Resurrection Day (61 page)

The room was very dark, the only light the table lamp on the antique desk, with the array of flags behind it. The President sat in his leather chair, stared absently towards the Washington Monument. The Oval Office door clicked open. His Assistant for National Security Affairs, Paul Burton, entered. 'You sent for me, sir?'

The President gestured. 'Sit down, Paul.'

He looked over at Burton. His face had gained a few worry lines in the last few days. 'What do you think, Paul? Will Abu Hasim stick to his word?'

Burton thought for a moment, shook his head. 'I don't know, sir. My hope is that he will. That once he fulfils his ambition, gets what he's always wanted and humiliates us in the process, then he'll have no valid reason to renege on his promise.'

'I hope to God you're right. But do you think Hasim will think I'm going back on my word by bringing Israel into the equation? Will it provoke him?'

Burton gave a tiny fleeting smile. 'It's a clever move, sir, and a bold one. But I really can't gauge what his reaction will be. Only time will tell. But I'm pretty sure Abu Hasim will hear about it soon enough. Time enough to worry about it then, sir.'

The President sighed, rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. 'You know what really worries me? What Professor Stern said. That the likelihood is that this guy really wants to gas the capital, no matter what. You read all the FEMA report?'

'Of course, sir. Every word!'

'It's frightening reading. I keep thinking about the image of those dead bodies being transported out through the countryside of Virginia and Maryland — thousands upon thousands of truckloads of them — and it chills me to the bone. Men, women, little children. Then the ships taking them up to the coast of Maine for burial. Our capital left like a ghost town ... an entire nation with it's heart ripped out. It's almost inconceivable ... '

Burton shook his head. 'You've done everything that was asked of you, sir. And what happens now isn't up to you. But you've got to pray it won't happen like that. That we come through this without harm or casualty.'

'I keep praying, Paul.' Booth shook his head in despair. 'But God help me, I keep seeing those images.'

For a moment Burton was silent, then he said quietly, 'Sir, Abu Hasim has won this battle. We all know that. But if it's any consolation, there'll be others. It's not going to end here.'

'Perhaps you're right.' The President glanced at his desk clock. It read 11.55. He rose. 'You better get some sleep. We all have an anxious day tomorrow.'

Burton stood. 'I thought you ought to know, sir. The press have been asking about your health. There have been quite a few calls this evening.'

'What did we tell them?'

'You had a bad flu bug. But you're on the mend, and ought to be continuing with your public engagements some time tomorrow.'

Andrew Booth was grim. 'That remains to be seen. I've talked to Vice-President Havers. Just so you know, if anything goes wrong within the next twelve hours, he's ready to assume presidential authority.'

When Burton had gone, the President swung his leather chair to face the lawns. Sitting there, in the dark silence of the room, he knew that Burton was right: Abu Hasim had won this battle. The most powerful country in the world had been defeated by a mad religious zealot with a weapon of mass destruction.

It galled him, made his heart a furnace. Already his mind was trying to figure out how to repay Hasim, how to recover the Gulf territory, but he knew that course was fraught with hazards. What if there were more devices planted in the US? At the first signs of any attempt to regain lost territory they could be triggered, this time without warning. He tried to concentrate on the next twelve hours. But his mind was assailed by the many things that could still go wrong.

What if Abu Hasim went back on his word, or upped his demands? What if, by some fluke, the device became unstable and exploded, or an errant signal set it off? What if the terrorists baby-sitting the nerve gas didn't like the idea of handing it over? The cold-blooded murder of the fourteen innocent Americans kidnapped in Azerbaijan, and the suicide blast at the Hoover building, had proved, if proof were needed, that terrorists like these were capable of anything.

And from what he could gather from the intelligence reports he'd read, a man like Mohamed Rashid was as insane and callous a murderer as his master. Would he follow his orders, do as his master told him once the terms of the letter were complied with? Or, in a moment of madness, would he — or Abu Hasim — decide to send hundreds of thousands more Americans to their deaths? Andrew Booth knew that Washington and its citizens were not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.

