The Threat

by David Poyer

  “No it wasn’t.” Dan held out his hand. “We owe them a better response than that. I might not get to it today, but I’ll take it home tonight and think about it.”

  * * *

  He went through the e-mail, the intel summaries. The first interesting thing was a report from Belize that had located the Baptist in Morawhannä, on the coast of Guyana. The silt Bloom had talked about was settling. Unfortunately, by the time the extradition paperwork got there, he’d left. Dan remembered his suspicions about a leak, but didn’t come up with any new ideas about who it might be.

  He read the Early Bird, then flicked through the cables and messages the Sit Room watchstanders had filed in his queue. One was based on his request for anything about air cargo. It looked like there was going to be another airline strike. Since freight volume had been falling, due to the recession, the companies had been trying to circumvent the baggage handlers’ union. The union was going out, just to remind them who was boss.

  Message traffic about Bogotá, arrangements for the conference. He started an e-file on that, figured he’d probably be going. Major busts were going down in Colombia. Tejeiro was on the warpath. On the other hand, interception rates through the Bahamas were back up. A single factoid told you nothing in this business. It had to be part of a tapestry before it made sense. And even then, two people could use it to back up opposite conclusions.

  What was the point, anyway? When marijuana got scarce everybody went to crack. If they stopped every gram of coke at the border, the Hell’s Angels would cook up more meth. If that dried up there was still alcohol, the most destructive drug ever. He wondered what they’d do when it went digital, when you just clamped a headset on and downloaded the latest buzz.

  He jerked his mind back to what was in front of him. A message from the CIA feed. A raid on a Mexican power plant. He made himself read it.

  He read it again.

  Then went downstairs, trotted across West Executive in a cold drizzle, and let himself into the Sit Room. He stood at the director’s cubicle, looking out her window. Dead pansies thrashed in the window box, whipped by the wind.

  Captain Roald glanced up. “You look terrible. What’s wrong with your eye?”

  Dan dropped the printout on her blotter. It was marked “Secret,” but it hadn’t been out of his hands, and if the Sit Room wasn’t a secure space, what was? “See this, Jennifer?”

  “The Laguna Verde break-in. We got the first cables at zero-six. They wrecked the place. Shot three guards.”

  “But didn’t take any of the nuclear materials. What was that about?”

  “Made me wonder too. I had the watchstanders make some phone calls. See if it was worth passing up the line.”

  Roald said they’d finally decided it wasn’t immediate action, though she’d phone-notified the deputy NSA, and it would go in the daily summary. Took place on foreign soil, no U.S. forces or interests involved; and it hadn’t succeeded. She gave him the facts.

  Laguna Verde, Green Lagoon, was on the Gulf of Mexico fifty miles north of Veracruz. The Mexican government ran two nuclear reactors there, for power and production of isotopes. Ninety percent of nuclear isotopes used in the U.S. for diagnostic X-rays, nuclear medicine, and radiation therapy were imported. A sizable percentage, Roald said, came from Laguna Verde. They included iodine-131, technium-99, cobalt-60, iridium-192, and cesium-137.

  According to the police command center in Mexico City, two vanfuls of armed men had crashed the gates. They’d shot down the guards, then been taken on in a firefight by more security personnel from deeper in the plant.

  The security force held its own, dropping two attackers while losing one man to fire, and eventually drove the intruders back outside the perimeter fence. But meanwhile, using the gate action as a diversion, another team landed from a boat flying a huge Greenpeace flag. There were often demonstrations on the gulf, and Greenpeace often crowded the security zone. So no one had thought much of the boat until it ran up on the beach, disembarking six men who blew the seaside fence and penetrated the complex.

  Only the timely arrival of a Mexican Army helicopter drove them out. The helo machine-gunned the boat and set it on fire. Both parties of intruders had left in the vans, abandoning one dead man. None of the reactor pressure walls, waste pools, or isotope storage areas had been breached.

  “This time,” Dan muttered.

  “‘This time’?”

