Power Down

by Ben Coes

  He thought back to the conversation with Fortuna. The entire strategy had been his.

  He swallowed as he pictured Fortuna, walking out the door that last day at Sowbridge. Only thirty-two years old, and already a billionaire. His long, dark hair combed back, down to the tops of his shoulders, slightly unkempt. Lusted after by so many of the young, single women at the firm, even the married ones. His long nose and big, brown eyes. Fortuna, he now realized as the sedan climbed onto the on ramp of the FDR Drive, is a terrorist.

  Fortuna is a terrorist.

  “Jesus Christ,” he whispered to himself.

  The Lincoln climbed into the passing lane along the FDR and quickly gained speed.

  “Why the FDR?” Karl asked.

  “Fundraiser tonight at the Waldorf. The mayor. Traffic’s all knotted up midtown.”

  The car went fast. Faster than usual. At some point, the car lurched right, swerving to pass a car, then swerved back. The tires made a slight screeching sound.

  “Slow down, Bobby,” Karl said. “There’s no hurry.”

  But the luxurious sedan didn’t slow down. It tore north on the FDR, the sound of squealing tires growing more frantic as Bobby weaved between drivers. Karl tried to lean forward, but the movement of the car was so sudden and violent, it was difficult. He was able to read the speedometer; it read 105 miles per hour.

  “For fuck’s sake, Bobby, slow down!”

  But it was no use. His driver wasn’t listening. Karl then understood what was happening. He reached for the lock on the door. He had to get out of the car. Even at this speed, he had to jump and try and save himself.

  He grabbed the lock and tried to move it. But it wouldn’t move. He pushed and pulled it with all of the strength he had, but it was useless.

  He reached forward and grabbed Bobby by the neck. He grabbed his chin and tried to move his head around and force him to look away from the road, so that he would perhaps crash into a guardrail. But he held his head firm; he was stronger than Karl had imagined. The driver reached up and grabbed Karl’s hand with his right hand while he kept his left on the steering wheel. With a swift downward motion, he snapped Karl’s wrist, breaking it in an instant.

  Karl screamed. Another violent swerve sent him flying backward into the backseat.

  Then he saw it ahead as they flew beneath the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, a cement barrier. The sedan was now moving at more than 110 miles per hour. A large cement barrier separated the exit ramp from the FDR. Nothing stood between the sedan and the approaching cement barrier.

  In a fiery moment, it was all gone. The impact of the Lincoln sedan pulverized Sheldon Karl, erasing with him Alexander Fortuna’s last loose end.

  26

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  In the West Wing of the White House, four individuals were seated in the office of Jane London, chief of staff to the president: London; Myron Kratovil, national security advisor to the president; Bill Holmgren, head of the CIA; and Roger Putnam, U.S. secretary of state.

  The West Wing of the White House had a busy but surprisingly cozy atmosphere. The ceilings were low, the walls adorned with large, historic paintings and photographs. Staffers walked the hallways with energy and, usually, a smile. The carpets were lush, vibrant reds with beautiful patterns. The general feeling was one of luxury, preppiness, and history, like an old home in a wealthy town in New England.

  John Scalia, deputy national security advisor, walked hurriedly into the office to join them, settling in a chair at the edge of London’s desk. “Evening, everyone.”

  “Let’s hear it,” said Putnam, the secretary of state. “As it is, I’m already late for my flight to South Korea.”

  “You might want to consider postponing, sir,” said Scalia.

  “And why is that?”

  “The president authorized a special NSA protocol thirty-six hours ago,” said Scalia. “We went back almost a decade and opened up electronic and audio vaults within NSA. The bottom line is the intercepts show clearly that there have been discussions for some time about sabotaging Capitana.”

  “And who was doing the discussing?” asked London.

  “The evidence,” said Scalia, “points to Saudi Arabia. We have multiple NSA intercepts in which high-ranking Aramco executives and government officials discuss the harm Capitana could cause, before it was built, during construction, and currently. We have the foreign minister discussing it. We have planning discussions about embedding people at the rig. It’s messy. It’s why I called this meeting.”

