by Fritz Galt
The president pursed his lips and leaned against the edge of his desk. “Are the networks ready to carry my speech tonight?” he asked meekly.
Chuck stiffened. “Damn it, Mr. President. Are you going to let these terrorists win? This isn’t Spain. This is the United States of America.”
“Yeah, and her president is selling out the store.”
“You most definitely are not. You are standing up to terrorism!”
Bernard took a moment to consider the idea. Then he said, “Okay, you win. Release the prisoners.”
“That’s good, sir. That’s taking charge!”
Bernard cracked one of his prankish schoolboy smiles. “But only release a handful of them. The terrorists will have to come back to us for more. That’ll buy us time to track them down and nuke them.”
“That’s the spirit, sir!”
Chuck Romer marched directly back to his office, just a few thin walls away from the president, and picked up his phone.
“Get me the Pentagon,” he snapped at the White House operator. “I want Assistant Secretary of Defense Max Spelling.”
He waited, focusing once more on the vacant week in August. On an impulse, he grabbed a blue felt-tipped marker from his desk and drew tiny wedding bells at the start of the president’s summer vacation.
“Yeah, Chuck?” came Spelling’s voice over the phone from the quiet of his Pentagon office.
“More word from the top, I’m afraid,” Chuck began. “The president is requesting that we release a handful of al-Qaeda suspects from Guantánamo.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“And in addition, we want this to be a high profile release. Make sure the press is aware of it.”
“Of course they’ll be aware of it. Especially when the next car bomb goes off.”
“I can’t help that,” Chuck said. “The president is in a particularly awkward political position at this point, and he needs room to maneuver.”
Max still balked. “These are foreign combatants we’re talking about. Foreign passport holders. All our American citizen suspects are already back in the U.S.”
“Okay, then release a handful of foreigners. What have we got to lose anyway? They’re a drop in the bucket compared with the millions of insurgents out there calling for jihad.”
“We aren’t necessarily holding them to prevent them from attacking our interests. We’re holding them to gain intelligence.”
“You’ve had years to interview them.”
Max didn’t have a ready response to that one.
Chuck played the Cooper tape back to the handwritten ransom demand to release all prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, or they would release Cooper. “Do we have any high profile detainees?”
“We haven’t given out their names to the public.”
“Why not? We want some good publicity here.”
“We don’t give out names so that the terrorists don’t know who we’ve got and what they’re saying. It’s a way of getting them to scrap all their current plans.”
Chuck stopped to consider that. “Is that why we haven’t had any attacks against American interests lately?”
“I’m sure it’s a significant reason.”
Well, that was just too bad.
“Release a few top al-Qaeda operatives, not the peons, and give their names to the press. We need some good PR.”
“You know I’ll have to clear it with Kenneth.”
“Clear it?” Chuck snapped. The president had ordered the release. Kenneth Spaulding was a wishy-washy Secretary of Defense, prone to obsessing over minor legal details such as the Geneva conventions.
“I mean ‘discuss it,’” Max rephrased.
“Then discuss it. I want to see action on this by the end of the day.”
“Okay. We’ll get to work on it,” Max said, making no attempt to conceal his reluctance.
Chuck set down the phone, took one last look at the video clip on his computer, then hit the Delete key.
Humming Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, he returned to the wall calendar that set forth his grand scheme to reelect the president, whether he wanted it or not.
Chapter 14
To her own critical eye, Sandi DiMartino looked striking in a bikini. She examined her physique in the soft lighting of her hotel room. Hainan Island’s tropical sun had done wonders for her tan that had faded under Washington, DC’s grey skies. Her tan lines had become distinct again, like white cream against smooth, brown muscle.
But her body hadn’t been alluring enough to draw Sean Cooper out of his secret world.
She didn’t have strong-armed men to whisk him away, as she had seen happen on the beach. She didn’t have money with which to entice him. All she had was his trust, and a bottle of Coco Mademoiselle.
If perfume didn’t turn his head, he was definitely beyond the appeal of patriotism. In fact, from his disgruntled statements, his loyalty to God and country was all but shot.
Company loyalty seemed strained if not altogether broken.
Sean had exuded the offhand, uncaring air of someone who was on the run and who had lost his moral compass. She studied her enhanced breasts and tightly toned buns. She should have been the perfect bait.
But she wasn’t. Something stronger than his appetites was driving him. And she couldn’t venture to guess what it was. It seemed beyond fear of the Feds, anger at his company and grief over his family. Could it be that Sean Cooper was simply trying to preserve what was left of his self-esteem?
Where did her self-esteem stand those days? She had a good head on her shoulders. A Bachelor’s Degree in History from Columbia University. A law degree from Georgetown, clerking for a Federal Judge in San Francisco, joining a team of prosecutors for the Department of Justice, and most recently, heading up the investigative team for the Special Independent Prosecutor, the renowned Stanley Polk, in the Chinagate scandal.
