Line of Succession: A Thriller (21 page)

The lesson wasn’t lost on him. He knew that there might be some among his staff who were plotting to kill him even now. He carried his sidearm at all times. And Lincoln’s opera glasses. Always the glasses.

Corporal Hammond entered. He was ashen-faced and his waistline looked tinier than usual. “General,” he said, “I have something.”

“
Shut the door.”

Hammond entered and closed the door behind him. The General pressed a button on his desk that frosted the glass.

“
It’s Angie Jackson, sir. She’s alive.”

He handed Wainewright a message he had received from Elvir Divac, along with a full-color photograph showing Dex Jackson’s wife on a carpeted floor against a bare wall. Looking glumly into the camera, she held a copy of that day’s Baltimore Sun with the headline PRESIDENT URGES CALM IN TV ADDRESS. A man in a mask stood behind her holding a machine gun.

“
They’re asking for a great deal of money,” Hammond said. The Corporal took comfort in the General’s unflinching expression as he absorbed the message. There was no fear in him.

“
We could both use a drink,” Wainewright said finally. “At ease.”

Hammond sat in a plastic folding chair on the other side of the General’s desk. Wainewright pulled a mostly empty bottle of Irish whiskey from his desk drawer and poured the remainder into two glasses. He picked up one of the glasses and raised a toast at the photograph of his dead son in uniform.

“
Did I ever tell you how he died?” the General said.

“
No sir.”

“
Hezbollah was firing rockets into Israel,” Wainewright said. His voice was softer than Hammond had ever heard it. “We had a few clandestine units in Lebanon, though we had plausible deniability in case they were captured. My son was a Second Lieutenant. He located the rocket launchers, called in the air strikes that saved Haifa. He was a hero.”

The General paused to finish the rest of his whiskey, then resumed in the same melancholy tone. “A few hours into it, an Israeli pilot comes in, drops his bombs fifty yards out of the target zone. Takes out my kid’s entire unit. And for what? Hezbollah was back within days. Hamas was back in months. Syria still wants revenge. And what do we get for our blood?” He looked at Hammond earnestly, still speaking from somewhere dark and deep within himself. “I’m asking you as a man, Corporal. What do we get for my son’s death?”

Wainwright stared at him for a moment, awaiting a response. Hammond was too timid to provide one. The General sighed and picked up the photo of Angie Jackson that Elvir Divac had sent.

“
Anyone else seen this?” he said in a much louder voice.

“
By your directive, I share sensitive information with you and you alone, sir.”

Wainwright detected a lie. “I’m glad I can trust you,” he told Hammond. “There’s another bottle of whiskey in that footlocker. Fetch it for us.”

Obedient as ever, the Corporal scurried alongside the General’s desk and bent down to open the footlocker. Wainewright kept a 14-inch long, heavy black flashlight, the type that the Military Police had used long ago, in his desk. As Hammond bent fully over, Wainewright grabbed the flashlight, turned and cracked the unsuspecting Corporal on the back of his skull as hard as he could. Hammond fell unconscious. The General turned Hammond over with his foot, then took the pillow off his bunk and smothered him with it until he stopped breathing.

The General calmly went to the door and locked it. He returned to his desk, picked up the phone and the ransom note, and dialed Farrell.

He hung up before Farrell could answer. The news about Angie Jackson was far too sensitive, he decided. It would be better if Farrell stayed focused on his own tasks.

Instead, he dialed Chris Abrams directly. Abrams answered on the first ring. “Baltimore has turned out to be more enterprising than we imagined,” the General said into the receiver. He looked down at the Corporal’s body, which lay slumped on the floor. “Don’t delegate this, Mister Abrams. I want you to take care of the problem personally.”

Professor Hitchiti’s Home

5:30 p.m. Central

Professor Hitchiti’s stiff corpse sat upright in the armchair in the living room, awaiting an agency forensics team. Carver and O’Keefe wore latex gloves as they sifted through the murdered professor’s files and mail. From the scant knowledge of forensics Carver had picked up over the years with CIA, he figured that the professor had been dead more than one day but no more than three. The lack of stink and the presence of maggots told him that much.

Nico sat at the kitchen table hunched over the murdered professor’s computer. He quickly located, on a Ukrainian hacker’s site, an old spyware program called Thor that he had once used for desktop intrusion. Thor was hardly the latest or greatest, but Nico knew it well and figured it would be adequate for resurrecting any files that the 93-year-old professor had deleted.

The screen went blank for a moment, then came back with an image of a hammer squashing a hapless rodent. “Oh the power!” Nico said, shooting his hands up into the air. “You don’t even know!”

Seven seconds later, he spotted something in the professor’s deleted instant message files. “The Professor sent a study pack to someone named Elvir Divac. The address is in Baltimore.”

Carver went to his side. ”How recent?”

“
Five months ago. It’s the same address used by another one of the professor’s students. The Hamilton Arms in Baltimore. Apartment 309.”

“
Who’s the other guy?”

“
Ali Lahari.”

Carver sat down to think, angling his chair so that it faced the door. They would need to go to Baltimore, and they would need plenty of backup. He didn’t dare go to DOD, and Speers was completely AWOL. He would need Eva’s help, but he still couldn’t divulge details of the investigation. Not without Speers’ consent.

“
Nico,” Carver said, “Eva just got a brand new dot mil email account for use on base. She’s been using it to boss Madsen’s staff around. How hard would it be to spoof it?”

“
So…You’re asking me to forge a military email message in Eva’s name?”

Agent O’Keefe shook her head. “I don’t think that’s what Agent Carver meant.”

