Root and Branch

by Preston Fleming

  “Knock, knock,” she said as she followed him in and closed the door behind her.

  Blackburn was already across the floor switching on the flat-screen television, which was kept going at all times when he was there, tuned not to cable news or C-SPAN, but to Sesame Street, the Muppet Show or the Cartoon Channel. Though no one in Washington would ever compare him to Mister Rogers, at sixty-one, he did have a certain rumpled, grandfatherly look, in his wrinkled blue suit, open-neck white shirt frayed at the collar, and scuffed loafers. And, despite his incisive wit, Slattery had always found him fair-minded and willing to listen.

  As a partner in a Washington-based law firm specializing in defense and intelligence-related contracts, Slattery had performed occasional legal work for Blackburn over the years. So when Blackburn asked her to do some pro bono legal work for their party’s presidential nominee, she accepted. Now, as a senior White House lawyer, Slattery often collaborated with Blackburn on national security issues, and the pair had formed a tacit alliance.

  “What in heaven’s name is going on?” she demanded, sparks flying from her sea-green eyes. “Am I delusional, or did Charlie Scudder just give DHS free rein to pursue their insidious police-state nonsense? And how in hell did that idiot ever get a seat at the NSC1?”

  “Come now, Margaret. Look at it from Charles’s perspective. He sees himself as a foreign policy guy – that’s what got him onto the NSC staff in the first place. He couldn’t care less about the domestic side of his job, so he’s delegating the emergency security measures stuff.”

  Blackburn’s voice was warm, but his eyes remained blank and cold, like uncommitted bystanders to the conversation.

  “So that justifies his turning the asylum over to the crazies?”

  The meeting that Slattery, Blackburn and Scudder had just attended was the second, and likely final, session of the Deputies Committee of the President’s Crisis Planning Group. The CPG Principals Committee, comprising the president, vice president, secretaries of state, defense and homeland security, along with other high-ranking national security officials, had met just once before punting to its Deputies Committee.

  That swamp-savvy gang then sketched out a perfunctory response to the intifada from thirty thousand feet and delegated its execution to bureaucrats another level lower. This deft move left no fingerprints and allowed each committee member to maintain plausible deniability while lesser officials were left to shoulder the blame for any smashups.

  “Let’s wait and see,” Blackburn replied, stealing a glance at Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy on television.

  “But Scudder was talking about revoking visas and green cards2, annulling naturalizations, and ordering mass deportations! While my boss, the White House counsel, utters not a peep when this chattering nitwit cites Korematsu3 as legal precedent for what he’s doing! Was no one else in there even listening?”

  Blackburn shrugged.

  “You’ve got to hand it to the guy,” he replied while cramming his ample midsection behind the desk. “He’s certainly got an eye for the main chance. When his former boss stupidly calls the intifada the ‘new normal’ and tells us all to get used to it, Charlie notices the smoke billowing out of the president’s ears and steps into the breach. I expect he’ll have about a month to produce results or he’ll be out on the street like his predecessor.”

  “And where does that leave the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, now that DHS is the lead agency fighting the intifada?”

  She stood with fists on her hips and feet wide apart, as if ready to pounce. But Blackburn remained unfazed.

  “If the attorney general and the White House counsel won’t speak up for civil liberties, Margaret, I suppose that leaves it up to you, doesn’t it? You’ll just have to do your best and hope your superiors have your back.” Blackburn’s expression turned cloudy as he opened his laptop and watched it come to life. “So why not go to Charlie’s meetings? Make yourself some friends over at DHS and show them how to fight the jihadis the proper way.”

  Slattery knew that, when Blackburn’s face took on that look, it was a waste of breath for her to say more. While her boss, the White House counsel, might not back her up in a situation like this, Blackburn would. Except that he wouldn’t want to know details. Not yet, at least. He was clever that way.

