Resurrection Day (28 page)

Washington, DC 12 November 8.15 a.m.

It was a scene that could have been repeated in millions of homes across America that morning. The TV was on, its volume turned up too high. Three-year-old Daniel Dean was watching the screen as he spooned in mouthfuls of Cheerios, while at the same time keeping his eyes totally fixed on the episode of Pokemon that blared from the set in front of him. Nikki Dean, sipping her coffee on the kitchen chair beside his, studied her son with tender fascination.

Daniel took his eyes off the set and his spoon fell to his plate with a clank. 'Pokemon over now. Can I watch Scoobydoo?'

'Just for five minutes, Daniel. Then we've got to go.'

Her son flicked through the channels, and then his favourite cartoon dog came on. Nikki thought: It's not that long ago he was a helpless infant. Now he's flicking channels, operating the video, going to preschool, talking, arguing, developing a mind all his own. The previous night, lying in bed beside her son, stroking his hair, gazing down at his sleeping face and his sturdy, growing body, she had been overcome by a feeling of loss. Daniel was no longer a toddler; she was losing her baby.

Her thoughts strayed to her talk the previous day with Jack. The things she had wanted to tell him but hadn't. That she realised she'd come to a crisis in her life. That for the last couple of years she'd just tooled along with no real aim or purpose, just trying to be a good mother, keep her career going, put her failed marriage behind her. But lately she'd begun to feel it was time to put direction in her life. And she knew exactly what that direction should be.

A long time ago her mother had told her something, small words of wisdom she hadn't realised the truth of, not until she'd had Daniel: Life is about life. It was about settling down, about filling your days with the mundane things of family, the rich storehouse of joy and love that opened up to you when you had children. If anyone had told her ten years ago, when she'd been ambitiously trying to forge a career in journalism, that having a baby would be the saving of her, she would have laughed at them. But she realised now that if she hadn't had Daniel in her life after she'd split from Mark, hadn't had the overpowering responsibility of a tiny infant who needed to be loved, cared for, fed and changed, she'd have been a basket case by now.

Direction, for her at least, meant a relationship, and it meant family. That was one of the things she hadn't admitted to Jack: she desperately wanted more children. And she couldn't wait for ever. She was suddenly aware of time racing on, that she didn't want herself and her son to be alone, but needed a solid, loving relationship — and soon, as much for Daniel's sake as her own. She just wasn't sure that Jack felt the same way.

He hadn't phoned her last night as he'd promised, and she wondered why. Had he just been too busy with work? Or had she said too much, scared him with her talk? She remembered the well-meaning advice she'd once been offered by a girlfriend: If a man says he's not ready to commit, then believe him, and walk away.

She finished her coffee. 'Daniel, we've got to go. It's time for preschool. And Mommy will be late for work.'

She had two interviews scheduled that day. One was with the Police Commissioner, to write a progress piece on the new Crisis Control Centre the metropolitan police had opened on Ecklington Place over a year before, and the other with Tony Gazara, the air traffic control manager at Reagan Airport. The airport story didn't interest Nikki much, but she'd been stuck with it. There had been two reported near-misses flying into Reagan in the last week and the Post's editor wanted a piece on the ATE problem.

'Daniel, come on, honey.'

Daniel sighed, flicked off the TV, dropped the remote, dragged himself to his feet. 'Oh, OK.'

Nikki wrapped him up in his coat, hat and scarf, pulled on his Power Ranger satchel.

'Daniel ... Mommy wants to ask you a question.' She hesitated, then said thoughtfully, 'Do you like Jack?'

A nod. 'Jack gave me a Power Ranger suit for my birthday.'

'Any other reasons?'

Daniel frowned, shrugged his shoulders.

'Would you like it if Mommy had a baby. If you had a brother or sister?'

'No way.'

'Why not?'

"Cause then I'd have to share my toys. Mom, can I bring my Power Ranger suit to school? Can we go swimming after?'

Her questions had made little impact — too much for a three-year-old, even one as bright as Daniel. All she could do was smile helplessly. 'I guess.'

'Thanks, Mom.' Daniel offered her a puckered kiss, scampered away. Nikki sat at the table, listening to the sound of her son's footsteps racing down the hall to his bedroom. How much time had she left? Five years, six? Maybe a little more, if she was lucky. Should she walk away now, cut her losses? She loved Jack Collins. And even if the relationship wasn't going the way she planned, walking out wasn't something she wanted to do. But sooner or later, she knew she'd have to make that choice.

Between 10th and 9th Street, a brisk ten-minute walk from the White House, is a tan-coloured modern building that serves as the headquarters of the United States Secret Service.

