by Sam Powers
“You were talking about the group, old friend, the ACF,” Brennan said. “Tell me about it, about its connection to the bomb.”
The Spaniard squinted his way through a few more memories before getting back on point. “It has faced much… retaliation. Bosnia, East Timor … blood flows downhill. Abbott learned that. He knew much. And now she does, too.” He giggled slightly, like an old man who’d lost his faculties in the moment of a fond memory.
“And South Africa?”
Bustamante smiled through crocodile teeth. “Si, the stupid South Africans. They lost one, lost a bomb. It was madness.” His eyes began to flutter backwards. A second later, his head tipped back and Bustamante was sleeping.
Brennan felt he had all he was going to get; he started to pack up his gear. He needed to get out of the hotel – and the city – in short order. He’d try one more round with Bustamante in five minutes, after the stress to the businessman’s system had subsided somewhat. He retrieved a bottle of water from the tiny refrigerator under the desk and downed it in three swallows.
The room door was flung open violently, smacking against the wall from the force of a kick. Brennan saw a chorus of shapes, men rushing in; Bustamante’s men had either woken up, or others had come to spell them off duty.
And it hadn’t taken them long to track down their boss.
13. /
DEC. 12, 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C.
John Younger studied his opponent’s speech on his office TV. He was looking for signs of weakness in the other man’s delivery, issues or agendas that might trip him up, anything he might be able to use when they inevitably met in a public debate. But March was on platform, solid.
Younger, the ranking senator from Pennsylvania, had been sparring with Addison March for a few years. His Republican opponent was a new face, charismatic and able to rally people to him. And in Younger’s view, March’s ultra-right ideology made him a menace to public service. He’d been telling himself for six months that his own quest for the presidency was as much about preventing March’s ideas and direction as promoting his own. It wasn’t true, as Younger was a veteran campaigner, and had lived off the prestige of power for five decades; he was as morally fluid as the voter base required him to be. But it made him feel better about the slings and arrows of the campaign trail to tell himself that carrying on the family Democrat tradition was about ideas and social perspective.
Each man was now the prohibitive party favorite to win the nomination for 2016, and both had long since started campaigning nationally for the Oval office, no longer worried about shoring up party support.
March was scoring points on the continued absence of a deportation-based refugee and immigrant policy, scaring his base, which Younger believed was vehemently racist and ignorant. He continually raised the specter of gang crime in Phoenix and San Diego, tying it to the vast number of Mexican immigrants that both cities accepted without ever offering statistical proof that the two were related. His latest speech had even revived the long-dormant idea of a wall between the two nations, an impractical and absurd concept, Younger thought. Even March had to realize that.
Still, the man made him nervous, and Younger decided those nerves weren’t likely to be calmed until he received the President’s public endorsement.
His office line buzzed. “Sir, Mark Fitzpatrick is here,” his secretary intoned.
The younger man entered the office a few moments later, dressed in his customary grey suit and dark tie. “Senator,” he said.
“Mark, good to see you. You said you have an update?”
“My sources at the agency say the individual discussed at the NSC session is in play, in Spain.”
“They were pushing hard for Bustamante as a suspect,” Younger noted. “I have to assume they’re going right to the source.”
“Likely surveillance to start with.”
“Are we expecting news back from field level?”
“No. As discussed this one is totally off the books.”
Younger smiled. It sounded like Fitzpatrick had things well in hand. “How confident should we be with how things are going?”
“Quietly so, I’d say,” Fitzpatrick offered. “You have no exposure anyway.”
Younger smiled. That much was true, and it meant that he could spend a little more time concentrating on Addison March. He looked around at his office, its relatively small waiting area, the cheap wood paneling and small windows. The Oval Office was much, much more appealing, Younger thought, and as much as he deserved.
AMMAN, JORDAN
A thirteen-hour flight to the east, Ahmed Khalidi was enjoying the far more opulent surroundings of his third palace. His office was the size of an aircraft hangar but, despite the ninety-five degree heat outdoors, remained at a steady seventy at all times, its marble floors cold underfoot, the whitewashed interior making it seem bright all the time.
His mammoth desk sat halfway across the room, some forty feet from the double doors. Marble pillars adorned each corner of the room stretching up to the ceiling twenty feet above, and a pair of white tiger pelts lay in front of the large fireplace along one wall. The phone on his desk was gold, as were the door handles, lamp standards and fixtures in the palace. He had insisted on at least eighteen karats.
In truth, Khalidi spent little time there. If not for family responsibilities to his father, the Sheik, he would have remained in Europe whenever possible, enjoying his homes in Brussels, Paris, Nice and Geneva.
That, and taking care of business. He had been watching the news for an hour on the eighty-inch screen, which rose from the floor just ahead of his desk on a single button’s command. There had been a brief update on the shootings of Lord Abbott and Marie La Pierre, but no real new information was offered. As with the other five remaining ACF board members, Khalidi was nervous, worried that on any given day, he might step outside and be cut down by a sniper.
