WASHINGTON, D.C.
N
ASH hopped on the Beltway and circled back around the city in a counterclockwise motion. He’d made three seemingly random stops: a gas station, a coffee shop, and a drugstore. Both his phones were turned off and the batteries removed. The internal GPS computer on the minivan had been disabled long ago. This way if they ever tried to pull his records there would be no record of his stopping at these various locations every week. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on New York and D.C., none of this had been necessary. In Saudi Arabia and Syria, yes. He was used to being followed when he operated over there, but not here in America.
When they’d decided to launch their own operation in America, though, everything changed. For political reasons, the FBI wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of sending deep-cover operatives into mosques. The idea had been suggested by many people, more times than anyone could count. The folks at the bureau knew it was the right thing to do in terms of national security, but they also knew whoever signed off on it would be crucified up on the Hill, so the bureau found a middle ground. Their solution was to stay out of the mosques and instead focus on Muslim charities. It was a good start and early on they had a lot of success, especially on the money side. That’s what the bureau was really good at. They could investigate the hell out anything. Throw a hundred bright and motivated agents at a problem and inhale it. Collect every little bread crumb until they’d pieced together an amazing picture of what was going on.
With the charities, they found out that a lot of these seemingly innocuous organizations were actually fronts for more militant terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda. Just like organized crime, the groups adapted. They changed the way they did things and slowly withdrew behind the walls of their mosques, and the FBI stopped at the imaginary line. A line shrouded in the First Amendment. The right to practice one’s religion, to say what you’d like, and associate with whomever you saw fit. They’d beat this one to death – “they” being all of the men and women who staffed the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC. The nerve center of the fight against terrorism in all its emerging forms.
The few who dared to speak out said that this was not about the First Amendment. The decision to stay away from the mosques was political correctness at its apogee. It was a fear of being painted bigots for spying on minorities practicing a minority religion, and it was born out of the illogical, emotion-based, feel-good philosophy of the sixties. Because Islam was different, they dared not criticize it. One of Nash’s counterparts at the FBI summed it up best one time when he said, “If four abortion clinics were blown up tomorrow, killing hundreds of people, and a group of white men who were all part of a Southern Baptist antiabortion group took credit for the attacks, do you think we would hesitate for a second to send undercover agents into their churches?”
The question was never answered. The word came down from on high that they were to continue investigating the charities, but they were to stay away from the mosques. That had been nearly two years ago and that had supposedly been when Kennedy, Stan Hurley, and a few select senators got together and agreed that something needed to be done. They pulled Rapp and Nash in and gave them their walking orders. Everything would be funded off the books. A budget of ten million was provided to start with. The initial million was culled from safety deposit boxes at an old bank in Williamsburg. More was flown in from overseas and not a single receipt was kept. Everything was shredded every step of the way. Kennedy had placed her trust in Rapp and Nash that they would spend the money wisely, and they did. The hardest part had been recruiting the agents. They started with four and hooked them with service to their country and a pile of cash. One million per guy, all tax-free, and they could choose to keep as much or as little of it offshore as possible.
They targeted four mosques. One in Washington, one in Philadelphia, and two in the New York area. They were now up to eight agents, and the intel was pouring in. It was where they’d first learned that al-Qaeda was training commando teams to send to America for coordinated attacks against individuals and infrastructure. The last six months had been an intelligence bonanza. They were steadily connecting the dots of a terrorist network that was being built to help fund and support jihad in America. Two cells had been intercepted and a third had finally been confirmed. And now he was being asked to pull the plug on the entire thing. Roll it up and make it go away. Get ready for the investigation.
Nash pulled through the security checkpoint at the NCTC and parked in the underground garage. He didn’t know what he dreaded more, going upstairs or having to go before the Intelligence Committee later in the afternoon. At least with most of the people on the Intelligence Committee he knew where he stood, which was pretty much that he didn’t respect three-quarters of them. Upstairs was filled with people he liked. People he respected and people he was going to have to lie to yet again. The internal conflict was wearing on him, which made him think of Hurley and his comments on how it was all tied together.
Nash put his phones back together, turned them on, and headed for the elevators. When the doors opened on the sixth floor, he forced himself to get out. He walked across the carpeted hallway, held his card up against the black pad, and waited to hear the click that would allow him to enter the bullpen. It came and he opened the door and stepped into the big room. Men and women from virtually every federal agency that had anything to do with law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and the military were present. They were sprawled out across the gymnasium-sized room in working pods designed to make them more efficient. On the far wall was a massive screen the size of a neighborhood movie theater. It was flashing images from eight different news organizations.
