Scott Roarke 03 - Executive Command (33 page)

Chicanery?
She had heard that only minutes earlier. Swingle said the president was reviewing something called
Chicanery.

Slocum was drawn to the secret file like a moth to a flame. She was in the White House, about to seduce Scott Roarke, as prompted, and now here she was with a secret file. She closed her eyes and visualized the coded e-mail,
Get close to him. Learn everything you can.
A file marked top secret certainly qualified. She touched the folder, wishing the information would intuitively come to her and she wouldn’t have to actually open it. Opening the file and reading it took her commitment to helping the loyal opposition, which is what she thought she was doing, to another level.
Would she? Could she? It’s right here.

She slowly picked up the file, placed it in her lap and started rocking back and forth. Her eyes narrowed and her nose crinkled. Tears formed. She rocked more, weighing the options and the consequences. She looked down, then up at nothing in particular.

In another room, the Oval Office, Morgan Taylor, Scott Roarke, FBI Chief Mulligan, and DNI Evans watched the troubled woman over a closed-circuit television camera, simultaneously being recorded on a computer hard drive. Roarke was uncomfortable.

“Crisis of conscience, Mr. Roarke?” Mulligan asked noting his reaction.

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I don’t like this.”

“Give it five more minutes, Scott.” The president understood how he felt. “It’s an awfully big step to go from Capitol Hill mistress to International Mata Hari.”

“Especially if she doesn’t know who she’s working for,” Roarke offered.

“What do you mean?” Evans asked the question without taking his eyes off the screen.

“We know what she’s done. But none of it is illegal. Ill advised. Reprehensible. Yes. But I think she’s naïve and maybe innocent.”

“Like a hawk innocently eyes a mouse,” Mulligan snickered.

Roarke ignored him. “Let me go back in and talk with her before she fucks up her life. She could help us.”

“No wait,” Mulligan said. “A few more minutes. She’s tasted too much of the forbidden fruit to not take a bite of this apple.”

Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

The same time

Ibrahim Haddad watched life in America get worse. Thanks to CNN International, the NBC and Fox news channels, and Telemundo, he monitored the unraveling of the infrastructure. Fear spread, perhaps not as quickly as he hoped, but it was surely reaching the heartland. So was distrust in the government. What he hadn’t accomplished before was close at hand now. There were things that concerned him, however.

Haddad’s plant within the FBI was being more cautious. Communications had slowed when he wanted more information. He’d have to find out why. It made him nervous.

And then there was the woman—Slocum. If there was trouble with his FBI man, there could also be trouble with her. He believed that, if questioned, she couldn’t possibly provide any trail that would lead directly to him or Ciudad del Este. But electronic fingerprints were another thing. Haddad had been her benefactor for half her life, but through sheltered foundations. Maybe it had been a mistake to connect her so directly with the Secret Service agent.
Maybe…
He thought about the possibilities. Then his mind fixed on his ultimate target:
the so-called nation of Israel
. With the United States focused on its own troubles it was time to set his last move in motion. Haddad dialed a cell phone number reaching a man conducting some unrecorded business on Av San Blas, one of the city’s main shopping districts.

“Midhat, it’s H,” he said in Spanish. “Tomorrow night at my home. Bring Ahmad and Mustafa. Seven o’clock.”

The man confirmed the information and hung up.

The meeting was set.
A month, maybe less, we strike.

With the call completed, Ibrahim returned to his concern about the American woman.

The White House

Minutes later

It had been more than ten minutes. Fifteen now. After coming to her decision Christine Slocum pulled herself together and awaited Roarke’s return.

The door opened but it wasn’t Roarke who came in first. It was President Morgan Taylor. Roarke followed a few steps behind. Though she didn’t recognize the other two men, she’d soon find out.

“Ms. Slocum, it’s time we have a chat.”

The sight of the president drained her. After all, this was
the
president of the United States.

“Mr. President,” was all she could manage.

“Mr. Roarke doesn’t have a lot of places to sit. So why don’t you just return to his desk where you were a few minutes ago.”

She looked at Roarke and the others, confused. Roarke pointed to one overhead light fixture that contained a camera, then another in the clock facing her.

“I…” She choked as she tried to get more out. “I didn’t…”

“We know,” Roarke said in a comforting tone. “We know. If you had, you would have only seen or photographed a fabricated plan. But you didn’t, and it’s time you come over to the other side.”

“I’m…”

“You, my dear, have been knowingly or unknowingly manipulated almost your whole adult life. We want to find out who and why.”

She looked at Roarke again, now frightened.

“Who is he? What…”

“Christine, this is FBI Chief Mulligan and the Director of National Intelligence, Evans.”

