It wasn’t a dream, though, and Ryan had proven it by recounting his story to Director Andrews no less than three times, all the way from the time he received Harper’s telephone call up until his detainment by the FBI. Kharmai had also been asked to thoroughly describe the events that had transpired in Hanover County. The two junior officers did most of the talking, but they got some of the answers they were looking for as well.
Naomi was seated next to Ryan, while the two senior officials sat in comfortable armchairs on the other side of a low coffee table. She had enjoyed a long hot shower in the women’s locker room upon returning to Langley, and someone had been dispatched to her house to pick up some clothes. Her unknown benefactor had chosen well. As a result, she looked a thousand times better than she had that morning, and was anxious to learn more about the disastrous raid in Virginia.
Harper was the one to explain it to her. “The Bureau’s Explosives Unit concentrated their efforts on the basement. They found damage consistent with a gas-leak explosion, but leaks almost always originate from the output valve, which is located on the ground floor. So they think that Vanderveen disconnected the fittings to the stove, drilled a hole into the tile and rigged up a hose leading down to the basement. Then he used duct tape to seal off the hole and all the air vents leading out, so that the gas was just trapped down there.”
Harper took a sip of coffee and continued: “They found other evidence that corroborates that account as well. There were pieces of a gasoline can — one of the old-fashioned metal ones — jammed into the walls, and what appeared to be two contact plates and traces of SEMTEX H. He didn’t have time for anything fancy, so he simply taped a block of explosives to a gasoline can, then wired up a battery to an electric cap. The device was set to go off when the buffer was removed from between the steel plates.”
Ryan was shaking his head. “What about the bomb in the van?”
“That one was a little more complicated, though not overly so,” Harper said. “They only got around to moving it a few hours ago; there were some concerns about booby traps, especially after what happened in Hanover. The ATF guys that are taking it apart all say the same thing: simple, but efficient. He wired up a cell phone to the SEMTEX H, which was concealed in five steel trunks. By the way, you would have been screwed if you’d gone in through the back, Ryan. He had antihandling devices on the phone and two of the trunks.”
“But not the switch.”
“Not the switch,” Harper agreed. “He didn’t want to risk a premature explosion, so a wrong number to the phone wouldn’t have made a difference as long as there was no power going from the battery to the circuit. You said you heard the phone ring?”
“Yeah, it rang about two seconds after I flipped it.”
“That was Vanderveen trying to set it off. Those few seconds made all the difference, Ryan.”
Ryan felt a little bit sick over how close he had come to being wiped out, along with about eight city blocks. “Jesus Christ,” he said, “all I did was flip a switch.”
Harper was nodding slowly. “He needed to be able to activate it quickly, but he couldn’t exactly get in the cargo area and start rooting around in the middle of a busy city street. It was the best way for him to do it, and if it wasn’t for you showing up when you did, it would have worked.”
Ryan fell silent. He didn’t want to think about what had almost happened. There would be plenty of time for that later, but Naomi didn’t notice his hesitation, and she wasn’t finished: “What kind of damage are we talking about?”
The deputy director cleared his throat. “Well, there’s no definitive answer. I talked to Bateman — that’s the guy heading up the ATF task force, by the way — and he gave me some round numbers. We would have been looking at serious damage to every building in a four-block radius, plus some varying damage out to twelve blocks from ground zero. That would have included Freedom Plaza and Pershing Park. Estimates, and there is some dispute on this, are between 400 and 500 dead, plus anywhere up to 2,000 injured. The time of day was factored in to that as well; if it had been a few hours earlier, for example, the casualties would have been much lower.”
Ryan looked at his hands.
Director Andrews turned to stare out the window, ashen-faced. “My God.”
“What about the angle?” Ryan asked. “He was going after the motorcade, right?”
Harper nodded and said, “That’s right. There’s even more dispute over that question. He was definitely going after the motorcade, but it’s not clear if he would have been successful. Bateman thinks it would have worked, but the Bureau’s people are saying otherwise.”
The DCI broke in and added, “He stacked the odds in his favor by placing concrete blocks against the partition. That close to the actual device, it would have pushed most of the force of the blast directly out into 13th Street. I think he came closer than anyone wants to admit.”
Kharmai and Kealey fell silent at the candor of the remark, but Director Andrews was only getting started. He turned back from the window to appraise them carefully. “Needless to say, there’s going to be some serious fallout in the next few weeks. The first choice, of course, would have been to keep the whole thing quiet. After Senator Levy’s assassination and the Kennedy-Warren, the last thing we need are reports of a 3,000-pound bomb nearly taking out the president’s motorcade. If it had just been the evacuation on the waterfront, we could have explained it away. A few heads would have rolled, but we might have swept it under the mat.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. Vanderveen killed two people in his escape, including a Metro police officer. Both of them died in crowded areas, so there’s no way we can play it down. This is going to be headline news for the foreseeable future, so the president’s advisors, in all their wisdom, are trying to spin it into a positive thing, a major success for U.S. law enforcement. No one wants to call it what it really was.”
