“That’s what most people think. But the way I read it, the real, big picture catch was this: they can do anything to you that you can’t stop them from doing. That’s how they can sweep this under the rug as if nothing ever happened.”
“Well, then we’ve got to stop them.”
“Interesting concept. How do you propose we go about doing that?”
“Well, I’ll blow the whistle on them. Call a reporter. Leak some files. You know, what people have done before.”
“And then what happens? Remember Snowden? I bet Moscow is pretty cold this time of year. And how about Chelsea Manning? She won’t be out of Leavenworth ’til she’s in her sixties.”
“Well, Daniel Ellsberg never went to jail for leaking the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.”
“Not for want of trying by the government. As I recall, he only went free because the judge tossed the case out of court due to egregious misconduct by Nixon’s prosecutors.”
“So what do you suggest we do?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that the first thing we need to do is everything we can to help stop Foobar from bombing us back to the Stone Age. After that, we can talk about how to get the word out without violating the nondisclosure agreements you and I signed that say they can toss us in jail forever if we violate them.”
“Sure. And who’s going to listen to us after the danger’s past? Remember you told me about that journalist who’s on to the danger and can’t get anyone to listen to him.”
“Okay, okay. But I still say let’s come back to this later. If we blow the whistle on this now, Foobar will just tell his ships to turn around, right? We’d look like a couple of cranks. No one would even notice when we got tossed in the clink for as long as the CIA felt like keeping us there.”
“And if we blow the whistle after they sink the ships, why won’t we look like a couple of cranks then?”
“I can’t answer that yet. I just know that we’ve got to stop Foobar first.”
Tim threw up his hands. “Fine! Just fine! But I’ll tell you, not worrying about this until the whole thing’s over is making less and less sense to me.”
* * *
Things were progressing rapidly now, as indeed they needed to with the ships steaming inexorably closer to their targets. Multiple, hastily assembled teams of engineers and analysts were scrubbing the data Tim dumped from their laptops into the CIA’s system, testing their assumptions and crosschecking them against the updated information streaming into CIA headquarters from satellites, field operatives, and NATO sources.
One group was reviewing everything the CIA was learning about the Caliphate’s financial and contractual relations to determine how the new V-1s had been manufactured, and by whom. Another was trying to determine as much as possible about the flying bombs themselves. Was there evidence anywhere that they had been tested in actual flight? Could they have been modified to use modern fuels to extend their range? Should it be assumed that each one would reach its target? There was so much to learn—like the total number of prehistoric cruise missiles that had actually been built and whether the ships might have V-1s stowed on multiple decks instead of just one—but very little time.
Another team was crunching the data necessary to refine the list of most likely targets, an area Frank and Tim had not had time to address in more than cursory fashion. The last team was taking apart Tim’s data relating to the Caliphate’s ships to confirm that each ship he had identified as being a V-1 launcher was indeed a threat.
In every case, all the significant data held up. The target and ship teams were now tracking the routes and speeds of each ship in order to match their current courses against the presumed targets and determined their expected arrival date off shore of those targets. Day by day, the whole picture became clearer.
Meanwhile, a dozen SEAL platoons were feverishly training off San Diego, readying for the rapidly approaching day when they would come alongside the freighters in small speedboats with muffled engines before throwing grappling hooks aloft and swarming aboard. Once they had secured the ships’ bridges and locked the off-duty crew in their cabins, the rest of the team would arrive by helicopter to take the crews into custody and remove all the computers and other evidence they found. All but one of the ships would then be scuttled; the last one would be diverted to Guam for more detailed study of the weaponry aboard and anything else of interest.
* * *
“Hello? Remember me?”
Frank’s and Tim’s heads swiveled up from their laptops in unison to face a pajama-clad Marla standing in the door of the living room of her apartment. They stared blankly for a moment before Tim replied.
“Oh—sorry!” Tim said. “I didn’t think you’d still be up. It must be 12:30. I just got in.”
“Yes, I’m still up. If I didn’t stay up late these days, I’d never see you at all. And all I see of my father lately is the back of his head. What’s come over the two of you?”
“Things are just really busy on my government project,” Frank replied quickly, giving Tim a minute to think. “But things will start slacking off a lot after Friday.”
“Friday?”
“Uh, yeah. I’ve got a deadline I’m working against. If I’m not done by then all hell will break loose.”
“And how about you, Tim?”
“Hmm, not so sure.” Tim looked down at his laptop again, hesitating. “I just learned I may have another project waiting for me as soon as this one is done. It may start with some meetings out of town.”
“You’ve got to be kidding—after all the hours you’ve been putting in?”
“Yeah, I know. But they’re telling me this is a real plum assignment—a reward for all I’ve been doing and a big career advancement opportunity. I didn’t know how to turn it down.”
