The Senate, 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.
Hartley took a long draught of his whiskey. He was trying to wrap his mind around what the president was saying to him, and why. There was no way Jeb Tyler didn’t still want to be president. It had to be a trap.
Hartley wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve and mustered as much dignity as possible. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Good question. I could ask you the same thing. Complicated answers to both. Right?” Tyler looked at the steward, who hovered back into view. “Manuel?”
Carefully, Manuel laid two dossiers on the table. Even in his condition, Hartley could see that one was marked HARTLEY and the other, SCI.
“Which one am I supposed to look at?”
“You’re the guest—you choose.”
Gingerly, Hartley set his drink down and took the one marked SCI. He knew it had to be dynamite. “I want you to make a big stink about this—a very big stink,” the president said. “About how I haven’t been fully leveling with the American people in this time of crisis. That you have somehow gotten your hands on this explosive information and, given this grave threat to our national security, you feel compelled to share it with your fellow citizens. And you’ll do it exactly when I tell you.”
This was crazy. Hartley’s mind reeled as he tried to glean Tyler’s angle. “But, Jeb—Mr. President—this doesn’t make any sense. I can’t. This is a matter of national security. I won’t.”
“Have it your way, Bob,” said Tyler, pushing the other dossier toward him.
Somehow, Hartley knew what was in there even before he opened it. Probably the photos of himself and the dead boy. Probably the photos that awful man had taken of him, after he’d knocked Hartley out. Not just career-ending pictures, but life-ending pictures. If these ever got out, he’d just have to kill himself. “Where did you get these?” he stammered.
Tyler laughed. “Over the e-transom, as it were. They were delivered embedded in the Paris Hilton blowjob video. I guess somebody out there has a sense of humor, eh?”
“And you’ll release these if I don’t—”
“Ain’t bipartisanship grand?”
A new thought hit Hartley just before a wave of nausea swept over him. Suddenly, the whiskey didn’t taste so great any more and he just had time to turn away from the president and his valet before he hurled. Neither of them made a move to help him or offer him a towel. Hartley wiped his frothing mouth on his sleeve and tried to compose himself as much as possible under the circumstances. “What if I win?” he croaked
The president didn’t have to answer that question and, after a moment, even Hartley understood: he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t and finished politically either way. Tyler would take a scurrilous beating while he presented himself to the American people as their savior. And then this stuff would come out, and Tyler would win in a walk. It was brilliant politics. Hartley nodded mutely, defeated.
Tyler slapped him, hard, on the back. A cold, hard slap, with the none of the affectionate bonhomie he was used to. Jeb Tyler had changed.
“I’m glad that’s settled, Bob. Here—take your file with you. There’s plenty of copies where that came from.” He turned to the Filipino steward. “Manuel, burn the other one.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Manuel.
He motioned toward the house and a few seconds later Hartley could see the Whippet and the Refrigerator marching toward them. He’d never liked Augie Willson, the head of the Secret Service presidential detail, and assumed they were Willson’s way of telling him the feeling was mutual.
Hartley had nothing left to lose. “Why Jeb?” he asked. “Why are you doing this to me? I’ve always been your—”
“My what?” Tyler shot back. “You’ve always been your own best friend, Bob, until you got yourself a new little playmate. Well, we found out about him, and now I’m going to fuck him up and fuck up everybody else involved with this…with this clusterfuck.” Hartley couldn’t help but thinking that, for the first time in his presidency, Jeb Tyler was actually acting like a president. Even if it was at his expense.
“The other day, a very wise and brave man said something to me. Okay, not said. He texted it to me. Wanna know what he said?”
The Whippet and the Refrigerator were almost upon them now.
“THANK YOU FOR BLOWING ME BEFORE YOU FUCKED ME.” That’s what he said to me. What do you supposed he meant by that, Bob? I mean, I figured you might be able to translate.”
The two goons flanked him, side by side. “I believe you’ve already made the acquaintance of two of the best members of my Secret Service detail,” said Tyler. “They’re going to be your new best friends for the duration of this situation. They’re going to make sure you do exactly as you’re told. And if you don’t, they’re going to help you meet with a very unfortunate and painful accident. Are we clear about this, Bob?”
“Yes, sir.” Hartley started to add something, but Tyler cut him off.
“And don’t even think about asking me if you can clean up. You’re going to stay in those clothes until you get back to the Watergate and then, if you’re a good boy, your new roomies may think about letting you have some shower time before you announce. Which, by the way, will be when you drop your first bombshell about that rogue intelligence operation that the American people need to know about. Understood?”
Hartley nodded, but his eyes were vacant.
