White: A Novel (7 page)

“We are bringing you back in,” the voice advised. “Tonight. The concierge has a ticket for you downstairs.”

Back in?
Jeremy wondered. His initial instructions called for him to fly out the next morning to Ramstein, Germany, for a debriefing, then back to his TDY duty station in Baghdad.

“I trust you’ve seen the news?” the voice asked.

Jeremy swallowed hard, trying to slow his heart rate and breathing. He grabbed the remote and flipped to BBC World.

Images of broken, mangled bodies. A bomb. Devastation. The slug line said Atlanta.

“Don’t miss your plane,” the man said. “We need you stateside as soon as possible.”

Jeremy heard the phone go dead, then turned back to televised images of the carnage. Something had gone terribly wrong; something more than what he had just seen in the jungle. The pit in his stomach told him they had to be related.

III

Tuesday, 15 February

00:55 GMT

Reagan National Airport, Alexandria, Virginia

NO ONE PAID
any attention to the Merry Maids cleaning van that appeared out of the snow and pulled up to a high-rise luxury apartment building at 21789 Madison Road. The driver—a dark-skinned Indonesian working illegally on a student visa—parked in a handicapped space. He yanked the collar of his jacket up around his neck and walked around the back of the van. A passenger joined him at the rear doors, a white man who called himself Ralph.

“I take da cart,” the driver said, pointing out what he wanted the other man to accomplish. He spoke only broken English and weighed little more than the brooms he pushed, but everyone at Merry Maids marveled that this man could clean toilets like a world afire. “You carry shoulder bag.”

The passenger wrapped a scarf around his face against the cold and snow, then did as he was told.

“Cold as a witch’s tit, out here, ain’t it,” Ralph said, less a question than small talk. He waited for the driver to retrieve his rolling workstation and followed him inside to the reception desk. A uniformed doorman sat near the back of a grand marble foyer.

“Sign the book an’ list yo’ place o’ destination.” The doorman pointed to a loose-leaf binder where other visitors had scribbled indecipherable scratch.

The Indonesian attempted to show his company ID, but the doorman couldn’t have cared less. He looked past his visitors to consider the snow piling up outside. He had two hours left in his shift and did not look forward to what would surely be a miserable commute.

The passenger left the scarf around his face, clapping his hands together and shuffling his feet to regain some warmth.

“You gonna have ta move that truck,” the doorman said. “I ain’t care, but Ms. Embry in 1411 always watching those handicapped spaces. She’ll call the po-lice and they write yo’ ass up.”

The driver smiled and nodded. “Not worry,” he said. “Company pay ticket.”

“Suit yissef.” The doorman shrugged. They were all like this, these cleaning people. Never cared about what he said, even if they spoke English, which they seldom did. Most of the time, they were Chinamen or Mexicans or Puerto Ricans, jabbering in their own tongues. And Russians; lots of Russians lately. Shame to see a brother stooping.

With that, the two sanitation professionals pushed their work cart to the elevators and stepped inside the farthest to the right. The driver pressed twelve and waited as the car shot upward.

“How about I go get started on 2110,” the passenger said when the doors opened.

“I start twelve floor,” the Indonesian agreed. He nodded once, then held up the Nextel phone Merry Maids gave all their DC workers. “Call me when ready. I come up.”

“Yeah,” the passenger agreed. The Indonesian pushed his cart off the elevator and disappeared down the corridor, seeking his appointed toilets.

Once the doors closed, however, the passenger rode up eight more flights. When the doors opened, he walked out of the elevator and down the corridor to a service entrance. He opened the unlocked door and hurried up a few more steps to another door that opened out onto the massive building’s snow-covered roof.

Within minutes, he had found himself a lee on the roof’s northwest corner. He knelt down behind the waist-high parapet.

RRRRRRRRRRRR . . .

An unsettling rumble grew on the northern horizon and filled the air around him with a hoarse, deafening noise. The passenger looked up and out toward Washington DC, which lay out there someplace in the waning storm. Within seconds, he saw it. Due north, looking like they might fly directly into him, came two enormous headlights, then the distinctive nose cone of a 747-400.

