by Mike Maden
“Thanks, August. I owe you.”
Pearce hung up his phone. He felt the familiar, mind-numbing fury burning again in his chest. He wanted to smash something.
“Excuse me,” Tarkovsky said. He pulled out his cell phone. Checked the text message. He turned to Lane, “Unfortunately, I must leave on urgent business. But I’m available for further discussion by phone or perhaps later today in person after this matter is resolved.”
Lane nodded at Tarkovsky’s phone. “Anything I can do to help?”
Tarkovsky smiled as he stood. “No, sir. That is very kind of you. This is an internal Russian matter.”
Lane stood, as did the others. Tarkovsky shook hands with him. “I hope I don’t need to remind you to keep everything we’ve just discussed between us. A press leak at this time would be a disaster.”
“Of course,” Tarkovsky said. “Discretion benefits us all. If you don’t mind my asking, have you made your decision?”
“Not yet. But I’ll be in touch.” Lane turned to al-Saud. “With you as well, Faisal. Again, I urge your discretion.”
Tarkovsky left as al-Saud gripped Pearce’s hand. “I’m sorry to hear about President Myers. Please convey to her my country’s best wishes and my personal concern for her health. If there is anything I can do for her, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
Pearce peered into the ambassador’s dark eyes. “I will on both counts. Thanks.”
After al-Saud shut the door behind him, Lane turned to Chandler.
“Can we trust either of them, Clay?”
“No, but you can trust their ambitions. We stand to gain a lot more than we’ll lose if we invite them into the fight. It’s better than going it alone.”
Lane turned to Pearce. “Troy? Of the two, whom do you trust more?”
Pearce’s mind was on Myers. He was scared to death for her. Everything in him told him to bolt out of there and head for the nearest plane and go to her. But duty called and she was in good hands.
“Neither, sir. But if it were up to me, I wouldn’t go back in, with or without them.”
“I think you’ve made your position clear enough,” Chandler snapped as he sat back down on the couch.
Pearce ignored the vice president. “But if you do decide to go in, I know you’ll do it because you think it’s right for the country. Whatever you do, trust your gut.”
“If the American people knew what you knew, David, they’d demand you launch an attack,” Chandler insisted.
“Your instincts have gotten you this far,” Pearce said, casting a withering glance at Chandler. “Ignore the noise.”
47
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Meghan Osweiler’s phone rang. Hardly unusual for the assistant managing editor for foreign and national news at the Los Angeles Times. What surprised her was the message from the unidentified voice on the other end. A woman. It was familiar but she couldn’t place it.
“How do you know about this?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the voice said.
“It’s not possible.” Osweiler’s head ached. She’d missed breakfast and her late lunch was still an hour away. “I have sources in the water department. I would’ve heard about this already.”
“Not if it was labeled a national security issue.”
“How did you get my direct number? It’s unlisted.”
“All that matters is that you confirm what I’ve told you and get the word out. For God’s sake, it’s a public safety issue.”
“I’ll confirm it first. What we do with it after that is up to the managing editor.”
“I know you’ll do the right thing.” The voice went on to provide an address as well as the name of an FBI special agent from the L.A. bureau office, someone Osweiler happened to know.
Osweiler’s phone disconnected. She wasn’t sure if she should shout with triumph over the story of the year—she was already thinking Pulitzer—or race home, gather up her two shelter cats and Yorkshire terrier, and jump on the next plane to Alaska.
Her throat suddenly parched. She glanced at the half-empty glass of water on her desk. She picked it up gingerly with her thumb and forefinger and poured the contents into the wastebasket, then tossed the glass in after it. She called her assistant and told her to bring a can of cold Diet Dr Pepper and a couple of Tylenol from the break room.
It was going to be a long afternoon.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Grafton slipped her cell phone back into her purse, flushed the toilet, and stepped over to the sink, still stinging over the snub of getting cut out of today’s meeting with Lane, Tarkovsky, and al-Saud.
Damn them. Damn them to hell.
She washed her hands. This was the best way for her to keep control of the narrative. Osweiler was a bulldog. She wouldn’t let this story die even if her boss tried to spike it. Osweiler would go over his head or, more likely, step on it—and get his job in the bargain.
Grafton stared at herself in the mirror. Checked her lipstick and her long red hair. Didn’t like what she saw. She frowned. Her hair looked tired. Maybe it was too long.
Time for a change, she decided.
BLACK LAKE, MICHIGAN
Tamar had been studying Pike’s lake house from a distance all morning. She couldn’t hear the crunch of his tires on the gravel driveway but she watched the black windowless Chinook Charter panel van pull out of his driveway and onto the two-lane asphalt road. She checked her watch. It would take him approximately twenty-five minutes to reach his charter boat in Cheboygan and probably another thirty minutes to load everyone on board for the afternoon excursion, which was scheduled to end at five o’clock. She’d wait fifteen minutes before she moved toward the house just in case Pike forgot something and decided to turn around.
She checked her phone again, hoping Pearce had called her back. She would’ve liked an extra pair of hands on this job, especially his, but he was a big shot in the American government now and probably up to his blue eyes in paperwork and committee meetings. She chuckled.
