by Jack Mars
There were a dozen tables in the room, with three of them currently occupied, in each case a visitor sitting across the table from a woman in an orange jumpsuit. At one of them, an older women and three young children were visiting the prisoner—probably a young mom seeing her own children.
Eight-foot-high windows, embedded with metal wire, let afternoon sunlight stream in. Luke could look out the window and see basketball courts and a track painted with running lanes. A handful of heavyset women in prison jumpsuits were walking around the track, large orange dots moving at different speeds—slow, slower, and slowest.
Luke drummed his fingers on the table. He was nervous to see Trudy after two months. He hadn’t visited her before now, and worse, he hadn’t even known she’d been arrested.
Also, he didn’t have all day. Even as he sat here, analysts from the various intelligence agencies were digesting the data from Li’s office. At any minute, Luke was expecting a call from Susan. He glanced at his phone to see if he had missed anything. He had a text:
Where are you?
Ha! It was Gunner. He was serious about wanting to text. Luke felt a sudden, almost absurd swelling in his chest. He smiled and shook his head. God, he missed that kid. He pulled up the keyboard screen and started typing.
Visiting an old friend. Where are you?
He watched the screen. Dots zipped across it, indicating something was happening.
Home. I saw you were in North Carolina before. Mom and me are going to Screen on the Green tonight. It’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I know you like that one. Wanna meet us?
Screen on the Green was a program where they showed free movies on a massive screen, right on the National Mall between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument. They showed them only on Monday nights, and only in the summer. Thousands of people would come to the Mall with folding lawn chairs, blankets, and picnic baskets, and settle in to watch classic family-friendly movies like North by Northwest or Back to the Future. Luke and Becca had been taking Gunner to the movies there since he was three years old. They used to bring a bottle of white wine and some cheese and crackers, lay out on their old flannel blanket, all three of them in a pile, and call it date night.
The idea of meeting them there was almost too bittersweet to contemplate. Becca wouldn’t want Luke there, and Gunner would be hoping this was the start of a family reboot.
Even so…
What time?
He sent it knowing that in all likelihood, it couldn’t be. The reply came back very quickly. He could almost feel Gunner’s enthusiasm, and longing, through the words that he typed. Movie starts at 8. We try to get there at 7:15 to get a good spot. We ride the subway to Smithsonian. Will you do it?
I’ll try, Monster.
Luke got a sinking feeling just contemplating it. He’d love to watch a big screen outdoor movie with Gunner. He would do it every day of the week. But with Becca? He had no idea how that would go. And then there was the little issue of impending infrastructure attacks, if that was even real.
A thought came to him. It was a loud thought, almost as loud as if someone had spoken it to him.
Susan didn’t ask you to stop the attacks. She asked you to interrogate the prisoner.
It was true. He did what she asked. He was free to go… anywhere.
The door opened and Trudy walked in between the two guards. She waited while the woman unshackled her wrists. Then she made a beeline toward Luke, not running, but walking fast between the tables. He stood and watched her as she came. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her orange jumpsuit seemed baggy on her. Her eyes looked owlish in big red-framed glasses. There was an old shiner beneath her right eye, its last remnants a bruised purple and yellow, like overripe fruit. Even so, she was as beautiful as ever.
She walked straight into his arms. They embraced, and he held her tight. Her body pressed against his. He picked her up. She weighed less than nothing.
Luke watched the guards over Trudy’s back. They stared at him, but made no move.
“Okay to touch here, huh?” he said.
Trudy held him tight, her arms around his neck, her legs wrapped around his legs. He could smell the shampoo in her hair. “Yes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s fine.”
After a long moment, Luke let her slide to the floor. She looked up at him. “We can touch. I’m supposedly a murderer, but I’m a non-violent one. This is a special unit—embezzlers, art thieves, con artists, investments scammers. We’re all flight risks, but we’re not going to hurt anybody.”
Luke gestured at the fading black eye with his chin. “Somebody around here is violent.” He reached out and touched her face with his fingers.
She half-smiled. “Oh, this old thing? When I first came in, a few of the girls thought I had a hand in murdering President Hayes. It took me a little while to set them straight.”
Trudy moved to the other side of the table, and they sat down. She reached her hands across and took his hands. Her hands were tiny. His were the big hands of the high school quarterback he had once been. They held hands like lovers. And they were lovers. They’d had one night together.
“I love your beard,” she said.
“Thank you.”
She nodded. “Very sexy. You should become an underwear model now that you’re retired.”
“I just came out of retirement.”
Her eyes became wide. To Luke, they seemed almost frightened. “The dam?”
“You know about it?”
She shrugged. “We get television in here. What’s going on?”
Luke glanced at the guards. They were scanning the room, on edge, for what Luke wasn’t sure. This place was almost like the family room at a McDonald’s.
“Trudy, I would love to tell. The truth is, I need your help. But with you in here… I don’t know. I can’t do it. The information is classified.”
She nodded and cast her eyes down at the table. “Right. And I’ve lost my clearance.”
“You have. Yes.”
