Whirlwind

by Joseph R. Garber

  WHIRLWIND

  A NOVEL

  JOSEPH R. GARBER

  For my brother, Dr. John Garber

  Contents

  Part One Charlie’s Exile

  1 Ah, Vengeance!

  2 Charlie’s Gifts

  3 Introducing Mr. Schmidt

  4 Liar’s Poker

  Part Two Charlie’s Love

  5 Roadwork

  6 Air Charlie

  7 Betrayals

  8 Cliffhanger

  Part Three Charlie’s Epitaph

  9 Memories Are Made of This

  10 Saint Charles

  Epilogue The Fall of the Following Year

  About the Author

  Also by Joseph R. Garber

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  Charlie’s Exile

  A man who tries to carry a cat home by its tail will learn a lesson that can be learned in no other way.

  — MARK TWAIN

  1

  Ah, Vengeance!

  Tuesday, July 21.

  0700 Hours Eastern Time,

  0500 Hours Mountain Time

  Charlie McKenzie glared over the rims of his half-moon reading glasses. Shuffling his Washington Post in what he hoped was, but suspected was not, an intimidating manner, he reached for his coffee. A newspaper, a cup of coffee, a dozy cat in his lap, and a peaceful morning in which to enjoy them — were they not every man’s natural-born prerogatives?

  Hugging two-year-old Jason to her hip, Carly brandished a portable telephone. “Dad,” she said breathlessly. “It’s the White House! The national security advisor!”

  Apparently his daughter held the rights of men, or at least males, in low esteem. Charlie had no one to blame but himself. Up until the day she died, Mary had insisted that Carly certainly did not get that sort of behavior from her side of the family.

  He turned in his wicker chair, looking out beyond the screened porch, past the long green expanse of a stately lawn, down to Chesapeake Bay. It was a lovely summer morning, bright but not yet hot. Perfect weather as far as the eye could see — except in the climatological zone directly above Charlie’s thundercloud brow. “Tell him to go piss up a rope.”

  “Dad!”

  “Tiss upa row,” echoed Jason. To which Molly, aged six and peeking around her mother’s skirts, added, “Mommy, Jason’s saying dirty words.”

  “Your grandfather’s influence. Again!” hissed Carly, thrusting the phone into Charlie’s lap, then dragging her children away from what doubtless would be another bad example.

  Charlie raised the phone to his ear. He spoke softly, gently. “Mornin’, Sam.”

  An unctuous answer, amiability’s illusion in every syllable: “Charlie! It’s good to hear you, man! Thank God I caught you at home! Listen, there’s a problem, a helluva problem, and the president personally asked that I call —”

  Speaking in the gentlemanly tones of a sweetly reasonable soul, Charlie interrupted. “Give him my best personal regards, and tell him I said he can screw himself.”

  The portable phone chirped like a digital bird as Charlie fingered the Off button.

  Eight seconds, he estimated as he glanced at his outrageously garish wristwatch, a solid gold Rolex President with numbers set in colored gem-stones. The preposterous thing was a gift from the Philippine government. That figured. No one in that part of the world had a bit of taste.

  …three, four, five…

  As opposed, for example, to the Italians. It was one of their presidents — who could remember which, they never stayed out of jail long enough to make memorizing their names worth the effort — who’d given Charlie the monumentally expensive, solid silver Faema espresso maker whose ambrosia he was savoring at this very moment.

  …six, seven, eight… Ring!

  Perfect timing. Charlie McKenzie never missed. Clicking the On button, he smiled beatifically, a man who had been waiting two long years for Sam to call, and who planned to enjoy himself mightily now that the roly-poly little weasel needed help. “Okay, Sam, if bunny brains doesn’t know how to do it, tell him first thing he needs a dildo.”

  Sam’s oiliness had dissipated. “Charlie, we don’t have time for this.”

  “ ‘Dildo’ usually is synonymous with ‘national security advisor,’ but not this time.”

