Final Strike--A Sean Falcone Novel

by William S. Cohen

  When Oxley declared the meeting over, he asked Carlton to stay—a move he often did when Falcone had been the National Security Adviser. He could depend on Falcone to size up the meeting and point Oxley toward decisions that had not yet been made. Carlton had not filled Falcone’s shoes, but Carlton, over the past two years, had developed his own style. Oxley sometimes called Falcone out of the blue to get a quick second opinion. But Oxley had come to accept Carlton’s no-nonsense, stay-the-course manner of steering through rough waters.

  “I got a man-to-man call from Lebed,” Oxley told Carlton. “He offered to help mediate the China-Japan crisis, along with the crisis between the North and South Koreans.”

  “And?” Carlton asked, trying hard to hide his annoyance over not being on the call.

  “And I politely thanked him for the offer. It’s just like the Russians to offer to play a role as a big global player while taking pleasure that the U.S. is in a lose-lose position. If I side with the Japanese, we could end up in a shooting war with the Chinese in the Pacific. If I back away from Japan, I’ll be faced with a humiliating loss of credibility with Japan, China, and just about the rest of the world.”

  “Well played, Mr. President,” Carlton said. “No way Russia can be a player and a mediator. Lebed’s been playing footsie with China. But he’s also enjoying seeing China squirm over Little Kim’s mischief with South Korea. China will have to put several hundred thousand troops on the border to prevent a flood of North Koreans from crossing over into China, seeking refuge from what looks like an imminent war.”

  “Serves the Chinese right for failing to rein in that man-child dictator,” Oxley said.

  Both men stood, and Oxley preceded Carlton out of the room.

  “You’re right, Frank. It’s complicated.”

  Damn complicated, Oxley thought as he headed for the Oval Office. Lebed and Zhang Xing and I are playing around with war when we all know about an asteroid that may hit the Earth in 2037.

  12

  As President Oxley’s Chief of Staff, Ray Quinlan often accompanied him to Situation Room meetings. When he was not invited, Quinlan would fume and start to weave groundless West Wing conspiracies aimed at getting him exiled from power. Sitting now in the anteroom of the Oval Office, he awaited Oxley’s return from the meeting on Pacific strategy, and a tantrum was rising within him. He had just about gotten over not having been invited to the Situation Room when Christakos called and he was presented with a new grievance. Why, he asked himself, didn’t I know that Lebed was holding Hamilton?

  Quinlan had a full head of curly red hair, which topped a pale face tending toward roundness. His blue-and-white striped tie was yanked down from the open collar of a blue shirt. A veteran of Yale’s heavyweight rowing crew, he had the sturdy body of a former athlete who kept fit.

  A Secret Service agent told Quinlan that Oxley had returned from the Situation Room. Trained to spot signs of rage, the agent took the precaution of walking in front of Quinlan as he hurried to the Oval Office door. A young woman at a desk said into a console, “Ray Quinlan on the way, Mr. President!”

  Oxley was standing by one of the windows, his back turned to the opening door. Without turning around, he said, “Take a seat, Ray. Be cool.”

  In a sudden quiet, they sat opposite each other on pale-yellow sofas flanking a low table topped with a bowl of apples. “Now, Ray, what’s causing you to be a pain in the ass this time?”

  “What the hell is going on about Robert Hamilton … sir?”

  “It’s been tightly held,” Oxley said, reaching for an apple.

  “His lawyer—Akis Christakos—called me,” Quinlan said. “Says Hamilton wants a grant of immunity—from you—and threatens to go to the media—to that son of a bitch Dake—if he doesn’t get it.”

  “It’s not a White House matter, Ray.”

  “Well, then, what is it … sir? Surely one of America’s richest men being holed up in Moscow—a la Snowden—is a White House matter. It seems to me … sir.”

  “Well, Ray, here’s what the White House is working on right now: The Chinese have taken over one of the Senkaku or Diaoyu—whatever the hell they’re called—Islands. They’re making artificial islands for bases in the South China Sea, and Japan is pounding war drums. Crazy Kim Jong-un is suffering from a global attention deficit about his nuclear power. North Korea and South Korea are mobilizing and preparing to shoot at each other, and China is pouring troops to the North Korea border to hold off refugees. I just put the Pacific Command on DEFCON 3. And you want me to spend time worrying about a missing billionaire?”

