Armageddon Conspiracy

by John Thompson

  “Sounds like a movie,” Smythe said.

  Brent was about to agree when there was a knock on Smythe’s door and Betty Dowager put her head inside. Her glance took in both men, and her expression became severe. “Mr. Biddle is on the phone,” she said in a cold voice, as if she knew he’d already violated the gag order. “The call is coming to your office.”

  Brent felt Betty’s eyes burning into his back as he ran next door, but he didn’t care. “Give me the details,” Biddle barked as soon as he picked up the phone.

  Brent filled him in on all of it.

  “What did Spencer say?”

  “To let them take it.”

  “Then it was the right thing to do,” Biddle said without hesitation. “I trust his judgment implicitly.”

  “I’m glad you do. We’ve let the government walk out with our client’s money without doing a thing.”

  “I’m sure Spencer realized that now was not the time to fight.”

  “Well, I want to know when it will be.”

  “When Spencer tells us. I want you to sit down with him as soon as he’s available and let him review the documents.”

  Something in Biddle’s tone troubled him, a sound of finality, as if certain unfavorable conclusions had already been drawn. “I assume we’re going to support our client. Dr. Faisal is no terrorist.”

  “The FBI will have to tell us that,” Biddle said.

  “Dr. Faisal entrusted us with his money!” Brent said, feeling his temper begin to rise. “He deserves our full backing until the facts are in!”

  “We also need to protect the firm,” Biddle said. “We will do what is right, but for now, the first thing is for you to meet with Spencer as soon as possible.”

  There was a brief silence. Brent could hear the hissing of their sat-phone connection. “By the way,” Biddle added, “I’m sure there’s a gag order surrounding this, but in any case we don’t need it getting out. You haven’t told anybody, have you?”

  “No,” Brent lied.

  • • •

  At exactly three o’clock, Brent stood at the bay window in Genesis Advisors’ first-floor reception room and watched a silver Mercedes S500 pull to the curb. He held his umbrella over his head, rushed out through the rain and opened the passenger side door.

  “Brent Lucas?” the man behind the wheel asked. When Brent nodded, he reached out his hand. “Spencer McDonald.”

  Brent guessed McDonald was in his late fifties. He had a pale complexion, a swelling stomach, and thinning gray hair that had once been light brown. His blue eyes hid their cleverness behind wire rim glasses, and a ring of soft fat at the neck almost camouflaged the stubbornness of his jaw.

  “I hope you intend to fight this,” Brent fumed, “because I certainly do.”

  McDonald pulled away from the curb. “I understand how you feel; however, the last thing we need right now is anger and irrationality.”

  “I can be pissed off without being irrational,” Brent snapped.

  McDonald said nothing as he turned left on Fifth Avenue and followed the flow of traffic downtown. They turned right on Sixty-Fifth and headed across Central Park, then turned south again. Brent assumed they were headed to an office somewhere on the West Side, but then McDonald surprised him by turning into the Lincoln Tunnel. “Where are we going?” he demanded.

  “My house.”

  “Why?”

  McDonald drew a ragged breath as he slowed behind the line of barely moving cars. When Brent glanced over he could see a line of sweat along McDonald’s hairline. The man smelled as if he’d just run several miles. McDonald seemed to sense the examination. “I’ve had a very bad day,” he said tersely.

  “So have I,” Brent shot back.

  “Look, if this case involves the war on terrorism, I don’t trust the walls of my office.”

  “Come on,” Brent scoffed. “You can’t believe the government’s bugging us!”

  McDonald shrugged, his eyes on the traffic ahead. “Better safe than sorry.”

  Out the other end of the tunnel, they drove south on the New Jersey Turnpike then west on Route 280 to the Oranges. The real estate became fancier and the properties larger as they headed into West Orange, and McDonald finally turned between two brick gateposts into the long driveway of a multi-acre estate. They parked on a graveled circle in front of a large house with white columns.

  McDonald led the way through the front door then down a long hall to a paneled library. He sat behind an antique desk and pointed Brent to an overstuffed chair. In spite of the grandness of the house, Brent found its atmosphere oddly sterile. The desk held a scattering of papers but no mementos or family photographs, nothing of an idiosyncratic or personal nature.

  Also, the room had a stuffy odor, as though it had been closed up too long. The bookshelves held expensive leather bound volumes, the kind people liked to show off but never seemed to read. The paintings on the walls were bland as hotel art, suggesting nothing of what Spencer McDonald loved or did in his spare hours. Brent envisioned a guy who’d spent too many years working the brutal hours of a Manhattan attorney, who’d created enough wealth to buy this impressive house but never had the time to build a life.

  Brent waited while McDonald studied the FBI’s seizure documents. His hands shook noticeably as he read, as though he suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Finally, he looked up and scowled. “Well, it’s tight. They did their homework.”

  “What’s it based on?”

  “Secret testimony.”

  “Come off it! Not in America!”

  “Welcome to the war on terrorism.”

  “We have to fight it!”

  McDonald said nothing.

  “We have to fight it,” Brent repeated.

