Executive Treason

by Grossman, Gary H.

  Morgan Taylor hated it, but it wasn’t the kind of job you simply retired from. He accepted it for two reasons. First, he admired Henry Lamden. The second and real reason, decided in the instant that Lamden asked him, was that he had unfinished business. He claimed it was professional. Reporters speculated it was more personal. He was determined to find out who was responsible for stealing his presidency. Teddy Lodge was the end to the means, but not the means itself. Someone else had patiently manipulated the political process for more than forty years. He had failed, which Taylor assumed would be hard for a man who counted on winning.

  The same could be said for Morgan Taylor.

  He won at Annapolis, graduating in the top ten percent of his class. He won in the air, as an aircraft carrier Super Hornet commander. He won on the ground, coming out alive after a crash landing in Iraq. That was thanks to a man who remained close to him today. He won in business as an executive for Boeing. He won in the Senate, and he won the presidency.

  Now 54, Taylor kept to a military regime and a military look. His weight remained a relatively fat-free 195 pounds, and his hair was no longer than when he was in the Navy. He exercised like he’d go hungry without it and kept current in the cockpit of almost everything the Navy had in the air.

  While he wore black pinstriped Brooks Brothers suits during work hours, he couldn’t wait to get into loose-fitting turtlenecks, khakis, and a Navy flight jacket. Sometimes he wished he could chuck the suits in his closet altogether. He got close, but when Lamden asked him to remain in government, he unpacked his suits and sent them back for a pressing. For his Senate confirmation hearings, he wore his favorite, which was really hard to tell since they all looked the same.

  Taylor testified that the country could not rest. When asked for proof, Taylor couldn’t provide any. In fact, all the evidence in hand pointed to a one-time plot. But Morgan Taylor reminded the senators of the Islamic terrorist attack in February 1993. Their bomb below the World Trade Center towers damaged but did not destroy the buildings. Eight years later, with greater resolve and a deadlier plan, al-Qaeda brought down both massive towers. “The same could happen with the United States presidency.”

  “No, this is not a time to breathe easier. Not a time to celebrate,” he told the senators. “Not a time to think the country is safe. The American political process is the target now. The goal is to undermine America’s foreign policy, destroy ties with our allies, and demolish our infrastructure. Our standing in the world can collapse like the World Trade Center towers.” What he didn’t say was, of course, the guiding political principal of the Moslem world: The day the Great Satan falls, the State of Israel disintegrates.

  It was all so clear to Morgan Taylor. The press was right. It was personal.

  So, Taylor accepted Henry Lamden’s call. He testified before Congressional investigative committees, at his Senate confirmation hearings, then raised his right hand and once again swore on the Bible to uphold the Constitution of the United States, which he had done his entire military and political life. In doing so, he became the first ex-president ever to move into the number-two seat.

  The new president gave Vice President Taylor wide-ranging, though not public, powers to do it. And he allowed Taylor to keep a unique asset on the payroll: a man by the name of Scott Roarke.

  FBI Labs

  Quantico, Virginia

  “No, no, no. His jaw is bigger. Wider.”

  Secret Service Agent Scott Roarke slid his deep black coffee to the side of the standard issue metal desk, and leaned closer to the computer monitor. He pointed to the image on the screen—the work of FBI photo age-progression expert Duane “Touch” Parsons.

  “Broaden it. And a bit more angular, Touch.” Roarke said.

  He’d spent a good deal of time with Parsons, whose nickname fit perfectly. Parsons had the knack. It was his touch that had convinced Roarke, and, in turn, President Morgan Taylor, that Congressman Teddy Lodge was not the man he claimed to be. Visual evidence, although not court-worthy, was in Parson’s age-progression photographs.

  Parsons lived at his computer day and night. Despite his weakness for Krispy Kreme donuts, ever-present at his desk, Parsons remained trim and fit. Roarke didn’t know when or how he stayed in shape. Maybe he’s just one of those guys with a fast metabolism. Whatever the case, Scott Roarke was happy he was at the computer.

