Corbitt jogged out of an adjacent office, pulling even with Charlie. “Eager to see your dad?” the base chief asked.
“Yes. And to see if he knows where Bream took the bomb.”
“It’s only a matter of time until we find that son of a bitch.” Reaching the elevator landing, Corbitt gazed into the gilded-frame mirror as if already seeing himself with the medal he would receive.
Charlie hit the down button. “I wish I were even half as sure.”
“Look, our commo folks sent an encrypted cable-flash precedence-to the director, the chief of the Europe division, plus all the honchos in India, Pakistan, and pretty much everywhere else boats go. The U.S. Coast Guard and Homeland Security have cast the satellite and radar version of a tight net over the water between Saint Lucia and the coast of India. And as we speak, the agency’s unleashing NEST teams.”
“What teams?”
“Oh … uh … Nuclear Emergency Search … something?”
“Team?”
“Right. They have dedicated 707s decked out with radiation sniffers, the works. They’ve already taken off, on their way to swarm the Caribbean. It’s only a matter of time until we get the news that they’ve disabled Bream’s boat.”
“What if the radiation is masked?” Charlie didn’t want to give away the fact that the supposedly enriched part of the uranium was essentially pabulum, lest the operation’s secret be cabled flash precedence pretty much everywhere boats went.
“We still have a squadron of UAVs plus a few tricks that you don’t need to know about, but put it this way: Given the intel you provided us, we’ll know about every object larger than a baseball that comes within five hundred miles of India. Either our people or our liaison counterparts will board any ship they can’t swear by, and a good percentage of those that they can.”
“Great, unless the bomb’s not really headed to India.”
“What would make you think that?”
“Half of everything Bream said was a lie.” The groans and sputters of the cables within the elevator shaft seemed to echo Charlie’s thought process.
“There’s no reason to think he was lying about India, and every reason to think you snagged grade-A intel,” Corbitt said. “You’re probably just tired.”
Tired? If only. Fifteen straight hours of sleep and Charlie might be upgraded to tired. “I just feel like we’re overlooking something.”
A chime announced the arrival of the elevator. Brass-plated doors slid open. Corbitt led the way into a car whose Victorian decor predated electric elevators. “I’m telling you, you’ve got nothing to worry about. It probably just needs to set in is all. Take a long bath and crack a cold bottle of beer. You’ve won, bud. The stuff on that Korean Singles site has completely exonerated you-you’re a hundred percent free.”
The doors closed with a hydraulic hiss. Charlie, who had never experienced claustrophobia before, felt as if the mahogany panels were about to close in on him.
Clapping a hand on Charlie’s good shoulder, Corbitt said, “And it gets even better. Stanley and that Lanier woman are locked up someplace really dark, key thrown away, the works. And every U.S. agency this side of the Department of Agriculture is teaming to roll up the rest of the Cavalry-I saw onboard UAV footage of Ali Abdullah in his pajamas being tossed into a French paddy wagon. We also collared a couple of other guys you might know, Ben Mallory and John Pitman?”
Pitman had tried to kill Charlie on at least three occasions in New York. Mallory, another Cavalry man, just twice. “Where are they now?”
“Put it this way: They’d better like vermin.”
The U.S. Embassy in Barbados had flown in so many physicians and so much medical equipment for Drummond and Hadley that the consulate infirmary now looked like the ICU at Mass General. And everywhere there wasn’t a medical professional, there was a marine guard. Charlie figured that he and Drummond were safer here than anywhere they’d been in months, or anywhere they might ever go.
Charlie entered Drummond’s room-a curtained-off section of the infirmary, really. Drummond sat up in bed with obvious pain. His generally wan appearance wasn’t helped by the pale green light from the stack of machines or the intravenous tubes blooming from his arms.
“Good morning,” he said.
It was a little past three A.M.
“How are you feeling, Dad?”
“Fine. Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
Charlie put him at a 4. He decided to try anyway. “Does anything seem strange to you about the Bream business?”