Chilled by his alarming thoughts, he shook his head with dismay, his own words coming back to haunt him. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people are in my hands. If I fail, many of them may die.

They might still die, even if he didn't fail them.

As the clock on his desk struck midnight, there was one thing of which he was certain, although it was small consolation. He'd planted some bait tonight. At the behest of Harry Judd, he'd told an important lie during the NSC meeting, in the hope that one among the four suspects would take the bait, try to make contact with Abu Hasim, and in so doing reveal himself.

Before midday tomorrow, he might at least have found his traitor.

PART SEVEN

14 November

Resurrection Day

A little after midnight, a procession of six delivery trucks entered DC from the south, off the Eisenhower Freeway. Heading north, passing L'Enfant Plaza, they crossed the Mall until they reached Constitution Avenue.

From there, the trucks dispersed in pairs in three different directions: two heading east towards Union Station Plaza, two heading north towards Chinatown, and the final two moving east towards the Federal Triangle. Minutes later, six more delivery trucks entered the District from the direction of Chevy Chase, and from Tacoma Park in the north. By 5.30 a.m., a total of ninety-six special trucks would enter the District, with exactly the same cargo.

The contents of those eight dozen deliveries were known to their hand-picked military drivers and helpers, all of them dressed not in their military uniforms but in civilian overalls. Inside each truck were ten tons of sealed food rations, medical supplies and containers of fresh water. Over the course of the next five hours, the drivers and their helpers would offload and store their supplies in designated subway station storerooms, warehouses and depots all over the District.

As the cargo was being unloaded, senior emergency crew managers at underground offices in four secret command posts in military bases in Virginia and Maryland were already putting plans in place to safely evacuate and decontaminate over one and a half million of DCs population: to provide them with food, shelter, necessary medical aid, energy sources for heat and light, and to nominate hospitals for the treatment of up to three hundred thousand injured nerve-gas victims.

That same night, the National Emergency Response Team, ERT-N, whose members had been positioned at two of the four command posts, were carrying out their assigned tasks: drawing up lists of whatever specialist equipment and expert manpower might be needed, experts who would help seal off and evacuate the contaminated area, liaise with the emergency services — fire and police departments, hospitals and emergency medical teams — and with the FBI, National Guard and necessary government agencies.

Another specially picked technical team, based in Alexandria, had the task of ensuring that FEMA's Emergency Alert System was ready to be plugged into every major TV and radio station in DC, so that radio and TV programmes could be interrupted with pre-prepared event tapes, or scrolling messages that would appear across TV screens, advising people of an attack and telling them to seek shelter in subways or basements, or to get out of the city. Another group of technicians had the job that night of ensuring that the District's extreme-weather alert sirens were operational. But before carrying out their tests they were given one important condition — none of the sirens to be tested was to be set off, for fear of causing an alert. The technicians were instructed to disconnect the sirens, measure their coil resistance to ensure they were serviceable, and check the individual output circuit to the coils by measuring their voltage. If they passed both tests, the sirens were to be deemed to be in working order and reconnected; if not, they were to be replaced.

Washington's evacuation expert, Gavin G. Lord, flown by helicopter to one of the command posts in nearby Virginia, was already in the throes of a long and sleepless night, fine-tuning his plans and consulting other experts, determined to ensure that the exit routes he had chosen wouldn't cause bottlenecks or congestion. While he worked, a short distance away, in a half dozen offices down the hall, clusters of industrious men and women were busy labouring through their own sets of tasks.

