The Patriot Threat (Cotton Malone series)

by Steve Berry

  Malone leaped left from his boat into the channel. He hit the water feetfirst and surfaced just as the boats crashed into the concrete tripod piling, both hulls vaulting skyward, engines whining, propellers beating only air. They careened down and splashed the water on the channel side, but did not float long, quickly sinking, their engines’ wild chaos drowned to silence.

  He breaststroked to the far side of the channel and found a sandbar only a few yards beyond the defined perimeter, the water barely knee-deep. He suddenly realized how close he’d come to disaster. He searched the darkness for the man from the other boat, but saw and heard nothing. He stood in the lagoon, a good mile from the nearest shore, eyes burning, hair plastered to his skull. Only the silent islets, the faraway buildings of Venice, and the dim line of the mainland could be seen. Overhead, he caught the lights of a passenger jet homing in for a landing. He knew this water was not the cleanest in the world, nor at the moment the warmest, but he had no choice.

  Swim.

  He heard the growl of an engine, back toward the south, the direction he’d come from. No lights were associated with the sound, but in the darkness he caught the black outline of a boat cruising his way. He still carried his Beretta in his pocket, but doubted the gun would be of much use. Sometimes they worked after a dousing, sometimes not. He shrank down in the water, his feet now encased with a soft layer of muck.

  The boat eased closer, cruising at the edge of the channel.

  The nearest light was five hundred yards away at the next piling. The one that had been positioned here, nearby, had been obliterated in the crash.

  The boat stopped, its engine switched off.

  Another sleek V-hull.

  A sole figure stood at its helm.

  “Malone. You out there?”

  He recognized the voice. Male. Younger. Southern accent.

  Luke Daniels.

  He stood. “About time. I wondered where you were.”

  “I didn’t expect you to go Superman on me, flying through the sky.”

  He freed his feet from the muck and trudged closer.

  Luke stood in the boat and stared down at him. “Seems the first time we met you were pulling me from the water in Denmark.”

  He stretched an arm up for some help. “Looks like we’re now even on that one.”

  SEVEN

  KIM POURED HIMSELF A GENEROUS SPLASH OF WHISKEY. HIS PENTHOUSE suite two decks above Larks’ was a four-room monstrosity filled with mahogany and rattan furniture. He’d been impressed by the size and grandeur, along with its amenities like rich food, ample drink, and a massive spray of fresh flowers provided each day. The in-room bar came stocked with some excellent regional wines and American brown whiskey, both of which he’d also enjoyed.

  A grandfather clock with Westminster chimes announced the presence of midnight and the beginning of November 11. Pyongyang was seven hours ahead, the sun already shining there on Tuesday morning. His half brother, North Korea’s Dear Leader, would be rising for another day.

  Kim hated him.

  While his own mother—kind and well bred—had been his father’s lawful wife, his half brother sprang from a long-standing affair with a national opera star. Both his father and grandfather had kept many mistresses. The practice seemed perfectly acceptable, except that his mother hated infidelity and became clinically depressed at her husband’s callousness. She eventually fled the country and settled in Moscow, dying a few years back. He’d been there with her at the end, holding her hand, listening to her laments of how life had treated her so cruelly.

  Which it had.

  He could say the same.

  He’d been educated at private international schools in Switzerland and Moscow, first earning the respected title of Small General, then Great Successor. From living overseas he acquired a taste for Western luxury, particularly designer clothes and expensive cars, again not unlike his father. Eventually he’d returned home and worked in the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, then was assigned to head the nation’s Computer Center, where North Korea waged a covert cyber-war on the world. Next he would have garnered high military appointments, moving closer and closer to the center of power. But the incident in Japan cost him everything. Now, at fifty-eight years old, he was all but nonexistent. What had been the harm? He’d just wanted to take two children to Disneyland.

  “We cannot rule without the army,” his father said. “It is the foundation of the Kim family’s hold on national power. My father acquired their loyalty and I have maintained that. But after your antics, they have no confidence in you.”

