Pinnacle Event (3 page)

 

2

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2

POLICY EVALUATION GROUP

NAVY HILL, FOGGY BOTTOM

WASHINGTON, DC

SCIFs, Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, weren't supposed to have windows, but his did. Dugout loved to stare out at the Potomac and the jumble of trees on Roosevelt Island. Usually there were rowers on the water on Sunday afternoons, but not today.

Sunday afternoons were a great time to work. No one else was in the building, except maybe the guys in the little room that passed as an operations center and they were probably watching football. It was even more pleasant for Dugout to work when Sunday was like today, rainy. It was not a cold or windy rain, just steady, and it darkened the sky. A good day to be inside, with hot Earl Grey tea in a mug, sweetened by honey he had bought at the farmers' market.

Dugout blamed the dark sky for his sleeping in, but it may also have had something to do with the fact that he had played the last set before closing at Twins on U Street. Hadn't gotten home until after three. The jazz kept him sane, he told himself, playing the tenor sax oiled his neural pathways. He wondered how Mrs. Wrenfrow's neural pathways had been doing since he had left her yesterday.

Mrs. Wrenfrow was what Douglas Carter III, Dugout to his friends, called the kludged-together cluster of servers that ran his modified Minerva software. He had named it after the ever-helpful woman at the Belmont Public Library who had assisted him in finding Curious George books when he was in kindergarten and obscure volumes and articles on mathematics when he was in high school. Minerva, the software package that ran on the computer cluster, was a big data analytics package he had gotten his old boss to buy him from a Silicon Valley start-up. Dug had modified it significantly, made it a kick-ass machine learning program, able to plow through the exabytes and zettabytes of data he could access, legally and otherwise.

Saturday afternoon he had set Minerva looking through the last two years of international interbank transfers for any unusual patterns involving noninstitutional players, individuals. NSA had gladly given him access to the data. His goal was to find pseudonyms of people who were actually Mexican government officials with overseas accounts, which had been the recipients of large deposits from suspect senders. Winston Burrell, the National Security Advisor, had in mind giving a list of miscreants to the new Mexican President who was going to visit the White House in two weeks.

Dugout, with his long hair, looked a little like the typical image of Jesus, but with glasses. He had been recruited to PEG from DARPA, the Pentagon's creative, geek hive. Raymond Bowman, PEG's first Director, had promised Dugout all the toys he wanted, the chance to work on “things that matter,” and most importantly, a work schedule of his own making. Dugout hated the nine-to-five mentality and seldom showed up before ten in the morning or left work prior to midnight.

For almost five years now, it had been a perfect home for Dugout, an eclectic band of geniuses with an all-access pass to the treasure trove of data gathered by U.S. intelligence and a sub-rosa virtual pathway for their analyses to get to the West Wing. Then, last year, Ray Bowman had left, gone on indefinite leave of absence. As PEG Director, Ray was supposed to be a desk jockey, but Winston Burrell had asked him to save the U.S. drone program from its critics, foreign and domestic. In the process, Bowman had been forced to go operational, become a field guy, and stop a major terrorist attack in the United States. In the end, he had stopped the attacks, but also had dealt up close with a lot of deaths, including some people very dear to him. After that, Bowman had checked out, disappeared, and left Dugout to catch some of the balls the National Security Advisor had sent bouncing off the left field wall.

Dugout tapped his keyboard to uncover the results of his search. He was surprised at how many people around the world had gotten several deposits into their personal accounts, each of ten million dollars or more. He then asked the program to list those who in one month got sums totaling one hundred million dollars, and then in one hundred million dollar increments up to one billion dollars. Then he asked the software to sort the people into groups with similarities of some sort. What popped up first was not what he was expecting, but with Minerva the unexpected was getting to be the norm.

What was at the top of the list was a group of five men who had each received deposits over a one-month period totaling five hundred million dollars each. What they had in common was that they were all South Africans living abroad. Dugout paused a moment to try to guess what else this group of men had in common that made them suddenly so rich. Nothing came to mind.

