by James Phelan
Mendes closed the file on Fox. The hand-held Motorola crackled again:
“And the case?”
“You still have to get it back,” Mendes said. “Bring me the case, and make sure Lachlan Fox is dead.”
PART TWO
31
THE WHITE HOUSE
At 7 am five staff assistants exited the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff on a delivery errand. Each staffer had a wad of Xeroxed letters to deliver to all senior staff in the West Wing and the Executive Offices Building next door.
Mary Swanson did the rounds of the first floor of the West Wing, efficiently knocking on doors or speaking to personal secretaries for the handover. She was typical of the junior assistants: fresh out of grad school, working over seventy hours per week for thirty K per year just to say she worked at the White House. It was more than a stepping stone to big places. Sure, employers nationwide respected the dedication it took to work in the team of the executive branch of government. But she, like all staffers in this building and next door, knew that she was a part of something bigger. Working within the executive branch of government was more than a job, it was to be a part of history.
She walked through the deserted Roosevelt Room and gave a copy to the Press Secretary, who thanked her and tucked the letter under her chin as she opened her office door with both hands full. Through a corridor and beyond the lobby the staffer passed a copy to the smiling secretary to the Vice President—a woman who looked way too perky for this hour of a Saturday morning.
A few paces down the corridor Mary came to the last drop on this level. She tapped on the closed door, reading the stencilled title Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and she was not surprised to find the room occupied.
“Enter,” Bill McCorkell said, looking up from his computer screen.
“Good morning, sir,” she said, passing over a copy of the letter.
“Thank you,” Bill McCorkell replied, taking the note. “What’s your name?”
“Me—my—Mary, sir. Mary Swanson,” the junior staff assistant replied, going red in the face.
“New here, Ms Mary Swanson?” McCorkell asked.
She nodded, as if words were almost too much.
“What department are you working in?”
“Communications.”
“Ah, Aaron’s crew. Listen to him, learn from him—he’s as smart as they get,” McCorkell said. He looked over the typed note, the letterhead and the President’s distinctive signature showing its origin from the Oval Office. “You read this?”
“No—yes, I mean—”
“That’s all right, I’d do the same,” McCorkell said with a smile. “This is a copy of a letter that would have just been faxed and hand-delivered to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. The Speaker of the House and all senior executive staff are just getting a copy now. You understand what it means?”
She nodded.
“Good. Read it to me.”
“Yes, sir,” Mary said. She read from the stack of undelivered letters still in her hands:
Dear Mr President,
As my staff have previously communicated to you, this morning I will undergo a medical procedure involving surgery and requiring sedation. In view of present circumstances, I have determined to transfer temporarily my Constitutional powers and duties to the Vice President during the brief period of the procedure and recovery—expected to be no more than 48 hours.
Accordingly, in accordance with the provisions of Section 3 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, this letter shall constitute my written declaration that I am unable to discharge the Constitutional powers and duties of the office of President of the United States. Pursuant to Section 3, the Vice President shall discharge those powers and duties as Acting President until I transmit to you a written declaration that I am able to resume the discharge of those powers and duties.
Sincerely …
“The President of the United States,” McCorkell finished for her. “What do you suppose the line ‘In view of present circumstances’ means?”
“It could be because of the War on Terror—I mean, we’re at war, we need a Commander-in-Chief who is totally capable,” Mary replied.
“That’s right. So by the President invoking the Twenty-Fifth it means that the Veep is in charge for a day or so,” McCorkell said. “And that, my dear Mary Swanson, is another example of our great democratic republic at work.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. She hesitated by the door before departing. “He’ll be all right, won’t he, sir?”
“The President? He’s as tough as they come, don’t you worry. He has a lot of work he wants to get done before his first term ends, let alone when he gets to his second one,” McCorkell said. “Good luck with your job here—I’d say don’t let Aaron work you too hard, but I know that’s asking the impossible.”
“Thank you.” And with that she was on her way.
McCorkell had a sip of tea from his Oxford University mug and went back to scanning Intellipedia. The intelligence community’s version of Wikipedia, it was accessed over the SIPRNet—the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network—the intelligence community’s secure version of the internet. It allowed users the world over to log in and edit data in real-time, to have discussions and even to rate the quality of the content. That latter point was proving a valuable new tool to a rapidly changing face of the intelligence, military and security of the nation. Accountability was becoming real-time, sharing data a priority, ownership of opinions paramount. McCorkell could now see a time not too far off where the millions of reports created by government departments and officials would become a much more interactive and accountable product. None too soon.
He heard the unmistakable sound of Marine One flying overhead on its way to the south lawn. The massive power of the three General Electric engines that powered the VH-71 Kestrel vibrated the heavy double-glazed windows of his northwest-corner office. In less than an hour the President would be at Washington Hospital Center, undergoing surgery for the removal of cancerous polyps from his colon.
