Primary Target

by Jack Mars

  “Okay,” Luke said.

  “But let’s get back to the language skills,” Trudy said. “Excellent language skills, a good-looking kid, who according to all accounts, is a sharp dresser. What does this suggest to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Ed Newsam said. “The camp?”

  “Could be,” Trudy said. “The camp you raided, or one very much like it. It’s a long shot, for sure. But it’s all we’ve got. There is ample security footage of Ahmet, entering the club, inside the club, and in the alleyway outside the club. There’s security footage of him wandering around Geneva and the surrounding area for an entire year. It would make sense to match those images with the images that were taken from the camp, and see if anything comes up.”

  Big Daddy cleared his throat. Of course. Big Daddy Cronin didn’t just hang around meetings.

  “Hi, Bill,” Luke said without turning around.

  “Hi, everybody,” Big Daddy said. “Thanks for inviting Monty and I to your little meeting. Of course we’ve already run the footage of Ahmet against images of students at the camp.”

  “What did you get, Bill?” Don said.

  “We got fourteen possible matches. Seven of those fourteen are better than the others. None are perfect.”

  “You have to consider that the man named Ahmet may have had cosmetic surgery,” Trudy said.

  Big Daddy nodded. “We have. But we’ve hit a dead end. The individuals in those photos are identified by codes—series of letters and numbers—not names.”

  “Did you pass this intel up the line?” Don said.

  Big Daddy didn’t answer the question.

  “Bill?”

  “I think you know the answer to that, Don.”

  “Bill, I don’t think this is the time to withhold information so you can build your little intelligence fiefdom. There are bigger issues at play here.”

  “Don, I’m not building a fiefdom. I’m about getting results. Too many times I’ve passed hard-won intel up the line, intel people have died for, only to see it get lost, stepped on, or squashed because it’s politically inconvenient. That camp was given to us by a Sunni tribal elder, in confidence, and under pain of his own death. He’s a source, and I’m protecting him. We pass this stuff up the line, and I guarantee you he’s exposed inside of twenty-four hours. I don’t do that, not here. Whisper the wrong word to the wrong person, and entire groups of people get snuffed.”

  Big Daddy let that linger in the room.

  He was a strange and mercurial man. He was sitting on intelligence that might, or might not, save the President’s daughter. He was not going to release it because he was protecting some Sunni tribespeople.

  “We don’t even know if what we have is relevant at all. Yes, the people holding Elizabeth Barrett claim to be aligned with Zarqawi’s group, but putting a banner on the wall doesn’t really mean anything. We have no identifying features in this video—no voices outside of Elizabeth’s, no identifiable landscape features, or even internal architectural style. No faces of the terrorists. We have a tattoo, but nothing else. Any one of a hundred terrorist leaders and splinter groups could have taken that child. There is absolutely no reason to believe that we have an inside track on this. We could get people killed for a lead that’s a dead end.”

  “If there’s no reason to believe, then why even do it?” Mark Swann said.

  Big Daddy shrugged. “We have to do something. We can’t just sit here. There are a million investigations going on, and most of them are higher priority than this. But the vast majority of them will not bear fruit. This one also probably won’t. But if we don’t try, and the President’s girl gets killed, I’m going to have a hard time living with that.”

  “What do you suggest?” Don said.

  “I suggest we poke at it. Probe around a little. You know my motto—grab a loose end and pull. Let’s see if we really have anything. We move fast, and in secret. If we do have something, then we pass it on. But only then.”

  “Monty?” Don said.

  Montgomery shrugged. He was wearing a dress shirt that was soaked through with sweat. He looked ruffled, like he had slept in it. He was a very rumpled man. Even his face looked like it had come through some sort of clothing wringer.

  He was drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.

  “I have access to a squad of blokes from the Special Air Service. If your lads and mine were all willing to go back out, I’d say we go and see our tribal elder Muhammad al-Barak at his family compound outside Tikrit. He brought that camp to our attention, which to me means he knows more than he’s been willing to say. My feeling is he will be willing to cooperate, if it means he might save Elizabeth. Naturally, he would expect something in return.”

  “Naturally,” Luke said.

  Monty went on:

  “We need to make a show of arresting him and his people, and then disappear them, so to speak. We get a name from him, someone who knows more, and who we can apply some pressure upon. Then we move up the line and acquire that person. We bring that person back here, not here to the Embassy, mind you, but somewhere nearby, and we have a little chat to them. A rather expedient chat, I imagine. There won’t be much time for talking around in circles, if you see my point. We get a name, or a place, from that person. We keep doing that until we develop a real lead. It’s a bit tedious, but I don’t see any other options.”

  “And the elder?” Don said. “Al-Barak? What happens to him?”

  “He’s gone,” Montgomery said. “For their own protection, we take him and his entire group and fast track their immigration to Britain or America. Overnight them, if you see my meaning.”

  “I do see it,” Don said. “Luke?”

  Luke stared at the octopus. He thought of Becca at home. Nine months pregnant. He had already told her he was leaving today.

  “Don, Becca is going to give birth any minute.”