Air France flight 176 from Charles de Gaulle International seemed to hang in the air as it approached, traveling more than 150 knots but almost stationary relative to his position in the flight path. It looked as though it might fall out of the sky with the snow.

The Merry Maid showed no expression as the plane roared just to the right of him, off the building’s eastern shoulder. He watched until the red and green warning lights disappeared; then he reached down and unzipped the case.

He pulled out three heavy steel rifle components: a gas-operated receiver group, a black polymer stock assembly, and a massive fluted barrel tipped with a quatro-ported muzzle break. Even to an experienced shooter, the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle was a formidable sight to behold. With a maximum effective range of 1,800 meters, a ten-round magazine, and bullets the size of pinecones, this semiautomatic doomsday device was the only low-signature, hand-portable weapon capable of penetrating the windscreen glass of a 747 airliner. Topped with a decent scope, it could accomplish irrevocable harm.

Now all I’ve got to do is keep from freezing to death,
the passenger thought. He checked his watch and hunkered down behind the rifle. Snow descended quietly around him, covering the rooftop and the sniper with more of its anonymous coating of white.

“HAVE YOU TIMED
this out?” the president asked. He led the way down a broad corridor that seemed to sag with the gravity of his presence.

“The computer clocks it at eight minutes,” Andrea Chase answered. She read as she walked, trying desperately to keep up with the president’s exaggerated stride and the “Blue Thing”—a twice-daily summary of incoming cable traffic and key reporting. Chase still hadn’t read a second package distilled from highlights of the CIA’s Presidential Daily Briefing, the State Department’s INR summary, and White House Press Office media clippings.

“This speech is full yet succinct; firm yet compassionate,” Chase said. “That’s just what we want to project to the American public right now.”

The former CEO of a New Haven insurance company, Chase had never handled anything more intense than hurricanes and hailstorms, but that didn’t stop her from rising to the challenge. A number cruncher by trade, she felt more than capable of making the transition from insurance claims to body counts.

“Good.” Venable nodded. “We need to reassure people without getting too dramatic. Don’t want to overstate our downside.”

“Best if you stick to the script, Mr. President,” Chase suggested. David Ray Venable was a brilliant executive, but his mouth sometimes found it hard to contain a stream of consciousness that flowed like the Niagara. “Get in and out quickly.”

“Spineless cowards,” he growled, practicing the high points of his speech. “Unrelenting commitment to justice . . . will not stand . . . track them down wherever they hide . . . national resolve . . . individual integrity . . . renewed vigilance . . .”

The president practiced his hand movements as he walked. He had worked as a speech coach during the early days of his political career and considered the public demonstration of emotion one of his greatest strengths.

“You tell whoever is operating that teleprompter that I pause a lot for effect, understand? Long pauses sometimes. They need to pay attention so I don’t look like I’m reading this thing, especially when we get to the part about individual integrity.”

“I’ll supervise it personally,” Chase said. She continued highlighting salient features of the intelligence reports, prioritizing and organizing.

“Matthew?” the president asked. “Anything new I need to know?”

Matthew Havelock struggled to keep up. He gave up more than eight inches of leg to the six-foot-three commander in chief and had made the mistake of changing into brand-new shoes for the speech. The leather soles slipped so badly on the slick wool rug, he had to shuffle on his heels to keep from falling.

“Uh, yes, sir,” Havelock said. He forced his natural tenor down a couple stops to lend his voice substance. “Homeland Security apparently has a good lead on a radical Islamic group associated with a Columbus mosque. They have been under surveillance for some time, and the FBI is working on a FISA warrant for their . . .”

“FISA warrants? Goddammit, I told you to speak English. I don’t have time for . . .”

“Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” he spit out. “A secret sneak-and-peek warrant. No notification of service. They think this group may be related to our bombers, and we don’t want to tip our hand.”

“Good.”

The president suddenly looked a little less exhausted.

