Hostile Intent d-1

by Michael Walsh

  Many were the times he’d thought of simply killing Seelye and getting the whole farce over with. With a gun, a knife, an ashtray, a fireplace poker, a shattered beer bottle, his bare hands, Colonel Mustard in the Parlor with the Lead Pipe. The thing could be done in moments, and either he would die in a hail of retaliatory gunfire, or be beaten into submission and arrested, or be given a medal and sent into well-deserved retirement. It didn’t matter. It was a way out.

  “The president’s very much looking forward to meeting you,” Seelye was saying.

  “Unfortunately, the feeling is very much not mutual.”

  “Come on, he’s the president.”

  “Which means he’s the guy I don’t want to meet. I don’t serve the man, Army, I serve the office. Better to imagine an empty suit than a man. Less disgusting too considering some of the men.”

  Army smiled inwardly; Devlin had not lost his edge. “And an empty suit is precisely who you’re about to meet. So keep a civil tongue in your head, answer his questions, take your orders, and leave.”

  “This was never part of our deal, Army. No face-to-face. Bulletproof deniability. What does he want?”

  Seelye didn’t look at him. He hardly ever looked at him, even when Devlin was a kid. “He wants to see the man who saved all those middle-American schoolchildren from a bunch of ruthless terrorists. After all, ‘the children’—”

  “‘—are our future.’”

  “Something like that. Hey, it wins elections.”

  “Is it going to win the next election?”

  “Here we are.”

  They were at Aspen Lodge, the presidential retreat. Dogwood, Maple, Holly, Birch, Rosebud — they were for visitors. Aspen was where the Big He lived.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Then that makes you a minority of one,” said Seelye, ushering him through the door. “Churchill sure did. Sadat as well.”

  “Look what happened to him,” said Devlin.

  “Through those doors,” said Seelye, pointing ahead.

  It was just cool enough outside for the walk-in fireplace to be roaring, consuming vast quantities of maple, birch, holly, dogwood, and aspen. Jeb Tyler was wearing a cardigan and an ascot. He was standing, framed against the fireplace, as they entered. “This must be—”

  He caught himself and didn’t mention Devlin’s name, as he’d been briefed by Seelye not to do. “I thought you’d be taller.” The president didn’t offer his hand and neither did Devlin.

  “I try to be, sir,” replied Devlin.

  Tyler didn’t get the joke or the reference, as his expression showed.

  “Doghouse Reilly. You know, Bogart? The Big Sleep?”

  “The president doesn’t waste his time with movies—” suggested Seelye, throwing Tyler a lifeline.

  He didn’t take it. “Loved that new Batman movie. Why doesn’t NSA have gadgets and gizmos like that?”

  “It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” lied Devlin. “I’m sure the affairs of state must keep you very busy, so we should be brief.”

  Tyler stood there with his famous smile frozen on his face. He thought he’d just been insulted, but he wasn’t sure. “Please sit down. Drink?”

  “No thank you, sir,” replied Devlin, hitting the cushions. He figured that the faster he sat the quicker he could get up and out again, if he played his cards right. Unfortunately, he was holding a busted flush, nine-high. Still, he’d won with worse.

  “I gather that there’s only one child missing—”

  Tyler got that look on his face that he saved for all discussions of dead or dying kids. “And feared dead. The blast—”

  “The blast didn’t kill her, sir.” You weren’t supposed to interrupt the president, but Devlin didn’t see what he had to lose, and pressed his advantage. “We tracked all the warm bodies with infrared before the assault, and only one kid was moved into the school proper. If she was there, she’d still be alive.”

  Tyler was knocked off his game, but only just a little. He was, after all, a politician. “Cleanup teams scoured the place. No sign of her.”

  “Then he took her with him. I don’t know why and I don’t want to think about why, but—”

  “Who’s ‘he’? The man who tried to get away in the chopper?” Nice — Tyler was smarter than Devlin had expected.