“
It’s exactly what I meant,” Carver said. “And Eva doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to thank me later. So can you do it or not?”

Nico smiled. “The Chinese have a saying: If you’re born with fangs, don’t pretend to be a panda.”

Washington D.C.

7:42 p.m. Eastern

Apartment 3C was answered by a woman with a pierced lip and a neck tattoo. Special Agent Rios figured her for a student. Even in this day and age, Washington was too conservative for someone like that to get any sort of real job. Even the President made waves when he dared to work without a suit jacket in the Oval Office.

“
You must be Hector,” the woman said. “Come in. I’m Jenna. Haley’s sister.”

Rios stooped his six-foot-ten frame low enough to squeeze under the doorway. The apartment was fully furnished, but only half as nice as he had expected for a woman of Ellis’ position. He had no idea what she made over at NIC. Low six figures at least.

“
I’ll tell Haley you’re here,” the sister said. “You want something to drink?”

“
No thanks.”

The sister disappeared into the rear of the house. Rios stood in the living room and looked over a collection of books on a shelf. They were mostly political biographies, but there were a few mainstream romances thrown in too. And some sailing books. He and Ellis had lunched together at least fifty times over the past two years. Rios had never heard anything about sailing.

Moments later, Haley Ellis appeared in the kitchen. It was the first time Rios had seen her long raven hair out of a pony tail. He liked the way the wispy ends flared around her shoulders, framing her angular face.

She hugged him like she meant it. Why was it, Rios wondered, that athletic women with curves gave warm, lasting hugs, while skinny women acted as if they were afraid of touching anyone?

“
You look awful,” she told him.

“
You don’t,” he said.

“
Stop!” she said. “Thanks for coming. You want some tea?”

“
I’d love some,” he said, “but curfew’s at eight.” He tapped his watch. “Don’t have much time.”

“
Curfew?” she said. “Don’t tell me curfew applies to the Secret Service.”

“
Those Ulysses guys, they shoot first and run credentials later. Know what I mean? Better to play it safe.”

“
Hector, the reason I called…I had a disturbing incident in the NMCC. Just after the attacks. After that we were evacuated from our offices and I’m unable to get onto the network. My entire address book is on that network. I haven’t been able to get hold of anyone. The Director’s still not taking my calls.”

“
Join the club,” Rios said. “It’s chaos right now. Agencies are pretty much not doing anything, and that’s across the board. So much for disaster preparedness.”

“
So, about the NMCC…The Joint Chiefs were talking about commanding from someplace called Rapture Run.”

Rios looked over Ellis’ shoulder. “Uh, your sister…”

“
I rent the back bedroom out to her. She’s back there now. I made her promise to wear her noise-cancelling headphones until after you left.”

Rios smiled. “Never heard of Rapture Run. Probably just a new codename for Site R.”

“
That wasn’t all. General Wainewright said -- I’m trying to remember the exact words – something like the ‘chain of command is not intact.’”

Rios’ expression did not change, but his voice shifted lower. “What else did the General say?”

“
They were suppressing casualty information.”

Rios considered this for a moment. “Back to the chain of command. It might not mean what you think it means. A chain of command can be considered less than intact just because communications have broken down.”

She smiled at him. “You lead the President’s personal detail. Don’t tell me you don’t know what’s going on.”

“
Look,” he said, “Truth is I didn’t get back to Washington until a few hours ago. The President put me on special assignment. I’m out of the loop.”

“
What was the assignment?”

Rios smiled. He liked Haley. He had always liked her. He wanted to tell her – to tell someone, anyone – that he had gunned down two would-be assassins and saved Eva Hudson’s life. And he wanted to tell her that he had not heard from First Team since Sunday morning, and that he had no idea what was going on, and that the President might be dead, and that it scared the hell out of him.

Instead, he would have to make small talk. “Your furniture,” he said as his eyes turned to the living room. “It’s…well…”

“
Beneath me,” Ellis said. “I know. I’m saving my money. That’s why I live with my sister, in case you were wondering.”

“
What are you saving for?”

“
Don’t laugh.”

“
I’m going to go now.”

“
A boat,” she said. She waited for a reaction, but Rios only listened. “I’d like to quit my job and sail around the world.”

“
I saw the books.”

“
I’m taking lessons every Saturday.”

“
So come with me tonight,” Rios said, an invitation that surprised even him. “I live down at the marina.”

“
What?”

“
Serious. I live on a boat. A sailboat.”

“
Shut up.”

“
A thirty-two footer. Are you in?”

“
What?”

“
You should come with me. What are you gonna do here? You’re locked out of your office. Locked out of the network. It’s not like you’re going to get anything done.” He checked his watch. “Those Ulysses patrols are starting in just a few minutes. So what’s it gonna be? Another night at home with the sister, or a night with ex-Jacksonville Jaguar first round draft pick Hector Rios?”

He blushed, embarrassed by the fact that he had just used his status as an ex-NFL player to seduce Ellis. It wasn’t his style. But maybe it was a sign of how badly he wanted her.

She stared at him for a moment. Sizing him up. The former football player. She had never been with anyone like him. And there had never been a week like this. It was like the world was coming to an end. Or at least her world. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done something just because. Just for her.

She got up from the table. She took a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from the rack. She grabbed her keys, already imagining the rhythm of the gentle marina waves lapping up against the hull.

Baltimore

The apartment had taken on the permanent odor of mushroom soup and baked beans. They had eaten the combo for every meal, and Angie had come to dread the sound of pots and pans in the kitchen. But maybe the fact that they were feeding her meant they weren’t going to kill her after all.