Code Word: Paternity, A Presidential Thriller

by Norton, Doug

  As the wind increased, Ella moved across the slanting cockpit to the high side. I wonder if Rick is going to get to what’s really on his mind and soul, she thought.

  “Now I have some questions for you, Ray,” said the president.

  “Fire away, sir.”

  “What about me, Ray? Did I do my duty? Did I save hundreds of thousands of Americans by killing fifty thousand Koreans? Did I do the right thing? Or was the bombing already over because Kim got cautious after we intercepted the second bomb? You’ve read the New York Times. Am I the bloodiest ruler since Stalin?”

  Morales saw a pinched, fearful squint on the president’s face that reminded him of an iconic newspaper photo of a Viet Cong guerrilla, his captor’s pistol inches from his temple, moments before being executed.

  Poor guy! thought Morales. He’s really at the center of a firestorm, some of it fed by people who don’t consider that they might be dead now if he hadn’t acted. But some also from folks who would have been willing to bet their own lives that we could get through this without using our nukes; that somehow, given more time, diplomacy would have worked.

  “All I can tell you, sir, is that I would have done the same. I can say you did your duty. But were you right? Was it the best outcome? Would somebody else, like Vice President Griffith, have done better?

  “Well, sir, as that Marine instructor I told you about said, ‘This is about you, Lieutenant. You’re the platoon commander. What are you going to do, now?’

  “You were the one who had the responsibility and the duty to decide. You know if you made the best decision you could. That’s all you get to know in this life, except that there’ll be other tough decisions coming along, because that’s what leaders get. You make ’em and go on.

  “You carry the decisions you’ve made in your rucksack. Some of them are really heavy. For the rest of your life, early some days and late some nights, you’ll wonder if you could have made better choices, better decisions. You’ll open that ruck and lay them out. You’ll revisit them. But you don’t get any do-overs. That’s just the way it is.”

  Rick gazed back at him for long seconds, face still pinched. Then he relaxed, nodded, squeezed Ella’s hand, and eased the boat onto a broad reach. It left a wake straight as an arrow as it rollicked through the green-brown waters of the Chesapeake.

  ***

  After dinner, the president and first lady sat on the porch of the guest house, enjoying the spectacular play of sunset reflected in clouds over the bay.

  “How do you feel, Rick? What do you think about the things Ray said?”

  “About what he said: obviously, that works for him, as he lives the rest of his life with the decisions he’s made. It doesn’t for me; it’s too pat.”

  “Does it have to be complicated to work for you?”

  “Maybe . . . I don’t know; I’m just saying how I feel.”

  “No, you’re saying how you think!” Ella smiled, then grew solemn.

  “Rick, how are you going to live with the order you gave to destroy Sinpo?”

  He leaned forward, elbows planted on thighs, hands clasped. “I’m going to focus on the good that could come out of it and work as hard as I can, for the rest of my life, to squeeze every bit of progress from it. A better life for Koreans. Tighter international control of nukes. The end, I pray, of nuclear terrorism.”

  “What about the country’s reaction?”

  “I don’t know . . . Ella, should we run again? Or am I such a symbol of anger and bloodshed that we couldn’t win a second term and shouldn’t even try?”

  “Rick, it’s too soon to tell! But do you want to be president for eight years?”

  “I don’t know. Nine months ago, I was so sure of everything. Sure that I could thread the needle and solve any dispute. A few days after Las Vegas I was sure I could lead a transformation, truly change the course of history for the better.”

  He twisted and looked intently into her eyes. “And it was the right policy—but I couldn’t get it done because of one man, Kim Jong-il, and one philosophy, bin Laden’s version of Islam. Evil plus unreasoning, undying hatred stopped me and nearly destroyed America.

  “So I’m no longer sure of much. Now, all I’m sure of is that someone—maybe Kim, maybe Kim and al-Qaeda—destroyed Las Vegas, and I destroyed Sinpo, and because of us about a hundred and thirty thousand people are dead.”

  Ella put her hand on his forearm and squeezed it hard. “Rick, you can be sure of more than that! You can be sure that a really dangerous man, Kim Jong-il, no longer rules a country with nuclear weapons. And you can be sure that never again will a country with nukes give or sell one to the crazies, because that had consequences as terrible as the terrorists’ act. And that every country will keep much tighter control over all nuclear materials. And that the UN will not just debate and watch again if someone like Kim starts building nukes and missiles.”

  Rick shook his head. “No, Ella, other than the Kim part, I can’t be sure of any of that! I thought the bombing of Las Vegas changed the world, changed the ways that Ming and other leaders thought about security. I was wrong—it only changed my way of thinking!”

  “So you can’t believe in something unless it’s certain? And nothing is resolved unless it’s resolved forever? Come on, Rick!” Ella smiled, taking the sting out of her words.

  She’s right. I’m afraid of getting comfortable with what I did, afraid of letting myself off the hook. But I accomplished a lot and I can acknowledge that without forgetting what it cost.

  “You’re right . . . I didn’t let Steve Nguyen down. I suppose I let that woman down, but I did try to find a way without more killing, and maybe another time I’ll succeed.