  Quinlan forced himself to stand silent. He could feel words and shouts welling up. He knew he was probably one outburst away from being fired.

  Oxley went back to the window, stared at the brilliant day beyond, then turned around and said, “Okay, Ray. There is something going on. I’ve kept it close. But now I think it’s time for you to know about it.” He held up his hand when Quinlan stood, his face twisted in anger. “Hear me out.”

  Quinlan nodded, still not daring to open his mouth.

  “There’s a complex issue that calls for absolute secrecy,” Oxley continued. “I want you to know about it so you can keep an eye on it while I wrestle with the Pacific crisis,” Oxley said. “You remember Dr. Benjamin Taylor?”

  Quinlan thought for a moment. Taylor, a former NASA scientist, was Assistant Director of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, a well-known author, and host of the popular television show Your Universe.

  “Yes, sir,” Quinlan said. “I remember that he was lined up to be your science adviser. And he turned it down. I never could—”

  “Right. Well, I did give him a job. Its highly classified label is ‘Defense of Earth.’ He’s working with scientists from Russia and China.”

  “On what?” Quinlan asked sullenly.

  “You’ll find out soon enough. I am going to call him and tell him to come over here and brief you—and Frank. He’s not in this loop either, by the way.”

  “Carlton? Why is he involved? And Taylor? I don’t get it.”

  “You’ll get it, Ray. I can promise you that.”

  13

  Dr. Benjamin Franklin Taylor was in the Air and Space Museum, having coffee with his assistant, Molly, in her cubicle when her desk phone rang. He reached toward it, but she beat him to it, lifting the phone to hear, “This is the White House for Dr. Taylor. Please bring him to the phone.”

  “Another tinfoil hatter,” she said, moving to hang up the phone. Molly Tobias, a widow in her sixties, had given herself the mission of shielding him from deranged or time-wasting fans of his monthly PBS show, Your Universe. Taylor, who had heard the words “White House,” intercepted the phone and said, “Taylor here.”

  “Please stand by for President Oxley,” the voice said.

  A moment later Oxley, speaking rapidly, said, “Ben. Please do me a favor.”

  A surprised Taylor nodded, then, feeling foolish, stammered when he said, “Whatever you want, Mr. President.”

  “Just this, Ben: As soon as you can, I want you to brief Ray Quinlan, my Chief of Staff, and Frank Carlton, my National Security Adviser, on … on what you have been working on for me. Planning to be in town for a while?”

  “Yes, sir. Whenever you want.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell Ray to set it up as soon as possible.”

  “Mr. President?”

  “Yes?”

  “Has something happened?”

  “Nothing special,” Oxley replied. “Except … I’m sure you remember that guy Ivan with the Hammer.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Frank Carlton … heard about that. He’s particularly interested in that, Ben. But don’t get him all hopped up about it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, of course, still keep everything under your hat unless you hear otherwise from me. And I mean directly from me. Thanks, Ben. Goodbye.”

  Taylor leaned back for a moment, and then looked
sternly at Molly. “You didn’t hear anything. Right?”

  “Right,” she said.

  They touched coffee containers in a silent toast and Taylor walked into his office.

  Molly, he thought, is handling this well. She didn’t ask questions about his absences or about cryptic calls from people with odd accents.

  Taylor—well over six feet, short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, broad shoulders, seemingly always in motion—did not look like a pensive man. But a life of science had made him into a man who looked for reasons, for patterns, for answers.

  Sometimes he looked back and saw that his life had been on a track with a lot of switches. Growing up in Detroit, he switched from a black kid heading toward a gang to a son who was being pushed to advance placement courses—and simultaneously toward a football scholarship at the University of Michigan. Then came the Heisman Trophy and another switch: Go pro or go for a Ph.D. He chose the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in astrophysics. Then, MIT professor-scholar or NASA scientist. Next switch: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena or NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington. Then Assistant Director at Goddard or assistant director of one of the most visited museums in the world. The next switch, labeled “potential” presidential science adviser, almost sent him hurtling into oblivion. But here he was, back on track.

