Sedition (A Political Conspiracy Book 1) (26 page)

The passage seemed familiar to Matti, as if she’d heard it somewhere before. She scanned her memory quickly. Then it hit her. She
had
heard it before. The asset used almost the exact same argument during one of their phone sessions. She must have taken it from the journal. Matti was more determined to keep reading the little books the AG had entrusted to her.

She learned more about the amount of Semtex available to the conspirators and how they’d obtained it. She knew how they planned to sneak the explosive material into the Capitol and the method by which they were to detonate it.

But most importantly, the young analyst was learning about the motive and the endgame. She was sure that as much as the NSA thought it knew about the plot, it knew little if anything about the reason. As Matti read through Davidson’s notes about the plot, she had trouble believing it herself.

“Spencer Thomas,” wrote the AG in a small, hurried script that hugged the lines of the pages, “is a megalomaniac. He has conceived this violent plot to overthrow a government he believes is ill-equipped to serve its people. I know that our path as a nation has strayed from one that is truly righteous and abiding of the constitution. But he is misguided.”

“For years”—his handwriting was like that of a man in a hurry; it was approaching scribble—“I have gone along with the idea that we could effect change at the very highest levels of government. Never did I envision violence. The greasing of palms and the quid pro quo of political favor was murky enough for me. I did not sign up for murder.”

Matti made a mental note of Davidson’s assertion that an unknown conspirator was somehow involved in the plot, but she kept reading to finish Davidson’s thoughts. It was the only part of the journal that she’d read so far, which was rife with personal opinion.

Her cell phone chirped, indicating she’d received a text message. She picked up her phone and checked the message. It was from her boss. Finally.

U R OFF THIS. I THOUGHT I MADE MYSELF CLEAR.

It was not the kind of reply Matti had been hoping to receive. She didn’t want to leave a phone message or send a text that contained sensitive information. She flipped open the keyboard on her phone and typed.

I HAVE NEW INTEL. NEED TO MEET. URGENT.

She pressed send. The phone chirped again, confirming to her that the text was successfully sent. She went back to the journals.

Though Davidson was certain the Daturans would detonate the Semtex with cell phones, he did not denote which kind of cell phones they would use.

Her phone chirped again. Another text message alert was flashing on the display. She marked her place in the journal and picked up her cell, hoping her supervisor had agreed to a meeting.

NO MEET. BUREAU HAS CONTROL. LEAVE IT ALONE.

Matti stared at the screen, trying to process the text. She hoped that reading it more than once might change the words on the small screen.

Why would he not meet with her? Why would he NOT want new intelligence? She dropped the phone onto the table and pushed it away from her. She blindly picked up her coffee cup and sipped through the small slit in the plastic lid. The drink was still hot and singed the tip of her tongue. She touched it to the back of her teeth and winced.

Matti might have been naïve about the nastiness of her chosen profession, but she’d long known its shortcomings. She asked herself why her boss was so disinterested in potentially valuable information while instantaneously answering it in her head.

The FBI had taken over control of the investigation. That meant that the heat was off the NSA and that her boss didn’t feel the need to staple an addendum to the file. Her agency, she thought he’d have reasoned, did everything that was asked of it and kindly passed along all relevant information. Therein lay the most dangerous problem in American intelligence gathering.

Despite the debacle of 9/11, when the FBI had information about the hijackers that was never passed up or down the command chain to the appropriate people, the United States intelligence community never fully got used to the idea of shared turf.

While the prevailing wisdom was that legal walls prevented the sharing of information between agencies, Matti knew that perception was wrong. She’d read the 9/11 commission report that concluded there had been no legal reason why the information could not have been shared. She’d also read James Bamford’s book about her own agency, which argued that the lack of adequate information sharing was due solely to interagency rivalries.

The Department of Homeland Security was created to facilitate cooperation and information sharing. All it really did, many believed, was create a greater bureaucracy through which good intelligence was filtered from bad.