  Roger Zorn pulled his rented Volvo SUV out of the parking lot at the hotel outside Dulles International Airport where he had spent the night after a late arrival from Paris. He had not been to Washington in over a year, and what he saw of the Virginia suburbs from the Dulles Access Road at seventy miles per hour shocked him. Tent cities every few miles, litter everywhere, and homeless people panhandling at every freeway exit. Most of them doubtless were refugees from EMP-stricken New England.

  Like Kay’s brother Ted and those who had fled Seattle after the EMP attacks, these refugees would probably never enter their homes again. Entire towns and cities on both coasts had been cordoned off as uninhabitable and would likely be razed. Because, without electricity, and with most electronic circuitry damaged by the EMP surge, all critical infrastructure systems had collapsed at once: water, sewage, waste disposal, communications, transport, banking, and everything else that rendered modern urban centers sustainable. Hundreds of thousands of Americans, chiefly the elderly and infirm, along with passengers aboard crashed aircraft, had perished since the attack, and millions rendered homeless.

  Traffic was sparse as Zorn merged onto Interstate 66 toward downtown D.C. He switched on the radio, which was pre-tuned to a news-talk station. The morning drive-time host, a fast-talking disc-jockey with a million dollar voice, offered a brief comment on the latest casualty estimates from the EMP attacks before urging listeners to call in and express their thoughts about America’s nuclear retaliation against Iran, Pakistan and North Korea.

  The first two callers were quick and to the point:

  “Wholly justified,” offered a retired Marine colonel. “The president couldn’t have responded in any other way without inviting further attacks.”

  “They got off lightly, in my humble opinion,” added a female airline pilot. “Do you realize America lost over a thousand civil aircraft that day? The EMP blew out their circuitry and they dropped like rocks. The FAA hasn’t released casualty figures, but our union estimates over fifty thousand passengers and crew members died. Our nuke strikes against enemy military bases didn’t kill nearly that many.”

  The third caller was an elderly woman, a retired high school teacher from a Virginia suburb.

  “People out there have no idea how close we came to being wiped out as a nation. If that third missile had exploded over the Midwest, the country’s entire electrical grid would have gone down and taken years to rebuild. Two hundred fifty million Americans would have died of starvation, disease and exposure within a year. I’m sorry, Les, but you can’t turn the other cheek to something like that. Never again.”

  The fourth caller was a young man who launched into an anti-Islamist rant that quickly lapsed into profanity and had to be cut off. Zorn switched to another station but arrived during a commercial break. Rather than spin the dial again, he turned the radio off. If these callers were at all representative of the country’s current mood, then something had at last managed to unite the American people. And, for the moment, they seemed to have closed ranks against a new Axis of Evil.

  As Zorn left the I-66 freeway ramp amid the satellite offices of Rosslyn, Virginia, across the Potomac River from once-fashionable Georgetown, most people he saw on the street seemed to wear melancholy expressions on hard-bitten faces. Many of the buildings had sandbag barriers stacked up outside their entrances and cement barriers along the curbs as precautions against car bombs. Heavily armed security guards stood outside every building where Zorn knew the federal government to have leased office space.

  He made his way to the antiseptic twelve-story office tower sheathed in bluish-gray reflective glass where Zorn Security’s U.S. subsidiary kept its offic
es. A minute later, he entered the digital code to retract the hydraulic wedge barrier blocking the entrance to the underground parking garage and pulled in.

  His first impression when he arrived at the building’s ninth floor was that the Zorn USA offices looked too lavish for the meager amount of business the subsidiary had been doing. But office décor was not his specialty and he rationalized that fancy digs might be de rigeur among defense contractors competing in the high-stakes Washington arena.

  At the reception desk, a plump brunette in her early twenties blessed with a flawless complexion and piercing blue eyes greeted him with a smile of recognition. Someone had probably shown her the boss’s photo the day before. On balance, he considered it a good sign.

  “Good morning, Mr. Zorn. I’m afraid Mr. Choe isn’t here yet to greet you. He drove downtown to pick you up at the Mayflower.”

