by Jack Bowie
Albino eyes! God, it was him. Slattery looked back down at the facsimile. It had always been the eyes.
He was shaking with anger. How much time had they lost already?
“You never said anything about his eyes,” Slattery accused.
“Of course we did,” Flynn replied. “It’s in the bulletins.”
“I’ve read the bulletins, Mary Ellen. Eye color was ‘NA’, not available. Here, I pulled this off Intelink this morning.”
He held out a sheet of paper and she grabbed it away from him.
“Shit! Somebody didn’t understand ‘None’ so they put in ‘NA.’ I’ll send the damn clerk to Frozen Toe, Alaska. We’ll get it fixed.” She looked up and gasped. “You okay, Roger? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Singer,” Slattery whispered.
“What did you say?”
“Gary. His name is Singer, Alfred Whitehead Singer. I worked with him at the Farm. And he was the one that attacked Braxton.”
Flynn’s perfectly-shaped mouth fell wide open.
* * *
Vision One was the key. Braxton knew it. Somehow Megan’s death was tied into that laboratory and C. Pneumoniae. But who could have had her killed? And why?
Yesterday he had meticulously gone through the Vision One web site, but it was nothing but marketing fluff and self-congratulatory rhetoric. He needed to know about what made the company tick.
One of his friends had once said, “When all else fails, follow the money.” So that was what he did.
He had logged onto the SEC site and pulled down everything they had on the company. The filings for Vision One’s Initial Public Offering had been a treasure chest of goodies. Between the corporate hype and the legal disclaimers he found details on the Founders, Board of Directors, facilities, and consultants. No wonder DoD was after him, they practically ran Vision One. The lists of Army, Navy, and Air Force brass read like a Joint Chiefs’ Christmas party guest list.
Venton still controlled 30% of the company himself, however. There was no way anything went on without his knowledge, especially that laboratory. Who else would have that information? And whose side was he really on?
It had been time to dig a little deeper on Paul Venton.
So he had spent most of last night filling out a dossier on the Chairman and President of Vision One. He had extracted information from the web sites of the Library of Congress, DoD, DoE, and NSF. There were five private sites in the US and Europe devoted to customers of Vision One, and even one site that purported to know all the “secrets” of Vision One’s clandestine support of FEMA’s shadow government.
Once he moved away from the corporate information, however, he was stymied. He knew there were people that claimed they could get anything on an individual electronically, but unfortunately he wasn’t one of them.
This morning, he had finally stacked up the sheets of printouts and slid them into a manila folder. This was not an area where he had the requisite expertise.
Fortunately, he knew someone who did.
* * *
“How are you feeling, Mr. President?” Dawson asked as he walked into the Lincoln Bedroom.
“Like shit, Chad,” replied Matthews. “How do I look?”
“Ah, a little brighter than yesterday, sir.”
“You’ll never make a politician, Chad. You’re a terrible liar.”
Matthews lay quietly but uncomfortably in the huge four poster bed, staring out at his Chief of Staff through a tent of hazy plastic. The team from Walter Reed had transformed the famous bedroom into a makeshift isolation ward. He had learned that even as President, he was ruled by the laws of modern medicine. The bedsheets were harsh and scratchy. The air under the tent was stale and smelled of balms and antiseptics. Even his voice, which had grown steadily weaker, was now metallic and flat, picked up by a miniature CIA microphone and amplified by a modified Secret Service receiver.
The distortions of his world through this protective curtain had increased over the past few days, and he didn’t know whether they were due to the aging of the material or his own deteriorating mental state.
Dawson’s eyes wandered over the bedside table and its pyramid of medicine bottles.
“They’ve got me on another cocktail of antibiotics,” Matthews explained. “A mouthful of horse pills six times a day. They even wake me up in the middle of the night. I’m beginning to think they’re all quacks.”
“Your physicians are the best in the country, Mr. President. In the world. They’re doing everything they can.”
