High Treason

by Sean McFate

  “Locke!” cried Jen. “Tom, what are you doing? We got to get out of here, now!”

  “No, wait. Let’s take a second to admire this, before it’s gone. All of it,” I said, sadness in my voice. It was an Armageddon of books, knowledge, culture.

  “Seriously?!” Bits of flaming ceiling rained down.

  “Yeah.”

  She gut-punched me, and I gasped. Then she picked me up and took me in a fireman’s carry to the window, which her Saiga obliterated. Then she tossed me out headfirst. Next, she landed on me.

  “Ow!” I said as she rolled off.

  “Serves you right, you dunderhead,” she said, grabbing my arm and yanking me to my feet. The entire mansion was ablaze with no firefighters because all roads to the estate were blocked. We ran into the baroque garden and flopped in a concealed flower bed. There we lay on our backs, staring at the moonless sky and its soft, flame-red glow. Automatic gunfire occasionally echoed in the distance, as did the wail of sirens. Soon the police would arrive and we would need to vanish again.

  “I need a vacation,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  Chapter 57

  The Chevalier descended the narrow spiral stairs to the castle vault. The medieval stairway was encased in rough-hewn stone and was barely a man’s width, allowing a single defender to hold off a group of invaders. The air was moist and stank of mildew as he approached the bottom. Once a mighty athlete, the Chevalier was still nimble despite his age.

  To think that Winters believed I served the Russians, he thought. Earlier, he had downgraded Winters from “useful idiot” to “brazen knave,” a more dangerous species of moron. Now he was demoted to full dead, an improvement but not without costs to the organization.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he felt around and found the light switch. Dim fluorescent lights flickered to life, and he continued through tunnels dating back to the castle’s founding in the thirteenth century, if not earlier. Before it was a stone castle, it had been a wooden fortress. No one knew how old the passages were, and some speculated they dated back to the Roman era.

  At last the Chevalier came to a heavy wooden door with black iron rivets and an ornate hinge that looked like ivy covering the door. He pulled out a key made of titanium, inserted it in a secret hole hidden in the metal ivy, and opened the door. Beyond was the vault. Lights automatically turned on. The air was climate controlled and fresh.

  The space was cavernous and two stories tall, with no windows. The vaulted ceiling was painted night blue with eight-pointed stars crafted in silver leaf. Inscribed around the rim of the ceiling was: Monstrant regibus astra viam (“The stars show the way to kings”). The walls and columns were painted red with gold leaf trim. As a boy, he remembered how the secret room would shimmer under torchlight. Now it looked comatose with modern electrical lighting.

  Not everything new is better, he lamented as he entered. Lining the walls were treasures that the Louvre would salivate over. But his greatest prize was the tomb of Sir Geoffroy de Charny, who fell defending the king of France at the disastrous Battle of Poitiers in 1356. De Charny was one of Europe’s most admired chevaliers during his lifetime, a true and perfect knight. Now he rested here, in the family vault, after centuries of aristocratic intermarriage that took his remains across Europe.

  “How are you today, old friend?” asked the Chevalier, patting the sarcophagus.

  De Charny and the French king founded the Order of the Star in 1351, and the group went underground after the battle, where it had remained and thrived ever since. Once a secret society dedicated to good, it had devolved into a for-profit conglomerate controlled by a dozen intermarried families.

  Mon Dieu! How we have fallen, he thought. Only he took the Order’s original vows seriously, and was hence dubbed “Chevalier” by his cousins. It was not a compliment.

  “I wonder what counsel you would give us now. It is a desperate hour,” he said to the sarcophagus. With a sigh, he approached a mammoth wooden desk with stars carved into it, and took a seat. A bank of large-screen monitors lit up and looked wholly out of place in the ancient vault. Eleven faces stared back at him, some old and others merely middle-aged.

  Oh dear, I’m late again, he thought.

  “The Order of the Star is now convened,” an elderly woman said, her voice sharp and alert.