  “Not if Prescott Biddle says we don’t,” McDonald said at last.

  “Did you talk to him? Is that what he said?”

  “If it became public that one of your largest international accounts has been seized by the government, other international accounts might consider pulling out.” McDonald looked at him and blinked slowly. “The loss could be significant.”

  “Let me tell you what would be a whole lot worse,” Brent shot back. “That people find out we didn’t lift a finger to stop it!”

  McDonald rubbed a finger across his chin then folded his hands together in a gesture of finality. “That won’t happen, assuming we can trust the discretion of everyone involved.”

  “So you and Biddle want to walk away from my client?” Brent said in a stinging tone.

  “Well . . . I don’t know if I’d call it walking away.”

  Brent turned and looked through the window. He didn’t know if McDonald was still talking because there was a noise in his head like a hive of angry bees. “I need to get back to my office.”

  “One last thing, Mr. Lucas.”

  Brent turned slowly and saw that McDonald had fixed him with a harsh stare. “What?” he snapped.

  “You’re making it very clear that you don’t agree with Mr. Biddle’s decision on this matter. Regardless of your personal feelings, there is the government’s gag order to consider.” McDonald paused, pursing his lips.

  “What about it?”

  “You need to obey it.”

  Brent shrugged. “I’ll try.”

  McDonald’s voice took on a warning note. “You need to do better than try.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  PROJECT SEAHAWK, NEWARK, NJ, JUNE 29

  AGENT JENKINS PACED THE FLOOR of her tiny office, her heels catching on the frayed polyester carpet each time she turned. She’d been arguing with herself for the past twenty minutes, dying to pick up the phone and call her boss, but resisting because it had only been six days since the poor bastard’s open-heart surgery.

  Finally, deciding to spare him, she called FBI headquarters in Washington. She waited to get through to the Executive Assistant Director in charge of Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, and then told the man in no uncertain terms that
she needed her people off the POTUS assignment and back on port security. She cited the CIA memo, saying she had to assume it was serious and accurate.

  The EAD sidestepped and said it was out of his control because she and her staff now reported through the chain of command at Homeland Security and Department of Justice. Jenkins swallowed her desire to tell the EAD where to stick it. Instead, she thanked him and called the Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security at Homeland Security, someone she’d wanted to avoid because she knew from previous dealings that he was a political hack with neither law enforcement expertise nor guts.

  She made the same request, but the Undersecretary coughed and cleared his throat then reminded her that the Threat Advisory System was at yellow. The President’s staff wanted it to remain there, he said, and her request was not consistent with a yellow threat level. With the President’s trip imminent, it was vital that her staff help with routine security checks.

  Jenkins suggested that rather than worrying about the nicety of keeping the threat level unchanged, they should worry about keeping the President safe. At that point the Undersecretary’s voice became icy. Did Jenkins feel prepared to stake her career on her recommendation? The Undersecretary suggested that Agent Jenkins should think long and hard. It could be a lonely position, he said.

  Jenkins hung up and resumed pacing.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  OYSTER BAY, LONG ISLAND, JUNE 29

  ABU SAYEED SAT ALONE IN the silent cottage, perched atop the missile crate where he’d spent much of the day. The weapons fixated him, drew him in with a kind of magical intensity. He felt seduced by their power, the psychological devastation they would wreak.

  He yearned to lift the cover off the crate, remove one of the weapons, and embrace its deadly symmetry, as if that might distract him somehow from his error in judgment. Naif! He should never have permitted him to go off with the Christian minister. Too many things could go wrong, and Naif was far too important to the mission.

  He sat a while longer, struggling with his anxiety, until finally the stillness became more than he could bear and he took out his cell phone and dialed.

  In only seconds he heard the welcome sound of Naif’s voice. “The objective is in sight.”

  Abu Sayeed turned his eyes to heaven. Thanks be to Allah. “Take great care, my brother,” Abu Sayeed ordered. “Allah blesses you.” He clicked off.

  He stood, felt the stiffness in his legs and went to the window where he moved the blackout shade to peek out at the rain-splattered courtyard, wondering at the whereabouts of his hidden sentry. This endless waiting ate at all of them but wore hardest on Mohammed, whose troubled emotions had always been too close to the surface. Unfortunately, his time in the shipping crate had only made things worse.

  Mohammed’s lack of control was the reason he’d had to send Naif on today’s mission, a silly errand that he knew was superfluous to Allah’s greater purpose. Only, it had been part of his agreement with Biddle and something he therefore could not avoid. The murder of Khaled Faisal was at best a gesture of vanity, and the killing of the other man was for Biddle’s benefit alone. What did any of that matter if they failed in their holy purpose?

  Unable to stand his own anxiety and the imprisoning cottage walls, he opened the door and went out. The pounding rain wet his face and hair and soaked him to the skin almost at once. He glanced around, but Mohammed was invisible, concealed in the trees where he could watch the driveway for approaching vehicles and at the same time see anyone entering the courtyard from the other side.

  Abu Sayeed walked to where the opening in the tall hedge gave a view of the water. Rain dripped from his nose and ran into his eyes as he searched for the outline of Biddle’s yacht. It was tied to the long dock only seventy-five yards away but nearly invisible in the mist.

