The Profession (31 page)

Gas prices have hit fourteen bucks a gallon. Desperation mounts. The United States teeters on the brink of collective hysteria.

Then comes September 27, 2032.

Crown Prince Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, speaking for his father, King Nayif bin Abdul Aziz, Guardian of the Two Holy Mosques and Sovereign of the Kingdom and the House of Saud, appears on forty-seven international nets simultaneously to announce that the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources has finalized a contract with ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips for 66.6 percent of Saudi crude for the next forty years. It will all go to the United States. The other 33 percent will be reserved for the people of Saudi Arabia.

Salter is not on the platform for the announcement. No officer of Force Insertion is available for comment. But every prime minister and head of state, every president and premier, crown prince, magnate, mogul, CEO, every Peterbilt-driving cracker waiting to fill up his saddle tanks … they all know whose hand is on the wheel.

Salter has made peace between the princes and their elders—and between both royal factions and the commons. He has taken nothing for himself and nothing for his legionnaires beyond their promised pay and bonuses.

Two days later the
Financial Times
announces a 50/50 split of the natural gas field at Takhar in Afghanistan between Royal Dutch Shell and Russian Lukoil, also for forty years—and a matching deal for thirty-three years for the Umm Qasr, Majnoon, and Rumayla fields
in Iraq with BP, Russian Gazprom, and Inpex from Japan. According to the
Wall Street Journal
, Salter has also taken under his protection the LNG fields in Qatar and occupied with thirty-five hundred mercenaries and forty I-SAM, surface-to-air missile trucks the Ras Laffan gas plant, from whose offshore terminal, R-LOT, the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Ali Hassan bin Jamad bin Salem, signs contracts with Unocal, US Shell, and Pacific Richfield for a hundred billion cubic meters per year.

In other words, thanks to Salter, U.S. markets for the next two generations have locked up nearly 40 percent of the crude oil and gas from seven of the largest and most productive fields on the planet and, because the deals are tied to Russia, the EU, India, and Japan, they are stable and, theoretically at least, proof against incursion, overthrow, and insurrection. The Dow takes off on a rocket ride. Overnight, Uncle Sam’s national manhood soars from broke dick to world-class stud.

I’m driving home from a Wizards game (a meeting on Kurdish oil), on the phone to Jack Stettenpohl, when the Saudi announcement breaks. What does this mean for the Emergency Powers Act amendment?

“It’ll take a couple of weeks,” says Jack. “Opponents need time to shape-shift and cover their asses.”

“But this thing is happening?”

“Slam dunk, bro. Salter is about to be anointed emperor.”

I sign off, about to speed-dial Ariel. She phones first.

“Log on to page 22,” she says, “in tomorrow’s
Post.
”

“What is it?”

“Fallon. The Third Amigo. Dead in his condo at Rehoboth Beach.”

IT’S ELEVEN THIRTY BUT
Maggie’s awake. She leads me into her kitchen. We sit. I tell her what Ariel has told me.

“And you think,” Maggie says, “that I know something about this.”

“If you’ll forgive me, Mrs. Cole, not much happens inside the Beltway or out that you don’t know something about.”

The former first lady pours Johnnie Blues. Her Secret Service detail hovers but, at a sign from her, the nearest two agents withdraw.

“Gilbert,” Maggie says. “Are you still my nephew?”

“Are you still my aunt?”

Mrs. Cole declares that she’s aware of my encounter with Colonel Hayward and of the suspicions I harbor concerning him. “What I want to know is what you intend to do about it.”

I repeat the events as Ariel has reconstructed them. “The CyberLeaks chief dies of a heart attack. A marathon runner, in the pink. Courtemanche, the blogger, crashes his Lexus on a dry road, alone, with no other vehicles in sight. Now Congressman Fallon suffers a stroke—at age fifty-six—and kicks.”

“With respect, Gilbert, you haven’t told me what you intend to do.”

“With respect, Mrs. Cole, you haven’t told me a damn thing.”

The former first lady studies me for a long moment. Clearly she is making up her mind whether to spare me or send me to the guillotine.

“Will you believe me, Gilbert, if I’m completely candid with you?”

