Pinnacle Event

by Richard A. Clarke

  Bowman frowned, skeptically, at Dugout. Winston Burrell continued unabated. “You may not have noticed down there in the Caribbean, but we are in the end stages of a presidential election. Imagine if they blow up a city and then make a demand of the two candidates to pull all our forces out of the Middle East or they will blow up another two cities. Both candidates will agree to pull out, do whatever they demand. Hell, I don’t even know if we could go ahead with an election after even one city had been nuked,” Burrell concluded. “It would be a constitutional crisis.”

  “So, what do all the nice departments and agencies suggest you do, Winston?” Ray asked.

  “Homeland Security wants to launch a search with radiation detectors. Trucks and helicopters running around in DC and New York with scanners. They want to stop any cargo from entering the U.S. unless it’s been searched first overseas.”

  Bowman scowled at the screen. “You can’t do that, Winston. There would be a general panic. Everyone would flee the cities.”

  “I know. Self-evacuation is what the FBI calls it. Sounds like a laxative. But seriously, if we do that everyone will leave town and no one would vote. The economy would tank,” Burrell said. “But if we do nothing and a city blows up? Then it turns out we knew about the threat and didn’t warn the public?”

  Burrell looked more agitated than Bowman had ever seen him, the usual confidence bordering on arrogance was gone. Burrell continued to pour out his concerns, “My fear, as I said, is they blow up one city and then make demands and say they will blow up more cities unless we meet their demands. The election would be a few days off and there would be huge pressure on the President and the two candidates to give in to their demands. But at this point we don’t even know who they are.”

  “What have you told the President?” Bowman asked.

  “It’s more like what he’s told me. He wants to seal the borders and start searching for the bombs. Of course, then the bombers would know we were on to them and probably blow up their first nuke. Besides, we can’t survive as an economy if we stop and search everything. We only look at about one or two percent of containers entering this country now. If we looked at all of them, the country would grind to a halt. Everybody is on ‘Just In Time Delivery’ from China or wherever.”

  Bowman could see where this conversation was going and he felt his back muscles tightening. “Well, Winston I will give it some thought here with Dugout and send him back to you with some ideas.”

  “The fuck you will. The election is November eighth. I got POTUS to agree to give you two weeks to find out who these bombers are and snatch them, grab their nukes. After two weeks, if you can’t find them, we institute Operation Rock Wall, close the borders, and search for the nukes. Then everything will go to hell in a handbasket,” Burrell told him.

  “Excuse me,” Ray Bowman replied. “I am a private citizen. This is not my job. I tend bar.”

  “I told POTUS last night that I would ask you, on his behalf. He remembered how you stopped the attacks on the subways and the drones. He agreed to the two-week delay only if you were running an operation in parallel to the Intel Community. He said they’ll never crack this, but you might. You could name your terms. Dugout could get you started and he will give you top cover from cyberspace. You know everybody around the world who you would need to work with. Look, think about it overnight and then say yes in the morning. Don’t make the President call you himself.”

  The screen went to black. Raymond Bowman sat on the sand in an old bathing suit, stained Skinny Legs T-shirt, and faded Red Sox cap. He knew that the world he had built for himself was fragile, maybe artificial, but he had wanted it to go on longer. He wasn’t healed yet from all the killing on the last job and he certainly wasn’t ready to do it all over again.

  “Top cover from cyberspace?” Bowman repeated. He turned and looked out at the turquoise water. “What have you been feeding him?”

  “I suppose you could say no.” Dugout was standing behind him.

  “And I will, tomorrow morning,” Ray insisted, “and I won’t take any calls from the Oval. Thank you so much for visiting, by the way. You have really made my day.”

  “Right. So where do I spend the night? I was planning on going back today.”

  “I can hook you up at Gallows,” Ray replied as they headed back up to the Jeep.

  “Hook me up to the gallows, hang me just because I did my job and found you?”

  “Don’t be a literalist tool, Duggie. It’s a nice resort on the harbor side in Cruz Bay. The only hanging done there is at the bar. Come on, get a move on, I have to get some Champagne before the store closes at six. This is not Manhattan.”

