Early Warning

by Michael Walsh

  The door opened a crack. “May I get you anything, sir?”

  Tyler ’s first instinct was to say no and then he decided to hell with his first instinct. “Bourbon and branch,” he ordered. The door opened and Manuel walked in carrying a silver tray upon which was a bourbon and water, fixed just the way he liked it. “You’re a mind reader, Manuel,” said Tyler.

  “No, sir,” replied Manuel, setting the drink down in front of the president, “but I am observant.”

  As Tyler reached for the liquor, Manuel straightened and reached into the interior breast pocket of his steward’s coat. “I brought you a cigar, too,” he said. Already, he had the cutter out, deftly sliced off the closed end, and handed it to Tyler at the same time producing a lighted kitchen match. Tyler accepted the cigar gratefully and leaned forward into the flame, which jumped as he breathed it in until the tip of the cigar glowed ruby red.

  “I’m going to lose, aren’t I?” Tyler finally said.

  “Probably, yes, sir, if you believe the polls,” Manuel replied. “She looks unstoppable.”

  Tyler took a long sip of bourbon. This was not how he had envisioned the end of his presidency, tossed out after one term, not because the people despised him, as they eventually did all presidents, but because they liked the other guy better. It wasn’t as if his polls were in free fall. Instead they read like the chart of a slowly dying patient whose condition was terminal and it was just a matter of time before he was carted off from the hospital to the hospice, to make room for some son of a bitch who actually had a chance.

  Four years ago, Angela Hassett had been the first-term governor of Rhode Island, of all places, a state barely bigger than one of Louisiana ’s larger parishes and even more corrupt. But when you stopped to think about it, it all made perfect sense. Providence was a wholly owned subsidiary of Beacon Hill, a kind of farm team for the gangsters and criminals who had turned Massachusetts from the cradle of liberty into what was, in effect, a criminal organization populated by suckers, easy marks, and robots, who regularly return the Party in Power to power no matter how many Speakers of the House got indicted.

  Hassett and her handlers, however, had taken the unholy conjoining of politics and crime to a whole new level. In her, they had the perfect front woman: a Harvard-educated lawyer (were there any other kind?) with a thousand-watt smile, impeccable but understated taste in clothes, a way of mellifluously stringing an endless series of platitudes together, and absolutely ruthless political instincts. The media loved her as well, finding everything about her fascinating; the lockstep editorial pages of both the Boston Globe and the New York Times hailed her as the perfect, sophisticated antidote to the hillbilly regime of Jeb Tyler. The funny part was, Tyler had been hailed in exactly the same way when he first ran for the Senate, but the Zeitgeist had evidently tired of his rustic good looks, folksy ways, and cracker-barrel delivery. Just as black was the new white, Angela Hassett was the new Jeb Tyler.

  Then there was that son of a bitch, Jake Sinclair…

  That Skorzeny business hadn’t helped, either. Tyler ’s administration had foiled an EMP attack on the east coast that would have plunged America into a hundred years of dysfunction and darkness, but he couldn’t take any credit for it; in fact, he couldn’t even let anybody know how close they had come to the abyss. Instead, he was blamed for the death toll in Los Angeles and Edwardsville, Ill.

  True, he had struck an onerous deal with the fugitive financier. In exchange for his relative freedom, Emanuel Skorzeny had become, in effect, a combination of debtor and confidential informant, forced to pay an enormous sum to the United States in compensation for the Grove bombing and the attack on the midwestern middle school, as well as to Her Majesty’s government in London, where the bombed-out London Eye had been transformed into affordable housing and a mosque for the capital’s burgeoning immigrant population.

  That was not all. Skorzeny also had been forced to surrender all his domiciles save Liechtenstein and use his continuing influence in the world’s stock market to restore some of the lost capital his machinations had stolen. In exchange for his cooperation, and to prevent him from going completely stir-crazy, Skorzeny was free to fly on his private jet. But it could not land anywhere in the world that the United States of America had any political, economic, or military influence. All Skorzeny could do was go for a ride in his custom 707, refueling in the air if he could manage it, and occasionally stopping off in Chad, Vanuatu, and Lapland. Even Switzerland didn’t want to see him anymore, although the Swiss were still happy to take and harbor his money.

