Authors: Stephen England
Local politics. That was always an obstacle. Marika sighed, glancing over at Russell. “I couldn’t care less. I work for the feds, not the town of Dearborn.”
He didn’t respond directly, just handed her the second photograph. It was as he did so that she realized his fingers were trembling. “This is al-Fileestini last fall, at the FBI training center in Quantico. Under the Hancock administration, he’s become heavily instrumental in making sure that new agents are trained to be sensitive to issues of Middle Eastern culture and Islamic law. He’s been a guest at the White House four times. If you think you’re going to launch an investigation involving him, think again. He’s politically connected—untouchable.”
She looked up from the picture into his face, her eyes narrowing. “Do
you
think there’s any chance that he’s involved in this? Off the record.”
The police chief held her gaze for a moment, then reached out, taking both photos back in a quick, brusque motion. “I have nothing to say.”
Marika let a sigh escape her lips. Fear. It was always the worst obstruction any investigation faced. But this was the
chief of police
! She turned back toward Russell. “Abu Rashid’s original handler is…where?”
“Maternity leave,” Russell replied, his focus still on the police chief.
She ran a hand over her forehead. “Get her on the phone.”
“Now?”
“Of course, Russell.
Now
. If she’s got a screaming infant, she’ll be up.”
11:16 P.M. Pacific Time
Beverly Hills, California
The night was cool, a slight breeze rustling in the trees over their head. Harry shifted his weight from one leg to another, the Colt heavy in his gloved hands.
“Any progress?”
Carol looked up, her face lit by the screen glow of the PDA in her hands. Wires stretched from the back of the small computer to the security keypad. “Patience…you do realize that your KGB friend couldn’t pick out decent electronics to save his life.”
Harry chuckled in spite of himself. “When Alexei got into this business, computers took up entire rooms. Technology isn’t exactly his thing.”
A beeping noise came from the PDA, the screen lighting up. “The password is 071289,” Carol announced. “The date of the realtor’s anniversary.”
“Do I want to ask how you know that?”
A faint smile played around her lips as she punched the number into the keypad with a gloved finger. “Probably not. If people had the faintest idea how much of their personal information was available on the Internet…”
An LED light began blinking to one side of the pad, a message scrolling across the top. ALARMS DISABLED.
She gestured for him to take the lead and his fingers reached out, touching the doorknob. The door swung open and Harry brought the Colt up in both hands, stepping into the four-car garage.
Empty. He marked the position of the door switches, then lifted the shortwave radio to his lips. “We’re in, Sammy. Come on home.”
4:03 A.M. Eastern Time, December 20
th
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Darkness. The room was spinning around him, blood trickling from between his fingers, wet and viscous. So weak. Polished wood –the nightstand—beneath his outstretched fingers, but he couldn’t begin to pull himself up. Dying
…
Hancock came awake with a start, his breath coming fast and heavy, his mind racing. He raised his hands, staring at them in the darkness as if he expected them to be drenched in blood.
He pushed back the sheets, realizing slowly that his clothing was soaked in sweat. Something was happening. Somehow—he had never been a man given to dreams. Or nightmares.
It’s just a dream
. Of course. He flicked on the switch, letting out a sigh as the room filled with light. He was alone—Nicole had gone to Camp David, beginning her Christmas vacation. Against the “recommendations” of the Secret Service, but that was Nicole. The traditional, retiring role of First Lady had never been for her.
It was nerves, yes, that was it. He’d been working too hard. Needed a rest. Needed a woman. That was all it was. There was one of Cahill’s aides…what was her name?
Just a dream.
He’d never dreamed of his own death. Hancock looked down at his fingers, realizing that they were still trembling. So real…
6:19 A.M. Central Time
Dearborn, Michigan
It hadn’t been the first night in her life that she had stayed up till three in the morning trying to connect nonexistent dots, but it had been a while. And she’d been younger.
The ring of her cellphone on the nightstand of the Holiday Inn jarred her from a sound sleep, her hand flailing out from beneath the covers.
“Altmann here.”
“Special Agent Altmann?” The voice was young, she realized, trying to clear the fog from her brain. Young and slightly accented.
Middle Eastern.
That brought her fully awake. “Who is this?”
“Please, listen to me,” the voice continued. “I am Nasir. Nasir abu Rashid. I have been working for your FBI.”
“I know,” Marika responded, reaching for her pants at the foot of the bed. “How did you get this number?”
