by Ben Coes
“What about monitors?” Dewey eyed Beauxchamps.
“There aren’t any, not on that corridor. That’s why Branch Four has such a bad reputation. A number of human rights groups have sued the French government. With nothing recording what happens, a lot can happen.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve seen the designs of DGSI’s terror intake units, including the one you’re in. There are a number of structural weaknesses in the schematic. Now listen carefully: if you get the door open, you’ll have less than a minute before they come. There’s an abandoned stairwell. It will not be easy to find, but you need to find it. It will be behind a cabinet or will be painted over, but there is access to it on each floor. Go to the basement and go out the door. There’ll be a car parked across the street. The key will be in it.”
“What kind of car?”
“Something fast.”
38
U.S. CAPITOL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The Capitol steps were crowded with reporters. At least a dozen different cameramen were positioned at various points along the sweeping granite portico, shoulder-held cameras trained on a posse of network reporters doing live feeds, all focused on the death of Lowell Trappe, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, an accidental drowning while on a hunting trip in Georgia.
In front of the Capitol dome, a large American flag hung at half-staff, its red, white, and blue canvas snapping in the autumn wind.
Sprinkled among the cameramen and reporters were several members of Congress, available for on-air interviews to discuss their esteemed colleague. Most were speaking not only as colleagues but also as friends, reminiscing about a man who was almost universally respected.
Trappe’s drowning had left a vacancy at the apex of Congress, a position that was third in line to the presidency of the most powerful nation on earth. Most of the congressmen and congresswomen availing themselves of the media exposure were messaging a deeper intent, showing the press corps, and the country, that they were considering running for the coveted position.
One of them—a good-looking, sandy-haired man in a dark suit—was surrounded by reporters. This was Congressman Ned Carroll of Pennsylvania, the Republican majority leader in the House, second in line to Trappe. As everyone knew, the speakership was Carroll’s if he wanted it.
“Ladies and gentleman,” said Carroll with a somber look on his face. “Now is not the time, nor is this the place, to discuss what shall happen in regard to the speakership. Like everyone who knew Lowell Trappe, I’m a friend today and that’s all. A very sad friend. Lowell Trappe was a mentor to me and to…”
A black sedan idled at the corner of Northwest Drive and Delaware Avenue.
Virtually unnoticed amid the hubbub on the steps, a tall man in a brown suit emerged from a side door atop to the left of the conflagrations of reporters, cameramen, and politicians. His name was Bobby Largent.
Largent had on a dark trench coat and a baseball hat. He walked quickly down the steps, avoiding reporters and colleagues. A seven-term congressman from Oklahoma, Largent was the Republican House Whip, third in seniority in the House of Representatives behind the Speaker of the House and the House Majority leader, the man now pontificating to reporters.
Largent approached the idling sedan via a sidewalk filled with tourists. He scanned the vicinity of the sedan. He swept his eyes in a casual, lackadaisical way, but his intent was anything but. The moment Lowell Trappe was reported dead, Bobby Largent knew the hour was upon him. Every moment from here on out had to be executed with the utmost precision and care. Every second had to be mistakeproof.
He saw nothing unusual as he took the final steps to the sedan. He opened the back door and climbed in.
Bruner stared at Largent. He had an emotionless expression on his face.
Then he spoke: “It’s begun.”
Largent nodded.
“I’m not sure I have the votes, Charles. Ned Carroll called me last night and said if I don’t back him by lunchtime, he’ll run someone against me.”
Bruner glanced into the rearview mirror. The sedan began to move.
“Carroll is not your concern,” Bruner said calmly. “He will be taken care of. The important thing is that you do exactly as you’re told.”
Largent nodded. “Of course, Charles.”
“Suspicion and paranoia could start to take over the government’s reaction to recent events,” said Bruner. “Lowell Trappe’s death is one thing. But if the White House or CIA starts to get suspicious about other developments, it would necessitate a more urgent time line.”
“Developments?”
