Scimitar SL-2 (17 page)

Friday, August 14

Chevy Chase, Maryland.

H
ARRY, CHIEF SECURITY AGENT
to Admiral Arnold Morgan, signed for the four letters delivered by the White House courier. Then he walked to the mailbox especially fitted inside the porch, emptied it, and walked around to the high gate that guarded the entrance to the swimming pool area of the house, the large dark-blue rectangular body of water.

Three of the high surrounding stone walls were in a light Spanish-style salmon pink. Giant terra-cotta pots overflowing with green shrubs were planted all around. The fourth wall was a high wooden fence into which was set a small cabana with a polished teakwood bar and four stools.

“
Sir!
” Harry called. “Would you like me to bring the mail through?”

“I guess if you must persist in ruining my entire day with goddamned trivia, then you better do it,” came the rasping voice over the top of the fence.

“Yes, sir,” said Harry, who let himself in and walked across to the wide glass-topped table, where Admiral Morgan sat in a director’s chair, frowning, as he mostly did, at the political views of the
New York Times
. As were many of America’s daily publications, the paper was currently enjoying a gleeful period, congratulating the wonderful new Democratic President Charles McBride.

“Jesus Christ,” growled Arnold. “I didn’t realize you could get that many total assholes under one editorial roof. Except possibly in the
Washington Post
…which I haven’t read yet, since I’m trying to keep my blood pressure steady.”

“Yes, sir,” said Harry, putting the Admiral’s mail on his table next to the coffeepot. “See the Orioles won again last night?”

“I did,” replied the Admiral. “
And
they made two errors. Same spot as usual. Straight up the goddamned middle. I’m telling you, they’ve needed a top shortstop ever since Bordick retired. And until they get one, they’ll never make the play-offs…”

“You watch the game, sir?”

“Just the last coupla innings, after dinner. Missed all the runs, though. Only saw the errors. For a minute, I thought the Yanks might catch us.”

“Yeah. So did I. Good closer, though, that kid from Japan. Saved our ass, right, sir?”

“He did too…now, what’s all this bullshit you’ve brought me? Hop inside and bring me out a plastic bag, will you? I’ve a feeling this consignment is about 99 percent rubbish.”

“Okay, sir…be right back.”

The Admiral looked at the top four letters, the ones from the White House. One was from the pensions department, two were invitations, the fourth was from someone in the Middle East, judging from the portrait of a sheikh on the stamp.

Arnold rarely looked at a photograph or painting of an elderly Arabian without remembering, automatically, the towers of the World Trade Center eight years previously. He took the letter and tore open the cream-colored envelope impatiently. The single sheet of writing paper inside was not headed by a printed
address. It was plain. No date. Across the middle were three typed lines, plus a one-word printed signature. Nothing personal.

Arnold gaped. He turned the sheet over, checked the envelope. There was not another clue, anywhere. Just this barefaced inquiry, full of menace. Could it be a hoax?

In the old days, he would have instantly summoned Admiral Morris, and then gone straight to the Oval Office, without knocking.

Today, however, sitting by the pool at eleven o’clock on a warm morning, a civilian in every sense of the word, things were very different. What were his duties? What should he decide? Well, nothing, was the answer on both counts. He was not required to decide a damn thing, and he found this almost impossible to accept.

Kathy was out at the hairdresser. He absentmindedly watched Harry bring out the plastic bag in which he would deposit most of the mail. But the letter from Hamas was burning his hand like a hot coal. He watched Harry wander out of the pool gate, poured himself a cup of coffee, and ruminated.

Finally, he decided the correct thing to do was to take the correspondence, place it in an envelope, tell Harry to whistle up the White House courier, and send the little package around to the man who had replaced him in the office of the President’s National Security Adviser.

Let him worry about the damn thing. It was no longer his—Arnold’s—concern. So he went inside, carefully made a couple of copies, and did exactly what he had decided. After placing the letter into a plastic bag, he added a little note to his successor, Cyrus Romney, former professor of Liberal Arts at Berkeley, and for all
Arnold knew, marcher
in almost every misguided, half-assed, goddamned demonstration for peace the West Coast had seen in living memory.