“Good. Now get out of here. You disgust me.” Tyler signaled to Hartley’s babysitters. As they led him away—
“Oh, and Bob—one more thing.” He paused for effect, then fired. “Don’t drop the soap.” Tyler watched as the two Secret Service men led Hartley away. One chess piece in motion, another couple to go.
“Did you catch most of that, Army?” said Tyler to General Seelye, emerging from the woods.
“Yes, sir,” Seelye had never been here before, to the president’s private retreat, so close to the White House and yet worlds away.
“Army, what I’m doing may seem strange, but I need you to trust me.” Usually, Tyler indulged in some small talk, especially after a snort, but today he was all business. “I know you and some of the others think I’m weak, that I’m a sob sister, a weenie—hell, I know half the country does too. And these last three days haven’t been good ones, to say the least. But now I need you to do something for me, even if it doesn’t seem at f
irst glance the right thing to do.”
Seelye studied Tyler carefully. For the first time since he became president, Tyler actually seemed like a human being instead of a politician. “You’re the president. You give me an order, my job is to execute.” He decided not to say a word about Hartley’s appearance, or what the president had just asked him to do. It was none of his business unless Tyler brought it up.
“Good,” said Tyler. “I want you to suspend Devlin’s operation, effective immediately.”
That was something completely unexpected. “Suspend, Mr. President?”
“As in, terminate.”
General Armond Seelye took a step back from the president of the United States. “You do understand the implications of that order, sir?”
“You and Rubin explained them to me all too well during the Edwardsville thing. About Branch 4 and its internal rules.”
“Senator Hartley was present too as I recall.” It was as gentle a remonstrance as he could manage under the circumstances.
“Yes, he was…well, as the lawyers like to say, you can’t unring the bell. So why don’t you let me deal with Bob Hartley.”
Now Seelye got it. “The phone tap that Devlin put on him. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” Jesus Christ, was Tyler running his own operation now?
“Bob was in contact today with someone claiming to represent Emanuel Skorzeny, the owner of the Stella Maria.”
“The ship that sank yesterday at Long Beach.”
“Yes. Skorzeny is convinced that we did it.”
“Of course we did. Devlin did. You authorized him to take any measures that—”
“Well, now I’m un-authorizing him. Turns out there was nothing on that ship, just humanitarian supplies and some equipment that one of Skorzeny’s companies was going to use for some high-atmosphere ecological experiments. I gather that, because of the sensitivity of the instruments, they kept it in a shielded vault in the hold.”
That was just great. Seelye tried his best to put a good face on Devlin’s actions. “Which obviously aroused his suspicions.”
“Which just as obviously were ill-founded,” snapped Tyler. “Then there’s the little matter of an FBI team that ended up dead in NoVa. We found three bodies in a van parked in Tyson’s Corners. They were all laid out neat; a phone tip told the Director where to find them. Any guesses?”
There was nothing to say. The president went on. “It’s clear to me that Devlin has been blown, and that his usefulness to us is now at an end. Hell, he practically said it himself.”
A cold chill was dancing up and down Seelye’s spine, the hand of a long-dead ghost passing over him. “You realize what you’re saying?”
Tyler turned and looked Seelye square in the eye, as if he were trying to press a particularly crucial point home in a closing argument.
“All I know is what you’ve told me about Branch 4. Your procedures are your procedures. Do I make myself clear?”
At first, Seelye was not sure he did. “Yes, sir. According to the rules, any Branch 4 operative who is publicly—”
“As I said,” said Tyler, turning away. “Your rules are your rules. Now, I suggest you get back to Fort Meade and act accordingly.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Oh, and Army…” Seelye looked at his commander in chief. “You were right. I am getting the hang of this intel business.”
Chapter Forty-six
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
Weather balloons?
That was what was in the hold of the Stella Maris. A couple of fucking weather balloons.
Devlin switched off his PDA, atomizing the confidential report sent to him anonymously by his SEAL buddies in San Diego. He parked his car in the far lot and made his way toward the big black building. Even though it was his home office, so to speak, he hardly ever came here. When he did, he came as he did now, as a custodian in overalls, a nonentity who would blend in with the rest of the night staff, and nobody the wiser. It was, he reflected, a fitting metaphor for his life.
Who was he, really? Everything else flowed from that, including the reason that somebody was trying to flush him out, humiliate him, and kill him.
He came in via one of the service entrances, where his low-level security pass would gain him admission. At this hour, late afternoon, most of the salaried workers were on their way out the door, heading for the Baltimore-Washington parkway and the comforts of spousal, suburban Maryland and Virginia.
“Hey, Brick,” said one old hand to Devlin as he shuffled toward the front of the building. That was how he was known here. “Brick” Davis. Nobody got the joke.
