by Jack Bowie
Senator Mitchell Henneberry was a decorated veteran and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He had been a constant thorn in the side of the Republicans ever since the Democrats regained majority in the senior chamber.
“It seems to me that Morgan has been handling things quite well,” Matthews said.
“Mr. President,” Carlson interrupted, ignoring Dawson and turning to Matthews. “As much as I respect the man’s experience and contributions, A.G. Kahler is a wet fish. He has the charisma of a telephone pole. The American people want a dynamic, energetic individual as the nation’s top cop. Someone who represents our best and brightest.”
“That’s not a particularly positive phrase, do you think?” Dawson asked. “It didn’t work very well for McNamara.”
“Thank you for the history lesson, Chad.” Carlson scowled at the Chief of Staff. Bulging veins and tendons strained against his starched collar. He turned his attention back to Matthews. “Nonetheless, Mr. President, the latest results show a significantly lower acceptability rating on the domestic side. Approval in our target constituencies has dropped ten points since the last poll. Fifteen points in the conservative Democrats. This could become a rallying point. There’s no question Henneberry could very effectively stake out this territory.”
Dawson rapidly shuffled through the pollster’s report. “General, where did you get those figures? They’re not here.”
“Oh, sorry,” Carlson replied. “J.T. faxed me a copy earlier this morning. I reviewed the details with him an hour ago.”
Matthews let the animosity cool before responding. “Even if I accept your premise, Steven, what would you have us do? I will not replace Morgan.”
“Of course not, Mr. President. That would be a definite sign of weakness. I am only suggesting that we incorporate these findings into the campaign strategy for the next three months. Wherever possible, we should look to minimize any negative domestic publicity and highlight foreign policy successes. And make sure we place our best people on any issues when they arise.”
“That is an excellent suggestion, General,” the Chief of Staff replied. The edge on his voice was unmistakable. “We will make every effort to see that we don’t put stupid people in prominent positions.” He turned back to his boss. “But really, Mr. President, we should thank J.T. for the poll. Your domestic approval is nearly fifty percent. Combined you have an unbeatable position. Your record is exceptional and the people realize it. I don’t think we need to go around worrying that the sky is falling.”
Matthews waited for Carlson’s retort, but the DNI refused to take the bait.
“Thank J.T. for a very thorough analysis,” Matthews finally said to Dawson. “I’ll review the results in detail tonight. I don’t think any immediate changes in policy are called for. Let’s talk again in a few days.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Dawson said with a nod. “We really must prepare for the Congressional Caucus meeting now.”
“I’ll leave you two for that,” Carlson said, abruptly rising from his chair. “I’ve got to get ready for tonight’s call with the Australian security Ministers. Thank you for the review, Chad. Mr. President.”
Matthews watched as his friend headed back over the Seal. When he had first taken office, Matthews had carefully stepped around that circular section of carpet. He had felt guilty putting a foot on it. Now, he and his staff trod across it regularly, just as thousands of others routinely trampled across all the other trappings of his office. It was metaphor he tried not to dwell upon.
Carlson was a man that commanded attention, from friends and foes alike. His thoughts on defensive responses might be very enlightening. “Oh, Steven?” Matthews called.
Carlson spun back to face the voice. “Yes, Mr. President?”
“If you have any specific suggestions in these domestic areas, I’d be very interested in reviewing them with you.”
“Certainly, sir. Thank you.”
Carlson disappeared through the door and Matthews waited for the inevitable analysis.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Dawson began as Matthews knew he would, “I know General Carlson is your friend, but sometimes he just gives me the creeps. I never know if he means what he’s saying.”
Matthews had to tread carefully. His friendship with Carlson was well-known and had compromised his relationship with other members of his staff on more than one occasion. It was a difficult line to walk but one he would not sidestep.
“You’re not alone there, Chad. However, Steven is a valuable resource for all of us. I value his counsel.”
