Behold a Pale Horse

by Franklin Allen Leib

  THE LOS ANGELES earthquake, measured at 8.1 on the Richter Scale, brought all government business to a halt. The president met with advisers at 5:00 A.M. He telephoned the governor of California, reaching her in her helicopter as she flew south from Sacramento. None of the airports in or around Los Angeles were operating. The promise of all aid and assistance was made and accepted. Governor Feinstein said the devastation was very bad and that huge aftershocks continued. Gas supplies were gradually turned off at sources, but one refinery in Long Beach continued to burn, too hot to approach.

  The president put the Secretary of Defense in charge of the assistance operation, to aid the Federal Emergency Management Administration, whose own resources were quickly overwhelmed.

  The president addressed the nation at noon Eastern time, asking all people of goodwill to do what they could to aid the devastated city and promising the full resources of the federal government. The air force began flying into military bases in the region with emergency supplies and medical teams. Army Combat Engineers and Navy Seabees restored airports and used their heavy equipment to plow pathways through the rubble. Civilian crews from the heavy construction companies of Flour and Bechtel, both headquartered in California, moved in to help. Firefighters and construction crews began arriving almost as soon as the president spoke. The president announced that he would be flying to Los Angeles later in the day. He concluded his remarks by asking the nation to help him to succor, restore, and rebuild.

  After his advisers left to carry out their various assignments, the president studied a map of the region that had been marked with areas of greatest damage. South Central and West L.A., older areas with frame houses and older concrete apartment buildings, poor areas. In the affluent community of Palos Verdes, a six-mile section of bluff had slid into the ocean, taking many large homes with it.

  The president shook his head in disbelief. If this was not a sign from God, what was?

  IT TOOK JULIA a week to finish her report on Uvalde County Savings and Loan, Little Cheyenne Development, and the laundering of money into the president’s campaign. The bank was busy, especially in operations, as banks all over the country tried to straighten out transactions with California banks that had lost all access to their own records and records of transactions passing through them. Julia e-mailed the forty pages of facts and figures to the Chairman of Capital National Bank, Alfred Thayer. She had traced much of the money, some from Cuba, some from Colombia, some from Taiwan and South Korea, and some from Saudi Arabia.

  Most of the rest of it came from organizations she suspected were controlled by international crime cartels. She was sure Thayer could find out if he cared.

  She sent the file in such a way that it could not be traced back to her by anyone less expert than Clifford Stohl, the famous Berkeley mathematician, and even he or one like him would need months.

  Julia went out during lunch and purchased a ream of cheap printer paper from Staples. It was nothing like the bank’s fine stock. She printed the report, put it in a plain brown envelope, and mailed it to the reporter, Charles Taylor. She was careful to handle the report, the envelope, and the label only by the edges.

  On her way back to the apartment, she mailed the package from a Mail Boxes USA, using a completely false name and return address and paying cash. She dumped the rest of the Staples paper in a sidewalk trash barrel.

  When she got back to the apartment, she phoned her daddy and asked if she could come home for a few days. When he said, “Sure, baby,” she burst into tears.

  ALFRED THAYER’S SECRETARY stopped him as he returned from lunch. “You have an e-mail, sir,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Very long; marked for your eyes only.”

  “Who’s it from?” Thayer barked. No one sent him e-mail; he hated infernal desktop computers and refused to have one in his office. He also hated long reports by any means.

  “No signature, and no origination code,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Very odd, but from within the bank.”

  “What’s the subject?”

  “Uvalde County Savings and Loan and Little Cheyenne Development.”

  Damn! Thayer thought. That was supposed to be buried months ago. “Can you print it out?”

  Ms. Schwartz handed Thayer a thick folder. “I did, and a damn good thing I did.”

  “Why’s that?” Thayer said idly, opening the file and reading the first few lines of the Executive Summary.

  “Because right after it finished printing, the report vanished from the computer.”

