by Sam Powers
Or maybe whatever was in that locker would give them the answers they needed, the road map to stopping a nuclear catastrophe.
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
It had occurred to Christopher Enright early in the unfolding hours of his political boss’s latest problem that there were better ways to handle it. For one, he was convinced there was more to the donation than a face-value mistake.
For another, as he’d discovered a day earlier, there was an irregularity. The campaign worker who’d raised it was a volunteer and older, no one with any pull. But she was sure she’d specifically turned down a request from the same Gayda Goodwill Industries less than a year earlier, and made it clear that the campaign didn’t want its money. After all, Gayda was on a list she’d been given of companies in the Chicagoland area to avoid. She was absolutely sure of it, she’d said when she called in, because the name reminded her of the term ‘gaydar’.
Curious, Enright had asked the fundraising branch to get a copy of the check receipt out of records, so that he could take a look of it. But there was no copy; they had copies of every other receipt out there, but not the Gayda donation. The record of the deposit was there; so they’d taken the money. But there was no copy of the receipt.
That had sent him after a calendar of who’d handled deposits out of the Midwest in that period, which had led him back to a now-departed campaign volunteer named Aaron Nacostic … of whom he could find no other record. The address they’d been given more than a year earlier when he’d signed up proved to be a dead end, as did his number.
It was all too convenient, Enright thought. He’d been trying to tell the candidate that something was wrong for several days, but had had trouble getting hold of him. Addison March’s “March to Washington” was busy at a pitstop in South Dakota; then Wisconsin; then south to Kansas and New Mexico. It had been a full day since he’d left his messages.
He stood in the hotel lobby and tried the senator’s personal line again. Maybe it was too late, Enright thought; maybe March had fallen so far behind – eighteen points in the latest poll – that he should just pull the plug.
The politician answered. “Christopher. I thought we were routing all calls through the communications folks…”
“Yes, sir, my apologies; it’s just that we might have a situation developing with respect to the Gayda Goodwill story.”
March sighed audibly. “You can stop trying to make me feel better, Christopher; I’m quite aware that that particular millstone is responsible for our existing predicament.”
“But I think perhaps there’s more to it,” Enright said. “The paperwork doesn’t lineup properly for one. Then there’s…”
“Christopher…” March sounded tired. “You’re a good man; but I’ve got investigators working on this. You don’t need to get involved.”
“Senator, I’m certain that if I just had a few days…”
“No can do, son; we need you working on the undecideds, shoring up the delegates…”
“Sir, the party is still completely behind you; the delegate count…”
“…Is an important historical marker, Christopher. Posterity must be considered. Besides, these are well-trained men. If there’s any discrepancy, I’m sure they’ll catch it in time for us to use it in the campaign.”
“Senator, I can’t stress enough how I feel…”
“Enough,” March said. “Now I know how you feel, my boy, and I will give it some thought. But leave this with me. You have more important work ahead.”
He hung up, and Enright stood for a moment in the mid-level din of the lobby, staring at his phone. Was March really that naïve? Did he really believe it was beyond his opponent to try and set them up in some manner, to engineer an embarrassment? Enright felt disappointed with his mentor, even a little hurt that his concern was being downplayed.
He checked his watch then called for a cab. He had work to do at the Memphis office; maybe, he thought, it would help take his mind off the matter.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
It was early evening by the time they got there. The gym in question didn’t look like the kind of place that would be popular with wealthy Russian gun runners; in fact, the prevailing script on the front of the small pink stucco boxing club in Queens was graffiti, and a hole in one of the front windows had been patched over with tape and old fight flyers. The neighborhood was solid middle-class, rough but not tough; Brennan and Malone stood in front of the gym, each looking as puzzled as the other.
“You figure Konyshenko for a fight fan?” Malone asked.
“Not the fair type. Plus, this isn’t exactly the big time. Place looks like it used to be a bodega or something.”
Malone gestured towards the twin glass doors, also covered in old flyers. “Well?”
“After you, madam.”
The inside was slightly more impressive, Malone thought, thanks to the old black and white photos that lined the walls, memories of better years.
But only very slightly. A bored-looking middle aged guy in grey sweats and a Radar O’Reilly-style jeep hat was behind the front counter, reading a copy of Ring magazine. He raised an eyebrow when he saw Malone. “How you doin’?” he asked with a greasy wink.
Then he saw Brennan. “Oh. Hey. What can I do you two for?”
Alex held up the key. “Friend of ours asked us to get something from his locker.”
He looked disappointed by the mundane request. “Round the corner at the end of the room. Gents only in the guys’ locker room.”
The corridor in question led to the main sparring area, where two rings were set up along with a series of heavy bags hanging from the rafters, and speed bags screwed to the wall. The place was fairly busy, a young guy skipping rope in one corner, sparring in both rings. Malone nodded toward the bench seating by the wall. “I’ll wait here.”
Ten yards away, a boxer who was stretching saw her watching and smiled at her.