  “But how do you feel, Ella? You wanted to kill the bombers, very slowly and painfully, as I recall.”

  Ella threw back her shoulders. Her dark eyes flashed. “Kim’s dead. I hope he died in pain and knowing it was payback for Las Vegas! But probably he didn’t; probably he got a quick bullet in the head. Still, I feel good knowing he was killed for what he did. Same for bin Laden—and I’m glad he had time to know what was coming!

  “But we didn’t get the others. Whoever planted the Las Vegas bomb, whoever was waiting for that second bomb—they’re still out there, somewhere. I want them dead, too!”

  Taking a deep breath, Rick plunged, driven to ask but fearing her answer: “But, Ella, I was also asking how you feel about me. I know there was a time you thought I wasn’t up to this job, to being president in these circumstances.”

  “Rick, I’ve always thought you were a good man! I’ve never wavered from that. But you’re a good man born and bred in a place of law and safety and abundance. You had never in your life been at physical risk. You had never faced an opponent who didn’t accept the rules and conventions that you had come to believe governed human life. In all of this you were like so many Americans. So I did fear that you wouldn’t be able to understand that this was kill or be killed, or, perhaps, would understand but be unable, or unwilling, to kill. Thank God, I was wrong!”

  Rick preened a little. Ella knew the signs: her husband was about to launch into one of his lectures. He’s going to be OK! As her heart jumped, she suppressed a smile.

  “Ella, you were wrong! But I understand why. Like I was, presidents are constrained by their own beliefs, which typically lean toward pragmatism and compromise, and the beliefs of a small but politically potent group of Americans who believe that both safety and morality dictate always acting in concert with others, always following the rules. So presidents are reluctant to use our enormous military power—and they should be!

  “But as a nation we are a fierce, passionate people, capable of determined action and ruthless—sometimes mindless and unnecessary—violence. So if you threaten and frighten and kill Americans, they demand, and will have, your blood.

  “Our political conversation can hide that reality and convince really dangerous people and groups that America won’t destroy them i
f they attack. Maybe it goes in cycles, because that’s what led to Pearl Harbor and to Hitler’s declaration of war on us a week later. Kim was probably crazy, so it’s hard to be sure, but I think that’s also what led to Six-thirteen.

  “Pakistan’s leaders understood us and cut a deal that saved them and their country. Kim Jong-il didn’t, and he and fifty thousand of those he ruled are dead, lives thrown away by their ruler’s miscalculation like the millions of German and Japanese lives. I killed them and I’ll be sick over that forever, but now I’m sure I had to . . . I guess I’m closer to thinking like Ray than I realized.”

  “Rick, do you think this is over now, with Kim and bin Laden dead?”

  ***

  Fahim kept his nimble fingers and restless mind occupied repairing the old cabin in the Idaho mountains. Most evenings he took a cup of hot sweet tea to the porch and watched the sun go down. And waited for The Base to give him another mission.

  Afterword and Acknowledgments

  “The Commission believes that unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.” So states the opening paragraph of the Executive Summary to the report of the Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, December 12, 2008.

  Code Word: Paternity is a novel, not a prophecy. But much of it is, unfortunately, fact. The spread of nuclear weapons, dubbed “nuclear proliferation” by scholars and governments, is real. A. Q. Khan’s nuclear smuggling ring significantly increased the risk of a nuclear weapon getting into the hands of terrorists. The late Kim Jong-il and his father did, indeed, buy and sell and barter nuclear weapon and missile technology with regimes controlled by other dangerous, unpredictable—perhaps unhinged—dictators. They did, indeed, engage in the astonishing assassinations, kidnappings, and warlike acts recounted by President Martin’s secretary of state and his CIA director. All of the technologies described in Code Word: Paternity exist: in fact analyzing the debris of a nuclear explosion is old hat, having been mastered some fifty years ago during the days of nuclear weapon testing in the atmosphere.

  The Paternity Project is my invention, in the sense that the name is my creation and to my knowledge there has been no government announcement of such a capability. I had no access to classified information. But one can find press reports from the late 1940s through the early 1960s describing the use of techniques like those of my fictional Paternity Project to analyze nuclear detonations. My surmise—indeed my expectation—is that the U.S. government has such a program, perhaps resident in the Department of Homeland Security’s National Technical Nuclear Forensics Center.

  Although nuclear terrorism hasn’t happened, America’s shield against it may be wearing thin. That shield, called nuclear deterrence, is the belief of all rulers possessing or developing nuclear weapons that should the United States be attacked anonymously with a nuclear weapon, the U.S. government has the scientific capacity to rapidly identify the nation that manufactured the weapon’s nuclear core and would retaliate against that country in kind, regardless of the affiliation of the operatives who emplaced and detonated the bomb.

  But our deterrence shield is constructed largely of two materials: the assumption that all who control nukes regard U.S. nuclear retaliation as their own ultimate catastrophe, and their belief that the president of the United States possesses both the resolve and the political capital to order nuclear retaliation in circumstances when the identity of the enabler nation is not established beyond all doubt. Unfortunately we live in a period when the first of these factors can no longer be taken for granted and the second depends on the ability of every ruler controlling nukes to accurately perceive the qualities of both America’s president and its politics.