She had a large heart, searching for ways to make America stronger, more pure, and more tightly knit. She had had lovers in college, and again in San Francisco. But those weren’t real men. They were callow, half-formed men who latched onto her far more than she needed them.
Some of her buddies back in Washington would argue that she lacked commitment. And her frequent flights from one relationship to another seemed to bear that out. But the way she saw it, she had left a trail of broken hearts only because of her own quest for emotional fulfillment.
Was that a cop-out?
She had to smile. Maybe her friends were right. Sometimes a deranged individual was the last to recognize her own problems.
Sean had seemed so sincere, mature and vulnerable. She had found it strangely attractive to lounge with him at poolside and trade observations of life. She had felt herself falling for him, wanting him, trying to dig under his skin and know him better.
But in the end, she had wanted him far more than he had wanted her, and that gave her a painful twinge of sadness.
She slipped into her flip-flops and swung her towel over a shoulder.
Taking one last look at her noble features under her bright, blonde hair, she asked the questioning blue eyes if she was ready to take on the world again.
She was, the eyes assured her. She didn’t need Sean. She just needed somebody before she would head back to Washington.
Due to insurgencies in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, the Seventh Fleet had already deployed a carrier battle group from San Diego to the area several months before.
Aboard the signals ship USS Endorse, Seaman Anthony Carlson was already used to the onboard routine and beginning to pine for home. He knew that it was still too early in the deployment to contemplate flipping steaks on his backyard grill in his off-base housing, but the voyage was mentally fatiguing, and he needed some sort of break.
For one thing, the voices that his superconductive antennae were picking up weren’t speaking a single word of English. The airwaves were awash with languages he’d never heard before.
&n
bsp; On Anthony’s morning watch, the USS Endorse had received a communication from the Pentagon that more voice signature files were on their way. He yawned. It meant a morning of linking up his computer program to the sound wave files so that transmissions he received from radios and cell phones could be matched against known criminals.
The airwaves were alive with communications on all frequencies, between ships, from ship to shore and back again, among police onshore in the nearby Philippine island of Luzon, between military units on the island, and from ordinary citizens making their cell phone calls from their offices and motor scooters.
Anthony sat straight-backed in the radio room before his bank of computer monitors and watched the latest voice signature files download from the Pentagon. As the long WAV files downloaded, he read over a printout of the new names added to the list. The number of terrorist suspects crept higher each day. Names originating from the Middle East, for the most part. But one striking new name caught his eye—“Sean Cooper.” Not only was it an Anglo name, but a notorious one at that.
Now, he didn’t follow the Armed Forces News Channel any closer than the rest of his buddies onboard, but even he was aware of the Chinagate investigation that had stalled in Washington due to the disappearance of its key witness.
And among seamen, the name Sean Cooper was a lightning rod for heartfelt political debate. Those who thought the special prosecutor was providing a valuable service to the nation by rooting out corruption in government would like to have Cooper found, put on the stand, and testify against the president.
The far greater majority, who defended the president, would rather not see Cooper ever resurface. And Anthony was among that group rallying around their president, ideological leader and commander-in-chief.
So why was the Pentagon sending them Cooper’ WAV file? Was Secretary of Defense Kenneth Spaulding bowing to public pressure and helping out the special independent prosecutor? Was someone in government trying to breathe new life into the Chinagate kangaroo court and bring down the Administration?
He sighed and shook his head dumbfounded. He hoped that he would never get posted to the Pentagon, because as long as he lived, he would never understand the mysterious workings of Washington.
Sandi felt several pairs of eyes following her as she padded across the pool deck in search of a chaise lounge. The women peered over their books and magazines with a mixture of envy and defensiveness. But that didn’t stop her from showing a bit of cheesecake and a flash of the forbidden. Men tried to maintain their cool as their breathing came to a halt.
She reached up to tighten the scrunchie that bobbed in her hair, letting the men glimpse the sides of her breasts as they spilled from under the tight neon green top. She squeezed her buttocks consciously as she walked, tightening her calves and flexing her thighs.
She squatted beside a pair of empty lounge chairs, turned on her toes and observed the tight lines of her legs glistening as hard ridges in the sun.
Then she leaned over to spread out her beach towel, letting her breasts swing free and catch the ocean breeze where a band of sweat had formed against her skin. She leaned far enough forward to stretch the wedge-shaped bikini bottom far up between her legs.
If there was a real man to find that day, she would draw him out.
She settled down with a copy of the South China Post and immediately turned to the international section. The Gulf was showing its contempt for America in new and novel ways. SARS was making a reappearance in Beijing. And Stanley Polk’s investigation into the president’s misdeeds was stymied. For his part, the president was being romantically linked to some college grad intern. And the Academy Awards had sustained minor damage from a foiled terrorist attack.
A young man approached her.
“Is this chair taken?” he asked in a confident voice.
She lowered her sunglasses.
The man was tall and dark, and his eyes seemed to dance. She could use a man with a hairy chest and a cocksure attitude.
“No, it’s free,” she said. “Make yourself at home.”
