“Seize the evidence,” McCann snapped, “and charge Wachter with attempted murder.”
“That’ll never fly. He has no motive to kill Webber. And if I go down,” she said, jabbing her index finger into his chest, “I’m taking you with me.”
His upper lip twitched, his Adam’s apple bobbed on a hard swallow, and he leaned in until their noses were an inch apart. “Threaten me again, and I’ll indict you for attempted murder.”
Malvado’s confidence dissolved into anxiety. She mulled over potential motives, ranked them according to viability, and said, “How about this? After witnessing the cold-blooded execution of women and children at the border, Wachter snapped. He just couldn’t allow a well-connected murderer to get off scot-free.”
“And when Sergeant Webber disputes that fairy tale?” McCann pressed.
“She won’t. I’ll keep her drugged and finagle the doting daddy into compliance until the big event.”
A despotic strain of skepticism radiated from his face. “Don’t fuck it up!”
Malvado watched him stride toward Wachter’s interrogation room, mentally adding McCann to her enemies list, and she resumed her post at Webber’s bedside. The Sergeant’s cogent protests had devolved into an irrational, nonsensical rant, confirming that the powerful drug was producing hallucinations and paranoia.
Tuning out the screeching, Malvado plucked her cellphone from the pocket of her lab coat and scanned the news. The Consortium would ultimately prevail, she knew. The only question was, which insurance policy would pay off? Blackmail? Resignation? Impeachment? Mind control? Coup? Or assassination?
I’m rooting for mind control, she thought, giddy over the prospect of Andrews rounding up his yellow-snake supporters and interning them in re-education camps. Maybe the “deplorables,” as Carter Sidney so aptly named them, will—What the hell?
She glowered at an outrageous headline: Johanna Krupp Demands Congressman Marino’s Resignation.
Marino was Malvado’s stepfather, the man who had deflowered her at the tender age of five and initiated her into the ranks of The Consortium. He and Krupp were rivals, always feuding, jockeying for House leadership, but this time the speaker had crossed the line, waging a wrap-up smear against him. The gambit began with demonization, leveling a false allegation; then the rumor was merchandised, amplified in the columns and broadcasts of complicit media assets; and finally, the false allegation was validated as credible by citing the bogus press coverage. The stratagem was a highly effective ruse of circular reasoning, typically reserved for enemies of the New Global Order.
Why did Krupp jeopardize a congressional seat? she wondered. Doesn’t she understand we’re at war?
“Mal-vado!”
Acting Director McCann beckoned her into the hallway. His nostrils were flaring and the knuckles of his clenched fists were whiter than his dress shirt. “Wachter’s gone!”
“What? How?”
“Stropky got careless. The bastard poached his service weapon, gagged him with a pillowcase, and bound him with his own cuffs. Cameras were offline for three minutes, just long enough for him to waltz out of here.”
“You have to find him before—”
Raucous shouts splintered her thought and eclipsed Webber’s frenetic cries.
What now? Malvado thought, darting toward the main entrance, a step behind the surly FBI agent.
Two hulking Airmen in white scrubs, handpicked for their loyalty to Night Sector, were denying Kyle Murphy and his security detail access.
McCann skewered her with a parting glare, a reminder to achieve compliance—at any cost; then he slithered through the tangle of security personnel and set off in search of Wachter.
“President Murphy!” Malvado said, raising her voice to snag his attention. “Weapons are not permitted inside the psychiatric ward; your security detail will have to rema-a-ain in the lobby.”
Without objection, the ranking bodyguard relinquished his handgun to an underling, and she stammered, “Uh ... Um ... I’m sorr-r-ry, but hospital rules only permit one visitor at a time.”
Gazing at a cellphone, which was converting speech into text, Kyle Murphy instructed his detail to stand down, then his green eyes bored into Malvado.
“Aaah-bby overdosed on antidepressants,” she told him, “in an apparent su-u-uicide attempt.”
Reading her response, Murphy’s eyebrows arched in shock then constricted with anger. “I want to see her!”
“Of course,” she said, escorting him into the facility.