He entered their names into a master database of current intelligence and media reports. The current intelligence files had nothing, which meant that nobody in the seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies cared about them. The media files, however, had a few small stories about each of the men. The stories were about how they had died, mostly in bizarre accidents. They were all, now, dead men.

Well, that was something else they had in common, he thought. Then he saw the dates of the stories.

He tapped on the links and pulled up the media accounts of their deaths. All five men had died on the same day, August 15, indeed at almost the same time, in five different countries. When he taught intelligence analysis classes, he always pointed out that coincidences do actually happen. This, however, was more than a coincidence. He doubted very much these were accidental deaths, although the media stories indicated that, except in Singapore, the police thought they were.

“All right, Minerva, let's see what you can do with this one,” he said aloud to the empty room. “Time to turn on the Way Back machine.” He began searching the intelligence archives. Some of the dead South African men had been in their seventies and eighties, so he tapped into files going back to the 1970s, files which had been digitized in recent years. While the search was underway, he made another mug of Earl Grey and tried to recall if South Africa had organized crime. It must, he thought. Everywhere does.

Crime, however, was not the correlation that Minerva made, not unless you think that making nuclear weapons is a crime. These men, or their parents, had all done just that in the 1980s and '90s in South Africa. Their names showed up many times in reports on the Apartheid regime's weapons activities.

It came as news to Dugout that South Africa had ever made nuclear weapons. He tapped into the databases for a quick tutorial, entering the terms “South Africa” and “nuclear weapon.”

Minerva answered that request with a long list of references, in chronological order. The most recent report was not, however, from the 1990s. It was from earlier this year. He pulled up that file. The highlighted sentence read: “Although it is unlikely, South Africa must be considered one suspect for the recent nuclear detonation in the Indian Ocean. South Africa is one of two nations suspected of a similar shipborne nuclear test in 1979.”

The recent nuclear detonation in the Indian Ocean? That, too, was news to Dugout. His next query hit a roadblock. In answer to his input “nuclear test, Indian Ocean, 2014,” he got the following: “An intelligence report matching your query parameters is restricted. Contact your supervisor to determine if you can be made eligible to access the file. Reference TS/Q/G/20160909/A751.” From the file designator, Dug realized that the report had been written in August. His five dead men had all expired in August.

With his clearances, it was not often that Dugout hit roadblocks in his data searches. As he stared out the window, wondering what to do next, he realized that one of the few cars in the parking lot below belonged to his nominal supervisor, Grace Scanlon, the new Director of the Policy Evaluation Group. Well, if she were in the office on a Sunday afternoon, at least he probably would not need an appointment. He printed a few files and wandered upstairs. So much for a relaxing, rainy Sunday afternoon alone with his computers, he thought, as he strode up the stairs two at a time.

Grace Scanlon had been the Vice President of a Pentagon-funded think tank in California. A year ago when the previous Director of the Policy Evaluation Group had placed himself on indefinite leave, National Security Advisor Winston Burrell had tapped her to take over what he thought of as his personal intelligence analysis unit. She had proved a good analyst and a natural manager, but she remained largely clueless about the ways of Washington. Dugout was not surprised to see her in on a Sunday afternoon. She had impressed everyone at PEG as being a hard worker and, the rumor was, she had left her boyfriend behind in Santa Monica.

“God, I thought I looked scruffy today,” Grace Scanlon said, looking up to see Dugout standing in her doorway. “What the hell happened to you? A gang of homeless men stole your clothes and left you theirs? And the hair. Have you been electrocuted?”

He was still getting to know the new Director. People had said she was blunt, had a “New York City street sensibility about her.” Now he knew what they meant. “Sorry to interrupt, but I just hit on something I think you should see.”

A few minutes of story telling later and Dr. Scanlon was pulling up the restricted report on her desktop monitor. She scanned it and summarized for Dugout. “Nuclear detection satellite saw the double-flash indicative of a nuclear explosion on nine August in the middle of nowhere in the Indian Ocean. No corroborating intelligence from SIGINT or HUMINT helps to explain who might have done the detonation. Analysts speculate about various countries, but they have no evidence to support their guesses. Case remains open.”

