Volcano (22 page)

Albert turned his reverberating chin in her direction. “And
you, daughter, would do well to remember your place... Your
non-
place in
our present situation!”

Ana felt the sting in her eyes. “Oh, I think I have
plenty
of business being here!”

Mark laid a steadying hand on her arm but she jerked it away
and turned toward her father.

“Mark,” Albert said, looking emphatically at his son-in-law.
“You take the wheel on alerting White House security of a potential problem.
Get the FBI, ATF guys, Secret Service, anyone you can think of and have them on
every conceivable container that gets delivered to any Washington, DC
celebration locale within the next twenty-four hours.”

Twenty-four, Ana suspected, because something in place
longer, particularly if it involved some sort of chemical hazard, risked either
losing efficacy or blowing prematurely if left in place too long.

“Triple security at the Old Post Office,” Albert continued.
“Anything out of the ordinary, we learn it here first. And get a list of
champagne distributors and the like. Anyone who’ll have access.”

“Yes, sir,” Mark said, squaring his jaw. “Consider it done.”

“Oh and Mark,” Albert said, as Mark ducked back toward the
red phone on Albert’s desk. “No mention of our other troubles here. Just that
we’ve got wind of a potential threat.”

***

Albert Kane slammed into the DOS Current Operations Center,
Ana at his back.

“How in Hades can you hope to
hide
all this
?!
” she hissed in his ear. “Don’t you think the White House
would be better off...
”

Ana’s words fell off as she looked around at the skeleton
crew manning stations. Mark had alluded to a mass exodus, but this was the
nucleus of the organization for crying out loud!
 
And the DOS was flying with a broken
wing. “Where
is
everybody?”

“Alright!” Albert barked into the room, commanding immediate
attention. “This is a Code Blue. I want all systems shut down now!
 
On orders from the commander...”
 

As the actual DOS commander was unreachable at an
undisclosed location somewhere else on the globe, Ana took that to mean her
father, the second in command who was now quite obviously in charge.

“We go black for thirty seconds while the systems guys
switch us over to our backup hardware!”

Heads swivelled and computer monitors went dark, blanking
out lime green coordinates and the series of codes and documents that had
blipped across every screen.

“Sir,” a soldier called from the corner, “I’ve just about
got this one-”

“Take it down, Captain,” Kane ordered. And then, sensing the
Captain’s angst, he added, “I’m sorry.”

The Captain turned back to her system and shut it down,
shit-canning something she’d probably been working on for eons.

Albert gave a sigh and walked to the far end of the room
where a smattering of world maps lined the wall. Up above those hung a
continuum of wall clocks, each set to the precise time zone of the
corresponding map below. “I’m afraid this is all we’ve got left,” he said,
finally speaking to Ana, in answer to her question. “These are the ones we were
able to track down, pull back in from holiday leave. But, the others-”

“There are no others, are there?”
Ana
asked, following her father’s sad eyes to each empty command station.

“The scare has the DOS completely crippled,” Albert admitted
with a worried frown.

“
The DOS and therefore the DOD,” Ana said.
“Can’t think of a better time to plan an attack on Washington. Must have taken
a pretty sick mind to think this one up.”

Albert grunted. “All hands are on it. All hands that we
have, that is. But as you can see--”

“What are those guys doing over there?”
Ana
asked of a team huddled together in intense conversation near the corner.

“That’s our forecast team,” Albert answered. “Trained to
predict where the trouble’s going to strike next.”

“You going to let them in on the secret?”
Ana
asked.

“Maynard!” Albert called across the room. “What are your
latest stats on the scare?”

“Overall, sir?”

“Past twenty-four hours.”

“Negative, sir. No additional reports in the past
thirty-six.”

Albert furrowed his brow. “The calm before the storm, Ana.
They’ve already accomplished that objective. The DOD is a crippled mess and now
the well-being of our President is at stake.”