  “Let us not waste time. Chevalier, please provide us with an update,” said a man in his forties on a private jet. Its ceiling was a light corporate gray with a subtle pattern of eight-pointed stars.

  “It is a setback, cousins. Our headquarters in Manhattan and Long Island estate were destroyed in one week. Elektra was demolished, as you know, and our agent is dead—”

  “Are we exposed?” interrupted a man, about as old as the Chevalier. A few others nodded their mutual concern. The rules of the Order did not permit interruption, but these were exceptional times.

  “No, cousin. As of now, we are not exposed,” replied the Chevalier. “I am working to contain the problem. There is no link between us and our field agent, Winters. Ultimately, others shall be blamed, and we will remain anonymous, as always.”

  “Blowback could destroy the Order,” spoke a woman in her fifties. “It’s not 1351 anymore. News travels fast now.” The Chevalier dismissed her swipe.

  Another member spoke up. “As I said from the beginning, it was madness to stoke an arms race between the U.S. and Russia for profit’s sake. Even with our substantial holdings in the cyber, aerospace, and defense sectors, such a scheme was hubris.”

  “Not so,” countered the Chevalier. “Our predecessors did well in the 1930s, backing Franco and the Communists.”

  “But it midwifed World War II and the Holocaust,” said the youngish woman.

  “We did not create Hitler—” said the Chevalier.

  “Nor did we stop him,” she interrupted.

  The Chevalier nodded acquiescence. “Not our finest hour, cousins. But let us not be hypocritical. We have always done well by war. The Order’s vast wealth was not made in the cool forges of agriculture but in the furnace of conflict.”

  “Perhaps, but you risk too much,” added a hoary voice. “For 670 years our families have worked together to achieve greatness, and now we gamble everything?”

  “We are great because they gambled,” said the Chevalier, pounding his fist on the medieval table. “We plan our enterprises cautiously and carry them out boldly. It has been our way since Chevalier Geoffroy, but we have grown flaccid in our success and decadence.”

  The Council erupted in raucous argument.

  “Silence! Silence!” gaveled the elderly woman who convened the meeting. Everyone fell quiet.

  “All is not lost, brothers and sisters. We still have this,” said the Chevalier, pulling out the aluminum briefcase. “Inside is the fate of three American cities. Shall we proceed with a new plan?”

  Heads nodded and knuckles rapped.

  Chapter 58

  President Hugh Anderson sat behind the Resolute Desk, his forehead resting in his hands as if he were praying. He was alone. The situation was far worse than most knew.

  Lord, you know I’ve never been much of a churchgoer. But if you’re listening, I could sure use some help, he prayed. He glanced around the empty Oval and saw oil paintings of dead presidents staring down at him. Judging him.

  “Yeah, and what would you do?” he asked defiantly, but Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt remained mute. “Didn’t think so.”

  Anderson sighed and looked out the window at the Rose Garden. It was just shrubbery and the yellow grass of March. Dozens of pictures were displayed on the small credenza behind his chair, and he grabbed the one of the vice president, himself, and their wives deep-sea-fishing off Key West ten years ago. He had caught an eight-foot-long sailfish, and all four of them sat at the back of the boat, holding it on their laps for the camera with big grins. He could still smell the engine fumes, fish guts, and salt spray. Happier times, he
thought with a smile, and his eyes glistened.

  “I’m sorry, Henry and Martha. Please forgive me, wherever you are,” he said, and a tear streamed down his face as he delicately put the picture back in its spot. Good grief, I haven’t cried in forty years, he thought as he struggled to hold it in.

  Henry and Martha were not supposed to die. What was I supposed to do? he thought, choking back tears. Don’t blame yourself. Blame Brad Winters.