  Now the two men worked on another, perhaps more complex, though completely related, puzzle.

  Ever since Roarke was a kid, plucked from a petty theft by an L.A. beat cop and given the choice to straighten out under the tutelage of a renowned Tae Kwon Do master or go to jail, Roarke listened to people in uniforms and experts. They took the form of drill sergeants in the army, officers in Special Forces, FBI investigators who really did know how to read evidence like the back of their hands, and most of all, his boss and mentor, Morgan Taylor.

  These were the kind of men Roarke related to. And for good reason: He lived to see another day because of them. Yet, most of his experiences were not recorded in any official reports. Not his missions to China, Iran, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Not his work in uniform. Not his assignments in plainclothes.

  Roarke stood six-feet even. He had a tight, muscular frame, but nothing that would draw attention to his strength. He always traveled with a Sig Sauer P229, but his smile disarmed almost everyone. His laugh did even more. And his flirtatious wit made him an extremely eligible bachelor.

  Only a few women had actually gotten close to the small scar under his chin. These days, there was one woman in particular.

  Roarke’s dark brown hair showed no signs of gray. He hoped it would stay that way for a while. He was 38 years old.

  Roarke and Taylor shared a bond that superseded any visible delineation of duty—and for good reason. Roarke had saved U.S. Navy Commander Taylor’s life in Iraq after a missile took out his fighter. Years later, then-President Taylor gave Roarke a strictly off-the-books job of coordinating counter-terrorism intel under a cloaked White House operation called “PD 16,” for Presidential Directive 1600. Roarke was the charter member. Actually, he was the operation’s only member. He moved about freely with Taylor’s permission. Considering what he’d recently accomplished, the new chief executive wasn’t about to change the natural order of things. Taylor’s going-forward “arrangement” with Henry Lamden included the continued funding of Roarke’s basement office.

  Like always, Roarke was on his own. He clocked in at the Secret Service, but unlike the 900 other agents, he had special privileges and other duties. Most important to him, he didn’t have to wear a tie. Next, he never had to stand vigil for endless hours while the president and other key members of the executive branch did everything from make speeches to screw their wives or girlfriends. He also didn’t have to talk into his sleeve to other bullet-stoppers stationed around their perpetual targets. And he only reported to one man: Morgan Taylor.

  Roarke had thought about giving it all up. A year ago, he was close to looking for a high-paying security job in the private sector. That was before he vowed—like Taylor—to clean up some unfinished business.

  So Roarke continued to work in the shadows, poring over the reams of public testimony and classified documents that followed the death of President-elect Lodge more than four months earlier.

  The assassin who killed Lodge had posed as a Capitol policeman. Ballistics had proven that an officer with fake ID pulled the trigger. Roarke was certain that he was the same man who shot Lodge’s wife nearly a year ago—the very act that propelled a sympathy vote and swept Lodge past Taylor in the election. He also placed the assassin at three other murders.

  While the FBI had developed its profile, Roarke quietly considered his own. Age 30-35, yet able to pass as almost anybody 20 to 60. Expert marksman. So good that people initially thought he blew the assassination of Teddy Lodge, when in reality he accurately hit his target, Mrs. Jennifer Lodge. An actor of sorts, with the ability to effect
ively disguise himself. Trained in dialects, allowing him to blend in with no notice. Definitely the muscle, probably not the brain.

  The evidence pointed to a man with honed athletic abilities, a convincing manner, and an incredible understanding of forensics. With the exception of quite literally two missteps—a latent foot impression against a hotel wall in Hudson, New York, and another thousands of miles away along a riverbank in Utah—he left no clues. A professional, Roarke considered, with very special training, including the precise eye of a marksman. But there was something extra-remarkable about him. Roarke looked for a pattern in his work. Bold strikes in the middle of the day—a main street, a riverbed, inside a commuter train, and even under the Capitol Rotunda. Every hit was different. There were no common denominators, except for the killer’s keen ability to change appearances almost instantly.

