Ground Truth

by Rob Sangster

  “You won’t get away with this,” Sinclair blustered. “The partners in my law firm will raise hell if I don’t return.”

  “No, they won’t. I’ll get word to your partner, Simms, that if he wants his firm to survive he’ll devise a plausible explanation for your absence. You people at State play at diplomacy. In the White House, we play hardball. So long as I or people like me are in power, you’ll be a nonperson. If we go out of power, the Attorney General at that time will receive a sealed indictment charging you with treason and murder.”

  Sinclair’s head fell forward. His broad shoulders slumped. Without looking up he said, “Jack, please . . . tell the President there’s some other way to handle this.” Then he looked at Jack, eyes pleading.

  Jack kept his face impassive, giving Sinclair nothing.

  “Tell me what you want, Jack. For God’s sake, man, you owe me.” The final words came out in a whisper.

  In a way he did owe Sinclair for sending him to Juarez and the beginning of his new life, but that was a debt Sinclair would never understand.

  Sinclair shifted his gaze to Gorton, “Jason, don’t throw away America’s future. We need nuclear power, but power plants are shutting down because we can’t get rid of nuclear waste. I solved that problem. I’m a patriot. I don’t deserve—” He broke off when Gorton walked out of the room and closed the door.

  Jack was silent as he looked from the closed door back at Sinclair. The man was like a corrupt king whose obsessions had brought him down, not in his castle but in a shabby solarium. After the way Gorton vacillated aboard Air Force One, this show of muscle was amazing.

  Gano high-fived Jack. “Home run, Babe.” He fist-bumped Debra.

  Sinclair straightened to his full height. Deep-set eyes burning, he glared at Jack. “Whatever happens, wherever I am, I swear I’ll make you pay for this.”

  “Well you better be good at mental telepathy,” Gano scoffed, “because they’re gonna put you where the sun don’t shine.”

  Gorton returned, followed by a bald man in a single-breasted suit who walked straight to Sinclair.

  “Sir, please empty your pockets.”

  Sinclair held both hands up in front of him like a shield. “Jason, we’re friends. Don’t do this. I beg you.”

  Gorton nodded to the Secret Service agent who got a firm grip on Sinclair’s upper arm. Sinclair tried to jerk away and was immediately immobilized in a hammerlock. The agent emptied Sinclair’s pockets with one hand and then handcuffed him. Having looked at no one else in the room, the agent asked, “Is there anything else, Mr. President?”

  “Report to me when he reaches Stage Three. You’re dismissed.” As they left, Gorton wandered to the far end of the solarium, as if numbed by the drama, maybe shocked by what he’d just done.

  Sinclair’s fall was complete. Jack had won his case and his freedom. But he had more to do. “Mr. President, that brings us to Samuel Butler, Dean Emeritus at Stanford Law School. I believe he acted as Sinclair’s chief operating officer. All he had to do was supervise a small staff who recruited businesses to send their nuclear waste to D-TECH.”

  Gorton looked at him, his expression baffled. “Why would he help Sinclair with this . . . terrorism?”

  “Butler has lined his office walls with expensive reproductions of Paul Gauguin originals. Recently, he replaced one of those reproductions with an original worth millions. He denied it to prevent me from wondering how he could afford an original. If he reported all his income, the IRS will be able to trace a very large amount to Sinclair. Or else Sinclair obtained the original Gauguin and gave it to him. For Butler, that would be a powerful incentive to do anything Sinclair told him to do.”

  Another father-figure bites the dust, Jack thought sadly. Early in his life, he had pictured lawyers as committed to having a positive impact on society. That image had given way to ugly reality.

  “Could be tough to prove if Butler denies it,” Gorton said.

  “He won’t. He’s at the end of his career and would hate being humiliated in public on the way out. You could require him to resign from the law school, donate his art collection to the Smithsonian, and pay a big fine.”

