There it was. Him in the helicopter, and his antagonist below. This, after all, had been the primary attraction of the mission all along, to flush that man out from the dark hiding place where Milverton had long suspected he dwelled. And while he had not really got a good look at him, not while lifting off, and readying for the jump he knew must come upon impact of the Barrett’s speeding round into the engine block of the chopper, his video apparatus had. No matter how poor the quality, the computers would be able to extract an image, extrapolate concealed features simply from the shape of the chin or the earlobe.
On television, meanwhile, there was Skorzeny, front and center, framed by the giant Ferris wheel everybody called the “London Eye.” The old phony could really snow them. All that aid, rushing to Los Angeles, surplus crap he had no use for in the first place. Free turkeys for the poor, and more, all obscuring the real reason the ship had put into port, which was safely tucked away in the hold and buried on the manifest as “scientific experiment materials.”
Barnum, or Mencken, or somebody, almost had it right: no one ever went broke underestimating the sentimentality of the American public. The greatest country on earth, a country (it pained him to admit) even more powerful than the Empire at its zenith, was being brought low by its sappy Victorian fondness for morally uplifting “narratives.” Triumph and tragedy. Hope rising from the ashes. Smiling through the tears. Well, soon enough they would have something to smile about.
Damn it, but the old man loved the spotlight. Well, he supposed that had he had the upbringing Skorzeny did, he’d want to shine on as long as possible. To pay the world back in Christian coin for the wrongs it had visited upon him — that surely was the mark of the secular saint these days. Still, business was business, and his job was to follow instructions.
He punched a code on his BlackBerry and turned up the sound. All these years in the Anglosphere and the old fart still sounded like Dr. Strangelove.
“And so, ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to thank you from the bottom of my heart for offering me this platform today. A boy born in Germany, who grew up when our two countries were bitter enemies, when there was suffering and dying beyond compare….” The faker choked up briefly, then continued.
“Thus, I do what I can in return. Already, our ship the Stella Maris is in port in Los Angeles, along with our prayers. She is one of the most advanced ships on the seas, with a state-of-the-art navigation system and a titanium-hardened cargo hold. What we have for the people of California cannot be compromised or damaged in any way. It will be delivered. For we cannot wait for governments to act. Another Skorzeny humanitarian vessel, the Clara Vallis, will make port in Baltimore in three days. As you know, it is my fondest dream to see a new world order emerge before I die, one in which we all are citizens of the world, not simply citizens of whatever nation in which we happen to have been born. As the poet said, ‘No man is an island.’”
Skorzeny stopped. The “London Eye” turned. Behind them, the Thames flowed, as it had for thousands of years, since before the Romans settled the place and called it Londinium, and as it would after the Britons finally gave up and abandoned the place to its new fate of Londonistan. Too bad, thought Milverton. He was a native Londoner. He liked the place, and he would miss it, but there were plenty of other places in the world, and with better weather too. Might as well start the ball rolling toward the transition.
John Donne was his cue. He started the countdown. Three…two…one.
He’d run the simulation a dozen times. The reality was almost exactly as he’d planned.
Somewhere just off the southeast coast of England, a Tomahawk missile blasted out of the hold of a Liberian tanker and sped toward London at subsonic speed.
Skorzeny’s entourage had just left the area when the missile slammed into the Eye.
Milverton had charged the Tomahawk with just enough explosive power to take down the Eye. Naturally, given the velocity, there would be some collateral damage, but it was the visual he was after, the image of the Eye collapsing, and it was the visual he got.
Twisted, burning metal flew in all directions. Some cars, wholly intact, went flying; several landed in the Thames and sank straightaway. Other cars had their bottoms blown away, the passengers plunging screaming 443 feet to their deaths. At ground zero, vehicles exploded, or were tossed skyward.
A second set of codes and the hidden charges in the ship sent the tanker to the bottom. That part he had neglected to mention to the captain when he hired the vessel.
Message delivered, COD — not just to the United States this time, but to the West.
In the distance, he heard the front door open, then close again. No alarms went off. He didn’t even turn around as she entered the room.
He could hear the thunk of her shoes as she kicked them off, the rustle of her clothes as they fell to the floor. Her soft footpads as she made her way toward him. In his old SAS days, he might have killed her anyway, so thoroughly reflexive was his training. Maybe he was getting sloppy; maybe he was just getting old. Maybe he really wasn’t as controlled as he thought he was. And maybe he was in love with her — not just to guy the old man, but because he really was.
In any case, he knew who was behind him. And despite her inarguable beauty and indisputable nakedness, what was in front of him was even more interesting. A face, re-created by the computers. The face of the man he sought. The face of an old enemy, brought to him courtesy of the very latest in facial-recognition software.
“He got away OK?” she asked.
“That was the idea, wasn’t it?”
“Still, seemed a little close.”
Milverton tried not to let his irritation show. Everything had worked perfectly. The panic-driven restrictive policies instituted after September 11th had long since been sloughed away, like a snake shedding old skin. Keeping the shipping lanes open had proven more important than inspecting every piece of cargo in their holds. After today, that would all change, of course, but it didn’t really matter. What was in port was already in port.
