First Strike (36 page)

A tall, handsome student with black hair approached Nazir.

“Tristan? Patrick Wilson. Let's go.”

“Should I grab something?”

“Yes, grab that bottle of champagne, will you? We'll take it easy, nice trot, yes? Then a swim. You're sort of a legacy, even though technically Franny isn't blood.”

Approximately fifty students moved down across the massive field in a whooping, shouting cabal of inebriation. The field grew dark as they jogged across the grass, the sky was clouded over. Various students formed small packs, stopping for a few swigs of alcohol or a cigarette. In the distance, Nazir watched as one of the upperclassmen tackled Clive to the ground, playfully wrestling with him.

At some point, Nazir lost track of Wilson but kept running. As he came to the end of the field, he saw the massive hedge, rounding the corner. A light was coming out of the ground. It was a small door to a root cellar. Franny was standing near the door, as if expecting him. A strange, cold shivering feeling came over Nazir then. He stopped and turned, but Wilson was there to grab him. Then there were others and soon they were on him.

Nazir could have screamed, but he didn't. For some reason, he remembered Anne Frank. He remembered the way she remained always convinced that she would live, despite the overwhelming odds against her. He also remembered the inhuman brutality that would've seen her killed for no reason.
Why?
was the question he couldn't figure out the answer to. Why would someone want to kill someone like Anne Frank?

As they dragged him down the rickety steps of the cellar and started beating him mercilessly, Nazir understood the answer.

They threw him on the ground and kicked him everywhere, punched his face, poured alcohol on him, all the while laughing cruelly, until they were so winded they couldn't laugh anymore. The front of someone's pointed shoe—perhaps a wingtip—struck him in the right eye. He screamed. Other than involuntary grunts and moans, it was the first display of weakness and defeat Nazir showed that day.

“My eye,” he mumbled. “Stop. Please.”

But they kept beating Nazir until he was nearly dead. He saw Franny's sweat-covered face through the dim light.

“Don't ever talk to your father about my inheritance, or my mother's,” said Franny, holding Nazir by the hair and lifting his limp head a few inches off the dirt. “And by the way, that's how an empire rules, you ungrateful nigger.”

“My eye,” sobbed Nazir, clutching his face. “Please, Franny…”

He didn't wake up until the next day, when an old man, one of the groundskeepers, found him and brought him to the hospital. His right eye was ruptured beyond repair.

*   *   *

In the hospital where Nazir slowly recovered, he refused to speak with anyone, not his father, not Clive, not the police, not even the doctors and nurses who took care of him.

On his tenth day of silence, he looked at one of the nurses as she took his breakfast tray away.

“My belongings,” he whispered.

“Yes, Tristan. They are over here.” She pointed to some cardboard boxes.

“Is there a journal?”

The nurse looked through the boxes, finding it near the bottom of one.

“Is this it?”

Nazir nodded.

“Could I have a pencil?”

After the nurse retrieved him a pencil, Nazir started to write:

The Diary of Anne Frank
(continued) I would like to reflect on this book from a different perspective, that is, what it shows about the weakness and imperfection of the Third Reich. While the book shows what we all know to be true, namely, that the Nazis were evil, it also exposes failures of planning and implementation of the Nazi system of government. The Nazis permitted families who were agnostic to the Third Reich to live, thus enabling situations such as that of the Frank family, who were able to hide. In retrospect, Hitler should have exterminated not just Jews but anyone who had ever associated with them, such as hiring them or being friends. While venal, this broader cleansing—from a purely political perspective—would have done more to prevent Jews from continuing to live, and engaging in such things as writing books, for it was works like this book that elicited the righteous anger that resulted in America joining the battle against the Third Reich and defeating them.

Thus, it works as such: when consolidating power, one must exert control on behalf of whatever agenda is that of the consolidator, and administer control with widespread and unfathomable violence, fear, and bloodshed. The Nazis, in summary, were not evil enough if their goal was permanence and political legitimacy—and power. The point is not that Nazism is good or bad. It has nothing to do with Nazism or, for that matter, with Anne Frank. The point is, when one has an objective, whether a government or an individual, one must bring to bear unbridled, unvarnished terror and pain in the pursuit of that objective. Anything less leads to defeat.

