First Daughter (6 page)

"A week, possibly less."

Jack turned back to the gibberish that spitefully refused to resolve itself into language.

"You aren't finished yet?" Garner said from over Jack's right shoulder.

"I'm sure Mr. McClure needs a moment to orient himself to our standards of methodology," Nina said, "which are quite different from those of the ATF." She walked over to Jack. "Am I right, Mr. McClure?"

Jack nodded, unable to get his vocal cords out of their own way.

"ATF, yes, I see." Garner's laugh held a rancid note. "I trust our protocols aren't too difficult for you to follow."

Nina pointed to paragraphs on certain pages, read them aloud, as if to speed the process of familiarization by highlighting elements the team found of particular interest. Jack, his stomach clenched painfully, felt relief, but with it came a flush of secret shame. His frustration had morphed into anger, just as it always did. Trying to control that poisonous alchemical process was the key to maneuvering through the briar patch of his disability. He shuffled the papers as if scanning them for the second time.

"The reports contain no pertinent information, let alone leads or conclusions as to which direction the investigation should go," he said. "What about the private-security people, any last-minute changes in the night watchmen, and have you reviewed the CCTV tapes for last night?"

"We've interviewed the security personnel." Nina took the file from him. "No one called in sick, there were no sudden personnel substitutions. Neither the men on duty nor the tapes showed anything out of the ordinary."

Had Nina read off sections of the report to help him? Had she somehow found out about his secret? Bennett wouldn't have given him up, no matter the pressure, so how?

Garner said, "Edward Carson prevailed on the president to have
you reassigned to us. I'm not one to beat around the bush, McClure. I think his interference is a mistake."

"A moron could understand president-elect Carson's line of reasoning," Jack said with a deliberate lack of edge to his voice. "I'm intimately familiar with the college grounds and the surrounding area. And because my daughter was Alli Carson's roommate, I'm familiar with her in ways you or your people can't be."

"Oh, yes," Garner sneered. "I have no doubt Carson considers those assets, but I have another take. I think this intimacy is a personalization, and will play as a detriment. It will distort your thinking, blur your objectivity. You see where I'm going?"

Jack glanced briefly at Nina, but her face was as closed as a fist.

"Everyone's entitled to his opinion," Jack said carefully.

The narrow smile appeared like a wound. "As the head of this task force, my opinion is the one that counts."

"So, what?" Jack spread his hands. "Have you brought me here to fire me?"

"Have you ever heard of 'missionary secularism'?" Garner continued as if Jack hadn't spoken.

"No. I haven't."

"I rest my case." Garner flipped the file onto the carpet. "That's about all those reports are good for—floor covering. Because they're built on old-school assumptions, we have to give those assumptions the boot or we'll never get anywhere on this case." He perched on the edge of the sofa again, linked his fingers, pressed the pads of his thumbs together as if they were sparring partners about to go at it. "It can be no surprise even to you that for the past eight years the Administration has been guiding the country along a new path of faith-based initiatives. Religion—the belief in God, in America's God-given place in the world—is what makes this country strong, what can unite it. Move it into a new golden age of global influence and power.

"But then there are the naysayers: the far-left liberals, the gays, the
fringe elements of society, the disenfranchised, the deviants, the weak-willed, the criminal."

"The criminal—?"

"The abortionists, McClure. The baby killers, the family destroyers, the sodomites."

Again, Jack glanced at Nina, who was flicking what appeared to be a non ex is tent piece of lint off her skirt. Jack said nothing because this argument—if you could call it that—was nonrational, and therefore not open to debate.

"There's a Frog by the name of Michel Infra. This bastard is the self-proclaimed leader of a movement of militant atheists. He's on record as claiming that atheism is in a final battle with what he terms 'theological hocus-pocus.' He's far from the only one. In Germany, a so-called think tank of Enlightenment, made up of Godless scientists and the like—the same dangerous alarmists proclaiming that global warming is the end of the world—are promulgating the devilish notion that the world would be better off without religion. The president is beside himself. And then there's the British, who haven't had a God-driven thought in their heads in centuries.
The God Delusion
is a book written by one of them." He snapped his fingers. "What's his name, Nina?"

"Richard Dawkins," Nina said, emerging from her near-coma. "An Oxford professor."

Garner waved away her words. "Who cares where he's from? The point is, we're under attack."