  Even so, Tyler had nearly blown one of the nation’s most valuable resources-the Central Security Service’s Branch 4 clandestine operation, and in particular the agent known as Devlin. And then there was Bill Hartley’s suicide, which had left him without a single Senator he could either trust or reliably bribe. The presidency thing was a lot harder than it looked. No wonder Caesar had nudged the Roman Republic toward the Empire.

  “Sir?” Manuel’s question brought him out of his fog.

  “Yes, Manuel?”

  “Will there be anything else this evening?”

  Tyler looked at his manservant; funny how here, in the heart of the world’s greatest democracy, the president still had man-servants. He was about to say something when the phone buzzed softly. That was Manuel’s signal to leave. He bowed and backed out of the room, closing the door and leaving the president alone with whatever problem was now announcing itself.

  It was Millie Dhouri, his private secretary, calling from the Oval Office. “Yes, Millie, what is it?”

  “Mr. President, I have Director Seelye on the line. He says it’s urgent.”

  Tyler wished that Manuel had made it a double. Calls from Seelye could never be good news. “Patch him through, please.”

  “Yes, sir.” There was a short pause, with a faint crackle on the line, as the security of the connection was verified and the scrambling devices activated, and then Lt. General Armond “Army” Seelye-the Director of the National Security Agency-came on the line.

  Tyler spoke first: “How bad is it?”

  Seelye did not seem surprised in the least by the president’s opening gambit. “Unknown at this time. Apparently, there’s been a major security breach at NYPD CTU. They were blinded for several minutes by a coordinated DoS attack, most likely Chinese in origin.”

  “The Chinks are always doing that sort of thing,” Tyler interrupted. “They’ve been in our shorts for years: at DoD, the Agency, even the power grid and water supply. I thought you guys were supposed to be doing something about that.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Seelye’s voice; even scrambled, the sting was audible. “We are, sir. But as you know, despite the reorganizations post 9/11, interservice agency cooperation is still a reformer’s fantasy and a bureaucrat’s nightmare. And, in any case, NYPD acts alone.”

  That much was true. The New York Police Department had become a stand-alone, off-the-shelf operation, completely independent of the nation’s intelligence establishment. How exactly that had happened was unclear, but it didn’t really matter at this point. The clannish Irish-and every cop on the NYPD was at heart Irish, no matter what his or her ethnicity-were deeply suspicious of the Washington outsiders and, after Atta & Co. punched two huge smoking holes in the ground of lower Manhattan, were in no mood to trust Langley, Fort Meade, or the Pentagon ever again.

  “Who’s in command of the CTU these days?” asked Tyler.

  “Captain Byrne, Francis X. Byrne,” replied Seelye. “Old-school to the end. Father was a cop, KIA. Plenty of write-ups and citations. He’s also been best buds with the commish since they were young detectives together. He’s bulletproof.”

  “So we know nothing about their operation.”

  “Not really, no sir.”

  Tyler sighed. What the hell was the point of having multiple intelligence agencies under the vague aegis of the Director of National Intelligence and the cumbersome Department of
Homeland Security? The whole thing was a giant cluster fuck. If he survived the fall campaign, it was something he was going to have to fix. Especially when a city cop shop could tell all of them to go pound sand.

  The hell of it was, the CTU was probably the best-equipped counterterrorism operation in the world, even better than the Israelis’. They had the latest equipment, state-of-the-art computers, and the top techies, including a cadre of former hackers who had been persuaded to join the force in lieu of a stretch at Auburn or Dannemora. By contrast, the FBI was making do with the un-networked equivalents of the old Trash 80s and Kaypros, and even the vaunted NSA was still behind the WYSIWYG curve on some of its older terminals. It was a wonder, Tyler reflected, that given the determination of America ’s enemies to strike and strike again that there were any buildings standing in Washington and New York at all.

  “…and there’s a reason for that, which goes beyond their insularity,” Seelye was saying.