“The idea was to make him look both heroic and like a victim simultaneously, just the way he likes it. It is an unfortunate fact of life, however, tragic accidents do happen.”
She gave Milverton a long look. “I didn’t think you cared,” she said.
“Why don’t you pour us both a drink?” he said over his shoulder.
She slipped her bare arms around his neck and set down two martinis in front of them on the desk. “Voilà,” she said.
He took a sip, then spun in his chair. Her breasts were already in his face. “It’s not nice to keep a lady waiting,” said Amanda Harrington.
“What about your daughter?” he asked as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
“I got a sitter,” she said.
Chapter Forty-one
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The president was on the transatlantic hotline when Seelye entered the Oval Office. He expected a crowd, and was surprised to see that the president was alone.
Tyler motioned for Seelye to sit down as he continued his conversation; on the television, the markets were tanking. After three successive shocks, the Dow had lost more than half its value, and the bottom was nowhere to be seen.
“Annabel,” he was saying. “I can assure you that we had no inkling, none at all, that this…outrage, as you put it, was about to happen. Yes. Yes. No, I don’t care what the ‘chatter’ is. It’s not true. It’s simply not true.” He held the phone away from his ear and shot his visitor an exasperated glance; even from across the room they could hear the British prime minister’s voice, shouting angrily.
“Annabel — Madame Prime Minister — please be careful with your accusations. Do you think for a moment that if we had specific and credible evidence of a terrorist plot on British soil we would not have alerted you? Come on—”
Whatever he was about to say was cut off in a controlled explosion on the other end of the line. Annabel Macombie, the new Brit
ish PM, was renowned for her Celtic temper. Seelye almost felt sorry for Tyler. Almost.
“Let me just say — excuse me, may I speak? The Dow is below 4,000, my approval numbers are in the toilet, and unless we can nail whoever is behind these outrages, I am not going to be reelected president of the United States next year. So I have a lot more to lose than you. Let me just say that we have our top people working on this. In fact, the director of the NSA has just walked into my office and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve had a chance to hear his report. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Yes, you too.”
He hung up. Seelye braced himself for what he knew was coming: Mount Tyler, exploding in a fiery shower of profanities. Which blew, right on schedule. “This is war,” said the president, after the volcano had subsided. “Flat-out war.”
“Yes, sir,” said Seelye. “But against whom?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to tell me. You and the rest of that useless bunch: Rubin, DHS, my national security advisor, what’s-her-name, and that fuckwit at CIA. Christ! How many intelligence agencies does a country have to have before one of them gets one fucking thing right?”
“Secretary Rubin’s a good man, sir, even if I personally don’t care for him.”
“What about the others?”
Seelye had no comment.
“Right. So what are he, and you, and I…what the fuck are we going to do?”
Seelye knew what that question meant. It didn’t mean, “What are we going to do?” It meant, “What can I tell the American people we are already doing and, if it goes wrong, put your head up on a pike and parade it down Constitution Avenue?”
“The first thing we need to do,” said Seelye, choosing his words carefully, “we’ve already done. The next-generation SDI shields are now fully operational on both coasts. Nobody’s gonna sneak a missile into New York or San Francisco.”
“If Congress knew, they’d have a cow,” said the president. “What about ships already in port?”
“The sensors have been in place for a while. So far, so good. No system is completely foolproof. But we believe we have enough safeguards. The real question is, why London?”
Tyler stepped eagerly up to the plate. This was something he could address. “Easy — because they’re not as ready as we are. They weren’t attacked in 2001, and when they finally were, the attack came on the buses and the subways. Because of the Special Relationship. Because the Brits are our friends, our allies. Our partners. Hell, they do what we tell ’em, no questions asked, if they know what’s good for them.”
Seelye shook his head. “With all…due respect, sir, I think not. Whoever just hit London doesn’t care a fig about the ‘special relationship.’ There’s a pattern here, if you can see it.”
Tyler couldn’t see it.
“Whiplash,” said Seelye, after a decent interval. “They’re trying to give us whiplash. Spinning us like a top. Or, to put it bluntly, fucking us up, down, and sideways until our eyeballs pop.”
That was something this president could understand. “Why?” he said.
“Because they want to. Because they can. Or, worst of all, because they’re about to ram it right up our ass.” He enjoyed putting complex ideas into terms the president could readily grasp.
“I thought you assured me Devlin was on this case.”
“He’s only one man, sir. He’s—”
Tyler smashed his fist down on the Resolute desk. “Goddamnit, Army, this is no time for pettifogging bullshit.” Only Jeb Tyler could yoke together two words like “pettifogging bullshit.” That was part of what made him so presidential. “Can he do the job or do I have to call in the Marines?”
“I believe he can, yes sir. Which is why—”
“But can he do it in time? I need you to lay all the cards on the table, right the hell now, so we’re both singing from the same choir book.” And only Jeb Tyler could shotgun-marry those two metaphors. Which is what made him an asshole. “Why what?”
