by Jack Mars
“Help me. Please help me.”
“You better give me something,” Luke said. “Or we’re going to get started.”
Luke stood ten feet away and watched him. Li was slumped over in the chair, his head low, his arms tight behind his broad back, his entire body trembling. There was no organization to it—every part seemed to be doing something different and unrelated to every other part. Luke noticed now that the crotch of Li’s jumpsuit was wet. He had also pissed himself.
Luke took a deep breath. They’d have to get somebody in here to clean this guy up.
“Li?” he said.
Li was still facing the ground. His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. “There is a warehouse. It’s a small warehouse, with an office. An importer of Chinese goods. In the office, everything is explained.”
“Whose office is it?” Luke said.
“Mine.”
“It’s a front?” Ed said.
Li tried to shrug. His body jittered and jived. His teeth chattered as he talked. “Mostly. It had to be somewhat functional, or else there is no cover story.”
“Where is it?”
Li mumbled something.
“What?” Luke said. “I don’t hear you. If you play with me, we’re going to do this the hard way. You think Ed wants you off the hook? Think again.”
“It’s in Atlanta,” Li said, clear and firm now, as if telling it was a relief. “The warehouse is in Atlanta. That’s where I was based.”
Luke smiled.
“Well, you can give us the address, and we can fly down to Atlanta. We’ll be right back in a few hours.” He put his hand on Li’s shoulder. “God help you if we find out you’re lying.”
*
“Nice job, Swann,” Luke said. “I couldn’t have asked for better if I had written the script myself.”
“Did I ever mention I was in the theater club in high school? I played Mack the Knife one year.”
“You missed your calling,” Luke said. “You could’ve gone to Hollywood based on what I saw in there.”
They moved down the concrete walkway toward the waiting black SUV. Two men in FEMA jumpsuits had just exited the SUV and gone into the cabin. Luke glanced at the surroundings. All around them were fences and razor wire. Behind the closest guard tower, a steep green hillside rose up toward the northern mountains of Georgia.
Swann smiled. “I tried to put just the right note of moral indignation into it.”
“You had me fooled,” Ed said.
“Well, it was real. I didn’t have to act. I’m really not for torturing people.”
“Neither are we,” Ed said. “At least, not all the time.”
“Did you do it?” Swann said.
Luke smiled. “What do you think?”
Swann shook his head. “I was gone only ten minutes before you came out, so I’m guessing that you didn’t.”
Ed clapped him on the back. “Keep guessing, data analyst.”
“Well, did you or didn’t you?” Swann said. “Guys?”
Within minutes, the three of them were back on the helicopter, rising over the dense forest and headed south to Atlanta.
CHAPTER SIX
10:05 a.m.
United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC
“Congressman, thank you for coming.”
Susan Hopkins reached out to shake the hand of the tall man in the sharp blue suit. He was United States Representative from Ohio, Michael Parowski. He had prematurely white hair and squinty pale blue eyes. Fifty-five years old, he was handsome in a rugged, Marlboro man sort of way. Blue-collar born and bred, he had the big stone hands and the broad shoulders of a man who started his career as an iron worker.
Susan knew his story. H was a lifelong bachelor. He grew up in Akron, the son of immigrants from Poland. As a teenager, he was a Golden Gloves fighter. The industrial cities of the north, Youngstown, Akron, Cleveland, were his stronghold. His support up there was unshakeable. More than that, it was mythic, the stuff of legend. He was on his ninth term in the House, and his reelections were a breeze, an afterthought.
Would Michael Parowski get reelected in northern Ohio? Would the sun come up again tomorrow? Would the Earth continue to spin on its axis? If you dropped an egg, would it fall to the kitchen floor? He was as inevitable as the laws of physics. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Susan had seen the videos of him wading into the crowds at union rallies, holidays, and ethnic festivals (where he did not discriminate—Polish, Greek, Puerto Rican, Italian, African-American, Irish, Mexican, Vietnamese—if you had an ethnicity, he was your man). He was a hand-shaker, a back-slapper, a high-fiver, and a hugger. His signature move was the whisper.
In the midst of mayhem and chaos, dozens or even hundreds of people pressing close to him, he would invariably take some older woman one step aside and whisper something in her ear. Sometimes the women would laugh, sometimes they would blush, sometimes they would wag a finger at him. The crowds adored it, and none of the women ever repeated what he said. It was political theatre of the highest order, the kind that Susan, frankly, loved.
Here in DC, he was a union man all the way—the AFL-CIO gave him a 100 percent rating. He was one of labor’s best friends on Capitol Hill. He was more wobbly on some of Susan’s other issues: women’s rights, gay rights, the environment. But not so much that it was a deal breaker, and in a sense, his strengths complemented hers. She could speak with passion about clean water and clean air, and about women’s health, and he could equal her passion when he talked about the plight of the American worker.
Even so, Susan wasn’t sure he was the perfect fit, but the Party elders assured her he was. They wanted him on board more than anything. Truth be told, they had practically made the decision for her. And what they really wanted from him, besides his popularity, was his toughness. He was the baddest man in the room. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, and it at least appeared that he didn’t sleep. He lived on airplanes, bouncing back and forth to his district like a ping-pong ball. He would be on the Hill for committee meetings and votes at all hours, at a cemetery in Youngstown in the morning six hours later, fresh and alert, tears in his eyes, wrapping his big strong arms around the mother of a dead serviceman as she melted against his chest.