  “I know that.”

  “I need to get out of here. Can we go see the elder today?”

  “My men can go as soon as you’re ready,” Montgomery said. “They’ve been awake since four a.m.”

  “If we do it, can you put me on a plane today?” Luke said. “Pretend I’m a journalist, give me a hardship pass, anything?”

  There was a pause over the line.

  “Don?”

  “Yes. Go bring in the elder, and I will bring you home.”

  There was quiet for another moment.

  “Ed?” Don said. “How do you feel about this mission?”

  Ed shrugged. “I got a date with the man in that video. Other than that, I got nowhere to be.”

  A squeal of static came over Don’s line. “Bill, do you have anything more to say about this?”

  Bill nodded. “Yes. I would caution everyone in this room that given the current circumstances, and the danger to the people involved, the mission we’ve discussed here does not exist, and it will never exist.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  May 8

  12:20 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (7:20 a.m. Arabian Standard Time)

  The Oval Office

  The White House

  Washington, DC

  “David, I think you should go to bed.”

  David Barrett, the President of the United States, sat at the Resolute Desk. Although he was quite tall, well-built, and very nearly movie star handsome, somehow he looked like a small child behind there.

  “I want to kill them all,” he said.

  “I know that,” his Chief of Staff, Lawrence Keller, said.

  Keller sat across from him, watching his boss carefully, analyzing him, assessing him. The desk, which had been a gift from the British people, was too big for David.

  Not physically, no. But Franklin Delano Roosevelt had sat at that desk when dealing with the fallout from the Great Depression, the Pearl Harbor Attack, the darkest days of World War Two. John F. Kennedy had sat at that desk during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and also during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Ronald Reagan had sat at
that desk during the nuclear face-offs with the Russians of the 1980s.

  David Barrett was too small for the desk. He was too small for the job. He was too small for the moment. Keller had always known this about him. Their relationship was a marriage of convenience—David had stumbled into the presidency through a confluence of family connections, money, good looks and grooming, and some rather glaring misplays committed by the opposing party. Their own party had installed Keller as David’s Chief of Staff, with the hope that Keller could guide the man through the minefield of his own lazy mind and awful instincts.

  “It’s a crisis, Lawrence,” Barrett said. He held his head in his hands, propped up on his elbows. His dress shirt was rolled back to his forearms. Until a few moments ago, he had been crying for a little while.

  Keller nodded. “Yes. It is. And we’re doing everything we can to manage it and see it through to a positive conclusion.”

  Barrett looked up. His eyes were red.

  “They’re killing me, do you know that? The press. They are killing me. My daughter is gone. The terrorists have paraded her on TV like a captured animal, making her say terrible, hateful things about me. They’re going to kill her. I know that. You know that. If they’ve…”

  He shook his head, unable to speak for a moment. “If they have hurt her in any way, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Keller was calm. “Sir… David… You can rest assured that when this crisis is over, there is going to be hell to pay. I am already in touch with every single decision maker who matters in the Pentagon, with the CIA, with the NSA, and a host of other organizations who safeguard our security. You do not have to worry about taking your revenge. I am going to take it.”

  Barrett nodded and began to cry again. “I know. I know. You’re a good man. I trust you. If they hurt her, I want the entire world set on fire.”

  “And it will be,” Keller said.

  Barrett gritted his teeth. “And this media. My God, Lawrence! Can’t we stop them? My daughter, my beautiful daughter, is under threat of death, and all these bastards can focus on is my military record. They’re making me into a damn laughingstock. I hate them so much. I would bomb them, too.”

  Keller shook his head. There was nothing anyone could do about the media, or about David Barrett’s military record. The man found it convenient to take five straight draft deferments during the height of the Vietnam War. At one point, during a period when his draft status was unresolved—meaning the Army felt he should report for duty, and his father and grandfather were frantically pulling strings to make the Army change its mind—David had spent four months in the French Riviera.

  Keller himself felt no sympathy about this, or about the skewering a few of the newspapers were giving him. Keller had done two tours of Vietnam as a United States Marine, had been wounded on three occasions, and had seen many, many people die. He had fought street to street during the Battle of Hue. Afterward, his reward—his downtime, as it were—was to spend a year patrolling the DMZ between North and South Korea.

  No. He didn’t feel much sympathy for David and his military record.

  The loss of his daughter was profound, and terrible. Keller would resolve that, if he could. But David being teased by a handful of resentful reporters? So be it.

  “David, you should go upstairs to bed. Okay?”

  “The things they’re saying about me, Lawrence… it isn’t fair.”

  “David!” Keller said, sternly now. “As your friend, not as your Chief of Staff, I’m telling you. I’m commanding you. Okay? Go to bed. Yes, Elizabeth has been taken. Yes, it is terrible, terrible news. But thousands of people are working around the clock, the best people on Earth, to save her life. Meanwhile, Caitlynn hasn’t been taken, and she’s still with you. And Marilynn is up there in bed, crying herself to sleep over the loss of her daughter. Be a man. Be her husband. Be strong for her, go upstairs and comfort her, and tell her that everything is going to be all right.”