Nash didn’t look at them, but he could feel the hush spread through the buzz of the room and knew that one by one they were turning to note his arrival. Nash had spent much of the day bracing himself for what was about to happen. His voice mail was full, and he hadn’t bothered to clear it. He figured he’d wait until he could sit down at his desk and call it up on speakerphone. Besides, the people who really mattered knew not to call that number.
Nash broke left and headed down the side of the room. He passed several glass-walled offices and kept his chin down. He’d made it to within a few feet of his own office when he heard his name barked by an all-too-familiar voice. Nash slowly turned and faced Art Harris. The forty-two-year-old was the bureau’s deputy assistant director of their CTC division. He was almost six feet tall, had receding close-cropped hair, and mocha-colored skin. He was extremely fit for a man who spent his days behind a desk.
Harris had one hand resting on the hilt of his 357 Sig and the other held a copy of the
Post
. “You want to tell me what in the hell this is all about?”
“Good afternoon, Art.”
“Don’t good afternoon me. Explain this.”
“There’s nothing to explain.”
“Bullshit.”
Nash pointed at Harris’s hip. “Are you gonna draw on me, cowboy?”
Harris, feeling slightly foolish with everyone watching, took his hand off his gun. “Don’t change the subject. I asked you a direct question.”
“I wasn’t aware that I answered to you, Art.”
“Don’t play games with me, Nash. I’ll have your ass transferred out of here by sundown.”
“Please do. Although I might miss watching you play wet nurse.”
Harris shook the paper. “Stop dodging my question.”
“It’s all bullshit, Art.”
“Fiction?”
“Yep.”
“You know I’m no fan of the
Post.
They usually manage to put their little spin on most of the propaganda they put out there, but I don’t recall them being in the business of just making shit up whole cloth.”
“I don’t know what to tell ya.”
“How about the truth?”
Nash sighed and said, “Art, I don’t know how to say it any other way. I have no idea what that reporter is talking about.”
“If I find out that you’re lying to me, I’m going to nail your ass to the wall.”
“You arrogant prick.” Nash took a couple of steps toward Harris. “You gonna start investigating people based on what’s printed in the
Washington Post
? Because if that’s the case, maybe we should investigate you guys for being a bunch of nutless pussies.”
Harris took three quick steps forward and got right in Nash’s face. “You want to take this down to the parking garage?”
“You wouldn’t stand a chance, and you know it.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“I’m sure,” Nash said as he backed away. “Why don’t you call that reporter and find out why he’s printing lies about the CIA. Maybe you could indict him for treason.” Nash slipped into his office and slammed the door. With a smile on his face, he walked over to his desk and looked down at a printed call list. The damn thing was a page and a half long. His wife had called three times. Nash quickly picked out which ones were the most important and then checked his watch. He had about an hour before he’d have to leave for the command performance with the Intelligence Committee. He would have done almost anything to get out of it, but he knew he had no choice. He’d have to sit there and take their pompous shit, and then lie to them, and thank them for their thoughtful and patriotic stewardship.
S
ENATOR Lonsdale stared up at the vote total on the board and looked around for someone to choke. She’d waited sixteen years for her party to get control of the Senate, and now with a five-person majority they couldn’t even pass a simple spending resolution. She scanned the well of the Senate in search of the majority whip. She’d never liked the little pudd from Illinois and had led a very vocal opposition to his being given the post. Her dark brown eyes zeroed in on him, and she began muttering a few profanities under her breath.
Then, just as quickly as she’d started, she stopped. A placid expression washed over her face as she remembered the admonishment she’d been given by her entire staff a little over a month ago. Something about her looking old, angry, and constipated. It had taken the little pussies two full weeks to work up the courage to tell her that someone had started a Web site dedicated to her declining looks. It had been a full-blown intervention with eight of them filing into her office with a slide show from the Web site. Her chief of staff, Ralph Wassen, who had not been involved in the conspiracy, stumbled upon the intervention and was appalled. Upon seeing several of the enlarged still images of her deeply lined and contorted face, he announced, to the utter delight of all, that she looked like an angry lesbian. Wassen, in addition to being her closest advisor and friend, was also a queen. His sexual preference gave him the cover to say all kinds of politically incorrect things.