If Arnold Morgan had had his way, Cyrus Romney would have been instructed to march his way to Outer Mongolia and stay there. Arnold Morgan did not at all believe the Californian to be an ideal choice to occupy the great office of the Department of State, which, by all accounts, he owed mainly to a lifelong friendship with fellow peacenik Charles McBride.

Arnold’s letter was cool:

The personal note from the old Lion of the West Wing would, Arnold knew, probably get short shrift from both Cyrus and his boss. Did he care what either of them thought? Not a jot.

Did he care what the implied Hamas threat might mean to the United States of America? On a scale of 1 to 1,000, Admiral Morgan was somewhere in the high fractions above 999. He walked back to the pool, picked up his mobile phone, and made a call to the private line of Admiral George Morris at Fort Meade.

“George…Arnie…got time for a brief private chat?”

A half hour later, he was on his way around the beltway, Harry at the wheel of the Admiral’s new automobile, General Motors’ state-of-the-art four-wheel-drive masterpiece, the 2009 Hummer-H2A. A polished city ride, at home on Fifth Avenue or downtown Washington, this broad-shouldered, off-road vehicle is a direct descendant of the military’s old desert warhorse, the Humvee. The new Hummer can go through streams twenty inches deep and climb over rocks sixteen inches high. Mud, deep sand, no problem. Admiral Morgan’s great friend Jack Smith, the Energy
Secretary in the last Republican Administration and former President of General Motors, had told him: “This thing is made for you, mainly because Kathy could drive it easily, and you could go to war in it.”

Arnold replied, “Would General Patton have liked it?”

“General Patton would probably have lived in it!” replied Jack.

Two other armed agents in a private White House car followed hard astern. They too had bulletproof glass.

They swung north up the parkway and drove quickly through the sprawling countryside surrounding the National Security Agency. At the main gates, a security guard walked to the driver’s side and asked for passes. He was hardly able to finish his sentence.

“Get in, and escort me immediately to the office of the Director, in OPS-2B.”

The guard recognized the former Tsar of Fort Meade, and understood that he might be working out the last three minutes of his career if he was not careful.

“SIR, YES, SIR!” snapped the former U.S. Army Master Chief, and hopped right into the backseat. Harry knew the way, and the guard jumped out and hissed to the next guard on the main doors. “Chuck, it’s the Big Man—I’m taking him up to Admiral Morris.”

“Rightaway, sir,” he replied and opened the door while Arnold was disembarking. He and his escort went up to the eighth floor in the Director’s private elevator.

“Tell Harry to take you back, then to wait right outside for me…and thanks, soldier.”

“You’re welcome, sir,” he replied holding the door open and waiting to hear Admiral Morris greet the Big Man, as he knew he would.

“Arnie, great to see you…come and sit down. It’s been too long.”

Actually it had been about two months. Too long, for both of the old seafarers. And for the first time, Admiral Morgan did not
walk around to the big chair, which he had once occupied himself. He accepted an offer of coffee, declined lunch, and parked himself in a large wooden captain’s chair in front of the Director’s desk.

Solemnly, he reached into his inside jacket pocket and handed over a copy of the letter he had received a couple of hours previously. George Morris stared at it, his bushy eyebrows raised.

“Jesus,” he said. “When did this arrive?”

“This morning.”

“How?”

“Regular mail.”

“From where?”

“The Middle East. All the postmarks were very smudged. But I think the stamp was Palestinian, the special ones issued in parts of Israel. Had a picture of some sheikh on it.”

“Have you told anyone?”

“Oh, sure. I sent the original over to the White House, to my successor. Told him the letter had come to me by mistake.”

Admiral Morris nodded. “You did not elaborate about our previous discussions on the subject of Arab terrorists and volcanoes?”

“Hell, no. They would have loved an opportunity to imply that I was a paranoid old relic from the Cold War…and anyway, I don’t have the energy to argue with jerks.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I know. But I don’t feel like it.”

George Morris looked again at the message from Hamas. And he recalled their evening together with Jimmy Ramshawe in Chevy Chase a couple of months before.