Now that the conflict had been resolved, Abby’s plaintive wails were reverberating off the tiled walls, and Malvado surveyed the overprotective daddy to gauge his reaction. Unable to hear the heartrending desperation and unbridled panic in his daughter’s cries, his emotional state was holding steady.
I overlooked his deafness, she thought. That’s going to make compliance a tougher sell.
“I don’t understand,” Murphy muttered. “My daughter isn’t depressed. And she wasn’t taking antidepressants.”
“With all due respect, you’re wrong, sir. Aaah-bby’s been suffering from PTSD since the kidnapping, and the death of her husband has triggered severe depress-s-sion. Your daughter went to grea-a-at lengths to hide her mental illness to avoid embarrassing you.”
Gaping at the voice-to-text device, his expression withered. Fear and worry deepened the fine lines beneath his eyes, and his strong shoulders drooped.
I’ve softened him up, Malvado thought. Now, for the kill.
“There’s no-o-o easy way to say this,” she said, feigning empathy. “But I have to warn you. Aaah-bby isn’t herself right now. She’s lashing out, behaving erra-a-atically.”
The former President replied with a solemn nod, and Malvado opened the hospital room door as if retracting a stage curtain.
Abby was bound to the bed, shrieking about demons and satanic sacrifices; spluttering about pedo-vores who raped and consumed children; and raging about a lost baby; but the doting daddy wasn’t reading the transcript of her insane ramblings. Instead, he clutched her hand, rested his forehead against hers, and uttered something Malvado couldn’t discern.
Son of a bitch! He’s tuning out the crazy! How can I convince him to accept involuntary commitment if he’s immune to the evidence?
She observed Murphy for several minutes, noting that his soothing touch and calming presence was taming Webber’s mania. Her cheeks faded from fire-engine-red to pink, her contorted expression relaxed, and her hysterical tears ebbed to a trickle.
I need to keep him away from her, Malvado thought.
“I’m taking her home,” Murphy announced. “RIGHT NOW!”
“Sir, as a lov-v-ving parent, I’m sure you want the best care possible for her, which is why she ne-e-eeds to remain here.”
The headstrong father scowled at her response. “I’ll decide what’s best for my daughter.”
“Actually, Mr. President, as a psychiatrist, I have determined that she poses a da-a-ay-nger to herself and others and that gives me-e-e the legal authority to hold her. Indefinitely.”
Undaunted, Murphy began removing the IV port from her arm.
Anxiety and dread mushroomed inside Malvado, and she ditched her sugary tone. “You may be a former President, sir, but you’re not above the law ... stop unbuckling those restraints. They’re for her protection ... okay, that’s it. I’m calling security!”
He whirled around, his face blazing with paternal fury. “If you say another fucking word, I’ll have President Andrews relieve you of duty!” Murphy pocketed his voice-to-text-equipped cellphone, effectively terminating the discussion.
If he takes her home, the drugs will wear off and she’ll start talking, Malvado thought, chewing on her lower lip. That’ll ruin the Wachter frame-up ... my role in her overdose will be exposed ... and she’ll derail the big event.
A hulking Night Sector goon burst into the room. He aimed a bolawrap at the irate daddy, and an eight-foot Kevlar tether, pro
pelled by a 9mm blank, shot forward at 640 feet per second. The cordage wrapped around Murphy’s midsection, pinning his arms to his body; a second lassoed his knees, immobilizing him.
Malvado snatched his cellphone and perused his call log and recent texts.
Why did he post a photograph of praying hands on Chatter?
He doesn’t seem like a bible thumper.
Did I misread him?
Malvado squatted beside the former President and shoved the LCD screen into his face.
“You’ve sealed your fate,” she hissed. “After witnessing the death of your beloved daughter, you’re going to suffer a fatal stroke.”
30
Ministry of State Security
Sonbong, North Korea
FLABBERGASTED, BRADLEY gaped at Gim Chong Lee, certain that he’d mistranslated the dreaded favor. “You want me to what?”
“Deliver this to President Andrews.” The pudgy dictator removed a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, smoothed the creases, and placed it onto the desk.
