PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller (28 page)

5

‘Come on,’ Director Noah Graham said, ‘you’ve got to tell us
something
, Ms. Aoki. Don’t you understand what’s going to happen to you if you don’t help us? We’ll get you shipped back to Japan, okay? And I think there are some people over there you’d rather not see, aren’t there?’

Michiko was disgusted by Noah Graham. Here was the Director of the FBI, one of the highest law enforcement officials in the country, trying to bully a teenaged girl. He acted so high and mighty when he was talking to Jones and Mason, on the recordings she’d made of their conversations, making constant reference to ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘protecting the constitution’, but he was willing to pervert those same principals in order to protect them.

Like these trumped-up charges she’d been pulled in for, completely bogus accusations of providing terrorist support, based upon evidence that had been dredged up from her criminal ties back in Japan.

She also knew that the threat of sending her back over there was groundless; she was a United States citizen, her paperwork signed by the president herself. She had explained these things already, of course, but still Graham persisted.

She wouldn’t have to put up with his bullshit for much longer though, she thought as she checked her watch; just a few more minutes should do it.

‘Am I boring you?’ Graham asked, noting her looking at the time. ‘Look here honey, this is the F-B-fucking-I you’re dealing with now, and you’d best get with the program if you know what’s good for you. So I’ll ask you again. Tell me everything you know about Dr. Alan Sandbourne, and anything strange that you’ve noticed going on at the Paradigm Group. That’s all I want, and I can make all of these charges against you go away.’

Michiko had been arrested in the lobby of the Paradigm Group in a nighttime raid, when there was just a skeleton staff on at the Forest Hills campus. They were tired of waiting for her to leave, and so Mason had insisted that they go in and arrest her on-site.

She was downstairs in the Force One area when they came, but had come up to meet them on Vinson’s recommendation. They’d presented a warrant for her arrest, and taken her away; and then they’d presented Vinson with a warrant to search her computers, due to the fact that she’d been designated a terrorist suspect.

Vinson had known that it was just a ruse to get access to the group’s systems however, and had held his ground. He’d immediately presented them with a presidential order protecting the compound from investigation, unless ordered by congress.

So for now, Michiko was all they had; and she was confident that they wouldn’t have
her
for very much longer.

She checked her watch again, and was pleased to see the angry veins threatening to burst in Graham’s temples.

‘I think you’d better check the news,’ she said.

‘You think I’d better check the news?’ he repeated. ‘Who are you to be telling me what to do? I’m the director of the fucking FBI,
I
tell
you
what to do, not the other way around!’

‘Trust me,’ she said with a wink.

Graham couldn’t conceal the fury on his face, but there was something about the way she spoke to him with such confidence that caused him to stop in his tracks.

What if there
was
something on the news? Had the vice president’s little home movie finally made it onto the networks uncut?

He left the room without a word to the girl, strode off down the corridor to the nearest rec room and – to the disgruntled comments of the people watching, at least until they realized who he was – he turned the TV off the baseball game and onto CNN.

The images in front of him were beyond disturbing – they showed Air Force Colonel Manfred Jones being greeted at his front door by a section of military police. He presented something of a comic figure, standing there in his nightgown, a look of complete shock on his pale face, and yet Graham failed to see anything funny about it at all. What the hell was going on?

But the news flash trailing along the bottom of the screen said it all –

HIGH RANKING MILITARY OFFICER ACCUSED OF SABOTAGE.

He reached forward to turn the volume up.

‘Last night,’ the voiceover narration said, ‘an unidentified military officer – but suspected to be the commander of the US Joint Special Operations Command – was arrested on suspicion of sabotaging the parachute of a fellow officer, General Miley Cooper, the suspect’s predecessor at JSOC.

‘Evidence – including eyewitness testimony – has apparently emerged suggesting that the suspect was in the rigging room, with General Cooper’s parachute, before a night descent a few months ago that saw the general suffering two broken legs and a broken pelvis. Data from the jump computer attached to the general during the incident seems to indicate that the parachute malfunctioned, causing the general to veer off course.

‘It has been suggested that the suspect – named, I’m hearing now, as Air Force Colonel Manfred Jones – benefitted from the general’s injuries directly because, as deputy, he was the man assigned to step into the commander’s shoes in such a situation.

‘The colonel’s records and files are being thoroughly examined, just in case he was encouraged to do this by unfriendly nations – Joint Special Operations Command is America’s spearhead fighting force, and the security ramifications would be immense if the reason for the sabotage was anything more than personal greed and ambition.’

The story segued into the weather, and Graham just stood there for some time, eyes locked on the television but seeing nothing.

What the hell had just happened?

The Director of the FBI returned to the interview room a shadow of his previous self.

He walked forward to the desk and turned off the recording device that sat in front of Michiko.

‘What did you do?’ he asked her softly.

‘It’s not what
I
did,’ Michiko replied. ‘Didn’t you just listen to the news? It’s what your
friend
did.’

‘It’s complete bullshit,’ Graham complained.

‘Is it?’ Michiko said. ‘You didn’t actually know him then, so it might be true, mightn’t it? You just never know. But what we
do
know is that there’s sufficient evidence for the military police – and, I guess, the FBI too, if there’s a feeling he’s a stooge for some unfriendly foreign power – to keep him under lock and key for a little while at least. And believe me, even if he’s found innocent, his military career is over. No more commander of JSOC, goodbye to dreams of ever getting into the offices of the Joint Chiefs. He’s finished.’

