High Treason Read online

  “Got it . . . Keep me apprised,” he said, and hung up.

  “Sir, everyone is in the Oval Office and waiting on you. Including the president.”

  “Thank you, uh . . .”

  “Anne.”

  “Anne,” he said, putting on his suit jacket. Normally he wouldn’t address an intern by name, but she was the daughter of one of their biggest campaign donors, and the president was going to press her parents to swipe another seven-figure check during reelection season. “Lead away,” he said.

  He followed her down the corridor. They turned left and walked past the Roosevelt Room. Then she motioned him into the Oval Office as if she were ground-guiding a 747. I hate millennials, he thought, entering the yellow room. It smelled slightly of linseed oil and flowers. The National Security Council’s principals were arrayed in chairs around the president, who was sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

  “George, glad you could join us,” said the president with a tinge of bite. A few of the others looked away in awkwardness. “Start us off, will you?”

  Jackson took a seat and heard the door close behind him. Next to him sat the secretaries of defense, state, and homeland security. There were also the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking general in the military. The only person absent was the vice president.

  “I just got off the phone with the FBI director,” said Jackson in a smooth voice. “There’s been a new development. A troubling one.”

  The director of national intelligence shifted uncomfortably in his seat, probably because he already knew somehow.

  “There’s a possibility that a nuclear weapon was smuggled into the U.S. through Newark, New Jersey.” He briefed what they knew so far. “The radiological test results could prove a false positive. But until we know for sure, the WMD is our new main effort.”

  The room sat stunned. President Anderson finally broke the silence. “Are the two connected? Is there evidence linking this to the bridge attack?”

  “No, but we have to assume they are linked,” said the director of national intelligence. “Expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed.”

  “It’s been nine days since the ship docked in Newark. The WMD could be anywhere by now,” said the head of homeland security, her voice quavering. “Mr. President, we may have to consider evacuating key cities, like New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago—”

  “There will be no evacuations,” interrupted the president.

  “We have credible evidence of a clear and present danger,” she said. “We must act.”

  “The evidence is not credible until I say it is, and it’s not. We don’t want to start a panic. Period.”

  Her eyes narrowed, the only tell of her outrage.

  “There will be no evacuations,” repeated the president, sensing the tension. “We don’t want to start something we can’t control. That’s how the terrorists win.”

  “We’ve already got the Bureau, Agency, and Department of Energy working the problem,” said Jackson, turning to the secretary of homeland security. “We’ll know more soon.”

  “Good, Jackson,” said the president. “Keep me informed the second you learn something. I’m writing my speech for tonight, and a nuclear bomb changes everything. Let’s have our next meeting in an hour by phone.”

  “Yes, sir,” said everyone in chorus.

  “And one more thing. Absolutely, positively, and under no circumstances can this leak to the press. The media cannot learn of this.”

  Chapter 25

  news alert: nuclear terror flashed on televisions and in headlines around the world. Jackson watched the TV in disgust. Outside his window he could hear protestors chanting in Lafayette Square.

  “Cities across the country are emptying out amid rumors of a terrorist nuclear bomb,” said the news anchorwoman. The screen showed standstill traffic jams in major cities around the world.

  “And who is responsible for spreading the rumor?” yelled Jackson to the TV. “Goddamn news cycle: create rumor, report rumor, repeat.”

  “Let’s go live to New York City,” said the anchorwoman.

  “Thanks Cindy,” said a reporter standing in the middle of the street amid an ocean of red taillights. “We’re at Varick and Houston Streets, blocks away from the Holland Tunnel entrance, and as you can see, nothing is moving.”

  The reporter bent down next to a man who was leaning out of his car window.

  “This is Donnie, from Bensonhurst,” introduced the reporter. “How long have you been stuck here?”

  “Six hours going on to eternity,” he said in dense Brooklynese, dropping his Rs.

  “How did the day start for you?” asked the reporter, yelling over the din of honking horns and expletives.