  He felt an illogical mixture of shame at his error and pride in his stubbornness, so he truly wanted to know, “For what reason?”

  “You are irresponsible. You always have been. Life to you is what you read in those adventure novels. What you write about in those wild stories of yours. The plays and shows you watch, they are all nonsense. None of it is real, except in your mind.”

  He hadn’t realized his father knew of his private passions.

  “You do not possess what is required to lead this nation. You are an incessant dreamer, and there is no place for those here.”

  To him generals were like schools of fish, each floating in tune with the other, none ever wanting to risk swimming alone. What one did, all did. They were useless, except in times of war. But war was the last thing on his mind.

  Lost confidence in him?

  That was about to change.

  His father had been a mercilessly practical man, depressing in appearance. He’d cut his hair in a short military style and, in public, wore drab Mao suits that looked ridiculous. His half brother emulated that style, another inept fool, thirty-nine years old, homeschooled by his whore mother and shielded from the world. But that had proven an unexpected advantage. While Kim had been sent abroad for an education, his father’s two other sons, both illegitimate, had been able to grow closer to him. The adoration that had once been his alone became spread among his siblings. And when he’d embarrassed his country on the world stage, those pretenders became players.

  He glossed his throat with more of the whiskey.

  One bright side, though, had emerged from tonight. No $20 million U.S. would be making its way to Pyongyang for any birthday. His half brother had ruled long enough to have amassed his share of enemies. Thank goodness loyalties ran shallow in North Korea. Some of his half brother’s enemies had become his friends and quietly reported the details of this year’s tribute. He’d intended on stealing the money and depriving his half brother of the funds, hiring a criminal group from Macao to handle the task. Now that money was gone. But for him, its destruction served the same purpose. Thankfully, personal finances were not an issue. He had more than enough monetary resources. On that score his father had not failed him.

  He refilled his glass with more whiskey.

  He’d actually never met his half brother. Custom required that a leader’s male children be raised independently of one another, the oldest son always favored. He’d heard that his half brother openly thought of his older sibling as an overweight, careless playboy, incapable of any serious responsibility, no danger to him at all. But underestimating him would be his half brother’s undoing. He’d gone to great lengths to create that carefree public image. He’d found that being considered an unimportant, embarrassing disgrace—a drunkard—brought with it freedom of movement. It also helped that he lived in Macao, out of the limelight, and never openly interfered in North Korean politics. From time to time the press would seek him out, but his comments were always silly and nonsensical. He was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

  He smiled.

  What a glorious resurrection he was about to experience.

  The look on his half brother’s face would be worth the indignities he’d been forced to endure.

  And all thanks to Anan Wayne Howell’s The Patriot Threat.

  Law and finance had always interested him. He liked how they were so intricately relat
ed, especially within the United States. Americans prided themselves on a strict adherence to law. Stare decisis, they called it. To stand by that which is decided. Most legal systems around the world rejected the concept, and with good reason since it came with a flaw. What if adherence to “that decided” meant disaster? Did you follow the law then? Not in North Korea. But the Americans? They would be a different story.

  He emptied his glass with one long swallow.

  His laptop sat on the table before him, its screen filled with a page from The Patriot Threat. He’d been rereading a part of it earlier before visiting Paul Larks. He studied the passage once again.

  By an executive order signed in 1942, Franklin Roosevelt taxed all personal income over $25,000 ($352,000 in today’s value) at 100%. Can you imagine? Work hard an entire year, make good decisions, earn a respectable income, then give everything over $25,000 ($352,000 today) to the government. Congress disagreed with FDR and, in its infinite wisdom, lowered the rate to 90%. Eventually, tax rates were changed by Presidents Kennedy and Reagan. Kennedy lowered the top rate to 70%, Reagan plunged it to 28%. Following each of those tax cuts, government revenues skyrocketed and investments increased. Both the 1960s and 1980s were times of great innovation. The first President Bush raised the top rate to 31%, Clinton climbed even higher to 39.6%, the second Bush cut it to 35%. Currently, the top rate has returned to 39.6%. Taxes on personal income account for 82% of all federal revenues. Corporate income taxes contribute another 9%. So over 90% of federal revenues come from the taxation of income.