“I know, I know. It’s just so damn frustrating.” He coughed and felt the painful contractions pulse across his chest. A wad of phlegm pushed through his bronchi and lodged in his throat. He fought the urge to spit it out and swallowed hard.
His head dropped back onto the pillow. He was so tired. “Our own bug, Chad. Our bug! What the hell were they thinking?”
Dawson stood quietly, leaving the question to dissipate in the air.
“Any news from Fort Detrick?” the President asked, sitting back up to face his Chief of Staff.
“They’re working on the new antibiotic. There’s some real progress. We just have to give them a bit more time.”
“I have always valued your frank opinions, Chad. Don’t start with D.C. double-speak now. Translation: they don’t have a goddamn clue. We’re on our own. What’s happening with the other members of the signing party?”
“We’re trying to keep the investigation as low key as possible, of course. Of the sixty-five US government officials we have determined that fifty-two have demonstrated symptoms. Thirty-one are sufficiently incapacitated to be unable to go to their workplace. This includes five members of the Supreme Court, ten members of the House, and seven Senators. All of the signators except LaRoche have significantly reduced their public appearances. There does seem to be some correlation with age. I’m sorry, sir.”
Matthews waved off the apology. “At least you seem to have come through okay.”
“So it appears, Mr. President. There are times when I do feel, well, a little guilty about that.”
Matthews considered the confession. He could not let his disability destroy his team. They were all that now stood against the forces of anarchy.
“You must never let that affect you, Chad. None of us is prescient. We must accept God’s will and move ahead.” He felt another wave of fatigue and fell back into the soft pillow. “How could we have let this happen?”
“There was nothing we could have done, Mr. President. Short of locking you up in a bombproof room for your term. That’s the horror of terrorism. It strikes at our greatest weakness: our openness.”
“Which is also our greatest strength, Chad. Never forget that. What has happened here may result in personal tragedies, but it must never be allowed to weaken our resolve to lead the world into freedom.”
Enough flowery eulogies, dammit. You’re still President, act like it.
“Call Steven. I’d like to go over the intelligence daily with him.”
Chapter 60
National Counterterrorism Center, McLean, Virginia
Friday, 12:30 p.m.
“Gary’s real name is Singer, Alfred Whitehead Singer.” Slattery was addressing a team of twenty agents in the FBI conference room. He recognized Carol Courington and Tony Lasalle from their previous meeting. Flynn sat calmly in the back of the room. “Manny, please give everyone a copy of the file. This is Singer’s personnel file. Some confidential agency data has been purged, but otherwise you’ve got everything we do.
“Singer’s father was a Yale philosophy professor. Alfred North Whitehead, the famous English philosopher, was his idol. Gave the name to his son the way you’d name a prize. Unfortunately, the father died when Singer was three. He was then raised by his mother, an elementary school teacher. She smothered him, and he never developed what we could call normal social skills. His shyness, coupled with an apparent ease at achieving scholastic success, was seen
by his peers as an aloof superiority that even more alienated him. He always saw himself as an outsider.
“Singer was a trouble-maker at school but bright, and won a scholarship to Princeton. His profile was perfect and we recruited him when he was twenty-one. Selected for special ops duty at twenty-five. Clandestine operations, overseas duty in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America. Did his job very well. Retired seven years ago. That’s what’s in the file.
“Now what’s not in the file. Singer liked his job too much. Got a thrill out of the op, turned paranoid whenever we brought him out. The albino eyes were a detriment, too easy to remember, but he was damn good. He proposed some rather unorthodox missions and was retired. We had heard rumors he was free-lancing but ignored them. Our mistake. He’s smart, tough, and utterly amoral. You can’t trust anything he says. He had a pretentious affectation to pick his cover name based on his location. It was his signature. I always felt it would get him killed someday.”
“Any ideas how to catch him, Roger?” Flynn asked.
“We can’t be sure that the op is over. If you have shut down his militia cells, it will cut off his ability to execute. That will leave Singer and his Commander. It’s an opportunity to catch his boss. But he’s on the run. He’ll try to disappear. We need to get him before that happens.”