“Pencil in ‘cautiously optimistic’ where I talk about the best efforts of our law enforcement and intelligence communities,” Venable said. He carried no copy of the speech; years of campaigning had refined his near photographic memory to a keen edge.

“To place our trust in a just and righteous God!” He cocked his head, trying to decide on the proper inflection, then said it again. “To place our trust in a just and righteous . . . where the hell is Alred, anyway? He should be here in case we get anything at the last minute!”

Chase shook her head. She had intentionally winnowed the president’s immediate circle down to Havelock and herself. Now almost forty hours without sleep, Venable had fallen a bit too susceptible to suggestion. Reducing the number of voices in the president’s ear allowed her to control a few more variables. If she could just get him through the speech and into bed, the national security staff would manage the details of this crisis while he slept.

“We have him in constant contact, sir,” she said. “Vick as well. Anything happens, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Good,” Venable said. “How’s my color?”

He stopped abruptly to consider himself in a gilt-framed mirror that dated to the Taft administration.

“Color’s fine, sir.” Chase nodded. She lied, of course. He looked sallow and spent despite a healthy application of pancake stage makeup.

“All right.” Chase changed the subject. “I’ve just gone through the latest intelligence estimates, and we have one issue that didn’t make the speech.”

Venable adjusted his tie, listening.

“Ali Fallal Mahar, the leader of Jemaah Islamiya, has been found in a jungle somewhere in Indonesia. He was killed during an arrest attempt along with two other senior terrorists.”

“That’s good news, right?” Venable said. “Gotta be. Jemaah what?”

Chase wrote Jemaah Islamiya in large letters on a yellow legal pad. “Here, I wrote it down for you. Adlib no more than two sentences near the end as confirmation that we’re onto these guys. Got it?”

“Got it.” He adjusted his lapels and lifted his chin to properly position the tie knot.

“Good. Let’s do this.”

Chase stopped outside the Roosevelt Room. Inside, a lone broadcast-feed camera faced a mahogany partners desk and a Federal parlor chair. Venable had argued that he should stand for the speech, but Chase prevailed. Sitting made him look more relaxed.

“The country is ready for you, Mr. President,” Chase said. She offered up a look of complete confidence.

Venable nodded and started toward the chair.

“Is it Islameeeya or Islamiiiiya?” he asked, taking his seat.

“Remember what I told you,” Havelock answered. The national security advisor swelled up with pride at standing second to a statesman about to face his country. “America wants gravitas . . . a president willing to make the tough calls and stand behind them. Stay away from that spy crap; it will just confuse them.”

JEREMY LEANED BACK
into his chair, staring at a perfectly acceptable plate of chicken cordon bleu served with steamed asparagus, fennel, and an arugula salad. The meal sat on bone china, with a cloth napkin, leaded glass goblet . . . and a plastic fork.

What a difference nineteen men with box cutters have made,
Jeremy thought. He turned his head out the window and looked down on a sea of storm clouds, which seemed endless from where he sat. The slow drone of the 747’s four monster engines coaxed back toward what would have been twelve hours of sleep without the connection in San Francisco.

How different the world seemed since 9/ 11.

It wasn’t the grandmothers spread-eagled at airport magnetometers that shocked him; not the color-coded terror alerts, the massive new spending, not even the broad indifference with which most Americans considered the threat.

No, what amazed Jeremy was the sea change in his government’s willingness to get dirty. Things only whispered in years past were now discussed openly in strategy sessions. Renditions that once had depended on host-country approval now occurred without so much as notification. Torture had become routine. Warlords were bought outright; shot when they reneged.

Assassination,
the nasty-sounding administrative action outlawed by Gerald R. Ford in executive order 12333, had gained a new sparkle. Now called “neutralizing targets of military importance,” the deliberate execution of individuals fell within a rubric known as “military actions other than war.”

What struck Jeremy most of all was the lack of oversight and interest. No one seemed to question rule of law in the war on terror. Not Congress, not the media, not even average Americans. It signified a revolution in matters of state, a shift in the collective will of a wounded democracy. Some things needed to get done; better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.