  THE PRESIDENT RETURNED to Washington after two days touring Los Angeles. When the fires died and the smoke blew away, the devastation seemed less than the first pictures had suggested. Tall buildings downtown had withstood the temblor with little damage beyond broken windows, as had most structures built to earthquake-resistant codes after 1970. Most of the damage was very near the fissure itself. A crack like an inverted L had opened from Santa Monica in the north to East L.A. and bending down to Seal Beach in the south. West of the fissure the land had settled and slid as a block thirty meters toward the Pacific. Another crack went west from the bend in the L and ran nearly all the way east to Pomona. Both fissures filled with seawater that steamed from the internal heat below. The city had literally been broken into three parts.

  THE PRESIDENT GRIEVED on his flight back to Washington. Tens of thousands dead or maimed, billions of dollars to rebuild. What could happen next?

  15

  THE KUWAITI-FLAGGED 500,000 dead-weight-ton oil tanker Abu Musa, outward bound and fully loaded, began a transit of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow choke point between Iran and Oman that restricted all shipping in and out of the Persian Gulf. Because of the narrowness of the passage and the amount of traffic, she had a full crew on the bridge, including the captain. At just past four A.M, the sky off to port of the thousand-foot-long vessel began to light up with bright flares. The first Silkworm missile, with a six-hundred-kilogram incendiary warhead, plunged straight down through the deck and the forward hold. The captain ordered the ship to speed up and turn right in the narrow channel. The quartermaster logged the order, and the missile strike, but as four more missiles struck in quick succession, he fled the bridge with everyone else as the ship burst into flames from end to end. Most of the crew made it off, even the engine room gang, as the ship’s great diesels were located aft, beneath the bridge and the crew spaces. The bow of the ship grounded on a rock off the Omani shore. Abu Musa swung across the channel and burned until she sank. The waters around her would burn for days, a lake of fire.

  AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK in the morning a rented truck filled with barrels of a mixture of fuel oil and common fertilizer detonated with a force equal to seven tons of TNT in front of the federal building in Little Rock, Arkansas. The whole front of the concrete and glass structure collapsed, as did the roof and many of the twenty-two floors. There would be no estimate of casualties for many hours. A muffled voice called the ABC Television Network in New York and claimed responsibility on behalf of the Blood Urban Brotherhood, saying that a government that could not provide for the poor of the cities should be destroyed and would be. The network’s sophisticated tracing equipment got a pay phone near Jacksonville, north of Little Rock on Highway 67.

  RUPERT JUSTICE TOLLIVER canceled his schedule for the next two days immediately after the news came in from the Strait of Hormuz and Arkansas. He asked for time from the four major networks that was immediately granted. He mourned the loss of the federal workers—including children in a day-care center in the federal building—and condemned the terrorists. He promised the nation they would be rooted out and punished. He promised as well the assistance of the U.S. fleet in the Indian Ocean and within the Persian Gulf in reopening the Strait of Hormuz and restoring the flow of oil, as well as punishment of the Iranis who had fired the missiles. He asked the nation and the world to remain calm and firm.

  WHEN THE CAMERAS had been wheeled out of the Oval Office, the president turned to Zeke Archer. His face was weary
and ashen. “It’s starting, Zeke, and we’re not ready.”

  “Mr. President—Juss—what’re you going to do? You lit a fire, and somebody just poured gasoline on it.”

  The president’s hand shook badly as he took a sip from the drink Zeke handed him, spilling most of it. “Nothing I did can explain Los Angeles, unless it’s the wrath of God himself against a man with too many sins to wash away who has taken a high office. We must be firm, Zeke. Things will get worse, far worse, then the promise will be kept.”

  ACROSS AMERICA, RIOTING and looting began in large cities and small. Violent demonstrations flared up in Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong.

  JUSTICE HAD JUST two meetings the afternoon of the bombing in Little Rock, the day after the sinking of the Abu Musa. One was with the vice president, the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs, and the other with the Director of the FBI.

