Hostile Intent d-1

by Michael Walsh

  But Skorzeny wasn’t just clean; he was scrubbed — scrubbed in a way only money and access could buy.

  “In position,” crackled the voice in his hidden earpiece.

  “And so the question arises, how do we fight back? Do we, in fact, even bother to fight back at all, or do we allow ourselves to succumb to the false dichotomy between the rule of law and the right of self-preservation? These are questions that each of us, each country, each society, must answer for itself. I imagine these are the same questions that the fifth-century poets of the Roman Empire asked themselves, just before the Vandals sacked their city. Perhaps from their example, we can glean the answer. Or at least understand what not to do.”

  “Dr. Grant,” said one of the Germans, “I have a question…”

  Devlin’s eyes, a nameless Navy SEAL, was standing in Angel’s Gate Park, overlooking the harbor to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the south.

  They had caught one big break. The Stella Maris was not truly in port. Instead, she had dropped anchor in deeper waters outside the Los Angeles Main Channel. That in itself was only slightly suspicious — the urgency of offloading the supplies was the stated reason — but taken together with everything else, made Devlin sure he was doing the right thing.

  Everybody had heard of the SEALs, but few Americans actually knew who they were, or what they did. The SEALs — SEa, Air, and Land forces — had grown out of the old Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT). Basically they were waterborne commandos who could slip into an enemy port, blow shit up, and retire without a trace.

  Most people forgot that President Kennedy, in his famous 1961 speech about putting a man on the moon within the decade, had thrown the lamb chop past the wolf by strengthening the Special Ops in Vietnam at the same time. Not wanting to play second fiddle to the Army Rangers, the Navy got into the act, establishing Team One in Coronado and Team Two in Virginia. This is where it got serious. In addition to underwater demolition, the UDT lads got training in sabotage, hand-to-hand combat, even parachuting. Languages became a must; any SEAL who couldn’t pass for native in at least three languages washed out before the end of the training period. They were men after his own heart.

  “Go,” he said, over the wallawalla.

  “Roger that,” said the voice in his ear.

  “It seems to me,” said the German, “that without the law, we have no society. So I am perhaps a bit confused by your implication that there might be, shall we say, a higher law than the law itself. Can you please clarify?”

  Devlin resisted the temptation to reply in German. Schopenhauerian questions were best answered in the tongue whose syntax gave them birth, but “Mr. Grant’s” German was not totally fluent, and he didn’t feel like dumbing himself down at this point. Not with what was happening in Long Beach.

  “Thank you, Dr. Hesse, for your most astute and provocative question. I think that what I am trying to say, in essence, is this — what we are up against is not something new. There have been forces of savagery antithetical to our culture since its beginning. Since the Irish monks salvaged the detritus of Roman civilization and retreated to the rocky western shores of Eire. Since St. Malachy mentored Bernard of Clairvaux. This savagery — I’m sorry, but there is really no other word to describe it — must be fought with both understanding and resolve and even, at times, utter ruthlessness. Fortunately we in the United States are blessed with some of the finest intelligence and security operatives in the world.”

  The BND man pondered this for a moment. “But, if what you said about the nature of the threat is true, doesn’t that give these ‘operatives’ extraordinary executive authority with very little accountability?”

  Inwardly, Devlin smiled. “The best way I can answer that question is to quote Wendell Phillips, in a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852. ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,’ he said. I really can’t improve on that.”

  Half an hour later the news was on the radio, on television, and on the Web sites:

  “Stella Maris Sinks at Long Beach.” By the time she sank, imploded from the bottom with limpet mines, placed with the aid of radar-and-ELINT-surveillance jammers, the SEALs had retrieved whatever had been in the dead zone, and would let him know sooner than ASAP; if his hunch was right, this was a major national-security issue now.

  And by the time they did, he’d be on an airplane. Long Beach Airport was only ten minutes away and he’d booked a seat for himself on a flight to Baltimore. Maryam was already in the air.

  DAY FOUR

  Take no enterprise in hand at haphazard, or without regard to the principles governing its proper execution.

  — MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations, Book IV

  Chapter Forty-four

  LONDON

  It was a shaken Emanuel Skorzeny who absorbed the shock of the sinking of the Stella Maris just after midnight in his suite at the Savoy. It was all over Sky News by the time Amanda Harrington reached the fifth floor. The river and the lights of the South Bank held no charm either for her or her boss at this moment. “Mr. Skorzeny,” she began. “I’m so—”

  Skorzeny gave her his best basilisk glare. “This is war,” he said, “Someone is at war with us, Miss Harrington.”

  “Sir, there’s no evidence—”

  “Evidence is for lawyers. I am interested in reality. And the reality is, someone is waging war against me, and I want something done about it.”

  “Yes, sir.” As usual, she was juggling a brace of cell phones. “I’ve already—”

  “Please sit down. Turn those things off and put them away. Sit here, by me.” He patted the empty space on the sofa next to him. Lying on the coffee table was one of the Savoy’s Victorian signatures: a three-button panel with which one could summon the maid, room service, or the valet. The help.

