America (24 page)

*   *   *

In London, Tommy Carmellini awakened from a nap to find the American media circus on most of the channels of his television. He watched the White House burn, horrified and fascinated at the same time.

He left the tube on while he showered and shaved, dressed, hung up his clothes in the closet, checked the attaché case the CIA man who met him at the airport had handed him when he dropped Tommy at the hotel. After looking over the contents of the case very carefully, he closed and locked it.

He turned off the television only when dusk had fallen and he was ready to go find something to eat. He took the attaché case with him.

At ten o'clock he walked two blocks to a pub. He ordered a cider and was sipping it in a booth against the back wall, making it last, when the door opened and Terrell McSweeney walked in. He saw Tommy, ordered a pint, then brought it over to the booth.

“Good to see you,” McSweeney said. “What's it been, three months?”

“Something like that.”

“Seen any television today?”

“A little, before I left the hotel.”

“Holy damn. Sounds as if somebody declared war on the guys in the white hats. They shot the shit outta Washington last night. A stolen submarine, no less. Beats the hell outta me what the world is coming to.”

McSweeney was CIA, of course, attached to the London embassy. He was over fifty, balding, porking up, with a braying voice. If the Brits didn't know he was a spook they were complete, utter incompetents.

“Maybe terrorists, you think?” Carmellini asked.

“Iraqis, I bet. Before it's over we'll find Saddam had his eye glued to the periscope.”

“I always wondered, McSweeney. Tell me, do the Brits know you're a spook?”

McSweeney snorted. “Of course they know. I go to conferences with them all the time. When they want something from us, they call me. Every Brit spook has me on his Rolodex.”

“Umm.”

“I know, you're thinking that maybe we should have had a covert officer contact you. Well, hell, I know what the book says, but this is the real world. I mean, who in the hell are we fooling anyway.”

“I saw the barkeep give you the high sign when you came in. You ever use this pub before?”

“I have a pint here a couple times a week, sure.”

“You're a real horse's ass, McSweeney, a professional joke. I've half a mind to walk out that door and grab the next plane back to the States.”

“Don't give me any of your shit, Carmellini. I'm in charge in London. Me! This is my turf.”

“You're compromising
me,
asshole!”

“Hell, we're only doing burglary tonight, not espionage.”

“That's a relief. I was so worried! But if I get caught and charged with anything, I'm taking you down with me. I'll squeal like a stuck pig. I'll even make stuff up.”

“I've got immunity, man, and three years to go to retirement. Tell 'em any goddamn thing you want.”

Tommy Carmellini rubbed his forehead. Why, Lord, why?

“Every other guy in the company is some kind of asshole,” he said to McSweeney. “Does this work appeal only to assholes, or did working for the company turn you into one? Has there ever been a study on that?”

“They got you, didn't they?”

Carmellini drained his cider and slid out of the booth. He reached for the attaché case. “I'll be outside when you get finished swilling that beer. Take your time. I don't want to talk to you any more than absolutely necessary.”

“Fuck you.”

“Thanks, but I've been fucked before.”

“And a good job they did of it, too.”

Working with idiots, he thought. They have me working with flaming idiots. It's been like that on and off since the day I got into this outfit. Oh sure, there are a few good people, and every now and then you find a gold nugget in a pile of dirt.

Almost an hour passed before Terrell McSweeney came strolling from the pub. From the smell of him, he had had a couple more beers. “I thought the bobbies would get you out here for soliciting.” He led the way to his car, which he unlocked with a button on his key ring.

Once they were in, McSweeney said, “Let's cut the friendly crap and get serious here. The target is the computers of the Antoine Jouany firm. Washington wants to know how big this guy is betting against the dollar and who is behind him. Anything you can get that answers that question will be appreciated. Get it and get outta there. And use one of those E-grenades in the attaché case on the security computer.”

“I got a brief in Washington.”