“A near disaster,” Ryan said.
Andrews nodded in agreement. “Exactly. But it’s out of our hands now, so if they want to play politics, we have no choice but to play along. Anyway, the president is looking to publicly slap some backs. That means you two. Especially you, Ryan.”
Kealey’s response was immediate and heartfelt. “There’s no way that’s going to happen.” He saw the DCI’s reaction, checked himself, then said, “Excuse me, sir. I just don’t want to have anything to do with it. Besides, we’ve never operated that way, and the president knows it. I don’t want my face on television, and I don’t want to give any interviews. I just want to know what we’re doing to catch the bastard.”
Harper looked up and sighed heavily. “He didn’t get far in the Camry. It was found in an underground parking garage in Anacostia, and in the trunk, the body of a twenty-nine-year-old secretary.” Ryan swore and looked away, thinking about how close he had come to stopping Vanderveen. “He chose carefully; there were no cameras in the garage, no way to immediately determine what kind of car he switched to. The woman was missing her purse, so it took a while to track her down. They started with the neighboring buildings… When they found her employer, they got her name and a vehicle registration from the DMV. Then, of course, they found out that her car was missing. So there’s a nationwide APB out on her Camaro, but no one is especially hopeful. Just taking the woman’s ID gave Vanderveen a two-hour jump on Susskind’s people.” The deputy director paused to take a sip of coffee. Studying Harper’s weary expression, Ryan thought that the man looked exhausted, then realized that he probably didn’t look much different himself.
Harper was still talking. “Since this is all going public anyway, the president has given us free rein to track Vanderveen down. His name is already on the list of Most Wanted Terrorists, and we’ve gotten his face to passport control at every major airport in Western Europe, as well as Africa and Australia. He inadvertently helped us out with that… The picture on the Nichols’s driver’s license is probably less than two years old, which makes it much more
recent than the army shots we were working with before. We’ve sent those updates to Interpol as well.”
“Vanderveen’s been tied to Iran and Al-Qaeda,” Ryan reminded them. “He has access to money, so he’s not exactly obliged to fly commercially. They might have arranged for a charter months ago, probably to some dinky little airfield out in the middle of nowhere.”
“You think he’s gone, Kealey?” asked the DCI.
“It would make sense, sir. If he stays here, he’s opening himself up to the biggest manhunt in the history of U.S. law enforcement. Besides, you know as well as I do that if he gets to Iran, we’re pretty much screwed. We have no assets there to speak of, unless something’s changed in the last twelve months.”
Harper sighed heavily. “Nothing’s changed.” He thought about it, then said, “He failed, though. If he’s on his way back to Tehran, he probably won’t be getting a very warm reception.”
“I hope you’re right,” Ryan said. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”
The meeting adjourned five minutes later. Kealey and Harper walked side by side down the hall, neither finding much to say, each lost in his own private thoughts.
Harper, just to break the silence, said, “You’ll be getting a medal, you know. Naomi, too. Probably something pretty.”
Ryan shrugged halfheartedly but didn’t smile. “I don’t really care about that.” He glanced over at the other man quickly. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. It’s just that I really don’t care. Besides, it’s not like I can show it to anyone anyway.”
Harper laughed a little at the way he had phrased it as they approached the elevators. “Not this time, Ryan. This is one of our few public accomplishments, our day in the sun. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.”
Kealey didn’t respond right away, once again lost in his own little world. Finally, he said, “You can mail it to me, John. I’m going home. Tonight.”
Harper found himself nodding in agreement. “Landrieu won’t be happy,” he observed. “He’s already pissed that you came here instead of getting debriefed back at Tyson’s Corner.”
“Fuck him,” Ryan said. “Fuck him. He fought you on that ID thing, and I really needed it. I was ten seconds behind Vanderveen when those guys from HRT drew down on me. I don’t have anything against them… They were just doing their job. If I could have shown them something, though, we might have been able to catch up to him. Hell, I know we would have been able to.”
“He’s probably done, anyway,” Harper observed, steering the conversation back to the TTIC director. “Brenneman threw a lot of the blame for the senator’s death and the Kennedy-Warren at Landrieu, and a lot of it’s sticking.” He hesitated, then said, “I really did fight him on that, you know. He was going to shut you down the whole way, Ryan. I had to compromise.”
“I’m not blaming you, John. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just sick of people like Landrieu. There’s a thousand like him in Washington, and they all seem to hold the most dangerous jobs.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Harper said, and realized that he meant it. As the elevator doors opened on the first floor, they stepped out onto the clean white marble, and he turned to give the younger man some last-minute advice. “Get back to Katie, Ryan. I’ll handle the fallout over your speedy departure. You did a hell of a thing today, so think about taking some of the credit for it, okay? And don’t worry about Vanderveen. He’ll turn up sooner or later.”
“I still want that bastard, John.” Ryan hated to break his promise to Katie, would dread trying to explain it to her, but the words had come out unexpectedly, and he knew that he meant them. “I want back in. Officially, I mean.”
