His hands hovered over the laptop. Damn the woman for closing it as they’d entered the room. Damn her to the hell she was even now experiencing in her place of confinement.
Or was she?
Could he trust Miss Harrington?
The laptop. The woman. The women.
Him.
He looked around the room, at Miss Harrington and Mlle. Derrida. “Now,” he said, “about Apollo 11…”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
New York City
The news was breaking as Jake Sinclair entered the offices on Sixth Avenue. Normally he didn’t come to New York much, certainly not since they’d moved the corporate base of operations to Los Angeles in some choice Century City property he just happened to own.
He’d flown in on his private jet, and if there was one rule he had on his private jet it was that he was not to be disturbed for any reason whatsoever, short of Selenites landing at Bowling Green or, worse, Carbon Beach. Or Elvis, reappearing in Branson on a comeback tour.
“What is it, Benny?” he said to Ben Bernstein as he entered the editor in chief’s office. Once the job had been called executive editor, and to be the executive editor of the New York Times had been the pinnacle of American journalism. So of course that had to go—he, Jake Sinclair, was the pinnacle of American journalism, and there would never be another one of him. Editor in chief was as far as he would go with people whose salaries he paid.
“Cows, Mr. Sinclair,” came the reply. “Lots and lots of cows.”
“So what? We got cows right here in New York state, somewhere. Cows all over the Midwest. Cows in India, sacred cows I think they call them. What’s so special about these cows?”
Bernstein kept a poker face. He had no opinion about his new boss and he did his damnedest to make sure his expression reflected that scrupulous neutrality. “These cows are all dead,” he said.
“Where?”
“On a big cattle ranch up near Coalinga.”
Sinclair’s visage expressed his distaste for Twenty Questions. “Where’s that?”
“Central California, sir,” replied Bernstein, backtracking. “I assumed that, since you’re from there, California I mean, that—”
“You think I drive to San Francisco?” Sinclair was rapidly losing interest in the story. “What does it mean? Is steak going to be more expensive? Is it news I can use?”
In Bernstein’s experience, the only story the chief was really interested in was the ongoing political story, so he quickly reframed. “It means Tyler’s got another disaster on his hands, sir. Somebody’s poisoned the California water supply or something.”
That stopped Sinclair in his tracks. “What?” Then he was moving again, double-time.
Bernstein watched the boss disappear into his private office at the end of the hall. He’d only been inside it once or twice, but from what he’d seen it was more like a fortress than an office, completely secure, with dedicated phone lines and all the latest electronic gadgetry. Not that Sinclair knew how to use most of it, but to men like Jake Sinclair the display of such equipment was at least as important as its actual use.
Sinclair shut the door behind him and turned to the ranks of TV monitors. The sun may have set on the British Empire, but it was always coming up somewhere on his. Sure enough, Bernstein was right — dead cows everywhere. He didn’t much care how the paper played the story the next day — newspapers were so retro they were almost chic — but he very much cared how his news networks were handling it — and so far he was not seeing what he wanted to see.
He reached for one of the secure lines and dialed her secure number. She answered on the second ring. She spoke first.
“Remember what I told you about puzzles? Ciphers? Cryptograms?” He did remember. That was the day they were in the bathroom at his office in Century City, with the shower on, the day she’d pulled him toward her in the steam, kissed him and told him that if he was ever late for another meeting with her she would kill him. “Well, this is the piece of the puzzle we’ve been waiting for. Now use it.”
“I’m not sure I under—”
“How did you ever manage to get anywhere in this life?” came the voice at the other end of the line. He had no idea where she was at this moment, somewhere out on the hustings, as they used to call them, whatever hustings were. Somewhere putting their plan into action. “Honestly, I think you are the stupidest man I have ever met in my life.”
There was nothing to say. His job was to say nothing. So far, so good.
“Have you got the package ready? The October Surprise?”
That would be the complete dossier on Jeb Tyler — every bit of dirt and mud and slur and slander and innuendo that the combined newsgathering forces of the Sinclair Empire could dig up. And was there ever plenty of it. It was so explosive that it would finish Tyler before the voters went to the polls, except that they would not be merciful. The material would not be released all at once. No, it would dribble out day by day, each story more damaging than the last, some on TV, some on the radio, some in the papers and magazines.
Beginning the third week of October, every day would be sheer misery for the incumbent president, but there would be nothing he could do about it. He could not withdraw from the campaign, because it would be too late to replace him on the ballot. He couldn’t concede in advance, because the propriety of elections would have to be observed. Day after day he was going to have to sit there in the Oval Office and take his beating like a man. And then be destroyed the first Tuesday in November.
Now that was something Jake Sinclair was really looking forward to. And he knew two other people who would enjoy the spectacle even more than he did. The first was the woman on the other end of the phone, Angela Hassett, the governor of Rhode Island, whose meteoric rise to power was about to be crowned with the highest office in the land.
The other was a man he had never met, never seen, and never spoken to — only communicated with by cutouts and go-betweens, each similarly invisible. But a very rich man and the man who had made him, Jake Sinclair, a modestly rich man by his lofty standards. This man who wanted Jeb Tyler gone and would spend any amount of money to achieve that objective.
