The conversation also led Brock to believe that the little tyrant might be abusing his position as the program co-lead to cause problems for the winner, Langston Marlin. That was a no-no.
Brock James wasn’t a crusader by any stretch. If anything, he was a little too cynical about the US government’s role in the world, and he despised its slow, lumbering stupidity, but he wasn’t above a little revenge.
People went to jail for violating acquisition laws, and Brock was sure that he would enjoy watching the asshole smirk being wiped off the general’s face for good.
Brock was still working out how best to expose Landers. In the meantime, it was enough just to tell his dyspeptic tyrant of a boss to stuff himself. He had certainly earned it.
6
Newport News Airport, Virginia. Thursday, 6:27 p.m. ET.
The muscular man keyed the microphone switch on the yoke of his two-seat propeller airplane. “Newport News tower, Cessna 173 Alpha Tango ready for takeoff.” His moniker for this operation was Albert Mayfair, but that was no more his name than the dozen previous aliases he had used over the years.
“Cessna 173 Alpha Tango, Newport News tower, line up and wait, traffic is a Dash 8 on takeoff roll. Expect a two-minute delay for wake turbulence.”
As he pushed in the throttle to move the small airplane forward toward the runway, he glanced at the duffel bag in the passenger seat next to him. It was the first of two important reasons for his dusk foray.
The car trip south from Washington, DC, had been relatively uneventful. He had left the nondescript office building opposite the Pentagon, retrieved the rental car from the basement parking garage, and made his way to the southbound high-occupancy lane on I-395 as rapidly as was possible without appearing any more rude or obnoxious than the rest of the DC commuters.
It was just shy of 3:00 p.m. when he got on the highway, and he had a little over thirty minutes to use the HOV lane before the police began enforcing the occupancy requirement. He was alone.
He was always alone.
Traffic on that stretch of road could be brutal. Getting between DC and Hampton Roads could take as few as three hours, or as many as nine. Today, he was lucky, and had encountered only a brief slowdown as the four-lane highway necked down to two lanes just north of Williamsburg.
He had set the cruise control for eight miles an hour over the speed limit. He didn’t want police attention.
He had returned his rental car at the Newport News airport, then walked the mile and a half between the passenger terminal and the private aircraft ramp.
The duffel bag was heavy, even for a man of his strength and stamina, and beads of sweat dappled his brow by the time he had unlocked the door to the light single-engine airplane in which he was now sitting, awaiting takeoff toward the sunset.
The radio crackled. “Cessna 173 Alpha Tango, cleared takeoff, caution wake turbulence.”
He acknowledged the clearance, pushed the throttle all the way to the firewall, and instinctively added right rudder pressure to counter the left-turning forces created by the spinning propeller. The small airplane slowly accelerated in the hot, damp air.
He was soon airborne, amused once again that the silly little thing could get off the ground while moving slower than the cars on I-95.
At 700 feet above the ground, he began a lazy left turn toward the southeast. Before long, he was cruising along at 110 knots, heading out over the Chesapeake Bay. “Cessna 173 Alpha Tango, Newport News Tower, frequency change approved. Have a safe flight.”
As the giant cranes in the Hampton Roads shipyards slowly disappeared behind him, he adjusted the trim wheel to hold the airspeed steady, and moved the throttle a fraction of an inch to keep from climbing above his current altitude of 2,000 feet.
He was alone in an airplane in uncontrolled airspace, so this degree of precision wasn’t really required, but he couldn’t help it. It was in his nature, reinforced by training, and he was nothing if not fastidious. That’s why he was still alive.
With the airplane now holding steady of its own volition, he turned his attention to the dark duffel bag. He unzipped the top and retrieved one of his steel-toed boots. He stuffed one of his gloves into the boot, along with the paper towel he had used to wipe the Monsignor’s blood from his soles, and the small knife he had used to slice the priest’s throat from ear to ear.
He hefted an eight-pound iron weight from the bag and wedged it inside the boot.
He repeated the same procedure with the other boot, this time including the disposable cell phone he had used hours earlier to deliver the coded report: “Your order was processed as requested.”
The assassin unlocked and opened the airplane’s window, and checked once again for any boats in the water beneath him. Seconds later, he dropped the laden left boot from his left hand, and it fell two thousand feet to the dark water below.
A few miles further south, the right boot followed.
It wasn’t a terribly innovative concealment technique, but it was certainly effective. Even if it were possible to find the evidence at the bottom of the Chesapeake, the saltwater would wreak havoc on any remaining DNA.
He angled further south and peered to the east at the vast darkness of the Atlantic. Before long, he’d be making his way further southeast on his favorite means of conveyance, a fully-staffed luxury yacht.
That was the second reason for his flight. Escape.
For the first time since he received the activation call directing him to target Monsignor Worthington, Albert Mayfair, CIA assassin, finally began to relax.
7
Washington, DC. Thursday, 6:39 p.m. ET.