  Warily, she crossed the room and sat. The TV was still on, flashing its silent images. “I gather they’re saying it was some kind of accident, an explosion in the ship’s—”

  “Let me be blunt. I believe the U.S. government was involved in this. In fact, I am certain of it. I want my protestations to reach the ear of the president, with the understanding that I will go public with them if I do not receive some sort of satisfaction. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We have many people in Washington on our payroll, including several congressmen and senators. I am thinking of one senator in particular who has long been a friend to us and, I am given to believe, is now even more sympathetic. Despite their political differences, he is a friend to the current president and has his ear. He is the chairman of a powerful committee. He knows things.”

  Amanda wasn’t quite sure where Skorzeny was going with this. “What is it, exactly, that you wish me to do, Mr. Skorzeny?” she asked.

  Skorzeny leveled his gaze at her. It always made her flesh crawl, they way he looked at her. “I want the man behind this punished.”

  How she was supposed to accomplish that was beyond her. “Sir, the United States is a sovereign country. Even assuming that you’re right and for some reason an American operative was involved, what can we do about it?”

  “This American operative,” said Skorzeny levelly, “is a devil, whose very existence is an affront to me and everything I hold dear. He must be terminated.”

  Amanda gasped. “Are you asking me to kill him? You…I don’t—”

  Skorzeny waved away her objection. “No. I am saying they can kill him. And that is what I want Senator Hartley to effect.”

  “And just how am I supposed to convince him to do that?”

  “You aren’t. That is a job for your boyfriend. Your job is to make sure he carries it out.”

  Her heart nearly stopped. Had he been following them? Monitoring them? Had Milverton blabbed? They had been as discreet as possible, which was to say very. Or was he just guessing?

  “Boyfriend? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, sir. My duties as a mother preclude…”

  He reac
hed out and stroked her hair. “There, there,” he purred. “You look tired, stressed out.”

  She tried to relax a little. “It’s been a very bad day all around.”

  “I should say so. I was nearly killed.” Another dig, another suspicion?

  “Mr. Skorzeny,” she said. “Milverton calibrated the missile strike exactly, to the second. As we all agreed. It was meant to be close, to make you look good. Heroic. A victim, in the modern fashion.” She was glad that Milverton had already prepped her.

  “I’ve already been a victim,” he said, “many times over…and yet something went wrong.”

  “Nothing went wrong, Mr. Skorzeny. You are here.” She reached out and took his hand away from her hair, but continued to hold it. “We are here. Together.”

  That was all the encouragement he needed. He tugged her hand closer, pulling her toward him. And then he lunged for her, throwing his arms around her, kissing her, his mouth seeking hers.

  She knew that to pull away now was to risk everything. She had seen, so often, the side of Emanuel Skorzeny few others had: the Caligula-side, in which the slightest frustration of his will to power was met with instant punishment. The uncontrollable, raging man-child, bearing the hurt of generations in his breast and the vengeance of centuries in his heart.

  And so, despite her loathing, she kissed him back, stroked him, and kept stroking him. At this moment she wished him dead, wished the missile strike had hit him, that they had gone ahead and done the deed and rid themselves and the world of this monster. But now it was too late.

  At last, she felt him softening, relaxing, withdrawing. When at last he subsided, she pulled herself away, smoothing her skirt. “There,” she said soothingly. “There…”

  Gradually, his breathing returned to normal. If he felt any shame, it was not reflected in his face. “Do you know what Blake said, Miss Harrington? He said, ‘Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.’ I could not agree more.”

  He looked at her with that reptilian, penetrating, blinkless gaze he could always muster when he needed to stare down an opponent. There was no way to beat him, no way to insult him, no way to fight back. He was impervious to normal human emotions. All except one.

  “Are you my enemy, Amanda?” he said. It was the first time he had used her Christian name.

  “No, sir. I am not your enemy.”

  “Then carry out my wishes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You do love me, don’t you, Miss Harrington?” he said as he reached for her again. She had just enough time to be amazed that he could recover this quickly when he was on her again, like an old tiger leaping upon a piece of helpless prey and tearing it limb from limb.

  I hate you, she thought as he ripped her clothes away. I hate you and I wish you were dead.

  As she fell backward on the couch, her eye caught the three-button panel lying on the coffee table, and thought about reaching out, pressing, calling for help. But she knew if she did that, she’d never leave the Savoy alive. And there was a little girl at home who needed her.

  “Do not fail me,” he said as she closed her eyes and thought of England.

  Chapter Forty-five

  EASTERN SHORE OF MARYLAND

  President Jeb Tyler looked toward the west over the Chesapeake Bay and took a deep breath. Either this gamble would pay off or it wouldn’t. It wasn’t just his job on the line, it was the fate of the entire country. Even for an experienced and avid poker player like himself, this was the biggest gamble of his life.

