Murder on the Metro

by Margaret Truman

  Brixton recalled the fate suffered by of the members of the surgical team who’d performed the procedure on Vice President Stephanie Davenport. The attack on him last night, which Lia Ganz had thwarted, saving his life, now made perfect sense, fitting into a far larger pattern supported by the administration’s plans to murder between three and five million Americans to solidify its hold on power. Led by the first lady, they’d concocted an elaborate scheme to cast blame on Islamic radicals, starting by linking a known Hamas bomb maker to the attack on the Washington Metro. Now a raid had been launched on a mosque the country would be made to believe had been harboring terrorists, who would subsequently be blamed for the attack on the Y-12 facility.

  “You need to get somewhere safe, Kendra,” he told Rendine. “You need to get somewhere safe now.”

  “I don’t think there is such a place anymore. Not even close.”

  CHAPTER

  54

  WASHINGTON, DC

  You promised you wouldn’t make trouble for us with our American friends, Colonel,” Moshe Baruch said to Lia Ganz, after she’d completed her report.

  Lia Ganz might have smiled, if the head of Mossad wasn’t watching her through the secure video line. “Did I? I must’ve forgotten.”

  She’d been waiting in a secure room inside the Israeli embassy on International Drive NW, in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of the city, seated in front of a computer monitor, when the screen glowed to life and Baruch’s face appeared before her. The desktop offered no keyboard or other controls, just that monitor directly before her at eye level.

  Taking at least temporary refuge at the embassy in the aftermath of the gunfight was in keeping with the cover story concocted to explain her presence in the United States, specifically that she was to conduct a review of the embassy’s security protocols and make recommendations for improvements in the fenced-in, cream-colored compound that was modest in scope compared to some of its contemporaries. Her intelligence and operational background more than qualified her for such a task, though anyone hearing of that would greet the claim with a wink and a nod. Such cover stories were orchestrated all the time to disguise an operative’s real reason for being in country. Since she was retired, though, Lia hadn’t been concerned that anyone would give her presence in Washington a second thought.

  Until now, in the aftermath of a gunfight that had seen her kill two men who could only have been American operators. Instinct had driven her actions; she’d had no time to think before they would have killed her instead, and then Imam Alaf.

  “You did not have our okay to carry a firearm out of country,” Baruch said, continuing to chastise her.

  “I took it off one of the imam’s guards.”

  “You were seen wielding an assault rifle as well. You took that off one of the American operators, I assume.”

  “I only wounded the others, Commander. Four of them, by my count. Have the Americans managed to identify me?”

  “Not yet, Colonel, but it’s only a matter of time. What would you suggest we offer as an explanation?”

  Out of habit, Lia had positioned herself in clear view of the only door that accessed the secure room on the third floor, one of three rooms designed for the same purpose. She kept her eyes on it the whole time, ready in case it burst open.

  “How about the fact,” Lia started, “that this may be much worse than we originally thought, that indications point to the fact that the American government is spinning out of control?”

  “I’m sure they’ll love to hear that.”

  “Did you ever meet the American vice president, Commander?”

  “Indeed, I did. A very impressive woman. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was one of us. Her death was a terrible tragedy.”

  “It turns out she was murdered, assassinated.”

  Silence on the other end of the secure line followed Lia’s statement.

  “I’m not going to ask you how you came by this information,” Baruch said finally. “Because it’s coming from you, neither will I challenge that information’s veracity. I’d ask only how this pertains to your original mandate.”

  “It’s very much connected to that original mandate.”

  “Chasing down terrorists.”

  “Who were supposedly staging an operation out of that mosque.”

  “Supposedly,” Baruch repeated. “I’m going to assume that a source pointed you in this direction.”

  “But there were no terrorists, no cell based in the Masjid Us Salaam mosque.”

  “What reason did this source have to lie?”

  “None. Because he didn’t lie. He was misled. He only reported to me what he believed to be the truth, because that’s part of the ruse the Americans have concocted.”

  More silence, a bit shorter in length this time, before the head of Mossad’s voice returned.

  “You’re describing an extremely elaborate operation, Colonel.”

  “I’m well aware of that, Commander.”

  “And putting us in a difficult position, given that our American friends would appear to be creating some kind of rationale for further action.”

  “They killed the vice president because she must have uncovered their plans.”

  “Plans that included a suicide bomber on the Metro, blamed on a terrorist cell that doesn’t exist.”

  “As near as I can tell,” Lia said, nodding toward the computer’s tiny, built-in camera. “Because something much bigger is coming.”

  “Our American friends are normally not clever enough to be so devious,” Baruch said, almost admiringly, before uttering a deep sigh. “You’re certain about the murder of the vice president?”

  “I have extremely high confidence, yes.”

  “Most unfortunate.”

  “Why?”

  “Because our contact there has requested your immediate censure and recall.”

  Lia knew Baruch must be talking about the man she’d met at CIA headquarters who called himself Winters.