  “Which I shot down, yes, sir.”

  “Then you might have killed her.”

  “I might have, but I didn’t.”

  “How do you know? The helicopter went down, killing the—”

  “Killing the pilot, yes, sir. Who was expendable.”

  “So how did—”

  “Milverton, sir.”

  Devlin heard Seelye gasp. Just a brief intake of breath, but as telling as if he’d just socked him in the gut. There — that cat was out of the bag and pissing on the table.

  “I don’t understand,” said President Tyler, but Seelye was already punching up Milverton on his PDA.

  “Charles Augustus Milverton, Mr. President,” said Seelye. “Not his real name, of course. ‘The most dangerous man in London,’ he likes to call himself. Most dangerous man in the world, or one of them, is more like it.”

  “I don’t care what he calls himself. I call him dead,” said President Tyler.

  “Working on it, sir,” said Devlin, realizing he’d just been handed a stay of execution, thanks to a little girl.

  “Do it,” said Tyler. He got up and threw another log on the fire. One of the Marine sergeants would have done it, but the famously populist president snatched the birch log away from him and did the deed himself. “I don’t give a shit how you do it. Just get him.”

  “It will be a real pleasure,” said Devlin.

  Tyler turned, offering his hands to the Marine sergeant to wipe them off with a clean handkerchief. “Mr. Devlin, you said something to me over the phone about this being a misdirection. A feint, you called it. Is that still your considered opinion?”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “So you think there’s more to come?”

  “I don’t see why not. Even if we take what happened at face value, which we shouldn’t—”

  “Tell that to the people of Edwardsville—”

  “Yes, sir. But even if we do, then they didn’t get a thing that they ostensibly wanted. Unless Edwardsville was a very elaborate way of snatching one kid, which is obviously ridiculous. Which means either they’ll try again to get what they say they want, or — and this is what I’ve thought all along — it was a probe, to test our defenses. Which is why, one way or another, something else wicked this way comes.”

  President Tyler thought for a moment. “How much time have we got?”

  Devlin answered: “Assume none, if they’re doing it right.”

  The president turned to Seelye. “Army, I want you to give Devlin all assistance, carte fucking blanche, to get this Milverton. No matter where the trail leads, no matter whose dicks get caught in the wringer, I want this man found, braced, grilled. I want his fucking head on a pike, and I want it ASAP. Top priority.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Seelye.

  “Failure is not an option. I want to know everything about this guy, including the names of his twelve best friends. I want to know whether this goes higher up the food chain, and if it does who’s the son of a bitch behind this whole thing. Fail me, and it’s your ass.” He looked at Devlin, as if for the first time. “You read me?”

  Devlin decided to play his wild card. “I can name at least one of them for you right now. But you might not want to hear it.”

  Tyler was fast and he was sharp. “Do you suspect someone in my administration?” Devlin’s estimation of him improved on the spot.

  “Mr. President, I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say that I’m more than a little disturbed that knowledge of my existence has leaked beyond the inner circle. Especially since you’re the leak.”

  Devlin waited for the nearly obligatory “how dare you?” speech as Tyler’s famo
usly short fuse went off. But it never came. Devlin glanced over at Seelye, who wasn’t going to like this part. “On my own initiative, I cast a wide-net intercept flag in the Washington area on the telephones lines, cell and hard, all e-mail, text, and other PDA traffic as well.”

  “And what did you find?” asked the President, impatiently.

  “I found exactly one anomaly. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee—”

  “Bob Hartley?” exclaimed the president.

  “Yes, sir. The man who was in the Oval Office with you yesterday when my name came up. That’s who it was, wasn’t it?” The president chose not to answer, so Devlin took that as a yes and continued. “Last night, he made a call to a local number—”

  “So?” Tyler was starting to lose it.