Maggie swears she has no firsthand knowledge of any action taken against these three men who were responsible for ruining Rob Salter’s career and ending his life. “But I understand,” she says, “how the game is played. This country is fighting for its survival. Sometimes messages have to be sent.”

She glances into the adjacent dining room, making sure that the Secret Service men are out of earshot.

“The world changed for Jim Salter,” Maggie says, “the day Rob was killed. Jim worships this country. But he came to understand, then, that he had lost it, or rather that it had become a different country—one he didn’t know, one he no longer recognized.

“We started then. He and I and others. Believe me, there was no want of patriots who shared our desperation, our fear for the nation, and our refusal to stand by and permit it to perish.”

Maggie tells me to take a drink. I do.

“This is not the first occasion in history when a nation has banished her noblest son, only to call him home in her hour of need. The days of the United States pretending to be a republic are over, Gilbert. History has moved past that place, and you, as much as any man, have been a part of it.”

The first lady’s eyes fix upon mine.

“You blew an entire village into a river. I applaud that. It was justice. When unspeakable crimes were committed in East Africa, you struck at the villains, though you knew the act could cost you everything. I salute all you’ve done, in the service of General Salter and on
your own. But you are no innocent. You’re in this game up to your eyeballs, my friend, and you have been all your life.”

My blood turns to ice.

“I’ve put people in the ground, Mrs. Cole, plenty of them. But never Americans—and never in the cause of trashing the Constitution.”

“The Constitution is a piece of paper. Men wrote it and men can rewrite it. It was made to be amended!”

“Then amend it by law, not by murder!”

“It
is
being amended, Gilbert. Read the news! Ask your precious friend, Miss Caplan!”

A rustle from the dining room; the Secret Service agent appears in the doorway. “Are you all right, Mrs. Cole?”

“I’m fine, Richard. Thank you.”

Maggie recovers herself.

The agent withdraws.

Maggie turns back to me. She tells me she wants me at her wedding. She wants me up front—with the family.

“Jim’s flying back. He and I decided tonight, just a few hours ago. It’ll be the first time he’s set foot on U.S. soil since Rob was killed.”

The wedding, Maggie says, will be held in the chapel at Annapolis. She and Salter had reserved the National Cathedral but have changed their minds. Modesty is more seemly. And it is critical, they both agree, that the ceremony be held on ground sacred to the military, particularly the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps, which are and always will be Gen. Salter’s home.

“Jim loves you, Gilbert,” Maggie says. “You have no idea how deeply.”

She lifts her Scotch and throws it down at one belt. Then, looking over my shoulder into the night:

“This country is fucked. Who else is there but Salter? No one.”

THE PHONE RINGS AS
I’m driving home. It’s Jack Stettenpohl. The dash clock says one thirty. “Gent, I love you, man. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Did Mrs. Cole just phone you?”

“Biscuits and gravy tomorrow. I’m buying.”

Jack makes me promise to meet him for breakfast at the Hay-Adams.

“Gent—”

“What?”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

I turn onto Jeff Davis Highway, heading home to Crystal City. A black SUV turns behind me.

I try to reach A.D., but her phone’s on work-block. I call Ariel. “Put a pin in me. Come now.” I sync the GPS in my phone to hers, so she can follow me.

“Where are you?”

“In trouble.”

I turn off Jeff Davis. The SUV turns after me. Crystal City is high-rises built in the 1980s; you turn onto a frontage road that leads to underground garages serving corridors of aging residential towers.

Ahead, a Chevy Suburban angles in from an alley. In three seconds they’ve pinned me. I’ve got a .45 under the seat but it’s too late.

“Gentilhomme.”

It’s Agocopian, the FBI man. He presses an ID against my driver’s-side window and points to the locked door.

“Open it.”

Secretary Echevarria’s house is an 1850s historical landmark near Lee’s Hill in Georgetown. It’s past two when Agocopian and two other agents, one a woman, shove me up a flight of Civil War–era stairs and down a long, unlighted hallway.

Into the secretary’s bedroom.

He’s sitting up in bed, with papers and documents strewn around.

“Here he is,” says the FBI guy, pushing me forward.

Echevarria doesn’t look up. The room is flooded with video lights. A cameraman runs a disk-cam on a tripod. The secretary is speaking into the camera—something about Salter and the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. A boom mike extends above him, held by a soundman.

