Capitol Conspiracy (12 page)

15

U.S. S
ENATE
, R
USSELL
B
UILDING
,
O
FFICE
S-212-D
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

B
en felt ridiculous creeping through the back stairwell that led to the rear door of his Senate office. He had discovered this private passageway when he was working on Senator Glancy’s defense—the murder had been committed there—but he had never expected to use it himself. He was a U.S. senator, for Pete’s sake. However junior or unelected he might be, he shouldn’t have to sneak into his own office. But he knew what would happen if he came through the front entrance in his usual manner, and he was in no mood to be ambushed by Christina. He needed some time to be alone. He needed to think.

He tiptoed through the rear door as quietly as possible and gently closed it.

“Got a hangover, champ?”

Ben froze.

“I can only assume your head was throbbing, given the way you’re tiptoeing around. Guess you and the leader of the free world hit the bourbon bottle too hard.”

Ben slithered into the chair behind his desk. Busted.

“So you know I met with the president?”

“That’s not the sort of thing you can keep quiet,” Christina said, hovering over his desk like a vulture scrutinizing its prey. “This whole wing of the Russell Building knows you met with the president. A minute ago, I heard it on CNN.”

“Hardly seems that newsworthy…”

“The President of the United States invites in a junior senator, a political opponent, the other politician who survived the April nineteenth attack, just after proposing a sweeping constitutional amendment that would dramatically alter the status of civil rights in America. You’re right—nothing newsworthy about that.”

Ben didn’t have to look up to know she was wearing her sarcastic face, which he knew many in these hallowed halls referred to as her “How stupid are you?” face. “I guess I’m not used to having people tracking my movements.”

“Well, you’d better get used to it, if you’re going to be hanging out with the president. Or running for reelection. What did he offer you?”

“Offer me?”

“In exchange for your support of his Nazi amendment. Some pork barrel project for the state of Oklahoma? Or maybe something you’d find even harder to resist. More money for education. Support for some version of your antipoverty bill. Maybe he even said he’d throw his weight behind the Protection of the Alaskan Wilderness legislation.”

“Wouldn’t you like that?”

“Depends on what it costs,” Christina said curtly. As if by sleight of hand, a report suddenly appeared in her hands. “I’ve been talking to Barry Koehler. You know who he is?”

Ben racked his brain. “Some sort of lobbyist…”

“Close. Works for the ACLU. Possibly the leading expert on American privacy—or the lack thereof.”

Ben clenched his eyes shut.
Here we go….

“Did you know that the government has reconnaissance satellites that can take pictures all over the globe—pictures with a resolution rating of ten centimeters, which is good enough to read the title on the spine of a book?”

“I assume that’s for foreign intelligence gathering.”

“You’d think. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the spy satellites are also being used to track the activities of U.S. citizens. There’s a little-known federal agency called the National Imagery and Mapping Agency that collects, analyzes, and saves images taken by these satellites all over the world.”

“Isn’t that good for law enforcement?”

“Sometimes. The FBI and CIA use them to monitor security when various dignitaries are making public appearances. They were used at the Winter Olympics for the same reason several years ago. But why are they being used to observe the activities of ordinary Americans?”

“It’s probably just a temporary thing….”

She continued unabated. “Another hush-hush operation called Future Imagery Architecture recently launched another dozen spy satellites. They’re ramping up, not down. We’re looking at the possibility of constant, real-time surveillance of the entire planet.”

“They’d need a warrant to take pictures of private citizens.”

“You’re supposed to need a warrant to wiretap private citizens. But with a new intelligence program called Echelon, the NSA is now capable of intercepting three billion communications a day. Think about it. What are the odds that any given call you make might be recorded by the NSA? Pretty darn good, as it turns out.”

“Christina…”

“Needless to say, the government is monitoring Internet traffic in a big way. The FBI has a program called Carnivore that targets an ISP and scans all the information that passes through it—e-mail, Web surfing, anything they want. Carnivore can analyze and, if desired, record millions of messages per second.”

