DAYBREAK: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 3) (30 page)

In the Russell Building on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on Current and Projected Threats to the US had assembled in a massive room. From her desk on the floor in front of the broad dais, Jennifer looked up at the senators and
ex officio
members, their names on placards in front of them.

Seated along the platform were the National Counterterrorism Center Director, the FBI Director, Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the CIA. There was also the Defense Intelligence Agency Director, and the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research. So many ranks, so many departments.

Conspicuously absent was the director of the NSA and the CSS. In his stead sat Brigadier General Wick, seated behind the FBI Director. Where the other men wore their crisp suits, Wick was in full formal military attire, his medals glinting in the bright overhead lights.

Their names, ranks, positions — these felt pointless. She found it hard to concentrate on them, on who they were, men she had come to know over the years, but men she had never really known at all. She found it hard to keep their names straight in her head, when there was only one name she could think about.

He had been listed in a department brief along with the other bodies discovered at the Heilshorn mansion in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. One name in what the media, with what little they knew, were calling a tragic shootout over the sinister black market enterprise known as XList. Brendan Healy, once a cop on the case of the murdered escort Rebecca Heilshorn, was counted among the dead, his body badly burned.

The men and women on the platform were sworn in, raising their right hands in the air. The
ex officio
group was composed of the same individuals — save for Fogarty, the CIA head — who had served on another recent committee that had found that the CIA had misled the government and the public concerning its interrogation program during the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of Justice had been involved then, too, to testify that the enhanced interrogation tactics employed by the CIA were effective in obtaining unique intelligence helping to disrupt terrorist plots and save lives.

Now the CIA sat on the panel, represented by Fogarty, and it was a former agent of the Department of Justice who was about to be questioned. It was a game of musical chairs. A puppet show.

“Ms. Aiken, thank you for being here today,” said Robert Cole, the Director of National Intelligence. Cole was the ad-hoc chairman of the committee, a handsome man in his mid-sixties with kind eyes.

Jennifer leaned towards the microphone. “Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It’s a pleasure to be here.”

When in Rome
, she thought.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, and the pleasantries were a faint memory. Jennifer was out for blood.

“Mr. Chairman, the face of propaganda is complex. The problems of our country are systemic — most every one of us believes we’re working towards some version of the greater good. And we have a balkanized media to support our worldview.”

She took a nervous fumbling sip of her water, then steadied herself.

“What ultimately brings everyone here today is not some nefarious secret plan. It’s been right out in the open. We have a sort of critical obliviousness as a society, and are prone to the fallacy that everything as it is, will
stay
the way it is. Yet everything around us has evolved and grown. Population, technology, our laws. We normalize it, acclimatize to it, until the next thing comes along. Like cell-phone interceptor towers. Police responding to demonstrations with IRAD sirens and BearCat armored cars and Sky Watch towers. Surveillance that has people detained in airports for their tweets, cops knocking down doors for Facebook posts, FBI investigations launched over ‘Un-American’ sentiment. Or maybe, if you will, Article 215 of the Patriot Act. Liberty’s at a tipping point, Mr. Chairman.”

She took a breath and pressed on.

“The people know they’re being monitored. Some of them consider these instances of detainment as ‘taking one for the team.’ In the interest of that greater good, to disrupt terrorist plots, to stop the next mass murderer or respond to the next Waco. But to anyone who takes a look, there is little to justify these measures. FBI stings that lure in potential threats, aid them in obtaining materials to commit acts of domestic destruction. CIA interrogation tactics not yielding vital information, and then dissembled about. A US citizen today is nearly sixty-times more likely to be killed by an officer of the law than a terrorist. The conspiracy theorists are called paranoid, but I have to wonder, Mr. Chairman, if the paranoia isn’t on the other side? The side that says we justify all of this with the ‘known unknowns’ — the threats we consider possible but have no evidence of. Is it probable that we might actually be contributing to some of these threats? Alexander Heilshorn was out to make money, something obviously sanctioned — practically considered a holy endeavor — in our culture, but perhaps he believed he was serving his nation by aiding in the proliferation of a militarized police force, by contributing to an event which—”

Cole held up his hand and cut her off. “Ms. Aiken, I appreciate your overview of the situation in America. Let that be sufficient. But meandering as deep into conjectural territory as you are about to, you’re implicating the American government in a . . .” He glanced down at his notes, which, Jennifer felt, was purely for effect, “. . . A false-flag event.” He looked up. “Ms. Aiken, we’re not here today for an ethics lesson. We’re here because a terrorist group known as Nonsystem staged and executed a series of cyber-attacks and ground-based attacks on US soil to incapacitate the Internet and wreak havoc on municipal services, to endanger the lives of innocents. An attack on the homeland. Now, you’re sitting there talking about how ineffective our intelligence community is, how despite all our efforts we only glean useless information. But didn’t this intelligence community help to prevent what could have been an even worse attack?”