Her fingers traced a design on his hands. “Can’t you give me a tiny piece of it? Something tantalizing, a puzzle for me to ponder over? I have nothing right now. Nothing to do, nothing to work on, nothing to think about. All anybody does around here is watch TV.”
“What’s your situation?” Luke said.
“My situation?”
“Yes. Do you owe anyone anything? Is anyone protecting you?” Trudy was a beautiful woman, she was small, and a little bit on the skinny side. There were probably some big girls in here.
She made a face of disgust, designed to show how appalled she was by the very thought. “It’s not like that here. This is a pretty safe place.”
He was close to telling her. It was the reason why he came here. Back at SRT, he had known all along, without having to be told, how much he relied on her intelligence gathering and her scenario spinning. She was the best in the business. Whatever other flaws she might have, she had a gift for spy work. But she couldn’t do him any good while in jail. And if she told anyone what was going on, anyone at all…
“Trudy, I tell you, you tell one other person, then the guards know, and a short while later, the President of the United States is asking me why I’m spreading rumors in prison. Worse, it gets outside the prison and becomes common knowledge on the street. It’s no good. I can’t give you anything while you’re locked up.”
He shook his head. “You know the drill. Loose lips sink ships. It’s as true now as it ever was.”
“Thanks, Luke. For nothing.”
“Trudy, what are you doing in here, anyway? Why didn’t you call me?”
Now she looked up at him. Her eyes said she was wounded. A deer with a broken leg, helpless in front of the oncoming semi truck.
“You took off right after the Ebola crisis. Just gone, without another word. It seemed like we had something, that just for a moment, the elusive Luke Stone was pinned down… But then you were the incredib
le disappearing man again. Wham bam, thank you, ma’am.”
It pained Luke to hear her describe it in that way. He was Luke Stone, the good guy, wasn’t he?
“I couldn’t imagine that you wanted to hear from me,” she said now. “Before I was arrested, Ed Newsam told me that you were going to try to put your marriage back together. Did it work?”
Luke shook his head. “No.”
She shook her head, just slightly. “I’m sorry.”
Luke almost smiled. She was the one in prison. She was the one facing death, or a life behind bars. All he was facing was a life alone. Otherwise, he was free as a bird.
“What are you going to do now?” he said.
She tilted her chin up. “I’m going to do whatever it takes. Whatever I need to do to survive this. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m not going to let them execute me, if that’s what you’re wondering. And I don’t plan on doing life in here, either.”
“Do you have anything you can give them? Something they don’t already know?”
Now she smiled. “Loose lips sink ships. A very smart man once told me that.”
Luke paused. He was hesitant to ask the next question. But it was the question he came here to ask. She might hate him for it, but…
“Do you have anything you can give me?” he said.
She stared at him. “About what?”
He didn’t say anything.
“About the dam?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Luke, how would I know anything? All I know is what I saw on TV. You won’t give me the first piece of intel.”
He shrugged. “Guess. Use your gut.”
She shook her head. “If you won’t give me anything at all…”
He took a calculated risk. “They’re looking at China. I can’t tell you why.”
A gasp of air escaped her, almost a grunt, almost a sound of merriment. Just like that, the old Trudy was back. “I listened to the translations of intercepted Chinese telephone calls and bugged conversations for eighteen months when I came on board SRT. It was my first assignment out of school. I mean, calls between high-ranking party members. Calls from field operatives to their handlers. Meetings between men at the top of the secret police apparatus and their contacts inside the central government.”
“And?”
She smiled. “The Chinese are cautious. Their time horizon is a hundred years, two hundred years. A trickle of water wearing away rock, you know what I mean? They usually don’t go over the top. They want to kill you with kindness.”
“Are you saying it isn’t them?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“Hard to say. I think it’s unlikely.”
“What if it was an accident?” Luke said. “What if they were playing around and made a mistake?”
Trudy really shook her head now. “They don’t make mistakes.”
“Sure they make mistakes,” Luke said. “They’ve poisoned their own water. They’ve poisoned their air.”
“Sure,” Trudy said. “But that’s domestic policy. The people are powerless, and it’s all part of the long-term plan. When dealing with Russia, or the United States, or India? No one is as careful as the Chinese. They push, but not hard enough to knock you over. They do not want to upset the applecart.”
Just then, Luke’s phone started ringing. He glanced at it.
She frowned.
“You have to go, don’t you?” she asked. The sadness in her voice pained him.
He wondered if coming here had been a mistake. He was still not entirely sure why he had come. Was it because of his feelings for her? Or because he needed to solve this case? Or both?
But he had no choice. He nodded and stood.
There was one thing, at least, he could tell her.
“It’s the President of the United States.”
CHAPTER TEN
4:45 p.m.
The Situation Room, United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC
When Luke walked in, the Situation Room was in chaos.
He had never seen it this crowded. There were at least fifty people packed inside. The walls were lined with chairs, each chair with a person on it, and an aide or two aides standing nearby. The young aides were typing into their tablets, or scribbling furiously into notepads.