“Anybody who expects privacy on the Internet is delusional.”

Christina leaned in closer, the lines of her face tightening. “The Treasury Department has a program called the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.”

Ben folded his arms across his chest. “Good. Financial crimes are bad. Wreck people’s lives.”

“Don’t kid yourself. This is an excuse to collect and save financial data on private citizens, possibly matched with the digitized pictures taken by spy satellites and recordings of their telephone and Internet conversations. FinCEN requires banks to provide them information on private citizens whenever the Treasury Department issues a suspicious activity report—which they can do anytime they want.”

“I’m sure the bank would notify its customer.”

“To the contrary, banks are forbidden by law from notifying their customers. The whole process is totally invisible to the people being spied upon.”

“Well, that doesn’t seem quite kosher….”

“Did you know the government now has something called Forward Looking infrared cameras that can literally look through walls and take pictures? Did you know they can digitize your face, record it, and store it in a computerized database?”

“What could they possibly do with that?”

“The Pentagon initiated a fifty-million-dollar effort to develop what they call ‘Human ID at a Distance.’ In theory, they use these digitized databases to protect government installations from terrorists. As a practical matter, they could use them to track the movements of anyone they want. The reality is, Ben, that each new boost in computer memory has proportionately diminished American privacy. The more the government improves its holographic storage capacities, the better they can coordinate their various means of collecting intelligence on private citizens. A recent Wisconsin report discovered more than two thousand databases recording information on private citizens—in Wisconsin. Imagine how many there must be at the federal level, or nationwide. Soon they’ll be able to find out virtually anything they want about anyone they want anytime they want.”

“Well…if you haven’t done anything wrong, why do you care who’s watching?”

“Yeah, that’s what Hitler said when he started rolling back the rights of his citizens in 1933. And pretty soon, they had no rights at all.”

“I know there are congressional oversight committees monitoring NSA activities.”

“And yet, look what happens. People in government will always grasp for more power, Ben. And sometimes, even with the Bill of Rights in place, our rights will be violated. But at least with the Bill of Rights, American citizens have some means of recourse. They can go to the press. They can go to court. If you take that away, there will be no way of stopping these invasions of our constitutional rights—at a time when the government has greater capacity to invade those rights than it has ever had in the history of this nation.”

“And our enemies have a greater capacity to destroy than they have ever had before.”

Christina laid her hands flat on his desk. She slid one more slim stapled packet of paper across to Ben. “This is a Supreme Court opinion in the case that ruled that police couldn’t use thermal imaging to observe the heat signatures of people inside their homes without a warrant. This was written by Justice Scalia—probably the most conservative Supreme on the bench. And yet even though the Constitution obviously doesn’t say anything about thermal imaging, he wrote that it was an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. See the part I underlined? He said the use of this technology”—she traced her fingers along the words for Ben as she read—“‘would leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing technology.’ Toward the end, he says that in the home, ‘all details are intimate details, because the entire area is held safe from prying government eyes.’”

Ben pushed himself away from his desk—and from her. He was getting upset. He needed distance. “I hear what you’re saying, Christina. And I agree, to some extent. But there are other issues that have to be considered.”

“What you need to understand, Ben, is that this is important—maybe critical to determining what kind of country this is going to be in the future. A future that seems to be increasingly resting upon your scrawny shoulders.”

“What you need to understand—”
He realized he had snapped and stopped himself.
What’s happening?
He wasn’t sure he had ever shouted at Christina—certainly not since they had been married. “What you need to understand, Christina, is that…this is a very hard thing for me. And I need some…time. To process information. To think about what I’ve been told. To listen.”

“Don’t just listen to those bozos at the White House,” Christina said, matching his tone, “or even just to me. Listen to your heart.”

