End Zone

by D C Alden

  She swung her legs out of the armoured Chevy Suburban and took Blake’s outstretched hands.

  ‘Madam President, a pleasure as always,’ he gushed, pecking her cheeks.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Bob.’

  Blake looked past her to the suited Secret Service detail who crowded the doorway behind her. ‘Guys, I’ve got you set up in the staff lounge. Brian will take care of you.’ He pointed to a hovering flunkey.

  Coffman waved the detail away and followed Blake along the basement corridor, feeling a little uneasy. Her detail consisted of four agents; Blake had at least a dozen armed contractors patrolling the house and grounds, all of them former Special Forces. Despite her long association with the industrialist, despite the fact he’d helped her secure the White House, being in Bob’s lair made Coffman nervous.

  They continued beneath the house, passing the kitchens where Coffman caught a noisy glimpse of frantic chefs, clouds of steam and blue-flamed hobs. In truth, Coffman wasn’t ecstatic about making the trip to Washington, but Bob had insisted. He had news, he’d told her. Good news. Exciting news. It would be worth the trip. Coffman had relented. Bob was a lot of things, but a time waster he was not.

  ‘How’s Matt?’ she asked.

  ‘The cancer has spread to his lungs.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Blake shrugged. ‘He’s lived a good life. No regrets.’

  Matt Sorenson had founded Kroll Industries alongside Blake. They’d built the company up from nothing, becoming one of the biggest and most innovative defence companies in the world with an annual turnover of thirty-nine billion dollars. Like Blake, Sorenson had been instrumental in the destruction of Baghdad and Coffman’s rise to power, so the fact he’d be dead soon brought Coffman some comfort. One less witness to the crime, so to speak.

  They climbed a short flight of stairs into the main house. Coffman had to admit that Bob Blake’s home was magnificent, with its vaulted ceilings, its hardwood and marble floors, the glass walls, the expensive antiques and chic furniture. As they strolled towards the main reception room Blake boasted about his seven bedroom suites, his two acres of prime waterfront real estate, the Romanesque swimming pool, his private dock on Lake Washington, and the Sea Ray L650 power cruiser that was tied to it. It wasn’t the biggest he could afford, he told her, but if he needed to impress people he’d have one of his military drones photograph their house. Once again, Coffman felt a flutter of apprehension as Blake escorted her into the main reception room.

  She was greeted with wide smiles and a smattering of applause from the thirty or so well-heeled guests scattered around the white-walled, modernist space. Coffman recognised many of the guests, all of them close friends of Blake, including the heads of Amazon and Twitter, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, the owners of three of the world’s biggest hedge funds and various other luminaries, all of them accompanied by wives, husbands and significant others. Flesh was pressed, health and business briefly discussed, and then Coffman was veering towards Erik Mulholland and Charlie Schultz. Her Chief of Staff and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had also made the trip to Washington, even though Blake had insisted they speak alone. That wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Quite the gathering,’ Schultz opened.

  ‘This is Bob’s version of informal,’ Coffman smiled.

  All the men were wearing tuxedos, the women designer dresses and shoes. Coffman’s own outfit was a power-red Dolce and Gabbana that accentuated her trim figure.

  ‘Did he give you any hints about his good news?’

  Erik was also wearing a tux, though unlike Charlie and the older men in the room, he was clad in a blue satin Tom Ford. Good looking and impeccable taste, Coffman had to admit, which accounted for the discreet surveillance he was under from the other women in the room.

  ‘He’ll wait until after dinner,’ Coffman told him. ‘Bob likes to fatten you up before he fires the bolt through your skull.’

  They mingled for another twenty minutes, then the dinner gong sounded and Blake ushered his guests into an ornate dining room, the centrepiece of which was a huge, beautifully-decorated glass table. The fine art on the walls had been relegated to the shadows by the steel and smoked glass pendant lights strung above the full length of the table. It was impressive, Coffman had to admit, and for the next ninety minutes Coffman actually forgot about the threat facing them. Instead she listened with great interest to the techies and the financiers who had the world at their fingertips. Yes, they had amassed great fortunes and were the catalysts for global change, but they sure as hell couldn’t order the launch of a cruise missile or have a SEAL team assassinate their enemies. Coffman could, and the assembled Lords of the Universe would be wise to remember that.