The conference table was littered with coffee cups and empty plastic takeout containers. It looked like a war zone. Every seat at the table was taken. Susan was at the head of the table, her chief-of-staff, Kat Lopez, crouched next to her and whispering in her ear. There was a steady hubbub of noise, the low background hum of whispered and not-so-whispered conversations.
Kurt Kimball stood in front of a screen at the other end of the table. He was in his shirt sleeves. The dress shirt was too small for his big chest and arms. He was pointing at a diagram of Gulf of Mexico oil rigs. The slide changed to a video of the BP drilling rig Deepwater Horizon on fire in 2011.
On screens all around the room, data appeared, scrolling lists. Luke glanced at one. Commuter rail systems, what cities they served, ridership numbers, known vulnerabilities. As he watched, the relevant stats scrolled by for the SEPTA light rail network whose primary center was Philadelphia, but which also served surrounding cities like the state capital of New Jersey, Trenton; Camden; and Chester, Pennsylvania. It was one random piece of infrastructure in a vast country full of easy targets. There were hundreds like it.
Kimball saw Luke standing there. He raised his hands.
“People! Can we have quiet in here for a moment?”
The place quieted down, grudgingly.
“Agent Stone, thanks for joining us,” Kurt said.
Luke shrugged. “Okay.”
If Kurt Kimball was looking to Luke for answers, he was looking in the wrong direction.
“You’ve been off radar for some time. Do you have any more intel?”
Luke shook his head. “You have everything I found—a dead prisoner, a list of targets, and a date, which you already know is two days from today. About all I can add is my systems guy spent years in China and felt that the prisoner might have been of Chinese descent, but also maybe not. And just as likely to be part of some terror cell or non-state actor as an agent of the Chinese government.”
Luke was silent for a moment. “One last thing. The prisoner appeared to be terrified of waterboarding. Most people don’t know what to expect, so they aren’t all that afraid until after it starts happening. This suggests to me that at some time in the past, the prisoner might have been tortured, possibly by the Chinese, possibly by someone else.”
A low murmur went through the crowd as soon as Luke mentioned waterboarding.
“Why do you say he might have been tortured?” a woman in a blue business suit said. “You don’t know?”
Luke shrugged. “He could have been acting. One of my associates thought so.”
“Did you torture him?” a tall, good-looking middle-aged man said from a seat along the wall. His tone indicated that he was accustomed to being answered with deference.
Luke stared at the man. “No.”
“I don’t understand the circumstances in which this prisoner died. Did you threaten to torture him, mock execute him, or in any other way violate the laws of war or his human rights?”
Luke smiled. “Who are you, please?”
“I’m Representative Michael Parowski of…”
“Okay, yes, I know… Ohio.” Luke knew him by reputation. Long-time Congressman, tough political in-fighter, ties to labor, possible ties to the mob. He was one of the few high-level veteran politicians still around. The rest had been killed. That was probably why he was in on this meeting. The bench was not deep these days.
Luke took a deep breath. “Well, Congressman, I was brought in by the President of the United States to interrogate the prisoner. The President is familiar with my methods. If she was uncomfortable with them, I believe she wouldn’t have called me.”
He looked at Susan.
&nb
sp; “Isn’t that true, Madam President?”
Susan raised a hand, flapped it. She looked exasperated. She didn’t say a word.
Luke went on. “The prisoner was a party to the deaths of hundreds or maybe thousands of innocent people—I’m not up to date on the current body count. He was clearly gathering intelligence on soft targets within the United States. And after he was captured, he was being held by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a detention facility that apparently does not exist. Does that help you understand the circumstances any better?”
The murmur was louder this time. People in this room were not aware of the intelligence and prison apparatus at work in their own country. And they were the ones supposedly in charge.
Then again, maybe they were just pretending.
“The facility doesn’t exist?” a heavyset woman said. “In what sense?”
Luke shrugged. “In the sense that it’s not on any official list of detention facilities currently in operation. It’s in the middle of the north Georgia wilderness, and is not marked on any map. There is no direct way to contact it from the outside, and it has no name that I am aware of. And hundreds of people are in fact being held there.”
“Are you saying there is a black site in the United States?”
Kurt Kimball clapped his big hands together. They made a loud SMACK.
“Can we get this conversation back on track, please? Anyone with questions or concerns about domestic detention facilities, please talk to me off-line. Luke, we’re trying to get a handle on where the next attack may take place, so we can forestall it. Do you have anything to add to that discussion?”
“The list of targets is too long,” Luke said. “I have no idea.”
A graying man in military dress blues, a general, raised a hand. “Kurt, we have to realize that there is simply no way we can know where the next attack will take place. My people have analyzed these lists eight ways to Sunday. It’s raw data. There is no hierarchy at all. There is no indication anywhere of a sequence of attacks. I suggest we set a nationwide infrastructure alert—all first responders on a hair trigger and ready to go. And in the meantime, we prepare a counter-offensive. If the Chinese think they can just waltz in here and start killing people, we show them how mistaken they are. And we make them pay.”
