America (25 page)

A message appeared on the liquid crystal display at eye level. “Step closer please.”

Right eye, he thought, and used his left hand to hold up the marble labeled “R” about four inches in front of the scanner. He held it as still as he could.

Three seconds passed, four …

“Thank you, Ms. Houston,” flashed on the LCD display, and the main door unlocked with an audible click.

Carmellini went through the doors, then checked his watch. 1:12
A.M
. local time.

Her workstation was in an office halfway along the balcony on the south side of the building, about as far away from a corner office as one could get, Carmellini noted wryly. She had a lot of corporate ladder left to climb.

There was a small finger scanner beside her computer. He used his right forefinger. After a few seconds her computer screen hummed and came to life.

Now all he had to do was type in her password and get to work. Alas, no one at Langley knew her password. Neither did Tommy Carmellini.

He sat staring at the blinking computer prompt, flexing his plastic-encased fingertips, reviewing everything he knew about Sarah Houston one more time. He had been dreading this moment for days, and now it was here. He had, he thought, no more than three bites of the apple before the computer would lock him out. Then his only option would be to disassemble the main computer and steal the hard drive.

On the flight across the Atlantic he had decided on the three keywords he would try, but now, at the moment of truth in front of her computer, his confidence deserted him.

He looked around her desk, at the photo of her parents and the cup full of pencils and pens. He opened the desk drawers, glanced at the contents, stirred the nail file and photos and paper clips and candy bar wrappers around with one finger while he thought it through again. Four of the photos were of Houston and a man, sort of a smarmy guy, Carmellini thought.

He had gone through the items in her purse very carefully when she had been lying drugged in the bed of the New York apartment. What had been in there? Think!

He flexed his fingers carefully, then typed “houston” and hit the Enter key.

No. He was still at the password prompt.

So, what could it be? This was a woman who wrote her four-digit bank PIN numbers on the envelopes that held the ATM cards. A telephone number?

He typed “houston020474.” Her birthday.

No.

Okay, Carmellini, you clever lad. Last chance. He bit his lip.

“houston090602.” Today's date.

Yes. The computer brought up the menu.

Tommy Carmellini found he had been holding his breath. He exhaled explosively.

CHAPTER NINE

“Oh, Jake, I've been so worried.” Callie hugged him fiercely when he walked through the door into the candlelit apartment. He held on and hugged her back.

Finally she led him onto the balcony. “I made soup on the barbecue grill. Can I warm up some for you?”

“Sounds great.”

“Tell me, was it the submarine that did this?” She waved a hand at the dark city.

“Yes.”

“But I thought they didn't have nuclear weapons.”

“They didn't need them. They have ten Tomahawk cruise missiles carrying electromagnetic warheads, called Flashlights. We think two of them exploded over Washington and knocked out the power. A Tomahawk with an explosive warhead hit the White House.”

As she lit the grill, he explained how the warheads worked. “The warhead is basically a flux generator. A coil is wrapped around a metallic tube full of explosives, and an electrical current is run through the coil, creating a magnetic field. The explosion is more of a fast burn than a onetime boom; as the explosive burns, it creates a pressure wave that flares out the tube holding it and pushes the tube into the coil, which creates a short circuit that diverts the current into the undamaged coil that remains. As the explosion progresses, the magnetic field is violently squeezed into a smaller and smaller volume, which is the coil ahead of the explosion. This creates a huge rise in the current in the remaining coil. Just before the warhead destroys itself, the current flows into an antenna, which radiates the pulse outward. The whole process takes about a tenth of a millisecond and pumps out about a trillion watts of power from a seven-hundred-and-fifty-pound warhead.”

“A trillion watts!”

“Yep. Fries switches and blows transformers and generally obliterates computers and telephone systems.”

“Why did they shoot these things at Washington?”

“Guesses are two for a quarter. I don't think anyone in government knows for a fact.”

