Authors: Andrew Grant
“What?” I didn’t get the joke.
“When we found out the virus was targeted at the White House, where do you think was the first place we looked?”
“The White House?”
“Right. And yes, the virus
was
already there. Sent
from
AmeriTel. That’s why three state functions got moved this week. And next week’s are all canceled, too.”
“Sounds like chicken and egg to me, with the virus.”
“You could be right, I guess. But it would be a hell of a coincidence. We think AmeriTel’s ARGUS node was the insertion point. It’s not likely the virus would loop back around to the same place it started, because of a separate fraud thing.”
“You’re sure the fraud thing’s separate?”
“I am.” McKenna took out his phone and started to type. “But you know what? We haven’t specifically checked. It would be wrong to rule it out. I’m getting my guys onto it right away. And because it’s you, Marc, if you are right, I’m not going to take any of the credit. I’m going to let you take everything that’s coming to you.”
F
ROM A DISTANCE, THE ROTUNDA INN LOOKED LIKE A BROKEN
cartwheel with only three spokes remaining. Then, from the parking lot, like a Mercedes logo with no outer circle. But either way, Reception was in the hub at its center. It had sliding glass doors that faced the parking lot—curved to match the building’s contours—and a transparent dome covering the check-in area. From there, the residential wings radiated outward, and each was painted a different primary color.
Ours was red.
“Wait here a second.” McKenna knocked on a door halfway down the corridor. “There’s something I have to check on. Then I’ll get the key for your room.”
The door opened, and I recognized the woman who’d been driving the sports car when I’d been rescued from Peever’s people on, when, Wednesday? It felt like years ago. McKenna disappeared inside, leaving me to wrestle a sudden urge to run again, and when he emerged a couple of minutes later he was holding a little cardboard wallet.
“You’re in 112, down the hall. The place is a little primitive, I’m afraid. It was probably cool when it was built, but now all it’s got going is a weird shape, the most basic cable package known to man, and rates low enough to make Uncle Sam’s nightly allowance look generous.”
“I don’t care, as long as no one’s shooting at me. But what if someone sees me and calls 911? I don’t want the cops smashing down my door.”
“Don’t worry. The staff here know we’re federal agents. They know not to interfere. And the local P.D. knows to liaise with us before
mounting any kind of operation. You’re safe here. Just don’t set foot outside without me or one of my people, OK?”
“What about my things? I left my suitcase in the car. Can I at least go get it?”
“No. But give me your keys and I’ll have it brought to you.”
MCKENNA DELIVERED MY CASE HIMSELF
,
five minutes later.
“Mind if I come in?”
“Be my guest. I’d offer you a seat, if I had one.”
“Thanks. But I won’t stay long. I just have a quick question. One of the loose ends we’re tying up. It’s about your friend Weimann. Did he give you the memory stick back, before he … before the …”
“Before the fire? No. He didn’t have it. He gave it to the virus guy, remember?”
“He didn’t, actually. The virus guy told me Weimann made him copy it, then he took it away with him.”
“Are you sure?”
“The guy had no reason to lie. So if you don’t have it, that leaves a wrinkle. Odds are it got destroyed in the … house, but I’d prefer to know for sure.”
McKenna’s words had prompted another explanation: I’d been on my way to talk to Weimann last night because I knew he’d been in touch with Carolyn. I’d made assumptions as to why. But what if I was wrong? What if Weimann hadn’t been getting something from her? What if it was the other way round? Carolyn had been desperate to get her hands on the memory stick from minute one. Could she have found out he had it? And made a deal?
Suddenly the theory took on a much darker shade. One of the thugs Carolyn was hooked up with had been to our house. He’d tried to kill me because I had one of the sticks. Last night Weimann had taken a stick, and now he was dead. Killed at
his
house.
A 9mm. A box of matches. What’s the difference?
Carolyn’s thugs already knew where I lived. And Weimann would have been easy to follow after he’d rendezvoused with her. Cars like ours stand out a mile.
That was the clincher. The matching Jaguars.
The murderer thought Weimann was me.
