White: A Novel (22 page)

Satch clicked the Send key twice, offering the universal police shortcut for “understood.” Then he grabbed Ollie’s pack and laid it in the back of the van beside his own.

“You’d better drive,” the smaller man said, trying to straighten up. “I think I tore somethin’ in my back.”

“I’m a better driver anyway,” Satch said, taking the keys and moving to the front door. He smiled at the relative ease of their success as he climbed in. “Better-looking too.”

X

Thursday, 17 February

15:01 GMT

The Homestead, Kerrville, Texas

JEREMY DOWNSHIFTED INTO
third gear and eased out the clutch as the driveway came into sight. Wrought-iron columns rose from the far side of a mailbox cluster. A ranch banner spanned the columns, reading
THE HOMESTEAD
in foot-high letters painted white. The ranch looked just like the one he’d visited during the Harvey Point simulations.

Jeremy Walker, date of birth 7/ 22/ 1971, favorite color . . . hunter green,
he reminded himself, trying to concentrate on anything besides the thick, spiny ball rumbling around his gut.

Stagehand with a roving Folger Shakespeare Library-based road troupe. Who the hell had thought that up?

The 80-series street-racing tires on his 1970 Nova SS chirped brightly as he turned right into the gravel drive and passed over the cattle guard. Mesquite trees and prickly pear cactus spread out as far as he could see in any direction. Wire fencing lined both sides of the road, divided every few miles by a gate like Ellis’s.

The undercover job history had to be something they couldn’t track down easily, he realized. Ellis likely would not have many contacts in the theater world, and even if he did, stagehands came and went like carnival workers. This job came with all the anonymity the road could offer and suggested just the right amount of distaste for an ordered world.

The Homestead’s newest student tried to focus on the arrogant growl of the car’s souped-up L78, 396-cubic-inch engine. Jeremy’s FBI handler had arranged to borrow the boisterous muscle car—a drug seizure—from the local field office. It fit Jeremy Walker’s psychological profile, they said, and it would quickly announce his presence to Ellis.

All Jeremy cared about was the thrill he got in driving it. The owner had installed a 417 rear end with a limited slip differential, Hooker headers, Edelbrock intake, Accel ignition, and furry red dice hanging from the rearview mirror. The steroid-enhanced power plant turned mid-elevens in the quarter mile, but here on the rutted driveway, it made the car lurch and buck despite Jeremy’s attempts to feather the throttle.

“That’s it, baby.” Jeremy smiled, trying to keep rpms between three and four thousand. “Let’s let him know we’re coming.”

There was little doubt of that. The road ran straight as a rifle shot for about three quarters of a mile to a cluster of single-level buildings painted ocher. Sound traveled well across the tinder-dry countryside, and the high-pitched whine of the SS would have awakened the dead.

Jeremy swallowed the lump in his throat as he pulled up to where a Ford Dually and two late-model Dodges sat parked near a carport. He caught himself in the car’s rearview mirror and wondered if a day of preparation would be enough. They’d cut his hair close to the scalp then taken away his razor, giving him the look of a man who’d trimmed off the outside world, then been too lazy to stick with the commitment.

Divorced. Twice. Three kids: Patrick, Maddy, and Christopher. Stick as close to the truth as possible,
they’d told him. The proximity to reality would keep him centered when all other reference fled him.

Jeremy shifted into neutral and raced the engine a couple times.
That’s what Jeremy Walker would do,
he thought to himself.
Bold, self-centered, righteous.
Then he caught himself again.

“Don’t
think
about your new identity,” the FBI undercover expert had told him. “They’ll see right through that. You’ve got to
live
it. Don’t act.
Become
the new man. You have to believe it yourself before you can expect anyone else to.”

Jeremy raced the engine a third time.

“Fuck it,” he said, stomping on the throaty Holley four-barrel. The man he left behind would have raced the engine too.

ELIZABETH BEECHUM ARRIVED
at the Capitol on the Senate side, up Constitution Avenue, past the makeshift Jersey walls and the dogs and the men with submachine guns and thigh bags stuffed full of gas masks.

