Dimly, Nami realized that the two people sitting in those rows had also disappeared. They were gone as if they’d never existed. A long groan of tortured metal, deep and painful, came up through the floor, which then began to buck violently beneath her feet. A hot orange ribbon of flame crosshatched with sparks streamed from the rear of the engine outside, just beyond the hole, the source of the howling noise. Fire engulfed the top of the wing momentarily, before being swept away by the terrible freezing shriek that filled Nami’s ears.
Something flew past her shoulder. It was a young girl. She smashed into the twisted metal ripped away from the side of the plane, where she suddenly stopped. Flying objects battered her face and then tore away into the night, sucked through the hole into the blackness. The child gazed at Nami with dead eyes, fingers of gnarled aluminum rib arcing up and out of her shaking corpse. And there she stayed, impaled, buffeted by the hurricane rushing by her, rich red blood gushing and then slowly dribbling from her blue lips.
Nami was aware of the oxygen masks dropping down, the vomit exploding from her mouth and the horrible weightless feeling in the pit of her stomach as the crippled airliner pushed over into a dive. She looked down into her lap where her own blood was pooling.
She lifted her dripping red hand and stroked the dead girl’s hair by her knees. It was then that she heard the scream. Looking around, she saw the man with the hat sitting diagonally across the aisle. He was staring at her, his mouth open in shock, the scream hoarse and animal-like in his throat. Nami reached up for an oxygen mask and put the cup over her face. Then she stretched forward and put a mask over the girl’s blue face. As she did, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the porthole window. Her scalp had been peeled back from the top of her head and pints of blood were running down her shoulders and arms.
‘The ruse with the transponder—code 1300. It hasn’t paid off,’ observed Hamilton.
Garret was unable to move his eyes from the monitors. ‘Except that they’re right on the edge of international airspace, almost away.’
A shiver of conflict tightened the muscles at the base of his skull. Part of him willed the plane to safety, wrestling with his determination to see the mission through to its successful conclusion. The 1300 blip on the screen represented the lives of 269 people. He murmured the words, ‘“Take now your son, your only son, whom you love . . . and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.”’
‘What’s that from?’ asked Hamilton.
‘Genesis 22. God talking to Abraham. Don’t know your Bible?’
‘To tell you the truth, no. Though I do know one thing that Abraham said. I can’t tell you where it comes from, what part of the Bible—maybe Genesis—but it was something my mother used to drum into us kids.’
Garret looked at him.
‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ he said, ‘for they shall inherit the earth.’
Garret gave him a wry smile. ‘Peacemakers’ was Clark’s suggested name for the new MX nukes with their multiple re-entry vehicles. ‘And I’m sure they will,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you have a cigarette?’
‘Nope. Give ’em up, Roy. They’ll kill you.’
‘Good advice. Maybe I’ll take you up on it.’
‘See how the fighter’s dropping back?’ said Hamilton, his attention shifting to the screen. He pointed at the outline of the southern end of Sakhalin Island. ‘It’s happening. Just the way I said it would, and not a moment too soon. 007 has just crossed into international airspace.’
A new minute ticked over on the digital display set to Greenwich Mean Time—18:26.
Garret worked the computer keyboard and the image onscreen covering the pursuit of the 747 suddenly expanded and took over the entire wall.
A burst of staccato Russian crackled from the speakers.
‘You speak some Russian, don’t you?’ asked Hamilton. ‘Care to translate?’
Another barrage of Russian. The tone implied commands followed by responses.
‘Zakhvati tsel.’
‘Take aim at the target,’ said Garret.
‘Tsel zakhvatchena.’
‘Aim taken.’
‘Ogon.’
‘Fire.’
‘Ya vypolnil pusk.’
‘I have executed the launch.’
‘Tsel unichtozena.’
‘The target is destroyed.’
The tone of the exchange was businesslike, devoid of excitement.
