Ark Storm (36 page)

“Yeah, well much as I might like to, I can’t arrest a guy for that. Cells would overflow,” observed Wilkie wryly. “You finished moralizing? Wanna hear my stuff?”

“Always,” replied Rac, sitting back, stretching out his legs.

Bergers glanced up, watched the exchange with an indulgent eye before returning to his e-mail.

“I picked it out from all the daily crap when I was on the treadmill this morning,” declared Wilkie. She glanced at Bergers, fiddled with her nails.

Bergers pressed
SEND
, glanced up, shot her a big smile. “Hit me!”

Wilkie hit
PLAY
on her iPod. She’d attached it to a speaker. Two voices issued forth, ebbed and flowed: blue-collar California female; white-shoe East Coast male—Ronnie Glass.

“Shit, R, it’s been raining super-size cats ’n’ dogs out here. There was an article ’bout it today, saying ‘is it the big one?’ And in here they think it is coming, the big one. ARk Storm 1000. Our nice lady doctor says this storm that just hit was like a warm-up act. Her words to the big doctor, a ‘warm-up act,’ for the big one.”

“I got the puts already. Could buy some more, I guess.”

“How much?”

“Don’t stress. I’ll cut you in. Fifteen percent of profits, as always.”

“Oh I know you will, R. I know you’re straight.”

The sound of high-pitched laughter made them wince.

“Well, straight as a crooked sonofabitch can be.”

“Thanks,
Auntie.
That’s cute. Gotta go.”

Wilkie switched off her iPod, gazed across the desk at Bergers and Rac. The silence seemed to echo as Bergers stared into space.

“Holy Hell,” he murmured, eyes coming back to them. “So they
are
betting on an ARk Storm.”

Neither Wilkie nor Rodgers said anything, just exchanged a glance.

“Yeah, yeah, you guys were right,” declared Bergers. “And I told you to lay off the drugs. I remember. No need to do these cute little long-suffering looks.” He spoke with affection. This was why the man was loved by his people. He was big enough to see when he’d been wrong, and gracious enough to say so.

“So will you ring Andrew Canning now?” asked Wilkie.

“Oh, he’ll know about it. But I’ll ring him anyway. He can throw resources at this
aunt,
whoever she is, and these two doctors, find out who the hell they are and why they think they have a hotline to God. Don’t suppose we can trace her phone?”

“Pay as you go. Disposable. Can’t trace her through her cell phone,” replied Wilkie.

“Good job, you guys. Clear off and find this article about ‘the big one’ and let me call Canning.”

95

NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER, TYSON’S CORNER, VIRGINIA, TUESDAY EVENING

Andrew Canning glanced round at his team: Southward, Del Russo, Peters, Zucker, and Furlong, who had just hurried in nursing a swollen cheek courtesy of a root canal. Canning did not smile, scarcely bestowed recognition. His eyes were devoid of expression. He rose to his feet and began to circumnavigate the meeting room. All those sitting at the conference table had to turn and watch his progress, or else sit with their backs to him as he passed, an uncomfortable sensation that made their skin tingle or their nape hair bristle.

Canning paused at the head of the table. He leaned over it, fists braced on the polished wood. Again he cast his eyes over his team, measuring.

“So, people, let’s sum up where we are, shall we?” he asked in the smoothly rhetorical voice his subjects all knew spelled danger.

“We have prior knowledge, have had prior knowledge for close on six weeks now, that Sheikh Ali Al Baharna is planning a terrorist atrocity. We have spent several thousand man hours attempting to identify his plan. And have we identified it yet? Have we a tame airfield, planes at the ready, bomb loads, pilots with recently shaven beards training for their licenses in Miami?” He paused, allowed his words to settle.

“No,” he answered himself softly. “We have none of that.”

He began to circumnavigate the table again, talking as he went.

“Is that A) because you are all incompetent and have failed to find these leads, or is it B) that you have been looking in the wrong place all along?” He paused behind Pauline Southward, making her swivel in her chair to look up at him, neck cricking.

“Apologies to you, Ms. Southward. You would seem to have been a lone voice in the wilderness, possibly looking in the right place all this time. Even though, of course, that was not your principal, nor original job.”

Southward tried and almost succeeded in keeping her face expressionless.

Canning scanned the other faces again, lingering long enough on each for them to feel the full weight of his judgment. He moved on.