  Nothing — no advisors, no campaign managers, no public relations assholes — prepared you for this. All his life he’d been a politician, and to him “politician” wasn’t a dirty word. Sure it was sometimes mean, sure you had to associate with some pretty unsavory characters and, most of all, you had to forgo the notion that the ends never justified the means. That was for sissies and nuns: in politics, the ends were the only thing that could possibly justify the means. And if you believed in those ends, believed in the rightness and the justice of them, then you were in it to win it by any means necessary short of murder. And, sometimes, not even that, if some of the tales told of his predecessors were to be believed.

  Still, Jeb Tyler never thought it would happen to him. He’d led a charmed life, a golden boy life, a life too good to willingly change. When he’d first announced that he was running for president, his friends told him he was insane to subject his life to the kind of scrutiny he had been able to avoid during his single term as a senator. Politics, he reflected, was like a love affair, and at the right time, he had been Mr. Right.

  But this…this was different. He had never expected to be a war president, not like his predecessors, never expected to have an atrocity like this happen on his watch. And while Louisiana’s politics were plenty dirty, they were nothing like what he was about to go through. What he was about to do.

  Betray his only friend in the capital. Not “betray” exactly — the betrayal had already occurred — but certainly destroy. At last he understood the old joke; if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

  “May I get you something, sir?” asked his orderly, Manuel. Manuel Concepcion was a Filipino, like many of the servants in the White House. Twenty years ago, he would have been black.

  “What about a Labrador Retriever?”

  Manuel was used to the president’s jokes, but he didn’t get this one. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “A joke, Manny…how’s the market doing?” He knew the answer was going to be bad, the only question was how bad.

  Manuel glanced away. “Down another six hundred points or so,” he said.

  After three straight incidents, the shock to the world’s stock markets had been devastating. He might have to shut the markets down by early this afternoon.

  “On second thought, I’ll have a gin and tonic. And a whiskey neat for my guest.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Manuel, withdrawing for real this time.

  Jeb Tyler sighed. He’d only been president for three years and already the demands of the office were wearing him down. He hated looking in the mirror any more; every year in the White House added at least four years to his face and took a decade off his ticker. Nobody got out alive from this gilded cage, nobody’s reputation survived unsavaged, and, as he often did, he wondered why he had spent so much time and money and love and friendship attaining the office. Far better, he sometimes thought, to just…

  To just what? This is what he lived for. Elections. Campaigns. Votes. He really didn’t want to do anything else, but he was surprised when he walked into the Oval Office on the first day and realized he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do. Somehow, it looked easier from the outside. He felt like Robert Redford in The Candidate, at the end, just after he wins the senate race, asking his strategist, “What do we do now?”

  So not only was it time for results, it was time for a political play, a game-changer. It was time for him to start acting like a president instead of a politician.

  In the distance, he could hear the car pulling up, doors opening, feet hitting the gravel; for him, the rubber meeting the road.

  Manuel materialized at his side, the drinks ready on a silver tray, which he set down on a small table. “Would you kindly ask the senator to meet me down here, at the dock. No SS either. I cannot think with their earpieces up my ass. Besides, this is just between us girls.”

  Manuel looked dubious. “But, sir, Mr. Willson—”

  “Works for me and the American people, Manuel,” said the president. “So, if he gives you any shit, tell him to go fuck himself and tell him I said so.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” said Manuel.

  Jeb Tyler plucked a skimmer out of his pocket and sent it sailing across the water on a six-bounce on the Chesapeake. A minor river suddenly turned into a mighty bay, surging its way toward the Atlantic. Nothing, abruptly becoming something. Just like a politician. Just like a president.

  The Se
nate, on the other hand, had become a hotbed of blow-dried, Botoxed seditionists, each one plotting to succeed him, if and when they got their chance. His visitor was no exception — friend or no friend.

  “Hello, Bob,” he said, turning around at the footfalls. “You look like shit.”

  Hartley was a mess. There was blood all over his shirtfront and the lapels of his suit. His hair was mussed. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a month. He was dazed, disoriented, and right where Tyler wanted him.

  Hartley tried to speak, but couldn’t. He couldn’t believe what was happening to him. In just a couple of days his entire world had been turned upside down. And now here he was, at the president’s private retreat on Maryland’s eastern shore. Tyler liked to come here to crab and fish and be alone. Even members of his inner circle rarely got an invitation.

  Tyler took one of the drinks and, tantalizingly, left the other sitting on the tray.

  Hartley wanted a drink. Even more, he wanted a hot shower and a change of clothes, but that apparently was not on the agenda today. “I gather you’re thinking of running against me,” said Tyler. “Even for an opportunistic asshole like you, Bob, the audacity is breathtaking. But I guess that’s what I get for reaching across the aisle. I guess that’s what I get for considering you a friend.”

  He sipped, savoring his gin and tonic. “But what the hell, go ahead. Run. I want you to do it. I want you to give me the fight of my life. I want you to tear me a new one. In fact, let’s drink to it.”

  Tyler handed Hartley his whiskey: “To an honorable campaign,” the president said. They didn’t clink glasses.