Michael Walsh Bundle (8 page)

I do that which it is my duty to do. Nothing else distracts me; for it will be either something that is inanimate and irrational, or somebody who is misled and ignorant of the way.

Other than Marcus, his only boon companion was the movies, which his stepfather took him to as often as possible.

And all of this because his parents had decided to take a Roman holiday. To create the finest intelligence officer in the service of the United States of America. The “Branch 4” prototype. Creation by expiation of a man without a name, without a country, without a native language, without so much as a social security number. A man who, in short, did not officially exist.

The fellow officer's name was Armond Seelye.

The boy's name is Devlin.

F
ALLS
C
HURCH
/W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

At last, the phone rang.

Not the black phone. A nonexistent phone, in fact, one that registered in his consciousness as the sound of chimes, gently clanking in the wind. Except, of course, it wasn't chimes at all, but a distinguishing ring tone that was signaled to him in one of his many compartmentalized capacities and incarnations. He spoke into a Blu-Ray mouthpiece as he answered:

“Mr. Grant's office,” he said. Whenever he took a call on this line, his voice was altered to sound like a British woman's—the status symbol of executive assistants in Los Angeles.

Another woman was on the line. “Hello, Helen,” she said, “it's Marjorie Takei, just calling to remind Mr. Grant that he's due to speak at RAND the day after tomorrow.”

He pretended to consult something on the computer. Click-clack, click-clack. “Yes,” he replied, “I have the appointment in the book. ‘Assessing the Threat: The Legal, Practical, and Moral Challenges.' He's very much looking forward to it.”

“Good,” replied the caller. Her tone changed. “It's terrible, what's going on in St. Louis, isn't it?” “Helen” was silent. “Well, I suppose that makes Mr. Grant's remarks all the more topical, doesn't it?”

“There's a silver lining in everything, I suppose,” said Helen, ringing off. British secretaries were nothing if not curt, and nobody, especially in LA, thought them rude.

“Archibald Grant” was one of his favorite identities, yet probably his most dangerous. He was not just an off-the-shelf disposable cover, but an ongoing creation with his own richly imagined life, invented past and borrowed memories. Unlike Devlin's other shades and apparitions, Grant had a continuing existence as one of the RAND Corporation's most important consultants, whose expert exigeses on international terrorism and counterterrorism were delivered at the highest levels of the Santa Monica–based think tank, and under the strictest security guidelines. Not just “Chatham House” rules of nonattribution, but practically pain of death. In fact, over the years he'd had to eliminate one or two loose lips; there was nothing like a watermarked top-security briefing to flush out the traitors. Which, come to think of it, was how he met
her
.

An old-fashioned “ring,” just like real phones used to ring before they started playing snatches of 50 Cent, took him out of his reverie and back to reality. The black phone.

His hand picked up the receiver. Fingerprints scanned, the line was uplinked via satphone to one of the NSA's birds, scrambled with level three remodulation logarithms. A stealth-encryption field descended, so that even the most adept or malicious hacker would be left trying to apprehend emptiness.

Now “Tom Powers” looked into the receiver. His iris scan was digitalized, encoded, and flashed over the separate T-3 line to Fort Meade for confirmation.

“Devlin,” he said.

He knew who it was right away. “This is DIRNSA,” said Seelye. “You're on with POTUS and the SecDef. You're fully up to speed on the sit in Edwardsville.” A statement, not a question. Typical Seelye.

“Who else is there with you?” His voice had an otherworldly quality as it crackled over the hidden speakers.

Seelye looked at Hartley, then to the president, who shook his head. “Nobody,” he lied.

“Wrong answer.”

“We don't have time for games.”

“Neither do I. I'll speak to you, the secretary, and the president. That's the way it is, and it's non-negotiable. You've got ten seconds to get whoever I hear breathing in there the hell out.”

Rubin saw that Tyler had that look on his face that he got whenever he was about to blow his stack. He shot him a warning look:
don't do it
. The president controlled his temper. Hartley got the message and slipped out the door.

“This is President Tyler. I'm—”

Devlin didn't care that he was talking to the president of the United States. He interrupted him anyway. “Not recommending direct Branch 4 involvement at this time.”

“Why not?” barked Tyler.

“Because something about this stinks, Mr. President.”

President Tyler's eyes flashed. “Are you saying we should just sit back and do nothing?”

“No, I'm saying we need to observe.”

“Those kids need to be rescued.”

“Yes, sir, they do. We know it—and the terrorists know it. But I don't think this is really about the kids.”

The president was irritated at this display of independence. Who was commander in chief around here? “Then what do you think it is?”

“Not sure yet. Some kind of feint, or probe, to see how we react.”

“You're talking about children's lives,” Tyler said.

“If I'm right, sir—and that's what you pay me to be—then we're talking about much more than children's lives. Getting me involved now could potentially make things more difficult for all of us in the end.”

“That's a chance I'm willing to take,” said the president. “Where are you now?”

“That's classified, sir. And even your authorization doesn't reach that high.”

Tyler exploded, “Goddamnit, I'm the fucking president of the United States!”

Even with the electronic scrambling, Devlin's voice came across low and clear and confident. “Yes, sir,” he said, “you are. At least until the next election.”

Inwardly, General Seelye smiled. Rubin kept a poker face, badly. Devlin paused for a moment, then continued, “I've got your feed on my screen, General. Run the reporter's tape again. I'll show you what I'm talking about.”

“Cueing it up now,” said Seelye. Once again the tape: the kids, the bombs, the teachers, the shotguns—.

“Hold it. Right there,” said Devlin. “See it?” Seelye paused the feed. What was Devlin talking about? “The guy on the bench there, at click 4,156.07.” A blond man in a sport coat and tie, lying on the bench with the tied-up teachers, his face only partially visible.