  “As I recall,” Gorton said, “Gaugin died alone and penniless. That seems fitting for Butler. I’ll have someone approach him. Now what about Dr. Klein? Sinclair couldn’t have done what he did without her.”

  Jack nodded. “She gave us information against Sinclair because she wanted revenge, not justice. All she asked in return was that she be given time to slip out of the U.S. Debra couldn’t agree to that, of course, but I imagine she’s already disappeared from D-TECH.”

  Gorton’s slight smile showed he understood that Jack had given him a way out. “I’ll have Klein’s passport revoked in a few days. Any request to return to the U.S. will be denied. Now I have to get back. Someone will drive you over to the White House later. Civilian clothes will be waiting for you. Remember, Mr. Strider, you owe me an answer to my offer.”

  Jack just nodded. At the moment, he felt vindicated but not ready to celebrate. There were still a lot of loose ends and people who would be much safer with him out of the way.

  Chapter 56

  July 14

  7:00 p.m.

  PRESIDENT GORTON rose and came from behind the historic Resolute desk in the Oval Office, hand extended, smiling broadly. Early evening summer sunlight drifted through south-facing windows.

  Gorton was a flawed president, but the Oval Office was still the center of the political universe. It was impressive.

  Gorton pumped Jack’s hand. Waving his right arm to include Debra and Gano, he said, “Make yourselves comfortable on the couch.” He settled into a wing chair with his back to the fireplace on the north wall.

  “Sorry I couldn’t see you until now,” Gorton said. “It’s been a madhouse here.”

  “I can imagine,” Jack said. “We haven’t gotten any news the last couple of days, so we’re eager to find out about Albuquerque and the other dirty bombs.”

  “As far as Albuquerque,” Gorton said, “we now know that the driver abandoned the truck in a four-story parking garage outside the Kirkland Air Force Base gate. The garage and a dozen buildings on the Base were blown to hell, but a lot of the radiation was contained. There was no wind, so the airborne contamination settled straight down on Kirkland. I slapped a top-secret quarantine on the affected area. The worst news is that Sandia National Labs, located on the Base, housed one of the biggest supercomputers on earth. That area is so radioactive that the computer complex will be out of commission forever. That’s a killer for one of our nuclear programs just when we . . . well, it’s a big problem.”

  “What’s the public reaction?” Debra asked.

  “The media vultures were all over it for a twenty-four hour cycle. But we had the Air Force spokeswoman report to the media that a truck transporting mildly radioactive waste exploded as it left the base. After about twenty interviews in which she emphasized that it had been a one-in-a-million accident and not terrorism—with no deaths, no blood—they lost interest. The local folks know what kind of work goes on at Sandia, or they think they do, so they weren’t surprised. The public is never going to know what really happened. Of course,” he paused, looking steadily at the three of them, “if someone offered a different version of what happened we’d produce plenty of evidence to support what we put out. Anyone have a problem with that?”

  Jack thought about it. Since it hadn’t been terrorism, nothing would be gained by contradicting Gorton’s spin. Trouble was, the number of things Jack wasn’t disclosing was too large. He didn’t like that. No one would know Mac had been assassinated, let alone why. Sinclair’s whereabouts would remain a mystery. The public would never learn that Montana had damn near devastated four cities, or how close El Paso and Juarez had come to having their wat
er supply poisoned. Keeping it all under wraps let Arthur Palmer and Samuel Butler off too easy, but going public would do more damage than it was worth.

  Gano and Debra were watching him. When he remained silent, they followed his lead.

  Gorton, apparently uncomfortable with the silence, walked to his desk and took a cigar from a top drawer. He distractedly pawed around for a lighter, then gave up and walked back.

  “As for the other bombs,” Gorton went on, “our undercover CIA teams searched the cities you suggested in places where a dirty bomb would have the most impact. Within hours, they found trucks in El Paso, Chihuahua City, and Mexico City. Even though it was the middle of the night, deactivating the booby-traps drew attention. In fact, the team in Chihuahua City had to get rough when some street thugs tried to take the truck away from them. We still have teams sniffing around to be sure there aren’t any more trucks.”