As he ate his soup by the light of four candles, she asked, “So what is going to happen next?”

“I don't know.”

“Have you any idea where the boat is?”

“Oh, yes.” He gestured to the east. “Out there somewhere.”

“Isn't this the new superstealth submarine?”

“That's right.
America.
”

“What if the navy can't find it? What then?”

Jake Grafton finished the last spoonful of his soup. “I've been thinking about that. The fact is that we probably won't find the sub. Let's see if we can come up with some ideas.” He studied her face in the candlelight. “Those guys can't stay submerged forever. True, they might be suicide commandos, but that's extremely doubtful. Russians and Germans rarely indulge in that kind of thing.”

“They have a plan,” Callie murmured.

“Yeah,” Jake Grafton said. “And they've bet their lives that we can't figure it out.”

*   *   *

His CIA superiors had sent Tommy Carmellini to London because a certain key network of the Antoine Jouany firm was completely shielded from the Internet. Without outside or dial-up access even the best code breakers could not read the information contained on the databases of these machines, which were at the very heart of the Jouany operation. Carmellini's task was to find the software that prevented Internet access and disable it, then type in certain keywords that allowed CIA researchers to access the network database. Or to steal the hard drives.

Once he was on-line, the job took about five minutes, and because he was naturally curious, Tommy Carmellini lingered to examine the information that the CIA wanted to see. The menu listed dozens of files, mostly lists of names of investors, their addresses, and the amount of their account. Files setting forth how much money each fund was worth—well, they were mutual funds, weren't they—and files that accounted for the trading activity, profit and loss of every trade, in each fund. No doubt a competent researcher could quickly learn everything there was to know about Antoine Jouany and Company from studying these files.

Carmellini went to the window, looked down onto the trading floor. The dozen people had swelled to twice that number. They were laughing and drinking champagne. The silver lining of America's black cloud was being celebrated.

Carmellini returned to the computer. Numbers, names, addresses, was that everything?

He was flipping through the files, looking at names, when one leaped at him. Avery Edmond DeGarmo. The director of the CIA?

He stopped scrolling rapidly and began reading every name. Floyd Hoover Stalnaker? Wasn't he the chief of naval operations?

Jacob L. Grafton?

Now wait a minute. Tommy Carmellini stopped scrolling and stared at the screen. The problem was that he knew Jake Grafton. If his Jake Grafton was this Jacob L. Grafton. Had helped him rescue his wife in Hong Kong. Had spent almost a month running errands for him when he was named consul general in Hong Kong.

Grafton's account was worth … $3,489,922? As of the close of business yesterday?

What is going on? Rear Admiral Jake Grafton?

Carmellini dashed to the window, looked again at the crowd on the trading floor. Having a party down there.

He went back to the computer screen.

Jesus, this is pure bullshit. They sent me all the way to London to …

He rubbed his head, tried to get his thoughts in order.

Wow, had he been lucky or what? Houston and today's date.

Slowly he worked his way through the layers of dialogue boxes to get out of the program and shut the computer down. When the screen was dark and the machine off, he placed his right forefinger in the reader and booted it up again.

He paused to scratch his head, then eased over to the window for another look.

Shitty security … DeGarmo hated his guts … he hated the CIA … and here he was.

He typed “Houston” and hit the Enter key.

No.

Typed “Houston” and hit the Enter key again.

No.

Did it a third time and pushed Enter.

Voilà! There was the menu.

Oooh boy!

He escaped out. Shut down the machine while he tried to think.

Booted it up a third time. This time he typed “xxxxx” and hit Enter. The first and second time the computer refused to take it. The third time he was admitted to the inner sanctum. The menu appeared.

Someone had set him up, made absolutely certain that he could get in. Carmellini the computer whiz. Yeah.

He turned off the machine and checked the trading floor one last time. One of the men had apparently had too much champagne and was asleep under a computer stand.