"What's further aggravated the Administration," Nina continued blandly, "is a recent European Union survey asking its citizens to rank their life values. Religion came in last, far behind human rights, peace, democracy, individual freedom, and the like."

Garner shook his head. "Don't they know we're in a religious war for our very way of life? Faith-based policy is the only way to fight it."

"Which is why this Administration is hostile to the incoming
one." Having awoken, Nina now seemed on a roll. "Moderate Republicanism as represented by Edward Carson and his people is a step backward, as far as the president is concerned."

"Okay, this is all very enlightening," Jack said, "but what the hell does it have to do with the kidnapping of Alli Carson?"

"Everything," Garner said, scowling. "We have reason to believe that the people who planned and carried out the kidnapping are missionary secularists, a group calling itself E-Two, the Second Enlightenment."

"That refers to the ongoing—often violent—conflict originating in Europe's eighteenth-century Enlightenment," Nina said.

"A so-called
intellectual
movement," Garner sneered, making the word synonymous with
criminal
.

"Reason over superstition, that was the Enlightenment's battle cry, led by George Berkeley, Thomas Paine, who returned to the pioneering work of Pascal, Leibniz, Galileo, and Isaac Newton," Nina said. "And it's E-Two's credo as well."

"I never heard of them," Jack said before he could stop himself.

"No?" Garner cocked his head. "Your ATF office was forwarded the official memos Homeland Security sent around. The last one was—what?—but three months ago." He leered like a pornographer. "If you didn't see it, either you're negligent or you can't read."

"What makes you think this organization is involved?" Jack, the bile of anger feeding the heat of his shame, asked. "The most likely suspects are Al-Qaeda or a homegrown derivative."

Garner shook his head. "First off, the terrorist chatter's been elevated for about ten days now, but you know that ebbs and flows, and a lot of it is just trying to play with our minds. There's nothing there for us. Second, there have been no unusual movements in the suspected cells we have under surveillance."

"What about the cells you know nothing about?" Jack said.

Nina looked at Garner, who nodded.

"Show him," he assented.

Nina fanned out a handful of forensic photos of two men, naked from the waist up, with fatal wounds on their backs.

Jack studied the visuals with a relief only he could fully comprehend. "Who are they?"

"The Secret Service personnel assigned to guard Alli Carson," Garner said while Nina's lips were still opening.

Jack felt an unpleasant prickling at the back of his neck. The news just got worse and worse. The photos showed the respective bodies in situ.

"The killers are professionals," Garner said with an unforgivable degree of condescension. "They know how to kill quickly, cleanly, and efficiently." He pointed. "They took their wallets, keys, pads, cell phones. Just to rub our noses in it, I guess, because we've locked down everything belonging to or attached to these two individuals, so there's nothing the perps can do with the personal items. And see here."

Beside each body, partially wedged beneath their left sides, were what appeared to be playing cards.

He peered more closely. "What are those?"

Garner dropped two clear plastic evidence bags onto the photos. Each one contained a playing card. Drawn in the center of each card was a circle with a familiar three-pronged symbol: a stylized peace sign. "During the war in Nam, U.S. soldiers used to leave an ace of spades on the bodies of their victims. These E-Two sonsabitches are doing the same thing, leaving their logo on their victims."

Reaching down to his feet, he pulled a document out of a briefcase, read it out loud. "Faith-based initiatives and policies are spreading from America to Europe, where faith-based reasoning is taking root in the burgeoning Islamic populations of France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, et cetera. All too soon, Muslims will be running for office in these countries, and faith-based initiatives will begin there. . . ." There followed a list of statistics showing the alarming rise
of Muslims into Europe, as well as increasing militance of certain sections.

"Here." Garner handed over the manifesto. "Read the rest yourself."

Jack, who was inordinately attuned to such undertones, wondered whether Garner suspected—or, worse, knew. Chief Bennett had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep Jack's secret under wraps, but with the Homeland Security geeks, one never knew. They were as zealous as a Sunni imam, and if they didn't like you—and clearly Garner didn't like Jack—and if they felt threatened by you—and clearly Garner felt threatened as hell—they would move heaven and earth to find the skeleton in your closet, even if it was an enigma wrapped inside a conundrum.

Jack stared down at the impassioned tract, which was signed "The Second Enlightenment." It contained a stylized peace sign identical to those on the playing cards found on the Secret Service detail.