“After such an elaborate set-up, certainly seems like
they’re planning something pretty sophisticated,” Ana said. “Something our
normal MO doesn’t have a way around.”

Albert’s face went ghastly white.

“Father?”
Ana said.

Albert turned and headed toward the door. “I’ve got
something to take care of.”

“Now?”
Ana asked, panic-stricken. “What about this
?!
 
What about
Joe? We haven’t even discussed what’s being done about-”

“McFadden’s no longer a priority.”

Ana clamped onto her father’s arm with
unnatural force.
“Dad, he
saved
us... Mark, Isa, all of us!
 
If it hadn’t been for-”

Albert stopped her with a look that shook her to the bone.
His appearance was more than weary; he was positively phantom-like.

“You tell Mark I’m leaving him in charge. If I’m not back in
two hours, have Mark alert the Commander in Chief to clear the White House and
cancel every New Year’s celebration in Washington.”

Ana raced to her father.
“Dad,
no.
Where are you going?”

“Do me another favor,” Albert said, resting a hand on her
shoulder. “Take good care of that granddaughter of mine.”

“
Dad,”
Ana cried, throwing her arms around him,
“don’t-”

But Albert gently worked free of her embrace and turned
toward the door.

“At least tell me where you’re going,” Ana called, clutching
her middle as sobs wracked her voice.
Not again...after all this time. She
couldn’t lose him again.

Albert paused in the threshold, but kept his face to the
reinforced doors that sliced open in front of him. And when he spoke, his words
were little more than mere wisps of wind over his departing shoulder.

“To say goodbye to an old friend.”

Albert pulled into the drive of the vine-covered Arlington
cottage that belonged to INR Director Tom Mooney. Yes, it would have been
better for Tom and several thousand people, it seemed, if Tom had taken that
early retirement from government service, after all. The irony in the situation
was that Albert had been the one to talk him out of it. Had been the one to
insist Tom still had so much to give. Well, Tom had been dishing it out,
alright
. Hand over fist. And the only explanation Albert
could think of, the only thing that lent his tangled soul solace, was his
conviction that his old friend had gone completely mad.

Albert patted his herringbone coat, saddened that this time
his weapon’s check was more than a habit. It was, he feared, a necessity. Given
the shenanigans he’d pulled, there was no telling what condition Tom would be
in.

They’d made a pact, the three of them. Au Yang,
the
Yellow Viper,
Albert Kane,
the Silver Fox,
and Tom Mooney,
the
Gray Wolf,
that if anything ever went wrong with their plan and Volcano
were to fall into the wrong hands, one of them personally would ensure the
plan’s destruction, even if that meant the personal destruction of one of the
other members of the team. Volcano was far too deadly, it’s implications too
far-reaching, to be taken lightly. And so they hadn’t. The three men had signed
their pact in blood.

And now, that bond had been broken. Tom had betrayed not
only his country and Albert Kane but also the memory of his loyal comrade Au Yang.
Just this morning, Albert had finally received the long-awaited cable from
Beijing. It was just as he’d suspected. When Au Yang went back to China in
1999, it had not been to aid the Chinese but rather to continue his covert work
in American Intelligence. The nature of his mission had been so
sensitive,
it had taken a lot of arm twisting and extreme
pressure by the Director of the DOS, to get even the slightest bit of
information. But after Albert had been able to convince the Director of Au
Yang’s potential involvement in the analyst scare, the Director had been able
to grease the necessary wheels.

And now Albert knew the truth. Au Yang had taken an
assassin’s bullet in early 2000 because of something he’d discovered and had
planned to share with the Americans, something involving a systems invasion of
a major US intelligence organization.

Volcano.

It had been the early seeds of Volcano Au Lang had stumbled
across and before he could put two and two together and blow the whistle on Tom
Mooney, Tom had had him assassinated. Albert grimaced in disgust and unhitched
his seat belt. Between Au Yang and the few hundred analysts who’d fallen victim
to his sordid plan, old Tom had a lot of blood on his hands. Of course, it had
been Tom, all along, who’d insisted on violence as an end to his means. Au Yang
had been the pacifist among them.