“Christina…”

She laid her hand softly on his cheek. “You have a good heart, Ben. I know you do. That’s why I married you. And that’s why, ultimately, I know you’ll do the right thing.” She paused a moment, and Ben could see that her lovely blue eyes were beginning to water. “I’ll see you at home. I hope.”

She turned and quietly left the office.

The clock on the office wall told Ben it was half an hour till midnight. Tracy Sobel would be waiting for his call. And he still didn’t know what to tell her.

What a night. He’d been thinking so much, so hard, his head throbbed. He needed some relief. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, removed a flask, and chugged.

Ahh. The cool liquid felt good going down. The calm it induced, however artificial, spread through his body like a flannel blanket.

Amazing what a thermos of chocolate milk could do for a man.

He dialed the number just as he had done so many times before this week. He knew it by heart now.

“Hello, this is Senator Ben Kincaid and I was—”

“I’m afraid there’s been no change, sir.” The attending nurse, who by this time knew Ben quite well, understood why he was calling. “The night doc making rounds just checked him a few minutes ago. He hasn’t come out of the coma. His respiratory system has stabilized somewhat, but not enough to move him out of ICU.”

“Still…stabilized…. That sounds good.”

“I hope so, sir.”

“That means he’ll recover, eventually.”

A long pause. “We just don’t know yet, sir.”

Ben had heard it many times before. No matter how hard he pressed, they weren’t going to give him any false hope. As long as his future remained uncertain, the prognosis would be equally discouraging.

“Is Sergeant Baxter still with him?”

“Night and day. I understand she’s taken an authorized leave of absence from work so she can be here.”

“She still reading to him?”

There was a moment of silence. “Yes…”

“Got sick of the poetry, didn’t she?”

“My understanding is that she’s now reading him something by Mickey Spillane.”

“Well, he’ll like that, too.”

If he can hear it,
Ben thought, as he hung up the receiver.
If he can hear it.

When the phone rang, Ben practically jumped out of his chair. Good grief—had he fallen asleep? What a stupid thing to do, when so many people were waiting to hear from him. This would be Tracy Sobel, pressing him for an answer. Or perhaps Christina, wanting to know if and when he was coming home.

He punched the appropriate red button and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Ben, is that you?”

Ben felt a sudden clutching at his chest. He didn’t need help recognizing that voice, even if he hadn’t heard it for years. He’d grown up hearing it.

“Ben? It’s Julia.”

Which he already knew. His sister, so long gone. After all these years.

“Ben, you don’t know how hard it was to get through to you. I had to pass through like a thousand security clearances and operators. No one would believe I was your sister. They said they’d never heard anything about Senator Kincaid having a sister.”

And for a reason. For all intents and purposes, he didn’t.

“I can’t believe I just said that.
Senator
Kincaid? How the hell did that happen?”

“It’s a long story….”

“I remember when you were so shy, you couldn’t speak aloud in class without stuttering. And now you’re this big-shot attorney. And a U.S. senator!”

“Life is a funny thing.”

“I guess. It’s been pretty funny for me, too.”

After so much time, he hardly knew which question to go with first. “How’s Joey?” he asked, referring to her son, his nephew, who he had helped raise for a time.

“Oh, gosh. More than I can handle. And he’s ruining my chances with this cute guy. He’s nice, but the thought of linking up with someone with a child terrifies him.”

“So you’re not still—that doctor—”

“That ended a long time ago. He said he wanted to help raise Joey. That’s why I took him back, remember? But it turns out…well, we think Joey has some special problems. He’s not doing well in school. He may have Asperger’s, or something in the autistic spectrum. He may be dyslexic and dysgraphic. Some mornings, I just think…” Her voice drifted. “But this isn’t why I called. I heard that Mike got hurt! In that horrible attack on the president in Oklahoma City?”

“Yes.” She was being purposefully detached, and yet Ben couldn’t help but be touched. Maybe she still cared for her ex-husband, at least a little. “He was being the hero, as always. Saved the president’s bacon. Mine, too. But didn’t get himself out in time.”