Jennifer’s heart raced. She glanced to the side and thought she saw General Wick smiling faintly. He was gazing off into the room, as if he couldn’t be bothered to look at her.

“Mr. Chairman . . .”

The hand in the air again, and Cole was bobbing his head as if to say
We’ve heard your story, and we’re finished with it
.

“Ms. Aiken, you should feel proud to have been a part of something that was able to keep a disaster from becoming an apocalypse. And I choose that word with no intent of hyperbole.”

“Mr. Chairman, you make it sound like this is a debriefing—”

“Well, it’s not a
trial
,” he said with sudden force. He glowered at her as his words reverberated throughout the cavernous space.

His outburst had an unexpected effect on her; instead of flustering her or scaring her, Jennifer felt her pulse easing, her breathing relax. Meanwhile, Cole was frustrated, bordering on irate.

“Mr. Chairman,” she said softly, “in discovery, I described how I will be able to show how Titan was laundering its income and channeling it into the —”

“This committee is not acknowledging such evidence. We have no way to identify its source or validate its authenticity, Ms. Aiken. As a former prosecutor, I’d think you would be able to understand the painstaking evidence threshold of jurisprudence. Those documents could’ve come from the moon.”

No. Not from the moon. From the dead.

There was a ruffling of the committee as the other delegates began talking to each other, some of them chuckling. Cole put his hand over his microphone and leaned towards Bradley Gallup, the FBI Director. The two men spoke briefly. Jennifer could see FBI Agent Harlan Doherty, with his distinctive mustache, sitting towards the back of the dais. He shrugged at her and smiled.

Jennifer’s lawyer leaned in and whispered to her, “I’m advising you to comport yourself. Back down, Jennifer. You’re going to wind up in jail.”

So what
, she thought instantly.
Send me to jail. Or drag me through court for a few years; I don’t care
.

But despite this sudden burst of freedom fighter spirit, the calmer, more rational voice of reason continued to assert itself.

That doesn’t do anyone any good. Not you, not anyone. Maybe only the people — like Wick — who will gloat over your crucifixion. Don’t give them the satisfaction.

And, one other thought. An image, really, and a feeling. A face. Brendan Healy’s face, his humane eyes, his scars.

Brendan hadn’t wanted to make a deal with the DOJ. He’d had his own way out. And now he was gone.

But, you’re somewhere, aren’t you? Bombshells like a backup copy of all Philomena’s data — everything that was seized by the FBI — don’t just fall from the sky. You sent it to me. But why? It’s useless here.

Cole sat upright again, facing the microphone, looking down at Jennifer for a moment, then into the room, at the faces of the other attendees; the media working its angles, the denizens of Capitol Hill, a scattering of concerned citizens.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the purpose of this select committee is to examine and interpret the current and projected threats to our nation. Currently, through the combined efforts of the Department of Justice and the FBI, we were able to stop, in the process, a domestic terrorist attack on multiple levels. An attack cleverly made to appear as something to which those subscribing to conspiracy theories and wild conjecture might draw false conclusions. But if this was the case, as former Special Prosecutor Aiken claims . . .”

He was cut off by Korey Ramsey, who flanked Cole on the other side. Jennifer watched Ramsey’s jaw move as he spoke directly into Cole’s ear. She didn’t have to hear the exchange to know what was being said. Ramsey was advising Cole not to mention a false-flag event again, even in the context of it being a unfounded rumor, a paranoid conspiracy theory. It was far better left unstated. She watched Cole pull away, nod, and reiterate his sermon.

He cleared his throat, and it echoed in the room. “Nonsystem tried to implicate others in its attempt, to throw blame elsewhere,” he said. “They knew that. . .”

He continued to drone on, but Jennifer found herself tuning out. This was how it would go. She’d been naïve to think otherwise. There would be more posturing and rallying. There would be some obligatory rolling of heads — someone would have to take the blame for the casualties that had occurred. It wasn’t the CIA’s turn, so it was more likely that the FBI would be witch-hunted on this go-around. Flaws in their investigation. Connections that hadn’t been made sooner. The DOJ would emerge victorious, holding up XList as their victory, John Rascher gloating like a hunter with his kill. Former special prosecutor Jennifer Aiken would be a footnote, if noted at all.

Gentian had known it, too. He’d claimed he was ready — and she knew now what he’d meant. Ready to take the fall for this, to be the scapegoat. Why? Perhaps he believed in people. He believed that people would see the truth. Because here, in this forum, truth was like poison.

There would be no mention of the IMF or the Central Security Service. The IMF was not a US government body, of course; there was no representative on the dais. And the only representative of the latter organization was Wick.