Wow, Frank thought. That’s harsh. You’d think the CIA could give the kid a breather after everything they’d done and still come up with a great assignment for him later on. And anyone looking at Tim could tell he needed a break. He’d been looking progressively more tense and haggard ever since Henderson had finally taken them seriously.
“Well, okay,” Marla replied. “But I hope it really is and you’re not just letting them take advantage of you. But either way, if this is what life is going to be like going forward, I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
Tim frowned and looked like he was about to say something but then thought better of it.
“Time for a beer,” Frank interrupted. “Let me know if anyone else wants one.”
As expected, they ignored him, and he evacuated the living room for the safe haven of the kitchen. When the sometimes unusually loud voices in the other room finally subsided, he peeked around the corner and found the room empty and the bedroom door shut.
Propped up against pillows in the unfolded convertible couch in the living room, he read almost a whole page of a novel before falling asleep.
* * *
He woke up to the first light of morning and someone touching his shoulder.
“Dad?”
“Sounds right. What can I do for you?”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure. What’s on your mind?”
Marla was still in her pajamas and sat down on the foot of the bed.
“You and Tim seem to have gotten to know each other really well—which is great. Do you know what’s going on with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything had been going so well, and then he started getting busier and busier, and then suddenly things got so different.”
“Different how?”
“Well, at first it was just that he was busy. When he did have time, everything was still the way it had always been. But then he started getting so uptight. I told myself he was probably ju
st tired or maybe worried about how his job was going. Or probably both. But lately he’s been getting really distant, and last night he was even irritable and short with me, and he’s never been that way before.”
Well sure, he might be getting distant, and even a bit testy, with all he had on his mind, Frank reflected. He remembered with a twinge that he’d done the same thing once, when he was about the same age. It hadn’t ended well. He’d grown to like and respect Tim, and he very much didn’t want that to be the case for Marla and him.
He patted her knee and adopted what he hoped was his most reassuring voice. “I expect you’ve diagnosed it just right. You know, a first real career job can be terribly stressful. Everything about it may be new, and you want to look like everything you’re asked to do is no sweat, even though you and everybody else who’s new is sweating plenty, trying to figure out what the hell they’re doing without ever asking a question, even when they haven’t got a clue what’s going on. I remember one Friday night at my first job after MIT. It was about 7:30 and a bunch of us new guys were still hard at work, and I looked up, and all of a sudden it all seemed pretty silly. I rapped on my desk and said ‘It’s okay—we can come out now! All of the grownups have gone home.’”
Marla giggled. “What did they say?”
“They all looked at me like I had two heads. But I felt a little better.”
She gave him a quick hug. “Thanks, Dad. I needed that. I hope you’re right.”
She got up. “Gotta get ready for class. Will you be working here today?”
“Yup. I may go out to check out my condo—they said it might be all done today—but I should be here when you get home.”
“That’s great. It’s been getting lonely around here.”
Marla returned to her bedroom, leaving Frank happy to have taken the edge off her concerns. But he was worried, too. Tim had been growing uncharacteristically terse with him as well.
* * *
23
Now We’ll all just have to Sit Around and Wait
DHS, the CIA, and the FBI had all interrogated him at length and were now satisfied that not a single bit of useful information remained to be wrung out of CIA contractor Frank Adversego. It would be another four days before U.S. and allied forces would be prepared to strike, and Frank suddenly had nothing to do. He decided to use that time to leave Washington for a couple of days and get back to his own personally apocalyptic thoughts.
Three o’clock on a Monday afternoon should have been early enough to beat the Washington D.C. traffic, but no. For two hours, he crawled westward in the company of hundreds of frustrated commuters, all inching their way past accidents and road work. Finally, he made his escape onto a secondary road. Two hours after that, he was still looping his way through slow turns as he crossed West Virginia across the grain of the Appalachians, plumbing the depths and scaling the sides of successive mountain hollows. He was counting on a tiny state park campground to be empty on a weekday at this time of year and grateful to find out on his arrival that it was. He parked his car at the most private of the campsites and pitched his tent, missing the dry, insect-free expanses of the west where a tent was just so much useless baggage. This campsite might be cold and damp, but it certainly was isolated. Maybe this would be a good place to hole up for a while if they didn’t catch Foobar in time.
His camp made, he sat down beside the fire that this time he’d built for warmth rather than psychological comfort. It was time to get down to the contemplative business at hand. Watching the progress of Tim’s courtship of Marla continued to bring him both pleasure and trepidation. He knew Marla was a much more grounded, sane individual than he had been at her age. But he also knew that to him the feminine psyche remained a mostly impenetrable black box. And while he was comforted by the respect and affection Tim always displayed for Marla, he also knew that reactions in human chemistry did not exhibit the predictability of laboratory experiments. After two generations of divorce in the Adversego family, he fervently hoped for better success for his daughter.