“Oh my God, am I under arrest? I haven’t done anything.”

“Oh, you’ve done a great deal, Ms. Slocum,” the president said, “with puppet strings attached to you. Your contact with Mr. Roarke after your associations with the Speaker and Congressman Lodge were much too coincidental. Were you told to seduce him?”

The direct question from the president explained it all. She had been instructed to connect with Scott just as she had with Lodge and Duke Patrick. Lodge had been exciting. He was a powerful man on the rise and was destined to be president. Patrick, on the other hand, was a political buffoon yet fun to tease. She hadn’t slept with him…yet. And Scott? Scott Roarke could have been real…
if he was real
, she thought.
But he isn’t.

Tears flowed for more reasons than she could count. “I didn’t read anything. I didn’t know… ”

The Capitol Rotunda

The same time

The Speaker of the House approached the pool microphone. The video cameras, smaller by the year, were locked on him. Still cameras, looking just like many of the video cams, snapped away. A hint of what Duke Patrick was going to propose had been leaked strategically by Christine Slocum to
Huffington Post
. One blogger. One sentence. From there it went viral in thirty minutes. This was going to be the most important address of the Speaker’s life.
And now,
where the hell is Christine?
he asked himself. The forty-nine-year-old congressman relied on her for focus, rehearsals, quotable sound bites, even the right tie. Everything. Including this speech, word for word.
Christ!
He couldn’t wait a second longer. He was live across the nation, on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and progressive and conservative syndicated radio shows.

“Thank you for giving me your time today,” Patrick said without a hint of his characteristic smile. “I will get right to the point.” He gave the reporters a long, somber stare and took a beat before continuing.

That was a trick Slocum taught him their first day. “Wait and think before you speak,” she instructed. Another trick: “I always want you to have a paperclip or a dime in your fingertips. Casually transfer it from one hand to another as you talk. We won’t see the object, but it’ll keep your gestures from feeling awkward.”

“Today, with profound sadness, but for the good of the country, I call for an investigation into what did the president know and when did he know it.” He borrowed the phrase from Tennessee Senator Howard Baker’s cross examinations during the Watergate Hearings.

Career defining and explosive.
That’s what Slocum had told him. Patrick felt it as he spoke the words.

“We have lost confidence in Morgan Taylor as a leader. He has not demonstrated the ability to end this horrible crisis, to save American lives, and set things right. By setting things right, I mean find the perpetrators and kill them. But we must also discover how long the administration delayed going to the public, which, in turn, continues to result in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of Americans. Where this will go from here, I cannot say. But it is Congress’ responsibility to find out.

“I am compelled to demand, on behalf of the American people, that the House of Representatives examine the facts leading up to this horrible attack. That we do it now. That we do it with or without the president’s help. Thank you.”

There must have been close to forty reporters who called out “Mr. Speaker!” simultaneously. He chose one, a reporter from MSNBC.

“Congressman, according to my sources, the president only recently learned of the attack and then moved on it. What is there to investigate?”

Patrick counted to three and transferred the paperclip he was manipulating with two fingers in his left hand to his right.
Time to ignore the question and reframe the argument;
another Slocum tip
.

“President Taylor failed the nation,” Patrick said dead seriously. “According to my sources at the Centers for Disease Control, the White House was briefed on this in time to do something. How many people would be alive today if he had brought this act of terrorism to the American public when it started? I can’t answer that, but I certainly can demand an answer to the question.”

“Congressman, you are certain the White House knew? How early?” asked AP.

“A week or more.” He invented the time frame. “And now Americans are afraid to turn on their taps; afraid to have their morning coffee; afraid that their faucet and even bottled water will mean death. Next will come martial law and a complete usurpation of our rights.”

A question from Fox News. “Will you call for Morgan Taylor’s resignation?”

“The president did not prevent or contain this crisis. He has not brought it to an end. He has lost the confidence of the American people. That’s all I’ll say until we convene our investigation.”

More questions. More dodging and pontificating. The Capitol Hill two-step.

“In short, America is at war and we have no evidence that President Taylor has done anything to protect us.”

“Mr. Speaker!” shouted the young woman CNN reporter. “Based on the present situation, the impact on the public’s confidence in the available water supplies, and the subsequent surge in beverage-related stocks at the expense of the rest of the market, won’t your investigation lead to more uncertainty and unrest?”

Patrick filled his lungs, transferred the paperclip again, and peered directly into the camera.

“No. The answer is no. I am seeking to restore stability and show the world how we re-establish confidence that has been lost. Confidence that Morgan Taylor cannot personally regain.”