  “Coulda fooled me.”

  On his way back from Gallows Point, Ray Bowman took a right up a steep driveway to a gated villa. He knew the camera in the stone wall holding the gate would let the people inside see who he was. It took about two minutes and then the gate swung wide. A tin-sounding voice came from a little speaker under the camera, “Come on in, Ray. Just in time for cocktails.”

  The cocktails were mojitos. They were always mojitos, which Ray didn’t mind because Dr. Sidney Rosenthal made such good ones, with fresh mint from his own herb garden. Rosenthal said his retirement job was as an herbatologist.

  They sat looking across at Tortola and the scattering of small islands that dotted the Sir Francis Drake Channel. Sailboats and ferries were making their way back to ports and the sun was moving toward the horizon in the sky right in front of them. In another hour it would be gone below the waves and would color the few clouds that special Caribbean pink orange.

  “How are you sleeping these days, Ray?” Dr. Rosenthal asked.

  “Like a rock, except when Cody jumps up on the bed in the middle of the night.” He paused. “Cody is our dog.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, he’s more Emma and Linda’s dog than mine, but he sleeps in my cabin.”

  “What’s up? You’re nervous today.”

  “Rosy, you have been really helpful and I think it’s all behind me. I haven’t had the dream in weeks. I am enjoying bartending. I love my ladies. Emma’s having our kid in the spring. The watercolors are getting better. This may be what contentment looks like.”

  Rosenthal looked at Bowman and then out at the sea below them. “What’s happened, Raymond?”

  “They want me back. Just for a short time, just for a special job.”

  Rosenthal shook his head. “It would ruin everything you have achieved, no matter how short the job. The PTSD will return. You might not be able to get that contented state back and, if you do, it will take a long time.”

  “I can’t tell you what it is, the job, but it is very important, not just important for The Man, but for all of us.”

  “Raymond, you have PTSD for god’s sake.”

  “We could all end up with PTSD if somebody doesn’t do this job and do it right,” Bowman shot back. “And quickly.”

  “And you’re the only man who could, huh?”

  Ray Bowman exhaled and looked at his old canvas boat shoes. “Seems unlikely, I know.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Ray, I’m sorry. If The Man is who I think he is and he has confidence that only you can do it, well, I accept that.” Sid Rosenthal emptied his mojito.

  “If I go, will you help me when I get back?”

  “I’ll double my rates,” Rosenthal insisted.

  “My math was never great, Rosy, but I think doubling zero is still nothing.”

  “I’ll make you bartend at all my parties.”

  “I do that anyway.” Ray stood up to leave. “I’ll let you know what I decide.”

  “Sounds like you already have.”

  Ray laughed. “Let’s see how tonight goes.”

  * * *

  The sun did disappear below the waves as Ray drove back to Coral Bay and then up the winding, rock-studded road to the hillside complex of brightly colored little buildings and shacks he had made his home. />
  He walked in carrying two bottles of Perrier-Jouët that he had persuaded his friend Tommy, the bartender at Gallows Point, to add to the bill for Dr. Carter’s suite. On an island as small as St. John, there was a conspiracy of bartenders.

  “Oh, shit, something’s happened,” Emily Sullivan exclaimed when she looked up from her canvas. “Or gonna happen? But it’s something you have to apologize for, Ray, isn’t it? No other reason you’d be comin’ home with the bubbly on a Monday.”

  “Em, Em, it could be just because I want us to celebrate your finishing your latest masterpiece,” he responded.

  “It ain’t anywheres near finished and you know it, arsehole,” Emily countered as she hugged him. “Besides, you oughta know I can’t drink that stuff now.”

  “Did someone say we have the bubbly tonight?” Linda Fazio asked, emerging with her arms covered in clay. “Emy’s painting is not done, but I have just thrown a magnificent little vase and we can damn sure celebrate that. Pop one open there, bow man.

  “Bring the bottles to the pool,” Linda said and threw her red sports bra across the patio.