Anonymously, of course. Untraceably, of course. Electoral proprieties must be observed.
“Tell me that you have it. Tell me that you have everything,” she commanded. Involuntarily, he glanced over his shoulder. Even here in his inner sanctum, he could feel her presence, and it wouldn’t have surprised him at all to learn that, somehow, she’d had him bugged.
“I’ve got it — well, almost all of it. There’s still a couple of things we’re trying to chase down, but I have top people on it. Top people.”
Was that a chuckle or a chortle coming through the ether? “I’ll bet you do,” said Angela Hassett, “and I’ll bet I know just who she is, too.”
The line went dead. He was alone.
Sinclair sat in his chair, looking out the window at Midtown Manhattan. That woman did something to him. He could feel it. There was something deliciously erotic in fantasizing about an affair with the next president of the United States. With the first female president of the United States. With her. So what if they were both married? He still hadn’t quite decided Jenny II’s fate yet, and as for Angela’s husband… well, he could be dealt with down the line.
Somewhere, a soft chime sounded, like something you’d hear in a Buddhist rock garden. Jake Sinclair hated buzzers and refused to be interrupted by the ring of a telephone, the dull thunk of an incoming e-mail message, or God forbid, one of those Twitter things.
“What is it?” The chime automatically activated a microphone that allowed him to communicate with his secretary, whose name he could never quite remember.
“Ms. Stanley, sir.”
Just the girl he wanted to see. “Send her in.”
The lock on the door buzzed and in walked his favorite television correspondent. Her work during the siege of Times Square had been outstanding, and the fa
ct that she’d gotten herself temporarily kidnapped by, well, they never did figure out exactly who, had been a career enhancer.
“Mr. Sinclair?” she said.
She was beautiful, even more beautiful than she was on television, full-figured but wholesome, sexy but innocent — just the way the viewers liked them. About the only thing that had changed was her hair, but it was growing back nicely. On the air, she wore a wig, so nobody could tell she had been practically scalped.
He didn’t rise. To get up would signal weakness to the help. She didn’t sit down. To sit down would signal servility toward the boss.
“Have you been looking into what I asked you, Principessa?” he inquired. He loved that name, and wondered if it was really hers.
“Yes, Mr. Sinclair,” she said. She moved forward to the desk and now was standing just opposite him, towering over him. “Just a couple more pieces of the puzzle left to gather.”
He smiled. “Very good. How long do I have to wait?”
She smiled back. What a smile she had. “Won’t be long now. In the meantime, there’s this.”
She put an old BlackBerry down on his desk. “What I am supposed to do with this?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just listen.”
Who knew that BlackBerrys doubled as tape recorders? That they had little voice-memo doohickies (what did the kids call them today. Applications — yes, “apps”) and that they could record—
The babble coming out the smartphone was like no language he had ever heard before. Arabic or Iranian, rapid-fire, and then, at the end, this:
“Because I am sending you to hell.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, reaching for the phone, but Principessa swept it back up and slipped it into her pocket.
“You wanted a puzzle, I got you a puzzle,” she said. “Now all you have to do is figure it out.”
She was already at the door:
“That’s what I pay you for,” he said.
“Pay me more,” she replied, and then she was gone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Central California
It was just like old times. The phone buzzed softly, in a pre-arranged signal of long and shorts. He knew who it was without even looking at it. He didn’t care. He had better things to do than jump when barked at. He was under suspicion, in the soup, off the job, sent on uncompassionate leave — whatever. The soup was happening here, now.
He had made good time getting up from California City. There had been no reports of poisoned drinking water in the cities — not on the radio, and not from his secure sources back at Fort Meade.
He didn’t have to think twice about who might have done this. It had his fingerprints all over it. All the plots they’d broken up involving water had to do with city reservoirs, with the drinking supplies. Oh, they’d tried, but through a combination of luck and terrorist ineptitude, every last plot had been stopped — some just in time, to be sure, but stopped.
But this… this was classic Skorzeny. For one thing — and he knew he could take this to Skorzeny’s Swiss bank — it was a misdirection, an attention-getter while the real action unfolded elsewhere. That had been the man’s MO back in Edwardsville as he played on the sentiment of a nation while he tried to get his ships into port to launch the EMP devices, one on each coast. He was still new to the game, though, and had let his man Milverton get too cocky, and Devlin had managed to stop both of them — one of them terminally.
His hand stole to his shoulder, where Milverton had wounded him so grievously, where Skorzeny had kicked him as he dove down his escape hatch in Clairvaux. He’d had the bastard in his hands, and his weaknesses had defeated him. If it weren’t for Maryam… his guardian angel…
The secure Android buzzed again. He ignored it.