Drummond regarded one of the green curtains. “Pirate, right?”
“In a sense.” Charlie hadn’t expected much more. “Plays first base, as I recall.”
“That’s Sid Bream.” A Pittsburgh Pirate. Twenty years ago.
Weighted by frustration, Charlie took a seat at the edge of the bed, careful not to knock loose Drummond’s IVs.
Drummond sat a bit straighter and smiled, restoring some color to his cheeks. “Right, Bream was the name of our pilot too,” he said.
Charlie felt a trickle of optimism. “That’s the one I meant.”
Drummond paused to reflect. “Who was he, really?”
“That’s probably the first question I should have asked.” Charlie put it to Corbitt, chatting with a nurse outside the makeshift doorway.
Stepping into the room, the base chief shrugged. “Maybe you’ll find out in the debrief.”
“What debrief?”
“With Caldwell Eskridge, chief of the Europe division.”
“When does he get here?”
Corbitt looked at Charlie as if he’d asked for the moon. “When do you fly to Langley, Virginia, you mean?” Corbitt said. “As soon as possible.”
“Barring major medical advances in the next hour,” said Charlie, “my father probably won’t be able to get on a plane.” Or out of bed.
“It’s actually McLean, Virginia,” Drummond said. “An interesting piece of information: Langley’s not a city or town. It’s just part of McLean, as Park Slope is part of Brooklyn. You need to go there, Charles.”
“Do I?” Charlie wondered if his father’s danger detector had been disabled. He turned to Corbitt. “Why can’t Eskridge fly here?”
“The mountain doesn’t come to Mohammed.” Sensing Charlie’s anxiety, the base chief added, “I’ll be accompanying you.”
Which did little to ease Charlie’s anxiety. “Great,” he said.
Drummond reached forward, clasped Charlie’s arm, and drew him close. Although his father’s skin was tepid, Charlie felt an infusion of warmth.
“Go to McLean, Charles.” Drummond’s focus appeared to sharpen. Or was it a trick of the fluorescents?
“But until about twenty minutes ago, the agency had us on their To-Kill list.”
“You can handle it. I’m willing to bet on that.”
PART THREE
Lucidity
1
Eight days earlier, a man whose passport listed him as John Townsend Bream had flown from Puerto Rico to Paris to meet with an Algerian agitator he knew from his Air Force Intelligence days.
A three-hour drive from Charles de Gaulle and Bream was in Dijon, far enough off the security grid that countersurveillance didn’t require too much effort. And because the city was the capital of the Burgundy wine region, the mustard center of Europe, and home to the most dazzling collection of medieval and Renaissance buildings in the world, there was always a large and diverse enough crowd that anyone could blend in.
Or so Bream thought until Cheb Qatada plopped down opposite him in an isolated booth in the back of an otherwise lively brasserie near the train station-a textbook clandestine meeting spot. The problem was, the bearlike Algerian had a tough time blending in anywhere. Although he shaved every morning while in Europe, he sported a five o’clock shadow by lunchtime, and it was now an hour past that-the best time for a meeting because the lunch crowd thins so that friend can more easily be distinguished from foe
, or rather foe may be distinguished from genuine tourist. Qatada’s choice to heavily pomade his thick black hair, giving prominence to a V-shaped hairline, made him stand out even more. Also his eyes were set close to an extraordinarily wide and flat nose. But his most remarkable feature was an almost constant toddler-like glee, odd given that the majority of his forty years had been spent on a serial rant-in the form of massacres of innocent civilians-directed at the French government.
“I’m looking to retire,” Bream said.
“As opposed to living on a tropical island and flying once or twice a week?” Qatada spoke fluent British-accented English, at a higher pitch than the growl presaged by his appearance.
