White: A Novel

by Christopher Whitcomb

  “But, Mr. President . . . ,” Havelock began, not daring to point out that the president meant continuity of government protocols, “these provisions were put in place specifically to ensure . . .”

  “Darn it, I know why they were put in place!” he yelled. All eyes turned toward Beechum, clearly the force behind this sudden change in tack. Havelock, the press secretary, the president’s chief of staff, and Alred had been joined, now, by the secretaries of defense and state.

  “Flying helicopters in this weather would put us in more danger than these terrorists,” Beechum said in a firm voice. “Besides, I doubt . . .”

  “I don’t have time to argue,” Venable said, returning to his podium. Even through the fatigue he knew better than to let them think Beechum had coerced this decision. “We’ll reassess once the storm clears. What’s the latest?”

  “Saudis, Mr. President,” the secretary of defense barked out. “Let’s get right down to the problem at hand. The FBI has found compelling evidence that Prince Abdullah, a potential heir to the House of Saud, has channeled significant amounts of money into accounts used by suspected fundamentalists here in the U.S.”

  “Where?” the president asked. “I want names, locations, dates, amounts.”

  His mind seemed to flow quickly all of a sudden, leading everyone in the room to believe his “contemplation” reference had been a mere Freudian slip.

  “Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and DC,” Alred spoke up. He had the information on a briefing paper but never even glanced at it. “Financial transfers from accounts attributable solely to him. All transactions came in ninety-five- to ninety-nine-hundred-dollar increments, thereby avoiding mandatory disclosure regulations. We have tracked eleven transfers so far—a grand total of one hundred six thousand seven hundred dollars. Movement began three weeks ago. The most recent occurred last Tuesday.”

  Venable looked impressed. Beechum too.

  “Richard?” Venable asked, turning to his secretary of state, Richard Crabb.

  “I wouldn’t have believed this had I not seen the transactions myself,” said the former ambassador to the United Nations. Venable had picked him for his level head and conciliatory nature. After the last administration, he had hoped that his White House would extend a hand of goodwill to the rest of the world.

  “Despite our religious differences, they’ve been one of our strongest allies in the Middle East. I mean, haven’t they? It certainly seemed like that based on what I saw on the news and read in the papers.” Venable threw his hands up in the air. “I mean, you’ve had the briefings on this. What do you think?”

  “I think the Saudis have always played us for personal gain,” Beechum said. Of all the people in the Oval Office, she knew the most about the House of Saud. “Until the Riyadh bombings two years ago, they always dealt to us from the bottom of the deck, trying to placate our intelligence services without antagonizing their Middle Eastern allies. They talk a good game against al Qaeda, but there’s no denying their sponsorship of pro-Palestinian groups: Hezbollah, the Al-Aksa Brigades, PIJ. Who’s to say some of that money hasn’t slipped into pockets of people who mean us harm?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Why haven’t we taken a stronger position with them?” Venable asked.

  “Oil,” Havelock said. “Why else?”

  They all shook their heads until Beechum spoke up again.

  “Don’t get too cynical, gentlemen,” she said. “Taking shots like that may work at fund-raisers and stump speeches, but the reality is undeniable: oil represents a way of life in this country. We may be the most powerful nation in the world, but it’s the Saudis who fuel our engines. Energy, manufacturing, transportation . . . hell, you want to heat your house, brush your teeth, or go out for groceries, you got a Saudi to thank.”

  “Why now?” Venable asked. “Why are they backing terrorist attacks on this country? They have to know we can track their money. Surely they’re that smart.”

  Beechum again.

  “It’s not that simple,” she said. “The Saudi royal family is as dysfunctional as it is large. Too many profligate princes, too little money. There’s power at stake, a sense among the ruling class that they’d better stake their claim now while they still can.”

  More nods.

  “Look at the outrage over Jordan Mitchell selling them those Quantis phones,” Havelock interjected. “You’ve got to admit that they take one helluva beating in the media over here. And they’re scared. I’ve seen several intercepts suggesting that the Crown Prince himself fears that this administration has turned against them.”

