America (41 page)

“F-16s, I heard,” said the Toadman. “The Pentagon was a madhouse today. Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, or Miami. Serious money can be made if you can guess
America
's next target.”

A half hour later, when the two men left, Jake and Callie got a few minutes alone.

“This whole mess is a monstrous tragedy,” she told him.

He nodded.

“Do you want to listen to the news? Toad left us a battery-operated radio that he got somewhere.”

“Nope. The news is all bad. After a while I just can't listen anymore.”

“Did Ilin tell you anything useful?”

“Nothing specific. You gotta read between the lines, and it's tough. He talks and talks, sort of like Greenspan; doesn't say a whole lot. If that house was bugged and the Russian ambassador was listening, he can tell Moscow that Ilin didn't betray a solitary secret.”

“Did he say anything of substance?”

“Not so you'd notice. He said he thought the theft of the submarine was an inside job. Hell, that's my opinion too.”

When Callie went to get ready for bed, Jake sat down in his easy chair and tilted the thing back. He closed his eyes, recalling Ilin's words, how he had said them.

Ilin may have suspected the day was a show for his benefit, or worse, a ploy to trap him into making statements that could be used to blackmail him. Even so, did he point the way?

When Callie came back into the room ten minutes later she found her husband asleep. She spread an afghan over him and left him there.

*   *   *

He awoke several hours later. From the window he looked out at the dark city, silent except for occasional passing cars. The governor of Virginia had ordered out the National Guard to help prevent looting in the Virginia suburbs that were still without power, so occasionally an olive-drab truck or Humvee went slowly down the street.

Billions of dollars in damages in Washington and New York, several hundred people dead here, probably some dozens in New York, a submarine lost … for what?

He thought he had the pieces of the puzzle. If he could just put them together in the proper way.

The stakes were huge. That was obvious. Whoever was behind this was betting the ranch, so the payoff must be equally huge.

Think big, Jake. Big.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In the days following the attack on New York, Americans held their breath, waiting for the ax to fall again.

When it became plain that months would be required to return electrical service to normal levels in New York and Washington, people abandoned the cities in mass exoduses, overwhelming transportation and human services agencies. The simple truth that everyone was discovering was that modern cities require electricity to function; without it, they are uninhabitable.

The towns and cities that surrounded the dead urban metroplexes were flooded with refugees, many of whom were without a place to live or the means to pay for it. The inability of the authorities to deal with the sheer numbers of people who needed food, water, and a place to sleep resulted in a survival-of-the-fittest attitude that led, in some of the most crowded places, to a breakdown in law and order.

In addition to the emptying of the stricken cities, people in significant numbers throughout the eastern United States fled undamaged cities, choking highways and gridlocking public transportation. There was little panic, but the people leaving the cities had made up their minds and were not dissuaded by urgent entreaties from elected officials, or by less subtle closings of key roads and bridges by state police on orders from governors trying to manage the mess. Determined knots of people ignored and taunted police officers, pushed police vehicles out of the way, and went where they wanted to go.

This massive displacement of people was unprecedented in American history. Some commentators were reminded of the scenes of people fleeing from the advancing Nazi armies during World War II.

It was obvious that armed force was going to be necessary to enforce order, but elected politicians were unwilling to take that step for a variety of reasons, not the least of which, the president told his cabinet, was that the men and women in uniform might refuse to obey orders if those orders required firing on unarmed civilians. This danger was real, General Alt advised.

Huddled at Camp David with his advisers, the president realized that if he lost control of the armed forces, the federal and state governments in America would collapse in the resulting anarchy. What might happen then was too horrible to contemplate. Still, he had already ordered National Guard units to patrol Washington, D.C., and New York City, so he federalized more guard units to patrol the major cities that were being abandoned: Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Pittsburgh, Charleston, Savannah, Richmond, Norfolk, and a host of others.

He also made a speech, quoting the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The words did have a quieting effect, but they weren't enough. The economy was coming unwound, businesses were laying off employees by the thousands, the stock market was in free fall, and all over America people realized that the country was on the cusp of an economic depression.

USS
America
was somewhere in the Atlantic, and everyone knew it. Any day, any hour, more Tomahawk E-warheads could burst … anywhere.

So everyone waited.

*   *   *

Two days after the strike on New York, Vladimir Kolnikov brought
America
up under a storm system in the central Atlantic and raised the communications mast above the surface. He kept it there for five minutes, just long enough to record a dose of CNN's headline news on the hour.

He and Turchak listened, then erased the tape.

“We can't launch a missile without Rothberg to program the flight path,” Turchak said, pointing out the obvious, more to stimulate Kolnikov than anything else.

Kolnikov grunted. He had said little in the last two days, preferring to keep his own counsel.

“They don't know that,” Turchak continued, waving generally eastward.

“Umm.”

“Of course, we don't know where the attack submarines are, where the Americans have placed their ASW forces.”

“I don't want them to catch us shallow,” Kolnikov said finally. “Let's go back down, slowly, updating the sonar model.”

“Same course as before?”

“Yes.”

With that, Kolnikov wandered toward the captain's cabin to try again to take a nap. He hadn't been sleeping well. He hadn't mentioned it to anyone, but he was exhausted. A guilty conscience, he told himself. You'll get over it.

*   *   *

Toad Tarkington brought a television from home—he lived in Morningside, far enough from the locus of the E-warhead blasts that the electronics in his home had not been affected. With a satellite dish on the windowsill and some fancy jury-rigging, the office crowd got it up and running. They kept the idiot box tuned to CNN.

Jake Grafton was at his desk studying the information on the files Tommy Carmellini had stolen from the Jouany firm in London when Toad stuck his head in the door. “They're interviewing Jouany, Admiral. You might be interested in this.”

