From the Ashes (12 page)

Yes, an idea was a dangerous thing, but, thankfully, Greer and the Division only had one particular idea to keep under wraps. One secret that had been successfully swept under the rug for nearly a century. And every time someone threatened to come too close to that idea, it was the Division’s job to eliminate that threat. Unfortunately, Greer realized, in their zeal to snuff out threats before they had a chance to dispense even a whiff of the unspeakable truth on the Internet, they may have destroyed their best hope in years at finishing off the mission that Walton Greer, first director of the Division, had started.

But then again, maybe not. Greer turned the next page in the folder of intel that Recon had put together for him. He smiled despite himself. Michael Rickner had been good. Very good. According to information Recon had pulled off his computer, Rickner had uncovered a lead Greer thought the Division had covered up years ago. But Rickner found a back door into the truth. Or the beginning of it, anyway. The first breadcrumb that could ultimately lead Greer to what he so desperately sought. The culmination of his family’s legacy. The one thing he absolutely needed to finish before the cancer finally claimed his life. And that first bread crumb lay with the secret of a man dead more than half a century, a man of whom Greer had heard stories from his grandfather, and later, from his father.

Agent Roger Blumhurst.

In 1957, Walton Greer had given Blumhurst a special, somewhat unorthodox mission. To reclaim the one substantive loose end, the only evidence that could ever prove the horrible secret that the Division was tasked with protecting. The Dossiers, as the Division referred to them. The only problem was that the Dossiers were guarded, as they had been for decades, by a man with more power and influence in many circles than the President himself. And this powerful man, despite decades of pleading from top government officials – many of whom he considered friends – would not relinquish control of the evidence. In fact, all he would say was that they were in “a safe place.” Safe from whom, he never bothered to elaborate, but Walton Greer, realizing the man was not long for this world, decided the time for decisive action was upon them. So he summoned his most trusted field agent, Roger Blumhurst, to undertake another mission in addition to his regular duties. Beg, borrow, steal, or kill, Blumhurst was to recover the Dossiers. At any cost.

In September 1957, Blumhurst began a recon mission on one of the most powerful and famous men of the day. He followed him everywhere he went – covertly, of course – and, when that failed to provide any clues as to where the man might have hidden the Dossiers, he turned to violence. In the cloakroom during a ball at the Waldorf Astoria, Blumhurst managed to isolate the man and rough him up in one of the stalls. Yet even when faced with the business end of Blumhurst’s revolver, the man maintained his silence. It wasn’t until the man rejoined the party, blaming the soreness Blumhurst’s beating had given him on fatigue alone, that Blumhurst realized the tack he should take. The man wanted the past covered up as much as the Division did. Yet he was too wracked by guilt to bring himself to fully destroy the evidence. And it was that guilt that Blumhurst trusted would lead him to the Dossiers’ hiding place.

When the man was away on business the last week of September, Blumhurst took the opportunity to break into his home. The mansion was a miniature palace, yet, thankfully, the servants in residence were few and not on the estate at the time. Jimmying open a window, he made his way to the great man’s study, where, hidden behind a false partition in the bookcase, he uncovered a wall safe. Blumhurst had the skills to crack the safe if need be, but, on a whim, he tried the first combination that came to mind. The day, month, and year it all started. The day the great man had made the fateful decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

The safe opened.

After that, the story got murky. Blumhurst originally reported that he found some sort of journal inside, and he took it with him. Then he changed his story, saying that it was merely a ledger, and after he had thumbed through it, he left it behind. He eventually told Walton Greer that it was a dead end. And Walton, thinking he might have chosen the wrong man for the job after all, ended Blumhurst’s special mission and put him back on elimination duty. Walton planned to give the agent the third degree about what he really found in that safe, but Blumhurst killed himself before he had the chance. And, for some reason, Blumhurst chose the most conspicuous place and manner of suicide that he could. Which was very bad press for the Division. Or could have been if they hadn’t begun their cover-up immediately. And it was this very cover-up that young scholar Michael Rickner had inadvertently stumbled upon.

