“What do you think about the message they left on the wall?” Mike asked.
Mitch shrugged. “Not everyone is a fan of the Federal Reserve System, you know. Some would even argue it’s responsible for the economic mess we’re in. Don’t forget, the Fed is a private institution with a monopoly on our money supply. I’m not exactly a fan myself, if you must know.”
“I’d keep that to myself if I were you,” Mike said.
Mitch laughed. “I’m way ahead of you there, buddy. I pledge allegiance to the flag every time I have an unpatriotic thought.”
Mike rolled his eyes. “Just get in.”
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Sunday 16 July 2006
0600 EDT
Richard Fairchild, the director of central intelligence, sat looking at the two pictures on the small coffee table in the corner of his office. The bearded man sitting across from him was in his early sixties. He wore an outdated brown wool suit with patches on the elbows over a shirt and knitted vest, the spitting image of a doting grandfather.
“Did George know about this, Norton?” Fairchild asked. “Because if he did, he forgot to pass it on when he left.”
Norton shrugged. “Does it matter now? We know he has the information and we know what he wants.”
“Does it matter? This agency is running a fucking assassination program off the books that I know nothing about, and you ask me if it matters? Yes, it matters a lot. And I have to find out about it from a man trying to blackmail us into shutting it down? A scandal like this would sink the fucking agency. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“Read the letter, Dick. He’s not going public.”
“And you believe that?”
“We’re still here, aren’t we? I don’t think this guy wants to see this spread across the broadsheets any more than we do.”
“So now he’s a patriot? Perhaps we should offer him a fucking job. He’s clearly one step ahead of everyone else in this place.”
Norton took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “What do you want me to say, Dick? We’ve been here before. These are the risks we take.”
“Does the White House know?” Fairchild said.
Norton turned to the window and sat looking out for a moment, the lines on his face deepening as he considered the question. When he turned back to Fairchild, he put his glasses back on and picked up one of the photos. The man in the picture looked like he’d been dead for some time. His lifeless eyes seemed to stare back, as if accusing anyone who looked at it of his misfortune.
“They know, don’t they?” Fairchild said.
Norton nodded. “They do. But it’s not quite that simple.”
“Meaning?”
“These pictures aren’t from the Fed.”
Fairchild frowned. “They’re not?”
“I cleaned out that safety deposit box three months ago, Dick.”
“I’m not following you. The guy says he’s got the hard drive.”
“I’m sure he does,” Norton said. “But it’s not ours. Nothing from Princip has ever been digitized.”
“What the hell are you saying?”
“I’m saying that the safety deposit box isn’t ours anymore. Whatever he’s got, it belongs to someone else. If he hasn’t figured that out yet, he will soon enough.”
“And these,” Fairchild said, pointing at the pictures. “You said it yourself; they’re both your people.”
“I’m not saying he doesn’t know about the program, just that he doesn’t have the files to prove anything.”
Fairchild stood and began pacing the length of his office. “So who owns the box?”
“Some investment firm out in Ohio. Millennium Holdings.”
“You’re telling me some guy is going to walk in there in a week or a month, open his box and discover someone has taken a hard drive out of it?”
Norton nodded. “Yep.”
“Christ! And we can’t even tell them it’s coming.”
“Not unless you want to explain how we know. I wouldn’t worry about it though. They know it’s a possibility.”
Norton pointed to the letter Fairchild was still holding. “What we need to discuss is what to do about him.”
Fairchild ignored the remark and sat back down. He leaned across the table and fixed Norton with a cold stare. “First you’re going to tell me about Princip and why the fuck I wasn’t informed about it. Then I’ll decide what to do about it.”
When Norton spoke, it was in a tone of resignation. “What do you want to know?”
“How about everything. If it’s not too much to ask, you can start at the beginning.”
“All right, Dick. But you should know there were good reasons for not letting you in. Plausible deniability being just one of them.”
“Start talking.”