  Now Sam was feigning sincerity. “This is an emergency. More than an emergency. The word ‘crisis’ doesn’t even begin —”

  “And an industrial-strength motor, the kind they use to run jackhammers.”

  Goodbye sincerity, hello desperation. “Okay, okay, whatever you want. Name it. It’s yours.” He paused, then hastily added, “Short of an apology, that is.”

  Charlie ran a hand down his stubbled cheek. He’d have to shave before Sam showed up on his doorstep. And that would be — he eyed his watch — in fifty-seven minutes. “Anything, Sam?”

  “If it’s in my power, yes.”

  Yup, definitely desperation. It was a step in the right direction. “Ten million dollars.” Charlie heard a barely audible Shit! “The actuarial tables tell me I’ve got another thirty-five years to live. Ten million works out to about two hundred and eighty grand a year. That’s not much in light of my decades of loyal and faithful service.”

  “Put it in T-bills, and the interest is three hundred thousand.”

  Charlie snorted, “Hey, Sam, if you’re so good at math, how come the White House can’t balance the budget?”

  “Quit busting my chops.” He cleared his throat before predictably wheedling, “I don’t suppose I could appeal to your patriotism?”

  Charlie pictured the expression on Sam’s pudgy face: slit-eyed calculation. It always was. “You did that last time. This time I’ll take cash.”

  “Damnit, man, you know there’s no way I can come up with ten million —”

  “The president’s discretionary fund. The unaudited and unpoliced account Congress dispenses once per annum. Everyone since Millard Fillmore has used it to pay for botched assassinations, fund quote-freedom fighters-unquote, and compensate that compliant abortionist on J Street who caters to careless interns.”

  “This is a pro-life administration, and you know it.”

  Rumor had it that beneath his exquisitely shellacked exterior, Sam concealed a dangerously explosive temper. Too bad Charlie liked playing with fireworks. “Same as every other administration, the only thing you’re pro is pro-reelection.”

  “Jesus, what turned you into such a cynic?”

  “A lifetime in government service.”

  There was a long silence, broken only by the nearly inaudible drum of Sam’s fingers on his desk. Charlie smiled. Charlie waited. And, just as Charlie expected, Sam caved in: “Ten million. Okay. I can handle that. It won’t be easy, but I think —”

  “Think? You’ve never thought in your life, Sam. Connived, schemed, and plotted? Sure. But thinking? Uh-uh, no.”

  “All I’m saying is that it will take time.”

  “That it will. Five minutes to be precise. I’m logging on to my Swiss bank then. If my account is ten million dollars plumper than it was yesterday, I’ll answer the phone when you call back. If not…” Charlie regretted Sam couldn’t see his fine and wolfish smirk “…then not. Bye now, Sam.”

  “No! Wait! I don’t have your account number!”

  “Oh, spare me! My personnel file is on your desk, and my account number is right there on the first page.”

  “Err…why, so it is, but —”

  The phone chirped merrily, a happy little songbird soon to be fed.

  Charlie polished off his coffee, set his partially read newspaper on a wicker table, and ambled back into the house. The porch led directly to his den. His App
le PowerBook computer was already alive, alert, and scanning the Internet for such dubious data as people like Charlie always found beguiling.

  He pecked out his Swiss bank’s computer address, entered his password, and was just in time to watch his account grow from the token thousand dollars he kept in it to ten million, one thousand dollars and no (0) cents.

  Charlie reached beneath his desk and threw a toggle switch. The computer screen flickered. His modem was no longer connected to the ultra-high-bandwidth line the Agency had kindly let him keep after dispensing with his services. Charlie was now dialing into the World Wide Web via an ordinary telephone line.

  Well, not entirely ordinary.

  The line in question disappeared through his floor, into the basement, and from there traveled via PVC conduit a distance of one hundred and thirty yards to his neighbor’s cellar. Late one evening — or, to be accurate, extremely early one morning — Charlie had paid a hacker acquaintance to bridge the wire to the neighbor’s spare telephone extension, a phone line reserved solely for emergency use by babysitters.