‘Well, that’s that,’ said Garret, his eyes fixed on the small glowing radar return squawking 1300. The seconds drifted by. Long seconds. The numbers attached to the blip showing 007’s altitude began to fall, and fast. And then the numbers slowed and stopped.
Another radio transmission came through.
‘Tokyo Radio. Korean Air zero zero seven. Position at NOKKA one eight two seven. Flight level three three zero. Estimate arrival at . . .’
‘What the hell?’ Garret exclaimed.
‘Jesus. That’s 015.’ Hamilton frowned at the monitor. ‘They don’t realize what’s happened to 007. They’re too far away—they didn’t hear what we just heard.’
‘How do we explain that?’ asked Garret.
Another transmission crackled through their headsets. This one was distant, etched with interference and stress. It was also in heavily accented English: ‘Tokyo Radio, Korean Air zero zero seven.’
‘Korean Air zero zero seven, Tokyo.’
‘Zero zero seven . . . ***fifteen thousand** . . . holding with rapid decompressions. Descending to one zero thousand . . .’
‘Doesn’t sound at all to me like the target has been destroyed,’ said Garret.
‘No, sir, it doesn’t.’
BOOK TWO
January 13, 2012
NBC Studios, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City. New Mexico governor Roy Garret glanced at camera one and reminded himself to look natural in case the producer zoomed in for a quick reaction cut. The live televised debate—long awaited by the voters—had seesawed across the issues and now it was in its final moments. Garret thought that he’d come out on top, but it was going to be tight.
His opponent, Louisiana senator Lou Chevalier, was the moderate Democratic nominee in the race for the White House. Chevalier’s credentials were impeccable. At fifty-one, he was comparatively young, and he was black, from a poor working-class family living in Tallulah, Louisiana. His father was a preacher and his mother had been a house-cleaner. Both were still alive, in their nineties. Senator Chevalier had been a Gulf War I hero, earning the Distinguished Service Cross, and the evidence of his bravery was a patch over the destroyed socket of his right eye. After the war, he’d completed a law degree at Stanford and opened a low-cost legal aid service, which had grown in size and stature, attracting corporate sponsorship from Microsoft and others, and spreading to twelve state capitals—so the man was wealthy to boot. He was also an eloquent performer in front of the cameras and doing very well in the polls. It was an understatement to say that Garret hated his guts.
‘We’ve heard the governor of New Mexico tell us about our priorities and how we’ve got them all mixed up,’ Chevalier said, moving into the final stretch of his two-minute rebuttal. ‘Governor Garret tells us that being a teacher isn’t as important as being a soldier, but our children are our future. He tells us that providing universal healthcare will never work, but there are well over 47 million Americans who can’t afford to get sick. He tells us that helping the poor only entrenches poverty; that equal pay for women will only encourage them back into the workforce and lead to the break-up of families; that rape victims who bear children have in fact received a blessing from God; that forced deportation at the point of a gun is the only way to deal with illegal immigration; that we need to lower taxes and cut spending on virtually everything except the military.
‘Governor Garret tells us that, after having four years of a moderate in the White House, we’ve gotten our priorities all wrong. He can barely hide his
glee that the current President is retiring from office for reasons of poor health. But that shouldn’t surprise us, because the man on my left, well, he’s a Cold War soldier, a reluctant migrant from the land of conservative fear-driven mistrust. And what do we really know about him? In the 1980s, he was in the clandestine world of the NSA. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, he becomes the assistant deputy director of the CIA! A few years after that, he made director! What did he do to deserve all that? Well, my friends, we’ll never know because the governor of New Mexico’s employment records are top secret, a matter of national security.’
The half of the audience supporting Chevalier roared with applause, while the other half hooted and hollered, angered by their man’s mistreatment at the hands of this do-gooder.