What began in 1865 as a tiny government agency created to suppress counterfeit currency in circulation during the American Civil War is now a service employing just over five thousand people: Special Agents, uniformed officers, and technical and professional support staff, with field offices in over a hundred cities across America and a dozen countries abroad, in places as diverse as Moscow and Bangkok.

Although the Secret Service's primary mission is to protect, and investigate threats against, the US President, Vice-President and their immediate families, as well as visiting foreign heads of state and other designated individuals, among them National Security Council members, their job isn't limited to 'taking a bullet for the President'. The Secret Service also investigates crimes that include the counterfeiting of US currency, financial and computer fraud, the false identification of documents, money laundering, and credit card fraud. Unknown to many, it has one of the most extensive libraries of inks and papers in the world — over eight hundred types of ink alone. So skilled are its experts that in the case of a written or printed note they can determine the likely country or region of origin of the paper it is written on, say when the paper was manufactured, and — from the ink sample — conclude when the letter was written accurate to within a day or two.

By 11.30 a.m. of the morning that Abu Hasim's demands were delivered to the White House, the Secret Service — like the FBI — had already kicked-started their intelligence-gathering. Scores of Special Agents from its Washington field office were on the streets, pumping their informers, offering substantial financial inducements for any information on Arabs looking to buy false or forged identification documents or stolen credit cards, or who had recently rented accommodation in the city. By two that afternoon, the Secret Service lab had also conducted its preliminary analysis of the written material accompanying the Jiffy bag delivered to the Saudi diplomat. It was determined that the address on the cover of the Jiffy had been written with a standard, mass-manufactured Bic blue-ink ballpoint pen, within four hours of its delivery. The page pinpointing the location of the left-luggage box at the Union Station had been written with the same pen, within the same time period, and by the same hand.

By midnight that night they would discover that the two typed pages of prisoner names had been printed by a Hewlett Packard 825c series inkjet printer, one of a large batch shipped from an HP distributor in the Philippines to seven Middle Eastern and Asian countries over a year before. The paper used had been manufactured six months earlier in a plant in Malaysia which supplied much of the Middle East and South-east Asia. The Bic, paper and the HP printer were mass-market products — nothing really distinctive about them, hard to track down to an individual purchaser, as was the Jiffy bag, a standard, easily purchased item that could have been bought in any one of many thousands of outlets in DC or its surrounding states. With luck, and time, they could eventually be traced — maybe to within any one of a few dozen or more stores — but not before considerable time and effort had been expended. But would a busy store assistant remember selling a single Bic pen, maybe a month or a year ago? Or a busy retailer keep account of every customer to whom he sold a box or ream of printer paper? The HP printer offered maybe the best prospect, but again, could its owner — who might be anywhere in the Middle East or South-east Asia — be tracked down before the deadline? And with no fingerprints on any of the material apart from the Saudi diplomat's on the Jiffy — it was going to be a monumental uphill battle to glean any useful evidence.

Rob Owens, a tall, lean Pennsylvanian in his early fifties, and the Secret Service's Assistant Director of Protection, had been informed of the al-Qaeda threat at a private meeting with his Director at eight that morning, and was still recovering from the shock. The Secret Service's presidential protection detail had a roster of two hundred Special Agents, and their job was the most sought-after in the service. Since Abu Hasim's letter contained a direct threat to the President, it was going to be Owens's job to ensure the President's safety in the coming hours and days. Despite the advice that the President should not leave the White House, Owens would have every possible measure in place to try to evacuate him safely, and at short notice.

Failing that — in an emergency situation in which the device actually went off — then he might have no alternative but to use the basement bunker. Fitted with radiation, chemical and biological filtration systems, stocked with rations, biochemical decontamination suits, bunks, communications systems, and other necessities, the bunker had been built by the Army Corps of Engineers. It offered the President immediate sanctuary in the event of a sudden nuclear, biological or chemical attack. Owens was running through his 'to do' list — including making sure that he had a sufficient number of decontam suits and oxygen supplies stored in or near the Oval Office and the President's private quarters, ready for a hasty evacuation either to the bunker or for a dash across the lawns to the President's chopper — when there was a knock on his door, and a sad-faced, stocky man with a bushy moustache stepped into his office. 'You wanted to see me, sir?'

'Take a seat, Harry.'

The first thing you noticed when you looked at Harry Judd's face — apart from the mournful expression — was a deep, rutted cavity scar near the tip of his nose, about the size of a small fingernail. Owens always had a difficult time not looking at that deep scar — it begged notice, and made it look as if someone had bitten off a piece of Harry Judd's nose. At fifty-one, balding and just a touch overweight, Judd was a near-legend in the Secret Service, and had a rock-solid calm about him that was reassuring in a crisis.

