Treason (8 page)

“Ms. Harper, may I ask how many campaigns have you run?” Stanton replied in a smug voice.

“Only two,” she answered, “but both were presidential campaigns, not House races, and I learned during them that the American people don't like to see our nation denigrated and dragged through the mud when it comes to how we deal with terrorists. I also learned how invaluable the support of a president and our political party can be to those who support her and our party.”

Her threats are becoming more direct
, Stanton thought. He would be facing another reelection campaign in less than two years.

Rising abruptly from her seat, Harper said, “I'm afraid I have other commitments, but thank you for speaking to us this morning.”

Grainger rose from his chair too. Stanton did not.

Washington etiquette dictated that the official who had agreed to meet with guests in his office decided when a meeting was over. Harper was being rude.

“What shall I tell the president?” Harper asked.

“Tell the president that in the future if she wants to discuss what committee hearings I may or may not conduct, she should call me directly. Meanwhile, I will give your arguments the consideration that they deserve.”

Harper turned and left Stanton's office with Grainger at her heels.

When they reached the marble staircase outside the House committee's suite of offices in the basement of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, Harper whispered, “Payton, I don't care if Stanton is in our party, the president needs to get that pompous bastard stripped of his chairmanship and removed from the intelligence committee. Then we need to find a way to get him thrown out of office.”

She paused for a moment, and then added, “And if your agency did know that our embassy was about to be attacked in Somalia and did nothing, then you better come up with a damn good rationale or be willing to resign. The president isn't going to take a hit because someone under your watch—”

A parade of elementary schoolchildren encircled them as their teacher herded them through the center, causing Harper to stop mid-sentence.

Grainger hadn't needed to hear her final words.

Suburban medical building

Fairfax, Virginia

T
he Al Arabic network's newest Washington, D.C., correspondent peered through the heavily tinted windows of an unmarked white van outside the Fallen Oaks Rehabilitation Center's front entrance.

“She isn't going to speak to me if she knows we're filming her,” Ebio Kattan warned her camera crew. “Let's shoot first from the van.”

“We can't get a clear shot through these windows,” her camera operator complained.

Kattan pinned a brooch on the lapel of her bright red, one-button, Alexander McQueen patchwork blazer. “We'll get additional footage and sound through this,” she said, referring to the miniature camera lens and microphone concealed in the costume jewelry. “The shaky images will add drama to my story.”

A crew member fiddled with switches on a console until images from the brooch came into focus on his monitor. He shot her a thumbs-up.

“Good, because here she comes,” Kattan said.

Major Brooke Grant was the first to exit the revolving glass doors, followed by Jennifer Conner and her Ghana-born nanny, Miriam Okpara.

Kattan slid open the van's passenger door. “Still good?” she asked as she stepped around the vehicle onto the sidewalk.

“Yes,” she heard through her earbud.

“Major Grant!” she called out.

Brooke, who had been speaking to Jennifer, glanced over her shoulder at the figure approaching them from behind.

“I thought it was you,” Kattan chirped, pretending she had simply been passing by. She extended her hand toward Jennifer as she neared them. “You must be Gunter Conner's daughter.”

Brooke stepped between them, blocking Kattan from Jennifer. As she did, her eyes swept the parking lot where the white van with D.C. plates and tinted windows was parked. The glass button in Kattan's brooch confirmed Brooke's immediate suspicions.

“You're filming us,” she snapped. “Miriam, take Jennifer to the car. Now!”

Grasping Jennifer's hand, Okpara hurried toward Brooke's Jaguar XF sedan, one of the few luxuries that she afforded herself.

“How dare you ambush me,” she said.

Having overheard Brooke's comments through the brooch microphone, the film crew emerged from their hiding place and started toward them.

“In America, you can film anyone out in public,” Kattan replied.

“No one with any ethics ambushes an underage child,” Brooke replied, turning her back as she walked toward her Jaguar sedan.

“Speak to me and I'll block out her face,” Kattan said, giving chase. “I would have telephoned you, but you would never have agreed to an interview.”

“You're right. I've got nothing to say to you.”

Kattan's camera crew dashed ahead of them toward the car, but Miriam had already tucked Jennifer into its backseat and covered the teenager's face with a shawl. Frustrated, the cameraman turned the camera on a visibly angry Brooke, who was now only steps away from the driver's door.

“Get away from my car,” she ordered.

“You owe me,” Kattan said. “I helped rescue that girl's father in Mogadishu. I got him an ambulance.”

“You also broadcast a documentary that revealed where he was hospitalized in Germany and the Falcon murdered him.”

“You can't blame me for your government's lax security. I simply report the news.”

