Secrets of State (27 page)

“Losing one city in exchange for a guarantee that your sworn enemy will be stripped of his nuclear weapons, the program burned to the ground, and the earth salted? Seems like a pretty fair exchange, particularly if your stock-in-trade is strategic thought. Herman Kahn and the boys at RAND came up with way wackier shit in the sixties. About the time I left the Agency, there were reports that Ashoka and the Stoics were making common cause on Pakistan, but it was all pretty hazy and nonspecific. We didn't know the players or the programs. It was just shadows. Black holes where there should be stars.”

“It still seems to me like a huge risk, even for a big payoff.”

“They may be using a cutout. One of the militant groups active in Kashmir. Something deniable.”

“That seals it. I need to get my daughter out of there.”

“Well, if the mountain will not come to Muhammad . . .”

“Yeah, I've thought about that. First, I need to see if I can get ahold of Lena. I need to talk to her. I don't want to use your phone. It would be too easy for Argus to trace it back here.”

“Yeah. I wouldn't use the phone. But you can use my car. The keys are in the kitchen.”

•   •   •

Earl drove
an ancient Chevy Blazer. Jouncing down Dry Gulch Road, Sam could feel every bruise and muscle kink in his body complaining about the shocks. On Earl's advice, he drove into Tennessee. Knoxville was the closest big city, but Sam drove right through it and kept going another two hours to Chattanooga. Argus had direct access to the NSA database and it would be easy enough to trace a call to Lena's number back to the point of origin. Earl was pretty sure that Weeder's team was already working up a “known associates” matrix, a kind of wire diagram of Sam's connections built from Facebook and other social media sites, phone and e-mail records, and the address book on his Argus computer. Earl was somewhere on that list, and Knoxville was close enough to Linville that it would not be too difficult for the analysts to zero in on No. 9 Dry Gulch Road as Sam's most likely hiding place. Chattanooga was far enough away to fall outside the immediate search zone, and it would look like Sam was on his way to Atlanta or even Mexico.

For the foreseeable future, Sam knew that he was going to have to think this way about all of his movements. It was not natural to him and he did not like it. Neither did he especially like the Beretta M9 pistol tucked under the driver's seat.
It's like an umbrella,
Earl had explained.
You probably don't need it, but
if you don't have one, it's sure as shit gonna rain.

Earl had also given him two thousand dollars in cash.

“Who keeps two grand lying around a house in the woods?” Sam had asked.

“Ex-spies.”

It was almost ten-thirty at night when he reached Chattanooga. At a Walmart on the outskirts of town, Sam bought a prepaid cell phone. He picked up an international phone card from a pharmacy in a nearby Latino neighborhood. He paid cash and he did not park the Blazer close to either of the stores. If Weeder and his team succeeded in tracking the call back to the phone's purchase, he did not want any security-camera footage that might show the license plate. It would not take fifteen minutes for the Morlocks to trace the plate back to Earl. There was no answer when Sam dialed Lena's cell. After half a dozen rings it rolled over into voice mail. Sam did not leave a message. Lena did not have a landline in her apartment and there were any number of harmless explanations as to why she might not have her cell phone with her. Still, it made him nervous. He wanted desperately to speak to her.

In line with the plan that he and Earl had hashed out, Sam was supposed to check his e-mail in Chattanooga as well. Then, he would drive south for two hours before trying Lena again and logging on to his Gmail account. Assuming Weeder was tracking his personal e-mail, Argus would eventually get the location of the computer he used to access his account from the service provider. It might take time, but they would get it in the end. Sam was laying a trail of electronic breadcrumbs that was supposed to make it look like he was heading toward Atlanta. Then he would turn around and drive back north to Linville.

“Does this stuff work?” Sam had asked Earl, looking for reassurance when they had mapped out this strategy.

Earl had shrugged.

“Sometimes.”

Internet cafés were not as easy to find as they were even five years ago. Smartphones had undermined the business model. There were still a few places, however, and Sam found a café with a view of the Tennessee River that brewed decent coffee and had computers available for rent.

He checked the
Washington Post
first, looking for anything about a single-car accident on the GW Parkway. There was nothing. Sam wondered whether the Morlocks had hauled his Prius back up the hill or if they had just pushed it into the river. His next car, he decided, would be a Chrysler 300 with a V-8 or some similar iron monster. Screw the gas mileage.