As much as it pained Lonsdale to admit it, they were right. It was as if Mother Nature had sucked all the moisture from her beautiful skin and carved deep lines all over her face. That night she’d gone home and looked through a string of recent photographs and was further depressed. It was as if turning fifty-eight had suddenly aged her a full decade. She’d put on at least five pounds, if not ten. She was getting lazy. Lonsdale was not the type to sit around and feel sorry for herself for very long, so the very next day she went on a crash diet, doubled the number of cigarettes she allowed herself from four a day to eight, and began walking and taking the steps every chance she had. She made an appointment with a dermatologist and had already completed two dermabrasion sessions that hurt like hell, but they appeared to be helping.
A month later she’d lost five pounds and was set on losing at least another five. She’d talked to her dentist about getting some veneers for her teeth and was finally convinced it was time to have a little minor face work done. Just around her eyes. None of that Botox stuff, though. She’d come across one too many of those crazy bitches at fund-raisers. They looked like freaks, walking around with that stupid, wild-eyed permafrost expression. She wasn’t going to complain to her colleagues about it, but there was no doubt it was much more difficult for a woman to do this job.
As Lonsdale slid her feet into a pair of black pumps, she reminded herself to keep that placid expression on her face. Slowly but surely she was reprogramming herself to be more self-conscious about the faces she made. She stood and grabbed the bottom of her silver jacket, giving it a tug. Down the aisle she went, tucking first her shoulder-length raven black hair behind her left ear and then her right. As she reached the well, she turned right and slowed as she passed her party’s leadership table.
“Wonderful job, gentlemen,” she said with false sincerity. She stopped in front of the senior senator from Illinois and bent forward. With a congenial smile on her face she said, “Get your shit together, Dickie. You’re embarrassing all of us.”
Lonsdale left the floor and entered the cloakroom. Two of her staffers were waiting for her. A man and a woman, or more accurately, a boy and a girl. The girl had her burgundy leather briefing folder clutched tightly against her perky breasts, and was wearing a short-sleeved ivory cashmere sweater. Lonsdale suddenly resented the woman’s youth. That and the fact that she was pissed about losing the vote caused her to ask a bit impatiently, “What now?”
The woman, in her early twenties, tilted her briefing folder forward and scanned her notes. “You have a photo opportunity with the Pipefitters Union…”
Lonsdale listened as her aide spoke excitedly about the day’s remaining events. It was an entirely boring litany, and she unfortunately had no choice but to attend each and every one. The boy stepped forward. His name was Trent or Trevor or something like that.
“Wade Kline is waiting for you in your office.”
“Which one?” Lonsdale asked, trying to sound uninterested.
“Upstairs.”
As the senior female senator in her party, Lonsdale had an office in the Capitol as well as her larger one in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
“Did he say what he wants?”
“No.”
Without wasting another moment, she turned and left the cloakroom. She took one step toward the stairs and then headed for the elevator. Her heart was beating fast enough over the prospect of seeing her favorite Justice Department employee. She didn’t want to show up flushed and out of breath. Paula or Pastel or Pearl or whatever her name jumped into the elevator along with Trent. She waited to see which button her boss pressed. Down meant the tram over to Dirksen and the Pipefitters and up meant the handsome lawyer from the Justice Department. Lonsdale pressed the button for the fourth floor and the aide immediately began pecking an e-mail on her BlackBerry that would alert the rest of the senator’s staff that she would be late for the photo op.
Lonsdale’s Capitol office consisted of five rooms: a reception area that was staffed by two receptionists, a conference room, a bullpen stuffed with five legislative assistants, a good-sized office for her chief of staff, and a massive office for herself with a veranda that looked out over the Supreme Court, the Russell, Dirksen, and Hart Senate Office Buildings, and Union Station. Lonsdale knew Kline would be waiting in her office. She walked past her receptionists, ignoring their pleas for a word, and she continued straight into her office, closing the door behind her.
Kline didn’t bother to stand. He was sprawled out on the leather couch, his suit coat open, his narrow waist and lean chest on display. He looked at the senator from Missouri and said, “You look fantastic. What is that, Donna Karan?”