“Yes, sir. I know. But he’s so . . . well, private. I never see him relax. Does he have any family?”
“No one close. He never married. His first family was the military. Now I think he’s adopted us.”
“Do you really trust him? Some of the things he says, . . . well they don’t sound like he’s your ideological soul-mate.”
Matthews couldn’t hold back the grin. His Chief of Staff didn’t miss a thing. “He is a self-possessed professional, Chad. Just like the rest of us. Do I agree with everything he says? No. Do I respect his opinions and ideas? Absolutely. Sometimes I need someone who can say things that I can’t. Think of Steven as our lightning rod. Just be careful you don’t get too close.
“Look at it this way, would you rather have him working for the opposition?”
“I don’t know, Mr. President. Can we be sure he isn’t?”
Chapter 3
Tyler, Georgia
Sunday, 9:00 p.m.
It was Georgia, and Gary leaned into the corner of the room, disappearing behind the shadows. It was time to see whether this cell was up to its task.
“Not a bad place, Macon, but you gotta get some better beer. I can barely drink this shit.” A tall, lanky man dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans popped the top of a beer can, leaned back in his chair and dropped his feet, clad in a pair of ornately carved leather cowboy boots, onto the table. Mud fell from the boots and piled on the oak tabletop like tiny anthills.
“Well it sure hasn’t stopped you from swillin’ it, Tommy,” said a heavy, gray-haired man. “And Jesus, keep your goddamn feet off the table.”
Macon Holly swiped at the boots with a huge hand and knocked them to the floor. Tommy Wicks had to grab at the table to keep from falling over.
Gary shared Holly’s opinion of the redneck. Wicks was a real pain-in-the-ass. It had been hard enough to convince Holly to take over as leader of the cell without Wick’s taunting him at every turn. If they didn’t need the supplies from Wick’s father’s store so badly, Gary would have thrown him out.
“Did you talk to Bobby Joe?” Holly asked Wicks.
“Yup,” replied Wicks. “The old man ain’t ready to join up yet, too scared of the Patrol, but he said we could use his access.”
“He’ll come around,” Holly said. “He’s under a lot of pressure on that loan for his farm. Pretty soon he’ll figure out that those kike bankers ain’t no friends.”
Tonight, Holly had called his “staff” to a meeting in their new command center, a recently renovated farmhouse. The house’s great room was the only location where they could gather comfortably.
The conspirators sat around a rough-hewn trestle table in front of a huge stone fireplace. Light from a roaring fire cast their faces in alternating ruddy glow and ominous darkness. Shadows played on the ceiling, cast from the antlers of a majestic twelve-point buck leaping through the rock above the fireplace’s mantle. The room reeked of sweat and fertilizer. It was the second home for men that worked for a living.
“Sure was nice of them to give us the farm, Macon,” said a scrawny man at the end of the table. Cal Napes raised his beer in a mock salute and exposed a mouthful of black, rotting teeth.
“They did not give us this spread, Cal. I told you before, we’re just the caretakers. But we’re damn lucky to have a place like this, ’stead of traipsin’ all over the county for a place to meet in private. We got a nice p
iece of land with barns, sheds and this farmhouse. All for the Covenant. But if we don’t take care of it,” he glared at Wicks, “they’ll take it away and give it to somebody else.”
“Except there ain’t nobody else to give it to, Macon,” responded Wicks. “We’re the only cell of the Citizens for Liberty in this part of Georgia. So quit with your whining and let’s get down to business.” He turned to his right. “Sean, I heard the shipment came in. When can we get some of your new toys?”
Sean O’Grady was a ruddy-faced Irishman who ran the local hardware store. Middle age had grayed a head covered with curly red locks, but it had not dampened his enthusiasm for the hunt. During the day he sharpened knives, cut keys, and dispensed general wisdom to his customers. At night he focused on a more serious avocation.