  Ray and Linda managed to empty both bottles of Champagne and even persuaded Emily to have a little taste. And somewhere along the line before they all went into Emily and Linda’s bed, it had come out that Ray had to go away for a few weeks to help out an old friend who was in trouble. “Less than a month, really, not even that long.”

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18

  It read 0317 on his watch, as Ray stood alone and naked on the little brick patio of his yellow and purple cottage, which had originally been the garage and toolshed of Emily and Linda’s hillside house. Cody had followed him home and curled up inside the cottage, as he always did. “The girls have the house, the boys have the doghouse,” Linda was fond of telling the few visitors they allowed to join them for feasts on the lush hill, usually after long hikes in the National Park that backed up to their property.

  He looked down on the handful of lights still on below in Coral Bay and felt once again that warmth and satisfaction of being home, being grounded, settled, centered. It was a new feeling for him, one that he had not really known before in his adult life. This was where he belonged, in a little compound, half overgrown with jungle, hanging on the side of a hill, on an island without an airport, half off the grid. Whatever he did on this new job for Winston, he had to keep foremost in his mind that he had to limit his risks, he had to get back here. He heard something and turned to see Emily holding a Sig Sauer P290RS in her hand.

  “I thought you’d need the gun you gave us.” To attract women to guns, Sig had made a version of the P290 with a pink stock. It looked like a toy or some sort of ice cream treat. Ray had bought it for “his women” as a joke, but they had loved having it. Seeing it now in the hand of a beautiful, naked woman, made him laugh aloud.

  “No, you guys keep it. I’m clumsy, but I’m not the Pink Panther, not Inspector Clouseau.” He put his arm around her. “Come on and help me pack. I haven’t done that in a while.” They wandered together into Ray’s little cabin, essentially one room dominated by a bed.

  “Are you running away, now of all times?” Emily asked, as he threw a suitcase on the bed. “I thought you were finally calming down, that you had found your place in the universe and it was here.”

  Ray walked around the bed and embraced her, feeling her bulging belly against his flat abs. “Emy, I’m not running away. I just have a job to do, just one more job, and then I’m back here, back here for good.”

  “Bowman, we don’t just want you in our lives, Lin and I need you in our lives. We’re better together as three and we’ll be even better together as four.”

  Ray sat on the edge of the bed and, tugging lightly on her arm, he pulled Emily down to sit next to him. “I feel like I have a stake in the future now, Em, our future, together. That little one we created,” he said, caressing her belly, “I need to do this for her. It’s part of my role, making sure she’s safe.”

  “It could be a him, you know,” Emily said.

  “Either way, there may be something about to happen that would set us all back, collapse the global economy, create chaos. It could even affect us here. If I can help in some small way to stop it, as my last job in that business, I need to do it,” Bowman said, softly, and then lightly kissed Emily’s stomach. “And I promise I won’t put myself at risk. And I will be back in plenty of time to be here for the fun part when she starts kicking.”

  Linda stood in the doorway. “You’d better be back soon, asshole, because I am not building the nursery addition all by myself. I need a carpenter’s assistant and that would be you.”

  Soon after sunrise, Ray found Emily’s mobile phone, called Gallows Point and was put through to Dugout’s room. “I want you to meet me in half an hour. There’s a little beach.”

  Bowman drove down the hill and got back on “The Road,” as the locals called the loop around the island. He passed Cinnamon beach and Trunk Bay, Peace Hill and Hawksnest Beach. They were all still empty. It was early and the tourist season did not really start until Thanksgiving. He abruptly pulled off the road into a parking area big enough for two, maybe three, Jeeps. Dugout was already parked there.

  Bowman jumped out of his open-top Jeep and walked through a small iron gate into what seemed like a tunnel through a rain forest. The descending path was covered by a canopy of trees and vines. Dugout followed, stumbling over tree roots and rocks, balancing his backpack. In a few minutes the verdant tunnel opened onto a small, white sand beach and a turquoise cove. No one else was there.