“Enjoy the view,” Brennan said.
“I’ve seen worse,” she said, smiling back at the younger man, all the while being careful that she didn’t miss the bench and fall on her backside.
Brennan found the locker quickly. Inside was a large manila envelope. He retrieved it, ignored by the three men changing and drying off from showering.
In the main room, Malone was watching the sparring. She rose as Brennan approached, spotting the envelope immediately. “Curiouser and Curiouser,” she said.
“Alex in Wonderland?” he said.
“Something like that. Come on, let’s hit the coffee shop down the street and open this puppy.”
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
Enright’s day had gone from bad to worse. His Chicago source was now hesitant about repeating her story, and word had already filtered down from the road crew that the senator was unhappy with him, which made the local staff just as hesitant to do their jobs with him in the room.
After five hours of phone calls, haltering performances from the local yokels and a lot of half-glances tossed his way, he’d called it quits for the day and gone back to the hotel. Not a heavy drinker, it had nonetheless occurred to Enright that the bar in the lobby held a particular appeal after such a rotten turn of events.
So he sat at the faux-marble bar and drank a couple of scotches, downing the first quickly and taking his time with the second. The place was a prototypical fern bar, with the plants in question filling two corners – or silken replicas, anyway. The rest of the place was filled with square bar tables made to accommodate travelling groups that usually didn’t exceed four – or two and two dates. The bar itself fronted a dozen stools and ran perhaps twenty-five feet in length, backed by an obligatory Jack Daniels mirror and an always-lit faux neon sign advertising Cerveza Corona.
He sipped the scotch. What was March thinking? In his few brief years with the senator, Enright had come to respect his boss’s coldly efficient mindset, his ability to push aside the distractions. But this wasn’t a distraction; this was something much more.
He wondered if someone had gotten to the lady in Chicago, scared her out of talking. Her hesitancy also seemed like something more; a day earlier, she’d been practically bubbling at the prospect of helping her political hero. Now she was hanging up the phone and saying ‘please don’t call here’.
Enright considered his options; the associations with Khalidi and now Islamic militants would sink the candidate in November. It wasn’t that he doubted March’s ability to mount a comeback, as he’d seen the senator do it in other races. But the presidency would be won on the fine margins that lie between the ranks of the politically committed, a few states swinging one way or the other. Maybe it was time to cut his losses, Enright thought, and to step away before his name became associated with March’s inevitable defeat. It seemed impossible that March could still have an ace up his sleeve big enough to turn things around.
Or…
There was another option. The election commission was making a major show these days of cracking down on fraud; a case involving the presidential race would make its day. At the very least, it would probably call in the cops. They might even dig around John Younger’s campaign looking for a motive, if they thought the Chicago volunteer was credible and could get her to talk.
His eyes narrowed as he finished the rest of the scotch. It was time to act, and to take the candidate’s faltering presence out of the equation.
Enright looked around the bar; it was nearly midnight. The place was almost empty, just a handful of dubiously aged young ladies in one corner, giggling and drinking colorful martinis. At the far end of the bar was another woman; he hadn’t noticed her come in. She was lean, curvy, and her black cocktail dress hugged her figure as she leaned forward on the bar. She smiled at him before looking down at her drink, her eyes flitting demurely back in his direction.
Enright got up and walked over, drink in hand. “Hi, I’m Chris,” he said, flashing his pearly whites. “Do you mind if I join you?”
She smiled back. She was beautiful, he thought, way out of his usual league. “I’m Annie.” She extended a hand and they shook gently, and she held his hand for just a split second longer than he expected.
Wow, she’s really into me, Enright thought. He smiled again, some of the pressure of the day lifting away. He’d never dated an Asian woman before. He wondered what her background was; Chinese, he thought… or maybe Korean.
45./
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
They sat in quiet reflection, the coffee shop empty besides the two of them and the thin, pasty white waiter/cook, on the late shift, looking about as disinterested as could be. Outside, the restaurant’s neon orange-and-blue ‘open’ sign reflected off the large window pane next to their booth. It was raining lightly.
Malone wanted a cigarette. She hadn’t smoked in eleven years, since a year after getting out of college. But she could practically smell it now, and that nicotine yearning was there, as if it had only been a day since she quit. She pushed it away.
Brennan sipped his coffee. They’d both read the file; it was brief, after all, just a few pages of notes and a handful of memory sticks. But it was shocking, outlining Borz Abubakar’s deception, the destruction of the bus in Peru; from there, it took a turn, outlining how evidence of Konyshenko’s past arms deals had been used by representatives of a shadowy European cabal to blackmail him into shipping weapons’ grade Uranium and bomb parts into the United States. Though he admitted to great profit from the shipments, he also stated his guilt in the letter, an admission that he knew he what could happen as a result, along with a request that whomever found the letter might pray for his soul.
“Nearly thirty people dead, millions of others threatened,” Alex said with an edge of despair. “And for what? An arms deal gone wrong?”
