White: A Novel (12 page)

“The team is prestaging in a hangar up at Andrews, but I don’t know what the hell good that is going to do,” Jeremy said. The cold wind helped clear his overburdened mind. “There’s no way we’re lifting off in this weather.”

“Stand by to stand by—that’s our motto, right?” Lottspeich yelled. He couldn’t think of much else to say at the moment. Terrorism was their business, but fifty men in a snowstorm seemed a pitiful response to what Jeremy was describing.

“You driving or me?” Jeremy asked. Their assigned parking spaces were side by side.

“You drive,” Lottspeich said. “All you do is complain about my . . .”

“Waller!” a voice called out behind them. Jeremy turned to supervisor Billy Luther, who had run across the parking lot in his shirtsleeves.

“Hey, didn’t your mother tell you . . . ,” Lottspeich started, but Billy cut him off.

“We just got word that WFO’s SOG has a possible cell under surveillance in an Anacostia warehouse,” he yelled over the storm.

Jeremy could feel this ratcheting up very quickly. If the Washington field office’s Special Operations Group had run this Ansar group to ground, HRT might get to play in this after all.

“They think these assholes are cooking ANFO,” Billy said. “Our objective is to close down the perimeter so no one gets in or out. Get your men on the road; we’ll relay more information as we get it.”

Billy turned and started back inside.

“Make sure you maintain a safe standoff,” he called over his shoulder. “That shit can make a big hole!”

“ANFO,” Lottspeich said. He opened the rear doors of Jeremy’s Suburban and threw his pack inside. “That don’t sound right. Anyone capable of splashing three airliners isn’t likely to be messing with fertilizer and fuel oil, are they?”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Jeremy said, tossing in his gear after Fritz’s. “From what I heard in the team leaders’ meeting, this thing goes a helluva long ways beyond some guy cooking bubba bombs in Anacostia.”

He climbed into his truck and started the engine. For reasons that made no particular sense, all he could think of was that butter-fly in the jungle.

Graphium milon,
GI Jane had said just before everything went to hell. Odd that something so beautiful could send shivers down his spine.

JORDAN MITCHELL SELDOM
traveled for meetings, but this was one of those exceptions. Twelve years earlier, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a soft-spoken midlevel-management type had walked up at a conference and asked to have a word with him. The man had offered no business card, came with no introduction, and managed to insert himself in Mitchell’s day precisely at a time when his defenses were down. Ten minutes later they were talking in Mitchell’s suite. Within a week they were partners.

Mr. Hoch was all he had ever called the man, but that seemed appropriate for a wraith who came and went with no contact numbers or corporate affiliation. He spoke with spare economy, a trait Mitchell had always sought in his own employees. Most interesting of all, Mr. Hoch talked about a new program, developed within the CIA, to cover young intelligence operatives inside American business. The program was run out of the Directorate of Operations—the dirty-hands-and-broken-bones side of the house—and it was so secretive Hoch introduced the concept with a question Mitchell would never forget.

“I love my country enough to die for it, Mr. Mitchell,” he said. “Do you love yours enough to keep a secret?”

It had sounded like the perfect pitch. Mitchell felt compelled to hear the man out, to listen to what this otherwise completely forgettable person had to say. It felt like duty.

Hoch started by telling Mitchell that he represented a government agency and that his employer collected intelligence on other governments, agencies, businesses, and people. The intrigue alone would have compelled Mitchell to give this man a chance, but what really captivated him was the part where he talked about money.

“We have come to understand that the war on terrorism is all about money,” he said in explaining the link between intelligence and business. “National security is no longer a question of keeping the seething communist hordes out of Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. It’s an issue of protecting the strongest, most far-reaching financial empire in the history of the world.

“If we want to maintain the freedoms that allow people like you to accomplish their dreams, we have to adopt an entirely new attitude about national security. Our success as a world superpower is going to come down to leaders who understand the validity of the dollar.”

