The Sixth Man

by David Baldacci

  “A trick question, obviously. There has only been one since the office was established in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. Islam Karimov is the current officeholder.” He gazed at Sean with a knowing look. “You picked Uzbekistan because it was the most obscure one you could think of at the moment?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  Roy said, “But it’s not just about memorizing data. You have to do something with it.”

  “Give us an example,” said Michelle.

  “After analyzing the data on the Wall, I told our government to help the Afghans increase poppy production.”

  “Why would you do that? It’s used to make opium, which is the main ingredient in heroin,” said Sean.

  “Afghanistan had a blight when I first came on board at the E-Program. It knocked poppy production down thirty percent.”

  “But isn’t that a good thing?” asked Michelle.

  “Not really. When you have a shortage of something, what happens?”

  “The price of the commodity goes up,” answered Sean.

  “Right. The Taliban derive ninety-two percent of their revenue from the opium poppy sales. Because of the blight their income went up nearly sixty percent. It gave them a lot more resources to hurt us. It was speculated in the media that NATO had intentionally introduced the blight in an effort to destroy the poppy production. I conjectured that it was the Taliban that actually did so to cause the prices to skyrocket.”

  “Why did you think that?” asked Sean.

  “On the Wall was an article published in an obscure agricultural journal. It mentioned a scientist whom I recognized as a sympathizer for the Taliban. The article stated that this scientist had traveled to India where it’s believed the blight originated about six months before it appeared in Helmand and Kandahar. He brought the source of the blight back and the Taliban caused the blight to jack up prices. So it was my recommendation for the US to stop the blight from happening again and to allow more land for poppy production. Now the Taliban’s income is projected to fall by half next year. But I also have a little surprise planned for them.”

  “Which is?”

  “We’ve introduced a hybrid seed into the poppy plant production in Afghanistan. The poppies turn out just fine. However, when you try to use those poppies to make heroin you end up with something far closer to aspirin. So the poppy becomes what it always was supposed to be, a pretty plant.”

  “And you proposed that?” asked Michelle. “How?”

  “The Wall provides me with everything, but I supplement it with things that I learn on my own. The hybrid at first glance didn’t seem to be anything special when I read about it. It wasn’t even being discussed in the context of poppy production and certainly not in the effort against the Taliban. But when I learned of it and saw that it could be extended to such an effort I proposed it as a tactical maneuver with potentially strategic implications.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sean.

  Roy readjusted his glasses. He looked like the absentminded professor addressing a class. “Because now it goes far beyond mere supply and demand and price points. If the criminal element knows it can’t rely on the integrity of Afghan poppy production it won’t buy from them under any circumstances. It also has the added benefit of the drug cartels being very angry with the Taliban for ruining a year’s worth of heroin production. That’s billions of dollars. The cartel will take its revenge with the result that many of the Taliban’s higher-ups will end up dead. With poppy production out of play other crop possibilities become viable, none of which will yield nearly the same amount of money to terrorists fighting us. Farmers will still be able to make a decent living, and the cartel will have to search for another source of heroin ingredients. Win-win for us.”

  “Pretty impressive,” said Michelle.

  “I can see the forest and every tree in it. It’s an ecosystem of sorts where everything impacts everything else. I can see how things connect to one another, no matter how unconnected they might seem.”

  Michelle sat back. “You would absolutely rock on Jeopardy.”

  Roy looked alarmed at the thought. “No, I’d be too nervous. I’d get tongue-tied.”

  “Nervous?” exclaimed Sean. “That’s just a game show. You’re deciding policy for the United States of America.”

  “But I’m not competing with anyone. It’s just me. It’s not the same.”

  “If you say so,” replied Sean, who looked thoroughly unconvinced of this.

  “We have satellites positioned all around the globe. Much of what I see on the Wall are real-time video of events in every country.” He paused. “It’s a little like being God peering down at his creations, seeing what they’re up to, and then flinging down fire and brimstone to those who most deserve it. I don’t really care for that part of it.”

  Michelle stared into the fire. “I bet. And it creeps me out that there are people watching everything you do from hundreds of miles up.”

  Sean said, “They’re not watching everybody and everything, Michelle. With over six billion people on the planet that would be impossible.”

