(Wrath-04)-Breathless (2012)

by Chris Stewart

  The men sat in their customary seats: Grison and General Brighton on the white couch, the president and his chief of staff facing them on two padded armchairs. The president was holding an iced tea with lemon. A Diet Coke® was waiting for the general. Grison sipped his water. The chief of staff chewed his gum.

  “How’s Sara?” the president asked as the general sat down.

  “She’s fine, Mr. President. Thank you for asking, sir.” Brighton shifted in his seat, and then added, “She sends her warmest regards.”

  The president watched Brighton squirm and smiled.

  Brighton’s wife, the lovely Sara, had met the president on many occasions, and she always seemed willing to give him advice, something that made Brighton cringe but that the president loved. She was engaging and pleasant, and the president had a warm spot for her in his heart.

  “She still not reading any newspapers?” the president asked.

  Brighton smiled. “Still too many, I’m afraid. I can tell as soon as I get home if she’s been reading the Post.”

  The other men looked at each other questioningly, and the president leaned over to his chief of staff and explained. “Sara is, and I’m not just saying this,” the president eyed Brighton under a creased brow, “one of the most politically perceptive people I know. She seems to have a sixth sense, a real feel for the country out there. But, as I understand it, she recently swore off reading the papers or watching the news. Said she couldn’t take it any longer. Too frustrating. Too maddening. It was driving her nuts. But I knew she wouldn’t make it. She’s a news junkie.”

  The other men smiled. They could relate. The president turned more serious, looking at the general again. “Did she did she see the photograph of your son?”

  “Not yet sir.”

  The president leaned forward. “Yeah, well, you tell her, if someone ever shows her, it’s so much garbage. It means nothing. It’s all garbage press.”

  Brighton thought of the newspaper image of his soldier son that had appeared on the front page of the Post, the carnage and death of the Iranian village all around him. Were most of his fellow Americans willing to believe that their soldiers would assault and kill dozens of villagers in Iran? Apparently not. The story had no legs. Although the cynic inside him was a little surprised, Brighton was extremely relieved that the story hadn’t grabbed any traction inside the United States.

  The truth was that General Brighton didn’t much like the press. Left or right, it didn’t matter, he had little respect for any of them; he had seen how they worked, he knew the agendas they had. But as he looked at the president, his face remained neutral and calm. His was a nonpolitical position, and he took great pains to be careful of everything he said.

  The president watched him carefully. “Is your family OK, Neil?” he asked in a caring tone.

  “Yes, sir, they are.”

  “I’ll bet they miss you.”

  “Sir?”

  “I know that you’re not home much. You’ve been working long hours.”

  “We all have, sir.”

  “You’ve been working longer hours than most.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “I’m sure, and I appreciate it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President, but really, I’m just doing my job. Like everyone else, we’re just trying to make this thing work.”

  The president pressed his lips together. “And your boy, the soldier?

  “Doing well, sir.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Brighton hesitated. “All over, Mr. President.”

  “He’s Special Forces, right?”

  “Yes, sir. Special Forces. But in fact, he was recently invited to join the Cherokees.”

  The president hesitated. He knew what that meant. “Is that going to make things difficult for you, Neil?”

  Brighton was ready for the question and answered firmly. “No sir, it won’t.”

  The president kept his eye on him, thinking, and then let it go. “And your other boys?”

  “Fine, sir,” Brighton answered quickly. Although he was sincerely appreciative of the president’s interest, inside his mind, he was tapping a mental foot. Twenty minutes allocated for the meeting. Eighteen and counting. Lots to discuss.

  The chief of staff fidgeted nervously as well, eager to get to the point. As the unofficial timekeeper, he took his responsibilities seriously.

  The president saw Grison shift in his seat. He didn’t care. He wasn’t ready. He genuinely liked General Brighton and his family. “If there’s anything I can ever do for your kids, you let me know, OK? After all that you have sacrificed. After all you have done. It’s a small thing for me, General Brighton. Let me help out if I can. Schools. Graduate programs. A good job. Happens that I know a few people. Be happy to make a couple calls.”

  Brighton had to smile. In fact, he almost laughed out loud. It was an absurd proposition: the president of the United States making a call for his sons. He shook his head and waved off the offer with his hands. “Thank you, Mr. President. You are very generous.” He knew he’d never ask the president to make a call.

  The president cocked his head to the side. “You seem a little hesitant.”

  Brighton didn’t answer.

  The president waited. “The offer remains on the table.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The men were silent a moment, then the chief of staff said abruptly, “Mr. President, we only have a few minutes.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” the president answered. “A few minutes, a few minutes, never more than a few minutes. It’s the way we all live.” He turned to General Brighton, and then glanced at his national security adviser, a middle-aged man with slender shoulders and thin hair. “You got something for me, Bo?” he asked.

  Grison straightened himself. “Yes. A couple of things.”

  The president nodded.