  “When the news came over the TV, I grabbed the kids from school and drove into the city to pick up my wife. She works on Fulton. I thought we’d beat traffic, but will you look at this!” The man held out his hand, indicating the hoard of stationary vehicles.

  “Have you considered another way out? The George Washington Bridge?”

  “Yougottabekiddingme! It’s backed up in every direction. The whole island is a mess! I can’t even move,” he said, throwing up a hand for effect. His kids were screaming behind him.

  “It looks like we’re all going to be here for a while. Back to you, Cindy.”

  “Stay safe,” she said nonsensically. “There’s been another attack on a mosque, this one in Houston.” The news showed fire trucks around a large burning building. “Muslims and mosques are being targeted throughout the country, and police are asking people to remain calm.”

  The camera showed police trying to contain a crowd of people outside the White House, many holding signs with anti-Muslim slogans and images. Jackson heard the protest chants from outside his window and from the TV a millisecond later.

  “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Those Muslims got to go! Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Those Muslims got to go!” people yelled in unison.

  The TV changed to live protests of people burning American flags in Cairo, Bagdad, Tehran, and Kabul.

  “Anti-American protests are also occurring throughout the Middle East. It seems some people are celebrating the terrorist attack,” said the anchorwoman. “Let’s go live to Islamabad.”

  The scene cut to a reporter on the ground, where a sea of men draped in white-and-green Pakistani flags were yelling. One held up an effigy that looked like a scarecrow made of American flags, and lit it. Flames burst skyward followed by a plume of black smoke. The reporter looked terrified.

  “Cindy, as you can see, demonstrators are chanting slogans against the United States and burning American flags. There are protests just like this one across northwest Pakistan. The government here says—” A bottle flew through the air and hit the camera, and the screen went dark.

  The camera went back to the news anchor, who sat frozen and pale. After a brief silence, she said, “We’re having technical difficulties.”

  “Savages,” said Jackson.

  The screen changed to an empty White House press briefing room, showing an empty podium.

  “We are still awaiting news from the White House,” said the anchorwoman in a grave tone.

  “Aw, come o-o-on!” Jackson yelled. “You bastards know the president will make an address within the hour. Stop rushing us!”

  The camera zoomed in on the podium, jiggling slightly and somehow making it look ominous.

  “Savages!” he said, turning off the TV.

  Chapter 26

  It was midday and I had still not heard from Lava or Tye, worrying me. Lava said he would be back in a few hours, and that was more than a few hours ago. Could I trust him? I didn’t know.

  Lava instructed me not to leave the warehouse or turn on any electronics that emitted a signal, regardless of what my fixer promised. To make the point, Tye grabbed my four laptops while whistling the “Heigh-Ho” song from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
then proceeded to smash them to bits with a fire ax. He took great pleasure in it. In exchange, Lava handed me a crappy burner phone.

  “Take good care of this,” said Lava. “Only call me in an emergency.”

  Since then, I had slept, cleaned my weapons twice, double-checked my surviving tech, and did a round of physical training. Now I was down to playing solitaire, and losing. A mouse scurried across the floor.

  “Scram, mouse! I don’t have food here,” I said, and heard a small squeak as if in reply. Defiant rodent, I thought.

  Tye left me the emergency weather radio. “Thing don’t emit enough radio frequency to matter,” he said. Luckily, it also pulled in FM radio, so I tuned in the news. nuclear terror. terrorist nukes. nuclear bomb of islam.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” I whispered as I listened to live coverage that interrupted normal programming. The radio announcer described a warehouse in northern New Jersey, its parking lot filled with fire trucks and police. Gridlock had frozen all major highways exiting New York City. People were panicked.

  Next came the pundit brigade. Talking heads filled the airwaves with their yapping. One claimed the terrorists could have stashed multiple warheads in cities around the country. Another brushed it off as hokum. A third, a retired CIA director, said Iran was behind it but didn’t explain why. Meanwhile, the U.S. government remained silent, confirming everyone’s worst fears. I continued watching for ten minutes, absorbing the horror. New experts took to the airwaves but not with new facts. Ultimately it was just more palaver.