“Two boxes arrived today,” Grady replied. “Goddamn Uzis. Don’t know how the hell he got ‘em.” He almost turned around to look at Gary, but a glare from Holly held him back. “They look brand new. It’ll take a day or so to check ‘em out, but they’ll be ready. Just gotta do a little . . .”
“Good,” Holly interrupted. “We need all of ‘em for the Gathering. But everybody here’s gotta be trained on ‘em by next week.”
“Why the rush, Macon?” Napes asked.
“Cause we need to!” Holly yelled. “You got something better to do?”
“Shit, Macon,” Napes replied. “Take it easy. I’ll be here. What’s with you?”
“Just trying to look good for the visitor,” Wicks said in Napes’ direction. “But Macon knows he can count on us, right Macon?”
“Sure, Tommy. Sure. I always know where you stand.” Holly held his gaze at Wicks, then looked back to the group. “One last thing. With the Gathering comin’ and all, there’ll be a lot of folks from other cells spending some time with us. Get ‘em what they want but stay out of their way. We got the best damn camp in Georgia and we’re gonna share it with ‘em.” Holly turned to Napes. “Cal, you’re head of security. Your job is to make sure there ain’t no Feds hanging around.”
“No problem, Macon. I can smell a cop a mile away.”
And they can certainly smell you too, Gary thought. He made a mental note to double-check Napes’ preparations.
“We need more than that, Cal,” Holly countered. “We gotta make sure everyone is who they say they are. We can’t have any FBI or ATF boys sneaking in. We’re part of something bigger now and we’ve got to be careful.”
“Whadda I got to do?”
Holly shook his head. Gary could see the frustration in his eyes. Would this group really be able to execute their plans?
“You talk to everyone that comes in,” Holly explained. “Ask who sent them; what cell they’re with. And who’s their captain. Then check out what they tell you.”
“How am I supposed to know all that?”
“I’ll get you the names. All you’ll have to do is look them up. If anyone doesn’t check out, you tell me. We’ll take care of it from there.”
Napes stared at the ceiling as if it offered divine guidance to Holly’s instructions. “Okay, Macon,” he finally replied. “I guess I can do that. But things sure are getting complicated.”
“That’s what happens when you start working together, Cal. But now we’re really gonna start changing things.”
“You sure got everything worked out, Macon,” Wicks said with a sneer. “But with all this sharing going on, are we gonna have the supplies? What about ammo? We got enough, Sean?”
“The damn Uzis can burn six hundred rounds a minute,” O’Grady replied. “We’ll need at least ten more crates for all this training.”
“Sounds like a hole in the master plan, Macon,” Wicks offered.
“I’ll get the ammo, Sean,” Holly snapped back. “But lock up half of the boxes. These trigger-happy boys’ll burn through our whole stash if we let ‘em. That should leave enough for the training.”
Holly walked across the room and stood over Wicks. “Good enough for you, Tommy?”
Wicks bobbed his head.
Holly turned back to O’Grady. “Oh, Sean. Make sure Ricky gets enough time on the range. He’s a part of the team too.”
“Sure Macon. You got it,” O’Grady replied.
“Where is Ricky?” asked Napes.
“Back at his place,” replied Wicks. “Tryin’ to make sure that new monkey bartender doesn’t steal the night’s take. You’d think he’d learn.”
“Alright, that’s enough,” Holly said. “You got a problem with Ricky, you take it up with him. For now, get the hell outta here, all of you. I’ve got other things to do tonight.”
As they got up from the table, Wicks whispered in an overly-loud voice, “Time to suck up to the boss, eh, Macon?”
Wicks turned and Holly returned his icy stare. Gary just shook his head. One day that asshole was going to open his mouth once too often.
The rest of the cell gathered up their belongings and slowly filed out of the room, passing within a few feet of Gary’s position in the corner. No one would speak to him, of course. It was well known that the Commander’s representatives were off limits to all but the cell’s leader.