“Are you OK, Marc? You look like you’re going to puke.”
“No. I’m not sick. But something just hit me. Weimann’s death? It was my fault.”
I walked him through the logic, slowly, step by step.
“Don’t blame yourself about your friend,” he said, when I was finished. “But your wife? With the memory stick? That could be a problem.”
MCKENNA LEFT ME AGAIN
, hinting at vague but urgent aspects of the case that required his attention, but frankly at that point I was happier with the four featureless walls as company. I’d been coming to terms with the end of my marriage for a while now. But Carolyn running around in the shadows, making sure her AmeriTel buddies got what they wanted? While my heart was still breaking over her? That felt like a whole new level of betrayal.
It had wounded me. But it had cost Karl Weimann
—her friend
—his life.
I turned on the local news in the hope of updates, muted the sound, and tried Carolyn’s number. I wanted to see what she had to say about Weimann’s death, and the role she’d played in it. But not surprisingly, all I got was her voicemail.
MCKENNA SHOWED HIS FACE AGAIN
an hour later. I was still on my feet, looking out the window. My room had a great view. Of the parking lot. I’d just noticed how my car was sitting all alone at one side while the others were clustered together in the center. Like a nerd at a nightclub, I thought.
Another unwelcome reminder of life with Carolyn.
“How are you feeling?” McKenna was carrying an aluminum briefcase which, since there was no desk or table big enough to hold it, he set down on the bed.
“I just want to get out of here and put this fiasco behind me.”
“I thought you might feel that way. That’s why I brought this.” He indicated the briefcase. “Because aside from dealing with Peever and keeping the police off your back, there’s paperwork we need to take care of. My fault, I’m afraid. Some of the things I told you along the way, I shouldn’t have. We have to put the genie back in the bottle. Which, in twenty-first century America means there’s a form to sign. We could put it to bed right now, so you can get out of here a little quicker? Or, if you’d rather wait till you can run it by a lawyer, I’d understand.”
“Let me see?”
McKenna flipped open the case and produced a black leather conference folder with a Homeland Security logo stamped into the cover. Then he took out two pieces of paper and handed them to me. They were heavy gauge, thick, slightly off-white, watermarked with a government seal, and covered in fine print.
“I’ve tried to read government forms before. Is this one more understandable than most?”
“Hell, no.” McKenna grinned. “Do you think we want you to understand what you’re signing? Where would the open-ended liability be in that?”
“And suppose I do call my lawyer. He reads it, and asks for changes. What are the chances of the government agreeing to them?”
“Somewhere between zero and zero. But don’t worry. There’s a lot of bullshit in there, but it’s really pretty simple. It says that everything I’ve already told you, and anything I tell you in the future, is classified under the Patriot Act. Think of it as being like attorney/client privilege. You cannot reveal, imply, hint at—basically do much more than dream about—anything I’ve said or you’ve learned while you’re with me. If you do, two things will happen: Innocent people will die. And someone like me will crash through your door and take you to prison for the rest of your life. Clear enough?”
“I guess.”
“What do you think? Sign now? Or sign when your attorney gets here? Because realistically, those are your only two options.”
“I’ll sign now.”
McKenna passed me a pen and I scrawled my name in the space at the bottom of both pages.
“Good decision.” He took the form and pen back, dropped them into the briefcase, then scrambled the combination lock. “It means I can go ahead and offer you a choice other than sitting around in this miserable hutch for a couple of days. It has to do with your wife. And the memory stick she has. Because we could be looking at a very serious situation here, Marc. I know it seems surreal, all this chasing around after something so tiny. But the consequences of not retrieving it are huge. And now you’ve signed that piece of paper, I can tell you why. Remember I confirmed the virus had reached the White House?”
I nodded.
“OK. This is what it does. It seeks out the climate control system. But not of the aboveground White House. Not the part you see on TV. It homes in on the equipment in the bunker, beneath it.”
“There
is
a bunker? I thought it was urban legend.”