As the committee continued to chew its way through other witnesses — Rascher taking a turn, Doherty answering questions, the US Attorney General reading a shaky statement — Wick got up and left. He was simply there one minute, gazing out over the room, only once making eye contact with Jennifer after she’d returned to the main seating area. Then he was gone.

At the end of a twelve hour day, with only two relatively short breaks, she was tired, her body achy. Yet her mind remained calm and alert, clearer than it had been in days, weeks, maybe months. She was coming out of the aftermath of New York. Her faculties were returning. But things weren’t the same; she didn’t feel the same. She hadn’t since that first night in Cotuit Bay.

She felt reborn.

Jennifer sat and watched the television in her Washington townhouse apartment. From the windows you could see Gangplank Marina, still under construction. Word was that the work would be delayed even longer as attention was focused, both in the private and public sectors, on restoring and augmenting the internet. Altnet. It was a big payday for private companies involved in internet security and infrastructure, and a launch pad for a new crop of politicians crowing about terrorism as they ramped their campaigns up for the next cycle.

Philip Largo was one of them.

On the screen, Largo cut a solemn figure as he walked through the gaggle of reporters and took the small stage. He stepped in front of the podium and the lights flashed on his pale face. He looked calm and determined.

The crowd fell silent.

“When I was a young man, I made some irresponsible choices. As you know, I had an affair with an escort. She called herself Danice.”

The crowd murmured and then settled itself for more.

“Danice worked for the escort service known as XList. A sinister enterprise that is now, thanks to the efforts of our outstanding investigators and prosecutors, in an unprecedented joint effort of the FBI and the Justice Department, dismantled.”

Whistles and cheers from the crowd and extended applause.

Jennifer snuck a quick glance at the two agents in the room with her. Men in her own home, watching the TV with bored expressions. She refocused on Largo.

Largo gazed out over the reporters and photographers. He looked into the television camera, peering right into Jennifer’s eyes, it seemed.

She waited. If Philip Largo, who now had the attention of the spotlight again, were to tell the world about Titan, about the secret building of the data center, about
why
he had been targeted, it would blow open the cover-up: why Heilshorn and Titan were funding a data center as a backup to an internet attack, and why Nonsystem supposedly wanted to bring down the web. The applause quieted.

Largo stared into the camera, then dropped his eyes for a moment, and furrowed his brow in sorrow.

“In my position as State Assemblyman at the time, and in my race for governor, I became weak.” He lowered his head, his face lost to the watchful crowd, the photographers eagerly snapping pictures of his shame. Jennifer imagined one of those shots of Largo’s downcast head would be all over the papers and web.

The headline would be:
Former Assemblyman Expresses Deep Remorse. Now Running for State Comptroller.

He raised his head, his face the picture of penitence. Then, he carefully built his expression into something else; a mask of resilience. Nobility. She had always thought Largo was meant to be in politics. She couldn’t have been more right.

“But I don’t regret it,” Largo said with a talk-show-confessional tone. “I don’t regret it for a second, because of this — because of her.”

The crowd stilled, lights flashing silently as three armed guards walked up onto the platform. They reminded her of her own security detail, and she felt a wash of pity and gratitude for the three men who had given their lives for her. And Eddie Stemp — his honesty with her, his role in bringing some of the truth to light. She’d made discreet inquiries, but hadn’t gotten very far in determining what had happened to Stemp’s family. The Oneida County Sheriff’s was now under investigation by the Justice Department, she knew that. The entire incident had been smothered by the Department and the FBI.

One of the guards, a woman, was holding the hand of a girl. She led the little girl across the bright stage to Largo, who picked her up in his arms. The girl looked at him, smiled, and then turned her small, sweet face to the crowd.

“This is my daughter,” Largo said to them. “This is Leah.”

The crowd gasped. Largo’s lawyers had probably laid out this narrow course. Largo was clearly sticking to the line, but there was a painful truth in his eyes he couldn’t entirely hide with his rhetoric. It was welling up in him, this need to express the truth.

That his daughter had been hidden from him for almost seven years by the Heilshorns. That they ran XList, which dealt in prostitution, human trafficking, blackmail and murder, while they kept his little girl. And that revenue from XList fed Titan, which in turn fed Heilshorn, who had financed politico-military endeavors, such as Altnet, such as the framing of Nonsystem.

The audience hadn’t seen this revelation coming. Largo waited for them to calm down and settled Leah on his hip. There had been a deep rift between those who had supported Largo despite his indiscretion and those who felt he was scum — the majority of voters had written him off. Now, seeing Largo there with his child, Jennifer realized the brilliance of his strategy. Leah represented justice, forgiveness, and the American dream. Largo would come back into favor again. He already was.

“I will forever have to live with what I did. But, looking at my daughter, who came out of that, I wouldn’t change anything. And l never solicited sex. Let that be clear. I had an affair, yes. But, like Lawrence Taber, we were both under the impression that the women we were with were . . . that they weren’t professionals in the trade. I was entrapped, and by the same man and the same organization who blackmailed Lawrence Taber . . .”