  “Winters,” he whispered with loathing, prolonging the name like a curse. Somehow Winters had corrupted George, another old friend. He picked up a second picture, this one of Jackson and himself at a rodeo in Dallas while on the campaign trail. They were both holding plastic mugs of cheap beer and wearing cowboy hats. Ever the Boston Brahmin, Jackson looked uncomfortably out of place in a button-down oxford shirt and blue blazer amid cows.

  “You old codger,” he said. Anderson wanted to give his friend a pardon but knew he couldn’t. Treason is treason, and his was high treason. “We all make our choices.”

  And I made mine, he thought. Forty-five years paddling around the DC swamp bestowed a sixth, seventh, and eighth sense for bullshit. He smelled the reek of feces from Jackson and Winters shortly after his inaugural address, two years ago. But how to rein them in? Both men were powerful and shrewd, and they could manipulate the system for their protection just as easily as he could order their arrest.

  That was when he had turned to Apollo Outcomes. Sometimes you needed an outside-the-system solution to fix an inside-the-system problem. In this case, he needed someone to bring Jackson and Winters to heel—by any means necessary—while keeping his name out of it. Apollo did its job perfectly.

  Thirty minutes earlier, Apollo had confirmed that all three nuclear weapons in the three cities were recovered and disarmed. Jackson was contained, Winters had disappeared, and the Wagner Group was destroyed, at least on American soil. None of it would make the news.

  Only Winters’s client remained a mystery, but Apollo was on their scent now. Soon they would be neutralized, one way or another. Unlike the CIA, Apollo could liquidate America’s enemies where they hid. The company was not constrained by Executive Order 12333, which prohibited assassination. All it took was a phone call and a phrase—“Search and destroy”—and it would be done, off the books of course. National security without the red tape.

  A knock on the door. “Mr. President? Are you ready, Mr. President? We’re running late,” came a woman’s voice on the other side. It was his press secretary.

  “Give me another minute, please,” he replied, as he removed a handkerchief and dried his eyes. Then he straightened himself and checked his looks in a vanity mirror kept in the top drawer.

  Focus. Insight. Hope, he thought. He closed his eyes and took three deep breaths. Holding in the last breath, he opened his eyes and gave a long exhale. Refreshed, he said, “Send them in.”

  The door swung open and journalists streamed in, crowding the Oval. People murmured in anticipation. Half an hour ago, the White House press office shocked the media world and announced the president would deliver a speech. In it, he would explain who was behind the VP’s assassination, the terrorist attack on the bridge, and the battle on the Mall. All would be made clear. The press release simply said “new evidence had come to light” and the “responsible party will surprise you.” Lastly, “these incidences prove the world is facing a new breed of threat.”

  The global news cycle went berserk.

  All his life, the president wanted to deliver a speech that would change the destiny of the world. As a boy, he kept a copy of 100 Greatest Speeches in History on his nightstand, and would pen overwrought monologues the way artists doodled on scraps of paper. Such is the legacy of every great statesman, from Pericles to Churchill, and his moment had finally arrived. But he was about to do something previously unthinkable: ad lib it. Not even an outline. Somehow it felt true.

  Anderson beamed as everyone got situated, with the staccato of camera shutters punctuating the air. Under the desk and against his legs were a dozen blown-up photographs. Each photo was a secret shot of Winters meeting Jackson: deep in a garage, in a pew of an empty church, lunch at an elite members-only club, parked at the end of a runway, and other obscure venues. Each photo would make a dramatically timed appearance during his speech, and all were courtesy of Apollo Outcomes, which would go unnamed.

  Once the reporters were packed in, the president opened his mouth and delivered his perfect Churchillian speech.

  Epilogue

  We lay together under the cabin roof, our minds and bodies contented. A warm ocean breeze gently blew chimes made of seashells, making a peaceful clacking sound. The surf sang us a lullaby. Our cabin sat on a rocky outcrop with its own deck and pool overlooking the aquamarine Pacific, with a petite stairway to the sand. The bungalow had no walls because it had no neighbors, other than sea turtles that occasionally dug nests in the beach below. Polynesia is where you go to escape the world.