  He told his defense advisers retaliation against Iran must be swift and sure, and asked for a list of targets to be prepared. After the generals and admirals filed out, the vice president remained. “You’re mad!” he seethed. “What became of our bargain before the convention? I’m supposed to advise you on foreign policy, and you don’t even keep me informed!”

  The president sighed. “Vice President Donahue, you bore the hell out of me, and I haven’t time to listen to you whine.”

  “Mr. President!” Donahue bellowed.

  “Get out of my office, Donahue,” the president said icily. “Now.”

  THE PRESIDENT TOLD the Director of the FBI to find out who had blown up the federal building in Little Rock and bring them in body bags.

  “You mean arrest them, sir,” the director said nervously. “We have leads, good leads.”

  “Let’s save the people the agony and expense of a trial,” the president said, and waved the startled director from the Oval Office. God’s wrath must be swift, he thought.

  ALFRED THAYER READ Julia’s report with great care. He knew Capital National Bank had handled accounts for the Republican National Committee, but was totally unaware that it did any business at all with the Tolliver campaign. if the writer was right and that is what the huge money flows meant. But something was wrong with the picture. Very large transactions were reported daily on a sheet called the Significant Balance Change Report that was circulated to all department heads and above, including of course the office of the chairman. He should have known, and the fact that he didn’t wouldn’t save his bank if this was what the writer said it was.

  Thayer knew that because the report existed—he had it in his hands—it would get out. Anything recorded always got out, especially anything on a computer.

  Thayer buzzed Ms. Schwartz. “Get Max Berlin in here, please, and Frank Simmons.” She acknowledged the request and made the calls.

  Berlin, the bank’s president, arrived immediately; his office was only a few steps away. It took Frank Simmons five minutes to emerge from the computer warren in the basement. The Dragon Mother brought coffee as the two men sat. Thayer had slid the report into his top drawer and closed it. “Uvalde County Savings and Loan Society,” Thayer intoned. “Little Cheyenne Development.”

  “Never heard of it,” Frank Simmons said. “But I don’t look at individual accounts unless something gets messed up in the computer.”

  “I remember something from about last January,” Berlin said. “Some credit files went missing, and there was a squeal from the White House.”

  “It seems the First Lady is involved directly, and the president at least indirectly,” Thayer said.

  “Yes,” Berlin said. “But we recovered the files, all of them, and flagged them ‘No Access.’”

  “But why didn’t we see the huge transfers? Nothing in the daily reports.”

  Simmons carried a soft briefcase. He withdrew a tiny laptop computer and asked the chairman, “May I?”

  “Go ahead,” Thayer snapped, eyeing the loathsome thing. “I suppose you have to plug it in somewhere; there’s a jack around here somewhere, but I never use it.”

  Simmons knew the old man’s disdain for technology. He would have to tread softly to avoid getting the blame for whatever had gone wrong. “No, sir, it has internal power and a wireless modem.”

  Whatever the fuck that was, Thayer thought darkly. He watched as Simmons typed away. “What period are we looking for, sir?” Simmons asked.

  “October and November, last year. January, this year.”

  Simmons typed some more, then he gave a low whistle. “Your source is good, Mr. Thayer. Huge fund movements, but all in overseas branches and affiliates, mostly overnight or within one clearing day, so no report in the dailies.” He typed some more. “I’m looking at the last credit review of Uvalde County S. and L. No substantial increase in assets, so the money moved on.”

  “What about Little Cheyenne?”

  “We don’t have a direct account relationship,” Simmons said, scanning. “Uvalde County is their bank, and they give us information because loans to Little Cheyenne are such a large portion of Uvalde’s assets.”

  Thayer took a deep breath, and blew it out slowly. His stomach hurt. “I have received a report—a tip, really, but very detailed, that our bank may have been used to launder money, including huge amounts from overseas, into the hands of the Tolliver campaign.”

  Simmons winced, and Berlin shifted uneasily in his seat.