“How predictable. You think because they flew planes once into the Twin Towers that’s the model going forward? God help us when the Jihadis are more creative than us. That’s when we lose this war.”

He walked to the head of the table, resumed his seat. His face lost its masklike quality, softened just a fraction.

“So let’s join the dots. We’ve got, at the bottom of the food chain, one woman, this
aunt,
still un-ID’d, in California, tipping off Ronnie Glass that an ARk Storm is increasingly likely, she and these doctors believe. We have the two doctors.… We have a number of still un-ID’d nominees.” He flicked a glance at Zucker, who had lost her customary cocky air and sat shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “God Damn the bankers and the lawyers they rode in on,” continued Canning, “taking out huge bets against California casualty insurance companies. Then, at the top of the food chain, sits Sheikh Ali Al Baharna, planning an atrocity. So let’s start with the insane premise that you
could
make an ARk Storm…” Canning paused, let his words settle. “How would you start?” he asked softly.

Canning’s four CTC agents glanced around at each other, the politics of ridicule no longer open to them, the possibility of catastrophic error looming.

Southward sat motionless, apparently calm, but Del Russo, sitting next to her, could almost feel the tension vibrating through her body. Vindication?

“So let’s think the unthinkable, people,” mused Canning, steepling his fingers as if in prayer. “We’ve come up with zero on any other front. Let’s just say, Ali Al Baharna
is
planning an ARk Storm.”

“This is insane, sir,” said Chris Furlong, his words bursting out, thickly sibilant due to his swollen cheek. “He is not God! He cannot
make
the weather. We go down this line we miss the crucial clue to what he really is planning.”

Canning scowled at him. “I’m well aware that it’s insane. That’s what people would have said on Nine-ten about flying planes into the Twin Towers. So we have two task forces here: one looks at the ARk Storm scenario, as in how do you make an ARk Storm. That task force is headed up by you, Furlong, so you’d better buy into the idea and fast. Two, headed by you, Ms. Zucker, looks at everything else.”

Zucker nodded, chewed off a corner of one red-painted nail, mind already scrolling through a plan.

“Timing is in critical phase,” declared Canning. “Remind us of the sensitivities please, Ms. Southward.”

“The Festival of Ashura falls on November twenty-fourth; that’s in two weeks. Milud un Nabi is January twenty-ninth. The intercept suggested the attack would go down any time from the twenty-fourth of November.”

Canning got to his feet. “Two weeks and counting. Ms. Zucker, I want you to turn up the heat on all those nominee companies. Do what you need to break through the walls … you got me?”

Zucker looked thrilled. “Oh yeah! I gotcha.”

Southward watched Zucker, exchanged a complicit smile with her; zealot to zealot.

“I think it’s time one of you went to California,” continued Canning, “paid the legendary Dan Jacobsen a visit. Del Russo, you go. You’re an ex-Marine. One of his kind, or near enough.”

96

SINGAPORE, WEDNESDAY 6:00 A.M. SINGAPORE TIME

Marcel Caravaggio was starving, one of his least favorite sensations. Instead of waking to the gentle ministrations of Jeannette, his mistress, with whom he had contrived an overnighter, he woke to the shrilling of his cell phone. It was Xu Ling, one of his mules, as he thought of them, the private bankers who helped orchestrate his cascade of nominee companies and trades.

“We need to talk,” Xu Ling had said. “Right now.”

And so Marcel found himself seemingly going for an early morning walk around the Botanic Gardens, skirting the silent, almost-ghostly figures practicing their tai chi—five separate groups; God, it was like a contagion—while he listened to Xu Ling, who strode out beside him, skinny legs encased in green lycra.

Xu Ling played with his beard, glanced up nervously at Marcel.

“Yesterday someone got in our system. I’m not hundred percent. More a feeling. I did some stuff, saved my work, switched it back on later, and it was up. It was live. I’m sure I shut it down, man.” He shot another nervous glance at Marcel.

“What exactly are you saying?” demanded Marcel, coming to a dead stop, rubbing his bleary eyes, blinking at Xu Ling.

“I have feeling, no firm evidence, but strong feeling someone they hack in my system.”

“Which bit of it?” asked Marcel. He felt sick.