Norton sighed. “Princip was set up on Nixon’s orders in ‘72. It was based inside the Special Forces Command in Saigon, and run out of the Pentagon. The idea was to infiltrate Hanoi and neutralize enough of the communist top brass to cripple the North and turn the tide of the war. It didn’t work, of course. But then Nixon and Kissinger were both nuts, so that’s hardly a surprise.”
“Go on,” Fairchild said.
“By the time Ford came along, Princip had been expanded. Nixon had them looking into all kinds of people, including the Pahlavis in Iran, King Faisal, Isabel Perón, and a lot of other thorns in his side. He threatened to go public with the program after Watergate unless Ford promised to offer him a pardon when he resigned.”
“So why didn’t Ford shut it down?” Fairchild said, now looking almost as intrigued as he was angry.
“A lot was going on back then. I guess he came around to the idea. Being able to remove certain obstacles without jumping through too many hurdles has a way of growing on people under all that pressure.”
“You’re telling me Carter knew about the program, too? Reagan? All of them?”
“Not by name, no. And no details, of course. But they knew.”
“And you? Where do you come in?”
“The program was originally run by a career infantry colonel named Reginald Styles. When he resigned, I was already the point of contact for the Oval Office. I guess you could say I was next in line. After 9/11 we had to move everything out of the Pentagon. The Chief of Staff wanted it run here under NCS, but I advised him against it.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to make sure the White House didn’t get a chance to fuck it up along with everything else. And believe me, I have no regrets.”
“And why move the files?” Fairchild asked.
“I just wanted to tie up any loose ends,” Norton said. “You know, tighten the reins. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the NeoCon circus on Pennsylvania Avenue is beginning to make Nixon look like a saint. You know they’re talking about Lebanon and Syria as the next two in line for a makeover, don’t you?”
“I’ve seen the file,” Fairchild said. “It’s just talk.”
“So was Iraq. You should go downstairs sometime and have a chat with Gabriel. Ask him for his paper on the projected budget deficit and what would happen if we commit to another war. I’m telling you, I don’t sleep much anymore.”
“You’re changing the subject,” Fairchild said. “We were talking about Princip. Remember?”
“I’ve shut it down, Dick. That’s all that matters. We tie up this loose end, forget it happened and move on. If I’m being honest, I’ve had enough of this shit anyway. I’m looking forward to putting my feet up.”
“What about the FBI investigation?” Fairchild asked.
“I spoke to Nathan Remark at State this morning. Director Gobain has been ordered to shut it down and hand everything over to Treasury. Like I said, we find this guy, take him out of the picture and move on.”
Fairchild was shaking his head. “Have you even considered where the leak might be? He’s killed two of your operators already. When he finds out he doesn’t have quite as much of our balls in his hand as he thinks, what do you think he’ll do? Roll over and play dead?”
“I doubt it.”
“Besides, it doesn’t even matter. He knows he doesn’t need the files now that he has us all in a corner over the break-in. If you ask me, I think getting the files was just a bonus. Or maybe he was going to clean up the rest of your team if you dragged your feet. You’ve got to give it to him, he’s one smart son of a bitch.”
“I still think we should pursue the option of elimination,” Norton said. “We’ll just have to tread carefully. We can’t afford a risk like this, Dick. Think about it.”
“What about this Colonel Styles?” Fairchild said. “Have you considered him?”
“I’ve checked. He’s clean. I’ve called everyone out of the field. I’ll have more for you in a couple of days.”
Norton stood up with an audible pop from somewhere in his lower back. When he reached the door, Fairchild said, “Norton?”
“What?”
“You don’t move on this without my say-so. Is that clear?”
“Sure.”
“I mean it. Nothing happens until I say it happens.”
Norton nodded. “All right. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
Federal Reserve Bank
New York, New York
Monday 17 July 2006
0900 EDT
Jack Fielding didn’t quite shit a brick in the way Mitch Rainey had imagined it, but he came close. By the time he left the Fed and made his way down Liberty Street he was sweating profusely.