Nowhere was that more evident than in the aftermath of the attack at Fort Hood, Texas, in late 2009. A full eight years after 9/11, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was suspected of opening fire on dozens of unarmed soldiers and civilians in a medical clinic at a readiness center on post.

Hasan, an American-born Muslim and a practicing psychiatrist, killed thirteen and wounded another thirty people. In the aftermath of the mass shooting, the FBI revealed that Hasan was “on their radar” for months as a possible Al-Qaeda sympathizer. Matti remembered that FBI director Robert Mueller ordered an investigation into how the agency mishandled information about Hasan, employing the help of a former director, William Webster, to get to the bottom of the communication breakdown.

In the midst of that investigation, a young Al-Qaeda-trained Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutalleb was charged with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight as it traveled from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. Matti recalled that he’d worn a chemical explosive in his underwear and managed to light it as the plane approached its destination. Had he been successful, he could have killed hundreds.

Matti remembered from news reports that the kicker was that the government had information about the suspect prior to his attempted attack, yet it failed to act. Intelligence suggested that, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, Al-Qaeda leaders had discussed a “Nigerian” being prepared for a terrorist attack. But that information was never passed along to the appropriate authorities.

What’s more, the suspect’s father had gone so far as to contact the US Embassy in Nigeria to express his concerns about his son’s radicalism and association with terrorists in Yemen. He met with the CIA and other agencies to discuss his assertions. A summary of those meetings was sent to CIA headquarters in Langley. The embassy cabled Washington with the information along with instructions to raise alarms if Abdulmutalleb applied for a visa.

It was discovered he already had a multiple entry United States visa and it was not revoked. Abdulmutalleb’s name was put into a database of 550,000 people with possible ties to terrorism, but he was never put on the no-fly list. So, according to the government, the radicalized Nigerian boarded a plane armed with chemical explosives.

President Obama admitted there were missed signals and uncorrelated intelligence that should have prevented the would-be bomber from ever getting on the plane. He said the nation’s security agencies were guilty of “a mix of human and systemic failures”.

Here she sat with her nation’s security at stake
again
, finding out firsthand that nothing had changed. The imaginary walls still existed. Agencies were willing and ready to pass the buck to protect themselves rather than share vital intelligence.

Matti thought about a position paper she’d come across a few years back, written by a blogger and self-professed security expert named Bruce Schneier. She’d memorized the opening lines of his argument because they served as a reminder to her about the importance of her job.

“Security is both a feeling and a reality,”
Schneier wrote,
“And they’re not the same. The reality of security is mathematical, based on the probability of different risks and the effectiveness of different countermeasures. But security is also a feeling, based not on probabilities and mathematical calculations, but on your psychological reactions to both risks and countermeasures.”

In this case, Matti neither felt safe nor had confidence in the math. The FBI would be too late based on the intelligence she believed they’d obtained from their own investigation and that they’d received from the NSA.

She knew the FBI would wait to thwart the plot. If they acted too soon, they risked losing evidence of intent. Their method of operation was to wait until the last possible minute to stop the detonation, if they even had the ability to do it.

Matti wasn’t convinced the FBI knew about the casket bomb. She wasn’t sure they had intelligence about the cell phone detonators. For all she knew, they were expecting a more conventional attack.

She could try to alert them through some radical, attention-getting act. Getting arrested somehow might facilitate a meeting with the right people. But by the time authorities bought into her story and deemed her legitimate, it could be too late.

Matti’s reasoned calculations were hijacked by a seemingly impossible notion. She tried to fight the ridiculous idea. But as she mentally played out the various endgames in her head, the conclusion was always the same. Matti more carefully sipped through the foam in her latte as she convinced herself of the laughable. She would need to stop the attack herself.

Chapter 36

Laura Harrowby’s temples were throbbing, with each pulse beat more excruciating than the one before it. Her tongue felt thick and her stomach uneasy. The acid of the merlot was scolding her for the overindulgence.