“The trading records. All the US trades we done, the special trades…” Marcel’s head began to swim. Worst case. If someone were looking, then they had burst through all his layers of nominees, right down to the source. It would only be a matter of time before someone came knocking at Xu Ling’s door, and then at his. Best case, Xu Ling’s system was leaky.

“Get a security expert in. Build up your firewalls. Now. Anyone comes knocking, you say nothing!” He gripped Xu Ling’s arm, his long fingernails cutting into the flesh.

Xu Ling shook off his grip.

“The cops, if they come calling,” wailed Xu Ling, “If they knock on my door, I gonna tell them ‘fuck off,’ but if they looking, man? If they looking, they not gonna go away. Sooner or later they’ll peel back the skin, get the onion. What shit you got going on, man? What you brought to my door?”

“Hold your nerve,” hissed Marcel. “This is Singapore. You do not have to disclose anything. Anyone comes knocking, you just keep telling the guy to ‘fuck off,’ and smile when you say it, like it’s no big deal. Don’t use the cell phone for any kind of related conversation. We go into lockdown mode now. You need to see me, you invite me for a walk.”

“No more of this. I’m done now,” said Xu Ling heatedly.

Marcel gave a soft laugh. “Too late for that. You’re too far in! You asked me what I’d brought to your door … it’s more a question of who,” he said softly. “You really, really do not want to upset this man. If you do, you and I and whoever you love will be dead. And it won’t be a good death. It would be the death of your worst nightmares.”

97

SEVENTEEN MILE DRIVE, TUESDAY EVENING

Dan sat Gwen down at his kitchen table. He’d led her there, his hand warm on hers. With grave eyes, he’d asked her to sit. The pine was rough under her fingers. Outside the sun had set and darkness was coming on fast. Clouds massed, black and purpled like the legacy of violence. The wind lashed the windows. Another storm was coming. Gwen sipped on a beer. She wore jeans and one of Dan’s cashmere jerseys. Leo lay in the sitting room, basking in front of the fire smouldering in the hearth. Gwen remembered all the details later. Everything, however minor, seemed etched.

“Had a shit day today,” Dan said slowly, ignoring his own beer. “There’s stuff I need to tell you.”

Gwen tensed. There was always stuff hidden, she knew that, had come to accept it, not to ask questions, though it almost killed her curious nature. Black Ops and something else hovered in the air. Gwen lifted her chin, faced him.

Dan met her gaze. His eyes were cold.

“So tell me,” Gwen said, her voice quick. No surfer drawl.

“First, you need to know something I have never said to you. You need to know that I love you. That I am in love with you. I didn’t want to be. I don’t want to be. But I am.”

Gwen felt as if she didn’t dare take a breath. His words did not fill her with the euphoria she would have imagined in another context. They filled her with dread.

“But I have also used you, or to be more precise, I set out to use you. When push came to shove, I didn’t actually use you. Couldn’t do it. So my editor fired me today.”

Gwen pushed up out of her chair. She could not stay still, could not sit, felt the need to run, not to hear more. She walked to the window, looked out in the last of the dying light, at the gray sea churning. It was never still here, the Restless Sea, but for the last week it had been not restless, but tormented. She gave a bitter smile, turned back to Dan.

“Get it over with, Dan. Tell me quickly.”

“I’m a specialist in a few things, back from my time in the Marines. As you will have gleaned, electronic surveillance is one of them. My editor knew a bit about my background, hired me straight from my diploma. He wants a shortcut to stories. Hardly unique in the newspaper world. I was his tool. He wanted dirt on two things: Falcon and the ARk Storm story. So I bugged Falcon. I heard all your first pitch. Next I bugged Riley’s office. Then I started to follow you, staged the first meeting in the sea, staged the meeting at Riley’s.”

Gwen felt her mouth fall open. She clenched it shut. She stared at Dan as he spoke, a cascade of emotions pummeling her: betrayal, fury, humiliation, disbelief.

“I pulled the devices from Riley’s the same day. I’d pulled the bugs from Falcon as soon as you went to work there. My editor kept pushing me for stories, for the real, back stories.” He gave a bitter laugh. “He knew something was up, the man has a nose for a story like a fuckin’ bloodhound. The real story would have blown him away, got me a Pulitzer,” he added ruefully. “But after that day I spent with you at Hurricane Point, surfing, eating, and talking, I was never intending to tell that story. Or any other story involving you.”