Harper smiled. It was what he had wanted to hear. “We’ll talk about it in a few days. Until then, get some rest and go see your girl.”
“If I can even catch a flight,” Ryan said, with more than a little frustration. “That storm passed us, but I heard it’s headed north pretty fast. By the time I get to Dulles, they might have the airports—”
He stopped when he saw that the other man’s smile had turned into a big grin. Harper shook his head, handing Ryan a card with a number on the back. “Got your cell phone?” he asked. Ryan nodded. “Call that number when you’re ready to go. I’m the DDO, Ryan. Sometimes you forget that.”
Kealey was about to ask what he meant by that cryptic remark, but instead just reached out to shake the other man’s hand. “Thanks, John. I’ll see you Monday.”
“Have a safe trip. I’ll meet you at the main gate when you get back. Call it 9:00 AM.” Harper was looking over Ryan’s shoulder. “I think someone else wants to have a word with you.”
Ryan turned to see Naomi Kharmai standing a few feet away, wearing a nice smile and looking good in a white pantsuit that contrasted well with her caramel-colored skin. She tilted her head and said, “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
They sat across from each other in the dismal cafeteria, which was mostly empty at this late hour. Awkward silence at first, as Ryan left his coffee untouched, and Kharmai rolled a mug of tea between her shapely hands.
“Just gonna run out on a girl, huh?”
He looked up. She was smiling, maybe a little bit sadly. “I’ll be back next week, Naomi. You’ll get tired of me in no time.”
“I thought you wanted out. I thought you were out.”
“I can’t leave. Not while he’s still out there.”
She thought about that, was about to say something, then decided against it. “Are you going into the CTC?”
“That’s where you work, right?” She nodded. “Then no.”
She scowled as the grin spread over his face. “Seriously.”
He shrugged. “Probably. That’s where I’ll have the most access to resources, so, yeah, I think so.”
She smiled, and they both fell silent. Finally, just to make conversation, Ryan said, “They’re giving us medals, you know. Pretty ones.”
She shrugged, and what followed kind of surprised him. “That’s not so important to me. I don’t know why… I always thought it would be.”
He read in her eyes that it wasn’t an act. She meant the words, and that surprised him even more. “Harper likes you, Naomi. You got noticed on this, so take what they give you and smile for the cameras, okay?” She looked up to see if he was making fun, but his face was completely sober. “I’m not trying to be arrogant, but I don’t need this job, and I don’t really want it all that much either. It’s more time away from Katie, because she’s back at school in the spring and won’t be able to come down here with me.”
He paused to take his first and only sip of coffee, then said, “You, on the other hand, have the goods, Naomi. You could go high here… You couldn’t be DCI, because of the nationality thing, but just about everything below that is open to you. I mean, you could definitely head up the CTC. To get there, though, you’re going to have to fake it once in a while. You don’t care about the medal… This is one of those times. It’s in your best interest to play it up a little bit, believe me.”
She took the advice for what it was worth, flattered by the compliment, wishing that he hadn’t brought up the other woman. I want you to come home with me! she wanted to scream, and it must have been all over her face, because his words were followed by a long, awkward silence.
Eventually, though, she decided to spare him. It was clear that he wanted to go, and making him suffer wouldn’t change his mind. “Well, I guess I’ll see you Monday,” she said.
They both stood up. “I guess so.” Then they were looking at each other for a long moment, Naomi waiting, hoping that maybe he’d lean in and…
It didn’t happen. Instead, he just reached out to lightly touch her arm. Then he turned and walked out of the cafeteria.
She looked after him for a long moment, a number of expressions mixing on her face. When he passed through the doors and disappeared from view, she sat down to finish her tea, and tried not to think about it.
When Ryan called the number that Harper had given him, he was reminded for the first time in a long time just how much sway the man really had. It was easy to forget, because there was nothing flashy about the deputy director’s personal lifestyle; although he lived in a nice house and dressed well, he took his wife to the same resort in Colorado every year, and drove a six-year-old Explorer with 100,000 miles on the odometer.
When it came to his position at Langley, though, Harper had the power to move mountains. Five minutes after placing the call, Ryan was met at the main gate by a dark-suited man who, after introducing himself as George, showed him to a glistening black Mercedes with tinted windows. Judging from the way it hunkered down over its wheels, the aggressive-looking sedan was also fitted with armor plating in the door panels and engine compartment.
George opened the rear door, but Ryan shook his head and climbed into the front. He didn’t want to get too used to this kind of treatment, and wondered for a moment if Harper had gone through the trouble as a favor, or to intentionally remind him of some of the perks to be found at Langley. Ryan smiled when he decided that the occasional chauffeured ride in an armored Mercedes didn’t really compensate for the government salary because, after all, it was the salary that determined your actual living conditions. Maybe not for him, but certainly for most government employees.
He was forced to reevaluate that assessment, however, when they squealed onto the runway at Dulles International. He couldn’t believe they had been cleared onto the tarmac, and was even more surprised when he realized that he would be returning to Maine on one of the Company’s Gulfstream executive jets.
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