  “Oh, rats, my mistake. I meant to text him last night but I couldn’t get my cell phone to connect with the U.S. carrier. My flight came in late, so I spent the night by the airport.”

  “Will you be staying tonight at the Mayflower? Should I call to make sure they hold your room?”

  “Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. I changed my reservation to the Hyatt down the street so I can walk to the office. Cheaper, too,” he added, gazing out the window toward the sun rising over the Potomac. “I figured I should set an example for frugality.”

  The girl nodded, handed Zorn a visitor’s security badge and used her own badge to unlock the bulletproof metal-and-glass door to the offices. Once inside, she led him to a large and well-furnished corner suite. But the place had a neglected feel, with its empty bookshelves and the sun’s morning glare exposing a layer of dust on the desktop. So, on second thought, Zorn asked the receptionist to show him to a vacant conference room. She led him to one that was filled with bright morning sunlight and offered an impressive view of the Marine Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

  Zorn had just opened his laptop and settled in when the receptionist returned with the message that Mr. Choe would arrive in twenty minutes.

  Until now, Zorn had never met Choe and knew relatively little about him, except for having leafed through his personnel file. Brandon Choe, chief operating officer of Zorn USA since the departure of the previous chief executive to join a competitor, was a Korean-American in his late thirties.

  According to his resumé, Choe had been a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee before joining Tetra Corporation. Soon after jumping ship from Tetra to Zorn USA, he had helped gain approval for the Triage pilot program and had harnessed his extensive roster of government contacts to win new air logistics contracts. When the COO job opened up, Choe won the nod over more senior candidates because he had a knack for getting results.

  An acquaintance of Zorn who had worked with Choe had described him as vain and highly strung, a health nut who sought eternal youth by exercising to near-exhaustion at a CrossFit gym, washing down fistfuls of dietary supplements with a fortified smoothie at lunch, and treating himself to manicures and facials at a unisex day spa.

  Lest Zorn conclude from this that Choe might be gay, the acquaintance had gone out of his way to assure him that Choe definitely chased women, even if his preference ran to those barely above the age of majority. None of this was germane to Choe’s employment, of course, and Zorn resolved to keep an open mind.

  Choe burst into the conference room ten minutes late, out of breath and looking more tense than perhaps he needed to be, considering that it was his boss’s error that had sent him on a wild goose chase to the Mayflower. To Zorn’s eye, his Number Two Man at Zorn USA looked surprisingly young for his age, dressed as he was in a classic two-button blue suit that seemed a shade too snug at the shoulders, wearing Italian-style loafers and vintage Ray-Ban sunglasses perched atop his close-cropped head. He didn’t look a day over twenty-five and could have passed for a model in a J. Crew catalog.

  The two men introduced themselves by first names, and Zorn felt reassured by Choe’s solid handshake.

  “Before we get down to reviewing the ESM package,” Choe began the moment he took a seat across the table, “there’s something you might want to address. The partner who handles our public relations is eager to meet you. She wants to know whether you’re ready to generate some media attention.”

  “Media attention? For what?” Zorn asked, drawing a blank.

  “For the EMP contract bid. Our competitors are already out there in force with media placements and surrogates, touting all they’ve been doing to help keep America safe. She wants to know if you’re available to do some press interviews, radio and TV appearances, op-ed placements and the like.”

  Zorn’s face held an expression of utter distaste, which Choe ignored.

  “And, while we’re at it,” Choe went on, “our chief lobbyist wants to know if you want him to set up appointments for you on Capitol Hill.”

  “Has anyone from the media or Congress reached out to us to request an interview or a meeting?”

  Choe shook his head.

  “Then let’s leave it that way. Any statements or appearances at this point might prompt pre-emptive badmouthing by our competitors. I’ll talk to the media when I’m ready.”

  “Okay, then,” Choe yielded. “I’ll be back in a minute with our draft Triage bid package.”

  But while the COO was away, the receptionist’s voice rang out from the conference room’s speakerphone.