  “What’s that?” Talking to Seelye exasperated Tyler, but given their shared past, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Seelye stayed until he quit, or until Devlin asked for his resignation. That was part of the deal, too.

  “Byrne’s brother, Tom.”

  “Go on.”

  “As in Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Thomas A. Byrne.”

  “Oh, shit. Don’t tell me that asshole is our guy’s brother.”

  “That’s what they say the ‘A’ stands for, yes sir.”

  How and why Tom Byrne was still with the Bureau, not to mention how and why he had risen as far as he had, was one of Washington ’s great mysteries. Not since Hoover himself had a SAC been as roundly and as cordially despised as Tom Byrne, and yet he had continued his unimpeded rise through the ranks. “Haven’t you got anything on him?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment as Seelye chose his words. “Plenty of stories, mostly about something that went down years ago. Something that seems to have involved both Byrne brothers. But if anybody knows anything, they’re either not talking or sleeping with the fishes. Which is weird, because…”

  “Because?” prompted Tyler.

  “Because the two brothers hate each other’s guts. They’re like two guys, each with a loaded gun at the other one’s head, knowing that no matter who pulls the trigger first, they both get their heads blown off.”

  Tyler saw the outlines of a possible play. As Seelye had told him in the middle of the Skorzeny business, he really was getting the hang of the intelligence game. “Sort of like you and me, in other words.”

  “You could put it that way, yes, sir,” Seelye said.

  “Not to mention Devlin.”

  “Let’s not, if you don’t mind, Mr. President.”

  “You don’t like him very much, do you?” asked Tyler. “Is it because he’s hard to like?” Tyler was still smarting from his confrontations with Devlin.

  “It’s not that he’s hard to like,” replied Seelye. “He’s impossible to like.” He wondered if the president would get the reference to the original Manchurian Candidate and immediately decided he would not.

  He did. “The first version really was much better,” said Tyler. “Did you know I was one of the Chinese workmen who laid the track on this stretch?” This president was always full of surprises.

  “Nonetheless, Maryland is a beautiful state.”

  “So is Ohio, for that matter-so level with me. Where’s Devlin?”

  The thought crossed Seelye’s mind that somehow Tyler had found out about his true relationship with the man known as Devlin-how he had in fact raised him after his parents’ death in 1985, trained him to be the perfect operative, kept him off the grid and in his pocket until…until the Skorzeny business came out into the open. The only other person who knew was Howard Rubin, the former Secretary of Defense, but he had retired to his farm in Maryland six months ago. Seelye and Rubin had never been particularly friendly, but he felt for the man when Rubin had called him up one afternoon to tell him of his impending resignation. “When a couple of guys with a suitcase nuke can take down a whole country,” Rubin had wondered, “what’s the point of a Defense Department?” Especially one that, for reasons of political cowardice, wouldn’t fight back.

  The new SecDef was Shalika Johnson, the former governor of Tyler ’s home state, Louisiana. There were plenty of folks who thought Johnson was simply an affirmative-action appointment by a floundering president looking to shore up his minority base, but Seelye had already learned the hard way that Ms. Johnson was one of the toughest human beings in Washington, which was saying something. If the country were ever really to go on a war footing, she would be the fiercest, most uncompromising warrior since Scipio Africanus. He dreaded having to have the Devlin discussion with her, when and if the time came.

  “He’s in the air.”

  “Where is he going?”

  Seelye hesitated. “He…he didn’t say sir?”

  “The fuck you mean, ‘he didn’t say’?” At the other end of the line, Seelye could feel the temperature rising inside the White House.