“Which is why somebody is whipsawing him from coast to coast. Find out who that someone is and you’ve got your culprit.”
“I thought we decided it was this Milverton character.”
Seelye shook his head. “Milverton’s a hired gun, a soldier of fortune. We need to find out whom he’s working for. And, no offense, sir, but you’ve just made Devlin’s job a lot more difficult.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tyler, who hated criticism.
“Well, sir, insofar as ‘Branch 4’ is concerned…” he had to choose his words very carefully, “insofar as Branch 4 is concerned, you pretty much blew its existence at the press conference. I’m sure you had a good reason, but right now every foreign intelligence service, both friendly and hostile, will be working that out right now. And let me tell you, they’ll be plenty pissed that we haven’t been leveling with them about this. The friendlies, I mean.”
“Fuck ’em,” said President Tyler.
“Now, as far as Devlin is concerned, he’s is in California, and”—Seelye pretended to look at his watch—“is in no position at the moment to get to London, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Send somebody else, then,” said Tyler. “One of the other Branch 4’s.”
“There are—” began Seelye, and then stopped to rephrase. “Branch 4 ops work alone. They cannot be identified, even to members of their own service. You know that, sir.”
“Yes,” said Tyler, reddening, “but I don’t give a damn. I want results, not—”
“Not pettifogging bullshit,” supplied Seelye.
“Precisely.”
Seelye took a deep breath. Damage control, above all, damage control. I’ll do what I can do, sir…without harming operational security, of course.”
The president’s secretary, Millie Dhouri, was at the doorway. “Mr. President,” she said, “I think you should take this call.”
“Not now, Millie,” said Tyler, but the look on her face bespoke worry, and she had very sharp political instincts. For the call to have bumped its way up to her desk must mean something.
“It’s evil, sir,” she said softly, shaking. “What he’s saying.”
The president motioned for her to put the call through on speaker phone. The Oval Office speaker phone was not one of those tinny contraptions that sounded as if you were connected with a wire tied between two hamsters. Instead, it sounded like you were having a private conversation, which is exactly what it was intended to sound like.
“Okay,” said Tyler, signaling for her to trace the call. The White House number was in the phone book, and any idiot could call the switchboard. It was a democratic holdover from the days when John Quincy Adams used to go swimming nude in the Potomac, when Andy Jackson let the great unwashed troop through the White House, stealing everything they could lay their hands on, when Truman used to play poker with the press corps and fleece them out of their paltry weekly salaries and make them feel good about it. It was one of the things Tyler had decided he was going to have to change after his reelection.
Tyler picked up the phone. “This is the president of the United States. To whom am I speaking?”
“Mr. President,” said the ghostly voice at the other end of the ether, scrambled and opaque. “You are badly trying our patience.”
Seelye was already in action, punching in instructions to NSA headquarters. He knew they wouldn’t have much time, but at least the call was already being digitally recorded and analyzed. He wanted a full report on his PDA pdq, and made that quite clear as he listened to the conversation.
“We have given you clear instructions and an even clearer timeline. Because we are merciful, we spared the lives of the children in Illinois…most of them, anyway.”
Seelye was already relaying the conversation capture straight to Devlin. Seelye’s BlackBerry lit up as Devlin punched in.
“If anything, we should have thought that the incident in Los Angeles—”
HE’S BRITISH popped up on DIRNSA’s screen. KEEP HIM TALKING. Seel
ye had noticed that too: the pronunciation of “anything”—en-a-thing. The use of the word, “should.” Not to mention: “Loss ANGE-e-leese.”
“—focused your minds, but it appears that such was not the case. It appears that many more deaths will be required. Not just in America, as you have just seen, but all over the Christian West. The stakes have been raised. It is now immaterial whether you accept Allah. You are all doomed.”
THIS IS BULLSHIT.
“Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”
AND THIS IS NOT. IT’S “REVELATION.”
The line went dead.
Seelye’s other BlackBerry buzzed. NSA, with the trace: the technology had been developed at Fort Meade using a fifth-generation network-centric system based on a Rijndael block cipher.
The call was coming from inside the White House. Which left only two possible conclusions: either the call really was coming from inside the White House, which was impossible, or whoever was making it had cracked the NSA defenses. Seelye decided the president didn’t need to know that yet.
“That was this Milverton, wasn’t it?”
Seelye had left the scrambled audio feed on, so Devlin could hear every word. “It may well be, yes, sir,” he said.
“Get Devlin on this immediately.”
I HEARD THAT. Then Devlin punched through another text message. Seelye read it and blanched.
Seelye’s perturbed look caught the president’s attention. “What’s he saying?” asked Tyler.
“He says to say thank you, sir.”
“Thank me for what?”
“I’m not sure you want to know, sir,” replied Seelye.
“I’m a big boy — let me see it.”
Seelye handed the president his BlackBerry: THANK YOU FOR BLOWING ME BEFORE YOU FUCKED ME.
Chapter Forty-two
Hostile Intent d-1 Page 22