"It's official now," Garner said. "E-Two are terrorists of the first rank. They won't hesitate to kill again—I can guarantee you that because E-Two's manifesto calls for a drastic change in the current president's faith-based policies before he leaves office. We believe that it is seeking to discredit him in front of the entire world, to sabotage his legacy, to force him to admit that his policies are wrong." He took the document back from Jack. "It's clear from the evidence that E-Two has abducted Alli Carson. I want all our energies concentrated on this organization."

"Sounds like a leap of faith, rather than a leap of logic," Jack said.

Garner squared around, bringing to bear every asset that had allowed him to climb the jungle gym of federal politics. "Do I look like I care what it sounds like to you, McClure? Goddamnit, you're in my army now. The President of the United States has tasked me with getting Alli Carson back, alive and as quickly as is humanly possible. I'm telling you how. Either you're with us or get out of our way."

"I'd like to see some hard evidence—"

"The E-Two cards on the bodies of our fallen soldiers aren't enough for you?" Garner rose and, with him, Nina.

The atmosphere had deteriorated from unpleasant to toxic. Jack went to the window, stood staring out at the neat manicured lawns.

He gathered himself. "I need to see where it happened."

"Of course." Nina nodded. "I'll take you."

"I know the way."

Garner's knife-edge smile just barely revealed the tips of white, even teeth. "Of course you do. Nevertheless,
I'll
accompany you."

L
IGHT, MELANCHOLY
as a ghost, tiptoed into the room through a pair of mullioned windows. It was northern light, dismal, vagrant, at this time of year almost spectral. Hugh Garner had peeled back the yellow-and-black tape that marked the boundary of the crime scene like an admonishing finger, but as he was about to step across the threshold, Jack blocked his way.

Jack snapped on latex gloves. "How many people have been through here?"

"I don't know." Garner shrugged. "Maybe a dozen."

Jack shook his head. "It looks like a shit disco in here. You sure took your time getting me over here."

"Everything in this 'shit disco' was tagged, photoed, and bagged without your expertise. You read the reports," Garner said with peculiar emphasis.

"That I did." Jack knew by now that the only thing keeping Garner from kicking his ass off the grounds was the president-elect. Even the president couldn't say no to Edward Carson without looking like something you picked up on the sole of your shoe.

"If you find anything—which I seriously doubt—it'll be analyzed by our SID division at Quantico," Garner said. "Not only is it the best forensic facility in the country, but the security is absolutely airtight."

"Is that where you sent the two bodies?"

"The autopsies were done by our people, but the bodies are housed locally." Garner took out a PDA, scrolled through it. "At the offices of an ME by the name of—" He seemed about to read off the name but, struck by a sudden idea, turned the face of the PDA so Jack could read it.

"Egon Schiltz," Jack said, his brain vainly trying to decode the scrawly squiggles on the PDA screen. Mercifully, his guess was more than a shot in the dark. Schiltz was medical examiner for the Northern District of Virginia. Despite sharp political differences, they had a friendship that went back twenty years.

Returning his attention to the present, Jack entered the room, carefully placing one foot in front of the other until he stood in the center. It was perhaps twenty by twenty, he estimated, not small by dorm standards. But then, Langley Fields wasn't a standard college. You got what you paid for, in all areas.

The floor was plush wall-to-wall carpet. Beds, dressers, chairs, lamps, desks, closets, sets of shelves—there were two of almost everything. Alli's laptop, its hard drive ransacked by IT forensics, sat on her desk. The shelf above her bed was a clutter of books, notes, pins, pennants, first-place trophies she'd won for horseback riding and tennis. She was an athletic girl and intensely competitive. He took several steps closer, saw the bronze medal for a karate competition, and couldn't help feeling proud of her. Owing to her diminutive size and with Schiltz's daughter in his mind, he'd convinced her to take it up in the first place. His eyes passed over the spines of the books—there were textbooks, of course, as well as novels. Jack had been taught to locate a spot outside himself on which to fix his rabbity mind. The point was fixed. Like a spinning dancer trained to concentrate on a
single point in the distance in order not to lose his balance or grow dizzy, it was essential that Jack concentrate on the point and stay there to tame the chaos in his mind. Otherwise, trying to make sense of letters and numbers was as futile as herding cats. He couldn't always locate it. The more extreme the tension he was under, the less chance he had of finding the point, let alone holding on to it.