  As time wore on, Roarke developed an odd sense of admiration for the man’s talents. He knows it all. That means he was a great student with a great teacher. No, he decided. Different people, from different disciplines taught him…trained him. While the FBI had their own profilers on the investigation, Scott Roarke was coming to his own conclusions. This was a man who was not only the perfect killer, he was a talented actor. He had two classical skills. Roarke realized he needed to look in two places to find him.

  The man had murdered Lodge’s wife, key in the plot to manipulate the congressman’s rise to power, ultimately Lodge himself, and God only knows how many others. Taylor said it all after the inauguration of Lodge’s successor and running mate: “Find the assassin, and we’ll find the man behind him.”

  First, Roarke needed to review whatever footage existed. The assassin had posed as a member of the Capitol Police, gotten access to the Rotunda, and at a key moment, made his shot. The still photographer at the Rotunda had nothing. Michael O’Connell, the New York Times reporter shooting a DV camera, only had the back of the killer’s head from twenty feet away. Roarke found one quick shot on the pool videotape coverage from the Capitol shootout. But the camera never really focused on him. He was barely visible in a wide shot that panned the room—certainly not enough to make a true ID. He was turned to the side, his hat covered his forehead. He was out of the light. But there he was.

  Roarke tried to glean something from the man’s body language, his bulk, his posture. Upright. Stiff. Alert. Watching everyone in one glance. Probably military-trained. Half of the puzzle.

  What do you look like? That was clearly Roarke’s primary problem. There were descriptions. But each one was of a different man—all presumed to be the same killer.

  A 20-year-old gang member. A 40-something businessman. An insurance agent in his thirties. A fisherman of undetermined age. One dark-haired, another balding, another gray. The Capitol policeman.

  No fingerprints. No DNA. No photographs. The only evidence in common with some of the murders, but not all, was the size 11 boot print. Maybe even that was a red herring.

  A different identity with every role he played.

  Roarke needed to give him a name—a working identity. He thought for weeks, and then it came to him. Depp, for Johnny Depp. He decided on naming his quarry after an actor who always transformed himself adeptly. He even played a master of disguises in the film Donnie Brasco.

  Depp fit him perfectly. It showed proper respect for a man Roarke realized he could never underestimate.

  Roarke actually had provided a description himself. He’d had fleeting eye contact with Depp in the Rotunda when the killer was disguised as the policeman. But it was more likely that the assassin could pick Roarke out of a crowd quicker than he could spot Depp. That worried the Secret Service agent because it would give his prey a definite advantage the next time they’d meet, and he was certain—deadly certain—they’d meet again.

  Touch worked with sketches of each “identity.” They’d been drawn by FBI artists at the scene of Jennifer Lodge’s death in upstate New York and the other killings he could be tied to. Now, he was reconfiguring the sketch based on Roarke’s description. Once completed, it would integrate with the others in a computer program a Littleton, Massachusetts, firm, Viisage Technology Ltd., had provided after 9/11.

  Clearly, all of the sketches portrayed vastly different men. But Roarke was personally certain he was looking for a lone accomplished killer. His goal was to come up with a reliable composite image, good enough to make Depp’s mother proud.

  “More like this?” Parsons asked after he’d made the changes on the jaw.

  “Not sure.” Roarke looked more closely. “No,” he said on second thought. “Split the difference.”

  Parsons used his mouse to drag the jaw line out. Then he adjusted the shape of the chin to Roarke’s specifications.

  “Once I mess with one thing, I have to adjust everything else. You know, keep the face in perspective. Let me just play with it a bit.”

  “But his eyes still need…”

  Parsons cut him off. “Do I tell you how to jump in front of the president or bust down a door?”

  “No.” Roarke saw where he was going.

  “Then let me do what I know how to do.”

  “Your toys. Be my guest.”

  Parsons worked on a number of things. Thinning the eyes, making them colder. Raising the ears. Lengthening the nose. Everything connected with the last set of changes Roarke requested.

  “So what exactly are we looking for in all of the pictures?” asked the Secret Service agent.