  “How are you handling D-TECH?” Debra asked.

  “I sent troops from Fort Bliss to lock the place down. The D-TECH Board members are very savvy, so they won’t get out of line. And I sent people from the Army Corps of Engineers, all in civvies, into Juarez to dismantle the pipeline, cement the wells, drain the tanks, and treat the toxic waste properly.”

  “They also need to shut down the incinerator until it’s refitted to scrub all dangerous chemicals from the exhaust,” Jack said. “And I suggest that the EPA unofficially keep inspectors on the Palmer site until all violations are remedied.”

  “I’ll make that happen,” Gorton said. “Look, Jack, you and your friends know a lot more about the facts on the ground at Palmer Industries than I do. Any other suggestions?”

  “Arthur Palmer instigated or defended Montana’s illegal actions in Juarez. With Montana dead that would be hard to prove, but you should require the Board to fire him immediately. Edward Palmer, Arthur’s brother, is a decent man, and you should get him down there to take over. The plant is still open and hazardous waste is pouring in from the U.S.

  Gorton nodded. “If the Palmer Industries Board fights me on that, I’ll make sure the company lives in regulatory hell until they change their minds.”

  Jack waited a moment, then said, “That still leaves a much bigger problem, Mr. President.”

  “Let’s see,” Gorton said, “Kirkland Air Force Base shut down. Three other cities almost got bombed. And if the public finds out about all this, my approval ratings will drop below freezing. What’s the ‘bigger problem’ . . . an alien invasion?”

  “It’s those containers crammed into the cave near Batopilas. They contain hundreds of truckloads of nuclear waste, some of it high level. You can’t leave it in that cave.”

  Gorton rubbed his eyes. “I haven’t forgotten, but there’s nowhere to put it. Even if we could figure out where it all came from, it makes no sense to send it back. I assume you know about the Yucca Mountain fiasco. Hoping Congress will solve this problem is like expecting elephants to jump.” He stared at the Great Seal of the United States woven into the dark blue carpet.

  “No scientist would sign off on the cave site as a secure repository,” Jack informed him, “and it’s very likely to be in an earthquake zone. And when decrepit shipping containers degrade, the contents can contaminate the underground water system. The radioactive material can also get hot enough to explode. One way or another, that cave will become a disaster. You should have the contents trucked to D-TECH where security is already in place.”

  “For temporary storage,” Gorton said. “After that, I could expand a site in Skull Valley, Utah and use one of our bases in the New Mexico desert. Either way, I’ll have to force Yucca Mountain or some other permanent storage facility onto a fast track.”

  “The time pressure is greater than you may be aware of,” Jack said quietly. “Imagine you’re a worker at that cave when the trucks stop showing up. No paycheck. What will you do? Maybe you’ll contact a drug cartel and offer to sell radioactive material. The leader of the cartel can use a dirty bomb to blackmail a city it wants to take over. Or use a dirty bomb to destroy a town controlled by a competitor. Or the workers sell to real terrorists, who then smuggle dirty bombs into American cities. Even securing that cave temporarily means having a sufficient force on site to fight off a cartel.” He sensed Gorton’s political brain realizing that all of this could happen on his watch.

  “I can fly in Special Forces and run trucks 24/7 until the cave is clean.”

  “That couldn’t be kept secret down there for even twenty-four hours. Don’t you have to tell the Mexican president about the cave?”

  Gorton shook his head in disgust, in resignation. “I guess I do. After he stops shouting at me, he’ll list every concession Mexico has ever wanted and ram them all down my throat.” Gorton’s bleak expression showed he finally understood the gravity of the crisis.

  “Pardon me, Mr. President,” Gano said into the silence. “I’m curious about that $100 million Montana tried to scam.”