Sam logged on to Gmail, hoping that there was something from Lena.

A part of him expected to find access to his account blocked, but it opened normally and he skimmed briefly through the twenty or so unread messages in his in-box. Most were trash, “special offers” from various businesses and putative Nigerian princes that had managed to get ahold of his e-mail address. As much as possible, Sam used a separate account, biteme99@hotmail, that he had set up for when websites demanded his e-mail address. Over the years, however, his real account had bled over enough that his box was starting to get clogged with junk. There were also a few notes from friends and one from an address that Sam did not know but immediately recognized: Zeno of Citium.

That was the only identifying information. There was no ISP provider and no generic or country-specific top-level domain. Just the name and birthplace of the Greek philosopher from the third century BC, the father of all Stoics. The subject line was no more informative.
READ
THIS
was all it said.

He opened it.

There was an audio file attached to the message. Under the link were words that sent a chill down the back of Sam's spine.
No evil is honorable; but death is honorable. Therefore, death is not evil.
It was a famous syllogism, one of the few surviving quotes attributed directly to Zeno.

The café did not have headphones to rent, but they had them for sale. Sam bought a pair and plugged them into the computer. He hesitated before clicking the link. Maybe it was a trap of some kind that would immediately broadcast his location to the Morlocks. Maybe he should talk this over with Earl first. Sam knew he could not wait. He opened the link.

A marble bust of a bearded man that Sam assumed was Zeno appeared on the screen.

“Mr. Trainor. Listen carefully. The reason we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may hear more and speak less.

“We congratulate you on your survival. You are a resourceful individual. This is a character trait that we respect and admire. You are also, however, something of a problem for us. Your understanding of morality is immature. It is micro rather than macro. You do not see the big picture and you do not appreciate that our society is made safe by those who make the difficult choices. This is a trait that we neither respect nor admire.”

The voice was computer-generated or electronically distorted in some way. If it was Spears or Weeder or one of the other Morlocks, Sam could not recognize the voice. Even so, he recognized the sentiment. These were the same principles as those behind the trolleyology questions Spears had posed to him in a conversation that seemed a lifetime in the past.

“You have seen a piece of a complex picture,” the voice continued. “We understand how this can be disorienting. We bear you no ill will. To do so would be at odds with the logic of the current situation. Neither, however, can we trust you with the fragment of information that you have uncovered. This would be equally foolish. You are a distraction from our purpose. We will not hesitate to eliminate this distraction, but will not focus disproportionate resources on managing it. We believe that we have found an acceptable balance of risk.”

It was hard for Sam to fully appreciate that he was the abstract “distraction” the voice was discussing so dispassionately. The car crash on the parkway that nearly killed him was, to the Stoics, merely an attempt to remove a minor irritant.

“We have secured an insurance policy. Your daughter, Lena, is currently in our custody. Please be assured that we are treating her well and courteously. She is healthy and unharmed, and she will remain so as long as you do nothing that we would consider threatening in any way. We do not think that you will be at all confused as to what sort of actions might constitute a threat. If in doubt, we recommend that you err on the side of caution.

“Once our objectives have been achieved, we will turn attention to the issue of our future relationship.

“We understand that you will want proof of life. That is not unreasonable.” The head of Zeno morphed into Lena. There was no background, just a still shot of Lena's head and shoulders against a black background.

“Papa Bear.” It was her voice and Sam felt his throat constrict. His girl was in danger and it was his fault.

“I'm okay,” she continued. “They won't let me tell you anything more than that, but they haven't hurt me. I love you, Papa Bear.”

The marble Zeno replaced the image of his daughter.

“Good-bye, Mr. Trainor,” the voice said. “And remember these words from Zeno of Citium. ‘Love is a god, who cooperates in securing the safety of the city.'”

The bust of Zeno disappeared from the screen.

Sam wanted to explode. He wanted to rip the computer from its mount on the desktop and throw it across the room. If Spears or Weeder walked into the café at that moment, he knew that he would launch himself at the ex-SEALs with murderous intent.

They had his daughter. They would pay for this. There would be an accounting.