This elicited a fresh wave of excitement in the crowd, and Largo was grabbed by one of his slick-suited attorneys who whispered something in his ear. The lawyer’s eyes were wide, his jaw working. Largo nodded. Then his eyes closed. For a second, Jennifer wondered if Philip Largo was going to lose it. But he composed himself and turned back to the press, holding Leah, looking like a man bracing for impact.

The world held its breath.

“Thank you,” he said.

Jennifer exhaled in a burst. The press conference was over. She watched Largo take his daughter in both arms, hugging her close as he exited the stage. Then the station broke for a commercial.

Jennifer sat back. Largo was a disappointment. But at least Leah was safe. Her care would be scrutinized. She would be raised by some top-notch nanny. And she would be out of the Heilshorn’s world.

Jennifer flipped aimlessly through the channels, watching out of the corner of her eye as one of her guards, who had been making himself a sandwich in the kitchenette, walked out of the room. She heard the agent open the front door and caught the noise of a car engine. A moment later and the FBI agent was leading John Rascher into her living room. His arm was in a sling and he was still pale from the shooting.

Jennifer frowned at him. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m going to drive you.”

She had another battery of debriefings at the DOJ headquarters to look forward to that evening. With any luck, she’d be through it all by the time she was old and gray. Maybe have a few good years left to take up sewing.

“That’s nice of you. But I have my private chauffeurs right here with me.”

She indicated the two impassive agents, who, she knew, resented the hell out of their babysitting detail and wished they could be anywhere else but stuck here with her. Rascher glanced at them briefly and then found her gaze and held it. There was something treading water behind his eyes — fear? A kind of potential energy.

“Yeah, well, I’d like to drive you. Have a chance to talk. If that’s okay with these gentlemen.”

The two agents looked at each other and murmured consent. Jennifer continued to clock Rascher. What was he up to?

He led her out to his vehicle and he opened the door for her. He had his own personal driver, a kid who wore a suit one size too big and an expression like he was ready to lay down his life for the DOJ. They just kept coming, she thought.

Before he closed the door on her, Rascher turned to the two agents getting into their own vehicle.

“Hey, do me a favor? She’s going to need that box of files by the kitchen counter. You grab that for me? Sorry, we’re actually running late. Just meet you there.”

* * *

For a gangly young man in a too-big suit, the kid drove like they were at a NASCAR rally. Before she knew it, the townhouses were far behind them and they were rocketing past the Gangplank Marina, and through the touristy fish market, where the drive had to slow. She could smell shrimp through the open window.

“Where are we going, John?”

He was silent, looking out. She watched him trace a finger over his lower lip, back and forth. They made their way through thick traffic. Within a few seconds, they spanned the Washington Channel. On the far side, Jennifer caught a glimpse of the magnolia trees with their white blossoms, lining the road down to Hain’s Point. Then the trees and the golf greens vanished, and they were swallowed up into the rushing interstate.

They looped through a coil of off ramps until they’d left behind 395 and were on George Washington Memorial Highway. When John Rascher finally looked away from the window and turned to her, she saw his eyes were red. And at last she understood.

“I’m sorry,” he said. The lip he’d been polishing with his finger was now trembling as he tried to hold back the emotion. She watched it work its way through his system, saw the single tear escape, which he quickly swiped away. He gathered himself and lowered his voice. What would come now would be the regretful speech, but he’d already communicated everything she’d ever wanted to hear from him.

“I know I was . . .”

She leaned forward and put a hand on his knee. He stared back at her for a moment but then broke the eye contact. He was apologizing for who he was, not easy for a man to do — not easy for anyone to do, man or woman.

She turned away and looked out the front window as they sped down the highway towards Reagan International Airport. Past the co-op buildings hazy in the distance, towards the air traffic control tower penetrating the gauzy white sky.

The driver looped them around to the departures. They drove past the commercial airlines’ departures to a separate hanger off the main concourse. A small white jet waited for them.

“I don’t know who William Chase is,” Rascher said. “But anyone willing to go to such lengths to get a hold of you . . . I guess they deserve you.”

The driver got out of the car and held the door for her. She didn’t have anything with her. No clothing besides what she was wearing. Not even a toothbrush. The plane engines were thrumming. The steward was walking over, his hand in the air in greeting.

Jennifer gave Rascher a hard look, but she was suppressing a smile. “Did you make some money out of this?”

He turned away and tried to hide his own betraying expression. “I meant what I said.”

She shook his hand, gave it a squeeze, and then she turned to the steward. The steward led her to the plane. She glanced back at John Rascher, her old college boyfriend, his suit jacket off his shoulder because his arm was in a sling. And she realized she would never see him again.