—T. Nazir, 1 Jan.

*   *   *

Nazir finished reading the passage. He flipped the page. Taped to the next page was a newspaper clipping.

Oxford Student Drowns

Francis Highgate III, an undergraduate student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, drowned two days before he was to graduate, it has been reported. Highgate, twenty-one years of age and the son of Vaughan Nazir and Barbara Highgate, was a resident of Kensington, London. According to Oxford police, Mr. Highgate was found floating in the Thames near the lower acres of Port Meadow. No further information has been released in the matter. A memorial service is to be performed this Saturday, 17th May, 12:30
P.M.
, in the Brasenose College Chapel.

 

48

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Dewey stared out the window as the chopper took him from Andrews Air Force Base across Washington, D.C. He was alone. When the chopper landed on the helipad at GW Hospital, he was greeted by a pair of plainclothes CIA paramilitary.

They stepped onto a waiting elevator, which descended to the second floor. When the doors opened, Dewey's first sight was the expressionless face of J. P. Dellenbaugh, standing next to Amy Dellenbaugh, both consoling Vivian Calibrisi.

A cadre of other officials, staff members, Secret Service agents, and a medical team was also in the corridor. The tone was hushed.

On the wall above the nurses' station, a television displayed live coverage of the hostage crisis at Columbia.

Behind him, on his cell phone, stood Polk. His normally friendly face was ashen, even haunted.

It was Vivian who saw Dewey first. Tears streamed down her face. Dewey wrapped his arms around her.

“Dewey,” she whispered, sobbing.

“He's going to be all right, Vivian,” he said. “He's the toughest son of a bitch I know.”

Dewey felt his own tears begin to moisten his eyes, but he fought to hold them back.

Dewey stepped to Dellenbaugh and extended his hand, but the president instead reached his arms out and hugged him.

“I need to talk to you,” Dellenbaugh whispered. “Go see him first.”

A nurse accompanied Dewey to the room. A sliding door—like a barn door—was moved aside by a nurse. It was a large, modern operating room. Dewey registered three nurses and four doctors. The walls were lined with plasma screens displaying digital readouts. The steady monotone of the heart machine seemed familiar.

In the center of the room, on a large, elevated steel table, covered in light blue blankets, was Calibrisi. His eyes were closed. An oxygen tube protruded from his mouth, running down his throat. Three separate IVs were attached to his arms. His skin was the color of parchment.

Dewey placed his hand on Calibrisi's hand, clutching it. As hard as he tried to not cry, he felt tears on his cheeks.

“You're not leaving yet,” said Dewey, squeezing his hand. “This is not how it ends.”

One of the doctors stepped forward. He placed his hand on Dewey's shoulder.

“Are you family?” he asked.

Dewey looked at him but didn't answer.

“It's okay,” said the doctor.

“How bad is it?” Dewey asked. “People recover from heart attacks all the time.”

The doctor nodded. “Yes, they do. He's alive. For now, that's all that matters. We're going to do everything in our power to bring him back.”

Dewey gripped Calibrisi's hand as tears now rolled down his cheeks. He held onto his hand for more than a minute, until he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see J. P. Dellenbaugh.

“He's going to be fine, Dewey,” said Dellenbaugh, forcing a smile. “You know it and I know it.”

Dewey walked back into the hall. Polk stood near the elevator, still speaking on the cell phone.

It was then that Dewey felt a cold, terrible emptiness, a chemical feeling of silent terror. He looked around the corridor, searching for her.

“Where's Daisy?” he asked, his voice a little too loud.

Dellenbaugh motioned for Dewey to follow him. They walked to an empty room.

“Daisy is in the dormitory at Columbia,” he said. “The one taken over by ISIS. We haven't told Vivian. I'm not sure if you agree, but she's in a tough state.”

Dewey stared blankly into Dellenbaugh's eyes.

“How did she end up in a Columbia dorm?”