She remembered not so many years back to when anyone could drive in off the street and cross the big lot of crushed rock and shale. Tours of grade-schoolers and Gray Panthers used to picnic on the East Lawn before queuing up in the rotunda for public tours. You could go all the way up to the top of the dome in those days, venture down into the crypt, maybe even get a member to show you the tunnels or point out the bullet holes left behind after Puerto Rican radicals had shot up the place in 1954.

But those were the old days, gone forever. No more open tours, no more public access to the viewers’ galleries or Statuary Hall, no more sense that the People’s House was still a place for the very Americans who had built her.

“It’s a crying shame,” she said out loud.

“Different world,” James agreed, reading her mind.

The motorcade of black SUVs, marked Metro police cars, and decoy limos pulled up to beneath the south stairs and Beechum climbed out. Secret Service agents in their bulging suits and cuff mikes ushered her in for a handoff to plainclothes Capitol police officers.

Turf wars,
she thought. Just another reason the United States would always be playing catch-up with people who answered to just one leader: Muhammad.

SR-220, a committee room reserved for closed hearings, was already full when the vice president led her administrative assistant in. She carried a worn leather briefcase in her left hand and a rolled-up battle damage assessment in her right.

“I want to read into the record that this is a meeting of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,” the chairman said. Beechum had always liked the right, honorable, and distinguished senior senator from Florida, one of the more open-minded Republicans she’d worked with. His ascension to the chair had surprised no one. A senior member of the committee during Beechum’s tenure, Radford Baines Beauchamp knew the intelligence community and he knew Washington. Few had ever succeeded in pushing rot past his discerning nose.

“This is a closed meeting,” he droned. “All minutes and discussions are classified top secret.”

With that, he nodded to his not-so-former colleague.

“Good day, Madam Vice President. Good of you to come. I think we all appreciate how busy you must be.”

“Good morning, Mr. Chairman.” Beechum nodded back. It felt odd to sit there among the witness seats. Just over a month earlier, she’d walked out for the last time with a bittersweet taste in her mouth. “Nice to be back. I have to admit that I never thought I’d find myself in the cheap seats, but I must be moving up in the world, because Evelyn actually said hello to me in the elevator this morning.”

Everyone laughed. Evelyn had operated the members-only elevator for twenty-seven years. She never said hello to anyone.

“Well, cheap seats or no, it’s so nice to have you back,” Beauchamp said. “I want to say how proud this old Republican is to see you moving down Pennsylvania Avenue, especially with everything that has happened. This country would be hard-pressed to find a better second in command.”

He held up a cautionary finger and pointed to the other Republican members.

“And I don’t have to remind you that everything said within these walls is classified,” he admonished them. “If that leaks out to the whip I’ll deny it!”

Everyone laughed again. What might have been a very tense atmosphere loosened considerably.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.” Beechum smiled up at the courtly gentleman. Though Washington crawled with all manner of backbiting parasites, Beauchamp was honest to a fault. “Why don’t we get down to it then.”

She reached for the briefing book James had carried in. West Wing staffers had prepared a redacted version of the CIA’s Presidential Daily Briefing. It outlined information the president felt comfortable handing to this notorious sieve of secrets.

“As you may have seen on cable news, a new Islamic fundamentalist group has claimed credit for both sets of attacks. They call themselves Ansar ins Allah, and though we don’t have a lot of information about them, the FBI is working closely with the Department of Homeland Security and the CIA to follow up on literally thousands of leads.”

“There is talk of a connection between Saudis and radical Islamic cells here in the U.S.” A committee member from Alabama spoke up. “Do you believe these people infiltrated this country illegally or are they naturalized Arab Americans?”

“First of all, we don’t even know that they are Arabs,” Beechum explained. “The State Department has identified dangerous Islamic fundamentalist groups in at least eleven countries around the world. It would be entirely premature to ascribe this to any one geographic region.”

“Oh, come on, Elizabeth,” another member said. “Everyone is reporting that the FBI has an Arab in custody. They’re saying he is a Saudi by birth. Is that not true?”