  She looked at Sean. “Oh yeah? Well, they can keep eyes on whoever they want to. Remember when we went out to Edgar’s house? No one followed us. No one could have seen us from the ground. But those goons still showed up. They knew we were there somehow. I bet they have eyes in the sky on Edgar’s home.”

  Roy looked at her and said, “Eyes in the sky on my house?”

  She said, “Yep. As far as I can see it’s the only way it could have worked.”

  In the firelight Roy’s eyes seemed magnified behind the glasses. “Do you think the satellite was watching my house 24/7?”

  Sean glanced at Michelle. He said, “Twenty-four/seven? I don’t know. Why?”

  Roy just kept staring at the fire and didn’t say anything.

  Finally what he was getting at dawned on Sean. He said, “Hold on. If that’s the case, how did the satellite not see the people planting the bodies in your barn?”

  Roy stirred and turned to him. “There can only be one answer to that, of course. Someone ordered the satellite to look away at the precise time it was being done.”

  “That would leave a paper trail. And that would take some pretty heavy authorization,” said Sean.

  “Like the secretary of DHS,” said Roy.

  CHAPTER

  79

  “GIVE ME THE status. Bad?”

  Mason Quantrell sat in a deep leather seat of his luxurious private jet that was actually a Boeing 787 Dreamliner customized for its fortunate owner. It had a painting of the fleet-footed Mercury on its tail representing the symbol of Quantrell’s company. The jet was far larger and more costly than Peter Bunting’s Gulfstream G550. Yet as a billionaire Mason Quantrell could easily afford the most expensive toys on the market. And in truth Uncle Sam had footed a large part of its cost.

  “Pretty bad,” replied the only other person in the passenger cabin.

  James Harkes sat back and sipped a glass of water while Quantrell was already working on his second bourbon and water. The CEO looked haggard, with quarter-moon bags under his eyes.

  “She’s going to come at you hard, Mr. Quantrell.”

  Quantrell spread his hands helplessly. “But after our last meeting things seemed fine. And then I got the call from Bunting. Right in my office, no less. The ballsy prick. He dared us to trace him.”

  “And you couldn’t?”

  “No,” Quantrell said glumly. “The bastard was always good at the cloak-and-dagger stuff. Did you know I recruited him out of the PhD program at Stanford?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “He was in Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship before that. He did college in less than three years. Was already on people’s radars for some white papers he’d published on the rising threat of global terrorism and how best to deal with it. The work was very specific. He very nearly predicted 9/11 twenty years before it happened.”

>   “So he came to work for you?”

  Quantrell nodded as the plane banked left and began its initial descent. “For three years. He did a great job, really turned things around for us. Hell, I was grooming him back then to run the whole damn company. But he had other ideas.”

  “The E-Program? Seems like you would have jumped on that.”

  “I would have but he never gave me the chance. He left, started his own business, and quickly moved up the pecking order of contractors. I have to admit his stuff was good. No, it was better than good. And then he took it up to a whole other level with the E-Program.”

  “Ecclesiastes,” said Harkes. “The E-Program?”

  “What? Oh, right. Didn’t know the man had a biblical side to him.” Quantrell downed the rest of his drink. “And then he sold the concept to the folks that mattered in D.C. Now the rest of us have been eating his dust for years.”

  “Ever think of suing?”

  “No grounds. He developed the stuff after he left me and he never violated the noncompete we had. Way too smart for that. No, I hate him because I don’t like to lose. And with him around I’ve been losing. A lot.” He put his empty glass down and buckled his seat belt as the plane hit some turbulence. “But Ellen Foster can hurt me a lot more. And I’m not talking just dollars and cents.”

  “Yes she can,” agreed Harkes.

  “President gave her carte blanche.”

  “Yes he did.”

  “Collateral damage? Meaning me?”

  “Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “But she has to tie it into Bunting and the others. How does she plan to get to them?”

  “She has an ace in the hole,” noted Harkes.

  “Who?”

  “Megan Riley.”

  Quantrell sat forward, looking astonished. “The lawyer? She’s one of Ellen’s people?”

  “No. She was kidnapped from Maine. Foster is holding her somewhere.”