Despite the blithe reassurances from the voice that if he did nothing Lena would be released unharmed, Sam knew in his bones that they would kill her. Then they would kill him. For the Stoics, for Argus, this was the tidiest solution. Why not kill them? It was safer that way.

Sam would not sit and wait. He would go after them, even if he did not yet know how.

To start with, he wanted to listen to the message again to see if there was anything he had missed. But when he went to click on the link, he saw that the e-mail had disappeared. It had erased itself from the screen, and Sam knew that there would be no record anywhere of the message ever having been sent.

“Hang in there, baby,” he whispered to himself. “I'm coming for you.”

Sam felt a complex mix of emotions. Fear and anger were the top notes, but they overlaid a deep reservoir of love for his only child and something else. Parental pride. His little girl had been captured by killers and she had already got the better of them. She had told Sam where she was.

DALLAS, TEXAS

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

T
he kill zone was smaller than he would have liked. There was no getting around that. He did not want the tip of the rifle to be visible from the street. Neither could he risk the muzzle flash, so he was set up almost ten feet back from the open window. The weapon was not ideal either. It was an older-model rifle and foreign, a balky bolt-action Italian design. But he had zeroed it carefully at an isolated
spot in the hill scrub outside of town. For the distance at issue, it would s
erve.

He had been waiting for more than four hours in the small, stifling room. The target was behind schedule. In the enervating heat, it was hard to stay alert and focused. Looking through the sights of his rifle, he scanned the narrow kill zone one more time. An American flag hanging from a lamppost made for a suitable wind gauge. There was a light breeze from the northwest. Not enough to affect the trajectory of the bullet. A sizeable crowd had gathered along the parade route to welcome the target. He was a politician running for reelection. He would want to be seen. The target would be riding in an open-top vehicle. There would be security, of course, the best in the world. But there was little enough that even the best bodyguards could do against a skilled man and a high-velocity rifle.

He was not worried about the shot itself. He was an expert marksman who had learned the basics of his trade in the U.S. Marine Corps. Of greater concern was the reaction of the security detail after the shot. Getting away was at least as important to the mission as getting the kill.

It was the crowd that alerted him to the imminent arrival of the target. The civilians lining both sides of Elm Street cheered and small children were waving miniature American flags.

He pulled a small pair of binoculars out of a leather case and focused in on one particular man standing on the grassy knoll that overlooked Dealey Plaza. His spotter. The man held three fingers up in front of his chest. Three hundred yards. Two fingers. Two hundred yards.

The sniper turned his attention back to the rifle and sighted on the kill zone. The open-topped limousine traveled at a slow and constant pace. It was not an especially difficult shot. He lined the sights up on the back of the target's head and squeezed the trigger. His first shot was a little low, hitting the target in the neck. He ejected the empty shell case and fed another bullet into the breech, working the bolt carefully to minimize the risk of a jam. His second shot was dead-on, blowing out the top of President Kennedy's head and spraying his brains over his wife and the other passengers in the car.

Mission accomplished.

The passenger in the front seat of the Lincoln Continental was down as well. It looked like Governor Connally. That was not his shot. The sniper had heard the distinctive crack of a high-velocity round in between his two shots. There was a second gunman. That hadn't been a part of the plan briefed to him, but Smith kept his cards close and it was possible that taking down the governor was part of a parallel operation that was piggybacking on his. It was a little irritating that Smith hadn't told him about the second gunman, but it was not a real problem.

He laid the rifle on the floor near the window and stripped off the surgical gloves he had worn every time he had handled it. The gloves were likely the reason his first shot had been a little low. They made it hard to establish a connection with the rifle, to make it part of his body. But they also meant that the only fingerprints on the gun would be those of its owner—one Lee Harvey Oswald.

The nut job Oswald would take the blame for the death of the president . . . and the credit for what had been a fine piece of shooting. Such was life in the shadows.

Oswald himself would need to be eliminated, of course, but that was not his responsibility. That was Smith's assignment. Whether Oswald's life was measured in hours or days, he was not long for this world. And unlike Kennedy, he would die unmourned.

The president's killer took the stairs two at a time down six flights and did not look back as he left the Texas School Book Depository behind him.