  Any number of agencies, bureaus, and departments monitored Charlie’s high-speed data link every minute of every day. They didn’t have a clue that his bootlegged hookup existed.

  Charlie tapped a few keys on his computer. Ten million dollars disappeared from a Swiss bank, scampering off in multiple directions to multiple mouse holes where, in due course, various cunning software programs would tuck it into a quite select number of defiantly impregnable financial institutions.

  Sam wasn’t going to get his money back. He wasn’t even going to be able to find where it had gone.

  The phone rang.

  “Hi, Sam.”

  “Everything satisfactory?”

  “So far.” Charlie emphasized the word “far.”

  Sam grunted a predictable obscenity. “What else do you want?”

  “My daughter’s child-support payments suck. That syphilitic rodent in human garb who divorced her as soon as my name started making headlines —”

  “How much, Charlie? Cut to the chase, and just tell me how much.”

  “Another ten million.”

  “Why am I not surprised? I’ll call you back in five.”

  And so he did, the government of the United States now being twenty million dollars poorer — an insignificant amount in the overall order of things, what with run-amock waste, ludicrous congressional boondoggles, the bottomless pit of pork-barrel spending, and such alike.

  Or so Charlie opined.

  He answered the phone with a cheery, “Well, done, Sam.”

  “Fuck you very much.” No cheer in that voice, none at all.

  “And the very same to you. Now, let me give you a word of advice. Don’t even think about trying to track down those funds.”

  “The NSA can find anything in the world.”

  “With respect, Sam, the National Security Agency is a bunch of cross-eyed computer geeks. All they’re good for is collecting raw data. That’s not the art of intelligence. The art of intelligence is understanding the data, winnowing through it, finding which pieces of the puzzle fit —”

  “Charlie, please.” Sam’s patience was almost gone. Charlie wasn’t happy about the “almost” part, but he’d fix that soon enough. “We have a major crisis. The worst in all my years in government. I trust, now that I’ve paid you, you’ll spare me your sermons, and let me tell you what you have to do.”

  “Oh,” Charlie chuckled. “Have to do? I think you’ve made a mistake there, Sam. The only thing you’ve bought is the privilege of speaking to me. If you want me to actually do a job, I require a down payment.”

  “Almost” disappeared. “Completely” took its place. Charlie held the phone away from his ear until the swearing stopped — ordinary anger, unfortunately, not the frenzied rage Charlie had been hoping for. He supposed he’d just have to try harder.

  “You done, Sam?”

  “Yes, I am, you treacherous Judas Iscariot sonofabitch. What the hell else do you want?”

  “A small advance against any good and worthy service I might render to my nation.”

  “I’ll give you my word —”

  “I had your word the week before you hung me out to dry. Remember your testimony, Sam? ‘No, Senator, the White House was totally unaware of these activities.’ ‘Yes, Senator, the whole sorry affair was undertaken by a rogue agent acting on his own initiative.’ ‘I completely agree, Senator, the man should be disciplined in the strictest manner allowable.’ Remember that, you treacherous Judas Iscariot sonofabitch?”

  “Twenty million ought to cover it.” Give the man credit, Charlie thought, he truly has no conscience.

  “Indeed it does. The debt is now settled. The invoice is now paid. All that remains is for you to buy an option on my future assistance.”

  “In your dreams. Be so kind as to remember that I represent the president of the United States. The most powerful man in the world. Capice? And if I want to mess up your day —”

  “You can’t do squat. Listen up, Sambo, where my services are involved, it’s a seller’s market. The only question is: Is you a buyer or is you not?”

  After a long silence, Sam answered with audible pain, “Okay, Charlie, okay. You’ll get what you want. Whatever the fuck it is.”

  My, my, they really are in trouble, Charlie thought. Opportunity knocks. “Get the DCI on the phone. Conference call.”

  “The director of Central Intelligence is not cleared for the subject at hand.”