  “—to a Washington number that does not exist. It’s a cutout, with how many bounces I don’t know yet. I’ve traced it as far as Los Angeles, but it may not end there. Whoever gave him that number thinks his secret is safe, but he doesn’t know that we’re smarter than he is.”

  “What was this call about?”

  “Nothing. No connection was made. I think it was a dry run.”

  “Why? Do you think the next attack could come in LA?”

  “I have no idea. But it’s a good place to start.”

  “Dismissed, sailor,” said the president.

  There was an unmarked car waiting at the gate. Seelye nodded in its direction. “Can I give you a lift?”

  “I had a car here somewhere,” said Devlin.

  “‘I had to crash that Honda, honey,’” replied Seelye, doing a passable imitation of Bruce Willis’s character Butch in Pulp Fiction. “In fact, it’s already pulped. It’s sleeping peacefully with Jimmy Hoffa somewhere in Pennsylvania. Just in case Milverton is in your shorts.”

  Did he suspect something? Did he know something? Seelye knew perfectly well that made Branch 4 agents were soon dead Branch 4 agents, and the thought had occurred to Devlin that Seelye’s life would be so much easier once he was finally rid of his long-ago lover’s inconvenient son.

  Seelye closed the door and pounded on the trunk twice, the signal for the driver to get a move on. Then he changed his mind, rapped on the window. Devlin rolled down his window, making sure that the partition between him and the driver was securely in place.

  Seelye leaned through the window and asked, “How come you never call me ‘Dad’?”

  Chapter Thirty

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Hartley lay on his bed, shaking. He couldn’t believe what had happened, couldn’t believe what was about to happen. He had to get control of himself, calm down. Nothing was ever quite as bad as it seemed, not even this.

  Well, maybe this.

  Thank God the phone stopped ringing. The damn thing had been ringing all morning, his cell phone too. He knew it was the White House, which meant it was the president, which meant that sooner or later he was going to have to answer or else they’d send the Secret Service over to his flat to find out if he was okay. And, at this point, he was very fucking far from okay, and the Secret Service were the last people who needed to know just how far from okay everything really was.

  The pizza boy was still there. That poor fellow wasn’t going anywhere, not of his own volition, and part of Senator Hartley’s problem at this moment was to figure just how and when to make him disappear. His unwelcome visitor had gone through the boy’s pockets after the murder and told him that the escort service had deliberately set Hartley up and would have exposed him to one of the supermarket tabloids or cable TV, so in a sense the stranger had done him a favor. Still, the corpse in his flat was the least of his worries right now; his nocturnal visitor was going to help Hartley with that, assuming he played ball on the main request.

  Which had been, for him, relatively easy. Thank God and the Founding Fathers for civilian oversight of the military. And for access to certain files.

  As Balzac once said, behind every great fortune is a great crime, and if Hartley played his cards right, he could wind up with everything — money, power, glory. Already there were stocks, rather a lot of them, that he was to sell short today, very short, and he was encouraged to spread the word to select individuals, corporate managers, defense contractors, and pension-fund bosses of his acquaintance — very discreetly — that rolling back their exposure to certain things, immediately if not sooner, would pay huge dividends. Besides, the man had assured him that no one would be thinking about insider trading in twenty-four hours, but that the political opportunities that were about to open up for a man of Senator Hartley’s perspicacity and intelligence were, literally, invaluable.

  So Hartley had made all the phone calls, placed all the bets. The man had given him the number of what he said was a Swiss bank account to finance his transactions, and sure enough they had all gone through smoothly. Now it was time to make that one last phone call, to the number the man had given him, and the die was cast.

  He dialed it.

  Instead of an answer, he heard a series of clicks, like back in the old days when phones clicked instead of beeped as they ordered up a connection. The clicks stopped, replaced temporarily by silence, then a loud buzzing sound, as if a fax machine had picked up the line. He hung up. What the hell was going on?

  He rose and looked out the window. He needed some air, so he stepped onto the balcony. Almost immediately, he was sorry he did. He could hear police sirens, approaching.