“I’m afraid the inner sanctum has been punctured.”
“There’s no way—”
“A trip wire was initiated,” said Bruner. “The operation in Toronto. Langley and the NSA are digging in very hard. In addition, we have a possible security breach.”
“What do you mean, security breach?”
“Romy.”
Largent looked out the window, a look of mild anger on his face. He shook his head in disgust.
“I told you she needed to die,” he said, seething. “Everyone told you.”
Bruner listened, nodding politely, as Largent railed.
“Yet you allowed Kyrie to keep his trophy, didn’t you?” continued Largent.
“Has Kyrie been granted privileges?” Bruner said calmly. “Yes, he has. But so have you. Without Kyrie, we would not be where we are today.”
Largent looked away from Bruner. He lowered his head slightly and rubbed his eyes.
“What happened?”
“She found out,” said Bruner. “She told someone. In fact, she told two people. A woman in Massachusetts and—”
Bruner looked out the window as the sedan cruised along Constitution Avenue. Several blocks ahead in the distance was the front of the U.S. State Department. He pointed. Largent’s eyes followed Bruner’s finger. His mouth went wide in disbelief.
“Do you mean—”
Bruner studied Largent’s eyes, without emotion.
“Do I mean what?” he said calmly.
“Lindsay?… The … secretary of state?”
“Yes, that’s precisely what I mean.”
Largent’s eyes shot to the door, as if he was contemplating trying to run.
“Go ahead,” said Bruner.
“You’d have me killed.”
“I wouldn’t have to,” said Bruner as the limo came to a stop across the street from the entrance to the State Department.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re in a race against time now, Bobby. Either we find Romy and kill her, or she will expose the entire conspiracy. If that happens, we are all dead. She told Lindsay, and Kyrie was able to eliminate him before he told anyone. But every hour she lives increases the risk that she’ll succeed in betraying us. That’s why we must act now.”
Largent stared at the seat in front of him.
“If we don’t take over the United States government, you’ll be caught along with me and everybody else. I don’t need to tell you what happens next, but I guarantee you it doesn’t involve a jury,” said Bruner, his voice quietly seething.
“Don’t forget what this is about,” he continued, calmer now. “You’re a patriot, Bobby. We’re all patriots, and together we’re going to save America. Don’t be afraid. You’ll be in history books and it will be because you were instrumental in stopping the Nazism of our time, Islam.”
“You’re right,” said Largent, making a fist and lightly hitting his knee. “You’re absolutely right. I’m ready, Charles.”
“I know you are.”
Bruner climbed out and shut the door, then tapped on the back window. Largent lowered it a few inches. The slits of Bruner’s dark eyes were the only things visible as Largent looked at him.
“We’ve all made sacrifices,” said Bruner. “You perhaps more than anyone. I would like to tell you that it all ends up evening
out, but that’s child’s talk and we both know it.”
Bruner had an intense look in his eyes as he stared in at Largent.
“We’re playing a man’s game now,” he said, a hint of threat in his voice. “In a matter of hours, you’ll be the youngest Speaker of the House in American history. Soon after that, if everything goes according to plan, you’ll be president of the United States of America. Are you ready?”
“I was born ready.”
39
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY
Calibrisi entered his office, shut the door, and sat down behind his desk. He ran his hand back through his thick, slightly shaggy black hair. Mack Perry and Angie Poole were already seated.
“Let’s get started,” said Calibrisi, looking at Perry on the sofa. “Mack, take us through the time line.”
Perry looked at Angie and nodded. She tossed him a remote. He synced it with his laptop computer and then clicked a button. A large plasma screen descended from the ceiling in the middle of the office. Perry typed and the screen filled with a grainy photo of a hallway. It was footage from a video, which was paused.
“This is video from the hotel security camera down the hall from Lindsay’s suite,” said Perry. “Start time is in the lower right of the frame, so this is at eight oh five P.M. Paris time.”