  Hot damn! A President’s Office Only security cover! “You don’t have to tell him what he’s paying for, all you have to do is tell him to pay.”

  Sam grunted his surrender. Seconds later, the DCI’s private secretary was on the phone, seconds after that the man himself.

  Sam bit the bullet and said what he had to say: “Claude, I’ve got Charlie McKenzie on the line with me.”

  Claude inhaled sharply. Charlie was feeling happier with each passing moment.

  Sam pressed on, “Charlie’s going to ask — no, tell — you to do something. I want you to do it. No questions, no delay. The president will back you every step of the way.”

  What are you thinking there, Claude? Charlie asked silently. Are you thinking about how resolutely the president backed me?

  “Of course,” said Claude, speaking in the tones of a man who expects he is about to be gang-raped and knows there’s nothing he can do about it. “Go ahead, Charlie, tell me what I can do for you.”

  “My son-in-law. Ex-son-in-law, actually. The little skunk who married my daughter because he thought being a member of my family would advance his career. Then dumped her and their two children the moment he realized it would not.”

  Claude’s voice brightened. Maybe he’d escape serial sodomy after all. “For what it’s worth, Charlie, I consider Don’s behavior reprehensible, and I for one wish —”

  “He’s history. Today. You call him into your office, and you fire him. On the spot.”

  Salvation! Charlie could hear the relief in Claude’s tone. “With pleasure.”

  “Then he gets leprosy. No one will touch him. No one in government, no one in the private sector. He doesn’t get to work as a consultant to any of the Agency’s friends. He doesn’t wind up employed by an Agency front. He’s a leper, and the best job he can get is cleaning peep-show booths in a porn house.”

  “You’re a hard man, Charlie McKenzie.”

  “A just one, I think.”

  “True. That’s why I always liked you.” Liar! Charlie shouted, although only in his mind. “You know, I rather look forward to doing what you’ve asked. Sam, make sure the president knows that the Agency is happy to cooperate.”

  Claude disconnected his side of the call. Sam, emphasizing that his problem was not the sort to be discussed on a telephone, much less committed to e-mail or fax, said he had a helicopter waiting on the White House lawn. He’d be arriving at Charlie’s place in about forty-five minutes.


  “Forty-three minutes,” replied Charlie, who was smiling as he hadn’t smiled since getting out of prison.

  Irina drove.

  She did not know where she was. She did not know where she was going. She knew only that she had to drive this bleak highway, bitter desert on either side, asphalt night ahead, angry death behind.

  She was not there upon that road, not in any conscious sense of the word. She was — four hours earlier, although it seemed like four minutes — where Dominik had become not-Dominik, transformed into a red mist, no longer a laughing colleague sharing tedious duty but only an emptiness in the air where that which once was Dominik, who was one, became myriad, and was hurled in myriad directions.

  He’d not had time to scream.

  She saw the deer, too. First it had been limp and motionless, entangled in the wire. But then, the second time she’d seen it, it danced.

  Dead and dancing lively, a saraband in death’s embrace.

  It had begun with a hollow thump like the detonation of a distant mortar shell. Pale light speared the sky beyond a ridge, flickered, then died. Dominik pulled the Jeep Cherokee off the road. He gave her the night-vision camera, taking the infrared goggles for himself.

  The ridge bordered a two-lane road that Irina and Dominik cruised every week. They knew what was hidden out of sight beyond its crest: a well-patrolled electrified fence; farther still, but clearly visible to anyone who scrambled up the rocky slope, a small cluster of buildings, a helicopter pad, and no runway.

  No runway, no interest. Their business was aircraft. Monitoring those other unnamed bases scattered around the American Southwest was someone else’s job.

  But there had been an explosion. Dominik thought they should take a look. Maybe they’d see something that would add a little spice to their otherwise drably repetitive reports:

  The attached file contains digital images taken on the nights of the 27th through 31st near New Mexico areas 57 and 12. Images 1 to 6 show modifications in the B-2 Bomber’s airframe being tested for airworthiness. Images 7 and 8…