It was the sharpest attack the reporter ever heard on camera. The thirty-five-year-old Columbia School of Journalism graduate was about to have her defining moment on TV, too.

“Mr. Speaker, is this more about you than President Taylor? If he had not requested quick approval of General Johnson as vice president, then you would be next in the line of succession.”

“This is not about me!” The reaction had the effect of calling out the reporter for her insolent comment. “Not one bit.” Patrick took another deep breath, transferred the paperclip and calmly approached the question. “This is about the health and well-being of the United States of America. And for that reason, Morgan Taylor must do the right thing. Submit to an investigation.”

His actual speech was hardly more than 150 well-rehearsed words. There would be much more spoken and written about it in the next ten minutes, let alone in the nation’s history.

Career defining and explosive. Absolutely. But Duke Patrick’s timing couldn’t have been worse.

The White House

Scott Roarke’s basement office

Morgan Taylor wasn’t watching Duke Patrick’s tirade. He had no time and certainly no regard for the bombastic House Speaker. But Christine Slocum was another matter; a political chess piece on the other side of the chessboard.
Are you a
pawn or a knight?
he wondered.

“Ms. Slocum, now that you’re here, you can be of great help to us.”

“Help?” she said regaining her exposure.

Taylor cued Robert Mulligan to join in. Roarke and Evans watched.

“You’ve been at the apex of some high-level activities. And as best we can determine, though you are a very bright and accomplished young woman, things have come your way very easily. Without you having to do much. Am I correct?”

She acknowledged that fact.

“Your Congressional appointments. Your scholarship, internships, and jobs just happened, along with a monthly stipend.”

“Trusts and foundations,” Slocum replied. “Merit awards in school.”

Mulligan stepped closer. He’d been holding a file under his arm, which he now presented.

“You didn’t look at Mr. Roarke’s folder. You’re going to want to read this one.”

“What is it?”

Mulligan opened it up and put it in her hands. “Did you ever wonder how your parents died?”

The White House

Christine Slocum now answered direct questions posed by Roy Bessolo, one of the most unpleasant men she’d ever met. She knew one other in the room, by sight. The attorney general. The only comfort she had was seeing Scott Roarke, who stood against a wall and listened intently.

“You never questioned where your support came from?” Bessolo barked. They were well into the so-called “informational session.”

“No. It all looked legitimate. I’ll show you the letters. They always came from foundations I thought my parents set up.”

“And the foundations told you you’d be fucking a presidential candidate?”

Eve Goldman cleared her throat; a signal for him to calm down.

Bessolo barely corrected himself. “Excuse me, I meant who you needed to cozy up to.”

“No, that was all me.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’ve always…”

“Fucked anyone you wanted to? No need to respond, Ms. Slocum. We’re getting a pretty clear picture of how you operated and who your conquests were.”

“But no one told me to,” she started to explain.

“They didn’t have to. They knew your serial behavior and counted on it.”

Slocum turned to the AG. “I think I need a lawyer. I’d like to call a lawyer.” She reached for a tissue as an additional layer of her resolve slipped away.

“Ms. Slocum, you are not under arrest,” Eve Goldman explained again. “As far as we can tell, you have not committed any crime. But that does not mean you were not involved, even unsuspectingly, of assisting others who evidently duped you. We need your help. We need it now.”

“Okay, I’ll try.”

Bessolo returned to his last point.

“You were apparently very creative in all areas. You wrote campaign speeches, position papers.” He put undo emphasis on
position.
“And you filled in for Mrs. Lodge rather well.”

“Agent Bessolo!” Goldman commented in a scolding town. “Please.”

It was definitely a game of good cop/bad cop.

Randolph AFB

San Antonio, Texas

The same time

Much has been written and debated about “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a euphemism in some circles for torture; “applied encouragement” to others.

This would be neither. Though his name might have hinted he’d be attaching electrodes to testicles, Raymond Watts entered the isolation cell within the airplane hangar without any such equipment. He was prepared to offer Manuel Estavan a straight-forward take-it-or-leave-it deal, with a few key caveats.

“Mr. Estavan, we don’t have a great deal of time,” the career FBI agent stated, even before the door behind him slammed shut. And it did slam with a huge bang.

Estavan sat at a metal chair bolted to the floor, adjacent to a stainless steel table. On the surface, a half-filled paper cup of water and a pack of the gangster’s unlit Chesterfields. They would remain unlit.

The MS-13 gang leader followed Watts as he walked around the room. He saw that age was not a factor in the man’s strength. He calculated that the agent was around fifty and at least twice as powerful as he was.