“Of course I know what you’re thinking, Arnie…your honeymoon mountain in the Canaries last January, right? One of them almost certainly a Hamas assault commander? And we have your photograph of him, in company with two volcanologists from Tehran? And now this—eight months later, Hamas sends a note…implies they blew Mount St. Helens. Kinda fits together.”

“Well, the coincidence is a little striking. Although I understand
you can’t just go around blowing up volcanoes. So far as I recall, no one’s ever done such a thing. Not in all of history, and volcanoes have a lot of that—thousands of years.”

“Yeah, but the last sixty are the only ones that count,” said George. “No one had a big enough explosive before that.”

“You read anything about nuclear fallout in the Mount St. Helens area?”

“Well, I haven’t looked. But we would have been informed if there was any such thing. I’d guess that mountain is still a lot too hot for anyone to make any checks.”

“I don’t get it,” pondered Admiral Morgan. “I cannot believe anyone just planted a bomb in the crater. And anyway, a bomb probably would not have done the job. They don’t explode downwards. Surely to blow a volcano, you’d have to burrow down into the ground, way down, and then detonate.”

“Christ,” said George. “Imagine doing that. Excavating the main lava chimney of a volcano, probably several hundred feet, knowing the damn thing could erupt any moment and fry you.”

“How about a missile?” said Arnold suddenly. “How about a missile coming in at high speed with a sharp front end, designed to bang its way into the rock on the floor of the crater?”

“Well, who knows? It would take a pretty wide investigation to find out if such a thing was possible—like how thick was the floor of the crater…You know, it might have been impenetrable. And, anyway, where could the missile have come from—I imagine you’re not talking ICBM, are you?”

“Well, not from Hamas. God help us if they’ve got one of those. But I’m thinking maybe a cruise aimed at the crater. Or two. Or three. Or more.”

“Fired from?”

“Usual place, George. Possibly that second
Barracuda
, which appears to have vanished off the face of the earth.”

“Well, I suppose that’s all possible. But with this Administration, we cannot spend a lot of time chasing up theories like that. They’re already asking us to downsize every department. There’s going to
be enormous budget cuts, and they have their own agendas, mostly to do with calling off our worldwide hunt for imaginary terrorists.”

“Hmmmm,” said Arnie. “Do you think they’re going to react in any way to the letter from Hamas?”

“Romney will dismiss it as a hoax. And the President will agree with him. My guess is, it will never get as far as here. Though they might just forward a copy to the CIA.”

“How about it isn’t a hoax. How about they did hit Mount St. Helens? How about they are in that fucking nuclear submarine, loaded to the gunwales with missiles, planning God knows what? How about they really did send a letter of warning?”

“I guess we’ll know soon enough,” said George.

“How’dya mean?”

“Well, that letter was unfinished,” said George.
“ ‘You don’t think Mount St. Helens was an accident,’ because it wasn’t…We did it…and what’s more…”

George’s voice trailed off. “That’s what it really said, right?”

“Absolutely. And if the letter has any substance whatsoever, we’ll hear again, correct?”

“That’s my take on it, Arnie, old buddy.”

“Okay. But meanwhile I would like you to ask young Ramshawe to do a bit of sleuthing, check a few things up for me…I want to show him the letter, if that’s okay by you.”

“No problem. I’ll walk you down to his office. He’s less busy these days. We all are.”

The two Admirals finished their coffee and walked down to the office of the Director’s assistant. Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe was hunched over a pile of papers, his office much less like a rubbish tip than usual, the clear and obvious sign of a workload reduction.

Everything had changed in the world of international Intelligence. Where once people in the White House and the Pentagon jumped when a single word of warning emanated from Fort Meade, nowadays there was only cynicism. NSA suspicions were dismissed curtly. The new Administration’s significant operations staff followed their
President’s lead—that is, the CIA, the FBI, the Military, and the National Security Agency were comprised of a group of old-fashioned spooks, out of touch with reality, living in a somewhat murky past of Cold Wars, Hot Wars, and random terrorism.