  “Maybe there’s a good reason for that,” the president thought out loud. “I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to stand around while they shoot down commercial aircraft!”

  “Wait a minute,” Alred cautioned. “We have a list of money transfers. I don’t mean to imply for a second that we can tie anyone in the Saudi royal family to these specific acts of terrorism. This is an investigation, not an indictment.”

  “And we all know that where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Venable said, rubbing his itching eyes. “I want to know the minute you find something, understand?”

  He walked toward the door, mumbling.

  “Why the heck can’t we get a pot of coffee in here? Is that too much to ask for the leader of the free world?”

  He disappeared into the West Wing calling out, “Can’t someone get me a goldarned cup of coffee?”

  “SIERRA ONE TO TOC, we have movement in White Bravo Three,” Lottspeich spoke into his radio. He and Jeremy lay behind a parapet, looking down through a storm drain.

  “Wish we could tell them what the hell that movement might be,” Jeremy complained. “This goddamned snow is dicking up everything.”

  More than two feet had fallen since the storm began, and the skies showed no signs of reprieve. All the HRT snipers could see through the thick flakes was five multipane windows on the second story of a building across the street. Frost had obscured all but plate-sized openings, blurred by refracted light from incandescent bulbs inside.

  “You got any more lens paper?” Lottspeich asked, trying to defog the front lens of his 40x spotting scope. “I can’t keep this damned thing clear.”

  Jeremy reached under a poncho and rummaged around until he found a pack of the nonabrasive paper.

  “That’s all I got,” he said. “I hope they decide to take these assholes down in a hurry. I’m shaking like a dog shitting razor blades.”

  Lottspeich laughed.

  “I’d say you might get your wish.”

  He pointed off to their left, at a convoy of black SUVs. The assault force was moving in to prestage for the hit.

  “Probably playing cards and polishing up their boots, complaining about having to run all the way to the front door,” Lottspeich groused. “Did I miss something when they decided we were going to be snipers? I mean, did anybody tell us up front that this lying-in-wait business really sucked?”

  Both men had learned quickly that sniping was not the glamorous, door-kicking hostage rescue business depicted in the HRT poster. This was a grueling art defined by discipline, attention to detail, and opportunity along the tiniest of margins. Sniper school taught men how to kill others at great distances without getting killed themselves. Staying miserable just came with the trade.

  “You guys still bitching?”

  A man crawled up behind them.

  “Jesus,” Lottspeich said. “Sneaking up on us is gonna get you killed.”

  “Jesus as in ‘Hi, Jesus, it’s nice to see you again’ or ‘Jesus Christ you scared the hell out of me?’” the man said.

  Jesús Smith, their former Xray team leader had never known exactly how to respond to various pronunciations of his name. Most guys used the hard J, New Testament version, but he never knew if they were using his name in sport or the Lord’s name in vain.

  “As in ‘Oh, Jesus, why is it that every time you show up I end up hating
myself in the morning?’” Jeremy smiled, but both men knew he wasn’t kidding.

  “Hey, I’m a suit now, remember? I don’t shine shoes anymore.”

  Jesús had been promoted to supervisor and moved to the FBI/ CIA Terrorist Threat Integration Center. Jeremy hadn’t seen his former partner and team leader in more than six months.

  “Right,” Lottspeich grumbled. “You’d give your left nut to be out here shivering yourself dizzy like the rest of us.”

  “Yeah.” He slapped Lottspeich’s leg. “Hey, Jeremy, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  His tone changed. He hadn’t come to chat.

  “Told you,” Jeremy said, elbowing his current partner.

  “Hurry back, boys,” Lottspeich said, rubbing condensation off the lens of his spotting scope. “People are starting to talk.”