  “My private beach,” Ray said, “most of the time.” There was a boarded-up cinder block house, but none of the picnic tables and showers with which the National Park Service had dotted the other beaches on the island.

  Bowman stood and faced him. “You know what they call this beach?”

  “Ray’s Hideout?”

  “It’s named after a guy who bought it in the fifties, built that little shack over there. He was trying to get away from his past, from the killing he had been involved in. Kinda like me. But he was also haunted by images of a future in which cities went up in flames from nuclear bombs.” Bowman walked away from the beach, toward the shack.

  “In the end, it didn’t work for him. Being here. He went back to the mainland, back to work,” Bowman said, looking at Dug. “He was the man who built the H bomb.”

  “Who the hell lived here?” Dugout asked.

  “Oppenheimer. This is called Oppy’s Beach.”

  Dugout wasn’t sure what Ray Bowman was telling him.

  “So you’re in?”

  “You’ve ruined it for me. You and Burrell. I can’t sit down here in paradise thinking about cities being nuked, not any more than Oppy could. But if I’m doing this thing, so are you.”

  “Sure, but remember we only got two weeks. Then it’s Rock Wall,” Dugout replied. “They close the ports, the borders, they start looking everywhere with Geiger counters.”

  “And if Winston’s right, when he starts Operation Rock Wall, the bad guys will respond by nuking the first city. And even if they don’t, the country will tear itself apart in panic.” Ray Bowman began walking toward the path to the road. “How were you planning on leaving the island?”

  “If I am leaving with you in tow, I can call in a Coast Guard helo from Puerto Rico. It can be here in two hours. In the meantime, I can teach you how to use the iPad.”

  “However much of a Luddite I may be compared to you, I do know how to use an iPad,” Ray said taking the device. “My three-year-old niece knows how.”

  “You’ve never seen one like this. I designed it myself.”

  “Oh, good. I kinda liked the one Steve Jobs designed,” Ray shot back.

  “This one is secure, encrypted, has a telephone and video phone function and connects to an Air Force communications satellite.”

  “That’s nice, Duggie, but I’m going to need identities, passports, credit cards, cash. And I
’ll need Winston’s office to phone ahead and open the doors I can’t open by myself. Occasionally, I may need help from the Fort, the Bureau, or the Agency.”

  “All of whom, as I recall, were great friends of yours.”

  “Don’t be a wise ass. It’s unbecoming,” Ray replied. “Look. I’ll always let you know where I am and what I am up to.”

  Dugout had a wide grin. “Don’t worry. I’ll know.”

  4

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19

  CAFÉ GRIENSTEIDL

  VIENNA, AUSTRIA

  “Ein grosse schwartze, bitte,” Bowman said to the elderly waiter.

  “Mit strudel?” the old man asked.

  Charmed that some things never changed, he replied, “Okay, warum nicht?” He had taken a seat by the window, with a view across the narrow street and the Michaelerplatz to the Palace and the Spanish Riding School. Like most of the people in the cavernous, old café, he paged through a newspaper. Unlike most of them, he also scanned the room to see if his guest had arrived, or if anyone else of interest was present.

  “Raymond, you chose this café for the Lipinzaners? You like horses now?” Jonas Moe must have come through a back door. He was at the table before Bowman knew he was in the room, an unpleasant reminder to the American that certain of his skills had atrophied while he tended bar in paradise.

  “No, Jonas, I chose it because it’s a short walk from my hotel and a long way from UN City. No need for your fellow international civil servants to see us together.”

  “Ein Americano, bitte, und ein Sakertort mit slag,” the Norwegian told the passing waiter, who looked at him as if requesting service was rude or impertinent. Jonas Moe had been in Vienna long enough to know that unless he grabbed a passing waiter, it might otherwise be a very long time before he was served. He had been in the old city for twenty-six years, as a senior staff member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN nuclear inspector. Moe had also been one of Bowman’s personal sources on the Iranian nuclear program, passing on the full results of the Agency’s inspections and sometimes carrying some extra equipment with him to Iran.