Poor bastard.
—
TAMAR MADE HER WAY on foot through the trees, careful to avoid the watchful eyes of the security cameras on the house she’d observed through her binoculars. The cameras didn’t surprise her. If Pike was the threat Mossad thought he was, he’d have a security system in place. If not, it was reasonable for a person in a remote location like this to secure his property from thieves. Either way, she’d anticipated the presence of them and had prepared accordingly.
Fortunately the camera over the entrance facing the lake had been disconnected. Probably needed to be replaced, she assumed. She worked her way around to the side of the house, hugging her shoulder bag close. She was reasonably confident that she couldn’t be identified. She wore a ball cap to cover her angular face, dark hair, and clear green eyes. Her skin was hidden beneath long sleeves and slacks, and she wore blue surgical gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. The goal was to keep Pike from knowing that anyone had entered his house at all. She easily picked the keyed lock on the electrical panel and opened it up. She flicked off the main power switch, disabling the cameras and likely alarm systems on the property.
Confident that she could move freely about, she dashed to the front entrance, quickly picked the sliding door lock open, and pushed through the heavy curtains. Without lights and the curtains drawn the house was dark. She pulled out her tactical flashlight and smartphone and shot video as she passed through each room as quickly and efficiently as possible, careful not to disturb anything. At this point she was only trying to locate a hidden safe, military-grade weapons, or, best of all, his personal computer—anything to confirm Mossad’s suspicions and, ideally, help locate their missing agent.
Twenty minutes into her search Tamar found the bedroom door with the heavy security bracket and a simple combination lock. Not a problem
. Tamar removed an automated lock picker from her shoulder bag and placed it on the lock’s black dial. Two seconds later it popped.
She pushed the door open and stepped in.
Inside she found two long workstation tables loaded with video monitors, keyboards, joysticks, and a virtual-reality headset. At first she thought it was a film-editing suite, but the joysticks didn’t make any sense. Maybe he was a crazy online gamer. That would explain the VR, too. His brief said he had a background in computer science and did some contracting work for the U.S. government in Iraq.
What bothered her was the electronic hum of the CPUs on the floor below. How was that possible? The power was off. Her heart skipped a beat. Had she missed something? She double-checked the security camera in the far corner. It was clearly powered off. What was going on?
Battery backup power for the computers. Of course. She stepped over to a closet door and saw the power cable snaking through the green shag carpet. She opened the door and found three large battery backup systems. Thank God Pike hadn’t thought to do the same with the security system.
She shut the door and turned around. Something caught her eye hanging on the far wall.
It was a small reproduction print in a cheap frame. She recognized it instantly because she had written a paper on French Romanticism for an art course at university. It was Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. A brilliant piece of work, tragic in subject but beautiful in both its realism and construction. Strange it should be here, she thought, but then again perhaps not. Pike was a boat captain and its subject was the sea. It was the image of survivors on a raft on the verge of rescue having suffered the fate of people lost a long while on the ocean and the hard moral choices the starving often face. Géricault’s meaning was clear, her professor had insisted: Civilizations must sometimes be reduced to savage barbarism in order to survive.
Did Pike know that? Not likely, she decided. He had probably bought the print at a garage sale.
She stepped over to one of the keyboards and pressed the power button. The screen flashed on. It required a password to proceed. That was a lock that Tamar knew she couldn’t pick, but Lev could. He was the best in the business. He was the IT officer assigned to her case and he was on standby waiting for her call. If anyone could break into a secured system it was him. She dialed and he picked up instantly. She pulled out the necessary cable and connectors from her pouch to link her phone to the CPU so that Lev could begin remotely hacking into Pike’s computer. Once connected, she pulled up the rolling executive chair and plopped down into it, leaning in close to the screen to watch Lev move the arrow and operate the keystrokes remotely from his office in Tel Aviv. He was on speakerphone.
“It’s going to take a little while. Not your typical password protection.”
“I’ve got plenty of time. No worries,” she said. “Pike is far away and won’t be back for hours.”
—
PIKE SAT IN his van on the side of the road, admiring Tamar’s lovely face in his laptop monitor. Her green eyes and sharp nose were slightly distorted because she was sitting so close to the computer monitor back at his house, and the glow of the light from the screen muddied the color of her beautiful bronze skin.
He fired up the engine and put the van into gear. He was very much looking forward to seeing much more of that beautiful bronze flesh in a better light very soon.
48
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
“Assholes! Move!” Mathis shouted, his voice muted by the blaring squad car siren.
Sergeant Vasquez wove skillfully past the slowing cars. She was surprised they’d made it as far as they had on Wilshire, always busy this time of the morning. But the news broadcasts had really thrown a wrench into it. People were losing their damned minds. Helluva training day for Mathis, she thought. Just a week out of the academy. Couldn’t be worse than her first week, though, she thought. It was the end of the world, or so it seemed to her that day, thanks to Rodney King.
She wondered for the thousandth time if it was time to retire.
“Should I unlock the shotgun?” Mathis asked. Sweat beaded on his black skin.
“It’s a two-eleven in progress, not a riot,” Vasquez said. “No point in escalating the situation.”