  After dinner they retired to a vaulted sitting room with giant glass walls that overlooked the black waters of Lake Washington and the distant, gleaming towers of downtown Seattle. More drinks were served, but Coffman was finding it increasingly difficult to make small talk. She looked across the room and caught Erik’s eye. He read her look, paused his conversation with the inebriated wife of a Microsoft executive, and walked around the room to where Coffman sat in a white lounge chair. He leaned into her ear and she caught the scent of his cologne.

  ‘Everything okay?’ he whispered.

  ‘Bob and his goddamn parties,’ she griped, glancing at the gold Cartier on her wrist. ‘Tell him to take a shit or get off the pot.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him.’

  She watched her Chief of Staff circle back around the room and take Blake to one side. A moment later the industrialist was headed towards her.

  ‘Forgive me, Madam President. Calvin is trying to persuade me to pump ten mil into one of his experimental funds. He’s a goddamn snake charmer, I swear.’ He smiled, a heavy crystal tumbler of something dark grasped in his big hand.

  ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass about Calvin’s fund, and I certainly didn’t fly all the way out here for the filet mignon, exquisite as it was. You said you had news.’

  ‘Of course. Let’s talk.’

  Coffman got to her feet and followed Blake towards the door, her arm linked through Erik’s, more to piss off the ladies than to appear casual.

  Schultz broke away from his own conversation and intercepted them. ‘About goddamn time,’ he growled, the smile as hard as granite on his craggy face.

  Blake turned to Coffman. ‘I was hoping we could speak alone.’

  ‘You know I don’t keep secrets from my team.’

  The industrialist relented, escorting them through the house and down into a secure basement that resembled a hotel corridor. They passed a wine cellar, a large cinema room and a well-equipped gymnasium. The head-turner was the glass-walled indoor firing range. The paper targets were cartoon zombies, Coffman noticed. Blake stopped outside an open door and invited them to step inside.

  ‘Welcome to my private den. Please, make yourselves comfortable.’

  It was the most intimate room so far, Coffman observed, stepping down towards four large, comfortable sofas arranged around a marble centre table and lit by an overhead panel. Around the walls, bathed in recessed lights, Coffman saw a Van Gogh, a spectacular Monet, and something modern that she failed to recognise. The real deal, she imagined, and that surprised her. Bob had never expressed an interest in art. She thought she knew him, but she was starting to doubt that now. Bob Blake had changed, she realised. He’d grown confident in the wake of Baghdad, emboldened by his proximity to the American throne and his hand in Coffman’s ascendancy. His company had since been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in defence contracts. He was rich and powerful beyond his wildest dreams. Did he now believe he could summon the President of the United States to his home on the other side of the country and keep her waiting?

  Think again, Bob.

  Coffman watched him hovering by the drinks cabinet, refilling his glass with bourbon and icing it with a couple of cubes. ‘Drink, anyone? Amy? Guys?’

  Cof
fman glared at his back. ‘Sit down, Bob.’

  Blake obeyed, unbuttoning his jacket as he flopped onto the couch. Coffman sat opposite, while Mulholland and Schultz took up flanking positions on either side. Coffman folded one leg over the other.

  ‘How are we doing, Charlie?’

  Schultz set a small grey electronic device on the table. ‘You can speak freely.’

  Blake looked crestfallen. ‘C’mon, Amy. You really think I would bug a private conversation?’

  ‘Don’t take it personally, Bob. So, why don’t you tell me why I’m here?’

  ‘Sure.’ Blake took a sip of his bourbon and said, ‘It’s about Lance Corporal Hector Nunez.’

  For a moment Coffman was unable to speak. Erik and Charlie were equally dumbstruck.

  ‘On second thoughts I’ll take that drink,’ she said. She didn’t want one especially, but it bought her a little time to think.