The ugly questions of how many bodies you could fit in a five-or ten-ton truck, in a Greyhound bus, in a ship's container or in a naval vessel had already been answered. And so, unknown to thousands of registered businesses and individual owners of tractor trailers, buses, vans and truck fleets — living on the edges of DC and in nearby Virginia and Maryland — one group in the command post was adding the owners' names to a long list of people whose vehicles would be commandeered for the gruesome work of transporting hundreds of thousands of contaminated corpses out of the District. A squad from the same group had the job of drawing up a list of suitable sea vessels, both military and commercial, for shipping the corpses in sealed containers to an as yet unknown point, off the coast of Maine. Yet another had been given the task of compiling a list of likely sources — in the US and abroad — for over three hundred thousand body-bags.

Another crew — FEMA experts — was tweaking its plans and compiling lists of hospitals, emergency services and fire crews, in Virginia, Maryland and Philadelphia, that could be put at Washington's disposal if the attack was launched.

On it went, all through the night, the hard-working men and women in the command posts kept awake by grim resolve, anxiety and endless cups of coffee. And as they toiled away, the hearts of each of them were heavy with the same worry. If the device should go off, by accident or design, by midday, with the lives of up to two million people descending on the District at grave risk, they just hoped to God their plans worked and they would at least be able to save as many of them as possible.

At a quarter after midnight, Collins and Morgan arrived back at FBI Headquarters. They had tracked down the two illegals but produced no worthwhile leads. Immigration had got it wrong in one case: after three hours of slog, questioning his former landlord and several of his former room-mates, Collins and Morgan discovered that the twenty-six-year-old Egyptian medical student had graduated and actually been given a temporary work visa, had moved to San Francisco in mid-July and was working as an intern in a city hospital. Collins passed the man's name back to headquarters, who contacted the FBI's San Francisco field office, which followed up the request, and by 9 p.m. two agents had located the young doctor, thoroughly questioned him about his movements and background, and taken his name off the list.

The female illegal, a Palestinian postgraduate student of English, was still at large in DC, having overstayed on her visa, and after hours of interviewing campus staff and locating two of her fellow students, by 10 p.m. Collins and Morgan had finally found her at an address in Chevy Chase, where she had moved in with her American boyfriend. The young woman was obviously alarmed by the FBI visit, and willing to answer any questions. After accounting for her movements, and satisfying themselves that the student wasn't a likely terrorist or a supporter of any Middle East terrorist cause, Collins crossed her off the printout and Morgan notified Immigration.

Back at the Hoover building, the investigation was speeding up in a frantic, last-ditch effort to locate the device and the three suspects. Throughout the late evening and all through the night, the FBI and Secret Service pulled out all the stops: thousands of tired and exhausted agents, some having had barely four hours' sleep in the last thirty-six, were pushing themselves to the limit, pounding the streets, putting a last-minute squeeze on pimps, prostitutes, informers, hustlers, drug dealers, pick-pockets and thieves, in a final desperate effort to ferret out even a sliver of information.

Along 14th Street, in the streets and alleyways off its main artery, and as far out as the high-crime-rate ghettoes of the northeast and the south-east, agents were kicking down doors, breaking up drug deals, or walking into gay clubs, bars and nightclubs, strip clubs, massage parlours and brothels, even interrupting prostitutes and their customers in the sex act, and showing them photographs of the three suspects.

In the District, since 1 p.m. the previous afternoon, two dozen FBI and army WMD teams in unmarked vans had been scouring the inner capital block by block, using chemical detection equipment. Working in pairs, and dressed as utility workers either gas inspectors, electricity company technicians or telephone engineers — and carrying the proper company IDs, they entered building after building, paying particular attention to cellars, basements, underground garages, storage rooms and roof areas, probing the air for the slightest trace of a chemical 'signature'. They had found minute traces at dozens of locations — all harmless — from leaking air-conditioning and gas boiler units, from weak pipe joints feeding natural gas supplies, and in stores of industrial chemicals used for cleaning purposes, but none of the buildings had yet shown up any trace of organophosphate chemicals.

In the skies overhead Washington, as night fell, three Blackhawk helicopters fitted with 'hushed' rotors and kitted out with infrared heat-detection and imaging equipment were making slow, mapped passes over suspect zones: the docks, the gritty industrial strips and several of the ghetto areas, in an attempt to 'see' with their infrared imaging equipment any suspiciously behaving or remote clusters of people, or even individuals, hanging out near deserted or suspect buildings, who might be terrorists at work.

