The president shook her head. “I know King Abdullah is responsible. So far, he’s been behind every—”
The former president interrupted. This was the main reason he was here. “King Abdullah is innocent of this attack,” he shot back. “I have known King Abdullah for many, many years and there is no way, no way he had anything to do with these EMP attacks. To even suggest that the Saudi royal family had anything to do with this is patently absurd.”
The former president stopped and held his breath, glancing angrily toward the National Security Advisor. “I’m begging you, Bethany,” he said again, this time more softly, “do not retaliate. It doesn’t help us. All you’ll do is cement a hundred generations of Muslim hatred against us. Do this and there won’t be peace in your lifetime, the lifetime of your children or of your great-great-great-grandchildren after that.”
The National Security Advisor leaned impatiently back in his chair. “Worse, you’ll be wasting time and resources—resources that we need in order to rebuild. And that’s the only thing you should be concentrating on right now: rebuilding our nation, our military, our security services, our infrastructure, all of the things we need to survive.”
The new president lowered her eyes uncertainly. She didn’t know. For the first time she considered that they might be right.
But the other suggestions on their list, she was certain of them. She slid the red binder across the table, nudging it up against the National Security Advisor’s arm. “These other things you’re recommending are patently unconstitutional. Not a single thing you have presented here is within my authority. The courts will never allow it, the Supreme Court will—”
“Will what? Roll over in their graves? There is only one surviving member of the entire Supreme Court! Does his one vote control our world? Does one man decide our fate? No! It cannot be. We have no courts or Constitution. We have no laws now, no organization, no state borders, no state militias; we’ve got no working infrastructure, modern equipment, machines, food, sanitation, and no, we have no courts. All we’ve got is more than three hundred million people out there who are a few weeks from starving to death!”
“The nation will not allow me—”
“You don’t have a nation! Don’t you see that? You’ve got absolutely nothing now! Nothing but what little you can scrape together and somehow manage to rebuild. And that is the entire point. That’s the only reason we are here. Yes, we are going to rebuild our nation, but it won’t be like the nation we had before. It will be stronger, more defensible, more perfect. It will be different, we all realize that, but it will be better.”
The president shook her head, her cheeks growing pale. She looked down. Her hands were shaking. She slipped them under the table and bit her lower lip.
She was scared now. No, she was more than scared, she was almost terrified. She had a feeling—a terrible, dark, hopeless feeling—and it was coming from these men. They reeked of desperation and despair. They reeked of lies, deception, power and lust; she knew that, she could feel it. And there was something more, something evil, something loathsome. The only thing she wanted now was to get away from them.
Taking a quick breath, she pushed back against her chair. “I thank you for your input.” She struggled to move her fractured leg. “You are well regarded, and I will certainly consider the advice you have provided.” She started to stand.
The National Security Advisor pushed back and stood beside her. “Consider carefully, Madame President.” His cold eyes narrowed on her now. “There is danger all around us. None of us are safe.”
The former president took a short step forward and placed his hand upon her arm. Lowering his voice, he whispered to her, “We must work together on this, Bethany. That is so important now. If we combine our talents and our powers, we can salvage what we need to in order to raise this nation once again. But we must work quickly and in combination. And yes, it might be necessary to work in private, at least until we have a better understanding of the situation. But working in secret, our combination,” he suddenly paused and cleared his throat as if he had said something wrong. “Our combination of talents and abilities will be enough to see us through,” he finished.
“Think about it,” the National Security Advisor mumbled roughly. “I think you’ll see that we are right.”
*******
The president pushed a button underneath the table and an aide appeared to escort the two men out. They left the large conference room and walked down the hallway in the Command Center, away from the presidential office suite, then paused and turned to face each other.
The former president shook his head. “She’s not going to do it, is she?”
“I told you she wouldn’t,” the younger man said.
The two men stood in the crowded corridor, several military officers and civilians hurrying by them. They waited, letting them pass. “I do think we convinced her not to retaliate against our brother,” the former president whispered when the two men were alone again.
The National Security Advisor considered, then slowly nodded. “Yes, I think so, too. If not, I would have killed her before we left the room.”
A moment of silence followed, the sound of the ceiling fans and air purifiers humming overhead.
“Regarding the other items, she isn’t going to move,” the National Security Advisor hissed.
The former president hunched his shoulders and thought. “Let’s do it, then,” he said.
The National Security Advisor turned and started walking. “It’s already done.”
The older man followed, his steps short and weak. “You have ordered it already?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You weren’t going to give her a chance to think about it, to come around?”
The National Security Advisor kept on walking.
The former president rushed to catch up. “You didn’t give us much time to convince her.” He didn’t sound disappointed.