And so it fell to his long-time adviser, Faisal Mohammed, to put him at ease. It was a task the diminutive Egyptian-born aide knew would not be easy, and getting the appropriate information was costing a fortune. Fortunately, Khalidi had several to spare.
“If Arabs cannot see themselves represented among the world’s leaders as equals, we will never outgrow the mistrust western culture has in us, or us in it,” Khalidi was saying, finishing up a longer thought. “That, ultimately, is the entire purpose of The ACF. And if the membership be damned for profiting from that progress, then so be it. But it is essential business, nonetheless. We make decisions, develop policy and law that, whispered in the right ears, can redirect the course of history. And if I cannot even risk venturing out in public, it will become untenable.”
Mohammed, a man of middling height with a young face and dark-rimmed eyeglasses, nodded and confirmed he would call their contact as they spoke and find out what the various intelligence agencies were still doing to track down the sniper. Secretly he loathed Khalidi, who for several years had openly mocked Faisal’s Egyptian heritage in front of Khalidi’s relatives from the Yemen, Jordan and the UAE. The man was obviously unbalanced, seeing himself as the arbiter of how both the Muslim world and other faiths should proceed into the next millennium. Psychotic, perhaps.
But the man’s immense wealth and power not only frightened Faisal, it also excited him, and had enabled him to do and see things that would otherwise have been out of reach.
The call was answered after three rings.
“I hear it is sunny in Pennsylvania this year,” Faisal said.
“Except when it’s dark and rainy,” the contact replied.
“What have you got for me?” Faisal asked, once the pair had assured their identities. “We feel out of the discussion on this right now.”
The contact was brusque. “There are leads being explored. An agent is in place in Europe. That’s about all we know at this point.”
“What leads?” Faisal asked. “What agent? We are paying you a lot of money for details, not obscure references.”
“When you need to know, you will,” the contact said. “In the meantime, have you tried the mistress yet? It’s my feeling that if Abbott were to have passed information to or through anyone, she’d be the one. He trusted her, but she was oblivious to his work.”
“Efforts are being made.”
“On our end as well. For reasons of potential embarrassment, POTUS is involved in this.”
Faisal couldn’t help but be surprised. The contact was confirming what they’d already come to suspect, that Abbott had been a double agent. But now it appeared it was for the Americans, and not his homeland. A surprise, Faisal thought. “Fine. But when you’ve got something more concrete, we want to know.”
He hung up the phone. “He confirmed your suspicions,” he told the chairman. “They are searching for any more intelligence that Abbott might have collected. But it could be a long time.”
Khalidi was worried. “Faisal, as you know, my stake in all of this is much higher than it is for others. The damage to my family’s reputation…”
“I know, sir, and I will ensure there is pressure upon our man to do what he can, God willing.”
“Do that, Faisal,” Khalidi said. “Remember that which befalls me, befalls you also. And I think you know which one of us will come out, as the Americans say, smelling the roses.”
He meant ‘smelling like a rose’, Faisal thought. But the idea of correcting the man did not even cross his mind. Telling him about Abbott also seemed ill-advised, Faisal decided. That nugget of information could prove useful.
Half a world away, Walter Lang hung up from the call. He felt dirty, and he wondered if there would ever come a time when he wouldn’t.
He put the cell phone back into his pocket and stared silently out of the window of his D.C. walkup apartment. The room was tidy but plain, cheap old furniture, bookshelves crammed full. The lights were off, because his grim mood preferred it, although the tall windows on either side of room let the dim light of a gray afternoon wash across the fine filaments of dust. He turned around and moved over to his favorite old armchair and sat down, one more rumpled thing in a big box full of them, the coffee table ahead of him covered with more piles of books.
If he had other options, he would have taken them. If he’d made better financial decisions, or perhaps taken a job in the private sector that paid more; if he’d have known he wouldn’t depended upon the agency.
If, if, if.
But the treatment was going to be expensive, far beyond what his government insurance covered, comprehensive as it was. Khalidi’s money might be the difference between life and death, he told himself.
The tumor had caught his doctor by surprise, a baseball-sized object lodged in his chest cavity, perilously close to his heart and lungs. Not that it would matter; if it spread to his blood through his lymph nodes, he’d been told, there would be little-to-no hope. The tumor was growing aggressively and he was going to require surgery, as well as treatments several times per week at first, along with an ongoing prescription for a highly toxic chemotherapy drug, also incredibly expensive. The treatment would have hammered at his savings, despite just a few years until retirement.
And what was he giving up? Outdated information, several days old, repeats of briefings he’d heard or given on Joe Brennan’s mission. He hadn’t even identified his friend by name. And Abbott was already dead. Surely that wasn’t so bad, he told himself. Faisal Mohammed was no major player; he’d met him at a charity gathering a few years earlier put on by Mohamed’s alma mater, Georgetown. He was a spy wannabe, a fixer for Ahmed Khalidi.