  America’s political discourse now features frequent attacks on the character of our president, regardless of party. And the proliferation of cable television and Internet outlets catering to micro-audiences offers great temptation for someone—be he or she a “shock jock” or a head of state—to substitute googling for thought and simply reinforce beliefs already held.

  Kim Jong-il, “the Dear Leader,” died in 2011. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine that he, given his life journey and probably psychotic personality, was at risk of making the colossal misjudgments portrayed in Code Word: Paternity. Perhaps his successor, son Kim Jong-un, is unlike him and will take North Korea in a different direction. But, then again, perhaps not. And there are other autocrats who, should they possess nukes, could have the same combination of absolute authority and delusional thinking as Kim Jong-il and make the same catastrophic error that “my” Kim made.

  I wish to acknowledge a number of works that were essential to my research for Code Word: Paternity. I benefited enormously from them; any errors in the novel are my own. Professor Graham Allison has written widely and authoritatively about nuclear weapon issues, especially the dangers of nuclear proliferation. The title of his 2004 book, Nuclear Terrorism, The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, cannot be surpassed as a summation of the situation in which we now live. Professor Allison describes the risks and proposes solutions much less sanguinary than the one that Rick Martin ultimately employed. May they come to pass!

  Besides Allison’s book, I relied on Gordon Corera’s Shopping for Bombs, also on Nuclear Jihadist and on Fallout, both by Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz. Michael Levi’s On Nuclear Terrorism was important for its discussion of nuclear forensics, the techniques behind my fictive Paternity Project. Though first published over sixty years ago, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, edited by Samuel Glasstone, remains an essential resource on the topic and implies how much may be deduced from analysis of a nuclear detonation. I depended on Bradley K. Martin’s Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader for information about North Korea’s ruling dynasty of Kims. My copy of Don Oberdorfer’s The Two Koreas became well thumbed. I got a key story idea from Senator Jim Webb’s A Time to Fight: the kernel of Ray Morales’ conversation with President Martin—Martin’s epiphany.

  With great pleasure I express appreciation for the support of family and friends—and writing instructor Steve Alcorn—during my journey to the completion of Code Word: Paternity. Besides her steady encouragement, my wife, Janie, gamely read the entire manuscript and made comments that improved it. So did Robert Bishop, Sandra Bovee, John Dill, John Fredland, Dan Hahne, Bill Mason, Bob (the WO) Miller, Ted Mussenden, Barbara Sheffer, Chip Sterling, Kathy Sterling, and Bob Williams. P.T. (Pete) Deutermann gave me pithy comments on the writer’s craft and life that helped me find perspective. My thanks also to Robert Brown, Jr. whose contribution went beyond his eagle-eyed copy editing. Paul Chamberlain of Cerebral Itch and Megan Hahne gave me my first inkling about cover creation. Connie Reider, friend and wonderful portrait photographer, created my author photo. And my appreciation to the staff of Nimitz Library at the US Naval Academy where I did most of my research.

  GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS AND TERMS

  ACLU. Abbreviation for American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is a membership organization that advocates in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee.

  Andrews. Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington DC, houses the squadrons that provide transportation to the president and other senior government officials. It is the airport normally used by the president.

  BMEWS. Abbreviation for the Cold War-era Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, which could provide long-range warning of a ballistic missile attack over the polar region of the northern hemisphere.

  CBP. Abbreviation for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. It is one of the Department of Homeland Security’s largest components, with a priority mission of keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the United States. It also has a respons
ibility for securing and facilitating trade and travel while enforcing hundreds of U.S. regulations, including immigration and drug laws.

  CIA. Abbreviation for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency leads the organization and reports to the director of National Intelligence (DNI).

  Dear Leader. Term used by North Koreans to address or refer to Kim Jong-il.

  DHS. Abbreviation for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The secretary of homeland security is an officer of the cabinet, responsible to the president.

  DMZ. Abbreviation for the Demilitarized Zone, a buffer free of soldiers established along the border between North Korea and South Korea.

  DNI. Abbreviation denoting the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, who serves as the head of the intelligence community, overseeing and directing the implementation of the National Intelligence Program and acting as the principal advisor to the president, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to national security.

  DOE. Abbreviation for the U.S. Department of Energy, responsible for insuring the integrity and safety of the country's nuclear weapons, promoting international nuclear safety, advancing nuclear non-proliferation, and continuing to provide safe, efficient, and effective nuclear power plants for the U.S. Navy. The secretary of energy is an officer of the cabinet responsible to the president.

  DPRK. Abbreviation for the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, commonly referred to as North Korea.

  DSP. Abbreviation for the Defense Support Program. DSP satellites are a key part of North America's early warning system. They help protect the United States and its allies by detecting missile launches, space launches, and nuclear detonations.

  FAA. Abbreviation for Federal Aviation Agency, which is among other things responsible for U.S. air traffic control.