officers that had been about the size and weight of a large brick.
He picked up that device that looked like a BlackBerry. It was known to those who both were privileged to have one and knew the story as a “CaseyBerry.” He knew that when Secretary Cohen said she would call him later, she would do so immediately using the CaseyBerry in her Brick.
As McNab looked at his CaseyBerry, a green LED indicating an incoming call lit up, as did a blue LED indicating that the encryption function was operating.
Those who believed the White House switchboard and its ancillary encryption capabilities were state of the art were wrong. State of the art was really what Aloysius Francis Casey, Ph.D., termed “Prototype Systems, Undergoing Testing.”
When, for example, the encryption system in the “Prototype, Undergoing Testing” Brick that General McNab held had all the bugs worked out, it would be made available to the White House and to the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland.
In the meantime, even if NSA intercepted the signals transmitted-via satellites 27,000 miles over the earth- between the AFC Corporation’s test facility in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Bricks in the hands of a few more than a dozen people around the world, they would not be able to break the encryption. Dr. Casey was sure of this because AFC, Inc., had designed, installed, and maintained the decryption computers at Fort Meade.
Before he would turn over to the government McNab’s “Prototype, Undergoing Testing” Brick with all the bugs worked out, Casey would ensure that McNab and others on the CaseyBerry network had a newer “Prototype, Undergoing Testing” Brick whose encrypted signals NSA could not crack.
General McNab pressed the TALK button.
“McNab,” he said.
“Bruce, I just sent you a radio I just got from Mexico City. Do you have it?”
“Just came in,” he said.
The monitor of the laptop had illuminated and was now showing the message the secretary of State had received from Ambassador McCann.
McNab pushed three buttons on his desk, simultaneously informing his secretary, his senior aide-de-camp, and his junior aide-de-camp that he required their services.
He still had his fingers on the buttons when the door burst open and Captain Albert H. Walsh, his junior aide-de-camp, who was six feet two inches tall and weighed 195 pounds, quickly walked in.
“Just you, Al,” McNab said. Then he made a push-back gesture to his secretary and his senior aide, who were now standing behind Walsh. They turned and went away.
“Just got it,” McNab said.
McNab pointed to a chair and pushed the LOUDSPEAKER button on his CaseyBerry. Captain Walsh sat down and took a notebook and ballpoint pen from the pocket of his desert-pattern battle-dress uniform.
General McNab finished reading Ambassador McCann’s message that had been sent to the secretary of State.
“Shit!” he exclaimed, immediately adding, “Sorry.”
“That was my reaction, Bruce,” the secretary of State said.
McNab pushed one of the buttons in the attache case. A printer on the sideboard behind his desk began to whir. McNab pointed to it, and Captain Walsh quickly went to the printer.
“Something about this smells,” McNab said. “Danny Salazar is no novice. For that matter, neither is Ferris.”
“You know everything I do,” she said.
“Has the press got this yet?”
“They will half an hour after it gets to the White House.”
“Can I call Roscoe Danton before that happens, give him a heads-up?”
Roscoe J. Danton was a member of the
“Why?”
“Gut feeling we should. He’s almost one of us. We owe him. And we may need him.”
“Does Danton have a Brick?”
“No Brick,” McNab replied. “A CaseyBerry. Aloysius likes him. Number fourteen.”
“I’ll call him and tell him to call Porky. But all he’ll have, Bruce, is ten or fifteen minutes.”
John David “Porky” Parker was President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen’s spokesman.
“That’s a long time, sometimes.”
“Bruce, I’m really sorry about this.”
“I know,” McNab said.
The LEDs went out.
McNab put down the CaseyBerry, picked up the black telephone, and pushed one of the buttons on its base.
“Terry,” he announced a moment later, “I need you.”
“On my way, sir,” Major General Terry O’Toole, deputy commander of SPECOPSCOM, replied.
He was in McNab’s office forty-five seconds later. He was trim and ruddy-faced.
McNab pointed to the printout. O’Toole picked it up and read it.
“Shit,” he said. “And I gave Jim Ferris to you.”
“What
O’Toole looked at him.
McNab went on: “And what you’re going to say now is, ‘Yes, sir, General, that’s the way it went down.’ ”
O’Toole met McNab’s eyes, nodded, and repeated, “Yes, sir, General, that’s the way it went down.”
McNab nodded.
O’Toole said: “What happens now?”
“Do you know Colonel Ferris’s religious persuasion?”
“Episcopalian.”
“Al,” General McNab ordered, “get on the horn to the Eighteenth Airborne Corps chaplain. Tell him I want the senior Episcopalian chaplain and the senior Roman Catholic chaplain here in fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Walsh said, and went to a telephone on a side table.
“And call my wife,” McNab said. “Same message; here in fifteen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about your wife, Terry? Does she know Mrs. Ferris?”
“May I use your telephone, General?” O’Toole replied.
“Don’t tell her who,” McNab said.
“I understand, sir.”
Neither Mrs. McNab nor Mrs. O’Toole would be surprised by the summons. Both had gone more times than they liked to remember to accompany their husbands when they went to inform wives that their husbands were either dead or missing.
McNab picked up the CaseyBerry and punched in a number.
It was answered ten seconds later in what was known as “the Stockade.” Delta Force and Gray Fox were quartered in what had once been the Fort Bragg Stockade. The joke was that all the money spent to make sure no one got out of the Stockade had not been wasted. All of the fences and razor wire and motion sensors were perfectly suited to keep people
The CaseyBerry was answered by a civilian employee of the Department of the Army, who were known by the acronym DAC. His name was Victor D’Alessandro, a very short, totally bald man in his late forties who held Civil Service pay grade GS-15. Army regulations provided that a GS-15 held the assimilated rank of colonel. Before Mr. D’Alessandro had retired, he had been a chief warrant officer (5) drawing pay and allowances very close to those of a lieutenant colonel. And before he put on the bars of a warrant officer, junior grade, D’Alessandro had been a sergeant major.
