Red Deception

by Gary Grossman

  “You must get to meet a lot of beautiful actresses and famous women. Have you ever made love with any?”

  “Oh, no.”

  Time for more flattery.

  “Well, they don’t know what they’re missing.” She touched him again.

  Jonathan sighed. She had more questions, but they could wait.

  “Paris,” Reilly offered.

  Paris. This was news, Marnie thought.

  “Why Paris?”

  “Nothing serious,” Reilly said, shrugging it off. “A quick intermediate stop. Security upgrades to check on.” He didn’t indicate they were real needs based on actual threats. “Chunnel over in the morning. With luck, just one night.”

  “Okay, so let’s steal some time after.”

  “Can’t. Stockholm. The NATO talks. The Russians have block-booked our property.”

  “Just what you need. So, when will I see you again?” She sounded disappointed.

  “As soon as possible.”

  “You’ll be staying at the Metro Tower in Paris?”

  “No, the Paris Kensington Rêve.”

  “Classy,” she joked. “I could make it more memorable for you.”

  “You sure could,” he said. “But not this trip.”

  She pouted and suggestively ran her fingers over the stem of her wine glass.

  The Russian agent, an expert in the explicit art of Sexpionage, was patient. More talk, then his reward would come. Kushkin got him to boast about the company computer system and its firewalls. He explained things carefully, the way someone would to a child, but in detail. She pretended she hardly understood, so he went further. She’d pass everything she learned onto Moscow. It might prove helpful there, in Stockholm, or later.

  Next she asked about the organization, “—which you’re obviously going to be an important part of.”

  He liked that, which led to questions about the operation and the management. She worked her way up the ladder as her fingers worked their way down his chest.

  “And who’s that guy who was on TV talking to senators a while back? The executive from Chicago? Seems important.”

  “You’re talking about Mr. Reilly.”

  “Right, that’s him. I can see you in that kind of job in a few years.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  That opened him up to share everything he knew about Dan Reilly, which was limited, but it included his immediate travel plans—to the Paris Kensington Rêve.

  “Listen,” Reilly said, “you should really steer clear of Washington. Transportation in and out is going to be bad for a while. And for that matter, Moscow too. You don’t want to get stranded there if Gorshkov makes a move.”

  “I don’t, or you don’t want me to?”

  “Both,” he admitted.

  Marnie replied, “I like way you say both. It’s been a long time since that sounded good coming from a man.” Marnie reached across the table for his hands. “Both. Yes. Both.”

  “So, no Russia trips?”

  She withdrew her arms.

  “Now who’s asking? Dan Reilly, my lover, or Dan Reilly, international business competitor? You know I can’t talk about what we have going.” Reilly gritted his teeth.

  “Sorry. Out of bounds.”

  “Well, here’s the deal,” she proposed. “I’ll tell my lover as long as he doesn’t tell anyone else.”

  Reilly smiled slyly. “Really, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “It’s okay. No state secret. We’ve sought assurances from Moscow that our business agreements in Latvia will be honored.”

  She stopped at that.

  “And?”

  “We’re waiting.” She decided to turn the question around. “You?”

  “Same,” Reilly said. “Both.”

  “Both. That word again. We’re both worried?”

  She looked away. Reilly saw worry, but there was something else which he couldn’t quite place.

  Jonathan said he should go. The Russian FSB officer wasn’t ready for him to leave. Not quite yet. He was better than most his age and she was enjoying that. But there might be more she could gather, particularly about the most recent topic, Daniel J. Reilly. She continued in earnest, nibbling his ear and stroking him lightly.

  This time Reilly reached across the table and took Marnie’s hand.

  “How about no more business. Just pleasure.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Your place or mine?”

  “Mine. But not now. Back to work.”

  “I suppose I have to as well.”

  Marnie picked up her glass of water and raised it in a toast.

  “To both,” she offered with a smile.

  He raised his glass and was about to clink but stopped. He examined it.

  “What?” she asked.

  He tilted the glass slightly, tipping the contents from side to side. It created a small wave.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s not a nothing response.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s a glass of water. You drink it.”

  “Unless,” he returned the glass to the table, “…you can’t.”

  He took out his phone and quickly sent a text message.

  23

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  LANGLEY, VA

  Heath sat at his desk with the door closed, with Reilly’s original terrorism assessment report he’d gotten from the Director. He rolled up the sleeves on his blue button-down shirt and loosened his tie. He’d told his aide not to disturb him “at least until dinner.” At 6 p.m. he revised the request. “Ten o’clock.” An hour later he was alone with a sandwich.

  He was particularly interested in a three-word text he’d received hours earlier from Reilly.

  Let’s talk WATER

  Without indicating what Reilly wanted, it was soon apparent he was referring to America’s water resources. More than 151,000 independent water systems in the United States. An impossible number to fathom. Obviously, Reilly wanted him to narrow the scope. And so, he read into the night.