Jake stood in the doorway and watched. Carmellini was there, as was the rest of the staff. Stranded in a dead city, everyone seemed to want to come to the office. To visit, even if no productive work could be accomplished.

Antoine Jouany was a short, rotund sixtyish man with only wisps of hair on his perfectly round head. He spoke excellent English with a French accent.

“Of course I am making a fortune trading currencies on behalf of my investors. I apologize to no one. Our economic models suggested that the American economy was overextended, so we sold dollars and purchased euros. Events beyond our control have left us looking quite brilliant. Today. Had the dice rolled the other way, no one would have shed a tear for us.”

The interviewer asked just how many billions Jouany's activities had generated, and he refused to answer. “This is not the time or place for such a discussion.”

“What is your prediction? Will the dollar continue to slide?”

“I have no crystal ball. Common sense suggests that the decline is not over.”

“You must admit, Monsieur Jouany, that your massive bet against the dollar was fortuitous, to say the least.”

“‘Fortune favors the bold.' That is a quote, but I do not know who said it.”

“Today your attorneys filed a libel suit against a columnist for an American newspaper who suggested your good luck might be more than fortune.”

“Indeed they did. There is not a word of truth to that charge. That newspaper is distributed here in the United Kingdom, so we sued here. British libel law is quite clear. We defend our honor.”

There was more, but Jake went back to his desk. The names, Alt, Stalnaker, Le Beau … Grafton! And Blevins. All these military officers supposedly had investment accounts with Jouany's firm. Was that the fact that had been leaked to the columnist? If so, it would certainly come out in the libel suit. It was untrue, of course, but it would cast a pall of suspicion over those officers. Would lead to investigations and charges and countercharges in the press and in Congress. A lot of smoke.

He went back to the door and called for Carmellini, who came in to Jake's office. Jake indicated a chair and closed the door.

“Let's do the timetable again. When did your supervisor tell you of the Jouany problem?”

Carmellini consulted the calendar on Jake's desk before he answered. “Fourteen weeks ago, at least, Admiral. We targeted Sarah Houston and I started working on her about twelve weeks ago, in early June.”

“But the Jouany operation predated the loss of the SuperAegis satellite?”

“Well, looking back on it, I guess it did. The Jouany firm had been selling dollars and buying euros for months.”

“Was the date for the London break-in set when they first told you to meet Sarah Houston?”

“No. It couldn't be. We had no idea just how fast I could get her into a situation where we could put her out. I'm good, but I ain't James Bond. We knew something about the security setup and knew we needed eyeprints and fingerprints to get access.”

“The other night you told me about always getting into her computer, regardless of the password, on the third try.”

“Right.”

“What if you hadn't gotten in?”

“I didn't expect to. I went there to steal the hard drive. Obviously, if I took it they would know I had it, so I tried to finesse 'em. Whoever set me up didn't expect me to learn that any old password would do. They wanted me to get in, open the door for NSA hackers, then go sashaying home proud as punch about how I played that outfit like a fiddle. So I didn't do it.”

“You're a difficult employee, Tommy.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“The CIA still doesn't know you're in Washington?”

“I suspect they do, but they don't know where. Or if they do, they haven't come after me. I'm doing okay bunking at Tarkington's. He's got beer in the fridge. Hell, he's got a fridge. My apartment is in the dead zone. I hate to think what the refrigerator is going to be like when I get back.”

“Tell me again about the CIA's London man.”

“McSweeney, a real piece of work. The Brits have to know he's CIA. He might as well wear the black T-shirt with the big white letters. They know as much about his business as he does. Maybe more.”

“That's an opinion.”

“He makes no secret of the fact he's CIA. He tools around London like he was an earl on an expense account. They know what he eats, where he eats it, when he eats it, who he screws, when he screws, everything.”

“So what do you want to do? Go back to the CIA? Tell them you are alive and well inside the Beltway, reporting back?”

“No, sir. I've submitted my letter of resignation. I'd just as soon hang out with you and Tarkington until my time runs out, then sort of sift on out of here. If the Langley crowd never sees my smiling face again, that'll be fine by me. If they get pissy maybe you can tell them you had me sweating in your shop?”

“I don't think the federal personnel regs work just that way,” Jake Grafton said. “Why don't you just drop them a note and tell them you quit? I'll even buy the stamp.”

“Geez, I would, Admiral, but there are some old felony investigations lying around in various prosecutors' offices. The statute of limitations has run on some of that stuff, but some of it's still hot. To make a long story short, the CIA sorta drafted me a few years back. Now I want to move on to a more lucrative career. A man's got to make his way in the world, seek his fortune, save a little for his old age.”

A hint of a smile made Jake's lips twitch. “I see,” he said. “Involuntary servitude, in this enlightened age. Who would have thought it?” He made a sound with his tongue.

“Shocking, I know,” Carmellini said earnestly. “I normally don't trot out my troubles at the office, but I am in kind of a bind.”

“I'll do some research on the personnel regs. It'll take a few days.”

“Fine. Anything I can do to help, just say so.”

“Well, there is one thing. This list is going to start stinking one of these days. Who is Sarah Houston?”

“I don't know,” Carmellini said, his brows knitting.

“If you were going to find out, how would you go about it?”

“I've got her eyeprints and fingerprints. I—”

“Do you?”

“Well, I've got someone's.”

“Talk to Tom Krautkramer when he comes in. Get a real name to go with your eyeprints and fingerprints. Let me know what you find out.”

“Yes, sir.”

Next through Jake's door was Captain Sonny Killbuck. “What is the navy doing to find the SuperAegis satellite?” was Jake's question.