  * * *

  When Quinlan called to set up the briefing, Taylor recognized the Boston twang. The first time they talked, Taylor remembered, was when Quinlan called to say that he was under consideration for the post of Adviser to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

  But at that switch, Taylor was derailed. He had said very publicly that Robert Hamilton’s venture into asteroid mining was threatening to destabilize an asteroid and put the Earth at risk. Taylor’s warning had taken the form of a PBS NOVA show called An Asteroid Closely Watched. Two Senators, acting as Hamilton’s vassals, saw to it that PBS “indefinitely postponed” the show. He nearly lost his post at the Air and Space Museum. And, at Quinlan’s urging, Oxley quietly withdrew the science adviser offer.

  But Taylor and his friend Sean Falcone managed to prove that Hamilton’s company, SpaceMine, had a secret partner: corrupt Russian billionaire Kuri Basayev. Taylor and Falcone discovered that a SpaceMine engineer, Cole Perenchio, had been murdered after learning that the asteroid selected for mining was on a highly probable collision course with Earth.

  Things sure have changed, Taylor thought after Quinlan politely ended the call. I’m the whole Earth’s science adviser.

  14

  The briefing the next day was preceded by a quick visit to the Oval Office. Oxley shook hands all around and said to Carlton and Quinlan, “I’m going to set the same rule we have for briefing leaders of congressional committees on extraordinarily sensitive intelligence: ‘No notes. Just keep it in your heads.’”

  Then Quinlan led Carlton and Taylor down a corridor to the large room known as the White House Library. A fire was crackling in a fireplace beneath a portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. “When John Adams lived here,” Quinlan said, “this place was a laundry. Jackie Kennedy turned it into this room. She wanted an early eighteenth-century look.” He pointed to a gilded-wood chandelier with a red band and said, “Belonged to the family of James Fenimore Cooper, keeping the theme that the books on the shelves reflect American ideas. I come here sometimes just to get out of the twenty-first century for a few minutes.”

  “I work in a museum all day,” Taylor said, looking around. “And here I am in another one.”

  In the center of the room, under the chandelier, were three spindly-legged chairs and a small round table. “If you don’t mind,” Taylor said, nodding to each man, “I’m used to talking to an audience while standing. So you can just sit down, and I’ll tell you what I know.” Quinlan and Carlton sat, flanking the empty chair and facing Taylor, who stood to the right of the fireplace.

  “First, a little background,” Taylor said, standing silently for a moment and getting into his familiar role as a lecturer. “I’m sure you remember the event in Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, when an asteroid zoomed over the city and burst into a fireball. The shockwave damaged buildings and broke thousands of windows, causing a glass blizzard that wounded about twelve hundred stunned people. If the explosion had occurred over India or Pakistan, each nation probably would have blamed the other for dropping a nuclear bomb, setting off a panic and triggering a nuclear war.

  “The reports that started coming included videos of a fiery object speeding across the sky. Cole Perenchio, an old NASA friend of mine, immediately went to his superiors at Goddard Space Flight Center and said he wanted to drop the work he was doing on Earth-Moon gravitational variations. He proposed setting up a NASA task force to study the Russian event to see how it affected what we know about the probability of asteroids hitting the Earth.

  “Cole’s proposal was turned down, and Cole, who always was an obstinate guy, left NASA and went to work for Robert Hamilton’s company, SpaceMine. He was welcomed with open arms because he was a world-renowned expert on gravity in space, and that knowledge would be valuable for dealing with asteroids.

  “Cole believed that once he showed Hamilton the potential perils of mining asteroids, Hamilton would close shop. Besides being obstinate, Cole was naïve. SpaceMine was on the brink of launching an initial public offering. And neither Hamilton nor his Russian silent partner, Kuri Basayev, were about to give up their investment. So—”

  “Basayev?” Carlton said. He often delivered PowerPoint briefings, and he added: “Russian oligarch close to Lebed. Killed when his yacht exploded in the Black Sea.” He switched to normal language and said, “The Agency has a pile of intelligence on Basayev. But I never heard he was mixed up with Hamilton.”