  “There are three valuable things in that plant. Fuel, waste, and isotopes. They couldn’t steal the fuel, not if the reactor’s operating. The waste, pretty much the same, as I understand it. But the isotopes: small, light, and valuable. They were after the isotopes.”

  “Well, that’ll juice ’em to beef up their security,” Roald said.

  * * *

  He ate at his desk, a plastic sandwich from the cafeteria. Trying to ignore the abyss that beckoned whenever he thought about doomed things. Condemned, surrounded Sarajevo. Slumped bodies … when his mind recurred to that vision blackness shaded his sight, his stomach teetered between terror and nausea.

  By early afternoon he’d gotten through his callbacks. He even wrote a little on his white paper, the one he’d been doing on the Threat Cell. Thinking about Laguna Verde, he added a section on radioactive materials.

  Which reminded him, in turn, of Horn. Even now, with a Yankee White clearance, he couldn’t access certain files on the incident. Al Qaeda had modified that weapon, in some not-yet-comprehended way, to generate an enormous fallout. Detonated in the right place, dispersed by the prevailing winds, it would have made hundreds of square miles uninhabitable for years.

  He closed the file—didn’t want to leave something like that glowing on his screen—and went out to Major Lynch’s cubicle. Rapped on it. “Ed.”

  “Holy smoke. I’ve heard of riding the red-eye—”

  “Everybody’s got to make a joke. Remember that thing about FedEx? The guys who were trying to import empty containers?”

  “You mean UPS?”

  “Yeah. The relief organization. Ever come up with anything more on that?”

  Lynch told him he’d followed up as directed. “That’s what I was starting to tell you about yesterday, when you got the ring from Mrs. C. Transport security put out a closure bulletin on it. They didn’t find anything illegal, and the outfit’s clean.”

  “Where were these containers going to, again?”

  Lynch told him L.A., there was a big hub airfield near there. Dan nodded. “Okay … Where’s Miles these days? I meant to ask Bry this morning, but…”

  Lynch said the DEA operative was at a forward location in Ecuador, where the Colombian, U.S., and host militaries were setting up a combined surveillance center. Dan thought this over and asked if DEA could forward a message. Lynch thought so. Dan sat at the agent’s desk, logged in, and typed a message from his account. He queued it and logged off.

  He was headed back to his office when Gil Ouderkirk, the sergeant the Pentagon had sent to replace Ihlemann—a big taciturn guy with a shaven head that looked strange with a sport coat—said, “Commander? Call for you. State Department.”

  It was a staffer responding to Dan’s inquiry on the stuff he’d left with Buddy Larreinaga. His uniform, wallet, passport, and so forth. Dan especially wanted his class ring back. It had gone too many places with him, bore too many dings from the ships he’d served on. The staffer said he’d located it, but it wasn’t in State’s system. It was coming back through a UN pouch. So it would go to New York, not D.C.

  * * *

  Around five he finished the report on Bosnia that De Bari had asked for, then wondered whom he should turn it in to. Sebold? Gelzinis? That would invite delay, maybe second-guessing from CIA and State. Dan wanted his words read unvarnished. Maybe it was futile, but he was trying to separate the president, the chief executive it was his duty and obligation to counsel, from Bob De Bari. For whom he was starting to cherish a real loathing.

  Normally anything from NSC staff
went through the executive secretary, in a nook off the Sit Room spaces, and from there to the president’s staff secretary. This could take anywhere from a day to a few minutes. He’d noticed anything political got a higher priority than national-security matters. Everything that went into the Oval was monitored. Even the scrap paper the president doodled on was accounted for. He’d gotten back copies of two of his counterdrug reports with the red “President has seen” stamp. Copies only; the originals of everything that went before that sanctified sight came back to the Sit Room, thence into the classified archives.

  At last he decided the most direct route was through the chief of staff. If he could get it past the dragon’s guardians, into the Secret Cave. He printed off a clean copy and put it in a regular file folder. Holt’s office would slip it into one of the blue leather presidential jackets.