If his enemies claimed that he had quietly remained friends with a couple of the mobsters who he spent his childhood with in the old neighborhood… well, that only added to the image. He was soft, he was hard, he was loyal, and he was no one to mess with.
He gave her a bright smile. “Madam President, to what do I owe this honor?”
“Please, Michael. It’s still Susan.”
“Okay. Susan.”
She led him back into her study. As Vice President, she had long ago dispensed with holding important meetings in her office. She preferred the somewhat informal feel, and the beautiful surroundings, of the study. When they walked in, Kat Lopez was already there and waiting.
“Do you know my chief-of-staff, Kat Lopez?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure.”
The two shook hands. Kat gave him one of her rare smiles. “Congressman, I’ve been a big fan of yours since I was in college.”
“When was that, last year?”
Kat did something out of character then. She blushed. It was fast, disappearing almost as soon as it arrived, but it was there. The man had an effect on people.
Susan offered Parowski a chair. “Shall we sit down?”
Parowski settled into one of the comfortable armchairs. Susan sat facing him. Kat stood behind her.
“Mike, we’ve known each other a long time. So I’m not going to dance around. As you know, I abruptly became President when Thomas Hayes died. It took me this long to get my wheels under me. And I delayed picking my Vice President until the crisis seemed like it was over.”
“I’ve heard some rumblings about what happened yesterday,” Parowski said.
Susan nodded. “It’s true. We believe
it was a terror attack. But we’ll survive it like we did the others, and we’re going to move forward even stronger and more resilient than before. And one way we’re going to do that is with a strong Vice President.”
Parowski stared at her.
Susan nodded. “You.”
He glanced up at Kat Lopez, then back at Susan. He smiled. Then he laughed.
“I thought you were going to ask me to herd some votes for you on the Hill.”
“I am,” she said. “I’m going to ask you to do that. But as the Vice President and the President of the Senate, not as the Congressman from Ohio.”
She raised her hands. “I know. It feels like I’m throwing this is in your lap, and I am. But I’ve been putting feelers out, and holding little hush-hush secretive meetings for the past six weeks. You’re the name that comes up again and again. You’re the one with massive popularity in your own district, and broad appeal across the entire northern tier of the United States, and even in conservative working class districts across the south. And you’re the tireless campaigner who can ride hard with me when the time comes to run for reelection.”
“I’ll do it,” he said.
“Take your time,” Susan said. “I don’t want to rush you.”
His smile became broader. Now he raised his hands, almost as if imploring the heavens. “What can I say? It’s a dream come true. I love what you’re doing. You held this country together at a time when it could have splintered apart. You were a lot tougher than anyone gave you credit for.”
“Thank you,” Susan said. If he could have seen her in the early days, weeping alone in this very room when she thought ninety thousand people were going to die from the Ebola attack, would he still think that?
She nodded to herself. Probably more than ever.
He pointed at her with his thick index finger. “I’ll tell you something else. I always knew that about you. I can read people with the best of them. I learned it as a kid, and I saw it in you years ago, when you first came to DC. Ask anybody. When June sixth came, I told people don’t worry, we’re in good hands. I told that to the people who were still alive on the Hill, I told it to the TV shows, and I told it personally to at least ten thousand people in my district.”
Susan nodded. “I know that.” And she did know it. That little fact had come up again and again in her meetings. Michael Parowski has your back.
“You need to know something about me, though,” he said. “I’m big. Physically I’m big, and I have a big personality. If you’re looking for someone to stand in the back and fade into the wallpaper, then I’m probably not your guy.”
“Michael, we vetted you eight ways to Sunday. We know everything about you. We don’t want you to stand in the background. We want you upfront, being yourself. We want your strength. We’re rebuilding a government here, and in a sense, we’re rebuilding people’s faith in America. It’s hard work, and it’s a lot of heavy lifting. That’s why we picked you.”
He gave her a sidelong look. “You know everything about me, huh?”
She smiled. “Well, almost everything. There’s still one mystery I’d like to solve.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “What is it?”
“When you pull the old ladies aside at events, what do you whisper to them?”
He grunted. A funny look came into his face. It nearly transformed, decades of wear and tear dropping from it. For a few seconds, he looked almost (but not quite) innocent, like the hardscrabble child he must once have been.
“I tell them how beautiful they look today,” he said. “Then I say, ‘Don’t tell nobody. It’s our little secret.’ And I mean it, every word of it.”
He shook his head, and Susan thought it was almost with wonder—at people, at politics, at the sheer magnitude and audacity of what people like he and Susan did every single day of their lives.
“It works every time,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
11:45 a.m.
Atlanta, Georgia
“Is Mr. Li okay? I haven’t seen him here in quite a while.”