The National Security Advisor turned to him. “I wasn’t as optimistic about her as you were, I guess.”
SIX
The Paris Office of Danbert, Lexel, Taylor and Driggs, Paris, France
The servant slipped into the private living quarters built behind a hidden wall at the back of the massive office. The large apartment was well used for it wasn’t unusual for his master to sleep at the headquarters building, sometimes not going home for days. It was late at night and the bedroom was dark. Moving silently across the leather-covered floor, the lambskin supple and warm from the heated coils under his feet, he walked toward Edward Kelly’s bed. The red moon cast dim shadows through the fifteen-foot-high arched window, and he could see the whites of Kelly’s eyes shining in the dim light. “Sir,” he whispered carefully.
The senior partner didn’t move.
“Sir,” the servant whispered once again.
The man’s eyes fluttered, moving wildly left and right. Then they opened wider in panic, and his face contorted as if in pain. He breathed heavily, as if he had been running and was suddenly out of breath.
The servant waited, scared, watching his master’s eyes as they fluttered and moved in fear. Realizing the man was dreaming, he reached out and touched his shoulder. “Sir,” he said more loudly.
Kelly sat up quickly, instantly awake. “What, what, what is it?”
“Sir, you have a call.”
“A call? Who?” He stopped and held his tongue, fighting the lingering fear and disorientation, then moved his feet to the side of the bed and placed them on the floor, forcing himself to calm down.
The nightmare had left him breathless and it took him a few seconds to collect himself.
Late-night calls were the norm in his business. The truth was, he hardly ever slept. Like a father of a fussy newborn, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept through an entire night. At any given moment, about half of his clients were awake, stretched across the globe as they were. And at any given time, about a third of them were deali
ng with some crisis or another for which they needed the firm’s help. None of them gave a second thought to jarring him awake—for the money they paid him, they would have called him at his own funeral and been furious if he was a little slow to respond from the other side of the grave. Still, as he sat at the edge of his bed, something about this phone call seemed to cause a sense of worry. It was a sixth sense he had developed. He knew when to tighten up before the punch. “Who is it?” he asked as he stared at the mobile phone.
“General Lafferty, sir.”
General Lehman Lafferty, the new chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Kelly cleared his throat, took a breath, and reached out for the phone. “General, what can I do for you?” he said.
“Edward, we’ve got a little problem,” the chairman answered.
“The world is full of problems, General Lafferty.”
“You think?” The general wasn’t happy and clearly not in the mood to laugh. “We’ve got a personnel issue we’ve got to deal with.”
Kelly checked the luminescent clock atop his ancient Roman nightstand. “They told me the president would be taken care of within the day.”
“She will be. That isn’t why I called.”
“Unless you believe in instantaneous resurrection, I can’t imagine what you’re so worried about.”
The general snorted. The phone hummed a moment, the military STU-IV secure voice encryption creating a quarter-second delay. “You remember my old friend General Brighton?” he asked.
Kelly had to think. “I’m starting to remember.”
“He worked for President—”
“Yes, yes, I know who you mean.”
Another half a moment of silence. “It appears he might have known more than we thought he did. It appears he might have talked.”
Kelly didn’t move, his white legs hanging over the side of the pillow bed. He studied a few strands of hair protruding from his shins. “OK, that could be a problem, but hardly, I have to believe, one that would be impossible to overcome.”
“That depends on who he talked to, doesn’t it, Edward?”
Kelly brushed a hand across his face. His mouth was parched and tart from the nightly shot of whiskey and he wanted to spit the dryness out. “Maybe. But anyone he might have talked to is certainly dead.”
“To use your word, maybe. If we’re lucky. But there might be one we didn’t think about.”
“We didn’t think about. You know, Lafferty, I thought that was what we paid your group for. The people over here would be a little disappointed—”
“No, no, you can’t pin this one on me. It was never part of my contract to—”
Edward instantly shot back. “Listen, you snot-nosed little twit. Before we made you an offer, you were, what, some nameless three-star general counting tanks and training soldiers while looking forward to selling Amway when you retired to pay for some brat’s tuition there at Harvard? I hardly think, General Lafferty,” he spat out the general’s name, “you need remind me of responsibilities or any sort of financial arrangement that might be in place.”
The STU-IV hummed. The other man cleared his throat, a soft muffle through the line.
Kelly arched his back, feeling angry and impatient. “Look, OK, so Brighton might have suspected—”
“He way more than suspected. He was very close.”
“OK. It doesn’t matter. Say he knew. Say he talked. Whoever it was he talked to, it couldn’t be that hard to take care of them. We killed General Brighton. We’ve killed others. Surely we can kill anyone else he might have talked to.”
The general hesitated before he responded, “What about his wife?”