Rickner had all sorts of intel on the cover-up, and was beginning to unravel the threads of the original conspiracy itself. But it was less his work on the conspiracy that had piqued Harrison Greer’s attention; it was his work on finding the Dossiers. Michael Rickner had the right leads, the proper drive, notable discretion about prematurely publishing anything, and, above all else, the brains to finally uncover the great man’s hiding place for the Dossiers. The only problem was, thanks to the Division’s characteristic efficiency in eliminating potential threats, Michael Rickner, perhaps the greatest asset to finding the Dossiers in decades, was dead.

Greer turned the page. He smiled again, this time with teeth showing. Things might turn out alright after all. The caution that Michael Rickner had shown would be exacerbated in his replacement. As would his drive to find the Dossiers. By all reports, the replacement had a similar thought process as Michael, and was, if it were possible, even more brilliant. All the replacement needed was the proper leads. And Greer would make sure that those leads – closely controlled, of course – were extended.

Until Greer finally took hold of the Dossiers and completed his final service to his country. Until his family’s legacy was completed and his grandfather’s betrayal by Roger Blumhurst avenged. And then, the replacement would join Michael Rickner in death. Buried, along with the truth, forever.

Greer grabbed the phone off his desk and placed two calls. His hands were shaking with excitement as he replaced the receiver. Then he stood, stretched, and headed out the door. He was too full of energy to stay cooped up in the office today. All the pieces were finally coming together, and tomorrow the game officially began. But today he needed to get out, to move. As he locked up his office and headed down the hallway, he decided he would walk around the National Mall in Washington. The expanse of man-tamed nature commingled with the rich history of their nation to form one of Greer’s favorite places for reflection in the area. Though the weather was still a bit chilly, the sky was brilliantly blue today, and Greer realized that he didn’t have that many blue skies left to enjoy.

But even though he knew the cancer was there, a slowly ticking time bomb within his own body, Greer didn’t feel sick at all. In fact, thinking about the promise that tomorrow held, he realized he had never felt more alive.

Manhattan, New York

Despite the decade that had passed since the attacks of 9/11, the site of the former World Trade Center, also known as Ground Zero, still largely looked like a hole in the ground. A quiet, reverent place where pilgrims traveled from all around to pay homage to the victims of the devastating attack, to pray, to reflect. New towers were beginning to arise from the site, half-finished skyscrapers that would always have the ghosts of their predecessors lingering in their very foundations. A high chain-link fence surrounded the site, construction equipment and personnel visible through the gaps in the tarpaulins and boards that covered much of the fence. At the northern edge of the site, peering through one such gap, stood a man who had come here every day in the two weeks since his six months of training had finished. Brainwashing might have been a better name for it, he thought, but here he was, finished and free again. Until he was called up, of course. Which, Wayne Wilkins feared, would be sooner than he was ready for.

To say the past few months of his life had been a soul-searching, introspective experience would be not wholly untrue, but there is only so much probing of one’s own thoughts and beliefs one can do while new thoughts and beliefs are being shoved in on a daily basis. But if there was one thing the Division had underestimated about Wayne, it was his mental ability, both in its acuity and in his ability to shut off certain stimuli, certain parts of his brain even, in order to be able to think for himself. Something he felt he was just beginning to do for the first time in a long, long time. And he was here today – and every day – in remembrance of that moment, nine-and-a-half years ago, when his world had been turned on its head, and Wayne had drastically changed the course of his life.

One sunny Tuesday morning in September, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial jets and used them as weapons of mass destruction against the very people who had created the planes, the business bigwigs in New York and the military honchos in Washington. Destroyed one world icon and damaged another. Stole three-thousand lives and crushed countless others through injury and disease, the loss of loved ones, the faltering of the economy. Brought international terrorism, that unpleasant experience that
those
people in
those
countries
over there
had to deal with on a regular basis, to the doorstep of the American homeland, a wake-up call for top policy-makers and common citizenry alike. One of the countless Americans directly affected by this catastrophe was Wayne Wilkins, and he had been hit worse than most. Two of the dead from the World Trade Center attack were Edward and Martha Wilkins: Wayne’s parents.