  Blake handed her a generous shot of bourbon and sat back down. She took a sip and smiled sweetly. ‘Do you have an asset on my National Security Council, Bob?’

  ‘No ma’am.’

  ‘Another Gatekeeper?’

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘So how can you possibly know about Nunez?’

  Blake swilled a mouthful of bourbon and smacked his lips. ‘The idea came to me at Rock Creek. I saw an opportunity and made a phone call. When the embassy blew, it flattened the Green Zone and killed a lot of my guys, but not the team who’d taken cover below ground. They suited up, dug around the rubble and found Nunez unconscious but alive. They sealed him in a crate and drove him to the Northridge office at Baghdad International. He was out of the country before the Marines showed up.’

  Coffman took several moments to process what Blake was telling her. There could only be one conclusion. ‘You’re the Global Liberation Front, right Bob?’

  Blake smiled and spread his hands. ‘Live and in person.’

  Schultz’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re what?’

  ‘Did you send the videos too?’ Coffman pressed.

  ‘Yes.’

  Schultz leapt to his feet. ‘You goddamn lunatic! D’you realise the shit storm you’ve caused?’

  Blake gave the older man an icy stare. ‘Sit down, Charlie. You’ll give yourself a coronary.’

  Schultz took a step towards him. ‘You fucking maniac — ’

  ‘Enough,’ barked Coffman.

  She swallowed a generous mouthful of bourbon as Schultz retook his seat. The dark, fiery liquid burned a path down her throat. The threat of the H-1 virus sweeping the nation had been hanging over their heads for months, like some goddamn Sword of Damocles. Coffman had lost a lot of sleep, as had most of her security council. The NSA was practically glowing in the dark trying to find Nunez. Her emotions swirled; shock, relief, then a rumbling anger.

  ’How many homeless people did you kill in England, Bob?’

  Blake’s jaw dropped as he stared at Coffman. ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  ‘Because you fucked up,’ Schultz told him. ‘One of your tree-huggers was an undercover cop. She survived your clean-up operation.’

  ‘Wait, that…that’s not possible,’ Blake stuttered.

  Schultz turned to Mulholland. ‘What were those names, Erik?’

  ‘Lucas and Marion,’ the Chief of Staff confirmed, showing Blake the images on his phone. ‘No last names but good photofits. That’s straight from British intelligence.’

  ’The UK government has raised their threat level to Critical,’ Schultz told him. ‘It’s only a matter of time before your people are caught, and then they’ll point the finger at you, Robert Blake, close personal friend of President Coffman. You goddamn idiot.’

  Blake stared at him, his mouth twisted into a sneer. ‘D’you think we’re stupid, Charlie? Kroll has been running black projects for over a decade. Our people know how to keep secrets, unlike some in the federal government.’ He turned back to Coffman. ‘Only four people know the whole picture. Everyone else thinks they’re saving the planet.’

  ‘Four people,’ Coffman echoed. ‘That’s you, this Philip character and the woman from the UK. Who’s the fourth?’

  Blake smiled. ‘It’s Matt.’

  Coffman’s glass froze halfway to her mouth. ‘Sorenson? You said he was dying.’

  ‘Being a billionaire can buy you a lot of time. He resigned his position at Kroll months ago. He’s running this whole thing from his ranch in Arizona. It’s his parting gift to humanity.’

  ‘Mighty generous of him,’ Schultz mocked.

  ‘What about Corporal Nunez? Where is he?’

  ‘Dead,’ Blake told her. ‘Buried in a forest outside Berlin.’

  ‘How the hell did you get him there?’

  ‘He was flown from Baghdad to a facility in Qatar, shipped to Turkey, then driven overland to Berlin. Once we got him there he was effectively dismantled. We amputated his limbs, harvested his organs, analysed his blood, his DNA, broke it all down to a cellular level, until we were able to synthetically reproduce the infection.’

  ‘Then threatened us with it,’ Coffman reminded him. ‘Why, Bob?’