  He made notes in the margins and highlighted key sections in yellow. He came to the same conclusion that Reilly had in his report: with open reservoirs supporting most communities, a hundred thousand miles of aging underground pipes, unpatrolled open-air aqueducts and canals, and only moderately guarded treatment plants, the nation’s water infrastructure was impossible to completely secure.

  Reilly had outlined the threat of toxins that could be introduced at key distribution points. While this was more of a localized issue, Reilly noted it could cause wider panic if multiple coordinated attacks occurred. Reilly’s paper pointed to another threat: terrorists targeting a major distribution hub that serves a large region, a major city, or a network covering states. He cited the Dam Safety and Security Act of 2002 that recognized the importance of enhancing safety to the nation’s 77,000 dams. The problem was the federal government had oversight of only five percent of those dams whose failures could result in significant loss of life. The remaining structures were owned or controlled by local or state governments, or private entities.

  Even more revealing, Reilly’s report spelled out in detail how a coordinated effort aimed at multiple small dams could cripple farm communities. And on a far larger scale, Shasta and Folsom Dams in California, Grand Coulee Dam in Washington, Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, and Hoover Dam, located between Nevada and Arizona, which feeds water to the Southwestern U.S. Each had weaknesses and Reilly had pinpointed them. All five were operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and considered “critical infrastructure,” meaning their impairment or destruction could seriously impact national security. Heath viewed that as one gigantic understatement.

  Reilly concluded the section with a warning: “Dams are loaded weapons with the safety off.”

  It was a holy shit moment for Heath. But that was not the worst of it. He re-read another section which troubled him just as much
: Bridges.

  They were targeted in the East and the Midwest. What about the West? There were five bridges that came to mind. The Astoria-Megler Bridge over the Columbia River in Oregon, the Vincent Thomas south of Los Angeles, the Coronado Bridge in San Diego, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and—. He stopped in mid-thought and quickly dialed Reilly.

  “What’s up?” the hotel executive answered from bed.

  “Your goddamned paper. That’s what. Got a few minutes?” Heath asked.

  “Yes.”

  Heath shared his concern: dams and bridges on the West Coast.

  “Bingo,” Reilly replied.

  “Okay. Bridges first. Give me your risk assessment.”

  Reilly stood and began to walk naked around the room. “Rule out the Astoria-Megler over the lower Columbia River. It’s a magnificent span, the longest continuous truss bridge in North America. But as horrible as it would be, it’s a 24-hour news story to the rest of the country. Same for the Vincent Thomas in San Pedro. A link to the harbor, but most people in LA don’t even know it exists. Probably never even seen it. The San Diego-Coronado would be an impressive take-down, but nowhere near the impact of targeting the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco or the Golden Gate.”

  “My thoughts exactly. The Golden Gate would be number one. It’s virtually a national monument,” Heath concluded.

  “But hardened and harder to attack. It’s patrolled more just because it’s so iconic. No, I’d pick the Bay Bridge. At this moment it should be on a super-heightened state of alert with Coast Guard patrol boats every fifty yards on either side. If possible, every twenty-five yards. I’d slow traffic down. Squad cars everywhere. It will piss off everyone, including the bad guys. And that’s the point. Visible deterrents deter.

  “I evaluated the targets on the basis of probability distributions: how much damage a truck bomb can do and at what pressure points. A pre-stressed concrete beam, a continuous steel-plate girder, or the deck cantilever truss.”

  “Saw that,” Heath said. “Didn’t quite understand it.”

  “R=CVL,” Reilly said from memory. “R is for Risk, defined as the potential loss to a system. C represents the consequences of an event occurring. V stands for vulnerability, and L is the likelihood of an attacker succeeding. That’s where the probability rests. At this point, V is a given: the bridges, as we’ve seen, are extremely vulnerable. But it takes a great deal of effort. As far as the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge go, I’d rule out an attack by water. An oil tanker could do real damage, like the one on the Mississippi, but get the Coast Guard in place and you take away the water route. An air attack is possible. Load up a private jet, maybe two or three, and aim for the supports.”

  “Jesus, Reilly. You’re right. Little or no TSA interference. Take off and aim.”

  “Except,” Reilly said over the phone from England, “that’s a suicide mission and each of the prior attacks were walk-aways. So, no. Not now. The teams are too valuable to the cause. They act like mercenaries, not martyrs. It’s a sophisticated organization that has undoubtedly promised its team real-world rewards, not virgins in heaven.”

  “So, we’re back to truck bombs? But that still means they have to abandon their vehicles to escape.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll add a letter to your equation: F. F is for we’re fucked,” Heath declared.

  “Not with visible defenses on either side of the 8,980-foot span. Remember what scared off jihadists who had taken handheld video footage of the Golden Gate after 9/11? Police patrols. Coast Guard vessels in the sea lanes. And the governor made the threat public, which took Californians by surprise, but also made terrorists nervous. That’s the goal of safety at our hotels: make the targets unattractive. Too difficult. And the bottom line, the best course of action, the counter move against a terrorist attack is to let terrorists know that we know what they’re planning. That we’re ready. That they can’t succeed. But it may be too late for that.