  VII

  Wednesday, 16 February

  05:05 GMT

  Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity, Hertford, North Carolina

  JEREMY TURNED LEFT off New Hope Road just after midnight, trying to decide whether or not to call home. It had taken him a little more than an hour to drive the sixty-one miles from Norfolk, Virginia, to Albemarle County, North Carolina—more than enough time to ponder events that had once again turned his life upside down.

  “You have been selected for a new assignment,” Jesús had told him just hours earlier. “A Group Two undercover op relative to the Irian Jaya mission.”

  How the two related, the former HRT team leader didn’t say. But that seemed typical of assignments Jeremy had received since joining HRT. Life there felt like an ill-defined, undulating, often nonsensical series of impromptu journeys to places that were never explained with people he’d never get to know.

  “You’ll be gone for several weeks,” Jesús had said, “but this is a highly classified mission. You can’t say anything to Caroline, of course. She’ll understand.”

  Understand my ass, Jeremy thought, driving past a sign that read WELCOME TO HISTORIC HERTFORD, NORTH CAROLINA. Caroline had put up with a year of unexplained disappearances followed by unexplainable reunions. She had always been a strong and loving wife, but every relationship had its breaking point. He had pushed this one to where it was starting to crack.

  That’s it up there on the right, Jeremy told himself, shaking off daydreams of Caroline and the three little kids who were growing up without him. He pulled up to a normal-enough-looking checkpoint. This was a military installation, after all—at least on the surface. Though he had never visited Harvey Point, other guys on the team had talked about the secret facility the way they talked about Camp Peary.

  “The Point,” as they called it, occupied the easternmost portion of Perquimans County township, a stubby thumb jutting out into the Albemarle Sound. Named for one of North Carolina’s first governors, the Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity served as a paramilitary training center for second-stage CIA officers, high-risk political operatives, and some of history’s most secretive groups. Yasser Arafat’s security detail had trained here, as had Russian intelligence agents, Cuban Bay of Pigs insurgents, and numerous other organizations Middle America might not want to know about.

  Guys on the team had told Jeremy not to bother asking for directions. This shy neighbor provided much-needed jobs and financial support to the backwater village. Besides, there was a war on. All curious visitors could expect to hear from Hertford residents was “What point?”

  Jeremy pulled up to a drive-in-style talk box, where a stoic voice asked him to dim his headlights, turn off any portable electronic devices, and identify himself. So much for a call home.

  “Jeremy Waller. FBI,” the HRT sniper announced at the gate. He dimmed his lights but could see clear as day beneath the scouring wash of mercury vapor lamps. A modern-looking guardhouse stood at the other side of a heavy steel trap-gate. Three men in black SWAT gear waited nearby, M-4 assault weapons at ready arms. Another man held a regal-looking German shepherd on a short tether.

  “Present your ID to the camera, sir,” an authoritative voice commanded. Jeremy held up his credentials, and after a few moments, the gate dropped. He was directed to a second building, where he presented his ID again and then signed mandatory nondisclosure forms. They took his cell phone and handed him a badge, a map, and a copy of base security protocols.

  “Do you want my gun, too?” Jeremy asked, but one of the guards just laughed.

  “Not as long as you HRT guys are as good as you say you are,” he said. “You’ve been billeted in bachelor officer’s quarters. Just follow the map and check in at the front desk. Wear your visitor’s pass at all times, observe posted speed limits, and have a nice day.”

  Jeremy nodded and did as he was told. It had been a long trip, and the only thing in the world he wanted at that point was a flat place to lie.

  SIRAD STEPPED INTO an empty elevator and pressed seventeen. Though virtually everyone in the building had gone home for the night, she had assembled a cyber SWAT team of sorts to try to get to the bottom of what Jordan Mitchell assured her could mean the end of Quantis. The team of mathematicians, programmers, technicians, and engineers had already set up shop in the company’s security center, and she looked forward to a long night among their eccentricities.

  Soon after starting down from twenty-six, the elevator stopped.

  “Dammit,” she mumbled under her breath. Only one person would get on at twenty-four this time of night. It had to be Hamid.