  The room was silent for several moments.

  “Saudi Arabia?” asked London. “A sanctioned attack? By the government? There’s just no way.”

  “It would explain the bombers’ access to such cutting-edge munitions,” said Kratovil.

  “Do they actually talk about blowing up the facility?” asked Putnam.

  “No, they don’t,” said Scalia. “But they come damn close.”

  “They wouldn’t,” said Holmgren. “If something was being planned it wouldn’t be on the phone, e-mail, whatever NSA is using these days, unless they were complete idiots, which Fahd, Bandar, and Aramco are not.”

  “They have the motive,” said Scalia. “Capitana has killed the Saudis, taking market share, and adding to a host of production woes in their biggest reservoir, Ghawar field.”

  “Look, the Saudis aren’t starving,” said Kratovil. “They have more than a third of the remaining oil and natural gas still in the ground. That’s worldwide.”

  “I’m not saying what they did, may have done, was rational, Myron. They’ve badly mismanaged Ghawar field. They need to plow hundreds of billions into Ghawar to complete it as well as harvest other fields. The combination of Ghawar’s decline in productivity, and Capitana’s rise and appropriation of market share, has harmed them severely.”

  “So the idea is they hired some ex Al-Qaeda types to do this?” asked London.

  “It wouldn’t be hard,” said Holmgren. “They’re all over the place. Like rats.”

  “Even if you’re right,” said Putnam, “the Saudis would never do this. The ramifications would be too big. They wouldn’t piss us off like this.”

  “Well, that’s interesting,” said Scalia. “Because now the question becomes replacement dynamics. Savage Island is relatively straightforward. Electricity supply settles into the grid. Within the week, Savage Island wholesale megawatt will be largely replaced by other generators of megawatt, mostly domestic, natural gas plants, nukes, some Canadian hydro, coal. Straightforward, simple, no problems. The problem is oil. Where do we get the oil to replace Capitana? Do you realize that Capitana supplied more than nine percent of U.S. oil last year? This year it would’ve been nearly twelve percent. It’s still climbing.”

  “Where do we replace that oil?” asked London. “The president doesn’t want to tap SPR.”

  “The reality is SPR will not suffice even if we did,” said Scalia. “Energy has analyzed the replacement dynamics. The loss of Capitana has created a dramatic hole in the U.S. petroleum supply chain that has really only one viable solution.”

  “Saudi Arabia,” said Putnam.

  “Exactly,” said Scalia. “There’s only one place we can go. Saudi Arabia has us in a box.”

  “They’ve built what Kissinger referred to as an Anonymous Circle,” said Kratovil. “They’ve entrapped us, they possess the only way out, and no one knows except us and them. To go outside the circle would be suicidal.”

  “Call it whatever the fuck you want, Myron,” said Putnam, standing, his face turning beet red. “This is war! If this is true we should vaporize the entire fucking Arabian Peninsula!”

  “This is just bloody Machiavellian,” said Holmgren. “Couldn’t they simply pick up the goddamn phone and tell us they have a problem?”

  The room was silent again.

  “All right, I’m canceling Seoul,” said Putnam. “I want you with me,” he told Scalia. “We’ll need some o
f the intercepts. We need hard evidence. Get your energy person. I want to be airborne within an hour.”

  “Energy believes there’ll be a hefty price, perhaps in the hundreds of billions,” said Scalia.

  “We’ll need to brief the president,” said London. “He’s due back from California within the hour.”

  “The Saudis will deny everything,” said Holmgren. “I’m not a diplomat, but my suggestion is you go straight to the bargaining table. Avoid even talking about the attacks. Just get the oil pumping again. Nothing good will come of a confrontation over the destruction of Capitana and Savage Island. Let my people deal with that side of the equation.”