All of which had impelled him to this cold and solitary place to read the last of the letters from Clare. He no longer expected to discover any dramatic clues that might help him fully understand the troubled course of his own failed marriage. But having undertaken the painful task of excavating his emotional past to the depth he had, he wanted to see the process through.
Now that he was here, though, he found he was in no hurry to get started. The remaining stack of letters was small, but he expected its contents would be the most painful of all to rediscover. At some point, he knew, he would reach the letter in which he would sense Clare once again beginning to slip away.
But the winter days were short now, and it was getting dark. He turned on his camp lantern and opened the first letter, dated just after they had each returned to school their sophomore year. Just as before, the letters regaled him with the wonderful people and the great times she was having: swimming parties until all hours at the lake, and midnight bike rides under a full moon. And once again, their frequency soon began to decline, week by week.
Now that she was again surrounded by a vibrant circle of friends, Clare had found a balance point where her need for him could be satisfied with occasional letters and telephone calls. And for a while, she seemed content to think of their love as just as perfect and complete as ever, no matter how little time she assigned to its maintenance—perhaps like a favorite piece of jewelry that could be worn on special occasions but left in the dark in a drawer the rest of the time. He was painfully aware that he was reading only half the script, though. He had no copies of his letters to her, and therefore, no way to know how he was responding to her neglect. Had he sounded petulant? Demanding? Irrational?
He must have been transmitting his concerns in some way, as from time to time, Clare would try to reassure him. Eventually, there was a letter from her that informed him that if he wasn’t comfortable with the life she was leading, then her choice would be clear and not one he would like.
Then there were almost no letters for quite a while. He couldn’t recall whether they saw each other over Christmas break or whether any single event had brought things to a climax. All he could recall was that her neglect had made him wild, ending with the letter he had written and never sent and his sealing up her letters for over a quarter of a century before opening them again.
After that, he had heard nothing from, or about, Clare, except for any tidbits of information he might overhear in conversations with mutual friends; he had been too proud to ask any of them outright for information about what she might be up to. As far as he could tell, her interest in him had simply evaporated when his needs had become tedious.
He slid the last of the letters back into the envelope that had preserved them for so long. So that was it. No bang and scarcely even a whimper. His inquiry into the romantic disasters of his past through the examination of ancient, recently discovered texts was complete. He wondered what the best word to summarize the emotions that lingered was, and settled on mourning. Mourning for the fact there had been no more secluded waterfalls to skinny dip in together and no more stifling dorm room nights making love heedless of the heat, aware only of the completeness they found together for a brief while and the irrelevance of anything else.
Over the years that followed, an occasional letter from Clare would arrive unheralded in his mailbox. As always, they focused on the events of her day and the people she was fascinated by at that point in her life. The letters asked no questions of him and suggested no need for, or for that matter necessarily any interest in, a response. It occurred to him that her letters had always been rather like diary entries, more to herself than to him. Perhaps these random apparitions from later years were only the product of a lingering habit, each sparked by a moment or event in her day that in the old days had always caused her to pick up a pen and record a few
events that called out for a witness. Or maybe they reflected an effort to maintain some manner of connection. If so, they represented the smallest possible investment of effort that ran the least risk of leading to anything more.
Apparently, he hadn’t saved those letters from her. And he had been careful to take a long time answering them and to be equally superficial in his responses. Never again, he vowed, would he permit himself to show any sign of weakness or need. He wondered whether that was an attempt on his part to reassure himself he was over her.
It was four years before he received a different sort of letter from Clare. It said that she missed his friendship and had often wanted to get in touch on a more serious note, but she didn’t feel entitled to it, given how things had ended between them. She was going to be visiting a friend in Cambridge and wanted to apologize in person. Could they get together and catch up on what they’d been doing with their lives?
The letter arrived at a vulnerable time. He was coming down hard from a serious relationship that had just failed and answered yes. When they got together for dinner, he learned that so was she. And that she would be moving to Boston. They drank too much, and it was almost like old times.
He folded the envelope of letters shut again and stared up at the dark circle of starlit sky, enclosed by the bare branches of the surrounding trees, feeling his isolation intensely. The nearest house was easily fifteen miles away, but that wasn’t the cause. For most of the last twenty-five years, he’d been more alone in Washington than he was here and now. Could his life have turned out differently if he had acted in some other way?
Well, what did it matter anyway. That book was closed, and if there had never been a wedding with someone named Clare, there would never have been a daughter named Marla, and he wouldn’t surrender that gift to avoid a hundred failed romances. He stared at the fire and wondered whether it was time to place the envelope and his memories and dreams among the flames and let them perish together, once and for all?
The Doodlebug War: a Tale of Fanatics and Romantics (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 3) Page 23