“I don't know why they always say Jouany's betting against the dollar,” McSweeney continued. “What he's really doing is betting on the euro. He probably just thinks euros are gonna pop. I do. Stuff ain't cheap over here, but Europe is jumping. Euros got nowhere to go but up. France and Germany aren't going in the crapper.”

“Thank you, Chairman Greensweeney.”

“I'll just find a spot to park this buggy and wait for you.”

“This an embassy car?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don't you get a couple of those magnetic signs for the doors that say CIA in big bold letters? Or maybe a logo, an eye peeping through a keyhole?”

“We already got a bumper sticker.”

*   *   *

Jake Grafton didn't expect to find anyone in the liaison offices in the Crystal City Tower, across the parking lot and street from the Pentagon. Many of the commuters had driven in from the suburbs—a trek from hell, avoiding disabled vehicles—only to find that without electrical power or telephone service, nothing could be accomplished in the inner city. Jake went to the office to change clothes and think about the entire situation before he walked home. Toad had already set out for his house, worried about his son and the nanny. Jake hadn't heard from Callie—without telephones he was not going to—and he was exhausted and anxious to go home and sleep. Still, he thought he should check the office.

It wasn't empty. He found two secretaries and a staff officer in the warm, stuffy spaces. No one else. They were debating emptying the refrigerator of leftover lunches before things started to rot. Blevins, they said, hadn't been in.

In the closet of his office Jake kept a jogging outfit. It was cleaner than his uniform, which he had worn for two days and a night. He put it on, yet was so tired he had to sit to tie the laces on the tennis shoes. He didn't know if he had the energy to jog the three miles home.

He was trying to work up energy to get started when the door opened and Helmut Mayer walked in. “Are you still here, Admiral? I was expecting no one.”

“Getting ready to run home.”

“I will drive you, if you wish. A friend in the suburbs brought me a car earlier today.”

Jake was genuinely grateful. He put his feet up on the desk and talked over the situation with the German. While they were talking Janos Ilin arrived. He too had a car. “I am a believer now,” Ilin said. “You must have a car in America. Everyone.”

The foreigners were full of news. Power in Washington would take at least ten days to restore, the telephone system perhaps a week, the men reported. Their embassies had hardened electrical systems and emergency generators, so they had been listening to the cable news networks.

“The networks have learned the name of the pirate captain who stole your submarine,” Ilin said, making a steeple of his fingers. “Vladimir Kolnikov.” He said it in the Russian way. “The reporters are besieging our embassy, wanting to know whatever it is we know about him, which is of course nothing at all.”

“Did your government know that Kolnikov was being trained by the CIA?” Jake Grafton asked conversationally.

“So the story is true?” Ilin replied.

“Today we deal only in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. You knew that before the news broke, didn't you?”

“Ah, Jake, you overestimate the capabilities of my government. Once we were very capable, there is no argument about that, but now, with the political situation such as it is and the destitute condition of the government, we are not so capable.”

“What a storyteller you are, Ilin,” Mayer said in his flavorful Germanic English.

“So answer me a question,” Ilin continued, looking at Grafton and ignoring Mayer. “Did the CIA really intend to steal a Russian submarine, or is that only a tale for the children's hour?”

“Is that what the television dudes say?”

“Yes.”

Jake Grafton spread his hands and shrugged. “I don't go to meetings at that level. I have heard a rumor to that effect. I cannot swear to its veracity.”

Ilin went to the window and looked out. There were other cars on the street now, almost as many as there usually were, and most of the disabled vehicles had been pushed up onto the sidewalks or towed. “There are many accidents at intersections,” he told the two men behind him. “Americans need traffic lights.”

“Let us call it a day, gentlemen,” Jake said. “Herr Mayer, I will accept your kind offer of a ride home. But before we go, let me leave you two with something to think about. May I do that?”

Mayer and Ilin nodded.