“Then why do anything at all? If it’s all bullshit, what’s the point of anything?” The young executive’s frustration was obvious in his flushed cheeks and elevated pitch. Robert Johnston was the head of the General Electronics Corporation’s Government Services Division in Washington, DC, and he wasn’t fond of being led by the nose.
Unfortunately, the old man in the plush leather chair sitting across from him was accustomed to speaking in a slightly patronizing style.
The old tycoon went by Archive in the most important circle. Johnston, the almost-forty executive seated across from the old man, was known as Protégé. The monikers were silly. They were also necessary.
Protégé endured Archive’s annoyingly didactic style, frustrating as it was, because the old codger was far from ordinary. The old man’s curriculum vitae was full of enough international successes to match the three closest competitors taken together.
Never one to pass up an opportunity to expand his perspective, the young executive humbled himself and played along, as he had done many times before. But the old man could really get on his nerves.
“Precisely.” Archive’s voice was laced with gentleness, but was mostly gravity, an impressive and useful combination. An orange light from the glowing fire in an exquisitely carved fireplace danced about the large study, creating the illusion of movement. Tiffany lamps on marble and mahogany end tables added to the soft light. An imposing desk dominated the far half of the study, the intricate lines of its custom-carved legs visible in the glow of the fire.
“Precisely what?” Protégé rose from the opulent leather chair that had held his athletic frame for the last hour. “I don’t have any idea what you’re trying to tell me.”
Philosophical discussions over scotch and cigars had become the ritual of their unlikely friendship, repeated at least monthly over the past couple of years.
Protégé had long sensed that these conversations were much more than mere diversion and idle banter. He got the idea that it was somehow a lengthy interview process, though he wasn’t sure what had given him that impression. He didn’t mind terribly, in the grand scheme. As annoyingly enigmatic as the old tycoon could sometimes be, Protégé was frequently surprised by how closely his own views aligned with the old man’s.
Protégé had no idea what was in store, but he had long ago decided t
hat he could muster sufficient patience to find out. Given his impressive record and Midas reputation, Archive didn’t seem like the type to disappoint.
“I’m not making a point,” Archive said after a long pause. “I’m urging you to ask yourself whether ‘a point’ of some sort is a necessary condition of existence.” He took a long drag of his cigar. “And then, I’m asking you whether anyone else has the right to impose a point on your existence, in particular.”
“I beg to differ,” Protégé said.
Archive’s brow arched in an unasked question.
“You actually are making a point,” Protégé pointed out. “Your last sentence was a statement, buried in a rhetorical question.”
A smile crossed the old man’s face. “You’re right, of course. My passion gets the better of me at times.”
“I think I can overlook it just this once,” Protégé teased. “Besides, I happen to agree with where I think you’re going. I just don’t see how it applies to the rest of us, here in the real world.”
A twinkle appeared in Archive’s eye as he exhaled a dark cloud of exceptionally expensive cigar smoke. “You will.”
“May the pact of the Path bind us in this purpose,” said a slight man with a neatly trimmed, graying beard. He had donned a long, flowing ceremonial robe for the occasion, one that hadn’t seen the light of day since September, 11, 2001.
He went by the name Mullah.
He was a terrorist, he supposed, but no more so than the terrorists he opposed. He wasn’t one of those Luddite troglodytes wandering around the hills of central Asia, and unlike his more unenlightened Muslim brethren, he didn’t believe that women were created to be kept covered, controlled, and ignorant.
That was just one of many ways Mullah differed from most others upon whom the same moniker was bestowed.
“May it ever be so,” responded eight voices in unison.
It was a motley crowd, Mullah observed once again. It made him smile. The wide ideological differences between the faiths represented in this group of influential men were testament to the power of his idea, and the efficacy of his approach.
Dignity, humanity, and piety were ideals worth fighting for, and his hunch that those principles would resonate across religious boundaries in the face of one great enemy had proven more than correct.
“Allah, Elohim, Adonai, Yahweh, Father, guide and guard us in this duty of peace. May the suffering of your enemy be brief, but may his defeat be swift and total.”
“Amen,” intoned the eight acolytes. Several made the sign of the cross. Two bowed, their long, curled locks falling forward of their ears. Others rose from their knees and straightened their robes.
“Let us depart now with clear eyes and steel hearts,” Mullah said. “May we move ever forward on the Path.”
Mullah drew and released a deep, satisfied breath. He felt alive, and almost equal to the task ahead.
Almost.
Minutes later, he stepped onto the DC metro to make his way home.
8
The Senior Quantum Compound, somewhere north of Las Vegas, Nevada. Thursday, 11:54 p.m. PT.
Jonathan Cooper took off his white lab coat, but not before removing the small slip of paper he had received earlier in the evening from Whitey, the fair-haired Secret Service agent in the Vice Presidential entourage.
He placed the paper in the front pocket of his slacks, hung the lab coat on its peg in his locker, and retrieved his cell phone and dormitory room key. He stepped out into the darkness.
Another midnight trudge from the lab to the dormitory. Working too hard again. Cooper sighed.
