The Ajax Protocol (The Project)

by Lukeman, Alex

  Her intuition sounded an alarm. No agent would have been caught dead with loafers, brown or any other color, especially someone from the White House detail. His hair was too long, and she had never seen a Secret Service agent who needed a shave.

  Something in her face gave must have given her away. The man's expression hardened. He reached under his suit jacket. Behind the glass canopy of the helicopter the pilot watched the two of them.

  Elizabeth had not gotten where she was by being stupid. Even as he moved, her mind had processed the details it was taking in. The hair, the need for a shave, the shoes. It all added up to trouble. She made a decision. Her pistol came out of the quick draw holster at her waist as Williams drew a gun from under his jacket. She fired three, fast rounds. He fired into the ground, the round ricocheting off the cement, and fell back onto the hard surface of the pad.

  With a full throttle roar, the helicopter lifted off the pad and started to rise, turning as it climbed.

  Elizabeth was angry. She raised her gun in both hands and emptied the rest of the magazine at the chopper. Sparks flew from the metal fuselage. Some of her hollow point bullets found the engine intake. The slide locked back on her empty pistol. The helicopter rose steadily away from her.

  A sudden, strident sound of shrieking metal filled the night as the engine seized in mid-air. A thick plume of black, oily smoke poured from the rear of the bird. The helicopter tipped sideways and veered toward her. She could see the terrified face of the pilot through the canopy as the machine plummeted out of control. Elizabeth ran off the pad and dove onto the lawn. The helicopter passed over her and flew straight into the ground. The spinning rotors hit the dirt. The machine cart wheeled and exploded in a blossom of orange flame. The sound rolled across the Virginia countryside like thunder and faded away.

  Elizabeth raised her head and looked at the burning wreckage. Then she looked over at the man she had killed. He lay on his back. Blood soaked his shirt and oozed under his body. The toes of his brown loafers pointed into the air. She got to her feet. Her hands were shaking.

  She inserted a fresh magazine into her pistol, released the slide and de-cocked the hammer. She holstered the weapon.

  The crash would have been noticed by someone. She couldn't afford to have the local cops and the NTSB and everyone else poking around the crash scene, not until she knew who had sent the helicopter. Not until she had more information. She would have to call in favors and invoke National Security. It would be messy, but she could keep things under wraps long enough to find out what the hell had just happened. She didn't have a choice, if she wanted to keep control of the situation.

  She took out her phone and called Clarence Hood on his private, secure line. Hood was the current Director of Central Intelligence and an ally Elizabeth could rely on. There were good reasons for that. If it hadn't been for Elizabeth and her team, Hood would be in a federal prison instead of on the seventh floor of Langley.

  "Clarence, it's Elizabeth. I need your help."

  "Elizabeth. You've heard about the President?"

  "Yes. What's his status?"

  "Uncertain. He's in the ICU at Walter Reed."

  "Something has happened here," Elizabeth said. She told him about the phone call and the helicopter. She looked over at the wreckage as she spoke.

  "It still burning," she said. "Someone must've noticed. The state police and everyone else are going to be here in a few minutes. I need your help to head them off."

  "The man who identified himself as a Secret Service agent said the President had sent him?"

  "Yes. I'm wondering if somehow it's related to what happened to Rice."

  "You think it may have been an assassination attempt?"

  The only thing that gave away Hood's stress was a slight increase in his soft, southern accent.

  "It seems like too much of a coincidence, and I don't believe in coincidences," Elizabeth said. "I think you should boost Rice's security."

  "I'll have a team there in 15 minutes," Hood said. "If anyone shows up, stall them until they get there. Call me tomorrow. We'll talk. "

  "I'll do that," Elizabeth said. She ended the call.

  The flames from the burning helicopter lit up the night. Over on the patio by her office, she saw the cat watching the fire.

  CHAPTER 8

  The next morning Elizabeth briefed the team.

  After his conversation with Elizabeth, Hood had ordered Rice's doctors to administer a specialized panel of tests designed to look for unusual results well outside the normal coronary event. Trace elements of a rare toxin had been discovered in his blood. The poison came from a plant that grew only on the upper slopes of the mountains in Haiti. The extract of the plant produced all the symptoms of a heart attack. It was usually fatal. Someone had tried to kill him.

  Flowers and notes were piling up in heaps at the barriers in front of the White House. The information that Rice had been the target of an assassination attempt was being kept from the public. The Secret Service, the FBI and the others had no leads.

  No one said a word as Elizabeth told them about the attempt to kill her. From where he sat, Nick could see the charred remains of the helicopter in the flower beds outside. Someone had just upped the ante, but they didn't know the name of the game or who was playing.

  "No one called from Bethesda," Elizabeth said. "Rice wasn't asking to speak with me. It was a set up."

  Nick said, "Remind me not to get you mad at me. Hard to believe you shot that down with a pistol." He gestured out the windows at the wreckage.

  Everyone looked at the ruins of the helicopter. It wasn't something you saw every day.

  "I was mad." Harker picked up her Mont Blanc and began tapping on the desk.

  "That's my point."