“She was bringing a girl there. Her Little Sister, a precocious kid from inner-city Baltimore she's mentored since the girl was eight.”

Dellenbaugh was choked with emotion.

“The information you got out of Syria detailed a massive illegal arms program involving the deputy secretary of defense,” Dellenbaugh said. “We supplied ISIS with everything. More than a billion dollars' worth of guns and missiles. We made them. We created ISIS.” Dellenbaugh looked angry.

“Who did it?”

“Mark Raditz.”

Dewey was quiet. He knew who Raditz was. In fact, Dewey had a high opinion of him. Raditz was a key player in the discovery of the plot to detonate a nuclear device on American soil just a few months ago.

“A ship left Mexico four days ago loaded with another shipment of weapons,” Dellenbaugh continued. “We stopped the ship in the Mediterranean. That's when Nazir's men took over the dorm. They want the guns and ammo. They
need
the guns and ammo.”

When Dewey climbed aboard the jet earlier that day, he thought he would enjoy a calm ride home followed by a few weeks off. He felt battered and bruised. Not to mention the horrible feeling he could not shake, the feeling of having a knife against his throat.

The knowledge that he had asked Garotin to kill him.

Shoot me. A soldier's death.

He was planning to head up to Castine and see his family. He needed some time. He figured Calibrisi would start looking for him in late October. He was going to avoid his calls for a few weeks, spend Thanksgiving in Castine, then head back to Langley. But when he found out Calibrisi had had a heart attack, everything changed. By the time he landed at Andrews, he was prepared for the worst. Calibrisi might die. Now he understood the gravity of it all. And as much as he wanted to think about the hundreds of people who were now hostages, who, if he knew ISIS, were slated to die, he could only picture Daisy. He could only ask,
Why? Why, Daisy?
Why did you need to be there, this day, that college, that dorm?

“No wonder he had a heart attack,” whispered Dewey.

“What?” asked Dellenbaugh.

But Dewey remained silent. Only someone who's lost a child can understand. He reached out and grasped Dellenbaugh's arm, trying to ease the anguish that now coursed through him.

Dewey shut his eyes for several moments, steadying himself. He knew what needed to happen. He knew what he needed to do. He alone could change it all. He could never bring Robbie back, but he could save the hundreds of Robbies who at that moment were slated for death. He could save Daisy. But he would need to strip away the feeling of helplessness. Replace it with anger.

He thought of the knife at his throat and let the memory course through him. He pictured the moment in the basement of the hospital, the two men dragging the corpse, the feeling of the trigger beneath his finger as he sent slugs into the terrorists. The sound of blood hitting the wall behind them. The look in their eyes as they understood, these monsters who pretended to not value life, that they were slated for death. That he would be the one. It was a look of pure human fear. Cowardice. For him, a feeling of superiority and victory, a feeling that nothing else on earth had ever given him.

Dewey grabbed that anger then, in that moment. He took it and didn't let it go. Whatever sadness, guilt, and sorrow caused him to reach for Dellenbaugh slipped away. He stood tall, spreading his legs, and a look came over his face that caused Dellenbaugh to flinch.

“Who's running Columbia?” he asked.

“The FBI has command authority,” said Dellenbaugh. “Domestic terrorism.”

“I want to be involved, Mr. President.”

“You work for the Central Intelligence Agency. Technically, it's illegal.”

Dewey stared into Dellenbaugh's eyes. The president, a former professional hockey player, was the same height. He was also built similarly to Dewey—wide and stocky, his legs, arms, shoulders, chest, everything packed with muscles.

“The FBI has a lot of experience with this sort of thing,” said Dellenbaugh. “Obviously, their top CT team is on it. Half the guys in the group are former Special Forces or CIA.”

“You're probably right,” said Dewey.

Dellenbaugh grinned. “Then again,” he said, “I'm not a lawyer. Plus I hate lawyers.”

Dewey nodded and turned.

“I'll call George Kratovil,” Dellenbaugh said. “Dewey, keep me in the loop. You have my personal cell.”

“I'm not looking to make problems, sir. If they know what they're doing, I'll back away.”