  “Are you awake, my darling?” cooed Jen, stirring slightly. We had been doing this for two weeks or more, and it had become our new lifestyle.

  “Barely,” I murmured, pressing her naked body into mine. She giggled.

  “What do you want to do this afternoon?”

  We had spent our days talking about life’s mysteries, hiking the volcanic ridgeline, sparring on the beach, scuba diving the atoll, and playing in our bungalow. Of our list, we favored playing the most.

  “I have an idea,” I whispered, as she inhaled sharply and closed her eyes.

  Before we left, Lava and Tye were heading for Austria. New mission, they said, inviting us along. But we demurred. In the course of one week, our individual lives exploded and then miraculously reassembled as one. We wanted to explore it together, away from the din of the world.

  “No one deserves a break more than you,” Lava had said, nodding. “I’ve asked our client to clear your names, so you can travel normally again. Your names have been purged from every government watchlist and Interpol database. Think of it as a parting thank-you.”

  “Wait, how’s that possible? Who’s your client?!” asked Jen, ever the FBI agent. But I knew better than to ask such things, and I also had a hunch.

  “When you get bored—and you will—call me,” said Lava. “We need quality people. Also . . .” He pulled out two slim phones slightly larger than a credit card. “If you ever need our help, give us a call.”

  “For anything,” added Tye.

  “We take care of our own,” said Lava, putting his hands on our shoulders. We exchanged man hugs and departed.

  That was more than two weeks ago.

  Now, Jen crumpled on me, breathless. We were both sweaty.

  Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.

  “What’s that?” asked Jen, alarmed. We’d packed no electronics.

  Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.

  I got up, trying to locate the source of the electronic noise.

  Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.

  Jen reached into her backpack and started rummaging around.

  “I think it’s coming from here,” I said, digging through my backpack.

  “No, I’m pretty sure it’s here,” she said, holding up a travel purse.

  I held up my passport pouch, also buzzing, and we exchanged quizzical glances. Opening them, we pulled out the slim phones Lava had given us. We had forgotten they were there.

  “Hello?” “Hello?” we answered simultaneously, hearing each other as if we were on a conference call.

  “Voice match indicates Tom Locke and Jennifer Lin,” said a serious voice.

  Jen paused, thinking about whether to respond. Not me.

  “Affirmative,” I said.

  Jen shot me a glance saying: What the heck are you doing?

  My expression read: Hey, Lava gave us this phone. It’s probably OK. But she shook her head in dumbfounded amazement.

  “This is a secure line,” said the voice. “Lava, Tye, and their entire team went missing outside of Vienn
a twenty-six hours ago. We need help investigating what happened, and a possible rescue mission. We are critically low on available personnel right now. Are you available to assist? It’s urgent.”

  Jen’s face screamed: Wait! Let’s think this through like rational adults and arrive at consensual decision.

  “Absolutely! When can you extract us?” I blurted.

  Jen glowered at me, her expression saying: You are totally untrainable, Locke.

  “We already have a seaplane inbound to your location, ETA ninety minutes. It will take you to Fakarava airport, where a jet is on standby.”

  “Roger,” I said, and the phone went dead.

  “Tom Locke, don’t make me punch you,” said Jen, joking. I think.

  “Look, honeysuckle, we’re built for action and Lava needs our help. He’d do it for us,” I added. “Besides, he was right. We’ll soon get bored here, all this paradise. Yuck!” I teased. Jen punched me.

  “Ow!” I said, although she didn’t hit hard. Then she pounced.

  “We only have ninety minutes,” she said.

  About the Author

  SEAN McFATE is a professor of strategy at the National Defense University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank. He served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and then worked for a major private military corporation, where he ran operations similar to those in his novels with Bret Witter, Shadow War and Deep Black. He is the author of The New Rules of War and The Modern Mercenary and holds degrees from Brown University, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He lives with his family in Washington, DC.

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  Also by Sean McFate