  “We?”

  “Excuse me. What are you looking for?” It was always like this with Roarke and Parsons.

  “I am looking for common denominators to all the descriptions. I try them out. I grow them on a face, the computer whirs a little and tells me if I’m full of shit.”

  “And by the way, these are not pictures, so don’t expect perfection,” Parsons complained.

  “Okay, drawings.”

  Parsons typed in a new line of code and sat back. “Sketches,” he said, correcting Roarke again.

  “Sketches. And?” Roarke asked encouragingly.

  “And what?” Parsons replied.

  “And now what’s happening? You stopped.”

  “I stopped, but Ferret’s working on it.” Ferret was the Department of Defense’s name for FRT or “Face Recognition Technology,” the program pioneered in the early 1990s, principally researched at MIT’s Media labs. “The computer’s thinking. It’s scratching its hard drive.”

  Roarke looked confused for the moment.

  “Its head, you dumbass. Ferret is scratching its head looking for commonality. And if this little project of yours crashes my computer, well, if you break it, you bought it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Parsons displayed a holier-than-thou attitude most of the time. Roarke learned to accept it. The 40-year-old FBI expert lived in a world of algorithms. He questioned everything and everybody. He never seemed satisfied that he’d be given enough time or information to properly solve a problem.

  “You’re all always in a rush. Every one of you spooks,” he said.

  “I’m not a spook.”

  Parsons ignored the answer. “Gotta have it now. Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie.”

  At least Parsons was right about that. Of course, time was never on Roarke’s side, either. But the FBI graphic artist and programmer delivered, and that’s what made him Roarke’s go-to geek. Now the agent was back at Parson’s door.

  “You realize we’d both be better off if you’d give me something reasonable to work with.”

  “Sorry, but…”

  “Photographs, Roarke. Photographs. Just once. Real pictures. Ever hear of film? Or maybe I can introduce you to a remarkable invention called a digital camera. Sony. Minolta, even Kodak’s got it. Four, five, six megapixels. Amazing things.”

  Roarke knew this would go on for awhile. It was simply the cost of doing business with such a talent.

  “What was I thinking?” Roarke sar
castically asked. “I’ll go out, find, and capture Depp. Then I’ll ask him to stand still for a second and say ‘cheese.’ Shouldn’t be a problem. After that I’ll pat him on the back and say ‘thanks’ and ‘oh, by the way, you can go back to killing important people now.’ Then I’ll post a real picture of him and see if I can track him down again. But wait. If I knew who he was and where he was, why would I be here?” It was time to re-ask his question. “What the fuck are you looking for?”

  “All right,” Parsons said shaking his head. “Using biometric technology designed to ID a person from distinguishing facial traits, the computer is trying to determine if there are any signatures common to each sketch.”

  “In other words?” Roarke asked, hoping to get a clearer description.

  “Measuring characteristics, like the distance between the eyes, the dimensions of the nose, the angle of the jaw. Ferret’s struggling to interpret data to create a template. Based solely on the multiple images, created by different people, the chances are slim that we’ll get an accurate portrait. But since you ask, we’re looking for face-to-face analogies. Are the eyes similar enough? The bridge of the nose? The lips? Teeth? The things that are hardest to cosmetically change. The program is processing distinct facial regions, encoding parameters from the rectified images, and attempting to establish a norm.”

  “And it works?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Well, that’s the truth. I’d say Ferret works pretty well provided the materials at hand are good.”

  “Like a photograph?”

  “Even then, it’s no slam dunk,” Touch allowed. “It’s best when the subject’s face occupies the whole image. Unless they’re holding a number in front of their chest, you tell me how many bad guys will pose for the camera?”

  “Back to my point. I got it.”

  “No, you don’t. Not yet,” the FBI expert complained. “Ferret recognizes the improbability of that. It’s programmed to examine more complex images and sort out the extraneous, re-focusing on potential faces within any given field. Using a neural network-based face location system, it locates possible faces within an un-composed image.”