“My handler. I only have a few minutes. They may be back at any moment.”
“They? What is going on, Nasir—who are you involved with?” So many questions flooding her mind. So little time. They’d suspected that his disappearance was linked to the Michigan State Police’s discovery of that fully-automatic Kalashnikov, but there had been no direct ties. Silence. “Is an attack imminent?”
A moment passed, then he came back on, his voice even lower than before. “I don’t know—we’re leaving the city tonight.”
“We? I need names, Nasir.” There was no time to establish a relationship with this informant—no time for anything.
“I don’t have them,” the informant stammered. “You have to believe me, I knew of none of this before this morning. My brother had said nothing to me, absolutely nothing…the leader—they call him the ‘Shaikh.’ A tall man, with eyes the color of the sea.”
“Your brother?”
“My brother—no,
one
of the brothers, I mean.” She could hear the fear in his tones. The uncertainty. The
deception
. He had lied to her, but what about? Did he have family involved…
He went on before she could respond, announcing abruptly. “I will call you again.”
The phone’s screen went black, eliciting a curse from Marika. She dropped the phone back into the front pocket of her jeans, pulling on a sweater over her head.
The holstered Glock in her hand, she padded across the hotel room to knock on Russell’s door. “We’ve got a situation.”
5:45 A.M. Pacific Time
The empty mansion
Beverly Hills, California
Despite being empty for several years, the house had lost none of its grandeur. The bathroom appeared massive in the morning light, the sunrise streaming in through double french doors leading out onto a balcony.
Good sniper post, Harry observed, mentally calculating the range. Open the doors, and a man lying prone on the tiles of the bathroom floor would have a clear shot at anyone coming out of Valentin Andropov’s front door.
Over
the protective wall. In the absence of a dedicated sniper rifle, the FN SCAR had the range to do it.
By the time he’d made his way out to the kitchen, Carol was already sitting there. A solitary barstool was about the only piece of furniture left in the place, and she had commandeered it, her laptop resting securely on the granite countertop.
“How’s the battery back-up working out?” Han had run more errands, this time for the electronics they needed to set up shop.
She brushed her hair out of her eyes, looking up at him. “They’re not top-of-the-line, but they’ll serve our purposes. With just the laptop and the cameras, we should have well over forty-eight hours of battery power.”
Might be enough. Might not. It was impossible to say when the target window would open.
Harry walked over to the windows, eyeing the placement of the cameras. Mounting them under the eaves of the mansion had been tricky, but they were in position.
The more “eyes” you could have on a surveillance mission, the better.
“Have you done anything with the laser mic?” he asked, glancing back to where she sat.
A nod. “It’s not going to work—he’s utilizing vibration maskers on all the windows facing the street.”
“Privacy freak,” Harry observed. “I hate people like that.”
Carol looked up from her laptop. “Fortunately, his son Pyotr isn’t nearly as obsessed. He’s got an electronic footprint the size of Silicon Valley.”
“Can you exploit it?”
A smile. “Already have,” she replied, tapping the screen with a finger.
Harry looked where she was pointing. The e-mail link was headlined with an “alluring” photo of a European girl, with the caption, “Hot women in live action—FREE!”
“Let me guess—he clicked?”
“Of course. Have to hand it to him, though…it took him five minutes to decide. The average is two minutes…or so Carter used to say.”
He shook his head. That would be Carter. “So, what happened after our boy clicked on the link?”
“He went on and enjoyed his cam show, of course,” Carol replied. “While the Trojan opened a gateway into his system. I have his passwords and account information for every site he’s ever accessed—Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, everything.”
Social media. It had never failed to amaze him how much people willingly posted about themselves on-line. An intelligence officer’s gold mine, all of it…just there for the taking. “Seen anything actionable?”
“Of course. He updates his Twitter from his phone roughly every half hour—on a slow day. Talks about what he’s doing, where he’s going. And each tweet is embedded with his geo-tracking information.”
“Like painting a bulls-eye on his own backside,” Harry said. The naivete was darkly amusing.
When he looked back, the humor had left her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re really doing this, aren’t we?” she whispered, holding up a hand before her face. Her fingers were trembling, ever so slightly. “It’s different…being this close to it.”
“It is.”
“I keep trying to think of him as a target, but it’s not working.” She waved at the screen. “Not when he comes through as a kid in every post. Just a rich, stupid, oversexed kid.”
“Then don’t look. Not any more than you have to.”