He hit the remote and the video started playing. Two men were standing in the hallway near Lindsay’s door. It was hard to tell what they looked like due to the angle.
“The close agent is Tim Casales,” said Perry. “The other agent is Rex Cline. Both CONS OP, Cline a little over a decade, Casales, eight years.”
Suddenly, a dark figure entered the frame of the camera, only his back visible. He was wearing a polo shirt. He was large, his frame wide and muscled. He had longish dark hair. He silhouetted in the hazy light of the security camera but was unmistakable. He walked with an athletic, menacing air.
“That’s Dewey,” said Perry.
Onscreen, Dewey moved past Casales to Lindsay’s door and knocked. He stood in front of the door for several moments, waiting. Then the door opened. Dewey stepped inside, though the door remained ajar. The video showed the two agents glancing to Lindsay’s door but saying nothing. Less than a minute after entering, Dewey emerged from the suite and shut the door. He walked down the hallway in the opposite direction from where he’d come.
“Where’s he going?” asked Calibrisi.
“Elevators,” said Perry.
He clicked the remote several times, bringing up a series of photos of Dewey, exiting an elevator on the ground floor, passing through the front entrance, then, from an outdoor camera, moving along a wet sidewalk as rain pelted down.
“What about footage from around the time Lindsay was shot?” asked Calibrisi.
Perry hit the remote. “This is twenty-two minutes after Dewey exited the hotel,” he said.
The screen cut back to the security camera in the hallway outside Lindsay’s suite. The two agents were still standing guard. The closer man, Casales, turned his head toward the camera. A second later, the screen went dark.
“That’s the last footage we have,” said Perry. “The camera was still active, but someone hit it with black spray paint.”
“Let me guess,” said Calibrisi. “They found the paint in Dewey’s garbage can.”
Perry nodded.
“So they covered up the camera,” said Calibrisi. “We don’t know what happened next?”
“We don’t have visual reconnaissance on it,” said Perry. “We do know that within the next four minutes both guards were terminated, as was Secretary of State Lindsay.”
“Play it again,” said Calibrisi.
Perry reran the video four times, each time eliciting the same reaction from Calibrisi, squinting, as if he was trying to see something that wasn’t visible.
Finally, Calibrisi leaned forward. “What about ballistics?”
“They sent the report about twenty minutes ago. The slugs matched the hits. Colt M1911A1, the gun found on the ground near Lindsay’s corpse. The slugs that killed Lindsay were fired by that gun. It was Dewey’s sidearm. They were all the same: .45 ACP, Kevlar tipped.”
The door opened and Polk walked in. He was carrying some papers. “Sorry I’m late.”
“I analyzed the footage from the hotel security camera,” Perry continued. “From the moment Lindsay left the suite in the morning until the camera went dark, two people entered the room. Both were hotel service staff. They were in there about an hour, then they left. I did a back-pull on the two ladies, ran their identification cards through INTERPOL as well as our databases. They were clean. Other than that, no one entered the suite except for Lindsay … and then Dewey.”
“Go back farther,” said Polk. “Someone could’ve entered the day before. The week before. Look for entries and exits. If you get clear visual frame on a face, send it to Jesus.”
“Is the goal here to find Lindsay’s killer?” asked Perry. “Or prove Dewey’s innocent?”
Polk shot Calibrisi a look.
“Dewey is innocent,” he said. “We don’t need to prove it. But there’s something going on here and we need to know what. I’m not sure I care who killed Lindsay. But I want to know why he was killed, and why Dewey was put in the middle of it.”
Perry nodded, although he looked as if he didn’t one hundred percent agree.
“You disagree, Mack?” asked Calibrisi. “You’re allowed to disagree. What you’re not allowed to do is disagree and keep it to yourself. That does us no good.”
“If you’re sure he’s innocent, why don’t we try and get him out?” asked Perry. “He’s at Branch Four. They kill people there, Hector.”
“I’m trying. You heard me.”
“Let’s design something,” said Perry.