“Can’t be that hard to find a psychopath with albino eyes,” commented a young female agent.
“Do not underestimate this man,” Slattery ordered. His eyes drilled into the agent. “He can act as normal as anyone. And your different informants were correct; he changes his eye color at will with colored contact lenses. He only leaves them out when he wants to be remembered.”
The agent shrunk back in her chair from the reprimand. Another lesson learned, Slattery hoped.
“Agent Slattery,” asked Tony Lasalle. “You seem to know a lot about Singer. Did you work with him?”
Slattery paused. How honest did he really need to be? “Yes. He was in my class at the Farm. He scared me even then. I was also his last case officer.” And I was the one that forced his retirement.
After a few moments of silence, Flynn rose to take back control of the briefing. “That’s all for now. Roger, thank you very much for taking the time to brief us. Now it’s our turn. Carol, I want copies of Singer’s file to all the field teams in an hour. We don’t have long to catch this bastard. Now move!”
“One last thing,” Slattery added. “Singer is extremely dangerous. He will not be taken alive.”
Slattery let the implication hang in the air as the agents slowly filed out. He motioned to Ikedo and the junior agent followed.
“Okay, Roger,” Flynn said after everyone had left. “How do you know it was Gary at Braxton’s?”
“Braxton told me. Gary found my card on his desk. Told the consultant to tell me he was back.”
“Shit. There wasn’t anything in the report!”
“Yeah. He didn’t tell the cops. Didn’t mention the eyes either. Braxton can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.”
“I oughta throw his ass in jail.”
“Maybe later, Mary Ellen. For now, tell me why you really were at his apartment.”
She wrinkled her forehead, then cracked a half-hearted smile. “I’m sorry, Roger. But what I have to tell you can’t leave this room. We were at Braxton’s because we knew someone was going after him.”
“You knew? How?”
“We picked it up from Garrett Robinson’s phone.”
The realization took only a second. “You tapped the phone of an NSA employee?”
“Damn right we did.” The smile disappeared. “Every goddamn phone we could find. The bastard’s been stonewalling everybody about IMAGER.”
“Wait a minute. I know Carlson found out about the IMAGER ploy. So Garrett was playing games, covering his ass. That doesn’t give you the right to tap his phone.”
“He didn’t lose the decryption capability, Roger. He’s had it all along. He just buried the intel after Yang died. I got the tap because we knew he’d been lying to everyone.”
Slattery remembered what Tak Yang had said: his brother’s supervisor was keeping information to himself.
“But why? Why would he keep the messages secret?”
“Isn’t he mister schemes within schemes? I can’t imagine why. But that’s what I’m going to find out.”
The edge on Flynn’s voice would have cut through steel. What else was going on here?
Flynn looked up as a man walked by the door to the conference room. He gave a thumbs-up sign.
“What’s that about?” Slattery asked.
“We’re going to check out Robinson’s apartment. Want to come?”
“His apartment! You got a search warrant?” She grinned and nodded. The pleasure on her face was absolutely frightening. “Sure. Can I bring Manny?”
“Love to have him along,” Flynn replied.
* * *
“Don’t you ever eat anything healthy?” Braxton asked, putting down his tray of Chicken Caesar Salad. Across the table in the Tysons Tower cafeteria, Luckett was devouring two of the greasiest pieces of pepperoni pizza the consultant had ever seen.
“Hi, Adam. I’m really glad you called. It’s good to get out and have a real meal for a change. You know pizza has all three of the most important food groups: bread, cheese and meat. It’s the perfect meal. That,” he pointed to Braxton’s tray, “on the other hand, is nothing but rabbit food.”
“Let’s debate nutrition another time, Taylor. It’s been a long week. How are things at the Post?”
“With no more militia attacks, I’m back to working on the latest corruption charges from the Mayor’s office. Lots to do but nothing very exciting.”