  What was the proverb?

  A crafty rabbit has three caves.

  Just another way of saying—scatter your money and your attention.

  When he was stripped of all rights to succession, his father’s propaganda machine had gone to great lengths to scandalize him publicly. He’d been ordered to accept the insults in silence, then move abroad. His father had wanted him gone.

  That was fourteen years ago.

  His father died two years after that, his half brother immediately taking the title Dear Leader and assuming absolute control.

  And that could have been the end of it all.

  But a few months ago, while prowling the Internet, he’d accidentally discovered Anan Wayne Howell, one of those events that could only be described as fortuitous. After scanning through the website, he’d downloaded Howell’s book and read every word, wondering if it might be his ticket out of obscurity. Dreamer? Why not? He possessed something his half brother would never enjoy.

  Vision.

  And that had allowed him to realize the potential from Howell’s radical thesis. One problem existed, though. Howell had not been seen or heard from in three years. Kim had to find him. Originally, he’d thought this trip was the way to make that happen. Now his only lead seemed the woman with the black leather satchel and a possibility that Howell might appear tomorrow.

  He poured more whiskey.

  When he’d tried to visit Disneyland in Tokyo it had not been solely for his children. He was a fan, too. So much that a framed print hung on his office wall back in Macao. It depicted Walt Disney himself, above a statement the visionary was noted for saying—It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.

  That it was.

  Hana stepped inside from the balcony, where she’d retreated once they’d returned from Larks’ room. Solitude had always been her friend. Of all his children she seemed most like him. She was twenty-three years old and, sadly, life had not been kind to her. Many scars remained in a sullenness that refused to leave her.

  “You need to see this,” she said in Korean.

  She spoke so little that he always listened to every word.

  He followed her back outside.

  Below, he caught sight of a motor launch rounding in from the channel, making its way down a narrow man-made waterway that led to a concrete pier. Water taxis abounded, depositing passengers who were making their way back toward the ship’s gangway.

  The new boat slowed.

  They stood a hundred feet above it, concealed by the night, and he could see two men, one he recognized.

  The annoying American.

  Hana had spent the past ten days keeping close to Larks, their task complicated by a man who seemed to be doing the same. She’d managed to snap a photo, and sources in Pyongyang had informed them that his name was Harold Earl “Cotton” Malone. Tall, trim, broad-shouldered, with sandy-colored hair. A former navy commander who’d worked twelve years for an intelligence unit called the Magellan Billet, part of the U.S. Justice Department. Malone had retired three years ago and now owned an old-book shop in Denmark.

  So what was he doing here?

  Malone had followed each time Larks had left the ship, wandering through Dubrovnik in Croatia, Valletta on Malta, and Kotor in Montenegro.

  “Seems Mr. Malone has returned,” he said.

  They knew he’d left the ship a few hours ago, Malone’s absence making their visit to Larks possible. The missing leather satchel still weighed on his mind. There may indeed be a way to find it, but the nosy American below could be a problem.

  “He’ll check Larks’ room before heading to his own,” he said. “He’s done that every night.” He handed her a keycard. “I took it earlier when we left. I thought it might come in handy.”

  She accepted the offering with the same pointed silence he’d come to expect.

  “It’s time to deal with this problem.”

  And he told her what he wanted done.

  She nodded and left the balcony.

  EIGHT

  ATLANTA

  6:20 P.M.

  STEPHANIE TURNED ONTO THE GRAVELED DRIVEWAY OF HER house. She lived forty miles north of Atlanta on the shores of Lake Lanier, in a stone cottage surrounded by tall pines that overlooked the placid water.