  He continued, “You made a mess, Colonel, and left it for our friends to clean up.”

  “They’re not our friends, Commander. And the mess is theirs. I was the one doing the cleaning.”

  “You’re missing the point. Our relations with our American friends are not what they once were, Colonel,” Baruch resumed. “They don’t have patience for us conducting operations on their soil.”

  “They were conducting their own operation at that mosque. Perhaps we need to save them from themselves.”

  “But what you’re suggesting…”

  Lia waited for Moshe Baruch to continue.

  “This could only have originated at the highest levels of power, Colonel, the absolute highest. As in, the executive branch. Would I be correct in that assumption?”

  Lia’s cell phone began to vibrate on the desktop before her, the number Robert Brixton had provided for his latest burner lighting up in the Caller ID. “Give me a few minutes, Commander. I may be able to answer that soon.”

  “Forget the answer. This isn’t our problem, and we must respect the wishes of the Americans, friends or not. I want you on the next plane back home. I’m having an El Al flight held at Dulles so you can catch it. Is that clear, Colonel? Is that—”

  Lia Ganz reached out toward the monitor and pressed a button to end the call.

  CHAPTER

  55

  NEW YORK CITY

  Where are you?” Brixton greeted Lia Ganz.

  “The Israeli embassy.”

  “Not to seek refuge, I hope.”

  “Far from it.”

  “What happened, Lia?”

  “Long story. You go first.”

  “I think I know what this is all about, where it’s all heading, thanks to Sister Mary Alice Rose.”

  “Did you say sister?”

  “As in nun, a nun who might just spend the rest of her life in federal prison.”

  “Someone take offense to her prayers?”

  “She broke i
nto a federal nuclear repository facility.”

  “A nun?”

  “She was trying to make a point, ended up making her bed at the Metropolitan Detention Center for the last two years. That nuclear facility must be the target, Lia. That’s what all this is building toward.”

  When she remained silent, Brixton prodded, “Lia?”

  “I think you’re going to find my day interesting too, Robert.”

  * * *

  “That was you?” Brixton managed, before Lia Ganz had finished her story. “You’re not going to believe this, but I had a feeling it was.”

  After his call with Kendra Rendine had ended anxiously, he’d busied himself reading as much as he could find on his phone about the raid launched on that Baltimore mosque, on the pretext it was harboring an Islamic terrorist cell. Details were sketchy and the data stream on his disposable phone moved agonizingly slow, but several reports mentioned casualties from friendly fire. These assertions were refuted by on-scene witnesses who claimed that an unidentified woman had returned the commandos’ fire while shepherding innocent worshippers from the building. By all accounts, depending on which report proved valid, she’d killed two and wounded six.

  An unidentified woman.

  Lia Ganz.

  There was no way Brixton could be certain of that, and yet he was. He scoured the news reporting, focusing on the most recent time stamps, in search of more information to confirm his hunch, but there was nothing. Just conflicting eyewitness testimony and no firm evidence yet of anything, other than claims that the raid had been staged on firm intelligence about a terrorist cell that must have fled earlier in the day. The upshot being to concoct a scenario that would culminate in an attack on the Y-12 facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

  And now Lia Ganz had all but confirmed his supposition. She’d followed a trail that nobody was supposed to find, everything planted carefully to achieve a desired effect that she’d almost literally blown up by being on the premises when the raid was staged.

  “My people have ordered me home,” Ganz said, while Brixton continued to ponder the ramifications of her tale. “For going too far at the mosque. If I’m caught, I’m on my own.”

  “They tell you that?”

  “They didn’t have to.”

  “Plane ticket waiting for you at Dulles?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “I’ve had more than my share left for me over the years. Something else we have in common.”

  “Along with being grandparents, you mean.”

  “This won’t be an easy world to grow up in, for either of our grandchildren, if this plot succeeds.”

  “But exactly whose plot is it?” she asked him.

  “I was getting to that.”

  He told her about the recording made in the Situation Room, the suggestion of what was coming. Actually, he didn’t get much beyond the three million to five million casualties that had been mentioned. He didn’t have to.

  “I see what you mean about our grandchildren, Robert. And all this is about politics. Your president’s declining mental health is the whole reason for the plot being hatched in the first place.”

  “I’m not sure it’s the whole reason,” Brixton told her. “Maybe it’s something this cabal led by the first lady genuinely believes in.”

  “In my experience, politicians believe in nothing, and their conviction changes with the polls.”

  “That’s been my experience, too. In this case, they need to do something drastic, catastrophic, to not just maintain their hold on power but expand it.”

  “Sounds like the governments my country has been dealing with for generations.”

  “I think I can stop it, Lia, stop it all. But I’m going to need your help.”

  “Help with what?” Lia Ganz asked him.

  “Breaking an eighty-five-year-old nun out of federal prison.”