He remembered thinking the man who had taken him down to the vault was unusually tense. He also couldn’t recall the security check having been anywhere near as stringent when he had first opened the account, or on the day he returned to deposit the drive. But none of these things had prepared him for what he found when he opened the safety deposit box. The money was still there, or most of it anyway. The hard drive wasn’t. It had been replaced with two photographs of corpses: one of them little more than a charred skeleton, the other white and bloated. Written on the back of one was a message that meant absolutely nothing to him:
Shut down Princip! Last warning
.
In that moment he had felt as if the entire world had begun spinning around him. The voices of the men waiting outside the vault for him to finish had faded to distant echoes and he had found it hard to breathe. And there had been something else. A faint trace in the air of what he thought might have been fresh paint. But it was hard to know if that hadn’t just been his imagination.
He felt a little better out here in the fresh air, but far from all right. When he reached the intersection of Liberty and Nassau, he almost stepped straight into the path of an oncoming bus. That brought him a little closer to the moment.
Jack hurried across the street and ducked into the first alley he reached. He pulled out his cell phone, dialed and waited. “Marius, get a message to Bruce Jessops right away. I need to speak to him.”
Morisson, Vermont
Monday 17 July 2006
1000 EDT
By the time Jesse got to the offices of the Morisson Herald, it was five past nine. Mrs. Abernathy, a tall, thin woman in her early seventies, who appeared far more frail than she actually was, glared at him as he came through the door. When she was satisfied her silence had produced just the right amount of tension, she said, “Jesse Corbin, have I ever told you what I said to your father the first and last time he ever asked me to change one of his ads after our print deadline?”
“No, ma’am,” Jesse said.
“‘You’re too damn late, Corbin.’ That’s what I said. And here I am, saying it again all these years later.”
Jesse’s mind went blank. He looked down at Julia, the Herald’s forty-something spinster receptionist, who offered him a sympathetic smile.
“I was running an errand, ma’am. I’m very sorry.”
“Was it an urgent errand?” Mrs. Abernathy asked, sounding perfectly reasonable.
“It could have waited, ma’am.”
“When you get to be my age, you’ll discover that everything is urgent. But if you’re going to work for me, I’ll have to insist that you place my urgencies at the top of your list. Is that fair, Jesse?”
“Very fair, ma’am.”
“Excellent. You can start by taking this to the post office.”
She held out a package wrapped in brown paper.
“It’s not important, so don’t let that old fart talk you into sending it express. Standard will do. When you get back, I want you to go down to the sheriff’s office and get a picture of the new deputy for the appointments section. Maggie will give you the camera. It’s one of those digital things, so you shouldn’t have any trouble using it. Head and shoulders only. Make sure he’s not wearing a hat and that his hair is combed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jesse said and turned to leave.
He was halfway out the door when Mrs. Abernathy coughed twice. He turned around and saw she was still holding the package. He walked back, took it, flashed her a fool’s grin and left.
When he got to the sheriff’s office at around half-past nine, Jesse found the man himself sitting behind his desk with both feet up, reading a copy of
Law and Order
. Sheriff Dale Trent peered over the edge of the magazine and said, “That you, Jesse Corbin?”
“Sure thing, Sheriff.”
“My Betty tells me you got yourself a job working for that witch over at the Herald. I told her it couldn’t possibly be true.”
“Guilty as charged,” Jesse said.
The sheriff put down the magazine, crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Jesse like a man contemplating what to say to a child who was obviously too dumb for reason.
“Did she send you over here to get a
scoop
?” he said.
“No, sir. She wants a picture of the new deputy for the paper.”
“Oh. Well that’s easy enough. He’s in the locker room.”
Jesse was waiting for the sheriff to say something else, but he only pointed to the door at the end of the counter.
“Just go on in, son. His name is Brendan. As far as I know, he doesn’t bite.”
At first, Jesse thought there must be someone else with the deputy. He could hear talking as soon as he opened the door. Then he saw him.
Deputy Brendan Mills was standing in front of a long mirror at the end of a row of lockers. He was wearing his uniform pants and his Sam Brown belt, but nothing above the waist. He had one hand on the butt of his gun and appeared to be speaking to himself.