The FBI female tries to clip a microphone to my shirt. I tear it off. “What the hell is going on?”

Echevarria continues speaking into camera. I stare at him. He has lost fifty pounds. He looks like death.

The deputy, Agocopian, approaches me, with a Fed-issue 9 mm pointed at my chest. “Put on the mike.”

“Fuck you.”

The female wallops me with a steel baton behind the right knee.
I won’t go down. I refuse to give them the satisfaction. “Stop it!” cries the secretary.

The female has come around in front of me; she is itching to shatter my shin. She’s strong as a man.

“That’s enough!” shouts Echevarria, stopping the agents with his voice. He has finished dictating to the camera. He turns to me. For the first time I notice medical monitors and IV drips.

“Colonel,” he says, in a voice that sounds like his insides have been hollowed out, “you want to know why I’ve brought you here.”

A nurse helps the secretary sit up.

“You’re here to testify,” the secretary says. “And, by God, you will or you’ll never leave here alive.”

Echevarria wrenches himself free of the nurse. He tells me the video crew has recorded his “last testament”—everything he knows about Salter and how Salter has generaled his way to tyranny: whom he’s eliminated, whom he’s co-opted; whom he’s cut deals with. I see the cameraman unload the finished disk and set it on top of a case. The secretary swings his legs over the side of the bed as if they were made of concrete.

“You did this to me, didn’t you? You or another of Salter’s murderers.”

He struggles to stand. I start forward, instinctively, to help him.

“Get away from me!”

The nurse helps Echevarria stand. I’m telling him I’ve done nothing; I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“Colonel, you’re either the world’s most accomplished liar—or the dumbest bastard I’ve ever met.”

The secretary stands and tears off his hospital gown, exposing his chest. His skin from neck to belly is livid with lesions and ulcers.

“What did you use? Some untraceable isotope? How did you get it into me—”

The secretary’s chest looks like hamburger. The nurse and the male FBI agent catch him before he falls. They settle him onto the edge of the bed. I’m repeating that I know nothing; I’m stunned to see what I’m seeing. The old man greets this with contempt.

“I know,” he says, “that I’m just a fat old fuck to you. But I flew F-15s in Desert Storm, goddamn you, and I don’t deserve to check out like this.”

Agocopian and the female agent cover me with weapons drawn. “Now talk, Colonel.” The soundman swings the boom over my head. “Tell what you know and what you did.”

There’s a principle they teach you in SERE School, for escape and evasion. It says
Escape right away
.

I spin toward Agocopian and hit him with the heel of my right hand as hard as I can under the cartilage of his nose. This is no martial arts move; it’s just a street shot. The agent drops like a bag of dirt. I tear the 9 mm out of his hand and dive laterally onto the floor. Two sharp bangs explode behind my back. I roll and twist, turning to fire back at the female agent.

At that instant, the main doors burst open. Into the room charge four armed men in booties, hairnets, and latex gloves. Two silenced shots drill the female and male agents. Right behind the four men comes Tim Hayward. Hayward sees me on the floor with the 9 mm. His expression is almost comical with shock and puzzlement. Agocopian, the nurse, and the camera crew have thrown their hands in the air. In seconds the operators have flung the whole bunch facedown and flex-cuffed them. Two more, carrying body bags, race into the room.

“Gent! What the fuck are you doing here?”

“What does it look like?”

I’m thinking as fast as I can. Half my brain is scrambling for some bullshit story to keep Hayward from doing to me what he just did to the female and male agents; the other half is desperately afraid for
Ariel outside. Has Hayward’s team spotted her? Have they killed her already?

“You mean Klugh sent you here—”

“The fuckers snatched me.” I point to the camera, the lights, and the sound boom.

Adrenaline and surprise are keeping Hayward, for the moment, from seeing through me. “Help me then,” he says.

Two of his men have crossed to Echevarria. The secretary is blistering them with profanity. “I know you, Hayward, you’re a hero,” the secretary cries. “Why are you doing this?”

The old man shouts to Hayward and me that we should be killing Salter, not him. The operator beside the secretary opens a medical bag. Hayward nods. The medic spikes a syrette into Echevarria’s thigh, right through the hospital gown. The secretary convulses and spits blood.