Bradley studied the ancient characters, disappointed that this archaic language hadn’t been part of his cerebral upgrade. Was this a message? Or some kind of ultimatum?
“That’s it?” he asked, reaching for the paper, but Gim’s beefy palm and sausage-link fingers slapped down, anchoring the document to the desk.
“You must memorize the runic sequence and reconstruct it for your Commander in Chief. This information cannot fall into the wrong hands.”
Bradley heaved a frustrated sigh for effect. “I’ll never be able to remember all those symbols.”
Gim’s head tilted in a tacit reprimand, and his auxiliary chins jiggled. “I know your memory and linguistic capabilities have been augmented. Like your friend, Vladislav, I am a member of the LIT Society.”
Is that the anonymous group Volkov alluded to? Bradley wondered. The one hunting CIA dark projects?
“Volkov never mentioned any LIT Society,” he stated bluntly. “Or you, for that matter.”
The Dear Leader nodded, buoyed rather than slighted by the oversight. “The Liberty, Integrity, and Truth Society is an anonymous amalgamation of patriots from around the globe, spanning decades, devoted to a single purpose: the extinction of The Consortium.”
“Is this,” Bradley asked, hitching a thumb toward the written sequence of runes, “an effort to recruit Ryan Andrews into your little club?”
“It’s a low-tech communication beyond the prying technologies of your CIA—Consortium Intelligence Agency.” Gim glanced at his pricey Swiss watch. “Your ride will depart soon.”
“What’s the guy’s name?” Bradley asked.
Gim shook his head, sending his jowls into a shimmy, and stood. “I do not know who will meet you. Or the route of your journey back to the United States. Raw intelligence is uploaded and tasks are delegated anonymously through a supercomputer. Members have no means of identifying one another; we are all just numbers in binary code. This is how we evade retribution.”
Likening the LIT Society to a high-tech Culper Ring, which had used three-digit numbers to represent people and places during the Revolutionary War, Bradley suspended disbelief. At this point, the Dear Leader was his best—and only—chance of exfiltrating North Korea.
Gim rolled the paper containing the runic code into a wand and handed it off to one of his well-dressed guards, who set it afire and dropped the burning sheet onto the concrete floor. Then the roly-poly dictator retreated through the hidden panel, along with three members of his Supreme Guard Command. The fourth remained behind.
“Are you a member of the LIT Society?” Bradley asked, speaking in Korean.
The disciplined soldier ignored the question and remained frozen, like a Queen’s Guard outside Buckingham Palace. His probing dark eyes were fixated on Bradley, scrutinizing as if peering through skin and bone to eavesdrop on heart and mind.
Fifteen tense, grievously uncomfortable minutes elapsed before the guard instructed Bradley to stand and retrieve his backpack. He latched onto the desk, agitating his sore wrists; and as he arose from his knees, painful spasms savaged his strained thigh muscles. His legs quivered beneath him, struggling to bear his weight.
Prodded by his armed minder, Bradley hobbled through the hidden panel, into a well-lit concrete tunnel with an eight-foot arched ceiling and the girth to accommodate an electric golf cart. After descending for a quarter mile, the guard unlocked a steel ventilation grate and directed him into a dark, earthen passageway.
“Hurry!” the man urged in Korean. “Your ride will depart soon.”
Is this a subterranean prison cell? Bradley asked himself. Or the way back to Abby?
Having no viable alternative, he crawled through the three-by-three opening. The cagelike door clunked shut, and he was surrounded by a smothering blackness, as bleak and silent as the grave.
Wary of poisonous snakes and disease-carrying rodents, he groped for a small flashlight in the outer pocket of his backpack. Hazy black particles were swirling along a lazy current of air; the taste of coal dust coated his tongue; and he advanced on hands and knees through the claustrophobic shaft, angling his shoulders to prevent them from scraping against jagged rock walls.
His thigh muscles were burning; his hands, throbbing; his mind, racing with terrifying scenarios.
What if the detonation of White Rabbit compromised the structural integrity of this shaft?
Will this become my tomb?