  CHAPTER

  56

  NEW YORK CITY

  It was their only chance, Brixton thought, after he’d run out of minutes on his burner phone, just as his call with Lia Ganz was ending. His visit to the Metropolitan Detention Center and Sister Mary Alice Rose had undoubtedly attracted the wrong kind of attention, and by later today, tomorrow at the latest, she’d be gone. Disappeared deeper into the federal penal system, or just murdered.

  Brixton was guessing the latter of those two was more likely, based on what Rendine had told him. The old nun clearly had been incarcerated for reasons beyond making an example of her. Her infiltration of a facility that should have put security at an ultimate premium meant she knew something that Merle Talmidge and others behind this plot couldn’t let out. Brixton had no idea what that might be, only that it might enable the proper parties to stop it—“proper parties” including the man he called Panama.

  He replaced that disposable phone with another purchased at a Duane Reade drugstore inside Penn Station and dialed the number Panama had provided.

  “It’s worse than we thought,” Brixton said, as soon as Panama answered. “As bad as it gets. Check those plans from the UPS Store against the schematics for the Y-Twelve facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I assume you’ve heard of it.”

  “I’ve heard of it, Brixton,” Panama affirmed. “Now tell me why you brought the place up.”

  “Are you sitting down, Panama?”

  Brixton laid it out for him in blow-by-blow fashion, everything he’d learned from Sister Mary Alice, along with what he’d learned from Lia Ganz.

  “Do I have to connect the dots for you?” he asked when he was finished.

  “You think they’re going to attack Y-Twelve. You think they’re going to make the world think that radical Islamic terrorists killed millions of Americans.”

  “It’s not what I think, Panama. It’s what everything adds up to.”

  “Except one thing: Why?”

  “I was getting to that,” Brixton told him.

  * * *

  “And you’re only telling me this now?” Panama asked, after Brixton had finished relating the story of how the president’s mental deterioration had led directly to the murder of Vice President Stephanie Davenport, how the first lady was basically running the country in a figurative sense, which might well be about to become literal.

  “I didn’t have all the pieces until today.”

  “And just how did you come by that recording, Brixton?”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Wouldn’t have come to you by way of a certain Secret Service agent, now, would it?”

  “Like I said, doesn’t matter.”

  “Too bad, since we could protect her.”

  “What makes you think you can protect anyone from this, Panama? It doesn’t just go all the way to the White House; it started there.”

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten that I don’t answer to any of these clowns. They come and go, while the people I represent don’t go anywhere. Trust me on that one.”

  “Wish I could.”

  Another pause.

  “Okay, I need to check some of this out before I get the wheels turning. Those wheels carry steamrollers, Brixton, that will obliterate this plot and everyone behind it. The country can weather the collateral damage of that. I’m not sure it would be able to weather five million deaths to an apparent terrorist attack. I want you to call me back in one hour—that’s sixty minutes on the dot. Meanwhile, I’m going to send the cavalry to Y-Twelve. That place is about to become the most well-secured facility in the world.”

  “I’ll be using a different phone,” Brixton told him.

  “I don’t care if you’re calling me on the Batphone. I’ll have more to say then. I can tell you what you’re telling me makes all the sense in the world in the wake of the mosque raid in Baltimore this afternoon. That didn’t go through any channels I can find, like it sprang out of nowhere.”

  “They’re going to kill five million people, Panama,” Brixton told him. “I don’t think channels mean very much to the people behind
this.”

  “One hour, Brixton. On the dot.”

  * * *

  He called Panama back as instructed, one hour later to the second. The call didn’t go through at first, and Brixton thought he may not have initialized the new phone properly. He repeated the process detailed in the instructions and dialed Panama again. Brixton heard a click this time, and was waiting for Panama to answer, when an entirely different voice greeted him.

  “The number you have reached is not in service at this time. Please check the number and dial again.”

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER

  57

  WASHINGTON, DC

  In conclusion, ma’am, initial reports indicate there is significant cause for concern.”

  Merle Talmidge accepted the report from the director of the FBI in silence in her private study in the White House residence. Her husband had enjoyed an early dinner without her, after which some special seasoning she’d added to the meal, in the form of ground-up Ambien pills, left him drifting off in front of a television tuned to ESPN.

  He’d stopped watching the news several weeks back, thanks to a combination of having lost interest in the events unfolding around him and his inability to retain information for very long at all. He was in the next room, which they’d converted into a media suite for viewing movies and sporting events, the door open so she could keep a watchful eye and ear upon him.

  “How did this happen?” the first lady asked the director, not bothering to disguise the exasperation in her voice. “How did things go so wrong? You said we lost two agents on a raid where the team wasn’t supposed to encounter any resistance. Did I hear you right?”

  “You did, I’m afraid. Two dead and six more wounded, some seriously.”

  “At the hands of this—Who was it exactly?”

  The FBI director pointed to the photograph captured by surveillance cameras trained on the Baltimore mosque entrance. It showed two different shots of the woman in question, first entering the building, and then fleeing amid a throng of worshippers. The second photo had spot-shadowed her face.