  “First, we wanted to update you on the situation in Saudi Arabia. As you know, sir, Crown Prince Saud and his entire family seem to have disappeared. Now, we know the crown prince’s helicopter went down a little more than a fortnight ago, but we haven’t been able to confirm his status. As to his family, it’s very likely most of them are simply laying low. In fact, the entire royal family has dropped out of sight. There is upheaval in the kingdom, no doubt about that, but the workings inside Saudi Arabia are nearly impossible to track, and we haven’t been able to find out anything more.”

  The president frowned. He had been a huge fan of the Saudi king, but he disliked his sons. “What about that arrogant man, what’s his name, Abdullah? What’s going on with him?”

  “Sir, we’re hearing a few rumors—Jordan’s King Mohammad has been very helpful and a few others as well—but that’s all we have right now, rumors and whispers. Still, it appears that Prince Abdullah al-Rahman has already ascended, or will soon ascend, to the throne. But again, that’s only rumor; we really don’t know. He certainly isn’t the only one interested in being king. If he has consolidated power already, it would be remarkable. And as you know, sir, the House of Saud is a tight little family. They hate each other, yes, but they never talk. It was easier for us to split the atom than to crack the secrecy around the royal family. They all might have been killed by falling meteorites, and we wouldn’t know. Until we hear something definitive, all we can do is guess. So while we are attempting to make contact with Al-Rahman or his subordinates, right now we have to sit tight.”

  “I’ve never liked Abdullah,” the president said. “He’s a spoiled little twit. He’s got a few guns, he feels invincible, but he’s nothing without his posse and some cash in the bank.”

  “If he’s the next king, we have problems,” Grison replied.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about Abdullah. I can take care of him,” the president said.

  Brighton sat forward in his chair. He knew the royal family perhaps better than anyone, and the president’s estimation of Al-Rahman was clean off the mark. “Mr. President,�
� he said, “I must respectfully disagree. Abdullah is a dangerous man. Maybe very dangerous. We’ll have to approach him carefully.”

  “He’s nothing!” the president shot back. “He’s a spoiled kid, oversexed and over-moneyed. No brains. No ambition. No direction. No core. If he’s the next king, that’s fine. I know how to deal with him. I’ve dealt with worse men before.”

  Brighton shook his head slowly. “No sir, that’s simply not true. You don’t know him. None of us do. It would be foolish, even stupid, to underestimate this man.”

  The room fell suddenly silent, the general’s words hanging like a chill in the air. No one talked to the president of the United States that way. It was an incredibly stupid thing to say. Undiplomatic and unacceptable in every sense of the word.

  The president stared at Brighton. The general returned his gaze, never blinking. The president smiled.

  “Sir,” Brighton continued, “forgive me for speaking so bluntly. I certainly don’t mean to offend. But the truth is, Mr. President, something is going on. We’ve got high leaders throughout the Arab world dropping like flies. The Saudi king. The crown prince. His family. Now it has spread beyond Saudi shores. General Sattam bin Mamdayh, head of the ultra-secret Iranian Interior Police. Abu Nidal Atta, deputy director of Pakistan’s Special Weapons Section. Both of them dead. Their governments deny it, but we know it is true. And the one thing all of these men held in common was their association with Prince Abdullah al-Rahman.”

  The general sat back, feeling a trickle of sweat move down the side of his ribs.

  The president placed his fingertips together and lifted his hands to his face, covering his mouth and resting his chin on his thumbs. Muted voices could be heard in the hallway, and a security helicopter flew overhead, vibrating the windows gently against their old wooden frames.

  Brighton lifted his eyes and leaned forward in his seat. “I’m just saying, Mr. President, and you’ll forgive me for being so frank, but I’ve got a bad feeling. I think we need to presume the worst.”

  “You always do, General Brighton.”

  “That’s why you pay me, sir. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  Grison looked at Brighton, and then cut in anxiously. “There’s another little thing, Mr. President that we need to talk about. It may be nothing, and we hate to bring this to you when it is so preliminary, but some of my staff,” Grison glanced at General Brighton again, “particularly General Brighton feels this is something worth bringing up.”

  The president waited, sipping his southern tea.

  “You remember our Jackson Teams?” Grison said.

  The president frowned. “They are what, some guys up in New York? They monitor the SEC or something, right?”

  “Sort of, Mr. President. The team consists of Homeland Security agents, SEC investigators, some guys from Justice as well. But the team leaders are all FBI agents, and the team is under FBI control. The Jackson Team is tasked with monitoring suspicious trends in trading, securities, currency markets, that sort of thing.”

  The president sipped again at his tea, studying his security advisers over the rim of the glass. “Sounds like law enforcement,” he said. “Why are you guys involved?”

  Brighton sat back in his chair as he explained, “Sir, the Jackson Team was put together with the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation. It is based on the theory that, before we would see another major attack, there would be some indicators on Wall Street.”

  The president scowled. Out of the hundreds of issues he discussed every day, national security was his highest priority. But it had been clearly overshadowed by a crumbling economy now that was not getting better. The American people were nearly in a panic. They were demanding action. Jobs. A ray of light amid the chaos. A sense that things were going to move forward! That an entire generation wasn’t going to be lost. For good or bad, these were the things now that kept him awake at night.