  Barrett was shaking his head.

  “But what if it’s not going to be all right?”

  Keller shrugged. “If that’s what you believe, then lie to her.”

  Barrett stared at him.

  “That’s right,” Keller said. “It’s a time for comforting lies.”

  Finally, Barrett nodded his head. “Okay. I can do that. I lie all the time. I have to. It’s part of the job.”

  Keller nodded, but didn’t answer directly.

  “Do it for her,” he said. “Make her know that you’re going to be a man for her. Try to get some sleep, and in the morning… I promise. This isn’t going to look nearly as dark as it does right now.”

  “I can take a pill,” Barrett said. “I can sleep some.”

  Keller nodded again. He stood, and now Barrett stood as well. Barrett was much taller than Keller. The two men shook hands.

  “Promise me you’ll go right now,” Keller said. “I can see myself out.”

  Barrett nodded. “I will. I promise. And thank you, Lawrence. You’re my rock. I don’t know how I would ever get through any of this without you.”

  “It’s my honor to serve this office,” Keller said.

  * * *

  It was just after 1 a.m.

  Lawrence Keller sat in his car, a black BMW 325i sedan, which he had bought new last year. It was a nice car, and he was proud of it. He was proud of what it said about him, as well. A lot of people with high-level Washington jobs—and Keller had one of the highest of the high-level jobs—were driven everywhere.

  But not Lawrence Keller. He wouldn’t hear of it, partly because he was self-reliant to an extreme, and partly because drivers witnessed things. They saw things, and they overheard things. Washington, DC, was not a town where you wanted people to know what you were up to. The more people who knew, the more people who could (and almost certainly would, if the price was right) take you down.

  Keller was parked in the south end of Georgetown. Now and then, a car rolled slowly past on the quiet streets. Keller liked Georgetown. Disasters came and went, scandals came and went, famous men and women sparked through the sky like Roman candles and then flamed out, entire governments ruled the city and the country for years only to see everything they worked for undone by the next group in power… all of that happened, yes. But Georgetown was eternal.

  In his hand, Keller held a small Radio Shack digital recorder. He had been listening to the playback for the past twenty minutes or so, fast forwarding and rewinding to certain parts he wanted to hear again and again.

  He listened to the President of the United States abjectly weeping in the Oval Office.

  He listened to the President speaking certain lines, lines that were gold:

  “I want to kill them all.”

  Keller had marked the spots that he liked best. He could go straight to them, with just the press of a button. He went to another one now.

  “They’re killing me, do you know that? The press. They are killing me.”

  And then another:

  “All these bastards can focus on is my military record. They’re making me into a damn laughingstock. I hate them so much. I would bomb them, too.”

  Those ones were all good. Together, they painted a picture of a small-minded man who was coming apart at the seams. Here was a person in command of the greatest armed forces the world had ever seen, with his finger on the nuclear button, who was sitting in the Oval Office crying, and who was expressing an urge to kill many people.

  He was also almost laughably self-absorbed during a major crisis, worrying about his reputation, and the things the press were saying about him. And the self-incriminating things he said only got worse. The hole he dug only grew deeper.

  For example, there was this:

  “If they have hurt her in any way, I don’t know what I’m going to do. If they hurt her, I want the entire world set on fire.”

  Keller nodded and smiled. David Barrett sounded unhinged, a man going through a personal tragedy, who was
rapidly becoming a threat to everyone on Earth. Plus there was this:

  “I lie all the time. I have to. It’s part of the job.”

  The man seemed to believe that part of his job was to lie. Of course, this was true, but it wasn’t something the American people would like to hear. And then there was this, a small subtle statement that was perhaps the most damning thing of all:

  “I can take a pill. I can sleep some.”

  The President, who was weeping, raging about the media, and threatening to set the world on fire—something that was well within his power to do—was also dependent on medication to sleep.

  Lawrence Keller took a deep breath. It was amazing. He and his allies had wanted David out of office from almost the time the tall dope had wandered into it. He was a weak, uncertain President. He was swayed by random conversations—Keller often met with him in the morning, got his stance on a particular issue, and couldn’t be sure that it would still be the same by that afternoon.

  It would be good to get David out of there. It would be good to replace him with someone stronger—someone like his current Vice President, Mark Baylor, for example. It would be good for the country, and it would also be good for Lawrence Keller, wouldn’t it? Yes. It would. Being Chief of Staff to a weak President was a good job. Many people would kill for such a job. But it wasn’t the best of all possible jobs, was it?

  No, it wasn’t. What was a better job? Chief of Staff under a strong President, certainly. But also, Secretary of State, let’s say. Or Director of National Security. People made jumps like that sometimes.

  Lawrence Keller was the type of man who could make a jump like that.

  Admittedly, it was an unfortunate set of circumstances that were removing David from office. Keller would never wish anything like this on Elizabeth Barrett—he had met her several times, and thought her a fine young person. Attractive, but probably not beautiful. Smart enough, but certainly not a genius. Just a nice girl from a very rich family whose dad happened to be the President.