  ’To give you political cover,’ Blake explained, as if to a child. ‘There’s a lot of eyeballs on you right now, Amy, especially after the collapse of Stein’s administration. Your initial shock, the reactions and decisions of the National Security Council, they all had to be completely genuine. People had to be convinced that the threat was real. Including you,’ he told her, pointing across the table.

  ‘Scarily, it makes sense,’ Erik admitted.

  ‘And you also have the perfect scapegoat,’ Blake continued. ‘A bunch of crazy Europeans with a fucked up manifesto and a devastating bioweapon.’

  ’Right now the only suspects are the Iraqis and your own goddamn company,’ Schultz growled. ‘No one’s buying European involvement.’

  Blake wagged a finger at him. ‘But everyone will buy an Iraqi corruption narrative, right Charlie?’

  Coffman simmered. ‘Do I need to remind you that the Aswad’s helped get us here?’

  ’No ma’am, but we can point the finger elsewhere. The Aswads have a lot of enemies. Throw in a disgruntled military or religious faction, a history of dubious weapons sales, a vengeful Caliphate with links to Europe, and you’ve got more than enough to muddy the waters. People will buy anything we goddamn tell them if the dossier has a presidential seal on it. Besides, we invaded Iraq on a bunch of bullshit. This is no different.’

  Coffman teased the bourbon around her glass as she watched Blake. Truth was, she wanted to throw it at him, but she had questions, lots of them. The first three would decide how the rest of the meeting went.

  ‘Tell me something, Bob. Do you have a mental health issue?’

  Blake frowned. ’Excuse me?’

  ‘What possessed you to go rogue and cut me out of the loop?’

  ‘I really don’t — ’

  ‘Is this a shakedown? Have you dragged me across the country to tell me that you’re calling the shots now?’

  Blake put his glass down on the table. ‘Amy, I — ’

  ‘Madam fucking President!’ Coffman screamed at him.

  Her hands shook as she watched Blake’s face drain of blood. Erik and Charlie stared at her, speechless. She got to her feet. She needed air but she wasn’t going to storm out of the room like some menopausal woman. Instead she wandered over to the Monet, allowed herself to be distracted by its beauty. She wasn’t an art expert but she knew this piece; Nymphéas en fleur, worth tens of millions of dollars. Bob was a wealthy man before Baghdad but that wealth had increased significantly, thanks to Amy Coffman. Why would he risk going to war with the President of the United States when —

  No, she realised. Bob wasn’t trying to blackmail her. He was trying to tell her something.

  She stood in front of the painting for another minute or so, controlling her heart rate, daring any of the men behind her to open their mouths. They didn’t. Power restored, she
sat down again.

  ’Talk to me, Bob.’

  ‘Madam President, if I’ve offended — ’

  She silenced him with a raised hand. ’You and Matt have gone to a lot of trouble. The question is, why? What’s the end game here?’

  ’To finish what they started,’ Blake said, setting his empty glass on the table.

  ‘Who’s they?’ the admiral asked.

  Blake stared at Coffman, as if he were willing her to make the connection —

  And then it all made sense.

  ‘You’re referring to The Committee,’ Coffman said.

  Blake gave her a single nod. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘You and Matt were part of that?’

  Blake pinched his thumb and forefinger together. ‘No, but we came this close.’

  Coffman’s pulse quickened. ‘Who made the approach?’

  ‘Former Defence Secretary Scranton. He figured Kroll Industries would be a key player in their global security force. He told us about the Angola virus, the dismantling of the UN, NATO, everything. Gave us the whole playbook. That was a week before they took out the hotel in Switzerland. Me and Matt were not on anyone’s radar at that point, so no one came looking for us.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ Schultz muttered.

  Blake ignored him and focussed on Coffman. ‘Did The Committee approach you too, ma’am?’

  The President forced herself to look indignant. ’What makes you think I would be party to such a ruthless conspiracy?’

  Blake shrugged. ‘Baghdad, of course.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘The brutal audacity of it. Your willingness to sacrifice American lives for personal ambition. It got Matt and I thinking. We concluded that you must’ve been involved with The Committee somehow.’