He knew, of course, that the agency would not see it as such. He suspected Khalidi was involved in the shootings, or whatever Abbott had been up to, because he’d heard Fenton-Wright slip the man’s name out a half-dozen times in the days prior. But the key was that his information was already days old, unlikely to get anyone into trouble. And Khalidi was paying him more than enough to deal with his treatments and perhaps to leave his estranged wife and son something if he passed.
If caught revealing classified information, he’d be tried for espionage, probably in a closed court, and spend the rest of what little life he had left in the federal correctional facility in Butner, North Carolina. That thought did not appeal to Lang, and he prayed each night that Joe would close the file, catch the sniper before his own dual role was discovered.
It probably wouldn’t end there, he knew. Once he’d taken the money, he was on the hook, beholden to his paymaster or facing the risk he’d be thrown to the wolves. It was another unsettling thought, and Walter pushed it to the back of his mind, hoping his growing anxiety would eventually recede.
14./
BARCELONA
Brennan reacted instinctively as the men burst into his hotel room, ducking behind the edge of the bed and drawing the silenced pistol from his waistband in one smooth motion. The men opened fire, machine gun bullets ripping into the mattress and sending a flurry of feathers into the air.
He’d spotted at least three before taking cover, and when he popped up from behind the mattress he moved with machine-like precision, squeezing off three shots in quick succession, each finding its mark, two head shots and the third center mass.
Two of the men were dead before they hit the floor, and the third lay bleeding on the carpet, twitching spasmodically. There were two more in the doorway, but they ducked back around the doorjamb.
Brennan remained crouched and moved to the corner of the mattress, looking for the slightest motion. The pair reached around the doorway in unison but stayed in cover, spraying the room wildly with fire as Brennan hit the deck. He rose out of cover again, swinging the pistol left, then right, the sequence timed perfectly as each of the two remaining guards tried to charge the room. Each went down within three steps.
Brennan looked back at Bustamante; at least two of the machine pistol bullets had hit him in the chest, and he was coughing up blood. The drugs probably weren’t helping as the immobilized gangster fought for breath, and the gunfire would have alerted others. He had to move quickly.
He ripped Bustamante’s shirt open, but the wounds were gaping, blood flowing freely. There was nothing he could do for him. Brennan knew he had perhaps a minute, at best, before others arrived. He retrieved the syringe from the dresser and injected the remainder of the cocktail into the dying drug dealer.
“Tilo!” Brennan smacked his face gently to rouse him. “Tilo!”
“Eh?” He was fading fast. “Feel like sleeping…” Bustamante said.
“Tilo, the bomb. Where is it now?”
“Eh? The nuke… ask the chairman. It is his mistake.” He drifted out of consciousness again, and Brennan slapped him twice again.
“Tilo, where is it going? You said it was being shipped?”
Bustamante smiled. “Go to hell.” His head bobbed twice and his heavy eyelids slammed shut.
“Tilo, it’s me, it’s Juan,” Brennan said loudly. “Tell me where the bomb is? We need to find it.”
Bustamante was nodding in and out of consciousness. Brennan knew it was futile; he had to go. He left the tycoon behind and turned to the desk. He dropped the laptop and gun into his carry-on bag and walked out of the room, heading for the stairwell, at the far right end of the corridor. The door closed slowly behind him just before the elevator slid open. A minute later, he exited a side door from the hotel to the street. He walked around the corner to the next block, dropping his gloves into a nearby garbage can as he blended into the anonymity of evening on the Barcelona street, a cacophony of police sirens growing louder.
DEC. 14, 2016, WASHINGTON, D.C.
The young man in the grey-green herringbone suit was nervous, and he paced back and forth by a window of the Capitol Club, his tension rendering him oblivious to the tasteful opulence of the place, his brown brogue dress shoes shuffling a little too much on the blue patterned carpet. He ignored the Edwardian chairs and the portraits of Republican Party greats; instead, he tried to r
emember the exact wording of the message Addison March’s assistant had asked him to pass on.
His nerves were justified, as March was his new idol. Unsatisfied with the namby pamby professors and community organizers adored by his college classmates, he’d looked for a leader made of sterner stuff. He found it in the smooth-talking Tennessean. The young man thought March had the charisma of Reagan and the smarts of Lincoln, combined with the aggression of his other idol, the former vice-president Dick Cheney.
In short, he believed with every fiber of his being that he was about to pass a message to the next President of the United States; and so he paced, trying to keep his hands from shaking as he gripped the message.
March kept a regular table at the Club, where he was a committee member and sponsor of an annual Wine Tasting attended by every important West Coast Republican, a significant portion of the senator’s donor base. The young man expected him around by 4 p.m. but he was running late.
He paced some more.
“Careful, son, or you’ll wear a hole in this here carpet.” The voice was rich and melodic, utterly friendly. He turned and found himself face-to-face with the presumed Republican nominee. March was smiling, his small teeth just visible, lips a thin line across his bony face.
“Sir, Mr. March, sir…”
“Now rest easy, son, rest easy. What can I do for you?”
“I have a message from your assistant Christopher, sir; he wanted you to know he had information on the matter you’d asked about… I mean, the EU matter…”