“It is, as a matter of fact.” Lonsdale placed the toe of her left foot out in front of the other foot, bent her knee, and held out her arms, striking an elegant pose. Her silver jacket and matching skirt were accessorized with a black belt, black blouse, and black pumps. She did not look fifty-eight.
“You’ve lost weight.”
“Please.” Lonsdale spun and walked over to her desk. She was extremely pleased he’d noticed.
The office looked like a European drawing room with its fifteen-foot gilded plaster ceilings, massive stone fireplace, and large oil portraits of well-fed men from centuries before. Lonsdale opened the top left-hand drawer of her desk and pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights. She held the pack up for Kline to see.
“Care to join me?”
“Why do you think I’m here?” Kline smiled. “Other than to see you, of course.”
The two headed out onto the veranda, like high school kids sneaking a smoke at lunch. It was a gorgeous afternoon. The sun was out, there was a hint of humidity in the air, and the flowers were blossoming. Lonsdale looked into Kline’s eyes as he lit her cigarette and she felt herself stir. She looked away and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
It was his damn eyes,
she told herself. They were this crazy blue gray that sucked you right in. If you looked at them for too long you’d begin to think of things that you shouldn’t be thinking of in the middle of the afternoon.
“That thing you wanted me to dig into,” Kline said as he finished lighting his own cigarette.
The spell was broken, and Lonsdale was momentarily confused. She shook the flustered look from her face. “What thing?”
“These black-bag guys over at Langley. Rapp and Nash.”
“Oh, those two,” moaned Lonsdale. “Please tell me you’re getting ready to indict them.”
“I wish, but at the rate things are going, we’ll both be retired by the time I actually get a chance to question them.”
“They’re stonewalling you?”
“I wouldn’t even say stonewalling. I can’t track them down. For a month straight I’ve been requesting meetings with them and I’ve got nothing. I finally got Director Kennedy to show up on Friday. What a coldhearted bitch she is, by the way.”
“Not my favorite person in Washington.”
“Well, she and I locked horns and it wasn’t pretty. I pretty much told her that if she didn’t put Rapp and Nash in front of me by this Friday I’d start serving subpoenas.”
“And?”
Kline took a drag and shrugged his shoulders. “The woman’s a coldhearted bitch. I don’t know what to tell you. She just sat there and stared back at me.” Kline looked off in the distance toward Union Station and after a moment said, “To be honest, she kind of gave me the creeps.”
“How so?”
“I got the impression she’d like to hurt me.”
Lonsdale giggled like a little girl.
“It’s not funny,” Kline said with a frown. “She has a lot of power.”
Lonsdale covered her mouth. She was laughing because she herself would like to hurt Kline, but probably not in the way Kennedy would like to. “Sorry… I didn’t mean to be so insensitive.” She reached out and touched his firm bicep. “You’re a big boy. I think you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’ve put a lot of nasty people away, but these guys are different. They’re not your average criminal.”
“I disagree. That’s exactly what they are, and that’s why they need to be locked up.”
“Barbara,” Kline said in a tone absent frustration, “I am not lacking in conviction. I firmly believe that these guys need to be brought to justice, but ignoring the fact that they are dangerous would be foolish.”
“I’ll grant you that point, but now is not the time to be timid. This fictitious war on terror has dragged on for far too long. Now is the time to act. Did you see the damn
Post
this morning?”
“Yes.”
“You need to get that reporter to sit down in front of a grand jury and tell you who his sources were for that article and then you need to start handing out subpoenas.”
Putting reporters under oath would not work. It had been tried by a lot of prosecutors and about all it did was ensure that the reporter would get turned into a martyr and offered a big advance for a book. “It would help,” Kline said, “if you could get your committees to put some pressure on them.”
“Wade… darling, I’ve tried that, and I will continue to put pressure on them. Nash will be appearing before the Intel Committee this afternoon. A one-front assault against these guys will never work. We need to squeeze them. We need to catch them in their lies.”
She watched as Kline looked away. He took a long pull off his cigarette and frowned. “What?” she asked, too impatient to wait for him to speak his mind.
“The president.”
“What about him?”
“I hear he and Kennedy are close. I’ve even heard he’s fond of Rapp.”
“Don’t worry about the politics of this thing. That’s my arena. Just get these bastards and make an example of them. Show the American people that we are a nation of laws.” Lonsdale pointed a perfectly manicured fingernail at him and added, “You do that, Wade, and you’ll be able to write your ticket in this town.”