  She stepped from the car and retrieved a newspaper at the end of the drive. She’d left so early this morning that it had not yet arrived. The cool evening air was typical November, and as she walked around to the backyard she listened to birds serenading one another while they searched for dinner. The attorney general of the United States sat on a terrace lined with autumn flowers.

  Her boss was sipping on a mug of something steamy and smiled when she spotted Stephanie. “I see you made it out in one piece.”

  Stephanie slid back one of the metal chairs and settled into its thick cushion. “It was interesting, to say the least.”

  Harriett Engle was a recent appointee, previously Kentucky’s senior senator. When she’d announced that her fourth term would be her last, President Danny Daniels had asked her to resign early and serve as his third attorney general. He hadn’t fared well with two previous AG choices. One had proven a turncoat, the other inept. Harriett seemed the exception. Smart, savvy, competent. Initially, Stephanie and Engle had not hit it off—too much testosterone between them—but they’d eventually come to an understanding.

  “You have a lovely home,” Harriett said. “You were smart when you bought this place.”

  That she was. She’d left the key where Harriett could find it.

  “After I was sworn in, I read your file,” her boss said. “You’ve been a single woman a long time. Do you think you’ll ever stop missing him?”

  Her husband, Lars, had taken his own life years ago. Thankfully, with Cotton Malone’s help, she’d settled all her disputes with the past. “We lived apart for a long time before he died. Still, his death hit me hard.”

  Harriett smiled. “My husband passed a few years ago.”

  She already knew that. Engle was approaching seventy, her age belied by the presence of high cheekbones, a ruddy tone, and bright-green eyes. Her blondish-gray hair, raked flat against her scalp and twisted in a knot, lay as smooth as marble. Some might say a surgeon had restored some of her youth, but the allegation would be a lie. That was simply not this woman’s style. Stephanie had come to know that Harriett’s sly smile offered no clue to her mood, and usually contradicted her true
emotions. Also, a disarming, grandmother-like voice masked an intellect first nurtured in law school, then refined at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

  “Tell me what happened,” Harriett said.

  And she reported the events from the mall ending with, “Chick-fil-A Man seemed to like his job. But I’d never have such half-assed, pathetic fools working for me.”

  Contrary to what was said during the show staged in the department store, Terra Lucent had promptly reported the first contact made by Treasury and the blackmail attempt. That information had been passed up the line to Harriett, and they’d allowed the incursion into the Magellan Billet to find out what was going on. The encounter at the mall had been arranged by Stephanie to flush out the problem, knowing that Terra was most likely being watched. Audio surveillance of their meeting seemed a given, which was why the mall had been chosen for the locale. Once Chick-fil-A Man knew Terra had confessed, it seemed reasonable that Treasury would make a move.

  And it had.

  “They’re definitely focused on Paul Larks,” she said. “And they don’t want Cotton around.”

  All of which seemed puzzling. Cotton’s task had been simple. The U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama had requested the Billet’s assistance. Standard procedure called for the names of all federal fugitives to be provided to the National Security Agency. The label Anan Wayne Howell was an unusual combination, easily flagged, and had been detected during NSA’s routine international telephone surveillance. From that the FBI had learned that Larks would be traveling to Venice to board a cruise boat and meet with Howell. Three years Howell had been on the run, and the U.S. attorney thought this might be a good opportunity to snag him. So Stephanie had hired Cotton to shadow Larks and see what developed. A typical in-and-out scenario that should have been without drama.

  “I’m told Mr. Malone can be a handful,” Harriett said.

  “That’s true. But he gets the job done.” She paused. “The secretary of Treasury has apparently decided that these missing copies are so important, he’s willing to threaten and coerce members of another intelligence unit. Interestingly, the secretary doesn’t feel he can simply ask us for the information. On both incursions into my files, they’ve only gone after the reports Cotton has made from that cruise.”