He grinned, exposing a healthy row of teeth. Sticking out his hand, he said, “Merle Stevens, with the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai.”
She wiped off some tanning oil that had mixed in with newspaper ink, and shook his hand. What a firm, dry grip.
She squirmed against her towel. This guy was more than the average pickup. He was the complete package!
The bearded skipper bounded into the mess hall where Sean was playing rummy with some of the crew.
“They’ve conceded,” he announced in triumph. “Washington is releasing our men from Guantánamo.”
As the other crewmembers emitted a cheer that resounded off the metal walls, Sean buried his head in his hands. He had become an impediment to national security. No, worse, he had become the most major threat to the United States. As long as President Bernard White held office, the entire country was in the grip of the terrorists.
“What’s next?” he groaned.
“What’s next?” the skipper repeated. “Next, we will demand that the Americans abandon their hunt for Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar!”
If Sean could only go public, that would be his best weapon. He had to forget his own complicity and indictable actions. Who knew how far the terrorists would take this? Would the skipper force the president to roll back homeland security and allow bomb-toting terrorists loose in America?
He threw his cards on the table, face up. The crewmembers he was playing against were no longer interested in the game, as they began clapping and dancing.
Once President White complied with al-Qaeda’s demands, he was heading down a one-way street. The president would have to accede to all further demands.
He knew about one-way streets.
His full house staring him in the face, he thought back to his relocation to Shanghai after leaving his family’s memory behind.
It did seem strange that he had picked up the pieces of his former life so quickly after their deaths. There he was, back in China, working for the same oil firm. The SARS experience could have changed his life, yet it hadn’t. Even with his family gone, he was outwardly the same person, a financial officer with corporate duties to fulfill.
In fact, he had changed—only he didn’t know it at the time. He had gone back to his company, taking the path of least resistance, in order to give himself time to deal with his anger and grief. He still had many issues to work out.
And it hadn’t taken long for his disgust with his company to boil over. His bosses were trying to buy him off with a cushy job, great pay, enhanced expat package and a very nice three-story house in a gated compound occupied by other foreigners.
But he had had no family to tuck into bed at night. And his job quickly reverted back to handling the illegal funds that he didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole.
This time it wasn’t Chinese bribes sent to the president’s offshore account. It was kickbacks from his own company that Sean directed into the president’s account. Was there no end to the man’s greed? Once a man took a bribe, he lost all moral compunction about taking another and another.
But in some profound ways, Sean was not unlike the president. His hands were dirty, too. He had taken the expat package, complete with car, driver, house, club memberships, free recreational travel, free insurance coverage, plush office and light workload. And then he had done the unthinkable; he had diverted the president’s ill-gotten gains into an account of his own.
He had to smile at his own naïveté.
It turned out, by what had to be more than sheer coincidence, that the same diplomat who had helped him in Beijing, the young man named Merle Stevens, had also relocated to Shanghai that summer. And they had met “quite by chance” at the Portman Ritz-Carleton, the latest expatriate watering hole where deals were brokered and China’s markets were divvied up. They had shared drinks that first evening, and Merle had shown genuine concern about his ability to handle his family�
��s death so stoically.
Then the diplomat had casually turned the conversation toward the topic of personal savings. Merle had told him that living off a straight government salary, he envied those in Shanghai who were truly raking in the money. If he were in Sean’s position, he would be transferring his life insurance benefits and income straight into a Cayman Islands account and never letting it touch American soil where he would be taxed to death.
Naturally, the topic appealed to Sean’s immediate interests, as he was searching for a way to siphon off some of the “contributions” that his oil company had earmarked for the president.
Merle gave him a tip or two on how to open a Grand Cayman Island account where money is untouchable and untraceable by his company and the U.S. government.
“Hell, half the Taiwanese companies doing business here in China are set up in the GCI,” Merle had said.
The expansive, high ceiling of the lobby’s bar seemed to impose no limits on Sean. The drinks were on Merle, and Sean allowed the rich vapors to work on him.
Sure the Taiwanese were doing it. Even the president of the United States was stashing money in the Caribbean.
He had let the topic rest, and Merle told him soulfully how gratified he felt that Sean was on the rebound.
Jolted back to the present by loud banging on the tables, Sean studied the shabby mess hall in which he sat. The sweaty seamen danced on the table before him as if he were a god. The galley was a far cry from the chic restaurants of Shanghai.
He remembered sitting on the 86th floor of the Jin Mao Tower, the world’s third tallest building. Elegantly lit, the architectural gems of Shanghai’s famous Bund reflected in the Huangpu River. Merle was his companion for the evening, and like most conversations taking place around the private, wood-paneled club, they were back to discussing money.
Over a plate of Shanghainese noodle, cuttlefish and hairy crab delicacies, Merle blithely revealed to him how he routinely transferred funds for the Consulate’s most shady, but highly valuable, contacts. He routed the money through various institutions to secret accounts in offshore banks.