The attack on Midtown Manhattan had been several orders of magnitude greater, but again Skorzeny had underestimated him, sent a child to do a man’s job. Devlin regretted having to kill Raymond Crankheit as brutally as he did, but it was a mercy killing. The boy had reminded him of himself, and he’d had to cut him off in his amateur prime, before anyone else got ahold of him and turned him into a really lethal weapon. He’d been up against the best the SAS had to offer in Milverton, and some punk, and between the two of them the punk had scared him more.
The goddamn phone was not to be ignored. He activated all necessary security measures, and knew that the party on the other end of the line had done so as well.
“Speak,” he commanded.
“This is President Jeb Tyler,” came the voice.
“Save your breath, sir. I know who you are. You fired me, remember?”
“That was then and this was now.”
“Do I sense my dad and the SecDef there with you?”
“You do, as per their authorization.”
“We have to stop meeting like this.”
The president replied: “I need you back.”
“If it’s about the cows, I’m already on my way.”
To Devlin’s surprise, there was a moment of silence. Tyler was usually quick with a snappy comeback; Devlin half thought that the president was amused by his rudeness, since Devlin was the only man on earth who could get away with being insubordinate to the commander in chief.
“I’ve got bigger problems than a bunch of dead cows.”
“I’ll say. You’ve got an election to lose, and I must say you’re doing a damn good job of losing it, sir.”
“Believe it or not, the election is only second on my list of worries. General Seelye?”
“Hi, Pop,” said Devlin before the director of the National Security Agency could say anything. That was just to get under Seelye’s skin. If there was anybody in this world he hated almost as much as hated Skorzeny, it was Seelye — the surrogate father who had raised him after the deaths of his parents in Rome on that horrible day back in 1985. The day he saw his father die and his mother die in his arms when he was eight years old.
“What do you know about the Mahdi?”
“Laurence Olivier played him in Khartoum. Is this a serious question?”
“There’s something afoot in Iran,” said Tyler.
“There’s always something afoot in Iran. There’s been something afoot in Iran since 1979. Carter should have done something about it. Reagan should have done something about it. These bastards have been killing our people, either directly or through surrogates, since just after their glorious revolution. They are the leading sponsor of state terrorism in the world. And yet your predecessor did nothing about them, despite all his brave talk, and you’ve done nothing about them. Don’t tell me you’re finally growing a pair.”
“Why don’t you shut up before I fire you again?”
“Why don’t you put Maryam on the case? She’s already in country, I believe.” That hurt, hurt him more than it hurt them, but he might as well get it out there, clear the air, get at least one ghost out of the way before anybody else got killed.
“This is no time for jokes,” came a female voice, which he knew belonged to Shalika Johnson. Johnson had fought her way up the ladder, from Philadelphia to prison to rehab to the Army to the officer corps to the general staff. She was mean and tough, an affirmative-action wet dream who had earned every last one of her plaudits, which meant she had exactly zero sympathy with bullshit gold-bricking diplomacy, political correctness, or half-measures. Although she had yet to fight her first war, everybody knew that when she did, and if Tyler took the gloves off, she’d finish the job in record time.
Of course, she could also finish him.
Then again, if Tyler lost, as now seemed probable, she’d also be out of a job. As would Seelye, in all likelihood. So maybe the smart play was to work against all of them, fuck up royally, and then disappear somewhere, forever.
Nah… they’d hunt him down — either they or their successors. He was walking a tightrope with no net, and the only way to go from here was straight to hell.
“You’re r
ight, Shalika,” he said, “so cut the crap and tell me why you’re all bothering me.”
“That is Secretary Johnson to you, mister—”
“Listen, you two,” said Tyler, “you can work out your insubordination issues later. Right now—”
“There is no right now, Mr. President,” said Devlin. “You know the drill and you know the deal, and if little Miss Your Name Here until November at the DoD doesn’t like it, she can go piss up a rope. I don’t care. But this talk about Iran interests me, so get to it before I change my mind. Send me the dossier, and I’ll let you know what I decide, and what my conditions are.”
He could hear Tyler exploding in the background; then the voice transmission went to mute. He gave them thirty seconds to get back to him and then he’d ring off.
He was down to seven in his countdown when Tyler came back on. “Deal.”
“It’s always a deal,” replied Devlin. “It’s either our deal or it’s nothing. Ready to send?”
“Coming through in three minutes. You’ll get some security misdirects first.”
“Okay. But whatever it is, first I have to get up to Lemoore and pick up some reinforcements. Plus there’s the matter of all the dead livestock.”
“We’re already on that,” said Tyler. “Botulism in the feed, caused by Congress’s cuts to agricultural subsidies — that’s the official explanation for now. The outbreak seems to be limited to a fifty-mile radius centered around Visalia, running up as far as Fresno. We don’t like it, but we can handle it while we figure out what it really is. Take a look at this report from Tehran.”
Devlin closed his eyes and let his mind race. This was the moment he had been waiting for — not for months but for years. This was the moment when he could tell the lot of them to go hang. This was the moment he could simply walk away, the moment when his life sentence was lifted, when a sudden, miraculous deus ex machina pardon had suddenly descended from the sky. All he had to do was say no — which under the terms of his indentured-servitude contract, he was now free to do — and that would be the end of it.
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