Kelly didn’t move. “The blonde witch. The Goody Two-shoes.”
“Yeah. That’s the one.”
“No freaking way Brighton confided in his wife. He wouldn’t have trusted her.”
“Apparently he did.”
“He wouldn’t do that to her, put her in such danger.”
“He might have if there was no one else to turn to.”
Kelly swished a wad of spit around his mouth. “Is she alive?” he prodded.
“We think so.”
“Have you looked for her?”
“Of course we have.”
“And . . . ?”
“Is it possible you’ve missed the newspapers, Edward?” The general’s voice dripped with deep sarcasm. “Maybe you’ve been busy with French wine and the lovely ladies down in Cannes, but things have been going kind of poorly over here. It’s proving a bit difficult to find her, under the circumstances, don’t you see? We can’t find Washington, D.C., let alone a missing person from the city. So no, we haven’t found her. If we had, she would be dead.”
“Don’t you know anything about her?” Kelly was incredulous now.
“We know she left the city.”
“Alone?”
“No, with her kids.”
Edward’s mind was spinning now. He had an incredible memory, more than photographic, he remembered nearly everything he saw, heard, or read. He wouldn’t have been worth a hundred thousand dollars an hour without extraordinary mental capabilities—and his brain was spinning now, sorting through his cerebral files. “She’s got a son who’s in the Special Forces.”
“He set out to find her. He might be with her, too.”
Edward Kelly swore. Rubbing his feet against the leather floor, he thought. “OK, let’s say that Brighton told her. Assuming you are right and that he knew—”
“Let me say it again, Mr. Kelly. He knew. That’s why it was so, what should we say, convenient, that he died in the attack.”
“OK, whatever, let’s say he knew. I’ll even give you that he told her. Who’s she going to tell? Who would possibly believe her? I’m sorry, general, I still don’t see what’s got your shorts in such a wad.”
The general snorted angrily. “What if I told you that, over the past couple of months, General Brighton had developed a very close and personal relationship with that idiot Brucius Marino.”
“The Secretary of Defense?”
“Yeah. That’s the one.”
“We’ve been watching him! No way they could have been together and we not know.”
“But we do know. Which makes us a little anxious. Why were they meeting? Why were they keeping it a secret? And where is Brucius now?”
Edward Kelly stood up from the bed, his heart racing. He walked toward the window, looking out. The sun was four hours from rising, but he wasn’t going back to bed. He thought, pacing, his body casting a dim shadow across the soft floor from the moon. “We’ll take care of Brucius Marino,” he finally said.
“You’ve been saying that, Edward—”
“Shut up! You hear me, General Lafferty. Shut up and listen to me now. We will take care of Brucius. Now you go find that woman. We can’t have her out there talking, not until we’ve taken care of Marino. How many historic corners have been turned because of some meddling wife? We’re not going to let her turn this corner because she’s messing with things out there.
“So take care of her, OK? We’ve got other problems, much more urgent and demanding. Smash this little fly so the group can concentrate on more important things.”
SEVEN
Raven Rock (Site R), Underground Military Complex, Southern Pennsylvania
President Bethany Rosen sat uncomfortably at her large office desk, her broken leg stretched out before her. She was tired, irritable and, worst of all, terrified—for her country, her countrymen, her staff around her, herself. She felt the crushing responsibility of the presidency and wondered, deep inside, if she was up to the task. Leading the country, even at the best of times and under the best of circumstances, was a nearly impossible task. Leading them out of the darkness that enveloped them now—well, she simply didn’t know. Could she do it? Could anyone do it? She took a breath and sat back, looking at the crowded desk around her. She had a pile of security papers on her left, another
pile on her right, two piles right before her, another stacked against the wall behind her chair. She popped an antacid in her mouth and glanced down at her watch. It was impossible to keep track of time inside the artificial environment of Raven Rock and she was shocked to see that it was 2:05 a.m.
She moved her back painfully. She had no feeling in her broken leg. She’d been working for almost twenty hours straight and she desperately needed rest. So did her staff. She’d been driving them very hard. For every hour she worked, they worked two, and some of them had been without sleep now for almost three days.
Leaning back, she rubbed her eyes, feeling the strain against her forehead and down her neck. She stood and reached for her crutches, then looked over as her chief of staff, a former campaign manager and close friend, entered the private office. “How are the fallout readings in D.C.?” was the first thing she asked.
The chief of staff glanced at his notes and then looked up. “I’m not sure, Madame President. I could find out very quickly.”
The president frowned. It was the answer he had given her this morning when she had asked the same question. “What about the results of the EMP? Is there any residual fallout or other health considerations?”
Wolves in the Night: Wrath & Righteousness: Episode Seven Page 5
