Cold Frame (2 page)

Thomas opened the doors to the library and wheeled in a coffee tray. He served them both and then withdrew again, reclosing the big white doors.

Hiram decided to get right to it. He needed to lie down, and soon. “This nameless government agency you work for, Mister Strang—is it involved in federal law enforcement? I ask because the original call came from a friend in the Bureau.”

“No, sir, it is not. Or not exactly. We asked the Bureau to make the appointment for me because you've helped their lab with some forensic work in the past. Our office of course does have a name, but we try to keep our invisibility cloaks on as much as possible, given what we do.”

Hiram smiled. “And what
exactly
does your office do, Mister Strang?”

“We coordinate the hunting down and execution of important foreign terrorists, Mister Walker. Men who are dedicated to the destruction of the United States.”

“Ah,” Hiram said. “You're involved with the sharp end of the DMX.”

Strang's eyebrows rose in evident surprise.

Hiram smiled again from across the coffee tray. “I've worked with the Agency as well as the Bureau, Mister Strang,” he said. “Forensically, of course, never operationally. Our little society has helped what used to be called the Clandestine Services to unravel some, ah, rather intractable mysteries from time to time. I called someone after I received the call from the Bureau about your wanting to meet. He told me you were coming at the behest of Carl Mandeville.”

Strang just stared at him.

“I encourage you to speak freely to me, Mister Strang,” Hiram continued. “It will save lots of time.”

Strang cleared his throat. “You have the advantage of me, Mister Walker,” he said. “I wasn't aware that you were read into DMX.”

Hiram said nothing, waiting. Strang plunged ahead.

“The DMX committee is under political attack,” he began. “There are some important members of the Senate who've taken issue with the whole concept behind DMX. There's been a proposal floated to conduct a classified policy review.”

“Their objection being what, exactly? That the U.S. government is indulging in assassination of foreign nationals without any sort of due-course proceedings?”

“That's the way it's being framed,” Strang said. “And, as with most Senate ‘policy reviews,' the desired outcome is known well before the review even begins.”

“Which is that DMX should be shut down, I presume?”

“Exactly. The CT world, that is, the federal counterterrorism bureaucracy, takes the view that DMX ‘candidates' are engaged in a war against the United States. It may be an asymmetric war, but a war nonetheless. Therefore the people who end up on the Kill List are genuine enemy combatants, not just foreign nationals, as you phrased it. In wartime, enemy combatants are fair game. Especially since these same enemy combatants have no qualms about targeting innocent civilians, like they did in New York, or in Benghazi.”

“You don't have to convince me, Mister Strang,” Hiram said. “In my book, all terrorists, foreign or domestic, were born to die badly.”

Strang nodded. “And it's not true that there's no due process,” he said. “Hence the DMX committee. You know the concept, but do you know how it actually works?”

“Enlighten me,” Hiram said, sipping some tea. The depth of his knowledge about the DMX was his business, not Strang's. He felt a slow warmth building in his tortured joints. Thomas, recognizing Hiram's discomfort after a rare walk around the grounds, had dosed his tea, God bless him.

“There are now eighty-plus federal agencies, offices, bureaus, task forces, operations committees, and even cabinet departments involved in the so-called War on Terror,” Strang said. “The DMX is where all their efforts come together. Simply put, the DMX is where all the agencies involved in counterterrorism nominate candidates for execution. It's a tortuous process, with many iterations, but ultimately, one or two names will be approved at each meeting to go forward to the President for inclusion on something called the Kill List. The President, himself, personally must approve any such operations.”

“Many are nominated, but few are chosen?”

“Exactly, Mister Walker,” Strang said with a wintry smile. “The criteria for selection are both complex and time-dependent, as you can imagine. There has to be evidence presented, not just speculation, and the focus is on the terrorist leadership, not whole groups.”

“Do the agencies who develop the Kill List carry out the actual executions?”

“No, sir. There is a Chinese wall between the selection process and the actual operations that follow presidential approval. The people who do the wet work have no interaction with DMX, and that is a deliberate separation.”

And which side of the wall do you come from, Mr. Strang? Hiram wondered. The separation had probably been the only way they'd been able to convince the senior government officials who sat on the DMX committee to accept the assignment. I'll help to define the most valuable targets, but I will
not
be associated with any killing. Harrumph. As if that made any difference, Hiram thought, with an invisible smile.

“And what is it you want with me and our botanical society?”

“The politicians who want to see the Kill List shut down know they cannot directly come out against the counterterrorism effort, per se. They would be seen as un-American. So: they are working to shut off the assets used by the executives on the other side of that Chinese wall. The drones in particular. If they proscribe the most effective weapons, they can gut the program while still being able to claim they're in complete support of counterterrorism.”

“You sound as if they might succeed.”

“They very well might,” Strang admitted. “There's a lot of backlash out there regarding things like, say, the NSA's domestic spying program. Snowden's drip-by-drip revelations keep fueling that fire. Ordinary citizens are becoming alarmed, to say the least.
We
feel they are more upset with the sheer scale of the CT world's scope than with the underlying concept, but—”

“Can you blame them, Mister Strang?” Hiram interrupted. “There are disturbing historical parallels with what the American federal government is doing to the citizenry these days.”

Strang put up his hands in a defensive gesture. “I know, I know,” he said. “But this is a vital program, Mister Walker. If nothing else, it gives potential terrorist leaders in the war against western civilization considerable pause to know that a promotion, as it were, makes one a candidate for the Kill List.”

“You think they know about it?”

“Of course they do,” Strang said. “We've made sure they know about it. In a way, we may have shot ourselves in the foot by doing that.”