  "What happens to that wreck out there?" Ronnie asked.

  "Hood will handle it."

  "Any ID on the phony agent you killed?"

  "Former FBI, kicked out a few years ago. He was suspected of compromising an important investigation. There was nothing they could charge him with at the time, but they let him go."

  "Why send a chopper?"

  "I think they wanted to kidnap me. If they couldn't do that, then kill me."

  "What's the status of the president?" Selena asked. She wore a pale blue silk blouse that offset the violet of her eyes.

  "He's alive, but he's out of commission for a while. Vice President Edmonds has taken over. He won't be sworn in unless Rice dies or is declared unable to perform."

  "That could be a problem," Nick said. "Edmonds doesn't like us."

  "I don't like him either, but we have to deal with it. Edmonds thinks we're a bunch of loose cannons. We're not going to get any cooperation from the White House as long as he's sitting in the big chair."

  "Are we going to try and find out who went after Rice?" Selena asked.

  "Plenty of people are looking at that. For now they can deal with it. I'm more concerned with why someone came after me. Why me? Whoever it is knew my private number and knew I'd have to respond to a summons from Rice. There aren't many who have that number. Which I'm changing, by the way."

  Ronnie rubbed a knuckle across his nose. "Someone's playing hardball."

  "They've got to be well financed and well organized," Nick said. He gestured out the window at the wreckage. "That's an expensive pile of junk out there."

  Elizabeth set her pen down. "That doesn't narrow things down much.,"

  Nick tugged on his ear. "Who knows how to reach you?"

  "The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Hood. The President. The Director of National Intelligence. The Director of the NSA."

  "Don't forget the Russians," Nick said. "Vysotsky has it."

  "He's more subtle than that," Harker said. "It's not his style."

  "What about Edmonds?" Selena asked.

  Harker gave her an odd look. "That's an evil thought, Selena. He doesn't like me and he'd be happy if I was out of the picture, but I don't think he wants me dead."r />
  "Somebody does."

  "Well," Elizabeth said, "If they want it badly enough, they'll try again."

  "What's next?" Nick asked.

  "I'll try and track down the helicopter," Stephanie said. "We might be able to find out who owns it and where it came from." She twisted the gold bracelets around her wrist. She did that when she was tense.

  Elizabeth looked at them. "All of us may be targets. I don't want to go into lockdown but everyone needs to be careful."

  "What else is new?" Ronnie said.

  CHAPTER 9

  The kitchen of Nick's Washington apartment was a comfortable place, big enough for a table and four chairs. It was set off from the living area by a wide counter that did double duty as a bar. A Paul Klee reproduction hung over a Danish modern couch in the living room. Nick liked the clean, uncluttered look of European furniture, just as he really liked Klee's paintings. A genuine Klee hung in the bedroom, a gift from Selena. Selena sat at the table reading a magazine and humming to herself. Nick stood at the stove making them something to eat.

  He looked over at her and thought about the file in his top dresser drawer, the one Adam had given him. He had decided that it was time to show it to her.

  Nick knew Adam only as a disembodied electronic voice from the other side of a partition in the back seat of an armored Cadillac. He'd never seen what Adam looked like. He didn't even know if Adam was a man or a woman.

  Nick would come out of his building and Adam's black Cadillac would be waiting by the curb. He'd get in the car, they'd drive around for a while, and Adam would talk about unpleasant things he thought Nick needed to know, about unpleasant people planning the kinds of things that started wars. The problem was that he was always right. Nick thought of him as a kind of personal messenger from the gods of conspiracy.

  Just a week before, Adam had given him a classified CIA file from the days of the Cold War, when records and reports were printed on paper and kept in locked cabinets instead of computers. He'd told Nick it would affect his relationship with Selena. After he'd read it, he wished he'd never seen the damn thing. He'd been unable to make up his mind about when to tell her about it. The contents of that file were going to upset her and make her unhappy. It was about the deaths of Selena's family, killed when she'd been ten years old. Their car had gone over a cliff near Big Sur.

  An accident, the police said. Except it hadn't been an accident. The file revealed that her family had been murdered by the KGB. Worse, it proved that Selena's father had been a spy. A traitor. How could he tell her that?

  Nick stirred the vegetables and meat simmering on the stove and added a little cayenne, a dash of salt.

  "You hungry?" he said.

  Selena smiled. "Starving. Whatever you're making over there, it smells good."

  "Just stir fry, nothing special."

  Nick scooped the food out of the pan and put it in a bowl. He carried the steaming bowl over to the table, dished some onto Selena's plate and his own and sat down. They began eating.

  "A lot of people are praying for Rice," Selena said.

  "He's tough. He'll make it."

  "Who do you think went after Elizabeth?" Selena took a sip of white wine and set her glass back down on the table.

  "I don't know."

  Nick pushed his food around on his plate.

  "Something's bothering you, isn't it?"

  After two years with Nick, Selena had gotten good at reading him.

  Somewhere in his mind a quiet voice said tell her. He was tired of walking a mental tightrope about it. She'd handle it, or she wouldn't. It was time to come clean.