Bream gazed at the cricket game on the TV above the bar, without which the dark stone tavern wouldn’t have appeared much different than it had a millennium ago. He used the mirror behind the bar to take an inventory of the crowd, inspecting for shifts in stance or positioning-that is, were they watching or listening to him? As new people came through the door, he assessed them: local businessmen, tourists, ladies lunching, etc. He would have preferred that one of his “associates” do the countersurveillance, but the mercenaries in his employ were all busy in Gstaad today, rehearsing a rendition for the new Counterterrorism Branch of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service-as far as they knew.
“I was on the tropical island prospecting,” Bream told Qatada. “Now I’ve got a prospect.”
Qatada smiled, maybe at the cricket game, maybe at the play of light on his water glass-who knew? Bream had given him no reason to be happy.
He was about to, though.
“You know how for a party, you write a check and a party planner does everything?” Bream asked. “He gets you the band, the cake, the hall-all for the exact day you want?”
“What about it?”
“I’ll run an op for you like that in two weeks, except instead of cake I’ll serve up an ADM.”
Qatada smiled again. “Sounds like quite a party.”
“The venue I have in mind is the municipal marina three hundred and seventy-five meters north of the hotel hosting the G-20.”
“The Grand Hotel near Mobile, Alabama?”
“Yeah, beautiful old resort.”
“The French delegation is planning to stay there.” Qatada spoke matter-of-factly. “I am guessing you knew that.”
“Think of them as your guests of honor. All you’ll be required to do is push a button, and you’ll strike the biggest blow possible for an Islamic state.” Qatada’s al-Jama’ah al-Islamiyah al-Musallaha, known here in France as Groupe Islamique Arme, sought to oust the current Algerian government.
Qatada sat back, lips pursed with skepticism. “Does the Fountain of Youth come with this package too?”
Bream laughed politely. “You know Nick Fielding?”
“I hope for your sake that he is not your supplier.”
“You mean ’cause he’s dead? That’s why I can get my hands on his ten-kiloton Russian ADM without any opposition from him.” Bream paused while the waitress deposited their plates of steak fries, then waited until she was out of earshot. “You know you can practically throw a rock from my place on Martinique to Fielding’s island, right?”
“No, I did not.” Qatada was rapt.
“I watched his act for three years. Not only that, I watched No Such Agency watching him-I even got myself hired on as copilot for a couple of their charters. After giving an envelope full of money to one of Fielding’s goons, I now know not only about Fielding’s ADM, but that he took its hiding place to his grave. Since he died, legions of spooks have tried and failed to find it.”
“But you can?”
“Yes. Then it’s yours, plug and play. I just need five million down to cover my expenses and another seven hundred and forty-five mil on delivery.”
The Groupe Islamique Arme’s principal benefactor, Algerian oilman Djamel Hasni, could write a check for $750 million on any one of a dozen of his accounts around the world.
“If I told Djamel that you asked for a billion dollars, he’d think seven hundred fifty million was a steal,” Qatada said. “His problem isn’t going to be the sale price; it’s going to be the salesman.”
“He’ll think I’m an American spook running a play for the United Satans of America?”
“Of course.”
“That would mean that the Air Force faked my dishonorable discharge, that I flew clunkers for four years in exile, and that I damn near destroyed myself with the cheap local rum all to build up cover for an op whose objective is to bag a couple of members of an Algerian terrorist group that no one’s heard of.”
Qatada ceded the point with a nod, but remained circumspect. “How would you get the device into the States?”
“That’s the easy part. I built myself an ironclad alias with access to a U.S.-flagged yacht that’s a fixture at the Mobile Bay Marina. You ante up, I’ll go get the yacht, cruise down to Martinique for a ‘pleasure trip,’ pick up a ‘souvenir’ along the way, then cruise on back to Bama.”
Qatada winced. “Take it from an expert: Since 9/11, your Homeland Security can’t install enough chem-bio-nuke detectors in your ports.”
“You’re part right. In Miami this scheme would never fly. Houston and New Orleans, ten miles before I even reached the coast, drones would shoot Hellfire missiles, turn my yacht into flotsam, and ask questions later.”