  “To my thinking, focus on The Bay Bridge over the Golden Gate. Less attention is focused on it which makes it more attractive a target. The bridge had been retrofitted and rebuilt, making it the world’s largest Self-Anchored Suspension Span with a single, almost mile-long main cable supporting the weight of the bridge. Terrorists armed with significant timed explosives could take out sections of the concrete roadway. Loss of life would be significant. A strategic attack could close the bridge down for weeks or months, if not longer, crippling the California economy.”

  He visualized the 4.5-mile span that carried more than 270,000 cars a day between Oakland and San Francisco. A potential for disaster far worse than the 1989 earthquake.

  “So, what are you recommending?” Heath asked.

  “Talk to Moore at the FBI. Tell him we should think big or go home.”

  24

  NEW YORK

  Flanders stared at the phone. Enough time waiting, she thought. She dialed the number for the Kensington Royal corporate headquarters.

  After being connected through the switchboard and put on hold for two minutes, she heard a warm but authoritative voice. Protective.

  “Mr. Reilly’s office, this is Brenda.”

  “Hello, Brenda, my name is Savannah Flanders. I’m a writer for the New York Times.”

  Flanders heard typing on the other end. The woman was taking notes. Good. Well-trained. Efficient. Like her boss.

  “Ms. Flanders, if you’re calling about an interview, I have to refer you to our communications department. Pat Brodowski. Her number is—”

  “Actually, I was hoping that I could speak to Mr. Reilly more off-the-record.”

  The typing stopped.

  “I’m afraid—”

  Flanders was very used to the pivot, the transfer, the brush-off.

  “Please, Ms.—”

  “Sheldon.”

  Good. She still’s talking.

  “Ms. Sheldon, Mr. Reilly performed incredible heroics in Washington. He saved lives at the risk of his own. He was the first to act and directed others to help. Military officers. First responders. He acted like someone in command.”

  Flanders waited for push back. There wasn’t any.

  “Ms. Sheldon, ten minutes with your boss on the phone. Please. I’m certain the Kensington Royal Corporation is proud of him.”

  “We are.”

  An admission. Good. Still engaged.

  “There are people who are alive today because of him.”

  “It’s not the first time,” Brenda volunteered.

  Another admission. An opening.

  “I can believe that.” Changing gears now, Flanders tried for the closer. “How’s tomorrow. I can fly in from—”

  “I’m sorry Ms. Flanders, he’s currently out of the—.”

  Sheldon stopped short of explaining where. Flanders filled in the sentence herself.

  “Of course. Will you at least let him know I phoned and I’m able to connect with him wherever he is?”

  Flanders gave her cell and office numbers and heard Sheldon’s typing again. She concluded with, “Thank you for your help, Ms. Sheldon. I’ll call back tomorrow.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll get back to you.”

  Savannah Flanders hung up knowing three things. Brenda Sheldon would pass along the request. Dan Reilly was already out of the country. And he was the real deal.

  “Mike,” she said. “Pull up the list of the KR properties in Europe.”

  “Gotta be about twenty,” the reporter said.

  “Then we’re going to check all twenty and see where this Daniel J. Reilly is staying.”

  LONDON

  Reilly looked at the incoming text message from Bob Heath. One word; one word that showed Heath had come to the same horrible possibility Reilly considered. A president’s name, but not a president. A location, but more than a location. A facility, but beyond most comprehension. A modern marvel nine decades old.

  Hoover.

  25

&n
bsp; HENDERSON, NEVADA

  LATE THAT NIGHT

  Harper parked in a lot adjacent to a Denny’s on West Warm Springs Road. He went to the restaurant every eighth day at precisely 2 a.m. and always ordered a Grand Slam—two pancakes, two eggs over easy, two bacon strips, two sausage links, and a side order of hash browns. Part of a routine. Never fully eaten, but enough to bide his time for an hour. Just an hour. Never longer.

  He sat at a table in the far corner, which was usually open. If it wasn’t, he took seat at the counter and placed his coffee cup upside down. A signal.

  So far, he’d been met twice, but only when he was at the booth. On both occasions it was the same person. The first time was five months prior. The second just a month ago. He didn’t know if tonight would be another one of those nights.

  It was.

  Harper saw the oncoming car lights reflected in the restaurant window. A vehicle slowed, rolled into the lot, and parked. Then nothing for two minutes. Two minutes exactly. When the door to the restaurant opened, Harper caught sight of a dark-haired man. Medium height. Blank face. Mixed ethnicity. He wore a tight-fitting black t-shirt, black jeans, black laced-up boots, and a Los Angeles Rams cap.

  The man ignored empty seats close to the entrance, taking a booth where he would be back-to-back with Harper.

  Harper was a third of the way through his Grand Slam. The other man ordered an egg white omelet.

  “You’ve taken to the food,” the man whispered after five minutes of silence.

  “I’ve learned to like it,” Harper replied softly.

  “The smell is offensive.” Harper ignored the comment.

  Another minute passed.

  “Be ready,” the man finally said.