The Alexandria Connection (40 page)

‘Go, go, go!’ O’Connor ordered, and both coxswains gunned the RHIBs to over 40 knots, approaching the container ship from her port side.

The RHIBs made it to the side of the
EVRAN I
and one after another, the grappling ladders were fired from their compressed air launchers. O’Connor and Kennedy led the way, followed by the rest of the team.

On the bridge, Sánchez watched the flare display for some time, but then he smelled a rat. He dashed across to the portside wing, in time to see the last of the SEALs clambering over the side.

‘
Merda!
Shit!’ He fired at the disappearing figures and the bullets twanged off the steel superstructure. ‘López! Portside! Repel boarders!’ Sánchez screamed into his two-way.

O’Connor sent CPO Kennedy and three men to cover the port side, while he led Petty Officer Estrada and the rest of them, dodging around companionways, past sea cocks and hatches. The first two guards came running toward the stern, and O’Connor fired two quick bursts. Both fell, clutching at their chests, their AK-47 Kalashnikovs clattering to the deck. The three guards following them immediately took cover, and sparks flew as the air was suddenly thick with bullets ricocheting off the steel bulkheads.

‘Man down!’ One of the SEALs had been hit, but O’Connor and Estrada pressed on, taking out the three guards with short but deadly accurate bursts of fire. ‘Five down . . . five to go!’ Estrada yelled. O’Connor smiled to himself. In tight spots like this, the Estradas and the Kennedys of this world were irreplaceable. Firing broke out on the port side as CPO Kennedy and his team accounted for two more.

O’Connor moved forward, more cautiously now. He propped by the next bulkhead and signalled Estrada to freeze. There it was again. A movement about 20 metres down the companionway that ran under the containers. O’Connor ducked as his quarry opened up with another burst of AK-47 fire. The noise in the confined space was deafening. His quarry changed magazines, exposing his left shoulder and O’Connor fired again, taking him out. ‘That’s eight!’ he called to a grinning Estrada, who had taken cover behind a heavy steel stanchion. After yet another sustained burst of fire on the port side, CPO Kennedy came up on the headsets. ‘Another thug down.’

‘By my count, that leaves just one, and I suspect he’ll be on the bridge,’ O’Connor replied. ‘Cover the portside, we’ll take the bridge . . . How’s the casualty?’

‘Stomach wound – not good, but he’s stable.’ Every member of the SEAL team was trained in first aid, but on this mission they’d brought along a hospital corpsman, who was working to stem the blood flow.

O’Connor and Estrada moved forward alongside the bridge superstructure and O’Connor cautiously opened a hatch, only to find a terrified crew member cowering in the companionway. O’Connor waved a calming open palm at him and moved on toward the ladder leading to the bridge. Sparks flew as Sánchez emptied his pistol from outside the bridge hatch. O’Connor ducked and waited till the firing stopped. He aimed instinctively and fired back, and Sánchez tumbled down the ladder landing at his feet, pistol still in hand. O’Connor kicked the pistol away, recognising Sánchez as the same thickset thug who’d set the dogs on the protesters at the EVRAN timber yards in Manaus.

‘He’s still alive . . . truss him,’ O’Connor said, taking the ladder to the bridge, where he found a white-faced captain and an equally white-faced first officer and helmsman.

It had taken nearly three hours of searching, but four containers on the aft deck eventually yielded their secrets: thirty-two gleaming Taipan and Scorpion missiles hidden among loads of EVRAN ipé timber.

‘I appreciate you may not have known about this cargo,’ O’Connor told a very frightened Umrani in fluent Urdu, ‘but that’s for others to decide,’ he said. ‘You and your crew are confined to your cabins, and you are to obey the orders of the stand-in crew who will be taking this ship back to Norfolk . . .
Entendes
? Do you understand?’ O’Connor indicated the marines who were already boarding to crew the ship.

Umrani nodded vigorously.

Four hours later the USS
Lassen
docked back in Belém, and O’Connor thanked his host.

‘What a pity you couldn’t stay. Belém is not without its night life,’ Tommy Guivarra said, as he accompanied O’Connor to the gangplank.

‘Next time,’ O’Connor said with a grin, shaking the commander by the hand and saluting before he and the rest of his team headed off to board the waiting CIA jet.

H
ugh Watson, the Washington bureau chief for CNC, and Walter Cronkwell listened. Over a few well-earned beverages of choice, Susan Murkowski, now returned to Cronkwell’s room, related her late night session with Governor Davis.

‘He’s like a fucking octopus, Walter. Thanks very much for setting up that little soirée . . . not!’

‘He wouldn’t be the first one in the White House to have wandering hands, buddy,’ Watson said. ‘The question is what the fuck do we do with what you’ve got? It’s fucking dynamite!’

‘It’s all of that,’ the elder statesman of the journalist fraternity agreed. ‘Never in all my years of covering Washington and presidential elections have I ever seen anything like this.’

The three veterans of the inner beltway were old friends. In the hard-bitten world of journalism, it was the survival of the fittest, and this team had seen it all, at least until now.