His only identifiable contact with the cabal had been Terence Corcoran, though Corcoran had mentioned a ‘Faisal’ as being in charge.
It contained nothing else.
“No location. No indication of a motive. No clue who hired Corcoran to blackmail him. And it had to be him? Someone from my past?”
“Khalidi.” she suggested. “His fingerprints have been all over this from the start.”
“I don’t know… someone has been pushing us towards him. He’s just too easy, too convenient a boogieman. And if he were planning something like this, why get us onto him in the first place by assassinating his fellow ACF board members?”
She shrugged. “Maybe they knew too much about his funding of the nuke purchase in the first place; maybe he’d tired of them or no longer needed them and was simply cleaning up.”
“No, that’s not it,” Brennan said. “Those assassinations were the loudest possible show of force. He could have had been much more subtle. Those shootings were about making a statement. This whole thing couldn’t have been more designed to guarantee outside interest in Khalidi’s activities. In fact, once the second shooting happened, it was almost guaranteed his African activities would come up at some point. Any man as powerful and ruthless as him has enemies.”
They were silent again. If Khalidi wasn’t responsible, then who? It made so little sense; a conspiracy to bring a nuclear bomb into the U.S., but one in which intelligence agencies were being strung along for a ride. Why give them a chance to prevent it? Brennan wondered. What did someone have to gain from concocting a terrifying conspiracy but then helping them to stop it?
“I feel like we’re being played, still,” he said. “But even that we can’t be sure of. We still have no idea where the device is.”
“There must be something we’ve missed,” Malone said. “Some piece of evidence that points us in the right direction.”
They went over everything, going all the way back to the shooting in Montpellier, followed by the assassination of Lord Abbott. They covered everything Brennan learned from Bustamante and in Cabinda, the information Malone gleaned from her federal source and the African file.
But there was nothing.
“Maybe your magazine will get another tip…” Brennan began to say, before Malone raised a hand and cut him off.
“Just a second… let me think for a second. You said the guy you knew from years back… what’s his name?”
“Terrence Corcoran.”
“Terrence Corcoran. You said he had a meet set up in Yonkers. So they were heading north.”
“Sure, but like I said, I spent hours touring the area looking for any sign or any potential target. And it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Why?”
“Well, because every simulation or projection ever run on this sort of scenario says the bad guys go for the maximum population hit; in this case, that’s downtown.”
“But he said they had a contingency, right?”
“Sure.”
Malone thought about it some more. Then she said, “Give me your phone.”
“This is a preloaded, picked up by Eddie.”
“Doesn’t matter. I just need maps.”
She brought up an image of the state. “Let’s go against the prevailing theory. It hadn’t helped us so far, right? So let’s look north.”
Brennan chafed internally at the idea. It wasn’t his style to ignore sensible intel. “You know, they don’t just make those projections up. They’re based on…”
“I know, I know,” she said. “I’m not criticizing the military. Jeez, Brennan…”
“Okay, okay: explain.”
“So maybe they’re going against the grain on this. Whoever set this up has managed to implicate Khalidi, bring down Fenton-Wright, and destroy the ACF. That kind of thinking just seems a little more devious and a little less obvious than your typical meat-headed fanatic.”
“Absolutely.”
“Let’s assume they had New York as a potential target, but Corcoran’s shipment was needed for that, and you brought the cops in.”
“Okay.”
“Plus, the city’s covered in agents looking for them. So they go to ‘Option B’, by landing something o
ut of town, up river at a secondary target.”
He peered at her critically. “Alex… you’re stretching.”
“Humor me.”
They both examined the small screen as she scrolled to Yonkers then kept going north from the city, away from the densest populations. A series of suburbs scrolled by, including New City, West Haverstraw, Croton-on-Hudson.
“Nothing,” Brennan said. “Unless you want to kill a whole lot of upper-middle-class boomers.”
“Be patient,” she said. She scrolled further, the map following the contours of the Hudson River.
She stopped scrolling. “Bingo,” Alex said. “I think you owe me a beer for that.”
“I’ll pay you later,” Brennan said. He put his jacket on as he climbed out of the booth, taking a twenty from his wallet to leave with the bill. “We better get going.”
JULY 2, 2016, AMMAN, JORDAN
Ahmed Khalidi paced the white-and-grey marble floor of his palace’s sitting room, hands behind his back, his body language tense and troubled. Increasingly, he awoke each morning feeling more insecure than the last, and there seemed to be little possibility of the situation improving in the immediate future. He had come to rely on Faisal for all of his information, but his assistant had less and less to tell him as the days went by. The EU had moved to freeze his assets and he continued to be guarded around the clock by a corps of security personally picked by Faisal.
The situation was beneath him; it angered him that he had to rely on a servant, that his family’s name and his fearsome reputation were no longer enough to guarantee his intentions were fulfilled. His colleagues had been systematically cut down like lambs to the slaughter – although in some cases he conceded it nothing short of just – and the influential contacts he had maintained within U.S. intelligence had been eliminated.