  “If your people had dealt with that side of the equation we wouldn’t be in this mess,” said Putnam. “Teddy Marks is a friend of mine. I served with him in Nam. I’ll be goddamned if I’m not gonna say something. I’ll get the oil flowing again, don’t you worry. But those fuckhead Saudis will know goddamn well that we know what they did.”

  In Jessica’s office, Savoy told her about the failed extraction at Madradora.

  “How the hell could they have known?” she asked.

  “Andreas didn’t have much doubt.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That someone in your interagency group is bad.”

  Jessica paused to think of the implications. She placed her right hand on her forehead and rubbed it for several seconds.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Don’t know. He hung up on me. He was running from the local police and God knows who else.”

  She shook her head and looked at her watch. “What about Ted Marks? When do you leave for Colorado?”

  “I leave in an hour,” said Savoy.

  Jessica stared down at her desk for a moment, then walked to the window and looked out at Pennsylvania Avenue.

  “What is it?” asked Savoy. “Andreas?”

  “Yeah, that. But it’s this Saudi angle too,” she said. “The group’s taking it seriously, and I know we have to. But I don’t see it. I . . .”

  “Want my opinion?”

  “Sure.”

  “Forget the fucking Saudis,” Savoy said. “Someone in that room”—he pointed his finger toward the ground, indicating the interagency conference room several floors beneath them—“is involved in this. For blood or money, they’re bent, and they’re scared, and they’d like nothing more than to have the government chasing its tail in Saudi Arabia. You need to start looking at the people who knew about Madradora immediately. And you’d better be extremely careful. Watch what you say and who you say it to. That’s how they found Andreas.”

  Jessica nodded, still uncertain.

  “But even more important, don’t let on that you suspect a goddamn thing. Trust me, if there’s a mole—and they think you’re onto them—then you’ve just put yourself in grave danger.”

  By 1:00 A.M., the secretary of state’s Boeing 777 was airborne out of Andrews Air Force Base.

  On board were Putnam, Scalia, Stebbens, and a smattering of specialists from State, NSA, and the Department of Energy. The flight would take six hours.

  The plane had three sections: the secretary’s section, which consisted of a large stateroom and private office; a staff section, which housed two conference rooms, a couple of private offices, and several rows of seats; and the back of the plane, which looked like the first-class section of an airplane, and was used when media traveled with the secretary of state. No reporters had been invited on this trip. Except for a couple of translators, the aft compartment was empty.

  Putnam was a legend in the diplomatic corps. He was serving his second stint as secretary of state. He served his first tenure under President George H. W. Bush, during which time he helped broker the end of the Gulf War. Now, at sixty-eight, Putnam was older, and it showed. He immediately retired to the large plane’s stateroom for a nap when he got on board.

  Scalia sat across from Stebbens in the staff area. He hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours. He closed his eyes and fell asleep as soon as the plane reached cruising altitude.

  After an hour, he was awakened by one of Putnam’s staffers. “Jane London’s office just called,” said the young woman. “There’ll be a call in twenty minutes with the president.”

  Scalia went into one of the bathrooms and washed his face. He went to the conference room.

  In the stateroom, Putnam was on a conference call with the president. Putnam’s booming voice, which could be heard through the door, indicated he and his boss were arguing.

  “I don’t want this devolving, Roger,” the president said to Putnam. “We need to calmly and quickly get the Saudis to alter their production cycle and get Capitana’s oil replaced. I don’t want this becoming a diplomatic battle or a personal one.”

  “They just attacked us, sir,” said Putnam.

  “Someone did.”

  “They nearly killed a friend of mine, someone who fought for me in Vietnam.”

  “Someone did, Roger.”

  “And our response is to fly over and hand them a check? Forgive me, but I’m not sure I agree with that stance. This was an unprovoked attack. They murdered hundreds of people.”

  “Spare me the lecture,” said the president. “I’m as angry as you are. If they did it, I’ll be the one screaming ‘kill the bastards.’ But we don’t know who did this. And we need the Saudis’ oil right now. I would not accuse anybody of anything, especially an ally, until we have proof. When we have proof, get out of my way because I’ll be the one who turns Saudi Arabia into a glass fucking parking lot.”