‘I mean you’d have to go back to 1988 and fucking Gary Hart and the Donna Rice affair to rival this,’ Watson said. ‘You’re probably too young and gorgeous to remember . . . can I stroke your inner thigh?’

‘Fuck off!’

It was some time before they all stopped laughing. A release from the tensions of an extraordinarily tough campaign. It was a tough gig, and there was nowhere tougher than inside the Washington beltway.

‘I remember the Hart affair well,’ the elder statesman said. ‘What was the dare to the Press Corps? “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anyone wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.” But they weren’t!’ There was more laughter as Cronkwell poured himself another bourbon. ‘The
Miami Herald
had been on to Hart for weeks before he came out with that shocker . . . they’d actually identified Donna Rice as the woman seen leaving Hart’s Washington apartment.’

‘Yeah . . . and what was Hart’s defence . . . they hadn’t watched both entrances?’ Watson chuckled.

‘And the usual shit . . . the wife came out and stood by her man.’ Murkowski shook her head.

Watson, who played a pretty mean guitar in his spare time, in the West Texas Crude band, broke into song. ‘Stand by your man . . .’

‘Don’t give up your day job,’ Murkowski said, pouring herself another chardonnay. ‘Jesus . . . have I drunk the whole bottle?’

‘There’s another in the fridge,’ Watson said, getting up to retrieve it. ‘What is it that young women see in powerful men?’

‘I read an article on that once,’ said Murkowski. ‘They’ve done a lot of research, and men and women who need power also have a greater need for sex. They’re apparently linked, because they both cause an increase in hormone testosterone, and that ramps up the dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain, activating a reward network.’

‘Bloody hell . . . at least it might explain why fat, ugly, rich men attract beautiful women, but to be serious . . . I’m not sure we can run this. Two days before the election? All hell will break loose, and you’re going to be in the spotlight, not only from the media here, but the world’s media.’

‘I can handle that, Hugh. It’s not just that this guy’s an asshole, or even a creep. There’s been plenty of those . . . look at Nixon, or if you want to go back, Harding. All sorts of assholes have occupied the most powerful office in the world, but it’s different this time. When Davis, albeit legless, told me that Sheldon Crowley was backing him up to his boot straps, my immediate thought was it’s illegal. But more importantly, if Davis wins, and he almost certainly will, EVRAN is in control of the White House.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time a president has been beholden to the big end of town,’ Cronkwell observed. ‘Look at Woodrow Wilson . . . obscure professor at Princeton who had an affair, and the likes of the Rothschilds and Rockefellers had him over a barrel.’

‘But if we publish this, and Davis still wins, he might then be impeached, or at the very least, he’ll be a lame duck president,’ Watson said, ‘and with China on the rise, I don’t think the country can afford that. I wonder if this is one of those times we remain silent.’

‘I can’t help wondering about the assassination of Abigail Roxburgh, though. She might have been about to spill the beans on Davis,’ said Murkowski. ‘The question is, who bumped her off, and on whose orders?’

‘Has an election ever been delayed?’ Watson mused.

Cronkwell shook his head. ‘Never. Some of Abraham Lincoln’s aides urged him to suspend the 1864 election because of the civil war, although that probably had as much to do with his aides believing Lincoln was going to lose. Lincoln was having none of it. He believed the election was a necessity. From memory, he said “We cannot have a free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forgo, or postpone, a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered us.” And there’s no authority for it,’ Cronkwell added. ‘Congress commissioned some research when there were fears that the November 2004 elections might be threatened by terrorism, and that report found the president has no authority to postpone an election, so McGovern couldn’t do it . . .’

‘And wouldn’t want to,’ said Watson. ‘It would look like the Democrats were trying to manipulate the result.’

‘So any postponement would require Congress to pass a law,’ Cronkwell concluded, ‘and at the moment, that mob on the Hill are flat out agreeing how they’re going to govern themselves. Perhaps we should sit on this and hope Hailey gets across the line.’

Murkowski took another sip of wine, but the euphoria of the first few glasses was fading. ‘I don’t think she’s got a snowball’s chance in hell. No one can try to do something about global warming in this country without earning the wrath of the rich and powerful, who have most to lose. If we don’t expose this, and it later comes out we knew all about it, we’re going to be crucified. I think I should at least put a call through to his bitch-face campaign manager and let her know what we’ve got.’

Crowley and Watson both pondered the suggestion.

‘I mean, she’s hardly likely to spill the beans. She’ll just deny it, but at least we can say we put it to them?’

Crowley nodded in agreement.

‘Give it a shot,’ Watson said.

Q
ureshi and Said stood together, looking across Melbourne’s iconic Port Phillip Bay. The second most populous city in Australia, Melbourne was known as the sporting and cultural capital of the nation, where the largest network of trams in the world had rattled around the bay and inner suburbs since the late 1800s.

Qureshi glanced around him. The terrace on the Eureka Skydeck viewing platform was open and windy, and only four other tourists were out here, all of them focused on the bayside suburbs of Brighton and St Kilda to the south-east. But even the tourists crowded on the other side of the airlock were being bombarded with deadly doses of radiation, as were the occupants of the building itself. He whispered to Said, ‘Now we will join the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.’