“The White House was the target of a guided missile last night, with our head of state in residence. The Secret Service hustled him and his family out of the building, so they weren't hurt, although at least two people were killed by the fire. Several airliners crashed, killing all aboard, and people died all over the city when pacemakers and defibrillators and hospital equipment were knocked out.

“Gentlemen, the attack on this city last night resulted in at least four hundred deaths at last count. Four hundred twenty-nine was the last number I heard. That attack could well be construed as an act of terrorism. Or war! Perhaps both. The blood of innocent people is on the hands of the people behind this attack and cannot be washed off. Prophet that I am, I foretell a bad end for the people responsible for last night's atrocities. They will pay the ultimate price.”

Neither man said anything.

Jake continued: “A threshold has been crossed. There is no going back. Regardless of what the politicians say later, the public will demand that those responsible pay in blood.”

“I will pass your views to my government,” Ilin said.

“You do that,” Jake Grafton shot back. “I don't make American policy, but you can take it to the bank: When the identity of the culprits is known, the pressure on the politicians for revenge will be irresistible.”

“I hope no government is behind this attack,” Mayer said. “That would be a great tragedy.”

“Indeed it would,” Jake said. “Indeed it would.”

*   *   *

The guard in the lobby of the Jouany building in the old City of London had been bought, according to the Langley briefer. Just say the magic words and he'll let you by and forget you ever existed.

Carmellini had winced when he heard that. After a suspected security breach, the lobby guard was the very first person an investigator would question. Any decent investigator would wire the guard to a lie detector. And giving a guard a wad of cash before the entry … of course the guy was going to spend it and attract attention. It was almost as if the agency didn't care if Carmellini got caught.

Two weeks. Then he would bid this silly band of paper-pushing bozos good-bye and be off to bigger and better things. If he wasn't in jail somewhere awaiting trial.

The guard was reading a newspaper when he walked in. There was a security camera behind him aimed across the desk at Carmellini, another above the arch over the elevator, and a third above the door where he had entered.

Carmellini nodded at the guard and spoke: “Someone told me you are a fan of American baseball.”

“I like the Yankees,” the guard replied as he looked Carmellini over.

“I'm a Braves fan myself,” the American said. He noted that the monitor behind the desk was automatically cycling from one camera to another every ten seconds. No doubt there was a recorder somewhere, probably in the basement security office, capturing this gripping drama on videotape.

“The bank of elevators on the left. Ninth floor.”

“Thanks.”

“All the bigwigs are on the trading floor tonight,” the guard added, but Carmellini just waved a hand as he headed for the elevator.

No cops eyeing him from behind the potted palms, no wailing sirens … just the cameras catching my handsome criminal mug on videotape, he thought bitterly. I'm going to spend the next ten years eating macs and cheese off a plastic tray.

He pushed the button to call the elevator and tried to look slightly bored.

The ninth floor was the upper balcony level. The eighth floor was the lower balcony. The seventh floor, just visible through the floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass that shielded the offices from the elevator waiting area, was the trading floor, the pit. Amid the computer workstations two floors below, Carmellini could see a crowd of people—at least a dozen—staring at screens, talking animatedly, sipping drinks. The people in the pit traded currencies and currency futures around the clock worldwide, according to the Langley briefer. None of the traders seemed to pay any attention to him standing here at this entrance. They were engrossed in their business.

Hot night tonight, Carmellini thought, with the mess in Washington. The dollar was probably getting hammered worldwide.

The security station that controlled the heavy glass door was on the wall at his left. Two security cameras were in the corners, one aimed at the elevator door, the other at the security station. As Carmellini approached the wall-mounted unit, he took two objects from his pocket and glanced at them. A left and a right. They looked like marbles.

The security panel had a slot about six inches across and three inches high in the face of it, about belt high. Left or right hand? Sarah was right-handed, so he put his right hand into the slot. A light illuminated inside the device. He held his hand very still as the scanner read the fingerprints chemically embedded on the flexible plastic sleeves that covered his fingers and thumb. He had sleeves on the fingers of his left hand too, just in case.