  “Undersecretary Craven from DHS is here to see you, Mr. Zorn. He said you were expecting him.”

  “Yes, please show him in.”

  A few moments later, Patrick Craven appeared in the conference room doorway, all smiles.

  “Man, you have no idea how glad I am to see your face,” the undersecretary began, reaching out with both arms to give Zorn a man hug and clap him three times on the back. Then Craven grasped Zorn by both biceps and held him out for a good look.

  “You’re looking very buff these days, Roger. I wish I could say the same for me.”

  Craven, at six foot four, was three inches taller than Zorn and, at two hundred forty pounds, about fifty pounds heftier. Born into a working class black family in Wilmington, Delaware, he had won a scholarship to an elite New England boarding school, where he had taken on the protective coloring of preppy dress, mannerisms, and above all, speech. He had gone on to a prestigious liberal arts college where, as a drama major, he excelled at amateur theatrics and pledged to an old-line fraternity.

  “Now why would you be so happy to see me,” Zorn teased, “other than for old times’ sake? You’re an undersecretary now, Pat, and I’m just one of dozens of contractors vying for your business.”

  In fact, a phrase Craven had used in their phone conversation a week before had stuck in Zorn’s mind. When Craven had said, “We might be able to help each other,” Zorn had assumed at first that his former colleague was still at Tetra Corp. It was common practice for friends in the industry to do favors for each other. And depending on the circumstances, such logrolling need not raise ethical concerns. But favoritism from a high-ranking government official took on a different color.

  “You’re too humble, Roger,” Craven replied, taking a seat at the conference table without being asked. “Since your father passed away, you’ve become a pillar of the counterterrorism establishment.”

  “And you’re too kind,” Zorn replied, seating himself across from his guest. “Your invitation to bid on the emergency RFP goes above and beyond. If my company hadn’t been excluded from so many bids in the past, I might even be worried about claims of favoritism.”

  “Oh, don’t give that one another thought,” Craven replied with a perfunctory wave. “People accuse us of cronyism all the time. There’s far too much money at stake for contractors not to cry foul whenever they lose a bid. But in your case, I’ll be frank. We need fresh ideas to beat the intifada, and Zorn Security seems to have them. Your Triage tech is the best in its class. And don’t quote me,
but the Big Five, including my former employer, haven’t had a novel idea among them in years.”

  “So, the purpose of this meeting is, shall we say, to help me put my best foot forward so that Zorn USA can get on equal footing with our American competitors?”

  “I couldn’t have said it better,” Craven said with a lopsided smile.

  “And you’ve invited Margaret Slattery to join us because…?”

  It was a curve-ball question.

  “Ah, yes, Margaret.”

  Craven lowered his gaze and rubbed the bridge of his nose while mulling his answer.

  “How to put it,” he began. “Let’s just say, Margaret is on the bid committee and has some concerns about Zorn Security’s reputation. She represents the White House, so her voice carries a lot of weight. Since she and I go back a ways, I asked her to come over to see if we couldn’t work things out in private.”

  Zorn had already searched Slattery’s name on the internet and found that she had taken an unpaid leave of absence from her law firm three years earlier to join the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, which gives advice to the attorney general and the White House. From there she moved on to the White House Counsel’s Office, as deputy counsel to the president for defense and national security. But Slattery was also reputed to have a prickly personality and a penchant for emotional tirades that could not always be dismissed as tactical dissembling. By some accounts, her law partners weren’t at all unhappy to see her go.

  For the next few minutes, Zorn and Craven reminisced about their service together in the CIA. The two men had met when the Agency assigned Craven, then a first-tour case officer, to Cairo, Egypt, where Zorn served as deputy chief of station. Zorn took a liking to the younger man, who worked hard and showed the kind of adroitness as a manipulator that was essential to recruiting clandestine informants. Zorn surmised that someone who had once stormed casting directors’ offices in New York and Los Angeles to break into the soap operas, as Craven had once done, might have the right stuff to make it in the intelligence business.