The rule of unintended consequences at work, Hiram thought. “I would think,” he said, “that the size, eighty-plus agencies you said, would make this CT endeavor in general and the DMX in particular difficult to control. That it might get out of hand, somehow. Leaders of Al Qaeda-in-wherever are clearly enemies of the state and thus candidates for the list. What's to keep that mind-set from expanding?”

“Expanding?”

“To enemies of, say, the sitting administration?”

“The President must approve each name, Mister Walker.”

“My point exactly.”

Strang frowned. “Yes, sir, but the people who are involved in developing the list come from across the whole political spectrum. Some are appointees, but most of them are longtime senior civil servants who've lived through both parties being in power. Plus, they are completely excluded from the subsequent clandestine operations to carry out the executions. DMX is a process, a very convoluted and even controversial process, admittedly, but unlike most of the CT world's efforts, this one produces a tangible scorecard.”

“Do these senators have any allies on the DMX itself?” Hiram asked.

“It's possible,” Strang said. “As I said, the members of the committee are, for the most part, senior executive service bureaucrats—career civil servants, with a few political appointees thrown in at the assistant secretary level. The DMX is no place for mere deep-pocket campaign contributors. That's another reason why the senators are going after the actual means of execution—civil servants can't be touched.”

“So,” Hiram said. “What do you want from me and my colleagues?”

“We want your society's help,” Strang said. “Actually, sir, I think we want some of your plants.”

“Who's ‘we,' Mister Strang? Carl Mandeville?”

“Yes, sir. He is a very—determined man. He's looking way ahead.”

“To what end, may I ask?”

“To be able to continue the work of the DMX should its opponents succeed, of course.”

Hiram thought about that for a moment. If Mandeville was the driving force behind Strang's visit, then someone on the DMX knew far too much about the society's research. He may have surprised Strang with his unexpected knowledge of the DMX, but Strang had just surprised him back. Then something occurred to him.

“It seems to me, Mister Strang, that there's a hole in that Chinese wall. Assuming you're on the execution side, why are you and Mister Mandeville working together?”

Strang nodded. “I know what it looks like, Mister Walker. The thing is, Carl Mandeville's in charge of the whole thing. Think of him as standing astride that wall. Once the President signs off, it's Mandeville who actually puts the name on the Kill List and designates the action agency. After that, of course, he's no longer involved.”

“So you're saying that he wants some of my botanical toxins as a backup for the assassination methods in play right now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me think about that, Mister Strang,” he said. “The toxins we've discovered, or accidentally created through mutations, are merely scientific curiosities. To weaponize them, as it were, is a major departure from the realm of scientific research.”

“The U.S. signed the biological weapons convention a long time ago,” Strang said. “We don't want to weaponize the toxins—we want to study them so that we can develop defenses against them.”

Hiram gave Strang a skeptical look. “And that's your story, and you're sticking to it, right?”

Strang gave a hint of a smile. “Yes, sir.”

Hiram sighed. “Okay,” he said. “I will need to consult with my colleagues in the society. On balance, and if they agree, we might be able to help you.”

*   *   *

Thomas entered the library room bearing a tea tray along with Hiram's noontime medications.

“Thank you, Thomas,” he said. “I'm going to need a video teleconference with the society tonight.”

“Very good, sir,” Thomas said. “I'll sort out the time zones.” Then he withdrew.

Or what's left of the society, Hiram thought, once Thomas had left. Like all too many familiar things these days, the Phaedo Botanical Society was beginning to fade from view. He poured a cup of tea. He looked over the pastries and decided not to indulge, hoisted himself upright, and then went over to the tall windows overlooking the south gardens, which presented the only formally sculpted features on the estate.

God, but he loved it here. The serenity of the grounds, the security provided by that all-excluding wall and what lay just inside it, and the knowledge that anything he wanted could be summoned at his every whim. His father had been right: you were destined for a secluded life, Hiram, he'd said, but that doesn't mean you need to be imprisoned. He could indulge in every aspect of the world except travel, and, for enough money, the world would willingly come to him. He'd lived on this estate for twenty-six years, and by now he'd learned that money could indeed buy most anything except sincerity and love.

The rise of the Internet had made life even more interesting, and that had been his entr
é
e into the Phaedo Botanical Society. He'd published one paper in the
American Journal of Botany
about his research on the genetic capabilities of weeds two years after moving onto the estate. Weeds had fascinated him since the days of exploring his father's estate gardens. Weeds: annoying, omnipresent, and yet seemingly capable of resisting every modality humans used to attack them. Spray them, they die—and then move. Root them out of the ground, they come back. They grow in the cracks of cement sidewalks and in oil-spattered railroad beds, no matter what humans do to inhibit them. That was the first time he'd broached the notion that plants, and especially weeds, might have something analogous to a brain. His paper had been well received, by and large, except for one dissenting commentary that had arrived by e-mail, along with an invitation to confer with some strangely named garden society.

Only four of the original ten left now, he thought. Besides Hiram, there was Hideki Ozawa in the Sendai prefecture of Japan, Archibald Tennyson in Kent, England, and Giancomo de Farnese in the Toscana region of Italy. Four rich old men who probably held the world's most comprehensive reservoir of knowledge on botanical toxins. Each of them had different interests, with Hiram's being on the amazing resilience of weeds and his growing conviction that so-called weeds acted as if they had brains. He had become an expert in the field of botanical mutations to see if he could replicate the natural abilities of weeds to mutate for survival. Ozawa was actually a medical doctor who researched the applicability of some of Hiram's plant toxins to cancer. Tennyson's specialty was the
natural
mutation of plants to produce useful toxins instead of man having to modify them chemically for medicinal use. De Farnese was a toxicologist who was assembling a database of the markers left behind by plant poisons in homicide cases where poisoning was suspected, a natural enough avenue of research for an Italian born in Florence.