  * * *

  The west wing again. The chief of staff’s space was past the vice president’s. The usual reception area, then Holt’s office off to the right. Neither was large, but the upholstery and carpet were of such luxurious-looking dark blue cloth, with small gold figures on them, that the effect was incongruous, as of infinite power compressed into a shoebox. He told the receptionist that he had an NSC report the president had requested. She held out her hand. “You can give it to me.”

  “It needs a verbal introduction.”

  “Mr. Holt’s in conference. I’ll get it to him.” She glanced toward a partition. Dan hesitated. A door opened, and he heard a once familiar voice.

  Then he remembered whose voice it was, and caught his breath. Holding the folder like a weapon, he pushed past the staffer.

  The inner office was bigger than Sebold’s or even Clayton’s. The polished glass of an enormous desk was covered with knickknacks, golf trophies, stuffed toys, union mugs, souvenirs, presentation globes. The right-hand window framed the south end of the Old Executive, but the one to the left had the long view: down the South Lawn, across the Ellipse, to the white bubble of the Jefferson Memorial against a sky just waiting for an excuse to snow.

  Holt, looking startled, was leaning back in a recliner, hands behind his neck. A slim, freckled man sat across from him. Bright red suspenders peeped from beneath a dark blue pinstripe, bracketing a pale lavender silk tie like Donald Trump’s. He wasn’t as young as he’d been ten years before, but his features still had a pixieish cast. His long hair was still reddish blond, his eyes more sun-crinkled. He looked very much at home in the red leather chair, twiddling a gold fountain pen. They regarded each other for a moment before Dan said, “Tallinger.”

  “You know each other?” Holt said. “Dr. Martin W. Tallinger. Dan Lenson, on our staff.”

  Tallinger dropped both hands to the chair arms. The pen hit the carpet. Dan, too, could not speak. Then his astonishment was obliterated by the same red rage as when he’d spat mingled blood and saliva in the face of the man who’d sold secrets, betrayed his country, and in the end helped kill, knowingly or not, a woman who’d cared only for peace.

  “What’s this asshole doing here?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “This guy’s a lying influence peddler. And a spy. Still running your ring, Tallinger? Still selling the Chinese our technology?”

  “Now just a minute.” Tallinger was still braced, but he was below Dan, looking up at him from the chair. He probably figured that if he got up, Dan would punch him. He glared at the chief of staff. “Tony. Call him off!”

  “I’d like to know what’s going on,” Holt said.

  Dan said, “What you have here’s the guy who tried to sell the Tomahawk terminal guidance to the Chinese. Check with the D.C. police. Call the FBI. Mention Operation Snapdragon.”

  “Which I cooperated with, and which cleared me one hundred percent,” Tallinger said. “Tony, here’s the picture. This … officer holds me responsible for a personal loss, years ago, that I had nothing to do with. I’m surprised to see him here. Surprised to see him still in government service, actually. The last I heard, he’d resigned under a cloud.”

  “The cloud’s yours, you fucking murderer.” Dan stepped forward. Tallinger shrank back and raised his hands.

  Holt knocked over a whittled figurine of a New England sailing captain as he stretched for his intercom. “I want Garner Sebold in here,” he said. “Lenson—outside.”

  “I have a report for the president. I’ll drop it on your desk. Then I’ll leave.” Dan looked at Tallinger again. “But you can’t trust this son of a bitch. He works for the other side. The real other side.”

  “I told you, this guy’s a loose cannon. It’s well known in his own service, Tony.”

  “This isn’t about me, sir. Just having him here is wrong.”

  Another voice cut in. “I have a lot of confidence in Dan.”

  Sebold looked put out, and out of breath. He’d probably heard the last exchange, which had been pretty loud. “But I agree he has strong opinions. And he’s seen some things lately no one should have to. Let’s go, Dan.”

  “The chief of staff needs to know who he’s dealing with, General.”

  “He knows that before anybody sets foot in his office, Dan. Don’t you think? One last time.”

  Dan knew the next step was calling in the Secret Service. He couldn’t believe it. Tallinger, next door to the Oval Office. And he was the one being hustled out. “All right,” he said. “I’ve warned you.” He stared again at Tallinger, and followed Sebold out.

  In the corridor the general said, “What the fuck was that about?”