  Hartley darted back inside, closed the plate-glass picture window, and pulled the curtains. His nerves were shot. Police sirens were always sounding in Washington, as in any big city. He thought about pouring himself a drink, but decided against it.

  He padded back over to the window, parted the curtains, and looked down at the street. Nothing. See? He was letting his imagination run away with him. He looked at the phone in his hand and hit redial.

  No clicks or noises — the connection went straight through. This time, a voice answered. It may or may not have been the same as his visitor’s, he couldn’t tell.

  Hartley gave the man the information his visitor had demanded.

  “I’m glad you’re seeing things…our way, Senator,” said the voice. Hartley realized that it was scrambled, disguising both the timbre and the accent of the speaker; that was why he couldn’t recognize it. “Look out the window.”

  Two police cars were pulling up to the building’s service entrance.

  “Don’t worry about the police, Senator. As long as you cooperate with us, they’ll sit tight. But if you fuck up, they’ll be at your door to investigate a report of a murder, and the next call you make will be to your lawyer. Understand?”

  Hartley nodded dumbly.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Well done,” the voice at the other end of the line said. “Now sit tight and await further instructions.” The fax-machine blast again, followed by the clicks. In his surprise and fear, Hartley dropped the phone, which bounced and settled on the sofa. He was still wondering what to do when there was a knock on the door.

  He practically sprinted over and peered through the peephole. Two men in business suits. Hotel security. “What do you want?” he croaked.

  “Routine security check,” came a voice from the other side. Hartley glanced behind him to make sure the bedroom door was closed and nothing untoward or suspicious was visible.

  He opened the door a crack. No sooner had he done so when one of the men flashed a badge and pushed his way past him, followed by his partner, who shut the door and locked it.

  “Who are you?” gasped Hartley.

  “Don’t worry,” said the lead man. “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.”

  One of them — the bigger, beefier fellow — headed straight for the bedroom, while his smaller partner, a whippet, just stood there, staring at him.

  “Nice,” said the voice from the bedroom. “Houston, I would say we have a situation her
e.”

  The Whippet smiled. “Ain’t that a kick in the head.” He looked at Hartley. “Sit down, Senator. The president’s been worried about you.”

  “And now we know why,” said the Refrigerator behind him.

  Hartley sat, his mind racing. He knew he was in a lot of trouble, but after all he hadn’t killed the pizza boy. They could take paraffin tests or whatever more sophisticated procedures they were using these days, which would surely show he hadn’t fired a weapon. He could explain everything.

  “Two pops in the head with this baby.” Hartley turned to see the Refrigerator holding up the gun. “Pro job — nice shooting, Senator.”

  “Senator Hartley,” said Whippet. “I’m not going to fuck around with you. Unless you play ball with us, not only is your political career over, not only are you going to jail for the rest of your life, but your good friend from across the aisle, Jeb Tyler, is going to be heartbroken. At a time of national crisis and peril, to lose one of his closest and most trusted advisors, with an election coming up…well, I’m sure you agree that this unfortunate incident couldn’t possibly have come at a worse time. Which is why he’ll feed you to the dogs.”

  Hartley nodded dully. “Am I under arrest?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it arrest,” said the Refrigerator.

  “More like day care,” said the Whippet.

  “It’ll be fun,” said the Refrigerator. “We can bunk down out here.”

  “Just the three of us,” said the Whippet.

  “Four of us,” reminded the Refrigerator. “Until your playmate gets back in touch with you or the Boss says otherwise.”

  “No, you can’t mean…” shouted Hartley as the implications sank in. “Not that.”

  The Whippet smiled. “I’d think about it twice if I were you,” he said.

  Hartley was about to protest that he was thinking about it when he felt the snub nose of the .22 pressed up against the back of his head.

  “In fact,” said the Refrigerator behind him,” I’d think about it twenty-two times.”

  Chapter Thirty-one