  Thayer buzzed Ms. Schwartz. “Ruth, call the White House; the loathsome Mr. Callendar. Tell him I want to speak to him and his boss, the equally slimy Ezekiel Archer.”

  “Yes, Mr. Thayer. Will you be going over there?” There meant the White House, a few blocks away.

  Thayer considered it. “No, tell them to come here. The matter is very urgent and very sensitive.”

  16

  JULIA EARLY FLEW to San Antonio, where her father, Jubal John (J J) Early, met her in his high-axle, four-wheel-drive Ford Bronco. J J was a retired captain in the Texas Rangers, still rangy and fit at sixty. He had been chief of Governor Rupert Justice Tolliver’s security detail until the governor hit the big time and headed off to Washington. J J embraced his daughter, rocking her as she wept. After he got her into the truck and gave her a tissue from the box on the dash, he asked softly, “What’s the matter, Julia May?”

  “I’m scared, Daddy,” she said. “And maybe ashamed.”

  “Tell.”

  “While I was at the bank, I was given two files to examine. Uvalde County Savings and Loan and Little Cheyenne Development.”

  J J gave a low whistle. “I been up there a couple of times with the governor—the president, now. Ambitious deal; kinda remote.”

  “I want to go see it.”

  “Now, girl, why ever would you want to do that?”

  “Because I think the development was a sham. A way to funnel money to the Tollivers, and later to the campaign.”

  J J shook his head. “Some things are best left unexamined, Julia May. This is Texas, and politicians raise money in different ways.” He paused. “It’s an awful excuse, but everybody does it; worst of all down here the judges.”

  “I think a lot of the money came in from foreign sources. I think a lot more was laundered through my bank in Europe and the Caribbean. I’d like to know if there is really a development.”

  “Why don’t we get you on home and get you a nice hot dinner and a rest. We could drive up tomorrow.”

  “It’s almost on the way, Daddy.”

  “Tomorrow,” J J said firmly. “You and me need to have a talk first.”

  “But, Daddy, the president is acting strange; doing strange things, preaching the Apocalypse to the Congress, making wars, scaring off trade and business. I’m afraid of him, and afraid for him.”

  “Your mother’s making fried chicken. We’ll talk after dinner.”

  CHARLES TAYLOR read the anonymous report that arrived on his desk just as he was leaving on a Friday afternoon. He was both elated and appalled. He examined both the envelope and each page of
the report, including the sophisticated graphics in the appendices. Who could have sent it? And why to him? Why not to one of the big newspapers or television networks?

  Charles made a copy and put the original in his safe. He called his travel agent and booked himself on the four o’clock American flight to San Antonio via Dallas. He would have to rush to make it, but he wanted to see the place, and photograph it, before he tried to sell the story.

  He told the agent he would be needing a car, preferably something four-wheel-drive, grabbed the satchel he always kept in his office. He had two; each with a shaving kit. One contained business attire, the other rugged gear. He took the latter, and called a cab to take him to Dulles Airport.

  While Charles Taylor was in the air rereading Julia’s report, Julia and her father sat in his study. Her mother had left them with coffee and gone to a meeting at the church. Julia explained what she had discovered, and how, and her strange treatment by the bank, including senior officers’ attempts to erase her files. J J listened patiently, interrupting only to ask her to explain some of the arcana of international funds movements, and how the untraceable could often be traced.

  “Let’s assume you’re right,” he said, after she wound down to exhausted silence. “He raised money, especially late in the campaign, from questionable sources. Is there any evidence that any of those sources got anything back?”

  “What’s the level of drug interdiction here in Texas and in the Gulf?” she asked. “Washington’s awash with the stuff.”

  “My friends in Austin tell me it’s way down,” J J said. “Troops and equipment patrolling the border all ended up in ships at sea or policing up the mess after the riots in the cities. Street traffic is active even down here, and promised assistance and grants from the DEA aren’t showing up.”