Qureshi quietly inserted the detonator cord into the slot in the briefcase, and held it up against the wire mesh with the backing plate against his chest.

An alert security guard inside the viewing platform had watched the odd behaviour, and he rushed for the airlock.

‘Hey you!’ he yelled, running toward the two young men.

Qureshi turned, smiled, and pressed the detonator.

The massive explosion engulfed the terrace, killing him, Said, and the security guard instantly.

The wind caught the fine particles of Cobalt 60, taking them around the sides of the skyscraper and back across the Yarra River toward the city. The greatest concentration of radioactivity was around Flinders Street and the lower ends of Queen and Elizabeth streets, but the winds took some of it further afield, where it settled on the footpaths around office buildings as far north as Lonsdale Street, east to Exhibition Street, and west as far as William Street.

Sirens filled Melbourne’s graceful streets as emergency workers rushed to the Eureka Skydeck building, unaware of the stream of gamma rays emanating from the lookout. But it was not long before word on the radioactive blast got out, and spread like a fire in high winds. Chaos enveloped the city, and those who couldn’t get on the crowded trams were fleeing on foot. Parents pushing strollers had tears rolling down their cheeks and the streets were in gridlock as office workers scrambled to get their cars out of the underground car parks. Unable to get free of the traffic, some motorists abandoned their cars where they were, bringing the city to a standstill.

Crowley hung up on Aboud, and took another encrypted call from Khan.

‘The first part of Phase Two has been successful, Sheldon.’

‘You’ve done well, Farid.’

‘There is still a little matter of your part of the bargain, Sheldon. I’m ready to pick up the Van Gogh.’

Crowley’s lips tightened. Compared to Vermeer’s
The Concert
and Rembrandt’s
Storm on the Sea of Galilee,
Vincent van Gogh’s
Poppy Flowers
was a minor acquisition, but he still hated to part with it. That said, Khan might be needed in the future.

‘I’ll probably be in Corsica very shortly. Quite possibly before the election. I’ll let you know when you can pick it up.’

Crowley put down the receiver just as Miranda returned with the Grand Cru.

‘Should I dim the lights, Sheldon?’

‘Let’s leave them on,’ he said, not yet tired of admiring her trim body and her perky breasts. Crowley repaired to the couch and poured two more glasses of Romanée Conti. ‘To us,’ he said, clinking the fine crystal with Miranda’s. She sipped her wine and put her glass down, her breasts swinging freely under her loose silk dress.

‘Where were we . . .’ she whispered huskily, running her hand through Crowley’s fine grey hair.

Eighty-two floors below, Rachel keyed in her code just as her phone rang.

Rachel hung up from Murkowski’s call and shook her head in disbelief. On the Sunday before the election, Davis gets maggoted, puts the hard word on one of the best-known journalists in the country, and spills the beans on EVRAN. She keyed in another code and took Crowley’s private lift to the eighty-second floor, wondering how long her denial would hold up.

Rachel got out of the lift and stifled a gasp. The sounds emanating from Crowley’s office were unmistakeable.

‘Fuck me, Sheldon! Fuck me hard!’

‘I’m going to come,’ Crowley grunted.

‘I’m coming too, Sheldon . . . oh
fuck
!’

‘So. This is what you get up to when I’m not around.’

Crowley got off Miranda and turned to find a furious Rachel glaring at him.

‘What I get up to when you’re not around is none of your business, Bannister,’ Crowley growled, recovering and quickly reverting to type. But his mind was racing. Rachel knew far too much. He finished putting his trousers on and Miranda, delighted that Rachel was now on the outer, retreated down the carpeted corridor to what had once been Rachel’s office.

Crowley walked over to his desk and unlocked the drawer where he kept his pistol.

‘As you won’t be needing me any more, I resign,’ Rachel said through clenched teeth, struggling to control her fury. ‘You arrogant, deceitful bastard! After all I did for you, and this is the way you repay me!’

Crowley shrugged.

‘And as your latest squeeze seems to have taken my position, she can run the rest of the Davis campaign. Her first problem is going to be a big one. Before I came over here, I escorted that creep you want to put in the White House to his suite. He’s got himself so pissed he wouldn’t know where he was, and the Secret Service has somehow allowed that journalist, Murkowski, in to see him. Until now, I’ve managed to force Davis to keep his dick in his pants, but as soon as I was out of sight, he’s put the hard word on Murkowski, and in the process, spilled his guts on you and EVRAN. I suspect the authorities are going to be all over you like a rash in the morning, and I hope it costs you and Davis the election. You bastard! I hope you rot in hell!’ Rachel turned on her heel.

‘Hold it right there!’

Rachel turned back to find Crowley pointing his gun at her, and in an instant she realised her mistake. Her knowledge of EVRAN would be her downfall, and a wrenching fear tore at her guts.

‘Sit down!’

Crowley picked up the phone. It was time to get out, at least until the election was over. By the time the FBI found out he’d fled to Corsica, the election would be done and dusted. With his hold over Davis, he had no doubt that his return could be orchestrated. In the meantime, Miranda would have to step in and handle the next forty-eight hours.