  Putnam paused.

  “Get the rest of the group,” said the president after a few moments. “I have a Homeland Security briefing I need to get to.”

  Putnam waved at the window to the conference room. Scalia and the others filed in and took seats around the conference table.

  “Who’s there with you, Roger?” the president asked, his disembodied voice coming from a speaker at the center of the table.

  “Mr. President, you have me, along with John Scalia, Antonia Stebbens from Energy, and two of my deputies from State, Garen Adams, who oversees our Middle East desk, and Hank Bishop, who as you know is the undersecretary for operations.”

  “The purpose of this call,” said London pointedly, “is to review any further developments as they relate to either Capitana or Savage Island, and to discuss the agenda for tonight’s meeting between the secretary of state and King Fahd.”

  “From FBI, there have been no major developments as it relates to either attack site, other than more direct links between Arabs who were on board Capitana and Al-Qaeda,” said Louis Chiles, piped into the conference call from a remote location. “We’ve identified some of the men from Capitana, going from Anson’s records and our debriefings. A number of the men aboard the rig trace back to the early days of the organization and received training at various camps. Additionally, the apparent leader of the cell, a man called Esco, was a student with Hezbollah’s number two, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, more than two decades ago at Cairo University.”

  “So there’s a clear Al-Qaeda connection?” asked the president.

  “Lots of them, but distant in virtually every case, and all dated. These were no leaders here. We seem to be talking about midlevel operatives who subsequently disappeared and resurfaced.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “It could mean a lot of things,” said Holmgren, also from Washington. “But we’re getting nothing from our informants within the two groups. Nobody knew about this. You don’t see the two groups collaborating on anything. Hezbollah despises Al-Qaeda. It doesn’t make sense that they’d be working together. Also, both groups love headlines. They would’ve taken credit, if you ask me, if either were involved.”

  “Unless someone paid them a great deal of money,” said Putnam.

  “Let’s get to Saudi Arabia,” said the president. “Antonia, we know Saudi Ara
bia had it in for Capitana, how it hurt them. But there was no direct motive for hitting Savage Island, right?”

  “Right,” said Stebbens. “In an energy context, Savage Island had little material impact.”

  “Yet the attacks are clearly linked by a couple of things,” said Chiles. “Same explosive type, highly sophisticated stuff that is new, not yet black market available, and exceedingly difficult and expensive to manufacture. Now links between the individuals involved, via Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah training camps. And timing, of course.”

  Putnam cleared his throat. “What if Savage Island was a decoy, a way for the Saudis to say, ‘Why would we do this?’ ”

  “There’s no logic to it other than the inexplicability of it,” said Holmgren. “As you say. But it seems a stretch. Especially when you add in the murder of Anson and attempt on Marks. That seems like a purely symbolic act.”

  “Right,” said the president. “The ‘decoy’ theory is circular reasoning. I don’t mean to sound like a skeptic but it doesn’t add up.”

  “Nor can we rule it out,” said Chiles. “At least not yet.”

  “We don’t know either way,” said the president, “yet you land in Saudi Arabia in hours. We need a game plan.”

  “To get back to the energy issue, Mr. President,” said Stebbens, “Saudi Arabia is our only option. They have the oil and can ramp up quickly, but at a cost. Their reserves have largely been sold off to China. We have approximately three weeks to run through whatever Capitana throughput was either en route or in refineries, so time is not on our side. We need to start filling the pipeline in a matter of days to avoid shock.”

  “What’ll they ask for?” asked London.

  “Whatever it is, we need to understand that the cost to our economy in not having adequate supply is staggering,” said Stebbens. “EIA rough estimates were just sent to my BlackBerry—I’ll forward them around. They say once the supply chain thins, the cost of gasoline could spike to seven or eight dollars a gallon. Our models show that every dollar over four dollars a gallon costs this country roughly twenty billion dollars a day in GDP. Those numbers are rough, but they could actually be low.”