Nothing this man or any other could have said would have seized Mitchell’s attention any more fervently. All his life, he had believed that bombs and tanks were little more than a Stone Age excuse to avoid more complicated issues. If the United States ever wanted to protect itself from foreign threats, it had to accept the new reality:
pecunia vincit omnia
—money conquers all.

Deficit spending, not military action or the threat of mutually assured destruction, had won the Cold War. Ronald Reagan crippled the Soviet Union by taunting it into bankruptcy. The war on terror would be won the same way.

Mitchell had gone so far as to include a chapter in his new book about the potentially calamitous dangers of foreign acquisition of U.S. corporations. When Daimler-Benz bought Chrysler, he wrote, they didn’t simply purchase a bunch of assembly lines, sheet metal, and hood ornaments; they bought a huge chunk of America. They gained access to labor contracts, research and development secrets, personnel folders, and virtually every black-walled program Chrysler ever worked on.

Corporate raiding by companies like Ford, Viacom, and GE threatened to change the global power balance more than all the bombs in Iran, Iraq, and North Korea combined. This new shadow war was being waged with a whole new kind of soldier—one armed with pinstripes and a BlackBerry. Guns and bombs were simply window dressing for the morons at cable news.

“Hello, Mr. Hoch,” Mitchell said. He had agreed to meet his enigmatic partner at a tiny SoHo café called Twelve Seats. There was just one large room with an espresso bar. Two women sat talking in the back. A man on Rollerblades fought his way out the door, wrestling a venti latte and two feisty pugs.

“Nice to see you, Jordan.”

It was just the two of them. Trask sat outside in the Mercedes. Hoch always came alone.

“You, too. How have you been?”

Neither man had any interest in small talk, but a mutual respect had grown between them.

“I feel well. Coffee?”

“Just water.”

They ordered and sat at the window.

“So, we have business?” Mitchell asked. He could see Trask in the car, wrestling with two cell phones, trying to juggle and cancel meetings to accommodate this last-minute tryst.

“We do.” Hoch looked casually around the room to ease any concern about overhears. “Jafar al Tayar.”

“I don’t speak Arabic. I think you know that.”

Hoch watched Mitchell’s face, trying to decide whether or not the phrase had surprised him.

“It means Jafar the pilot, or the high flier—one who controls things from a position of power or influential standing. We have developed a source in Guantánamo Bay who talks about an operation called Jafar al Tayar. A terrorist operation, it seems, but more troublesome than that.”

“What would be more troublesome than a terrorist operation?” Mitchell asked. “Particularly in light of recent events?”

“Jafar al Tayar was developed by the United States government,” Hoch said. The Borders Atlantic CEO held his eye with no change in expression.

“Go on.”

“In the mid-1980s, the Pentagon was getting itself involved in all kinds of crazy schemes called ‘asynchronous warfare.’ I’m sure you remember the stories—everything from ESP and telepathy to subliminal suggestion and mass hypnosis. Well, one of the more rational projects involved the possibility that communists or terrorists might infiltrate our government from within.”

“From within? What do you mean?”

“By getting themselves elected. The CIA and FBI had always been looking at spies, of course, but no one had ever considered the possibility that a foreign power might simply front a candidate in a general election.”

Mitchell nodded. America was a free and open society. Despite lingering vestiges of prejudice, men and women from all different ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds had achieved high office.

“Interesting,” Mitchell said. Hoch had garnered his full attention.

“To test this possibility, DARPA—the Advanced Research Projects Agency at that time—came up with an idea. What if the U.S. military found a handful of high achievers, altered their backgrounds, and gave them a mission: to get elected. It would be an offline project, of course—something almost no one knew anything about.”

“They did this?” Mitchell asked.

“Twelve people.” Hoch nodded. “The best and brightest the army could find. They called it Civil Defense Scenario Four: Project Megiddo. It was run out of a Special Forces unit within the Fourth Psychological Operations Group. Very small footprint. Total autonomy. Very black.”

Hoch looked around again. No one had spoken aloud about this in almost twenty years.

