The Leviathan Effect (3 page)

“Yes, unfortunately. We’d like you to attend a briefing in the morning before you issue any statement. What’s been leaked to the media is inaccurate, Cate. I can’t go into details right now, but it’s something very specific. And it has nothing to do with the power grid. Gabe Herring will give you details on the briefing.”

“Okay.” Blaine nodded to herself. It meant that they would have to postpone the meeting in Ohio. She’d have to stay in Washington. “Thank you, Harold. We’re on our way back now.”

“Good. We’ll see you in the
A.M.
, then.”

Jamie came up the aisle with two coffees and bags of peanuts.

“Thanks,” Blaine said, taking one of the coffees. Looking up at her chief of staff, whose tie, per custom, had been loosened three inches, the knot shoved to one side, she said, “Think I could I have a vodka tonic instead?”

“Sorry. Dry flight.”

“Shucks.” Blaine sipped. “Oh,” she said, feigning distress. “We’re going to have to scrap Ohio tomorrow. I’m going to be in on a briefing instead.”

“Rats.”

They shared complicit smiles. Then Blaine closed her eyes. She thought about her brief exchange with the reporter, Melanie Cross. She had enjoyed talking off script, even just for a couple of minutes. Talking about real issues, the kinds of things that had first lured her into politics.

Six minutes later, Catherine Blaine opened her eyes. She saw the wisps of sunlight through the gray rainclouds below the plane’s left wing, the drops sliding across the window. She felt the drone of the plane’s engines. Heard the sounds of keyboards clicking.

And remembered the third email message she’d received on her SME-PED.

H
AD
K
EVIN SOMEHOW OBTAINED
her secure email address? The thought stirred unpleasant memories: Blaine flashed to those months when Kevin had seemed to be slipping away from her, struggling to assert himself, talking to her defiantly, in other people’s voices, it seemed. Blaine had come to a humbling realization during that time—that her work as a politician meant nothing if she couldn’t fix the problems at home with her only child. That had suddenly become priority number one, the most important work in her life.

She had chosen not to run for re-election to Congress four years ago, and soon afterward accepted a long-standing offer to return to academia, as a part-time visiting political science instructor at Georgetown. Parenting had been a challenge for Blaine at times, and it was one she had mostly undertaken alone. She hadn’t always been the best parent, she knew, tending to underestimate what was required. But it was something she’d been determined to learn, and she—and Kevin—had come a long ways since her step back from politics. He was in school now and working three nights a week in a Georgetown restaurant. But she was also aware how easily it could all slip away.

Blaine pulled out her SME-PED mobile device.

She clicked open the email screen.

Saw the subject line: the abbreviations that no one but Kevin would have used. Then she clicked on the message, and stared at the words on her screen.

It took her a moment to fully comprehend what she was seeing. Then she felt her skin prickle.

No, it wasn’t Kevin at all.

It was some kind of prank.

But a serious prank.

Blaine listened to the tapping sounds of Lila Hernandez’s fingernails beating on her laptop keys one row in front.

Someone had hacked into her secure SME-PED and left a message.

Was this part of the “unprecedented” series of breaches the reporter had questioned her about?

She focused on the two-and-a-half-inch screen, studying the words more carefully. A message clearly intended for Catherine Blaine:

C
ATHERINE
B
LAINE LISTENED
to the engine hum in the cabin as the plane climbed to its cruising altitude of twenty-one thousand feet. A prank, obviously. But how had someone managed to hack into her secure mobile device?

During her time in Congress, Blaine had pushed for more effective cyber security safeguards, both in the federal government and in the private sector. Technological capabilities were constantly evolving and America’s intelligence and military branches had not prioritized cyber security as they had other matters, including the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. There had been numerous high-level breaches of government computer systems and military networks in recent years, most of which the public never heard about. But, as far as she knew, there had never before been an infiltration of a private secure internal network.

The fact that someone had composed the subject line using Kevin’s quirky abbreviations was deeply troubling to her. Somehow, someone had infiltrated her private life. Her
son’s
private life.

She studied the name and numbers at the end of the message.

Janus
.

Roman god of beginnings and endings. Doorways and gateways. Often depicted as a two-headed figure—gazing forward and backward.

Past and future.

But Janus was something else, too.

It was a name she recalled from her time on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and which had resurfaced more recently in an inquiry from a colleague. A nickname that had been given to one of the most notorious computer hackers in the world. A renegade product of the Chinese military, groomed to infiltrate the networks of foreign intelligence services.

She looked down at the blue screen glowing in her hand and read the message again, memorizing it. “The events that occur after Monday will devastate your country.”

Monday is tomorrow
.

“What is it?” Jamie asked. He was staring at her, two frown lines creasing his forehead. A row in front of them, Lila Hernandez stopped typing.

“I think someone’s hacked into my BlackBerry,” Blaine said.

There was a protocol to follow in the event of a network infiltration. First, she contacted the cyber security coordinator at the Department of Homeland Security on her other encrypted mobile. In a drone-like voice, he instructed her to disable the SME-PED and to use her other mobile device only if necessary.

Six minutes after Blaine reported the breach, a call came in on her secure phone. It was the head of the Cyber Crime Command. Not at DHS—this time, it was the cyber security coordinator at the White House. The man the media called the US cyber czar, Dean Stiles, a gruff, blunt former military intelligence officer.

“Your device has been fatally compromised,” he informed her. “We have remotely accessed and deactivated it. Proceed with caution in any further communications. You will be met at the airport with further instructions.”

“What’s going on?”

“You’ll be briefed and questioned upon your return.”