  Quantrell rubbed his chin. “This really is extraordinary.”

  “Yes it is,” agreed Harkes.

  “She kept me out of the loop on that.”

  “Me too, until now.”

  “And Foster is planning to use her to get to Bunting and the others? How?”

  “Playing on their guilt. And their conscience. Riley is an innocent victim in all this. If it’s played right, we can use her to draw them out.”

  “And Foster wants to survive all this with her reputation and Cabinet position in place?”

  “Yes she does. I told her it would be hard but not impossible.”

  “Does she require my termination as part of the plan?”

  “Desires, but does not require,” was Harkes’s diplomatic reply.

  “Then we have an opening.”

  “I think we do. A very advantageous one for you if we play it just right.”

  Quantrell said, “You know what they’re doing, of course.”

  “They’re playing each of you against the other. Bunting called you to turn you against Foster. And Paul corralled Foster in that ladies’ room and did the same thing.”

  “Clever. Foster has clearly fallen hook, line, and sinker for it. I have to admit Bunting scared the crap out of me when he called.”

  “And Kelly Paul can be very persuasive.”

  “She’s the most worrisome pawn on the board right now,” said Quantrell.

  “I would hardly call her a pawn, sir. We can’t underestimate the woman.”

  “Had run-ins with her before?’

  “A couple of times. And each time the result was not one that I desired.”

  “If she can beat you, Harkes, she scares the shit out of me.”

  “She has to know I’m involved in this because Bunting would have told her, but they don’t know I’m working for you. No one knows that.”

  “My ace in the hole.” Quantrell gave a satisfied smile. “How quickly can you deploy the Riley angle?”

  “As soon as you say go, Mr. Quantrell.”

  “Go,” replied the CEO with Mercury-like quickness.

  CHAPTER

  80

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE I never thought of that,” said Bunting.

  He stared over at Kelly Paul as she sat in a chair and looked down at her phone. She had just gotten off a call with Sean King. She and Bunting were in her “shared” apartment in New York City, not that far from Bunting’s brownstone. The mansion was empty, his family safe, for now.

  “The satellite coverage,” Paul said.

  “Twenty-four/seven,” Bunting added.

  “Provided by DHS?”

  “I suppose. Although if they did it, they didn’t bother to tell me about it.” He looked out the window, where the rain beat relentlessly down. “But moving those eyes is not done lightly,” he said. “Edgar would’ve been a priority for them.”

  “It might very well require Foster’s signature,” agreed Paul. “That’s a paper trail.”

  “Now if we can just prove the satellite was watching and that order was issued.”

  Paul didn’t say anything.

  “What are you thinking, Kelly?”

  “What if it wasn’t moved?”

  Bunting looked away from the window. “What do you mean?”

  “What if the satellite saw exactly what happened?”

  “Are you alleging that your brother is indeed a serial killer?” Bunting said in a bewildered tone.

  “No.”

  “Okay. So the only other conclusion is that they framed him. They planted the bodies in that barn. If that were the plan, why would they allow the eyes in the sky to watch? It would prove that your brother was innocent. It would have destroyed their plan. And more to the point, that fact would have come out by now.”

  “Not necessarily. You know as well as I do that satellite platforms vary greatly. And who is to say it was a government one?”

  “You mean commercial?”

  “Or essentially a private one.”

  “Why?” asked Bunting.

  “If the sat was government-owned it would be harder to control the information, even for Foster. But if it were private eyes?”

  “Which she might have agreed to since she was planning this whole campaign with Quantrell against me and the E-Program outside of DHS channels.”

  “Or it might be more complicated than that.”

  “How?”

  “Mercury has a number of satellites, correct?”

  “Sure. Quantrell was one of the first in the field.”

  “So let’s say he has the bird on Eddie’s property too. They pick a weekday when Eddie is in D.C. Foster orders her sat to look away. They take the bodies in and bury them in the barn in a way that will be easily discoverable later. They phone in a tip to the police, and my brother takes the fall.”

  “But why wouldn’t Quantrell turn his bird off too?” asked Bunting. Before she could answer his question, he did. “In case things went to hell he’d have leverage with Foster.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So how do we confirm this?”

  “There are ways. I’ll get working on them.”