  “He was supposed to return to Fort Meade, but-”

  Tyler exploded. He hadn’t yelled at anyone all day, and it felt good. “God fucking damn it, I don’t give a rat’s fucking rear end what he was supposed to do. I’m in the goddamned fight of my life with this phony from Rhode Island, even my bought-and-paid-for pollsters and TV pundits are telling me there’s no way I can win, and after all I’ve done for this goddamned country, and if something goes tits up in New York, well, this job won’t be worth a plugged nickel. And neither will yours, General. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly, sir, yes.” Seelye was used to dealing with Tyler, had even come to almost like him, and he reached for the right words to say. The last thing he wanted to see was Angela Hassett-untested, untried, a creature of the media and mostly of Jake Sinclair, who was probably fucking her or was thinking about fucking her-in the Oval Office. Especially since her one qualification for the office was that she was not Jeb Tyler. “Devlin has an instinct for these things, Mr. President. He’s probably on his way to New York right now. That’s where I’d head if I were him. Teterboro, most likely-no commercial traffic.” Seelye paused, the telephone equivalent of a shrug. “Anyway, you know his deal. He does what he wants, when he wants.”

  “I know it,” said Tyler evenly, “but I still don’t like it.”

  “It’s the only deal we have.”

  “It’s the only deal you have,” Tyler reminded him. “And he can pull the plug on it any time he wants. So you’d better make damn sure that, whatever he’s up to, it goes smoothly.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” said Seelye.

  “Now make sure he gets wherever he’s going, on the double.”

  “Er…sir?” Seelye got his question in just before Tyler hung up on him.

  “Yes, General?”

  “It’s not just him, sir. It’s her, too.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman he’s taken as his partner in Branch 4 operations. You remember, the Iranian. You authorized it, at the meeting at the Willard Hotel.”

  “I don’t remember anything about an Iranian.” That part was probably true. Tyler only remembered things that were important and, of course, grudges. “Who is she?”

  “We don’t know, exactly. Only Devlin knows who she is. That was part of the deal. We haven’t even been able to vet her, and here she is-”

  Tyler didn’t feel like arguing. The U.S. Government was so endemically riddled with moles, sleeper agents, old Soviet illegals, and various other burrowed and semi-dormant creatures that one more wouldn’t make any difference; it was a miracle the Republic had lasted this long, what with all the enemies, foreign and domestic. And, these days, it was impossible to tell them apart…

  “Whatever. Defend your country, General Seelye.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you sir.”

  Once again, the President of the Unit
ed States was alone.

  Tyler leaned back in his chair. He’d only been president for three years, but it already seemed like a lifetime, and as he looked back on that much younger man who had sought, and won, the office, he hardly recognized him. From the outside, running a presidential campaign might look hard, and of course it was, but it was nothing compared to actually having the job itself. All the political bullshit went out the window the minute you walked into the Oval Office for the first time and, unless you were really stupid or arrogant or both, that’s where it stayed, fertilizing the Rose Garden until either you were ready to leave or the voters sickened of you and threw you out.

  If anything happened, he could pretty much kiss his reelection chances good-bye. Even if the country rallied round the flag, there was just enough time from now to the election to make them forget. Maybe. Unless it was really horrific, in which case a century wouldn’t be enough. The patriotic shock would turn to outrage, and the second term of a Tyler presidency would be toast. He had to figure out an angle…of political survival.

  Instinctively, Tyler reached for his bourbon, then remembered he’d finished it. But when he brought the glass to his lips, he saw to his astonishment that it was a fresh one, as if delivered by a ghost. Manuel must have brought it to him while he was on the blower with Seelye. Nothing like a man you could trust, even here in the White House.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Fort Meade, Maryland

  General Armond “Army” Seelye put down the secure phone to the White House and typed out an encrypted message to Devlin: FRANCIS X. BYRNE, CHIEF OF NY CTU. He’d gotten his orders, which was the easy part. Executing them was something else.

  Whatever was going on in New York was plenty troubling. Not that it was exactly a surprise. The Chinese, the Russians, and all sorts of other “frenemies” were constantly engaged in a relentless probing of America’s cyber-defenses, so much so that the President had recently appointed a “cyber-czar” to war-game possible responses to a takedown of, say, the electrical grid. Not that they were going to stop there. Over the past few years, the number and the severity of the probes had been growing exponentially, which told him plenty. For one thing, it meant that the Chinese were no longer afraid of the Americans, and why should they be? They were holding a huge amount of American paper, notes they could call in any time they wanted to wreck the currency or take down the economy. Not even Emanuel Skorzeny at his most powerful could take on the once-almighty dollar.