  He stared at its faint shape, filled with a sudden premonition that the winds of fortune were shifting ever so slightly and beginning to blow against him. Allah had blessed him to this point, but he sensed that sending Naif on a fool’s errand was an insult to God and meant there would be danger now where there had been none before. Because of it, once darkness fell, they would move the missiles back onto to Biddle’s yacht.

  Over the past days Abu Sayeed and his men had crept over every inch of Biddle’s estate. They knew the schedules of the private security detail, when they changed shifts and went on their breaks. Moving the missiles would be riskless.

  Biddle had purchased another, smaller boat for them to use in their attack. Of course, he assumed they would die on it like typical Arab suicide bombers. Amazingly, Biddle seemed to have no inkling that they might have another plan. The thought made Abu Sayeed smile. A month earlier he had leased a Hatteras 100’ in Beirut, and his team had trained on a yacht identical to Biddle’s. After all, Allah blessed the prepared and crafty warrior.

  TWENTY-SIX

  PROJECT SEAHAWK, NEWARK, NJ, JUNE 29

  MAGGIE STIFLED A YAWN AS she pulled together her paperwork and sorted reports into a thick accordion file with a pocket for every agency that was part of Project Seahawk: the FBI; the CIA; the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection; the ATF; the Coast Guard; the New York/New Jersey Ports Authority Police; New Jersey State Police, New York State Police; New York City police; the U.S. Marshal Service; it went on and on.

  Her assignment was to analyze the flow of information, particularly issues of compartmentalization and data processing incompatibilities. Often, different agencies possessed bits of information on the same situation, but the data was never combined. Because no one saw the big-picture potential, threats went undetected.

  Maggie sighed as she looked at the bulging folder. The task was undeniably important, but she found the endless examination of procedural details and software protocols stultifying. Her background in computer science made her an excellent choice for the job, and her superiors in Morristown considered it a huge compliment to have one of their officers chosen for Project Seahawk. However, it was only her third day, and she already missed being a real cop, getting out on the streets and working cases.

  With the file packed she stood and stretched, thinking at least tonight she would get in a good workout, something she’d missed since the weekend. Exercise relaxed her, blew the dust off her brain cells, and God knew between job tedium and thinking about Brent there’d been enough shit these past few days to gum up the works.

  Brent had been on her mind entirely too much. She kept thinking about his phone call the other night, fantasizing that maybe he’d thought things over and wanted to get back together. Only, she hadn’t given him a chance to say it, and now maybe the moment had passed. She shook her head. Stop being pathetic, she told herself.

  She was walking out of her cubicle when her cell phone rang. She stopped, pulled it off her belt, and glanced at the readout. The caller I.D. showed a New York City area code and a number she didn’t recognize. Her first instinct was to ignore it, let the caller leave a message, but after another second she answered.

  “Maggie,” Brent said, his voice unmistakable.

  Her pulse quickened. She heard horns and the rasp of a bus engine in the background.

  “I need to talk to you,” Brent said. “I was hoping I could drive out tonight when you’re done with work.”

  She heard it again, the same ragged tone as the other night, only worse. He sounded worried, which got her attention because Brent was one of the most self-confident people she’d ever met. Self-confident but mortally fearful of commitments, she reminded herself.

  A glance at her watch showed it was already six forty-five. “I’ll be home around eight,” she said, deciding her workout could wait.

  “I’ll be there,” he said.

  • • •

  Five minutes later she was waiting at the elevator when the Shift Commander flagged her. “Main conference room in ten minutes. Jenkins’ orders. Everybody.”

  Maggie could tell fr
om his face that something was up. She started to ask how long it might take, but he’d disappeared down the hall. She headed down to the meeting room, really more auditorium than conference room, with a big rectangular table in the middle and then forty or so theater style seats facing a wall that held several projection screens. She sat with the more junior people in the theater seats, while the honchos took their places around the table. She looked around at the puzzled expressions.

  “Hope you didn’t have dinner plans,” said a voice beside her.

  She turned to see Steve Kosinsky as he settled into the adjoining seat. He was a Lieutenant in the New York State Police, a nice looking guy with big shoulders, crunch-toned stomach, and an earnest face. She knew he was divorced with no kids because he’d asked her out to dinner twice. She’d turned him down, refusing to date people from work.

  “The one night when I’m supposed to meet somebody,” she groaned.

  “Word has it Jenkins has a major hard-on about something,” Steve said. “The last time this happened we didn’t get out of here for two days.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  He shrugged.

  Maggie glanced at her watch and remembered Brent. He was probably on the road by now. She went to the last call on her cell phone and hit the callback button.

  “Where are you?” she asked when he answered.

  “Stuck in traffic on the West Side Highway.”

  “Something’s come up,” she said. “A meeting. I don’t know how long it will last.”

  “I can wait.”

  Maggie glanced at Steve. “I’m told it may go very late,” she said.

  “Right,” Brent said.

  She heard the disappointment but also disbelief. He thought she was blowing him off.