“You told the world I was on a personal crusade to kill the Falcon.”

“Aren't you?” Kattan asked, happy her crew was filming Brooke hollering at her over the car top. “Don't you want vengeance?”

Brooke slipped into the Jaguar, pushed the car's start button, and spun its console dial into reverse. Before its rearview camera had time to relay an image to the dash screen, Brooke hit the accelerator and the Jaguar shot backward, nearly hitting the camera operator. He yelped and leaped sideways as Brooke exited the parking lot.

Checking her watch, Kattan said, “We need to hurry.” It was ten a.m., which meant it was six p.m. in Al Arabic's main Dubai studio. With any luck, she would be able to broadcast a live report from the network's Washington studio in time for the network's most watched seven o'clock news hour.

As the van sped east on the I-66 expressway, Kattan scribbled out her script, and by the time she hurried into Al Arabic's bureau on Capitol Hill, she'd cleared her story with her editors and the government censors in the Dubai Media City compound, the hub for all broadcasts to the Arab world.

Kattan dashed into her dressing room, where she shed her western clothes for a modest, shapeless brown robe and drab hijab. She removed her makeup and with only seconds to spare, she mounted a stool behind a glass-and-chrome anchor desk next to the Al Arabic Washington bureau chief, Azim Basher, one of the network's most popular broadcasters.

When the live news broadcast returned from a commercial, Basher announced, “Ebio Kattan recently joined our Washington, D.C., bureau after reporting for us from Africa, and she has an exclusive follow-up story.” Turning to address Kattan, he continued, “You first told us about this female American soldier nearly four months ago in one of our network's most watched documentaries.”

The camera narrowed into a close-up of Kattan's face. “Yes, Azim,” she said. “Last October, I reported that two Americans had avoided capture when Al-Shabaab fighters overran the American embassy in Mogadishu. Their names were Brooke Grant, a U.S. Marine, and Gunter Conner, who I revealed was the CIA station chief in Somalia.”

Pictures of Brooke and Conner appeared on a monitor behind Kattan. “Gunter Conner was seriously wounded in Somalia during a confrontation with Al-Shabaab and was flown to a U.S. military hospital in Germany, where he was later assassinated by followers of an international masked figure known only as the Falcon. The other American—Brooke Grant—returned to the U.S. after preventing a suicide bombing in Mogadishu and freeing American hostages.”

Kattan looked down at her notes, pausing for a second, before continuing. “Brooke Grant was in the news again when she helped protect President Sally Allworth during last week's attack. She tackled Fawzia Samatar, who had lit herself on fire and was running at the U.S. president. Fawzia's husband, Cumar, detonated a suicide belt when the president was fleeing.” Footage of the mayhem outside the National Cathedral appeared. Those horrific images were replaced by jumpy footage captured by Kattan's lapel camera as she approached Brooke, Jennifer, and Miriam.

“Only hours ago, Major Brooke Grant refused to answer my questions when I attempted to interview her about a new fear gripping America—the fear of so-called homegrown terrorism by U.S. citizens who have sworn allegiance to jihadist organizations, such as ISIS.”

Images of Brooke hurrying to her parked car now flashed on the screen. She could be heard saying, “I've got nothing to say to you!” Next came footage of Jennifer hiding under a shawl inside the Jaguar.

“The teenage girl covering her face is Jennifer Conner, the only surviving child of CIA agent Gunter Conner. Major Brooke Grant is now this girl's legal guardian. This teenager suffered brain damage nearly five years ago when a bomb hidden in their family car exploded in Cairo, killing her mother and brother.”

The camera returned to a close-up of correspondent Kattan. “Major Brooke Grant became an orphan when her own parents were killed during the 9/11 attacks. Jennifer Conner became an orphan too.” Kattan hesitated to let her viewers absorb the significance of what she'd just revealed and to add suspense to her closing comments. With the monitor behind her showing Brooke speeding backward in her Jaguar after nearly striking the camera crew, Kattan said, “Brooke Grant is in hiding because she is terrified that she and Jennifer will be the next victims of the Falcon who, sources tell me, has pledged to hunt them down and kill them even if they are in the United States. There is no place safe for them to hide.”

Et tu, Brute?

—William Shakespeare,
Julius Caesar

Joint Chiefs of Staff Headquarters

The Pentagon

Arlington, Virginia

F
or a moment, Major Brooke Grant wondered if her uncle was ignoring her. He'd asked her to meet him in his Pentagon office for a noon lunch. Knowing that General Frank Grant abhorred tardiness and trying to make amends for appearing late at Decker Lake's funeral, Brooke had arrived at 11:40 a.m. for their meeting. That had been a half hour ago.