He eased the door shut behind him, made sure it latched, and went looking for the emergency exit. The stairs. Required by the building code, the stairs were always the weak point in the security system.

The door into the stairwell was unlocked, of course, although there was a switch on the door that was undoubtedly wired up to the security desk in the lobby. And, perhaps, in the security office.

Carmellini went down the stairs two at a time.

The door to the lobby was probably unlocked—as required by the fire code—but Carmellini didn't open it. He continued down one flight to the upper level of the basement. The stairwell continued on down to loading docks and various levels of underground parking.

The door out of the stairwell was locked. Carmellini set to work with his set of picks. Again, an alarm might sound at the lobby security desk, but …

It took about thirty seconds to find the right way to open the lock, then Carmellini pulled the door toward him and entered the hallway. Sure enough, there was the door marked “Security.” Presumably the main security computer was in there.

No fancy high-tech lock on the door, just one for a key. Carmellini was in in two minutes flat.

The computer was on and running, with banks of monitors showing the views from various cameras. All this was apparently being recorded digitally on the computer's hard drive.

Carmellini sat down at the keyboard. He used the icon to find the list of persons who worked for the Jouany firm and scrolled to find Sarah Houston's name. He liked her, thought maybe he might take the time after he left the agency to really get to know her. What he would really like to ask her was why her computer let any Tom, Dick, or Harry in on the third attempt. Let's see … Houston, Houston, Houston. Her name wasn't there.

Wasn't there?

But he had gotten in using her finger and eyeprints. No, no one by that name on the list.

So who was the woman he had taken to bed?

He glanced at his watch. McSweeney was outside, and he had said not to waste time.

Tommy Carmellini closed his eyes for a second, trying to sort things out.

No time for that now.

From his pocket he produced an E-grenade, one of his own manufacture. His E-grenade was constructed entirely of explosive and superfast primer cord that he had hardened so that it had the consistency of smooth plastic. All of it would be consumed, leaving only a residue for the forensic experts. He looked the computer over, found the place he wanted, pulled the pin on the grenade and twisted the cap. With the thing armed, he laid it gingerly on the table beside the computer and walked from the room. He was outside the room when he felt the jolt of energy produced by the explosion. So much for the security computer's hard drive.

On his way out of the building he flapped his hand at the lobby guard, who was working with the controls of his television monitor, trying to bring the thing back to life. McSweeney was parked seventy-five feet from the entrance, with the car pointed away from the Jouany building. Carmellini got a glimpse of the man's head behind the wheel.

He walked away in the other direction.

*   *   *

That evening in America the footage was played over and over on every news channel as the chattering class offered running commentaries. The public mood, if the media coverage was any indication, was becoming increasingly shrill. The one thing the chatterers could agree upon, however, was that the administration had made a severe mistake concealing the identity of the hijackers from the public. “They tried to suppress it,” were the words commonly used to describe the government's misguided attempt to keep the secret. An administration spokesperson explained that since the stolen warship carried no nuclear weapons and nothing was known of the motives of the crew, a disclosure of a canceled CIA operation would not have been in the public or national interest.

In any event, the existence of Operation Blackbeard was a secret no longer. Every sentient person on the planet had an excellent opportunity to learn of it by late that evening. And every person with a telephone had an opportunity to comment on the news on the endless local, regional, and national radio talk shows. Many were doing just that.

With or without nuclear weapons, the power of the submarine pirates to cause havoc was beyond dispute. Power company executives predicted that it would take ten days to two weeks to restore electrical service in the heart of the capital and in Reston. The damage to the telephone network was still being assessed, but the one fact all the engineers agreed on was that massive banks of switching units were damaged beyond repair. Computer equipment that had been subject to the electromagnetic pulses of the E-warheads was also junk and would have to be replaced. The immobilized vehicles that littered Washington and Reston were being towed away for repair, which would take weeks, perhaps months, due to the sheer numbers that had been damaged.