‘Another thing we know,’ Chevalier went on, his voice rising in pitch and ardor, ‘is that before becoming governor of New Mexico, and while I was defending people unable to defend themselves, Roy Garret was sitting in the boardrooms of a number of high-powered companies from the Chase Manhattan Bank to Bechtel, a company awarded over $2.4 billion in no-contest contracts to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, despite its well-known reputation for reconstruction failures. We know that as the director of the CIA for ten years, he used the agency as an instrument of his own brand of legalized terror: wire taps, the mysterious deaths of Venezuelan and Syrian presidents, the silent war in southern Thailand, the support of bloodthirsty rebel troops in the jungles of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the reseeding of civil war in Kosovo.’
‘And that’s time, Senator,’ moderator Tim Russert called out over the clamoring of the audience, who were practically rioting in their seats at the accusations that had—until now—just been whispers. Russert tried to calm things down with placatory hand gestures.
‘Okay, okay. Settle down, everyone,’ he said. ‘Hoo, boy, we’re passionate tonight.’ He turned to Chevalier. ‘Now, I know you were supposed to have the last word, Senator, but we’ll have to give your opponent one minute to respond—and that’s your fault for leaving the best till last.’
His comment extracted a laugh from the audience, which had the effect of blowing off a little steam. Russert glanced at the producer for a signal and then addressed Garret. ‘Governor, you have one minute.’
The audience waited for his response the way a man who’d poked a rattlesnake with a stick would wait nervously for the retaliation.
Ordinarily, Roy Garret loved the camera. But today it wasn’t doing him any favors. He tried to keep the smile on his face, though he had a feeling that the longer he kept it in place, the more the muscles in his cheeks were reorganizing his features into a grimace. And he’d started to sweat, a droplet greasy with make-up running down his temple. Chevalier had managed to twist his policy ideas just enough to make them seem extreme. That was politics, the name of the game. But what really crawled under Roy Garret’s skin was having his service questioned.
‘Is there a problem, Governor?’ Senator Chevalier prompted. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
The light on top of camera one was glowing. It was coming in for that close-up and the split seconds were mounting into an uncomfortable protracted silence.
‘No, the cat hasn’t got my tongue, Senator,’ Garret said, relieved to hear the sound of his own voice. ‘Though I’m afraid the cow may have jumped over the moon here tonight.’
Surprised laughter rippled through the audience.
A movement in the corner of Garret’s eye momentarily distracted him. It was Hank, his long-time aide, standing in the wings along with his campaign manager, Felix Ackerman. Both men were giving him an encouraging thumbs up.
‘What I mean by that, Senator,’ Garret continued, ‘is that it seems to me you have a nursery-rhyme grasp of the CIA. As you correctly point out, secrecy acts won’t allow me to talk about my tenure at the Agency. Nevertheless, let me try and address your accusations in general terms. The fact is, I took my orders from the government of the day and while I was director, sir, the CIA was never my plaything. What you are, Senator, is a carnival trickster who wants to con the American people with BS. And let’s talk about your tactics. Frankly, they’re cheap. You’re spreading innuendo hoping that the voters will see it as truth, which says to me you don’t put a lot of stock in the intelligence of the American people. But they’re a lot smarter than you think, Senator.’
Garret took a breath and pushed on. ‘Now, back to your accusation. In 1981, Senator, President Reagan outlawed assassination as a tool of foreign policy. If you’re not aware of that fact, you should be. And it has never been my habit to contravene presidential orders, no matter what the politics of the man issuing them.’
‘Yes, Governor,’ Chevalier interjected, ‘but you must—’
Garret raised his voice. ‘You must allow me to speak, Senator. Your statement went way beyond implication and into slander. You posture like a gentleman, but your words are as common as your intent. All you want to do is besmirch my record and character for political gain. You want to know what is on the public record? Under my directorship, the CIA served the administration of the day admirably and honorably. End of story.’
The yellow light came on. Garret’s one minute had expired.
He raised his voice to an indignant tone. ‘Senator, my record is on the public register. And unlike yours, mine has been a lifetime of service to the United States of America.’
Russert interrupted him. ‘That’s time, Governor . . .’