Watts circled the perimeter, staying clear of Estavan. He took off his sports jacket, revealing upper arms twice as large as most men’s thighs. He swept Estavan’s water off the table, and laid his carefully folded jacket on the surface. He picked up the cigarettes, crumpled them, and said, “This is a federal building. No smoking’s allowed.”

Then Watts circled the room again.

“There are cameras up there.” He pointed to a half-moon metal bowl in the center of the ceiling. “Four in fact. Microphones are planted in the table. They’ll pick up everything.” He approached Estavan and spoke softly into his ear. “Even a whisper. Right?” Watts looked at a mirror facing them.

They heard a knock through the glass.

“One-way mirror. We’re being watched, listened to, and recorded. Live to the FBI officers on the other side. Live to Washington. And, if the conversation doesn’t go too well from my perspective, it’ll go viral to your family and friends back in Guatemala. Your mother and sister still live there, Mr. Estavan.”

The gang leader tried to ignore the veiled threat, but couldn’t. He flinched.

“Yes, we know all about them.” Watts came closer and squatted across the desk. He looked at Estavan squarely in the eyes. “How long do you think they’ll survive if the video goes out on the Internet? You know we can dub, subtitle, zoom in. It’s really amazing.”

This was not how Estavan thought it was going to go down. Beating, yes. Threats to his family, no.

Watts stood up and resumed his pacing. “That’s the nice part of technology. Smart phones everywhere. We can even go live from this room. Right here. Right now. One call to your family. We have their number. I’m sure they’d be surprised to hear what kind of man you’ve become. What you’ve done with your life. For that matter, we can make sure your rivals get dialed in. Of course, at some point, the conversation would inevitably lead to how you’ve sold everyone out. You might deny it, but you think they’d buy it? I don’t. They’d probably want to make an example of you…through your mother and your sister.” He paused for a beat. “Natalia’s pregnant, you know. Her first child.”

This was news to Estavan. Staggering news. His eyes swelled with tears; the first time in years.

“You wouldn’t,” he finally said.

“Oh, we would, Mr. Estavan.” He looked back at the one-way mirror. Two taps came back at them in confirmation.

“Live. Here and now,” the six-foot-two retired Marine made his point. “But that won’t end it. We’ll let you back out on the streets. What will your life expectancy be? Days? I’d say minutes.

“You know how painful and difficult beheadings are. Nothing simple about it. Maybe you’ll man up to the moment. But your mother and Natalia? Would they make your mother watch your sister die or the other way around? How would you stage it? Or maybe they’d record your death, show it to them, then cut their throats. So many options.”

The White House

“Ms. Slocum, the attorney general said we’re not charging you with anything.” He paused. “But should we?”

“No. I just did what I was told.”

The comment hung in the air.

Roarke stepped forward. He showed real compassion when he quietly asked, “Who told you, Christine? Who?”

She took his hand. “I never knew. I just got some instructions over the Internet. Nothing that seemed really wrong. In fact it was exciting. I thought that’s how Washington works.”

She was right, but Roarke didn’t say it.

“And sometimes I had to send some messages out…”

There are many ways to get information from an asset to a handler. The traditional method is through a dead drop, so named because it involves a person dropping off a message. It’s usually coded information inserted into a container of some sort and left at a prearranged location. Another person then picks it up and moves it along or decodes the communiqué. It’s the thing of John LeCarré novels and Cold War intrigue.

Dead drops, like live drops—a face-to-face meeting, are still used. But with the development and proliferation of the Internet, a whole new world of anonymous data transfer has emerged.

That’s how Christine Slocum delivered her information.

“In pictures,” she offered. Slocum reached for another tissue but didn’t let go of Roarke’s hand. “A kind of nerdy guy came over a year ago and showed me how to do it.”

“How to do what?” Bessolo barked none too politely.

“To send and receive through pictures. But it was always gossip. You’d find better stuff on
TMZ,
” she complained.

For years, there had been rumors that Al Qaeda embedded coded messages in Internet photographs. It wasn’t until 2010, however, that the FBI was able to confirm the actual use of high-tech data concealment.

The technique requires a degree of technological training, but not a lot. Basically, it involves changing the numeric code that computers assign to a picture’s colors. To produce a computer picture on-screen, the computer gives every pixel three numeric values. They refer to the amount of primary colors—red, green, and blue that are generated in each pixel. Changing these values even to a small degree, allows spies to hide computer language of 1s and 0s in the picture’s pixel numbers.

This doesn’t change a picture’s appearance. However, it does create an electronic dead drop. With billions of pictures on the Internet, analysis by the CIA or NSA is virtually impossible.

While the technology is new, the act of concealing messages within images is not.
Steganography,
as it is called, is as old as governments and regimes themselves. It goes back at least as far as the ancient Greek messages tattooed into the shaved scalps of couriers, which became invisible as a head of hair regrew. Truly simple in its day; technologically elegant in modern times.