As Deputy Assistant Director of Protection, he had served under four presidents and had been with the Secret Service over twenty-five years. He'd worked in field offices in Chicago, New York and Miami, on investigations into counterfeiting and credit card fraud, and had spent seven years on the protection shift before being promoted to his current position. He'd been on duty that day at the Washington Hilton when Reagan was shot — boy, did the Service learn from that one — and had the displeasure of taking one of Hinckley's .22 slugs, not in the nose but in the arm. The nose wound he'd suffered in Miami on a counterfeit case. Plastic surgery could have corrected the flesh rut, but Judd wasn't that kind of man — he hadn't an ounce of vanity. He always reminded Owens of a sad-faced bloodhound; a quick, intelligent bloodhound who lived for his job.

Judd had already been told of the al-Qaeda threat, and Owens gave him the list he'd made. 'We'll start with the decontam suits, Harry. Get them organised and in place. I've made a few suggestions about how we can keep them secure and out of view. But if you come up with anything better, well and good.'

Judd took the list, scratched the tip of his rutted nose, a habit which only drew more attention to his scar. 'Yes, sir.'

'Then I want you to do another check on the bunker. Make sure everything's in order and that we've got everything we need down there in case we've got to use it.'

'You're sure we'll have enough decontam suits?'

'We can get more if you think we'll need them. That's all for now, Harry. Get back to me if you think there's anything I've missed.'

Never in all his years of working with Harry Judd had Owens ever witnessed a shred of unease in the man. But he thought he sensed the angst in Judd's next question. 'Has anything turned up yet with the investigation?'

Owens shook his head. His own hope was that legwork on the street on the part of the Secret Service and FBI would crack the case, but there could be no guarantees. 'I'm afraid not. But I'm saying my prayers, Harry.'

A mile across Washington, a man stepped out into the Rose Garden.

'I need a few minutes alone. OK, fellas?'

'Sure.' The two Secret Service agents waited behind the French doors in the West Wing. As a member of the National Security Council, one of the President's most loyal advisers, a personal twenty-four-hour security detail was part of the territory for this man.

Alone, he strolled along one of the lawn's narrow concrete paths, lit a cigarette. The Rose Garden wasn't up to much, just a small patch of clipped grass and bushes and some white-painted wrought-iron furniture. A common misconception was that it was named because of the rose bushes that grew there, but the rose bushes were pretty thin on the ground; in fact the garden had been named after the matriarch, Rose Kennedy. The man took a deep breath, filled his lungs with air and tobacco smoke, and let out a troubled sigh. He'd been stuck inside the White House for almost twenty-four hours since the crisis meetings began, apart from a brief visit to his apartment, and badly needed some space to get his thoughts in order.

Strolling on the damp lawn, on this cold November morning, the question that had haunted him from the very start came back to haunt him again. Why was he doing this? Why was he helping a bunch of Islamic zealots put the lives of millions of his fellow Americans in danger? If he'd told anyone his reasons they would have thought he was crazy. Yet to him they were honourable reasons that could only change his country for the good and he was resolute about his aims. Nothing was going to change his mind. But he knew he was playing a dangerous game, and had to play it very cleverly.

He was scheduled to meet with his contact at noon, to pass on his information. First, he had to make the phone call. Using the White House lines was out of the question, as was a public pay-phone — his face was so well known from his interviews on TV and in the newspapers that it made it almost impossible for him to walk the streets without being noticed.

But he had a cellphone, tucked in his inside pocket. It was no ordinary cellphone, but what the police liked to call a 'clone'. The term had been explained to him. With some simple electronic equipment and a device called a Curtis unit, a thief or a technician could scan the airways for nearby cellphones. Once the unit detected one in the vicinity, it would 'read' the phone's ESN — Electronic Serial Number — and its mobile identification number, MIN, embedded in its circuits. The user could then implant the stolen ESN and MIN in his own cellphone. This meant he could then use the 'clone' free of charge — the calls were credited to the registered owner of the number. But even more importantly, it meant that any calls made on the 'clone' were virtually untraceable. With careful and minimal use, the clone could be used for weeks — even months — if the registered owner didn't carefully scrutinise or query his bills. He had been told that the two phones he and his contact were using had been cloned by an Arab technician in Washington, and he had been assured that with minimal use they were good for at least two weeks, after which the users' bills would arrive.

Standing on the cold lawn, he knew there was one other problem he faced — his Secret Service protection detail. How could he get rid of guys who lived in his ear every minute of every day? But he'd do it, he decided, and tossed away his cigarette. Somehow he'd get away from the White House, make his call, and meet his contact.

Washington, DC 12 November 10.35 a.m.