  “Right,” Taylor said, nodding. “A silent partner. And that’s how he comes into the story. Hamilton fired Cole. But not before Cole managed to write a report about Hamilton’s so-called Asteroid USA. It—”

  “That’s the one that GNN made such a big deal out of,” Quinlan said. “Come to think of it, I thought it was supposed to be sending a signal. And—”

  “Yes. We’re supposed to hear a constant stream of ‘USA’ in Morse code,” Taylor interrupted with a touch of impatience. “And we haven’t heard it, have we? Well, that gets into the story, too. Cole’s report says that Asteroid USA was actually a pretty big asteroid known to astronomers as Janus. Hamilton, with help from Basayev, had sent a spacecraft to Janus and was planning to change its orbit to make it easier to mine.

  “Coincidentally, in my writings I had used Janus as an example of a big asteroid with an orbit that one day could be on a collision course with Earth. I mentioned Janus in a NOVA show that never got on the air because Hamilton started throwing his weight around.

  “Cole was really concerned that SpaceMine was putting the Earth in danger by messing with Janus’ orbit. He decided to act. He put his futile report to Hamilton in a SpaceMine laptop and hacked into confidential SpaceMine databases to get whatever he could find about Asteroid USA. Then he encrypted all this and headed for Washington.”

  “So far, Dr. Taylor, I don’t see you giving us any big secrets,” Quinlan said, conspicuously looking at his watch.

  “Call me Ben,” Taylor replied. “Sorry, but you have to hear this if you want to understand the secrets—and why they are secrets. But I’ll try to speed this up. Cole gave the laptop to a friend, a Washington lawyer named Harold Davidson. He and three other people in his law office were killed. So was Cole.”

  “Holy shit!” Quinlan exclaimed. “The law firm shootings! Falcone’s firm. And Falcone killed one of the gunmen.”

  Taylor nodded and said, “Yeah. I worked with Sean on this. We managed to get the information that Cole was trying to deliver. I guessed that he was using the code we had used in college—and I decrypted it. We—Sean and I—told President Oxley what was in it, and that�
�s why I’m here today, doing this.”

  Taylor paused and added, “Any questions?”

  15

  “Let’s start with Basayev,” Carlton said. He had been squirming in his chair and tapping his fingers on the gleaming tabletop. He was much more used to giving briefings than receiving them. “I know he was a crook and a great pal of Lebed, like a lot of other Russian billionaires. But did he order the killings? And did Hamilton get him to do it?”

  “That’s beyond my briefing,” Taylor replied. “But I do know that the FBI considered Hamilton ‘a person of interest.’ And, for that matter, they hung the same label on me and on Falcone for a time. To me, the point of the murders is this: Terrible as they were, they validated the basic warning in Cole’s message: SpaceMine’s Asteroid USA is on an orbit that is likely to collide with Earth in 2037. To be precise, on April 7, 2037.”

  After a long silence, Quinlan spoke up: “Well, that’s twenty years away. We’ve got time to do something about it. Right?”

  “Ivan’s Hammer,” Carlton said quietly. “My God! Twenty years under Ivan’s Hammer.”

  “What?” Quinlan asked, scowling and turning to Carlton. “What the hell is that?”

  “Now I’ll have to do a secret briefing,” Carlton said, rising from his chair and stepping back so that his gaze encompassed the other two men.

  “A few days ago,” he continued, “we learned that the term ‘Ivan’s Hammer’ came up in a … a … briefing given to President Lebed. And—”

  Quinlan lunged forward and said, “How the hell—”

  Carlton held up his right hand in a traffic-cop gesture and, looking at Quinlan, said, “I can’t say how we know. But I can tell you what we know.” He swung his head to resume directing his words at both men. “The term first came up in the 1980s when the United States and the then–Soviet Union were looking at space as a potential battlefield. It was an idea that didn’t go anywhere with American strategists. But we learned—”