  “What idiots,” I said, turning them off. I scrolled to the classical music channel, which was playing a Chopin waltz called “L’Adieu.” “How appropriate,” I mumbled with a smirk, as I listened to the piano weep. Yet it was comforting.

  My mind drifted back to Winters, now a nuclear threat. If the news reports were true, then he was surely behind it. A shiver took hold of me, and questions came fast. What was Winters’s game? Where would Apollo obtain a nuclear warhead? A rebellion inside the company? It wasn’t the Apollo I knew. Winters was capable of ghastly things, but half of Apollo joining him to kill the vice president and 230 Americans? Now a nuke? No. Something was off.

  It can’t be Winters, I thought, although it did not make me feel better. I opened up a can of tuna, my lunch. The mouse squeaked joy from somewhere beneath the kitchen cabinets, no doubt smelling the tuna. I tossed the empty can in the trash under the sink and heard mouse feet scamper around the cabinet. I felt like the mouse, except the trailer was my cabinet.

  “OK, mouse, you win.” I sighed and reached into a cabinet, unwrapped a cracker, and threw it under the sink. Happy scurrying. We were both pleased.

  But the question that nagged me most: It seemed unlikely that Apollo would leave a clue for the FBI to find. That was the work of amateurs, not Apollo. Was somebody else behind the nuke? Definitely not terrorists; they weren’t that sophisticated. Iran still didn’t have the bomb and Pakistan wouldn’t give one to a terrorist group, fearing their plan would literally backfire. China and North Korea didn’t export WMD.

  Maybe Russia did it, I thought. Russian mafia smuggled it in, so it made sense that Moscow could be involved. I had spent months in Ukraine dealing with Russia’s shadow war there, which Russia won. The Kremlin could have used Russian mercenaries and mafia to facilitate the risky infiltration. They’d done it in other places, although not with a nuke.

  Yeah, Russia could do it. But would they? Hard to know. If true, it would be a huge coup for the Kremlin, especially since Washington was convinced terrorists were behind it. Who knows how many warheads they had been secretly importing? Enough to worry.

  Then it hit me like Hiroshima.

  Winters does have nukes! I thought. A year ago, I was ensnared in Winters’s scheme to steal ten nuclear bombs from Pakistan. I barely got out alive. I thought Winters was dead and the nukes lost, but I was wrong. Winters lives, and now nukes are in play. It was no coincidence.

  Winters must have recovered some of the missing warheads, I realized in horror. The Chopin swelled into a crescendo, turning tragedy into triumph. Not helpful, Chopin, I thought. I opened the sink cabinet, but the mouse had vanished. I wish I could have, too. There were enemy nuclear weapons somewhere in America, and I prayed they were in the hands of the Kremlin and not Winters.

  Chapter 27

  Lin received Jason’s text while in the mixed martial arts cage. She found that working out helped with stress, but pummeling strangers relieved it. Her sparring partner was a five-foot-five Hispanic man who was a flurry of hands and feet. The guy never stopped moving, making it hard to land a punch as well as see one coming. She stalled as long as she could, hoping his incessant acrobatics would wear him out, but he kept going.

  Smack! He kicked her face hard, and she felt the sting through her protective headgear. Her opponent was a master of capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art that is literally dance and death. It was developed by African slaves in Brazil in the sixteenth century, and—done well—was hard to beat. But Lin was a master, too.

  Smack, smack, smack, oof! He landed two more punches, but she blocked the third and counterstruck with a punch that knocked him backward and sideways. In the millisecond of space, she delivered a perfect roundhouse kick to his chest like a baseball bat, sweeping him off his feet with 480 pounds of force. He lay on the floor, crunched over and sucking air, and she lurked over him like Muhammad Ali above the fallen George Foreman in Zaire. When he caught his breath, she extended a hand and helped him to his feet.

  “Not bad, Little Sparrow,” he said, using her gym nickname. She didn’t care for it but couldn’t stop it, so she’d finally accepted it.