As she sat in his outer office, her mind wandered to when she'd visited the Pentagon as a child. General Grant hadn't been eager to have a ten-year-old tagging along even if it was Take Our Daughters Or Sons To Work Day. But Aunt Geraldine had insisted. The couple had agreed to raise Brooke after her parents were killed during the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center. General Grant already had two children, both boys, and while he had been comfortable fathering them, he had no idea how to raise a girl, especially one as clever and mischievous as Brooke had been.

On the day of her first Pentagon visit, General Grant had passed her off to an aide who, in turn, had handed her over to a Pentagon tour guide. For several hours, Brooke had walked every inch of the nearly seventeen miles of corridors in the pentagonal building. Hoping to impress her uncle, she had memorized much of the trivia that her guide had recounted. Even now, nineteen years later, she could remember the numbers: 3,705,793 square feet of office space inside the building, 9,000 parking spots, 23,000 employees, 4,200 clocks, 284 rest rooms. The Joint Chiefs even had their own separate zip code.

She'd never had a chance to regurgitate those statistics because her uncle, who had just earned his first star, had spent the entire day in meetings, leaving her to wait in his outer office, just as she was doing now.

Brooke had spent much of her youth trying to please him. She'd excelled academically, been a state-ranked swimmer, and entered the U.S. Naval Academy. Rather than winning accolades from her uncle, he had groused about the emerging role of women in the military and the fact that she'd chosen the Navy rather than the Army. He'd pressured her to enter the JAG Corps, but she'd chosen to become a Marine and longed for combat. Her uncle had overruled her wishes by having her assigned as a military attaché, first in Paris and then London. Only by a fluke had she ended up in Somalia, where she'd done what she'd always hoped to do: kill terrorists.

“General Grant is ready now,” his secretary announced, shaking Brooke from her memories.

Every detail in his spacious office was masculine—royal blue carpet, heavy, dark wood furniture. The American flag and flags from each military branch lined one wall next to each service's official seal. General Grant had selected two portraits: General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the thirty-fourth president, five-star general, and Supreme Allied Commander, hung behind his ornate desk. The portrait that Grant could see at the opposite end of the room was a life-size painting of four-star general Colin L. Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisor, and Secretary of State. Like Grant, he was black, and this was a matter of great pride to the general, although race was something that he never mentioned publicly.

When Brooke had lived with her parents in Tulsa, Oklahoma, her Baptist minister father had often let her tag along when he visited church members in their homes. She'd noticed then that most kept two pictures on display in their living rooms. One was of Jesus. The other was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. In General Frank Grant's Washington, D.C., home, it was Jesus and General Powell.

“Major Grant,” her uncle said when she entered. Whenever others were present, Brooke and her uncle observed military formality.

“Come have a seat with us,” Grant said, nodding toward Lieutenant Colonel Gabe DeMoss, who was sitting next to General Grant at a conference table.

His secretary, who had escorted Brooke into the room, asked if the general wanted coffee served.

“No,” he replied, answering for all three. “Major Grant and I will eat lunch in a few minutes, after Lieutenant Colonel DeMoss leaves. Tell the cook to keep it warm.”

Brooke sat across from DeMoss with her uncle at the head of the table.

“Please continue your briefing,” General Grant instructed DeMoss.

The deputy director for political-military affairs at the National Security Council smiled at Brooke and she returned it.

DeMoss struck her as the stereotypical male Marine—physically fit, shaved head, medium height, reasonably attractive. He wore a wedding ring, although Brooke had never heard him speak of his family. In the military, you were known by your rank, where you had been stationed, and what you had done, not by your spouse and kids unless you lived on base and they were an embarrassment. Brooke knew DeMoss was a lifer who'd enlisted straight from high school in a West Virginia backwater town. He'd fought in the first Iraqi war and done a stint in Afghanistan, where he'd been held prisoner and tortured for nine months by the Taliban before he'd escaped. He'd successfully ascended through a number of desk jobs at Marine Corps headquarters, graduated from college and earned a master's degree by attending night school, before being sent to work at the White House as General Grant's eyes and ears.

“Cumar and Fawzia Samatar were born into unassuming Somali immigrant families living in Minneapolis,” DeMoss said. “Cumar had been working as an interpreter at the CIA before he committed suicide attacking the presidential motorcade. He had cleared a background check. That's embarrassing, but there's nothing in his past that would have raised our suspicions.”

“Clearly, we haven't been asking the right questions,” General Grant interjected.