McCorkell checked his online diary: a Cabinet meeting at 9 am; an update from his Middle East assistant who’d headed up a joint task force to monitor events and analyse the attacks in Qatar and Saudi Arabia; and the final of the draft of five African country National Intelligence Estimates round-tables to get the heads-up on any details prior to their publication to the intelligence community on Monday. Hopefully, out by five to enjoy a day and a half outside the West Wing.
He clicked on the ‘nation briefings’ tab and scanned the headline activities in African hot spots that were covered in the upcoming NIEs—Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, Libya, Angola. Each country had dozens of links that led to more detailed information.
A widget caught his eye on the screen and he winced at the price of oil that flashed with a new rise. NYMEX had skyrocketed this past week. Three terrorist attacks were to blame for a reduction of global production, worsened by the fact that there was already a shortfall of supply. It was through a wide-angle lens that McCorkell viewed the world. Oil, the world’s most fungible commodity, was the lifeblood of not only America’s economy but its national security. Still, his ethos this morning was the same as any other morning: every day he went to work trusting that the work he would do that day would be better than anyone else could do in his place. Time would tell.
32
OUTSKIRTS OF ABUJA
Fox rode in the back seat of the early eighties Land Rover, built desert tough. Next to him, Gammaldi was in the process of destroying an MRE.
“You know, those things are meant to keep a soldier in the field going for twenty-four hours,” Fox said. “And now you’re eating your way through your second.”
“The first one was vegetarian,” Gammaldi said. “And vanilla pudding in a tube? Is that even food? I mean, come on…”
“You ate it all, thoug
h.”
Gammaldi just grunted and continued looking out of his side window and mashing away at a muesli bar. His bulky five-four frame seemed always in motion, even while sitting there in the back seat—and he was constantly eating to make up for the energy expenditure. Energy in, energy out, he’d say often enough. Fox could hardly argue with him about it. With just on nine per cent body fat, Fox had nearly a foot and ten kilos on him, yet he couldn’t bench twice what Gammaldi could pump out in sets of ten.
Fox looked up ahead as the road abruptly ended its relatively smooth bitumen for potholed gravel.
“This is where the federal road ends,” Simon called over his shoulder. The teeth-rattling corrugations on the gravel road accentuated the point. Outside, mud-brick and fibreboard shanty towns flashed by in their wake of dust.
“Why are these people situated so far out of Abuja?” Fox asked, taking photos out of his side window with his Nikon D40x. A woman washing children’s clothes in a bucket. A man standing on a roof, reaching his radio to the sky for reception. Kids with sticks, herding chickens. A group of old men smoking rolled cigarettes, their open faces passive as vehicles rumbled past.
“They have been moved out here for the past couple of years,” Simon explained. “The government bulldozed their homes in Abuja—despite them purchasing their land legally, the government back-flipped and is sticking to the course of making Abuja a designed city, as it was originally planned. No civilians can afford the new houses they are building, only senior bureaucrats, foreign diplomats, and contractors.”
They came to a halt behind some petrol tankers returning to the oil fields in the delta region.
“This another toll point?”
“I don’t think so—they don’t dare toll petrol tankers, the government makes sure of that,” the driver said. He inched the Land Rover forward to see if he could look further ahead. Having made a career as a driver based out of Nigeria’s main seaside city of Lagos, Simon knew well when to be wary. His reach was never far away from an old revolver holstered to the inside of his door.
“I’ll check it out,” Fox said. He reached for his backpack on the seat next to him—his own pistol was in there. But he thought better of it, and took his camera only.
“Stay in the car, Al,” Fox said, and headed out into the noisy street.
The traffic jam was made up of twelve petrol tankers. Their drivers were honking their horns in tandem. Still, this stall was not enough to get them outside their air-conditioned cabs. He passed one driver shouting into his radio, either checking with the lead truck in the convoy what the hold-up was or calling it in.
As Fox neared the front of the convoy he came to a crowd where the traffic jam started. Chaos. Shouting, arguing, screaming. As he neared he could make out crying too—a woman, sobbing inconsolably. Men were pounding on the cab of the lead truck, and the action quickly spread through the crowd of fifty or more who began to rock the eighteen-wheel rig with their bare hands. Fox snapped off shots as he moved and bumped his way forward through the ever-swelling mass of people.
Fox tumbled into the hollow at the eye of the crowd, by the driver’s door just behind the front wheel of the truck. A mother sat there—she was the source of the crying. She was growing quieter, sobbing and praying, while rocking back and forth with a small child in her arms, as if trying to get this little girl to sleep.
It was horrific. Where the child’s legs should have been was just bloodied pulp. She was well past dead, a little lifeless rag doll torn in half by the truck.
Fox snapped shots of the scene. The driver yelling into his radio set. The crowd with their rocks smashing against the cab. The spider-web of the windscreen as it shattered.
Automatic gunfire filled the air, AK-47s. The crack of pistol shots. The crowd moved back but their hum remained, the shouting and blaming and mourning.
Fox watched as a Toyota pick-up skidded to the side of the road ahead, members of the black-shirted MOPOL filing out. They were threatening the crowd, pushing them back, more shots filling the air. Fox knew these guys were paramilitary, that their main objective was to protect the nation’s oil assets and the staff and infrastructure of companies that owned them. They had to keep the system going at full pace, and in this case it meant getting these trucks moving asap.