“What’s the take on the White House bomb scare?”
“Everybody’s accepting the party line. We’ve done a couple of background stories on Iraq and the IRA, but nobody’s taking it very seriously. And no one has connected Matthews’ mysterious flu. They figure he’s just over-tired.”
“I guess that’s good. You think DoD is working on a vaccine?”
“I bet they’ve got Fort Detrick and Walter Reed going full bore. But nothing’s coming out on it. My contacts are afraid to talk to me.”
“That’s too bad. I need some help.”
Luckett looked at the consultant warily. “What kind, Adam? No more trips in little airplanes I hope.”
“Nope. It’s Vision One. I think Venton is behind all this but I can’t find the connection. I pulled some corporate information, but I couldn’t find anything on the man.” He handed a folder to Luckett. “Here’s what I got off the Web. I was hoping you could get some more details.”
Luckett took the file and skipped through the pages. “Pretty dull stuff. What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure, unfortunately. There has to be something in Venton’s background that would explain destroying the lab. I was hoping you could check him out.”
“Sure, why not? It’s more interesting than tracking down feather-bedding meter maids.” He folded the file and stuffed it into a pocket of his raincoat. “You look pretty ragged, Adam. You okay?”
Braxton hesitated. Did he really want to pull Luckett into his problems? But hadn’t he already?
“I’ve been better,” he finally replied. “DoD is on my back. Getting my clients to cancel contracts. If I don’t find a way out of this mess, I’ll be out of business in a couple of months. I really want to find the bastard that’s doing this to me.”
“Funny how things change when they get personal, isn’t it? I’ll get what I can, and give you a call later today.” Luckett wiped his lips with a paper napkin and gathered up his trash. “You know,” he said, as he walked toward the trash bin, “this is going to make one helluva story. If anyone will ever let me print it.”
* * *
Flynn’s driver took the Special Assistant, Slattery, and Ikedo to Robinson’s apartment on Connecticut Avenue. Another car with
four additional FBI agents followed. They presented the search warrant to the building attendant, and the man led them to Apartment 301, a comfortable two bedroom suite that overlooked Rock Creek Park.
Slattery still couldn’t believe that Robinson had lied to them all. Why did he need to concoct such a strange story? And why involve Yang’s brother? But how else would he have known about Braxton?
The apartment was sparsely but elegantly decorated in wood and leather. A few MOMA prints hung on the walls. Simple, tasteful, and professional. Slattery never would have picked the spook for Scandinavian modern.
“Kevin, you and Aaron take the bedroom. It’s across there.” Flynn pointed to a doorway off to the left. “Tony and Carol, you check the living room. Roger and I will go through the study.”
“You seem pretty familiar with the place, Mary Ellen,” Slattery commented as she led them into a converted bedroom. “Been here before?”
“Yes. Some kind of party I think.”
Slattery didn’t think he was getting the whole truth. Maybe there was a reason Flynn was taking the developments so personally.
The study echoed the style of the rest of the apartment. A plain cherry desk sat against one wall, topped by a large monitor and keyboard. The system unit sat alongside. The desk’s surface was completely clear of clutter; a stack of magazines sat on the only other piece of furniture, a double drawer credenza.
Normally, Slattery would have expected piles of work-related papers, but this was no ordinary man. An NSA employee couldn’t exactly bring his work home, any more than Slattery could.
Of course there were those special times. And they deserved a special place.
Flynn started on the credenza. Soon she had piles of folders strewn all over the floor.
“How about I take a look at the PC?” Ikedo asked.
Slattery looked over and saw Flynn was still engrossed in her search. “Sure,” he replied. “Give it a try.”
Feeling useless with both his colleagues busy, Slattery went for his own tour of the apartment.
The other agents were busy with their assignments and paid no attention to their CIA guest. He was looking for something a little out of place, a little different. Nothing as obvious as a safe. A real spy would have his stash off-site, but Robinson was arrogant enough to believe he could keep it in a more accessible location.