“A prison break?” Calibrisi asked facetiously. “Even if it could be done, which I highly doubt, it’d only make matters worse. Cazanove will go out of his way to try and railroad Dewey and prove he’s guilty. Dewey can handle Branch Four. We need to get to the bottom of what happened, and we need to do it quickly.”
Lindsay, Calibrisi’s assistant, came to the door. “Jim Bruckheimer is on one.”
“Put him on.”
Calibrisi’s phone beeped. He hit Speaker.
“Hi, Jim. What do you got?”
“I’m putting this up on your screen,” said Bruckheimer. “It involves one of Lindsay’s Consular Operations agents. These are the guys with immediate body detail to the secretary.”
A photo shot to the screen. It showed Lindsay at an airport, walking along a red carpet and shaking hands at an arrival ceremony somewhere.
“The first photo’s from Lindsay’s trip to Vietnam last May,” said Bruckheimer.
A red circle appeared around a man walking behind Lindsay. He had a rugged-looking face, a mustache, and short black hair. He appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties.
“Tim Casales,” said Bruckheimer. “He was one of the agents killed in the hotel.”
Another photo appeared. This one showed the same man, Casales, up close. He looked younger, his mustache slightly bushier, with fewer wrinkles around his eyes. He had a hard, unapproachable look, with no attempt to smile or appear in any way kind.
“This is Casales’s first file photo from the State Department. He joined CONS OP eight years ago. Before State he was in the Secret Service, which he joined right after graduating from USC. Majored in government, played on the USC soccer team. Grew up in Bakersfield, California. Never married. We’re digging in deeper, but it all seems pretty straightforward.”
“What’s the point, Jim?” asked Calibrisi.
“Well, PRISM has a facial recognition module called LayerX,” said Bruckheimer. “It’s an algorithm based on underlying physical characteristics. Basically, the algorithm breaks down an individual’s subdermal physical characteristics into metadata. A person’s face is translated into data—bone structure, eye socket wi
dth and depth, mouth, skull size, all of it. Your face basically becomes a collection of zeros and ones, thus allowing the program to match photos based on a very precise set of data that is specific only to that individual. Now this is important: LayerX is designed to err on the side of what we call ‘extreme accuracy.’ So it misses connections all the time. For whatever reason, the metadata doesn’t match because someone can look or appear different at various times. But when it hits—when a photo matches—LayerX is nearly one hundred percent accurate.”
On the screen, a black-and-white photo of a young man in a dark blue military shirt appeared. He had dirty-blond hair and was tan. He looked like he was a teenager. He was tough-looking but wore a friendly smile.
“Who is it?” asked Calibrisi.
“You tell me,” said Bruckheimer. “According to the Pentagon, his name was Jeff Tindall. Tindall was a Navy SEAL, killed during a helicopter accident in 2003. Prior to that he was a highly decorated operator, a demolitions expert. He was part of the initial SPECOPS manpower we sent into Afghanistan after nine/eleven. DEVGRU. We’re talking about a badass. According to his file, he went to Chapel Hill and played football. Grew up in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania. This is a top secret pre-mission photo taken in 2004.”
Casales’s State Department photo appeared next to the black-and-white one. The two men looked different, though certain similarities existed. Both had similar muscular foreheads and prominent cheekbones.
“What’s that have to do with Casales?”
“According to LayerX, it’s the same guy.”
Polk stood up, as did Calibrisi. Both men moved to the screen, studying the two photographs.
“Did you rerun it?” asked Polk.
“Twice.”
“Why didn’t PRISM ever flag this before?” asked Polk.
“It’s the first time we’ve ever run him against PRISM,” said Bruckheimer. “We don’t run State Department employees against it, except foreigners, of course. The consular judge had to sign off on the FISA warrant. He allowed us to run everyone on Lindsay’s trip. Casales popped the grid.”
“I’m confused,” said Perry. “Did this guy actually die? I mean, did the SEAL die?”