“One of the teachers, obviously,” said the president.

“Why, obviously? Look at the way he's dressed. Look at that sport coat—it's an Armani, costs two thousand bucks. Middle school teachers don't wear things like that. General, run an NSA physio scan on this guy. Complete reconstruction—” They could hear the sound of typing. “And match it up with this.”

Tapping into the school's internal video feeds, Devlin brought up a shot from inside the school: the main hall, looking toward the front doors. A man in the doorway, holding open the door as a boy rushes in, late.

Zoom. The man up close, from behind. Grainy, but visible.

“Full reconstruction—strip him naked and build him back up again.” It wasn't protocol to give orders to the president, but this was no time to stand on ceremony.

Everyone could see, but just barely make out, the man under discussion. Tallish, powerfully built, with his back to the camera. But the back of his head was clearly visible, including one ear. “That ear will be especially helpful,” said Devlin.

“We'll get him,” said Seelye. “Mag it up—see his hair?” Closer: light hair, maybe blond.

“Not a lot of blond Muslims, Mr. President,” observed Rubin.

“Which is why he could be anybody,” said General Seelye. “A merc, a Russian spesh-op, a white South African glory hunter.”

“Or a teacher,” said the president, stubbornly.

“This guy's no teacher,” said Devlin. “He's the ringleader. He just doesn't want us to know it. Once we find out who he is, we'll have some sense of how to handle this thing. Match him with up all NSA motion captures of known terrorists, unrestricted by race, religion, or ethnicity. I don't want any PC bullshit here. Any tics, any gestures. Run video hair-and-fiber infrared analysis, see what you come up with. Got that, General?”

Tyler bristled at Devlin's tone. “Listen, Devlin, I don't think I like your—”

“On it,” said Seelye, intervening.

“Overfly ASAP, let's get a radioactivity read, just in case. We don't want any surprises in the basement or the girls' bathroom.”

“On that, too…”

“And I'll need our best guesstimates of their weaponry, worst-case. Then, I'll call you back.”

The president look confused. Was this “Devlin” on the job or not? He wished that America were a kinder, gentler nation, one that didn't need hard, rough men like Devlin to keep the women and children safe from people with legitimate grievances and misunderstood motives. He swallowed his pride. “Are you in or are you out, Devlin?”

“I'm not sure yet. What about chatter?”

“Nothing specific or credible,” replied Seelye.

“September eleventh was neither specific nor credible until the first plane hit the World Trade Center,” said Devlin.

“So what action do you recommend?” asked Tyler.

“That we await developments. I'll put a team in place. But things might have to get worse, before I can make them better. As in the level of causalities. It's a risk-reward situation, especially for me, and under the terms of my employment, not even you get to make that call, sir.”

“That is unacceptable.” Devlin could hear the steam escaping from Tyler's ears. “I will not sacrifice another innocent person.”

“Then, with all due respect, sir, let the FBI handle it. Just make sure you have enough body bags when they fuck up and the shit hits the fan. In the meantime, you might want to start learning Arabic.”

President Tyler looked over at Seelye and Rubin, absorbing the confident audacity of the man at the other end of the line. A Branch 4 op had every right to refuse a presidential request. With their lives on the line every time, they were the arbiters of their own fate. No choice but to play it his way. “Okay,” said Tyler.

“Also, this really is it for me. If we go red zone and score, I'm out. Last job. I disappear, you never hear from me again, and you damn sure never contact me. Yes or no, General?”

The only thing to do was lie. “Agreed,” said Seelye. “But—”

“One last thing. If I so much as smell a fart wafting from Langley's direction, I'm gone.” And then he really was gone.

At last, Tyler broke the silence. “You're sure nobody else knows about this Branch 4?”

Seelye and Rubin looked at each other. Seelye spoke first, “No one except the three of us and, now, your friend, Senator Hartley.”

The president felt the sting. Maybe he had been rash in insisting on political cover. But what was he supposed to do? He was a politician. “But he doesn't know the details. The specifics.”

“He knows everything he needs to know to blow Branch 4 sky-high,” said Rubin. “And, given his track record, “Senator Sieve' is just about the last person I'd want entrusted with the combination to my high school locker, much less the national security apparatus of the United States.”

“So you're telling me I made a mistake?” The question answered itself. “What do we do about it then?”

“We make it work for us,” said Seelye.

The president got up and started pacing around the room. What had he done? “How?” he asked.

Seelye took over. “You heard Devlin himself tell you how, sir,” he said. “He smells a rat here. And he's right to do so. Here's why.” Seelye opened his laptop, and as it awoke from standby he placed it on the president's desk. The White House wi-fi was as encrypted and as safe as the best minds as the NSA could make it, which didn't preclude an Israeli or Bulgarian teenager from hacking in occasionally. But it was a chance that, for a brief moment, they were going to have to take.

He tapped a couple of keys and an animated dossier sprang onto the screen. Tyler pondered what he was looking at, trying hard to absorb it all, then nodded. Seelye tapped another key sequence and suddenly the electronic version of the dossier was atomized—scattered to the four winds of cyberspace

“The evidence is all circumstantial, but that's not surprising. These forces have been coming together for quite a while, like a perfect storm. But if our suspicions are correct…”

The president got it. “If your suspicions are correct, then you've asked me to send our most valuable operative into a situation that might be—no,
is
—a trap.”

As Seelye nodded dispassionately, Rubin observed, “A very special kind of trap, sir.”

“And you're willing to run that risk?”

“Absolutely we are, yes, Mr. President,” said Rubin.

“But why?”

“So we can run the same trap on them.”

“Won't they be expecting that?”

“Of course they will, sir,” replied Seelye. “Which is why we have to play the hand out. First guy that blinks, loses.”