And Albert, who was neither one nor the other, was simply
the sort of man who got things done.

Albert popped his glove box and withdrew his silencer.

There were no two ways about it. If Tom were the murderous
traitor the world would make him out to be, he’d be better off dead. And if he
weren’t, if Tom was no more than a dangerous old coot gone positively insane-
then the old Tom, the Tom that Albert knew and loved like a brother, would have
begged Albert to put an end to the sick man’s misery.

For the man inside this house was no one Albert knew. The
man inside this house was a villain, a threat to society. A man even Albert’s
old service buddy Tom Mooney would have wanted taken out with a vengeance.

He didn’t want to, but he had to. Because Albert knew with a
clarity in his cleaving heart, that had the situations been reversed, Tom
Mooney would have done his best friend and the world a favor, and put a bullet
straight through Albert Kane’s head.

***

Tom sat at his kitchen table and downed another shot of
whiskey. He hadn’t told them, for Chrissake, to go
killing
people. But
it was all right there in black and white. Even worse, sometimes in color: the
photographic evidence from the slaughterings.
Butcherings,
pure and simple.
And all in a neat little UPS envelope that had landed
on his doorstep this afternoon.

Happy New Year’s, indeed.
This was
not
what Mooney ordered. Not what he’d ordered at
all.

Mooney refilled his glass, worrying about his nephew. Should
have known better, he told himself. Better than to get tangled up with those
goddamned Arabs. The Chinese were
alright
; the Chinese
understood. Though it was true Mooney had been a bit
blood-thirsty
in his youth, age had tempered him. He now saw the greater wisdom of Eastern
ways.

Sun-tzu had been right, “a hundred ounces of silver spent on
information could save ten thousand spent on war.”
 
And the use of spies could save infinite
lives... Volcano’s plan was to extrapolate. Avert violence- to the extent
possible- by having the
threat of war
predominate. Turn intelligence
back on itself. Al Fahd and his men were to
threaten,
god damn it.
Gaslight, yes.
Scare senseless. Make every goddamned DOS
analyst afraid for his life and his family’s
well-being
for fear they were being watched. It was a fricking psychological game that the
Chinese had obviously understood but the Arabs hadn’t.

Al Fahd was a wild card, a loose cannon
who
’d
taken the reins into his own hands. But not only control over the operation, Al
Fahd had also taken Joe.

Taken?
Christ. Mooney downed another belt. Tom had
fucking delivered the boy to that butcher.
Delivered!
 
His own flesh and blood, the son he
never had...

And when, god dammit, Tom wanted to know, exactly had he
done that? And
why
couldn’t he fricking remember?

These past six months had been a
checker
board
existence for Tom- or had it been longer? Tom strained to recall
when the memory lapses had begun, but couldn’t put it together.

At first, he’d attributed his “black-outs” to his increased
penchant for drink. A predilection that had seemed to take hold the moment the
State Department had made public its decision to force Tom from its ranks.

But the frightening part was, Tom hadn’t been altogether
sure whether the booze was to blame or not. Things seemed to happen even when
he
wasn’t
hitting the sauce. He could be on the horn, making a critical
call one moment, then bumbling into the water cooler the next.

And the worst, the absolute fucking worst part about it was
the
look
people got on their faces when they were talking to him. It was like
they thought he was fucking mad!

Tom lifted the bottle, wondering if he was.

The commies,
he reminded himself,
the god damned
commies.
Castro in Cuba and those goddamned missiles.
President Kennedy- or was it Bush
? Tom stared at the wall calender and
tried to remember, but all he saw were dates and the month. No year.

Didn’t matter what the hell year it was, Tom told himself,
pouring another shot. Important thing was they’d flushed the commies from the
system. Cleaned the pipes of the analytical realm. Mooney was god damned Mr.
Plumber!