Catherine Blaine clicked off and stared out at the dark gray clouds.
Questioned?

“We have Internet access here, right?” she said to Jamie.

“Sure,” he said. “Why?”

“I want to run a check on something.”

Blaine pulled out her private mobile device, and clicked open a Google screen. She keyed in
NATURAL DISASTERS
and then typed in the three dates from the email. 9/25, 9/28, 9/30.

The assassin watched from the next block as his target emerged from the suburban apartment building and rolled a medium-sized suitcase to his car, a blue Camry parked at the curb.

He loaded the suitcase into the trunk and turned, surveying the street, his eyes seeming to linger on the assassin’s Range Rover for a moment—although, of course, he could see nothing through the tinted glass.

This was unexpected: the journalist leaving early, attempting an escape, without knowing who or what was coming for him.

Ultimately, it does not matter
, the assassin thought.
It just hastens the process
.

The journalist, whose name was Jon Mallory, pulled quickly from the curb, driving away in the opposite direction.

The assassin followed at a careful distance, feeling a charge of adrenaline. He was fully engaged now, on the other side of the partition. The assassin existed for only a few hours at a time—and in the end he didn’t really exist at all; in the end, he was an unknown soldier, a man whose purpose was to protect the mission. This was a containment exercise; a pre-empt.
Protect the mission
. Jon Mallory knew things that he shouldn’t know, and the cost of that knowledge was going to be very expensive for him.

A
S THE LANDING GEAR
unfolded below the C-20F Gulfstream IV, Blaine realized that they were not coming in to Reagan National Airport as scheduled. She saw instead a familiar rectangular runway. Then barracks. Hangars. Military vehicles.

Andrews
.

She looked at Jamie, who mirrored her frown.

They were landing at Joint Base Andrews—what used to be known as Andrews Air Force Base—eight miles outside of D.C. in Prince Georges County, Maryland. The forty-five-acre base was home to some twenty thousand active duty military people, civilian employees, and family members. Home base, too, for the VC-25A aircraft known as Air Force One. If there were ever an attack on Washington, the responding US combat air patrols would lift off from here.

Blaine shook her head in reply to Jamie’s unspoken question. Before she had a chance to say anything, her secure cell phone vibrated.

“Catherine Blaine.”

“Madam Secretary. It’s Gabriel Herring.”

The White House chief of staff.

“Yes.”

“Secret Service has requested a change in venue for security purposes. I will be meeting you on the air field as soon as you de-plane.”

“Okay. What’s going on?”

“You will be briefed here on the base.”

He clicked off. Blaine stared out the window. The plane was taxiing toward a cluster of vehicles—two black Suburbans, a Lincoln
limousine, a half dozen military SUVs with blue lights flashing over the wet pavement—forming a semicircular barrier around the nose of the plane. She recognized the light blue berets of the Air Force Security forces, men standing at attention in the drizzle, armed with M-4 carbine rifles and M-4 pistols.

Walking down the landing steps, Blaine also noticed several Secret Service men hovering on the edges.

An Air Force security officer waited on the tarmac with an open umbrella for her. Beside him was Gabriel Herring, who stepped toward her stiffly and extended his hand.

“Madam Secretary.”

“Thanks for the hero’s welcome,” she said to Herring as he escorted them to the open rear door of a military SUV.

Blaine turned and motioned for Jamie and Lila to follow.

But Jamie was looking at Herring and getting a different message.

“The president requests that it be just you,” Herring said.

“Oh.” She looked at her chief of staff. “Okay, I’ll call.”

She nodded to the military guards standing by the open door, ducked her head and climbed in the back seat. Herring scooted in beside her. The door closed.

Swirling blue lights shone in arcs off the pavement as the vehicles started to move.

“So,” she said, trying a smile. “Can you tell me what the hell’s going on?”

The chief of staff stared straight ahead. Gabriel Herring was known to have an easy, collegiate sense of humor. Blaine had seen him do spot-on impressions of Harry Reid, Mitt Romney, and Joe Biden. But during times of crisis, he sometimes shut down and resembled a mannequin.

Blaine watched him, saw him blink once.

Finally, he said, “The president has requested your presence at a meeting.” His voice sounded metallic. “We’re going to an on-base SCIF. You’ll be briefed there.”

“Oh,” Blaine said. “Okay.”

SCIF, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, was a term that had emereged in the wake of 9/11. They were secured enclosures where sensitive classified information could be processed and confidential conversations could take place. Strict criteria had been
established for SCIFs through a 2002 CIA directive: separate heating and ventilation systems, walls reinforced with steel plates, single entrances, no Internet ports, everything protected by sound-masking materials.

“And you’re not going to tell me what it’s about?”

“No. I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t.”

He looked slightly seasick to Blaine.

“Why not?”

“Because I haven’t been told.”

T
HEY RODE IN
silence the rest of the way, a five-car motorcade, headlights full on, roof lights flashing, curving along a base road and then stopping behind a nondescript five-story office building. Herring got out first, all business. Two military vehicles had blocked off the drive on the other side, she saw. Armed Air Force guards stood beside the entrance.

Inside, Blaine followed Herring into the elevator. He pressed 5.

“Women’s apparel, please,” Blaine said.

Herring watched the numbers change. He didn’t blink.

In a hallway on the fifth floor, two Air Force guards stood on either side of an unmarked door with a cipher lock. Blaine didn’t have to be told to leave her cell phones in the tray on the table outside. The White House chief of staff typed in a code on the cipher lock pad, then pressed a release and the door clicked open. Blaine held the knob, waiting. But Herring was not coming in with her.