  "The last time I saw Adam he gave me something."

  Selena knew about Adam, everyone in the Project did. She waited.

  "A file," he said.

  "A file? What kind of file?"

  "A classified file from Langley. From the 80s. Adam said it's the only copy."

  "What's in it?"

  Nick sighed. "It's about your father."

  "Adam gave you a CIA file about my father? When were you planning on letting me know?"

  "That's what I'm doing now."

  "Why would he do that? Give it to you?"

  "I suppose he wanted me to know what's in it."

  She set her fork down "Where is it?"

  "In the other room."

  "Maybe you'd better show it to me."

  Nick sighed again. He got up and went into the bedroom and took the folder from the drawer. He set the file down on the table in front of her and went over to the liquor cabinet. He was going to need something stronger than wine once she'd read the contents. Nick poured himself an Irish whiskey and went back to the table and sat down. He pushed away the remains of his meal. He'd lost his appetite.

  Selena read in silence. He watched the impact of what she was reading sink in. She finished reading and went back to the beginning and began to go through the papers again. After a while she looked up. Her eyes were wet.

  "Why didn't you show this to me before?"

  "Because I didn't know how it would affect you. I knew I'd have to give it to you sooner or later."

  "You didn't think I could handle it." Her voice was flat, emotionless.

  "I didn't say that."

  "This says that my father was a double agent, working for the KGB."

  Nick felt helpless. What are you supposed to say when your lover finds out that her father was a traitor?

  "I'm sorry, Selena."

  "I don't believe this," she said. "My father wasn't a traitor."

  "Adam has no reason to make it up."

  "You don't know that."

  "I know everything he's said in the past has turned out to be true. Why would he make something like this up? It's real," Nick said. "The paper is the right age. It even smells like the 80s."

  "Maybe it's a false plant, a trick."

  "Why would he do that?"

  "I don't know."

  She picked up the folder, set it down.

  "This says it wasn't a car accident that killed them."

  "No."

  "The KGB killed him. And my mother and my brother."

  "They would have killed you too, if you had been in that car."

  "Bastards," she said.

  "I'm sorry," he said again. He didn't know what else to say.

  "BASTARDS!" she shouted. She stood and hurled her glass of wine across the room. It shattered against the wall. Then she put her hands over her face and began sobbing.

  Nick went over and put his arms around her and held her close without speaking. He could smell the clean scent of her hair. After a few moments she calmed. She wiped her eyes, used a napkin to blow her nose and sat back down at the table.

  "I want a drink," she said. "A strong one."

  Nick poured a double whiskey for her and another for himself. He gave her the glass and sat down across from her. She took a long swallow.

  "My uncle knew," she said. "He knew all along. His name was on those papers. He signed off on them. I knew he had ties to the CIA, but I didn't know he worked for them. He had friends at Langley. One of them set up the security at my loft in San Francisco."

  "It must've been a hell of a shock when he found out about your father," Nick said.

  "How could my father do that? How could he betray his country? He was a wonderful man, a wonderful father. What makes someone turn on the country that gave him everything?"

  "I don't know. I don't think Langley knew for sure which side he was really on. It looks like he was feeding the Russians false information along with the real goods. That would give the KGB enough reason to eliminate him. He might have been under orders to give them bad info."

  "But if he was passing false information and Langley knew about it, why do these reports make it look as though he was a traitor, another rotten double agent?"

  "There could be a lot of reasons. Maybe someone higher up wanted to cover their ass. Or someone wanted to manipulate the truth for their own advantage. Wh
en you start looking at Langley during the 80s, it's all smoke and mirrors."

  "Bastards," she said again.

  Nick wasn't sure whether she meant the Russians or the CIA.

  "What are you going to do?" she asked.

  "About what?"

  "Are you going to tell Harker?"

  "I don't see any reason to," Nick said.

  "You don't think this could affect my clearance? Whether she trusts me or not?'

  "Are you getting biblical on me?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "The sins of the fathers being visited on the generations and all that. You're not your father."

  "You don't think she ought to know?"

  "What good would it do?"

  "Selena held up the file folder. "I want to study this," she said. "There could be something in it to clear my father's name. A detail, a name. Something."

  "Maybe." Or maybe not, Nick thought. But he kept his thoughts to himself.

  "I'm going home," she said. "I need to think."

  Nick wasn't sure what to say. He opted for neutral.

  "We have a briefing at 0900 tomorrow," he said. "You want to pick me up and give me a ride in?"

  "I'll meet you in front of the building at eight."

  "Call me. If you want to talk."

  "I need to think," she said again.

  He watched the door close behind her.

  CHAPTER 10

  The next day, Nick and Selena were riding back to Washington after the morning briefing in Virginia. Traffic on 66 was heavy. Selena had been quiet ever since they'd left the Project.

  "How are you doing?" he said.

  "All right. I've been thinking a lot about that file." Selena stepped down on the gas and blew past a delivery truck.

  "Whoa," Nick said.

  "What's the matter?"

  "You just missed taking off the side mirror." He glanced at the speedometer. They were doing a little over 80.