Gary heard the truck engines start, their rusty mufflers sending out noisy spits and growls, then fade into the distance. After five minutes they were gone; only the sounds of tree frogs and crickets breaking the pastoral quiet of the Georgia evening.
He finally stepped from the shadows in the back of the room and slowly walked toward the table. Holly’s fatigues were drenched in sweat despite the cool evening, and they clung like wet towels from his shoulders.
“Sit down, Macon,” he said. “The meeting went well.”
Holly grabbed one of the chairs and squatted down.
“Yeah. Thanks, Gary. The mission’ll come off real good. You’ll see.”
“I’m sure it will. You’re doing a great job, Macon. Everyone knows that.”
“What happens next, Gary? I mean after Alpha?”
“What comes after Alpha, Macon?”
“After Alpha? I guess Bravo. Then Charlie, and Delta, and . . .”
Gary held up his hand and Holly stopped the recitation. “Now you understand the plan, Macon. That’s all there is to it. With each mission more patriots will join the Covenant; and we’ll grow stronger with each one.
“But you’re the key, Macon. Right here in Tyler. No one is as important as you.”
But you have no idea why.
Chapter 4
National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland
Monday, 8:30 a.m.
Garrett Robinson sat patiently in his chair waiting for the knock on his door. It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough to do; he was managing seven different projects, any of which could dissolve into worthlessness at a moment’s notice. It was his job to keep the teams of prima-donnas focused on their targets and out of cerebral cesspools.
The National Security Agency arguably employed the most brilliant team of mathematicians on the planet since Bletchley Park. The Puzzle Palace, as it was affectionately known, was the United States center for SIGINT: Signals Intelligence. Whether information flowed through the air, along a metal wire, or in a glass fiber, the NSA’s job was to capture it, classify it and turn it into intelligence on behalf of America’s citizens. And to see that the messages of those same citizens were protected from the eyes and ears of other, less friendly, elements.
They were in a never-ending game of cat-and-mouse with similar groups all over the world; some organized around traditional national boundaries, some not.
Within an organization of over forty-thousand employees, of course, specialization was required. The actual structure of the Agency was fluid and designed for obfuscation, but Robinson led a special projects group focused on cryptanalysis: the decoding of secure messages. Other groups worked the opposite side of the coin: cryptology, the creation of code and ciphers to encode messages. Power ebbed and flowed. For a few years the cryptologists would have the ed
ge with an “unbreakable” code. Then there would be a breakthrough, the code would be broken, and the cryptanalysts would have their day. So it went, back and forth. It had been this way for millennia.
What had Robinson on edge was that his most brilliant employee felt the need for a face-to-face meeting. Kam Yang was a Chinese-born, American-bred and American-educated cryptanalyst. To many, Robinson included, Yang was the brightest star in the Agency’s crypto-constellation. But he was a singularly private individual. He worked alone, communicated primarily by secure email, and never participated in the “my IQ is bigger than your IQ” arguments of his colleagues in the cafeteria.
Yang had recently made a discovery, worthy of notice by the Director, that promised the latest breakthrough to the cryptanalysts. He had found a computational solution to the nation’s most advanced cypher: the Advanced Encryption Standard, or AES. At least theoretically. Even Robinson had been bewildered by the mathematics in Yang’s preliminary paper.
Robinson had charged him with sampling some of the Agency’s “cold stack”: the backlog of daily messages that they couldn’t decrypt by known methods. This would be the test of his theory.
Was the meeting request to report a success? Or a failure?
A sharp rap at his door broke his reverie.
“Come in.” he called.
Yang entered the office, a stack of manila folders under his arm. He was five foot eight, slim with short black hair and hazel eyes that burned with a dark fire. He wore standard NSA summer attire, freshly-pressed chinos and a blue oxford shirt. Just under thirty, Garret gauged he still had another decade of mathematical brilliance remaining.
“Now still okay, Garrett?” Yang asked without a trace of accent.
“Certainly, Kam.” Robinson motioned to a chair next to his desk. “What is it?”