“But not in Mobile?”
“Think of Mobile as the Groupe Islamique Arme of port cities: It’s big, but no one knows much about it or really cares much about it. Cares enough, I ought to say.”
Qatada shrugged. “Even in such places, the Americans can afford to give every other port employee a palm-sized gamma-ray spectrometer and litter the docks with sniffers and ICx rovers and probably many other new detection devices that we do not even know about.”
“But there’s almost nothing along the other hundred-something miles of coast.”
“Except the Coast Guard and the Customs and Border Protection agency. You don’t think al-Qaeda has spent thousands of hours trying to find holes there? Djamel has spent millions of dollars on computer simulations alone.”
As a twelve-year-old, Bream had been undefeated in Tennessee Chess Association junior play, but he had dropped the sport in high school in deference to his image. Still he thought like a chess player. Now he saw checkmate in two moves. “The key is, I’ll be cooperating with Coast Guard and CBP from start to finish,” he said. “They’ll have had me on transponder and satellite the whole time I’m in the Caribbean, plus five kinds of radar on top of that as soon as I get close to U.S. waters on the way home. A foreign national can expect a Custom and Border Protection ‘welcome committee’ on reaching Alabama waters. But most of the time, all a good ol’ American boy’s gotta do is check in with the CBP folks with a phone call, which I’ll do during the night-they close at five every day. One in thirty times, they summon you across the bay to the commercial docks for an inspection the next morning, in which case I’ll risk offloading the device before I go. One in ten times, they come to your marina for a look-see the next morning. But even if that happens, I’m still good because the ADM’s concealed within a specially modified housing that does to spectrometers what fresh-grated bell pepper does to bloodhounds. And most of the time, all the CBP folks do is call you and say, ‘Welcome home, sir.’ ”
And there it was, Qatada’s smile, at full wattage. Although pleased, Bream looked down so that no one would remember his face, too.
2
The CIA’s New Headquarters Building, a pair of six-story towers of sea-green glass, could have been mistaken for a modern museum. Hardly the dark fortress that Charlie, in the Hyundai’s passenger seat, had been expecting. At the wheel of the rental Corbitt was whistling the tune of “We’re Off to See the Wizard.”
Although it was two in the afternoon, Charlie would have believed it was early evening, a consequence of the enervating trip from Martinique more than the overcast
sky. A nagging sensation that he’d overlooked a clue to Bream’s plans had kept him from sleeping.
As he extricated himself from the subcompact car, his eyes smarted from fatigue, and his reflection in the window shocked him: In the gray flannel business suit and dark overcoat the consulate had procured for him, he resembled his father in old photos.
He and Corbitt proceeded through a colossal arching entryway to the skylit lobby. Feelings of inadequacy buffeted Charlie, making the bitter wind an afterthought.
Leaving him with Eskridge and a young analyst at the door of a secure conference room, Corbitt said, not entirely in jest, “They only sent me along to make sure you didn’t stop at a racetrack.”
“But I have a hunch I’m missing something,” Charlie said after detailing the events of the past few days. “What if India is a decoy? What if the real target is somewhere else, maybe even somewhere in the United States?”
Across the conference table, a giant surfboard rendered in aquamarine glass, Eskridge shared a look with the analyst, Harding Doxstader, a twentysomething version of his boss. Their look made Charlie think of parents who’ve just been informed by their child about the monsters in his closet.
“We’ve picked up a good deal of chatter that a Punjabi separatist group was in the market for an ADM,” Eskridge assured Charlie. “If not for you, though, we wouldn’t have any idea about Vasant Panchami, or even that the bomb was heading to India.”
“What if Bream just wants you to think he tried to kill me and my father?” Charlie asked. “That way, our India revelation would carry more weight.”
Eskridge shrugged. “If Bream had meant to use India as a decoy, eliminating you would have eliminated his means of decoying us.”
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