“The army took these twelve soldiers and for two years sculpted them into the best possible political candidates. Education, charm school, distinguished military record—all backstopped, of course, with the full resources of the Department of Defense.”

“And sent them out to get elected?”

“Yes. Discharged them back to their hometowns. Dogcatcher, mayor, state assembly, U.S. Congress: their only mission was to rise as high as possible through the political system.”

“So, what happened?”

“We don’t know.”

“What?” Mitchell asked. “How do you not know?”

“For one thing, the project was compartmented and diffused. There are no records. For another, the project was run by a colonel named Ellis who has apparently retired. Project Megiddo and anything we know about it went with this colonel when he left.”

Mitchell leaned back in his chair. If America allowed business to function like government, the whole country would be bankrupt and behind bars.

“How does an Islamic holy warrior at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, know more about Project Megiddo than the CIA?” Mitchell whispered.

“We’re not sure he does.” Hoch shrugged. “But the similarities between his Jafar al Tayar plot and our Megiddo project are too close to ignore. The only way to find out is to go back after this project and see what happened to those twelve candidates.”

“Which means this Colonel Ellis is still around and that you know where to find him, I assume?”

“Yes.” Hoch nodded. “The problem is selecting the right person to send after him.”

Mitchell thought for a moment. He could see in Hoch’s eyes that the CIA boss had already come up with a name.

“Waller?” Mitchell asked.

Hoch finished his coffee and signaled for the check.

“We have very little time to spare. Our analysts predict that the next wave of attacks could start at any time.”

“How?” Mitchell asked. “Putting Waller on a plane to some Third World hellhole for a few days is one thing. Sending him undercover for an operation like this is quite another. We can’t tell the FBI what’s involved here, and they’ll never let him go without full disclosure.”

“They will if the right person makes the request,” Hoch said. He pulled cash out of his pocket to pay the check.

“Beechum,” Mitchell confirmed.

“This is a time of national emergency,” Hoch said. “I would imagine that the vice president of the United States has special authority, wouldn’t you?”

“She’d better.” Mitchell smiled. “That’s why we put her there.”

DAVID RAY VENABLE
hadn’t lived in the White House long enough to take its history for granted. Each room he wandered through carried the indelible stains of American conflict—the Red Room’s fireplace where Harry Truman had contemplated the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the library where John F. Kennedy prayed for strength during the Cuban missile crisis, the bedroom windows through which Lincoln saw Arlington Cemetery filling with the corpses of a nation falling upon itself.

And now it was his—this house, this country, this sacred trust. He settled in the Green Room, where a couch and two wing chairs offered ample comfort. The black velvet rope used to close it off to tourists still blocked the door.

“Is this private enough for you, Elizabeth?” he asked. It had been his only choice since the vice president had decided to make her stand. Had he decided to fight inside the Oval Office, the impact on his staff could have been devastating.

“Lose the suits,” she said. Beechum meant no insult to the Secret Service agents who had followed both her and the president’s every move since the first bomb exploded in Atlanta. But this was bound to get nasty, and her daddy had always told her not to quarrel in front of the help.

“Please,” the president said. He nodded toward the shift commander and motioned him away with his hand. “Close the door and give us a minute, will you?”

The agent, a veteran of two previous administrations, thought for a moment, then backed out of earshot. This was the Secret Service, after all; sometimes what you didn’t see was just as important as what you did.

“You need me here, David,” Beechum said when they were alone. “Don’t try to turn this into something it isn’t. I’ll stay completely out of sight. I’ll banish myself to the goddamned Situation Room if it makes you happy, but this is a brand-new staff you’ve brought to Washington and they have never been through anything like this. I have.”

Venable saw no upside in arguing that point. Beechum had served as chair of the Senate intelligence committee before, during, and after the 9/ 11 attacks. Few people in Washington had better sources, connections, or reputation.

“It’s not that I don’t value your experience,” the president fired back. “It’s just that we need to protect the government should something else happen. Like Havelock said, we will have full communications with . . . with wherever the hell it is they are taking you.”