“So there was a detonation on nine August,” Dugout said scanning his notes, “and on twelve August each of five South Africans formerly associated with their nuclear bomb program gets a half billion dollars deposited into their accounts. Three days later they are all dead.”

Grace Scanlon stood up from her desk. In her old gray tracksuit, Dug thought she was no one to criticize him for looking scruffy. “And you are the first one to make the connection?” she asked. “And you just made it a half hour ago?”

“As far as I know, yeah, I am the only one who has seen all three pieces. The bomb blast, the money, and the murders. From what I can tell the local authorities in four of these cases classified the deaths as accidents. Only the guy who got shot in Singapore was classified as a murder.”

“Hard to avoid the conclusion that the cause of death was the bullet between his eyes?” she asked. “You know, Douglas, for the first time since I began working here at PEG I actually think I know a secret that nobody outside of this little outfit knows. We have a little secret. Or should I say a big one?”

“So have you come to the same conclusion I have?” Dug asked.

“My conclusion is we don't have all the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle, but the ones we do have could be arranged into a very scary picture.” She walked close to him and spoke softly. “We're going to have to see Winston Burrell tomorrow on this. I'll get the meeting. In the meantime, you tell no one, but do see if you can find a few more pieces to the puzzle. Hopefully, they won't look like a mushroom cloud to Winston when you're done putting them together.”

“I'm afraid they may look like a whole mushroom garden,” Dug said.

“He's going to fucking love this,” Dug heard her say as he walked out the door. “Potential loose nukes in the middle of a presidential election campaign.”

 

3

MONDAY, OCTOBER 17

ST. JOHN, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS

The rear wheels spun, trying to gain purchase on the gravel. He knew if he took his foot off the accelerator, the Cherokee would quickly slip backward and go over the side to crash on the rocks by the sea.

Then suddenly the Jeep lurched forward and he pressed down harder on the pedal. As happened when he was nervous, Dugout began narrating his life in real time to himself, his mind racing. He thought of the story that would have run in his hometown paper: “Douglas Carter III, known to his friends as Dugout, was killed in a Caribbean car crash.” If that happened, his mother would be surprised and upset when she learned he was to be cremated. He had never shown her his will.

Then the road shifted left at almost 90 degrees and the grade shot up farther. And he was on the left-hand side of the road. Why the shit, he wondered, did they drive on the wrong side when this was part of America? We had bought it or stolen it years ago, from the Danes or the Brits or Spanish or somebody, probably before there even were cars.

Surely there were rules, he thought, regulations, about how ridiculous a hairpin turn could be. Sweet Jesus. And then the road switched right and climbed some more, just as one of those absurd Jeepney things came crashing down hill. Stretched, open-air buslike Jeeps, he had only ever seen them before in the Philippines and some places in Central America. But America was not supposed to be a third world country. Right now was the exception. This Jeepney looked like it had been painted in Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s by Peter Max. “
Ayyyah,
” a passenger cried as the thing missed him by inches and went on cascading down the road.

What was this road like when it rained, which the guy at the car rental place had told him it does every day? What if you had popped a few before driving? He made a mental note to find out the fatality figures.

Then, finally, the road, if you could call it that, began to descend gradually and flatten out. He felt himself exhaling, loosening his grip on the wheel. It will be just as bad going back, his interior voice said to him in that maddening way it had of providing a running commentary on his life.

Now, there was civilization up ahead. Or, at least, there were buildings, small colorful houses, and a little town. He passed a concrete schoolhouse, painted in pastels, on the left. On the right was a tiny firehouse, too tiny for what sat outside it. What looked like a Book-Mobile truck, but with lots of antennae, was on the side of the road, its Day-Glo yellowy green paint job shining in the sun.
USVI MOBILE COMMAND POST
were the words painted in large letters on its side. It proved his theory that everyone but him had been given a mobile command post by the Department of Homeland Security. And he was probably one of the few people who would know what to do with one.