  “Not bad yourself. You almost got me with your disco moves,” she said, rubbing her head with a padded glove. Lin had never met the guy before but had seen him practicing and challenged him to a match.

  “Ow, that hurt,” he said, still shaking off the roundhouse kick.

  “Training should hurt. If there is no pain, there is no fear, and if there is no fear, then you are not training.”

  He gave a mock look of terror, and then smiled. “Another round?”

  “Nah, gotta run. I just came in to loosen up. I got a lot going on right now.”

  “Ok, Sparrow. Maybe next time?”

  “Yeah. Next time.” She grabbed her towel and went to the locker room. Few women trained in mixed martial arts, so she had the showers mostly to herself. As she peeled off her clothes, she felt a little self-conscious that she was the only woman without tattoos. MMA fighters wore body art for the same reason soldiers displayed ribbons: to be admired. Their judging eyes on her inkless body always made her feel naked, even though she knew it was silly. More than a few times cage friends suggested she get an intricate Chinese dragon tattoo with flying sparrows on her back and ass. Her answer was always no, yet they would mention it again.

  Lin loved long showers. She stood under the high-pressure nozzle for ten minutes, letting the heat and pressure work magic on her aching muscles. Stress was the culprit, not cage fighting. She moved side to side, getting her entire back and then her front.

  Ahhhhhh, she thought, trying not to think about the FBI, Russia, nukes, and Armageddon. She was in a holding pattern until Jason got back to her with a follow-up lead, and she was growing impatient. It was why she’d come to the gym.

  Where the hell is he? she thought, irritated. She performed deep breathing exercises to slow her heart rate, sucking in steam and exhaling loudly. Ten more minutes later, she reluctantly stepped out and dried off. After blow-drying her hair, she made her way to her locker, carrying only the lock key. Reflexively she grabbed her phone as soon as she opened the locker.

  “Crap!” she said, seeing all of Jason’s texts over the past thirty minutes. “call me. new lead!” Immediately she dialed his number and paced nervously around the locker room in the nude.

  “Jason here.”

  “Jason, it’s me.”

  There was a paus
e, and she imagined Jason scanning the office for eavesdroppers before speaking. “Well, you’re not going to believe it,” he said in a hushed voice. “Actually, you probably will. I just don’t believe it.”

  “Jason, just tell me.”

  “First, you’re in big trouble. You’ve practically made the FBI’s most wanted list, and you need to come in.”

  “If they want me, they can come get me,” she said, equally defiant.

  She heard Jason sigh. “I checked with Dan in counterintelligence,” he whispered. “You remember him? A class ahead of us, my height, brown hair.”

  “Yes, I remember Dan. What did he say?”

  “He said they’ve been tracking an uptick of Russian spooks in Northern Virginia, and not the ordinary kind.”

  “What kind then?”

  “He got all cagey on me, not like him. He said they were close to moving in, when they got called off. Didn’t say why. Now he’s chasing bridge terrorists with the rest of us.”

  “That’s too bad. Did he say anything else?”

  “Yeah. I pressed him. Literally. We were in the gym. Three-two-oh-two Rockland Terrace in McLean,” he said.

  “What?” she said. A young woman with a scorpion-and-roses tattoo on her hip was drying off and looking at her curiously. Lin moved away. “Say again?”

  “Three-two-oh-two Rockland Terrace, McLean, Virginia. That’s the safe house they were monitoring.”

  Lin grabbed a pen from her locker, bit off the cap, and spit it out. Crap, where’s a piece of paper? she thought, looking around, but they were in a locker room. She was naked and couldn’t run out to the front desk for a sticky note. Screw it. “Repeat the address.” Jason did and she wrote it on her left inner forearm. “Thanks, Jason. Are they still running surveillance?”

  “Remote sensors only, but actually it sounds like no one is paying attention. The assistant director pulled them all for the bridge case. Everyone is working it, except me. I’m probably going to get fired, right along with you.”