The crowd was pressed back against the houses on either side of the dirt road. Fox was still taking photos as a cop came over and grabbed the dead girl by the arm, dragged her away from her screaming mother and tossed her to the side of the road. The mother got to her feet, and ran to the cop as he motioned the petrol tankers to continue on.
Fox couldn’t believe it—they were just letting this guy motor on without a single word uttered. He noticed that these cops had the same oil company logo on their shirt-sleeves that was sprayed onto the sides of the trucks—a federal police force for hire. Fox was still snapping off shots, the Nikon clicking away automatically at two pics per second as he held the button down.
The mother had moved again, and stood up holding her lifeless child in her arms once more. She was yelling at the senior cop, something in the local Hausa language. The cop’ eyes squinted into hard focus as he drew his 9 mm and popped her twice in the head. There was little left atop her shoulders. The bark of the pistol rang in Fox’s ears and he had a flash of an image he’d seen before—of a coalition soldier executing a Taliban member in Afghanistan. Only this time it was a defenceless, innocent woman.
For the first time the crowd was silent as the trucks rumbled onwards—the cops on one side, the civilians on the other. The stand-off was uneasy, each side like a coiled spring about to jump free.
Fox’s eyes were locked with those of the senior cop’s—he caught glimpses of him in-between the tankers as they rumbled past. It was clear this guy was not pleased with Fox’s presence. As if the camera was as much a threat to him as his 9 mm pistol was to Fox.
A honk and Fox looked to his left—the Land Rover pulled to a stop in a cloud of red dust and before Fox could get in the cop was standing in front of it, the traffic stopped once again. His pistol was raised at Simon’s head—then arced slowly across to Fox. His aim was steady. Fox’s heart was beating through his chest.
Fox looked into the back seat, saw Gammaldi glance down to the bag containing the pistol—and gave him a look that said no.
“The camera!” the cop yelled, holding his hand out for Fox to pass the camera over.
“We’re press,” Fox answered, holding his ground.
“You have five seconds, Mr Press,” the cop said.
Fox held for another moment, then walked over, passed the camera to the cop. Then he turned on his heel, walked back to the Land Rover and climbed into the back seat.
The cops waved them on. The senior cop, holding the camera by his side, watched Fox the whole time as they passed.
“Once we’re out of sight, drive as fast as you can,” Fox said.
Simon minced through the gears, the turbo diesel whining into action. Fox was shaking slightly—adrenaline, ready for a fight, nerves a bit out of control.
“What’s the rush?” Gammaldi asked, looking over at his friend.
“This,” Fox said. He held up the camera’s memory card.
33
THE WHITE HOUSE
At 9.05 am Bill McCorkell had the floor of the meeting in the Cabinet Room. The Cabinet were assembled to discuss releasing some of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to alleviate oil prices, their daily discussion for the past ten days.
Given the President’s absence, McCorkell was providing his usual rundown of global hot spots designated the PDB to the Vice President and the Cabinet as one. This had been prearranged prior to the President’s surgery, not as a sign of distrust in Vice President Jackson, but as a way of including the wider executive in the heightened circumstances. Simply, the ramifications of three major terrorist attacks against global oil infrastructure proved the necessity of Cabinet involvement as
they had greatly affected the US supply of imported oil. The domestic economy was taking a beating at a larger rate than the global one.
McCorkell pointed to a satellite image on a large LCD screen and was on the fly: “Following the explosion at the Saudi Aramco oil terminal of Ras Tanura, the Kingdom are still running four million barrels per day below usual production,” McCorkell said. “To put that shortfall on supply in perspective, this alone has equated to the price of petrol at the pump being seventy cents higher per gallon than it was two weeks ago.”
“Aramco are still refusing to release any reserve refining capacity?” the Secretary of Transport asked.
“That’s right. We’re getting no make-up refining from them at this stage, but we’re working at it from every angle,” McCorkell said. “How much are you hurting?”
“Updated figures went to press this morning,” she said. “Put simply, seventy per cent of the oil this nation uses is in transport. It’s hurting bad and it’s only getting worse. Prices on everything are going up as a result. We haven’t seen this sort of inflationary pressure in a long time, not since the early eighties.”
“I have a meeting with Prince Fahid today,” Adam Baker, the Secretary of State, said. “They’ve got a number of demands on the table, from procurement of F-22s to our halting of a push for democracy in the Kingdom.”
“And they’ll be getting nowhere on both. The Kingdom’s enjoying seeing us hurt, and the higher global fuel prices are boosting their coffers,” Tom Fullop said. The Chief of Staff spoke louder than necessary, a custom in Cabinet meetings that McCorkell assumed was to make up for his physical stature. “They’re in a high position and they know it. Nigeria’s the key here: we get them back up to their peak production, we have room to manoeuvre with the Saudis.”
“Need me in the meeting with the Prince?” Peter Larter, Secretary of Defense, asked.