  On the national security front, there were ten thousand security programs and procedures that had been put in place, or were being put in place, or were being considered, or were being funded, or studied, or talked about by his staff. There was simply no way he could remember them all. So while this whole Jackson thing was faintly familiar, it was still full of holes. “I don’t see how Wall Street can give us warning,” he stated suspiciously.

  Brighton continued. “Sir, the Jackson Team operates on the premise that before a terrorist organization or hostile government were to launch a major attack against the United States, they would provide some kind of warning to their financiers. You have to consider, Mr. President, every terrorist organization, whether al Qaeda or a hostile government, gets its funding from somewhere. We know that a lot of that money comes from wealthy individuals throughout the Middle East, individuals who have, ironically, financial interest in the West. And we hope that, before we would see a major attack on our soil, we would see some movement in the market as these individuals begin to liquidate their U.S. assets—”

  “Their terrorist comrades would warn them before they attacked?”

  ”We think that they might.”

  “So they could cash in their assets? Jump like a rat from a ship?”

  “That is our hope.”

  The president shook his head. It seemed unlikely to him that was clear from the look on his face.

  “You have to remember, Mr. President,” General Brighton went on, “the financial cost of the 9/11 attacks to our nation was more than ten trillion dollars. The market tanked. The dollar fell. The recession lasted almost three years. Then, after 9/11, when we were going back through our records, we discovered a very interesting thing. Several extremely wealthy Saudi princes started diversifying their U.S. assets just a few weeks before the attacks.”

  The president’s tea froze in midair. “They shorted us? They made money predicting how our markets would fall?”

  “Not really, sir. It appears they weren’t so much interested in making money from the market’s collapse as they were interested in not losing everything they had invested over here.”

  “OK,” the president answered. He glanced at his watch, and then turned back to Grison. “So, where are you going with this, Bo? What do I need to know?”

  Grison folded his hands on his lap. “Mr. President, our Jackson Team has seen indications that have caused us concern. Significant Saudi holdings have been moved from U.S. markets to various holdings overseas. Almost ten billion dollars have left our country in just a few weeks.”

  “Are you telling me the Saudis are dumping their U.S. assets before another terrorist attack?”

  “We don’t know, Mr. President. But we think it is worth looking at.”

  The president caught his breath. “It might be a purely financial decision,” he countered. “I mean, you have the Saudis, the Europeans, the Chinese and Japanese, most of the world moves in and out of our markets every day. We live in a global economy; trillions of dollars cross our borders in any twenty-four-hour period. Our unemployment rate is stuck in the stratosphere. Gas prices have started climbing again. Another bitter fight over the debt limit coming up. Don’t you think it might be nothing more than a reaction to the market?”

  The general moved his head slightly but didn’t say anything. This wasn’t a reaction to high unemployment and fuel prices. He was certain of that.

  “A purely financial adjustment?” the president prodded.

  “We can never be certain,” Grison replied. “But it is a significant adjustment, if that’s all it is.”

  General Brighton leaned forward again, but Grison’s eyes warned him off. He had been cautioned before the meeting, and he had already said too much. But General Brighton knew there was something else—something the president really needed to know.

  The royal families of the House of Saud weren’t the only ones dumping U.S. stocks and securities. A firm up in New York City was dumping as well—dumping so much and so fast, it would have been impossible not to take note. Jackson Team
or no, it was obvious.

  Which meant one of two things: They were either stupid or scared.

  And the men of Drexel were not stupid.

  So the general swallowed hard.

  FIVE

  Khorramshahr Refugee Camp, Iran/Iraq Border

  Mr. Sebastian Raule, special assistant to the camp administrator at Khorramshahr, stared at the paper that he held in shaking hands. His mouth went dry. His heart beat like a butterfly wing in his chest.

  It was not possible! He read the dispatch again and again, and then held it up to the light to study the signature.

  It appeared to be real.

  What was he going to do?

  He put the paper down and turned to his telephone. The yellow light in the corner of the black receiver was blinking weakly; there was only one line into Khorramshahr and it was already in use. He was almost relieved. He didn’t know what he would say when he made the call anyway. He turned back to the dispatch and read it for the fifth time, then turned again to the telephone. The light was out. He picked up the receiver and dialed with a shaking hand, his pointer finger jammed into the rotary dial.

  His knees bounced anxiously as he waited for the call to go through. The telephone clicked and hummed through forty-year-old communications switching machines, then fell silent. Yes, there was cell phone coverage in some of the most remote villages in Africa, but not here at Khorramshahr! He was just thinking he might have been cut off when he heard a man’s voice, “U.N. Baghdad mission headquarters.”

  “Yes, this is Sebastian Raule calling from Khorramshahr. I need to speak with Mr. Conner. Is he available?”

  “Mr. Conner. Let me see. May I ask again who is calling?”