Brick wasn’t very bright and sure wasn’t very threatening. In fact, unlike his Cagney namesake, he wasn’t much of anything at all, which is why hardly anybody ever noticed him. Just the way Devlin liked things.
“Hey, Jake,” he mumbled, not looking up.
Just off the main hall, he slipped into a custodial room. Like everything at Fort Meade, this room too demanded a level of operational security. There was too much access to the building’s support systems, its wiring, its air ducts, its ventilation, its electronic infrastructure, which was why he had chosen to put his office here.
The station included several rooms, including a locker room, a bathroom, and a room in which all the tools of the janitor’s trade were kept. Devlin headed straight for the bathroom.
Inside, he closed the door. He moved toward the sink and stared at it hard for the retinal scan. He placed his left hand at a certain spot on the mirrored glass and with his right hand, flushed the toilet. The back of the medicine cabinet slid open, revealing the control panel behind it. As he began punching in the codes that only he knew—
A banging on the door. The jiggling of the doorknob. A desperate voice. “Anybody in there?”
No time to close the back of the medicine chest. He shut the mirror as quietly as he could. “I’m on the john,” he croaked. “Gonna be a while.”
“Yeah, well hurry it up will ya? I got a four-alarm fire going here.”
He recognized the voice. It was Jasper Reddiwood, the old Baltimorean who had worked here for years, knew every square inch of the building, and never opened his mouth about anything. He flushed and ran the sink. “Be right out, Jasper.”
“Brick, is that you?” came the voice from the other side of the door. “Jesus, man, I’m sorry, but—”
“No sweat, Jasper.” The codes were already activated, but there was no way he could close the panel without aborting the sequence. The way he’d designed it, an abort and reset meant that he would have to wait at least one hour before reinitializing the sequence. He didn’t have an hour.
Even worse, he still had to punch in the finishing sequence codes, otherwise…well, there was no otherwise. A powerful plastic explosive would rip through the room and kill them both. He had twelve minutes.
He opened the door. Jasper looked like he was about to have a brown cow. “Thanks, man,” gulped Jasper, heading for the can. But Devlin made no move to leave. Instead, he went back to the sink and proceeded to wash his hands, slowly and carefully. Jasper looked at him like he was nuts.
“Be my guest,” said Devlin, looking away. Jasper had no choice. He dropped his drawers and did his business with an explosive, audible sense of relief. Devlin kept washing his hands.
Jasper finished up and moved toward the sink. Devlin was still washing. He moved aside to let Jasper clean himself, but still made no move to leave. Jasper ran the hot water over his soapy hands without saying a word, then turned to the blow dryer, and dried himself off. Devlin moved back to the sink and started washing up again..
“What’s wrong with you man?”
“Not feeling too well myself, Jasper,” he replied, still facing away.
“Brick, you are one weird dude,” said Jasper.
“That’s what everybody says,” said Devlin, still washing. “Thick as a brick.”
Jasper edged out the door. “You have your
self a nice night, Brick, you hear?”
“I got a lot of work to do, Jasper,” he said. “Cleaning up and all. Cleaning up.”
“Right,” said Jasper, and then he was gone.
Devlin whipped open the medicine chest door and finished the sequence with less than two minutes to spare.
The back wall of the bathroom slid open and he stepped into the next room. His office.
Not even Seelye’s office was this well equipped. It was a mirror of his Falls Church home, but with the added advantage of zero possible security leaks; everything was wired directly into NSA’s main system; whatever No Such Agency was watching and listening to, so was he.
There was a message waiting for him as he logged in. It was from Seelye: ABORT A/P POTUS DIRECTIVE THIS DAY.
He sat there for a moment, absorbing the import. That was it, then. He was well and truly fucked. The president of the United States had compromised operation security, hung him out to dry, and signed his death warrant. The sinking of the Stella Maris had just clobbered him with blowback. It was time to get out, and fast. But not before he got what he came here for.
Think.
Everything had a pattern—that was the entire basis of cryptography. Even the most of basic of codes—a simple substitution cipher, like his father had taught him when he was a kid—had some sort of pattern, and where there was a pattern, there was a key.
Edwardsville brought him into the game, got him spinning toward Los Angeles. The Grove turned him around again, looking at London after the missile attack. Milverton, Skorzeny, the Stella Maris…misdirection everywhere he looked.
There was an old Sherlock Holmes story—“The Adventure of the Dancing Men”—that he’d first read when he was a child; it was in that book of codes that his dad had given him, the book that had survived the Rome Airport massacre, the book that he hadn’t cracked since that awful day, not wanting to sully the memory of his parents with the blood of his mother that was still on the book.
Michael Walsh Bundle Page 25