Christine Slocum was as adept at the computer as she was in the bedroom.

“Look lady,” Bessolo said, leaning right into her face, “this isn’t a goddamned reality television show. You are in serious trouble…”

“I thought I was okay as long as I…”

Bessolo didn’t let her finish. “Quite honestly, the attorney general has told you some things that I’m not happy with. And when I’m not happy, I am committed to make you unhappy and very, very miserable. So confine your answers to specifics and save the commentary for your best-selling autobiography five years from now.”

Roarke patted her shoulder. “Just answer, Christine. We’ll be through soon.”

“I’m trying.”

“Did you ever know who you were sending reports to?” Bessolo asked.

“A think tank in Maryland.”

“What think tank?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you didn’t want to find out?”

“I should have.”

“Damned straight!”

“Mr. Bessolo,” Attorney General Goldman chided. “Let’s stick to the questions.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said only somewhat apologetically. He returned to Slocum barely changing his tone. “What kind of information did you pass, Ms. Slocum?”

“Like I said. Gossip. Sex stuff mostly. Short on details.” She looked at Roarke and pleaded, “I wouldn’t have said anything, Scott.”

“People you were ordered to sleep with?” Bessolo demanded.

“Yes. No. Not ordered to.”

“Doors opened up for you pretty automatically,” the attorney general offered from a few feet away. “You never thought that was odd? That these partners came so easily to you.” Goldman hesitated to measure her next words, and then proclaimed what should have been abundantly obvious to Slocum. “You never realized you were spying?”

“No. No! Why do you say that? Scott, what are they trying to do?”

Randolph AFB

“We have a problem that you helped create. Now you’re going to help us solve it. You’re going to do it without me having to lay a hand on you—which I’m quite capable of doing. Or worse, my colleagues will step in. They cut their teeth in Iraq, and what they didn’t learn there, they sure made up for in Afghanistan.

“They’re all muscle. I’m what they call the negotiator. They don’t believe in what I do a lot. And I don’t like what they do all that much. But at the end of the day, we need information. So one way or another we’ll get it.”

Watts moved closer and said, barely above whisper, “So here’s the deal. You answer all my questions without any hesitation; without any lying.”

“If I do?” Estavan asked tentatively.

“If you don’t!” he shouted as he turned to the mirror. They heard a loud knock back. “If I were you, I’d just open up right now.”

The killer looked like a little boy who had done something terribly wrong.

“And
when
I do?”

“
When
is
now.
And we will come to an arrangement.”

The word confused Estavan. “An arrangement?”

“A business arrangement, Mr. Estavan. Because you will be out of the business you were in and we couldn’t possibly allow you to continue.”

“And then?”

“We’ll talk about a new job. You’ll be working for us.”

“And if I don’t like this
arrangement?”

“We will always have the recordings. We’ll always know where your family is. Where your
friends,”
he stressed in a sarcastic way, “are. You
will
work for us. The details, of course, are a bit sketchy at this moment. But as the responsible adult in this equation; responsible to your mother and sister, I think you get it.”

Estavan’s will, all but drained, barely held him in his chair. He had no fight left.

“Shall we begin,” Watts said.

The White House

“Christine, you were being used and you used other people,” Goldman added softly. “By definition, you were a spy. And knowingly or not, you were reporting to someone. Perhaps a foreign national. Think. Do you have any idea at all?”

“No. Honestly no.”

“Okay,” Bessolo said completely changing his tone. “I believe you don’t.”

Christine cried grateful tears.

“But your computer will.”

Over the next twenty minutes Slocum described everything in detail; how she chose noncopyrighted photographs to manipulate; those unlikely to be pulled from Internet use. She provided the names of URLs she found instructions on and how she signaled through innocent-looking, but coded Facebook postings.

The session concluded with Roy Bessolo telling her exactly what would happen next. “Now you will, with full knowledge, help us. You’ll tell lies and you’ll help us find who and where your handlers are. You’ll feed them information that will trigger responses…that will chip away at their armor…that will lead us to them. More of the game, as you said. This time, we make the rules. Do you understand, Ms. Slocum? Do you fully understand?”

“Yes sir, I do.”

“Mr. Roarke is going to get you something to eat. Take your time. We’ve got a team over at your apartment now checking for listening devices and cameras. They’ll clone your computer, laptop, and iPad. Figure a few more hours and you can go home. Tomorrow, you slip back into your normal routine and continue to see Mr. Roarke as if nothing has happened. It will require some good acting, but apparently you already have that talent.”