“No. It’s real. It gets used all the time, because protocol calls for the President and his staff to get evacuated down there whenever there’s an environmental alert. And if ever there was a system with a hair trigger, it’s the White House environmental system.”
“The virus gives false environmental alarms? No. That wouldn’t make sense. It suppresses the alarms, so the President doesn’t take shelter when he should?”
“No, and no. It waits, dormant and undetected, until the environmental alarm causes an evacuation on its own. It doesn’t matter if it’s a real alarm, or a false one. What matters is the President goes down to the bunker. Because what happens when the doors lock behind him is the clever part. First, the climate control system does the opposite of what it’s supposed to. It switches off the oxygen supply and the CO
2
scrubbers, and vents whatever clean air’s left to the outside world. And while that’s happening, the management system sends a stream of false data to the local monitoring station—and the remote sites in Nebraska and Washington state—which makes the operators think everything’s peachy.”
“The President would suffocate?”
“He would. And so would all his staff. His family, too, if they were around when the alarm was triggered. A hundred-plus people, depending
on when it happens. All killed by the system that’s designed to protect them.”
“Like sticking a Polaroid in front of a CCTV camera. No one would know anything was wrong. Until it was too late.”
“Exactly. And think of the damage it would do. The President, plus the cream of the political and administrative crop, all wiped out in one fell swoop. Not the worst terrorist attack in terms of numbers. But by impact? Off the charts. It would take the nation decades to recover.”
I’d met the President once. Years ago. When he was still a Senator. I hadn’t much liked him. I certainly hadn’t voted for him. Since then he’d been nothing more to me than a smiling face on the front of countless newspapers. But the thought of that same guy—whose hand I’d shaken, who’d looked me right in the eye—lying dead on the floor of his bunker? His body contorted, lips blue, tongue bulging out of his mouth? It struck me: Stalin was right. One death can be a tragedy. And despite the warmth of the room, I felt a patch of goose bumps spread between my shoulder blades.
“Who’s behind this?”
“Iran. Syria. Yemen. One of a dozen radical Islamic groups not tied to any specific state. America’s not short of enemies.”
“OK, wait. Back up. You stopped the massacre from happening. Why the panic over one missing memory stick?”
“We stopped the initial attack, yes. But we have to prevent future ones, as well. The virus is heuristic—it’s self-learning. It’s always adapting and evolving, which is why every known iteration has to be studied. And more than that, it’s a question of containment. As a piece of programming—the way it can conceal itself, replicate, target specific systems—it’s incredibly sophisticated. We can’t risk anyone else getting hold of it. Imagine it in Air Force One, or a nuclear power plant. Actually, don’t. Just help us get that copy back from your wife.”
“How? What do you want me to do?”
“Call her. Sweet-talk her. Convince her to give it back to us. You can’t share the reasons, but you can see how important it is she cooperates. And if she claims not to have it, there’s no one else who knows her well enough to tell if she’s lying.”
I thought about his request, but I knew there was no chance of her
answering me. It was like getting ready to ask for our first date. Except that back then, I only feared she hated me. Now I knew she did.
“OK. But I should text, not call. Because if you want Carolyn to cooperate, using me as the messenger may not be the way to go.”
“I disagree.” McKenna shook his head. “I know about the spat you guys are having, but think about it. If you’re right and she somehow reached out to Weimann last night, she
could
have thought it was the quickest way to get the stick back for her cronies. That’s one explanation. But equally, she could have done it to take the heat off you. Which shows she still cares about you. And will listen to you.”
I felt a brief flicker of hope, hearing his words. But it was soon snuffed out by other thoughts. Like how she cared more about worming her way into LeBrock’s affections—and his bed—than standing by her husband.
“Come on, Marc. Try. And if she doesn’t respond to you, we’ll take the next shot. But it’ll go a lot easier on her if we don’t have to.”
“All right. I will. How do you want me to handle it?”
“First, confirm she has the stick. Then, set up a drop. There’s a drive-through ATM in Pound Ridge. Tell her to approach it at three pm, today. Wait in line if other customers are there. Then put the stick on top of the machine, and drive away.”