Carol looked up into his eyes, incredulous. “Close your eyes—that’s your solution? Doesn’t it ever bother you?”
He sighed. “I told you the story of how I got into the CIA, but I never told you what I had
intended
to do when I left Georgetown, did I?”
“No.”
“I…believed that God had called me to be a missionary. There was a team in Beirut, working to translate Gospel tracts into Arabic. They needed another translator, and I’d met with their team leader twice stateside. Had it all sorted. Or so I thought. When I finally ended up in the Middle East I was carrying a Kalashnikov instead of a Bible.” A grim smile passed across his face. “Sounds ironic, doesn’t it?”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, silence filling the room. “Do you ever regret your choice?”
Harry shrugged. “Youth mistakes many things for the will of God. In the end, it’s always hard to say. I was in Iraq in 2004 when I received word—the leader of that translation team had been killed. He’d stepped onboard a bus in Beersheba moments before a suicide bomber triggered their vest. He was killed instantly, along with his wife and his two-month-old son. It’s true what they say. Only the good die young.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He moved behind her, his hands resting gently on her shoulders. “You ask if it ever bothers me? The answer is no—not when it’s compared with the alternative.”
8:59 A.M. Eastern Time
The White House
Washington, D.C.
His tie was straight. Of course it was. Haskel tugged at it anyway, casting one final look into the mirror. He was nervous, and the Secret Service took a dim view of visibly nervous people meeting with the President of the United States.
Delivering the daily briefing wasn’t his job, he thought, as he made his way down the hallway toward the Oval Office, flanked by agents. That came within the purview of the Director of National Intelligence, Lawrence Bell—but after the bombings he had been whisked away to an “undisclosed location.”
He and Hancock had been friends once, but there was too much water underneath that particular bridge. Too many unfulfilled promises on the path to power. Now they were just allies.
Cahill was at the end of the hallway, what passed for a smile on his face.
It seemed impossible that someone could work in D.C. for such a long time and remain an unknown quantity, but that was Cahill. The President’s chief of staff was a black hole.
“It’s good to see you again, Eric,” he murmured smoothly, escorting him into the Oval Office. The President was nowhere to be seen.
“He’ll be here in five minutes,” Cahill announced, in answer to an unasked question. “Have a seat.”
Haskel took a deep breath. “I need you to look at this.”
The chief of staff looked down at the folder in Haskel’s hand as if it was poisoned. “What is it?”
“We got a FISA warrant request from a field agent of ours in Michigan a few hours ago.”
“So?”
“So it’s someone we know,” Haskel retorted, gesturing for Cahill to open the folder. “Abu Kareem al-Fileestini.”
A curse escaped Cahill’s lips. “You’re kidding me, right, Eric? Al-Fileestini was here a few months ago. He and the President
sat together
at the Ramadan dinner.”
“I know, I know,” the FBI director replied, holding up a hand. “That’s why I brought it to you first.”
Cahill’s eyes scanned down the page, his face purpling as he continued to read. “Listen, Eric, I lost a cousin when the World Trade Center collapsed. He was a firefighter—went back into that smoky hell to find somebody else to save. Never came back out.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Doesn’t matter—let me finish. I’m just sayin’, I
get it
. I understand the fears that still permeate this country…but for the love of all that’s holy, what type of people do you have working for you? This reads like some sort of Islamophobic hate rag—the type of stuff I’d expect to hear off talk radio, not coming from a federal agent.”
“Then you wouldn’t advise bringing it to the President’s attention?” Haskel asked. He leaned back in his chair, glancing at his watch.
The chief of staff snorted. “I’m wondering why you even brought it to
my
attention, Eric. If it weren’t for the help of moderates like al-Fileestini, we would have lost this blasted war on terror a long time ago. I don’t want to see him harassed by a glory hound.”
“I concur,” Haskel said, reaching out to take back the FISA request. “I met Abu Kareem myself when he spoke at Quantico—a finer man I’ve never had the pleasure of
knowing.”
“Then we’re all playing off the same sheet music here?”
“Absolutely.”
8:45 A.M.
Beverly Hills, California
The hardest part of survival was finding the will to do it. It was one of two primary lessons Viktor remembered from his childhood, from his years as a sex slave. The other one was,
trust no one
.
Korsakov. He pulled his knees tight up against his chin, curled up into a tight ball on top of the green trash dumpster. After all the years of abuse, he had idolized his rescuer.