“Yes, Sergeant! I mean, no,” Mathis said.
“Take a deep breath. You’ll do fine,” she said.
She hoped he would. You never knew with probes.
—
TWO MINUTES LATER Vasquez slammed the brakes and screeched to a halt at the edge of the intersection. A half-dozen cars and pickup trucks surrounded a red-and-white Coca-Cola delivery truck in the middle of the street. Its rolling doors were flung open and nearly empty. Civilians were stealing the last cases off the racks and tossing them into their vehicles.
“Let’s go!” Vasquez shouted. She leaped out of the driver’s side, drew her pistol, and charged toward the pickup nearest her. A young Hispanic male was throwing a case of orange Fanta into the back of his Chevy.
“Stop! Put it down! Now!” she shouted in Spanish.
“FUCK YOU, PIG!” the man shouted back in English, laughing, flipping two birds before leaping into the truck bed.
Adrenaline begged her to pull the trigger but her training kicked in. No telling who was driving the truck. A kid could be riding in the passenger seat. If she missed, the rounds could kill innocent bystanders. Besides, it was just a case of soda. Not worth it. The news this morning had caused this panic. Scared people did stupid things.
The other civilians were already scattering, slamming doors and squealing away in blue clouds of burning rubber.
Vasquez charged around to the other side of the Coca-Cola truck, Mathis hot on her heels. She stopped dead in her tracks. The uniformed delivery driver lay facedown in a pool of blood on the asphalt, his head broken open like a pomegranate.
Mathis puked.
“No time for that shit!” Vasquez shouted.
Mathis wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yes, Sergeant.”
Gunshots rang out from the corner. A 7-Eleven convenience store.
Vasquez turned and ducked into a low crouch, running toward the 7-Eleven. People bolted out of the front door, hauling armfuls of juice boxes, bottled water, energy drinks, and anything else remotely potable.
A Korean clerk emerged a second later, his face streaming with blood, waving a large-caliber revolver, shouting profanities in his native tongue.
“Drop your weapon! Now!” Vasquez shouted, her pistol pointed in his direction.
The Korean turned toward Vasquez, his bleeding face a mask of mindless rage.
Gunfire exploded in her right ear as Mathis ripped off a half dozen .40-caliber rounds. She winced in pain but through her squinting eyes saw three rounds flowering blood in the Korean’s white shirt as the plate glass window behind him shattered. He tumbled backward, screaming, arms wide like the Christ. He was dead before he hit the pavement.
“Got you, motherfucker!” Mathis shouted, a half-crazed smile smearing his face.
“You stupid shit! What did you do?” Vasquez shouted. She laid a hand on Mathis’s Glock. The barrel was hot. “Holster your weapon, officer.”
Mathis frowned at her, confused. “What?”
“Holster your damn weapon! Now!”
Mathis blinked away his confusion. “Yes, Sergeant.” He holstered the Glock.
A blue helicopter thundered overhead. Vasquez glanced up. White call letters plastered the side. A video camera pointed directly at them.
FoxSky 40 News.
Vasquez swore.
Should’ve retired yesterday.
49
WASHINGTON, D.C.
All eyes were on Alyssa Abbott, the White House press secretary. She shrugged and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I did everything I could. I played the national security card. Even threa
tened to pull their press credentials. But the Times wouldn’t hold off on the story. Frankly, I would’ve run with it, too, if I were in their shoes.”
Chandler blew out a long breath. “That’s terribly unfortunate, Alyssa. It puts us in quite a bind.” He glanced over at the video monitors on the Situation Room wall. They silently displayed several local L.A. news broadcasts showing live images of massive freeway traffic jams, looted stores, panicked mothers with babies in their arms. Los Angeles had gone mad.
Lane shook his head. “It’s not her fault, Clay. She’s right. There are ten million people in the L.A. basin. It’s a huge story for them.” Lane glanced back down into his lap. The Times story was on his iPad. “It looks like they only got the water story. That’s a break, at least.”
“But the wire services have picked up the scent on the others.” Abbott held up her cell phone. “AP has called me three times already this morning, asking for confirmation about Kan-Tex.”
“Shit,” Garza said. “Pardon my French.”
“There’s the mayor,” Peguero said, nodding at the monitor.
Lane tapped a remote. The sound came up. Ronald Hillman, the mayor of Los Angeles, had just begun his speech. His tailored sky-blue suit perfectly complimented his mane of thick silver hair and permanent suntan. A news ticker identified the other public officials flanking the mayor at his podium, including the general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
“I’ve been assured by federal, state, and local public health and security officials as well as by the head of the MWDSC that our water system is perfectly safe, that it has not been compromised in any way, and that every effort is being taken to ensure that our water remains safe, clean, and available to everyone in Southern California. I urge everyone to return to work or to their homes. There is no need to leave the area or to panic. Your water is safe.” The mayor was handed a glass of water. “This was drawn just thirty seconds ago from the break room here in the building. It came from the tap in the kitchen. This is public water.” The mayor took a long drink, draining the glass. He set it down empty and smiled a mouthful of blazing white teeth.