The man was small and thin, with a narrow and hunched back. He wore a gray uniform with the name Sal stitched over one breast. He kept a cigarette lit and in his mouth at all times. He talked with it in his mouth. He never seemed to see any need to take it out until it was finished. Then he lit another one. In one hand, he carried a heavy pair of bolt cutters.
“Oh, he’s fine,” Luke said.
They walked down a long, wide cinderblock corridor. It was lit by sputtering overhead fluorescents. As they walked, a small rat darted in front of them, then scurried along the bottom corner of the wall. Sal didn’t seem to feel the rat was worth commenting on, so Luke kept his mouth shut. He glanced at Ed. Ed smiled and said nothing. Trailing behind them, Swann coughed.
Li’s space was in a large old warehouse building which had been subdivided over the years into many smaller spaces. Dozens of tiny companies rented spaces here. There was a loading dock at the far end of the corridor, and the corridor itself was perfect for loading up dollies and rolling product in and out.
Sal seemed to work as some kind of manager or custodian of the place. He had initially been hesitant to cooperate. But when Ed showed him his FBI identification, and Swann showed him his new NSA badge, Sal became eager to please. Luke didn’t show his badge. It was his old Special Response Team ID, and the SRT didn’t exist anymore.
“What kind of trouble might he be in?” Sal said.
Luke shrugged. “Nothing too major. Tax trouble, trouble with trademark and patent infringements. About what you’d expect from a guy bringing stuff in from China. You must see it all the time, am I right? I was in Chongking a few years ago. You can go into the warehouses along the waterfront there and buy new iPhones for fifty bucks, and Breitling watches for a hundred and fifty. They’re not real, of course. But you wouldn’t know the difference to look at them.”
Sal nodded. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff I see come in and out of here.” He stopped in front of a corrugated steel door, the kind that slides up from the bottom. “Anyway, Li seems like a very nice man. He doesn’t speak much English, but I’d say he gets by on what little he has. And he’s very polite. Always bowing and smiling. Not sure how much business he does, though.”
The metal door had a clasp with a heavy lock. Sal lifted the bolt cutter and with one quick snap, chopped the lock right off.
“You’re in,” he said. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
He was already moving down the hall toward his office.
“Thanks for your help,” Ed called to his back.
Sal raised one hand. “I’m an American.” He didn’t turn around.
Ed bent over and pulled up the door. They observed what was visible before going in. Ed stuck his hand inside and slowly waved it side to side, up and down, looking for trip wires.
It wasn’t necessary. Li’s warehouse was unprotected by booby traps. More than that, it seemed long abandoned. When Luke flipped the switch, half the overhead lights didn’t work. Plastic-wrapped pallets of cheap toys were stacked in rows in the gloom, and covered with green tarps. Boxes of generic, no-name household cleaning products, the kind that would turn up in dollar stores and odd lot outlets, were piled in one corner, nearly to the ceiling. Everything was blanketed in a thin film of dust. The stuff had been sitting here for a while.
Li seemed to have imported a shipment of junk to keep up appearances, then never bothered with it again.
“The office is over there,” Swann said.
In the far corner of the warehouse was the door to the small office. The door was wood, with a frosted glass window for the top panel. Luke tried the knob. Locked. He glanced at Ed and Swann.
“Either of you guys have a pick on you? Otherwise, we have to go back down there and explain to Sal about how organized crime has cornered the market on year-old discount store crap.”
Ed shrugged and took his keys out of the pocket of
his jeans. The key ring had a small black flashlight on it. Ed held the flashlight like the world’s smallest night stick, and smacked it against the window, smashing the glass in. He reached through the hole and unlocked the door from the inside. He held up the flashlight for Luke’s inspection.
“It’s like a pick, only more direct.”
They went in. The office was bleak, but tidy. There was no window. There was a three-drawer filing cabinet, which was mostly empty. The bottom drawers each had a few folders with shipping manifests and receipts. The top drawer had a few power bars and small bags of pretzels and potato chips, plus a couple bottles of spring water.
There was a long wooden desk, with an old desktop computer on it. On one side of the desk were the kind of deep drawers where people often kept files on hangars. These drawers were locked.
“Ed?” Luke said.
Ed walked over, grabbed the handle of the top drawer, and wrenched it open with brute force—to the naked eye, it looked like a parlor trick, one deft snap of the wrist breaking the lock. Luke knew better. Then Ed proceeded to open each drawer in turn using the exact same technique.
“Like a pick,” he said.
Luke nodded. “Yes, but more direct.”
There was nothing much in the drawers. Pencils, pens, faded pieces of stationery. An unopened pack of Wrigley chewing gum. An old Texas Instruments calculator. In one of the drawers, on the bottom, were three CD-ROMs in dirty plastic cases. The cases were marked with letters A, B, and C, written in magic marker on scraps of masking tape. The case with the letter B on it was cracked.
Swann sat down to the computer and booted it up. “Pretty low-tech,” he said. “This thing is probably twenty years old. I’ll bet it’s not even hooked to the internet. Sure. Look at this. It’s from a time before cable hookups, and from way before wireless. There’s nowhere to plug in a Cat 5 cable. You want an internet connection on this thing? Anybody here remember dial-up?”
To Luke, it didn’t make sense.