The hundreds of engineers, scientists, and technicians on the Senior Quantum project had all spent an ungodly amount of time out in the desolate Nevada desert, miles away from friends and family for weeks on end.
The nearest town was over forty miles away, and it wasn’t much of a town. Rainstorms often delayed mail and supplies. Raging runoff dug deep channels into the unpaved roads.
Cooper was an exceptionally bright postdoc from MIT. He specialized in nuclear magnetic resonance applications.
There wasn’t a big market for nuclear magnetic resonance specialists, and Cooper had almost given up on finding a post-doctoral position in his field when the inimitable Art Levitow called to offer him a position on a “mid-sized team of folks doing some government stuff.” Nothing glamorous, Levitow had said, but much better than grad student pay.
Cooper had instantly loved working for Levitow, and he fit in quickly with “Art’s Army.” He was surrounded on all sides by highly capable scientists and engineers, and he believed deeply in the work they were doing. He felt they were saving lives by developing what the military people termed “non-kinetic” options. “Kinetic” weapons were much messier, involving explosions, death, and other unpleasantness.
Cooper figured that men had been fighting for millennia, and he might as well help develop weapons that helped win conflicts in a much more civilized manner.
It was also extremely satisfying from a technical standpoint. They were on the “bleeding edge” of new technology, but they had enjoyed great luck finding creative ways to make the most promising ideas work.
Then, over the years after his arrival in the Nevada desert, he had gradually discovered something that troubled him deeply.
He had discovered that he was working for the wrong side.
As he strode across the sandy desert toward his dormitory in the hot, still night, his stomach tightened as he thought about the conundrum his discovery had caused.
He couldn’t not do something about it. But he certainly didn’t have any legal options to pursue what he felt to be a moral obligation.
Since his “conversion,” he had often wondered how the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project had felt after they viewed the grisly images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It must have been a tremendous burden to bear, no matter what the Washington propaganda said about it. The human tragedy caused by those two devices, named “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” in what seemed in retrospect to be grossly inappropriate levity, was overwhelming for him to ponder.
He felt that he was working on something similarly devastating.
Worse, it was going to be handed over to a pathological organization with both the will and the means to utilize the extremely dangerous technology: the US Department of Defense. For Jonathan Cooper, that was an increasingly sickening thought as he observed the events unfolding in the Middle East. With a top-secret clearance, Cooper saw all of the gory details. He watched in quiet horror as his employer ran roughshod over virtually all of his long-held beliefs regarding decency and humanity.
His conscience ultimately permitted only one choice.
He made it reluctantly. He was angry at having to make such a decision, and even angrier at the men who had put him unwittingly at odds with his principles. He was a patriot, but even more than that, he was a human being. He felt the bitterness and bile start all over again in his gut.
He turned the key to his dorm room, shut the door behind him, flipped on the light, and dug into his pocket to view the small slip of paper for the first time.
Cooper was amused to discover that it was from a fortune cookie. “You will be successful in an important venture.” He smiled as he flipped the fortune over. He began committing the string of lottery numbers to memory.
9
Department of Homeland Security Headquarters, Washington, DC. Friday, 10:03 a.m. ET.
Sam Jameson’s androgynous name and no-nonsense communiqués frequently led to shocked silence when people met her in person for the first time. Most people expected her to be a man.
Sam—short for Samantha—was decidedly and distractingly not androgynous, and certainly not male.
She stood five-ten in flats. Her impeccable professional attire couldn’t hide her more-than-impeccable physical condition. She was stunning, brilliant, magazine pretty, and efficient. She had red-blonde hair and piercing green eyes t
hat seemed to leave burn marks.
Through no concerted effort of her own, she had come to be treated with deference, even a little bit of reverence, by most of her fellow counterintelligence officers at the Department of Homeland Security. It was a tough crowd, but her natural gravitas was impossible for her colleagues to miss.
Over the past five years, Special Agent Jameson had assembled the beginnings of what promised to be a stellar career in the counterintelligence service.
She sat down at the head of the small conference table. “Guys, thanks for coming on such short notice. I know this isn’t normal in a murder investigation, but we have reason to believe this guy may have been more than your average priest. We’ve been asked to—”
“Rub our noses in it.” The voice was gruff and unfriendly, and attached to a large man in a bad suit with a look of contempt on his ruddy face.
Sam saw his Washington DC police department badge through an opening in his too-small jacket. The badge was fastened to his shirt, but it rested atop a fold of belly fat that had migrated north, well out of its jurisdiction. Hank Thierrot, Perfect Bastard, Sam thought.
Sam affected a saccharine smile. “Actually, Hank, your amateur crime scene control doesn’t bother me in the least,” she said. “We don’t give a shit about convictions here in the intelligence world, and I don’t care if you ever find the Monsignor’s wallet. May we continue, or would you like to make some more small talk?”
Thierrot sulked in silence.
Sam rarely failed to make an impression. Her dad had frequently chastised her for her sailor’s mouth, and he had a point. Vulgarity was a bit incongruous coming from a mouth as pretty as hers. But it tended to have the desired effect.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 115