“It’s true that we have detained a naturalized American of Saudi birth,” she admitted. “But we haven’t determined that he had anything to do with the airliner plot.”

“Has he been arrested?” the chairman asked. “Is he being interrogated?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss his status,” Beechum said. She knew how this would sound. She well remembered White House stonewalling during the 9/ 11 aftermath. “All I can tell you is that we are looking closely at several countries with a history of state sponsorship, and . . .”

“Including Saudi Arabia?” the senator from Alabama interrupted.

“Including Saudi Arabia. It’s no secret that the House of Saud has questionable ties. They’ve come to this committee’s attention in the past. Remember, though—we have to exercise due diligence in all aspects of this investigation. It would be negligent to focus on a single group or country at this point.”

The member from Alabama slapped the table in front of him.

“Knew it!” he exclaimed. “I’ll tell y’all what . . . the Saudis have been playing us for fools way too long now. I highly recommend, Madam Vice President, that you stand up down there in the Oval Office the way you stood up before this committee. Somebody needs to make sure politics doesn’t stand in the way of justice.”

“Follow the money,” another committee member agreed. “Somebody had to cough up financial support for this. There’s bound to be a trail.”

“What about SIGINT?” another member asked.

“I told you we should have upped appropriations for domestic security!”

“Where do we think they’ll strike next?”

The questions came fast and furious, absent the traditional decorum. The chairman banged his gavel.

“Order,” he said in a firm, even tone. “I’ll have order.”

“Please”—Beechum held up her hand, trying to keep the others from piling on—“the veteran members of this committee know as well as I do that things aren’t always what they seem. In fact, they seldom are what they seem. I assure you that our intelligence community is wearing the shine off their shoes, turning over rocks from here to Damascus. We believe these attacks have run their course now, and that . . .”

The door opened behind her, and a Secret Service agent marched deliberately toward the witness table. Beechum felt a cold chill up her spine just looking at his face.

“Excuse me,” the agent said, approaching the vice president. He was a bodyguard, not an expert on Robert’s Rules of Order.

Beechum turned in her chair as the man leaned in to tell her something. This was the shift commander. He wouldn’t have interrupted with anything less than a summons from the Oval Office.

“I’m sorry, ma’am . . .” The agent spoke softly now, just louder than a whisper. “The president has requested that you return to the White House immediately.”

She nodded gravely.

“Did he tell you why?”

“Not really, ma’am, but there’s a story all over the news. Somebody broke into a research lab down at the University of Louisville. A significant quantity of radioactive material is missing. Two security guards were killed. Ansar ins Allah is claiming credit.”

Beechum gathered her papers and stood.

“Please forgive me, Mr. Chairman,” she said. “I’ll send someone with an update just as soon as we have more answers. Until then, I suggest you confer with leadership. Based on what I’ve just heard, things may not be as stable as we had hoped.”

To an eruption of questions, accusations, and outright demands, the vice president of the United States got up, turned toward the Secret Service shift commander, and left without so much as a good-bye.

NEW YORK SAGGED
under the weight of its worst blizzard in decades, but the snow had already begun to melt by the time Sirad emerged from the Albemarle Building. Three nights she had slept inside the building, popping out of the Rabbit Hole only for an occasional shower and catnaps on her office couch.

The fresh air felt wonderful on her face as Sirad stepped onto Fifth Avenue and turned south. Any other day, she would have called for a car, but not this morning. The bright midmorning sun warmed her face; the smells of new snow and empty streets filled her nose.

No point in fishtailing through the streets in a car,
she had decided.
The subway will serve me better.

It took twenty minutes to work her way down to Grand Central, where she picked up the seven train to Times Square, then the three downtown to Christopher Street. From there it was a short walk to the Soho House on Ninth Avenue. A pretty receptionist greeted her just inside the door to New York’s only private membership hotel.

“I’ll ring his room,” the clerk said in a refined British accent. Sirad imagined it something around High Street, Kensington.