It was little comfort to Tom Murphy that because of the intense agent and police activity over the last sixty-eight hours the crime rate in Washington had touched a record thirty-year low. After snatching two hours' sleep in his office, then calling his available men together and learning that the all-out effort had yet to produce a single worthwhile lead, he ordered them back to work with an irate dismissal.

Kursk had spent the best part of the evening in another office, helping two agents comb through a mountainous pile of shipping manifests, and took a break when Collins and Morgan appeared. 'Where the hell did you disappear to today, Alexei?' Morgan asked.

Kursk explained about his meeting with Suslov. 'Unfortunately, it came to nothing.'

'Guess that's another one bites the dust,' Morgan commented, shaking his head before he went to get a coffee.

'This guy Suslov,' Collins said, 'you really think he did what you asked?'

'He knows that Gromulko from the embassy is not the kind to cross. Yes, I believe Suslov did as I asked. You friend and her little boy, how are they?'

'Improving a little. I'm going to call the hospital again, see if they're still OK.'

'At least you have some good news.'

'What about you, Kursk? Murphy tells me he thinks you ought to get out of Washington, just in case. He asked me to check the flights. There are none direct to Moscow, but there's a flight with United Airlines to Montreal at eight fifty-five a.m., with a connection to Moscow via London. If it was me, if I had family and I was in your position, I'd be taking that flight, Major. We've got little more than ten hours to go before the deadline. If we were going to get lucky, we should have turned up something by now.'

'What if I stay here for now? Help in whatever way I can for the next few hours?'

'There's nothing more you can do.' Collins shook his head. 'We're pretty much running out of road, Major. My advice is to go pack your bags and try and grab some sleep.'

'I'll have to clear it with Moscow.'

'Do that. And if you want, I can have a cab pick you up at seven-thirty to take you to the airport. Meantime, you're better off out of here. The tension's only going to get worse before midday.'

Kursk saw the strain on Collins' face, knew that every agent in the Hoover building was under the same stress. Most likely, they would remain in the capital until the bitter end, no matter what that end was to be. It was a sobering thought, and Kursk didn't envy them. He solemnly offered his hand. 'Good luck, Agent Collins. Perhaps I could see Lou before I go?'

'Sure. I'll go find him. Then let me call you a cab.'

'Thank you, but it's not far to the apartment, and I'd prefer to walk.'

At 1.45 a.m., Collins phoned Georgetown Hospital. When he was put through to the Critical Care Unit and asked after Daniel, the nurse confirmed that there had been some minor improvement. Daniel was still on a ventilator, but his breathing had stabilised, and twice that evening he had come awake briefly, long enough to establish that none of his senses had been impaired. Relieved, on the verge of tears, Collins asked about Nikki. The nurse put him on hold while she checked with a colleague, then came back on the line after a few minutes. 'Daniel's mom isn't here. But his grandmother's around. She's been here most of the day.'

Collins asked to speak with her. At first the nurse seemed a little irritated that he was holding up the line, but when he explained he couldn't get to the hospital she got Nikki's mother to come to the phone.

She was tearful, sobbing as she talked about Daniel's injuries. 'Jack ... what's this world coming to? How could anyone maim a child like that ... kill so many innocent bystanders? I don't understand it ... Nikki and Daniel ... what harm did they ever do to these people?'

'It's OK, Susan.' Collins tried to calm her. 'They're both going to be OK. It could have been a lot worse. You've got to think about that.'

The sobbing went on until Collins finally got her back on an even keel, and when she'd asked how he was, and enquired about his injuries, he enquired about Nikki.

'But Nikki's not here, Jack. I thought you would have known.'

'Known what?'

'She discharged herself.'

Washington, DC 14 November 12.05 a.m.