Laura was prone on the love seat in Thistlewood’s Embassy Row apartment, a cool washcloth covering her forehead. She was still in the sweater dress she’d worn the night before. Her flats were on the floor, as were her pantyhose and bra.

“Are you feeling any better?”

Thistlewood was seated in one of the room’s two overstuffed chairs. The mantel clock chimed. It was later in the day than Laura imagined it would be.

“No,” she said in a gravelly voice. She cleared her throat. “How long before I can have something else for my headache?”

“I don’t know.” Thistlewood looked at the clock. “An hour maybe?” He was thumbing through
The
Washington Post
, but he was only mildly interested in the content. He was killing time until it was killing time.

“Remind me of what happened last night?” Laura slipped the cloth off her eyes so that she could see her boyfriend. “I know I drank too much wine. I know we went over to my dad’s place. After that, it gets kinda fuzzy.”

“Well”—Thistlewood shifted his body to face Laura—“we had some fun. A couple of times. And then, because I didn’t want to leave you alone at your place, I brought you back here. I’ve been nursing you back to health since you awoke.” He smiled at her and winked with his right eye.

“You’re too good to me,” she cooed, her voice still raspy. “I’m so lucky to have you.” She pulled the cloth back over her eyes. “You’re such a giver.” She giggled.

Thistlewood felt a tinge of guilt wash through him. He’d used her. He’d betrayed her trust. It wasn’t right and he knew it. But the guilt, however sincere, was not enough to push him from the prescribed course. It was too important. It was greater than his relationship with Laura Harrowby.

“You know,” he suggested, “you can stay here for the rest of the day. I’ve got to leave for a little while. You can hang out until you feel better. If you’re here when I get back, we could head out for a late bite to eat.”

She was quick to respond despite her funk. “I don’t think I will feel much like eating today. At all. But I will take you up on your offer to stay here. I like being with you. Are you sure you have to go?”

“Yes, I have a quick meeting. Maybe a couple of hours or so, but I’ll be back before it’s too late.”

She feigned a frown and moved a pillow to a more comfortable position under her head. She felt like she could vomit. Again.

“Do you mind if I watch some television?” he asked. “I’ll keep the volume low so as not to amplify your headache.”

“Whatever you want. I’ll be fine.” He could have asked her to stick her head inside a bass drum while he thumped it and she would have obliged. They both knew it.

He leaned forward in his chair and reached for the wrought-iron and glass coffee table. Atop a large art book was the television remote control. He pulled it to him and turned on the thirty-two-inch LED panel that hung from the wall amidst his Trek Kelly art collection.

The television glowed to life and an image of President Foreman’s cortege appeared on the screen. Thistlewood adjusted the volume so that it was loud enough to hear it but soft enough not to irritate Laura.

“This is a sight,”
observed the commentator,
“that we hope to never see. The memorializing of a sitting president. It is at once both majestic and heartrending.”

Thistlewood watched the screen as the president’s casket was pulled from the hearse and placed onto the caisson. He looked at his watch and then at the clock. Time was crawling.

“This exchange would normally take place at the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance of the White House,”
offered the newswoman.
“That is the protocol for a sitting president after his death, given that traditionally he would lie in repose in the East Room prior to the procession.”

“She’s quite the historian,” quipped Thistlewood.

“Who?” Laura’s eyes were closed, and she wasn’t listening intently to the television.

“The newswoman on TV. What’s-her-name from the political show. You know…”

Laura listened to the woman and then snapped her fingers. “I know her voice.” It was on the tip of her tannin-thickened tongue.

“Who is she, then?” Thistlewood turned to look at his girlfriend. For just an instant they were again a legitimate couple in his mind. He’d not betrayed her. She wasn’t merely a means to an end. It felt good for that moment. But when she answered him and he turned back the television and the truth of the situation, the pseudo-euphoria evaporated.