“You raise an excellent point, General. Background investigators are not permitted to delve into an individual's religious beliefs, ask if they are practicing Muslims or what mosque they might attend. Unless a person volunteers that information to an investigator, it's considered outside our purview,” DeMoss explained.

For the next several minutes, DeMoss provided them with details about when and where the couple met, when they were married, and when they had moved from Minnesota to Washington, D.C.

“If I may speak freely,” Brooke said, pausing for her uncle to nod in approval, “most of what you've said about this couple has already been reported in the media.”

“Yes, it has,” DeMoss replied. “What hasn't been made public is that the FBI recovered a cell phone that Fawzia had been using before she burst into the sanctuary with her clothes on fire. The phone was recovered inside the janitorial closet where she'd been hiding.”

“Tell Major Grant what else you have learned at the White House,” General Grant said.

“When the FBI checked the phone's memory card, it showed that Fawzia had received a text message at exactly eleven hundred hours, sixteen minutes, fifty-two seconds,” DeMoss reported. He removed a grainy black-and-white photograph from a yellow folder and slid it across the conference table to Brooke. She glanced at her uncle.

“He's already shown it to me, go ahead,” General Grant said, waving his hand dismissively.

Brooke examined it.

“This photograph,” DeMoss continued, “is an enlargement of a single frame captured from television footage at Decker Lake's funeral. Notice the time stamp in the photograph's right corner.”

The image was marked 11:16:52. The photograph showed President Allworth as she was rising from her knees in front of Decker Lake's casket.

“The text message was sent to Fawzia's phone at the exact moment when the president was standing and about to walk from the casket to the pulpit to give her eulogy.”

“What did the text message say?” Brooke asked.

“One word:
NOW
. Obviously, the text was signaling Fawzia, telling her the president was about to make her way to the pulpit.”

DeMoss removed another photo, which he slid toward her. It showed Fawzia, with her clothing on fire, exiting the closet. The time stamp on it was 11:17:01, or nine seconds after the “now” text message had been sent.

“She received the text, unbolted the closet door, lit herself on fire, and ran at the president. Luckily, you stopped her.”

“Do you have photographs of that?” General Grant asked.

“No, sir, but I could get them.”

“That's not going to be necessary,” Grant said. And then, in a moment of uncharacteristic humor, he added, “I'm familiar with Major Grant's tackling abilities from Fourth of July picnics when she used to knock down my boys.”

DeMoss smiled and said, “I believe it's fair to assume—based on these photographs—that the person who sent the text was attending the service and sitting in the cathedral.”

“You mentioned a television station was broadcasting the funeral. Maybe someone watching that live broadcast sent the text,” Brooke said.

“The station had an eight-second delay, which is a common practice, which is also why the FBI is confident the ‘now' text came from someone actually in the sanctuary attending Decker Lake's funeral.”

“Any idea who sent it?” Brooke asked.

“The text was traced to a ‘burner'—a throwaway phone.”

“Where was it sold? I know many stores photograph customers as they're checking out. If they trace the serial number on the burner to a receipt, then they can—”

Her uncle interrupted her. “You don't need to tell the FBI how to do its job. It tracked down the source.”

DeMoss looked at Grant.

“Go ahead and share that information with her too,” the general said.

“The phone was one of two thousand burner phones sold in bulk to a specific organization. Unfortunately, that organization didn't keep track of who used each phone. It simply doled them out. So there's no way to identify the individual who actually used it.”

“What organization?” Brooke asked.

“The president's reelection campaign.”

A surprised look appeared on Brooke's face.

“It could have been stolen from the reelection committee, of course,” DeMoss said, “or misplaced or taken by a staff member and sold on eBay to someone not connected to the reelection campaign.”

General Grant lifted his hand a few inches from the table and waved it dismissively to his right, signaling that he had heard enough. “Thank you for your briefing, Colonel DeMoss.”

Taking his cue, DeMoss rose from the table and said good-bye to Brooke as he exited.

After he was gone, General Grant said, “Brooke, that phone wasn't stolen, nor sold on eBay. Decker Lake's funeral was by invitation only and one of those invitees sent that text. The FBI and Secret Service have both told me that the phone was used by someone who they believe works in the White House.” He hesitated and then said, “We have a traitor in our midst, and I'm worried that he or she is someone close to the president.”

“Do they or you have any suspicions about who it could be?” she asked, trying to hide the anger and disappointment rising inside her at the thought that someone inside the White House had assisted two domestic terrorists trying to assassinate the president.

“We don't, but I'm conducting my own private investigation based on my own suspicions,” he replied. “And I'm gradually narrowing it down. Brooke, I feel I'm close to identifying this Judas.”