After signing half a dozen campaign posters for eager supporters, Governor Garret, Hank Buck and Felix Ackerman walked briskly through the network’s secure back entrance to the underground parking lot, flanked by a screen of secret service security.
‘I’m serious, Governor,’ encouraged Felix Ackerman, the 250-pound man referred to by some Washington insiders as a sweaty one-man avalanche, ‘the switchboard lit up with support for you. I’m ecstatic with the result.’
‘My campaign manager’s happy? That’s a first,’ Garret said. ‘I must be in trouble.’ Despite reassurances to the contrary and his earlier confidence, he knew the debate had gone against him.
‘Look, you showed America that you’re a strong leader, agile on your feet, passionate and patriotic. Your performance tonight was pure gold. Chevalier might have had his nose in front, but you pulled down his pants on camera. You even managed to include a subtle dig about that bayou cottonmouth’s trivial part-time service—a few short years in the army.’
‘I wouldn’t call the DSC trivial, Felix,’ said Hank.
‘If he’s such a great warrior, then why doesn’t a single soldier he served with have anything to say about him—good or bad? I tell you, Roy, coming into the final stretch, the timing of this debate couldn’t have been better. You’ll win the Democratic nomination for sure. The party’s looking for strength. Bringing things into the open like that did you a favor. Believe it.’
Garret wasn’t so confident.
‘Listen, I have to stay back here and talk to the print media journalists,’ Ackerman said. ‘I’ll catch up to you later this evening when the latest poll results are released.’
‘Okay,’ Garret said as he climbed in the back of the Lincoln with Hank, the secret service detail deploying to its vehicles. The driver shut the door and it gave a heavy, bulletproof clang. Garret settled into the aromatic leather seat.
‘Hank, I want that hick nigger’s head on a plate.’
‘And you’ll have it, Roy. But Felix is right—Chevalier did you a favor.’
‘On a plate, Hank. I want you to peel back his life, look into his past, lift up the damn seat on his john. Find some dirt on this cocksucker we can use. Somewhere along the way he screwed the wrong woman, inhaled, didn’t pay a bill, tripped up an old lady. I want to know why he got that fucking medal. I will not have my service to my country called into question. Not ever. You hear me?’
‘I hear you, boss,’ said Hank, and, furthermore, he approved. Garret had come
a long way from those early days at the NSA. A decade as CIA director had been the making of him, honed his edge. And now he was shooting for the highest office in the land, which meant Hank’s own stocks were on the rise.
‘Before I forget,’ Hank said. ‘Some stuff has come up.’
‘What kind of stuff?’ Garret asked, fixing himself a scotch from the bar.
‘Good stuff. Those two KAL players we’ve been keeping an eye on, Foxx and Suzuki, finally kicked the bucket. They both died of natural causes, by the way.’
‘It’s about time.’
‘So I think we can afford to relax a little, maybe let our Russian friend go.’
‘What about the tape?’
‘If it exists, I’m pretty sure it would have surfaced by now, but just in case it has been passed along we’re checking on family members.’
‘How many are there?’
‘I should have said, family member. We’re lucky—it’s just one, an American citizen.’
‘That’s fortunate,’ said Garret. ‘Who’ve you got on it?’
‘Our connections are still good at the NSA. We’ve given a couple of their best people a watching brief—low level. What about General Korolenko? I’m pretty confident we won’t need the Russian any more.’
‘I’ll leave that decision up to you, pilgrim.’
Hank allowed himself a private smile. Pilgrim—he hadn’t been called that in quite a while.
January 14, 2012
Key West, Florida. The courier exchanged a signature for the cardboard box. Ben kicked the door closed and took the package inside. He sliced the tape with a box cutter and lifted out the stainless-steel urn encased in bubble wrap. Curtis’s body had been picked up from the hospital by the funeral parlor, and his cremated remains FedExed to Ben. Nice and simple, and, as Curtis had requested, God had been excluded from the loop.
‘Where am I going to put you?’ Ben said. ‘The mantelpiece is in my other mansion.’
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