‘You bitch,’ Graham breathed, unable to believe what he was hearing.

Michiko shrugged. ‘It’s nothing you wouldn’t have done, right?’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about me being here in this room with you,’ Michiko answered, ‘brought in on some bullshit charge.’

‘It’s not the same thing at all,’ Graham said, his features hardening. ‘The charges are clear, you’re a threat to national security. And if you think your games with Colonel Jones are going to scare me off, you’ve got another thing coming, lady. The Paradigm Group is a front for a covert action unit, a hit team for the president, and you’re all going down, believe it.’

‘You don’t think what you’ve done is the same?’ Michiko asked. ‘Really?’

‘I don’t,’ Graham said decisively. ‘I would never misuse my position.’

‘That’s interesting,’ Michiko said. ‘Do you have your cell phone?’

‘Why?’ Graham said suspiciously.

‘There’s something you need to listen to.’

Graham pulled out his phone. ‘What?’

‘Dial this number,’ she said, before reeling it off.

Eyes suspicious, Graham nevertheless did as she said, listening as the line rang.

And Michiko just watched him as he listened to the recorded message.

Graham frowned as he listened to a familiar voice come over the earpiece.

His own.

‘We keep Michiko monitored,’ he heard himself saying, a voice from the recent past, ‘hope she slips up, contacts Sandbourne somehow.’

‘And if she doesn’t slip up?’ This voice was Clark Mason’s, and Graham realized – with a terrible, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach – that their phone lines must have been tapped. For how long, he didn’t know; and nor did he know what else Michiko, and presumably Bruce Vinson, and possibly a whole load of other people, knew about him and his relationship to Mason.

And not only Mason, he realized with mounting dread, but also the recently arrested Manfred Jones.

‘Well, then it becomes a bit more problematic,’ Graham heard himself say, ‘but not insurmountable. We’ll just bring her in for questioning, come up with some bullshit charge or something. She’s only, what? Seventeen? Eighteen? We’ll threaten her with deportation, she’ll shit her pants and give us everything we need.’

‘Why don’t we just go for that right away?’

‘Long term, it would be better if we had hard evidence rather than what some defense lawyer would probably deem to be a coerced confession. We could probably force it through if we had to, but it would be hard work, and not guaranteed. So we’ll keep the net open for now, and hope that she gives us something.’

‘Okay,’ Clark Mason – the Vice President of the United States himself – said, ‘but if we don’t get it soon, I’m happy to do it the hard way. That bitch is going to give us the Paradigm Group and the president one way or another.’

The line clicked off, but Graham had already heard more than enough anyway.

His destiny was clear.

He was fucked.

Bruce Vinson himself met Michiko outside FBI Headquarters, the door to his limousine open for her as she trotted happily down the steps, free just moments after Graham had listened to the message.

‘Did he take it well?’ Vinson asked with a smile.

‘About as well as you could expect,’ Michiko said as she slipped inside the car.

Vinson climbed in next to her and knocked on the glass partition to his driver, telling him to pull out into the traffic.

‘Good,’ Vinson said. ‘I hate to say it, but maybe you were right. Sometimes the direct approach is the best.’

‘So what happens now?’ Michiko asked.

‘Well, the president is going to make a few phone calls,’ Vinson answered, ‘and we’ll finally have that monkey off our back at last.’

‘And then?’

‘And then?’ Vinson repeated. ‘And then, we go back to work.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Michiko confirmed with a smile of her own.

At last.

Clark Mason had just finished listening to the same recording, in Ellen Abrams’ private study.

‘May I have a drink?’ he asked, and Abrams nodded, went to the cabinet and fixed him a Scotch on the rocks, just as he liked it.

‘Do you have anything to say?’ Abrams asked.

Mason drank half of the glass in one go, then wiped a hand across his top lip, shaking his head sadly. ‘I’m not sure there’s anything I
can
say.’

Abrams shook her head too, and sat down opposite him. ‘I can’t say I’m not disappointed,’ she said. ‘I thought you might have been more grateful. After all, after the last time I could have thrown you to the wolves, you know.’

Mason knew it was true, but only to a certain extent; the scandal would have hurt her too, and her ‘sparing’ of him was due – in some part at least – for rather more selfish reasons.

But he knew that he was finally done. The videotape was one thing, but now they had him talking about attacking the president with the director of the FBI. There was also plenty of surveillance photos and recorded conversations with Jones, another man who was now absolute poison to be associated with.

‘What will happen to the others?’ he asked, sipping more slowly now at the second half of his Scotch, unsure if the president would be generous enough to get him another.

‘I’ve just spoken to Noah,’ Abrams said, ‘and requested his resignation. Turns out he’d already written it out. Cites health problems, desire to spend more time with his family. Effective immediately. His deputy, Heather Klein, will move up to the number one spot as of today.’

‘And Jones?’

‘We’ll let nature take its course with the colonel,’ Abrams answered. ‘There’ll be an investigation, a possible court martial. At the very least, he’ll be discharged from the military. Olsen’s found a new guy to take over, current commander of SEAL Team Six, Scott Murphy. Popular choice apparently. Cooper says he’d be happy for Murphy to take over permanently, if he doesn’t recover sufficiently to come back himself.’

‘That’s good news,’ Mason said miserably, unable to believe how quickly his plans had all come crashing down.

Abrams laughed. ‘You don’t have to lie to me, Clark,’ she chided. ‘I know you’re pissed. But there’s no longer anything you can do about it, I’m afraid.’

‘So what happens to me?’ he asked.