The rocky passageway declined sharply and dead-ended inside a mine reeking of tar. Bradley tumbled from the shaft, his back struck the uneven rock floor, and knobby protrusions poked into his flesh. He lay panting, waiting for the pain to subside; while, around him, workers hacked at veins of coal with pickaxes.
Is this a slave labor camp?
Did Gim double-cross me?
Am I—
His thought petered out, derailed by the weak glow of sunlight seeping into the mine. His pulse quickened in anticipation, and with a dogged effort, he climbed to his feet and limped toward the mouth of the mine.
Inside a parking lot, delineated by course sooty gravel, workers were loading coal into a 1950s-era dump truck with shovels and buckets. The men showered him with curious stares then resumed their labor, seemingly too subjugated to ask questions.
Bradley surveyed the perimeter and locked eyes with a malnourished man perched on a scooter. Sporting the uniform of the Korean People’s Army, the soldier proffered a slight nod of recognition, then his head cocked as if listening. He sniffed the air, and his gaze jerked toward a narrow driveway that ventured into an evergreen forest.
Alarm gnarled his gaunt features.
He kick started his dilapidated scooter and took off into the woods.
Bradley felt like the ground beneath him had given way.
What spooked him? And what am I supposed to do now?
As if in response, a Russian-made truck with an open bed roared along the driveway, belching a whitish gray cloud of smoke. Its bald tires snapped and popped, compacting gravel, and he grimaced at a noxious odor: methane mixed with ash. The wood-burning vehicle skidded to a stop, the driver’s door creaked open, and a man in a Night Sector uniform trained a rifle on Bradley’s chest.
31
3,000 feet below White-Jefferson
Air Force Base, Ohio
IRRITATED AND IMPATIENT, Ryan Andrews crossed his arms and propped his backside against the conference table. The image of Kyle’s praying hands had been detected by “packet sniffers”—computer programs that analyzed data on communication networks to gather intelligence. The distress signal automatically triggered the real-time collection of audio, video, text, and GPS coordinates from his phone.
Ryan’s attention roamed a bank of monitors: a muted GNN newscast, satellite reconnaissance of Langden Air Force Base, data from Kyle’s cellphone, and two snowy, static-riddled video feeds.
“How much longer until Python taps into the surveillance cameras?” Ryan asked.
“We need to heighten security on Sybil ... And Jessie and the kids.”
“They’re all on lockdown,” the Admiral assured him.
Ryan’s left hand shot upward, absently scratching a patch of razor burn on the underside of his chin. “Why do I feel like this is connected to Quenten going AWOL?”
“Jonathan’s a patriot,” Rone snapped, shoulders stiffening, and Ryan was taken aback.
Was that a repudiation of his judgment as President or the General’s character?
“I meant that Quenten may have been targeted.”
Rone’s expression veered from agitation to stoic concern, and Ryan scanned the monitors again.
“Abby and Kyle are running out of time. Get Fitz on the horn and find out what’s taking so long.”
The Admiral blinked as if momentarily lost in thought, his jaw flexed, then he said, “I think you should reconsider deploying the TEradS, Mr. President. Secret Service is poised to handle the situation quickly and quietly.”
“Uh, correct me if I’m wrong,” Ryan said, sarcasm spilling into his tone, “but weren’t Secret Service agents complicit in the inauguration-day kidnapping of Abby Webber?”
Rone’s brown eyes met his, stony and austere. “A couple bad actors does not besmirch an entire agency. The Consortium has infiltrated every branch of government, for crying out loud. Every major corporation, religion, and charity.”
“Agreed. But the psych-ward employees are probably Night Sector embeds, handpicked by Malvado, who happens to be the stepdaughter of Congressman Pietro—the pedophile—Marino. We need to go in with a show of force and arrest them all!”
Rone’s head shook vehemently. “Sir, as a former TEradS commander, you know that it takes time to gear up, get briefed, and get to the site. Secret Service is already on scene, armed, and situationally aware. And politically, TEradS involvement will bolster the fake news narrative equating them to your personal Gestapo. Why play into their hands?”
The Power of We the People Page 12