  “Mind if I get in?” he asked.

  Sirad offered a polite smile and shook her head as he stepped aboard. The handsome Iranian-American oversaw Borders Atlantic’s financial operations, but she had known him on a whole different level. Sirad’s position at Borders Atlantic had always presented unique problems, and Hamid, unfortunately, had fallen among them.

  “Look, Hamid,” she said. “It’s been a year. Are you ever going to let this pass?”

  “How do you get over losing the love of your life?” he asked. “Does anyone ever get over that kind of betrayal?” He provided a smile that looked brave yet tortured.

  “Please. We’ve been over this.”

  Hamid reached out and hit every button between them and the seventeenth floor, delaying their descent.

  “You’ve been over this,” he argued. “And only to tell me I wouldn’t understand.”

  “You know I have work to do,” she said. “This is not the time or place to be having this discussion.”

  Sirad reached into her purse for a lip gloss.

  “Always work,” he lamented. “I’ve never known a person so incapable of love for anything but a career.”

  The elevator finally stopped on seventeen, and Sirad stepped off without responding. Hamid followed.

  “Evening, Ms. Malneaux, Mr. . . .” the door minder started to say, but Hamid grabbed Sirad’s arm and turned her toward him.

  “When is the right place and the right time?” he asked. “All I ever wanted to know was why.”

  Sirad cocked her head a bit, then pulled her arm from his hand. She looked genuinely puzzled. What is it about the male ego that makes men so vulnerable to rejection? she wondered. Love is just something victims use to justify underlying weakness. Sex is the only truly honest and mutually beneficial element in any lasting relationship.Why can’t I find a man who understands and accepts that?

  “Are you OK, Ms. Malneaux?” the minder asked. Like everyone else at Borders Atlantic, he would have done just about anything to curry favor with this extraordinary beauty.

  “Everything is just fine,” she said, shining a glossy smile while holding Hamid’s stare. “But could you be a dear and card me in? I seem to have forgotten my badge.”

  The door clicked open as the magnetic dead bolts disengaged. Sirad turned away from the jilted lover and walked off ahead of him into what she knew would be a long night full of even less-pleasant engagements.

  THE VICE PRESIDENT was sound asleep on the couch in her Old Executive Office Building s
uite when a Secret Service agent alerted her to a call from the Oval Office. The president had requested an emergency briefing in the Situation Room, he said. The FBI had come up with new information that could impact national security, and further discussion simply couldn’t wait until morning.

  Beechum splashed water on her face, brushed out her hair, and hurried into James’s office, where she found him sleeping under an overcoat beside his desk.

  Forty-four hours, she thought, leading the Secret Service caravan on a speed walk through a tunnel to the West Wing. Two days the president has been working without sleep. How long can he function before fatigue causes serious lapses in judgment?

  “All right, I’m here,” she announced, storming into the crowded and increasingly foul-smelling SITROOM. “What’s so damned important that we couldn’t wait to consider it in the morning with clearer heads?”

  No one said a word at first. Havelock turned toward the secretary of defense, who looked to CIA director Vick, who deferred to Alred.

  “Body count,” the president answered finally.

  “Body count?” she repeated. “What do you mean, body count?”

  “The body count is up to three thousand one hundred and twenty-seven,” Andrea Chase said. “The cable channels are running it nonstop. It’s official: we’ve exceeded the number of people killed on 9/ 11.”

  Beechum raised her eyes and let out a coughlike laugh.

  “That’s what we’re here at two o’clock in the morning to discuss?” she asked.

  “This is a big number,” Venable said. “The American people are going to wake up in a few hours, and we need to be ready with a response. Andrea, why don’t you break it down for us.”

  “One thousand seventeen killed in the three plane crashes—about eighty percent of them foreign nationals,” the chief of staff said. “Two thousand one hundred and ten in the three bombings; almost eighty-five percent Americans. You want individual counts by crisis site?”