Martha had been secretary to the CFO of a major brokerage firm that had its offices on the ninety-fifth floor of Tower One. Right where the first plane hit. Had she seen it coming, stared as the plane came far too close to the tower, felt the shocking realization that it was going to hit them? What were her last moments on earth like? Did she run for the door, hide under a desk, scream and panic? Wayne had often returned to those painful questions in the years after the towers fell. No, knowing his mother, she would have undoubtedly warned as many of her colleagues as she could, attempting to drag them to whatever safety she could find. Which ultimately was none, but that wouldn’t have stopped her from doing all she could. It never had.

Ed Wilkins had been a lifelong firefighter. Four months from retirement, but he had planned to continue on with the volunteer program, despite his relatively advanced age. Saving and protecting people and their well-being: that had always been his greatest passion in life. He had already brought two groups of civilians to safety from within Tower Two and had gone back in, against advisement, to try to rescue some more. Minutes later, the tower’s structure gave out and collapsed into a mass of steel, drywall, and human flesh.

Wayne, then a scholarship student at Stanford who was just starting his sophomore year of undergraduate study, was just heading to the gym for his early-morning workout when he heard the news. All that day, he sat in his apartment, glued to the television, watching the nonstop news coverage on every network. He called all of his friends and his parents’ friends and his friends’ parents: every number he had for everyone he knew in the New York City area. Left messages and called back ten minutes later. No one had seen or heard from either Ed or Martha. Air traffic was grounded, and Wayne was stranded on the other side of the country from his parents, unable to do anything to help them. And being powerless was a feeling Wayne could not abide.

When the death tally came out, Ed and Martha Wilkins were counted among the victims. Wayne considered that his name should have been on that list as well, for a part of him, a
huge
part, had died along with them, had fallen along with the towers, was buried under dust and ash like the bones of his parents.

Whether dropping out of college to join the military was a conscious decision or just a knee-jerk reaction of rebellion against the world that had betrayed everything he held dear was a question Wayne had never really started to ponder until just recently. He still didn’t have all the answers, but what had happened, happened. When the invasion of Afghanistan was announced, the Taliban having been linked to the attacks that stole his family from him, Wayne had enlisted in the Army. And had almost instantly made a name for himself.

Even before he had completed basic training, his commanding officers had taken special note of him and had flagged him as Green Beret material. When he got on the ground in Afghanistan, he had exceeded their already lofty expectations. He was put on a special detail that carried out covert missions, including assassinations of key targets, infiltrating high-security compounds, and other projects that intentionally never made the news yet were essential in winning the war.

Wayne killed to numb the pain. It took his mind off of the loss he had recently suffered. And these were the bastards who had been responsible for that loss. Maybe not directly, but that didn’t really matter to him.
They
were all the same. Weren’t they?

He escaped from the painful familiarity of life as he had known it, from the impotence he had felt when trapped three-thousand miles away from his parents when they had needed him most. The military allowed him to escape the normal life that was no longer normal for him, to take action against those who had taken his family from him. His anger and hatred for the terrorists, now dead with their victims, spilled out to those he killed on the battlefield. Yet every face inside his crosshairs that resembled those of the terrorists, every efficient kill that he made and mission he completed – kills and missions that eventually, with his lack of familial ties and loner lifestyle, turned the Division on to him as a potential candidate for their exclusive ranks – he felt his parents, their memory, and what they had stood for, getting pushed further and further away. No amount of blood, no number of vengeful killings could fill the void that that fateful Tuesday morning had opened inside of him. He closed himself off to his brothers-in-arms, suffering his grief and guilt on his own. Until one day, when everything changed again.