  Gorton’s grimace showed that the $100 million might be the last thing he wanted to talk about. “I made the transfer. If I’d known you were about to kill Montana, I could have saved the taxpayers a lot of money.”

  “But you got the money back?”

  “No, damn it,” he admitted wearily. “Montana’s automatic bank-to-bank forwarding network operated in seconds. My Treasury people will try to trace every step, but he probably chose banks in countries where we have no jurisdiction. We can threaten, but if even one refuses . . .” He shrugged.

  “So,” Gano kept after it like a terrier, “$100 million of taxpayers’ money is sitting—”

  Gorton’s venomous glance shut him up, but only for a couple of seconds.

  “Yes, sir, nothing else you could do,” Gano said bobbing his head in fake deference, “but I was also wondering, sir, about the cash we took away from Montana. No big deal, just a million or so. We left it in his Land Rover. I was thinking maybe that little bit of money might be considered a reward for us, you know, like salvage rights at sea.” His face was deadpan.

  Jack smiled to himself. No matter what the situation, Gano was Gano.

  Gorton’s questioning expression showed he had no idea whether Gano was serious. “Salvage rights? I don’t know. I’ll have to talk with someone about that.”

  “Mr. President,” Jack said, deciding it was time to change the subject, “earlier today you offered to nominate me to fill a seat on the 9th Circuit bench.” He gave Gorton a few seconds to wonder whether he was going to have to come through with the bribe Sinclair had put him up to. “I have to decline that offer, but I have a proposal of my own. Your White House Counsel has just resigned to run for governor of Texas. I respectfully request that you offer me the Counsel’s job and hold a press conference to praise your nominee.”

  Gorton didn’t answer right away. “No offense,” he said warily, “but I’m not sure we’re politically, um, compatible.”

  That had to be the understatement of the year.

  “I understand, so I’ll think about your offer for a few days and then regretfully decline. The offer is important to me. As Sinclair made clear aboard Air Force One, my reputation has suffered because of what my father did. Offering me the White House Counsel’s job will be a big help in getting my own good reputation back.”

  Gorton smiled, relieved. “I’ll make the announcement.”

  “And there’s one final thing.”

  Now they’d dealt with all the bad guys, except for one. Judge H. Peckford Strider had left more destruction behind than a hurricane—the young girls he’d stolen from Mexican families and turned into prostitutes, the deaths aboard Pacific Dawn, the scourge of HIV he’d spread, even infecting his lady friend Anita. No matter how much time passed, he’d never forget what Peck had done, but that wasn’t nearly enough. He needed to pay down the debt his father owed to Mexi
co.

  “There’s a place some people call the Borderlands,” Jack said. “It runs along both sides of the 2,000 miles of border from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas. It’s in terrible shape.”

  “I know about the Borderlands,” Gorton said. “But most of the problems are on the Mexican side. Homeland Security briefs me that drug cartels kill policemen and politicians there every day. And they’ve slaughtered more than 35,000 civilians in the past five years. But that’s out of my hands,” Gorton said defensively, as if bracing to be blamed for the violence of the cartels.

  “What I’m talking about is the fact that NAFTA led to a huge increase in assembly and manufacturing plants along the Mexican side of the border. Those jobs drew millions of Mexicans from all over the country. Populations in border cities exploded. Mexican governments can’t deal with the poverty and violence in those places.”

  “Hold on,” Gorton stated, frowning. “I supported NAFTA. Are you blaming it for those conditions?”

  “Blame gets us nowhere. I’m talking about reality. I’d like to see America help out.”

  “I’m sure you understand that most of those problems are beyond American jurisdiction.”

  “There are four things you can do. First, provide technical assistance and technology to improve water quality, access to potable water, and water conservation in the Borderlands, starting with Juarez. Second, many of the companies that operate maquilas are based in the U.S. You can strongly encourage them to have their maquilas offer more social services and training and to use their clout to force the police to crack down on local crime. Maquilas should be good corporate citizens, not geese that fly away to another country with any change in the wind.”