  “He’s an agent of influence.”

  Sebold said mildly, “If that’s true, I’m sure Tony knows it. I heard part of what you were putting out in there. I know tempers get close to the surface in politics. But that was really over the line.”

  Dan looked down the hall. He should go back. This time, get his hands on the traitor. But Sebold was gripping his biceps so hard his arm was going numb. Muscling him down the steps, to the ground floor. Passing staffers glanced at them, then away, snapping back to their own concerns. “I want you back in your office. Stay there till you hear from me,” the general said.

  “I’ve got some—”

  “In your office.” They were both in civilian dress, but it was the tone of command.

  He said unwillingly, “Right.”

  * * *

  The call came after the windows had turned black and the lights had come on in the quadrangle. The assistant NSA wanted to see him. Dan said to Lynch, to Harlowe, “Ed, Marty, I’m off to see Gelzinis. If I don’t come back, carry the torch. Keep Bry focused. And keep pushing the Threat Cell idea.”

  “Will do.” They nodded. Looking, he was encouraged to note, worried.

  The assistant’s office was on the third floor. He went down the cool echoing hallway feeling as if he were going to his execution. He pushed the gloom away. Martin W. Tallinger and his kind didn’t belong here. To acquiesce in that … he just wasn’t going to do it.

  “Dan. Come in.”

  Sebold was with Clayton’s second in command. Gelzinis shoved aside a pile of folders and laced his fingers. “Commander Lenson. I’d ask you to sit down, but you’ve seriously embarrassed us today. I just heard about this from Holt. What the hell was that performance about?”

  Dan explained whom Tallinger had represented and what he’d done. The two senior staffers exchanged glances. “That was a long time ago,” Gelzinis observed.

  “He never paid for it. And I have no doubt in my mind he’s still raking the same shit pile.”

  “Maybe you ought to remember something. You’re military. Not in the inner circles of this administration.”

  “I know that. But it’s part of my job, if I see a mistake being made, to point it out. Associating with scum like that is not going to make the president look good.”

  “So you had his best interests in mind,” Gelzinis said with that dry tone he was the master of. “That’s good to hear. Because it so happens Dr. Tallinger ran one o
f the biggest political action committees supporting his campaign.”

  “Representing who?”

  “That’s not yours to ask. The point is he’s a friend of the administration and we treat him as such.”

  “You let pricks like him dictate policy? Because they donate money?”

  Gelzinis said in a flinty tone, “He dictates nothing. I shouldn’t have to explain basics. There are a lot of interests who have access, or have to be reassured they have access. Who have to be listened to, but who don’t necessarily affect policymaking. That’s a given. The point I’m making is, we expect the military staff to stay out of that loop. Force yourself into it and you’ll be on the way back to your service before you can log off.”

  “What I’m saying, sir, is that any face time you’re giving this fucker’s direct access for the Chinese government.”

  “Let me set you straight on a couple of items, Lenson. We’ve got the biggest national debt this country has ever had. Thanks mainly to the previous administration, but we’ve done our part. Who do you think bought our securities? If the Chinese want a word with us, they’ve paid the going rate. We need to forge linkages, not perpetuate cold war enmities.”

  Dan recognized the same weaseling bullshit Tallinger had given him once. “Building trust.” “Profitable linkages, not competing interests.” The rationale he’d used to steal information to pass to China, and through China to North Korea, and Iran, and the other rogue regimes that were metastasizing into a new generation of threats around the world.

  “Are we clear here, Commander?”

  Dan stood with fists clenched. He saw the military-civilian divide, all right. But dipping yourself in shit for campaign contributions wasn’t right. He said in a tight voice, “I guess that’s where I belong. Back at sea. Believe me, I’m ready to go.”

  “Now, Dan,” Sebold said.

  “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you get fired out of here, you go back to any kind of decent assignment,” Gelzinis said. “Remember who approves military promotions. The president. Or his responsible staffer.”

  “That’s exactly the kind of low threat I’d expect from a pandering weasel like you,” Dan told him, and was happy to see the assistant choke and splutter, caught wordless.