The Cabal

Todd’s relationship with Liz was the most important thing in his life, not just because he loved her but because of their two-year-old daughter, Audrey. He owed both of them at least that much.

Givens appeared in the doorway from the hotel’s lobby, spotted Todd sitting upstairs, and came up. He looked out of breath and flushed, as if he had run all the way in from the Post. Unlike Todd, who was tall, solidly built with a broad, pleasant face, Givens was short and whip thin, his movements quick, almost birdlike. In college Todd had lettered two years as a running back on the football team, while Givens had lettered all four years in cross-country. He’d been incredibly fast with the endurance of an iron man, and it didn’t look as if he’d changed much.

“Thanks for coming,” Givens said, sitting down across from Todd. He laid a computer disk in a jewel case on the table and slid it across. “Don’t hold it up, don’t look at it, just put it in your pocket.”

“Okay,” Todd said. He slipped it into his jacket pocket as their waitress came over.

“Iced tea, with lemon,” Givens said. “I’m not staying for lunch.”

“So, here I am,” Todd said. “And I’m curious as hell.”

Givens glanced down at the entryway, and then at the other diners on the lower level, before he turned back. “Listen, for the past five months I’ve been investigating a power broker group called the Friday Club. And what I’m finding out is scaring the crap out of me. Everything I’ve come up with so far is on the disk.”

“Robert Foster,” Todd replied. Everyone in Washington knew of the so-called club whose ultra-conservative members called themselves American Firsters. Lobbyists, a number of high-ranking aides and advisers to some key senators and congressmen as well as at least one White House insider, and others. All men, all of them with power.

“He’s the top dog,” Givens said. “And when I started looking it didn’t take me long to find out that some of his lobbyist pals represented people like the Saudi royal family, the Venezuelan oil minister, the deputy director of Mexico’s intelligence service.”

“What were you looking for?”

Givens hesitated. “This is going to sound far-fetched. But one of the guys on the list was your deputy director of operations, Howard McCann, who got my attention when he turned up dead in the line of duty.”

Todd kept any hint of emotion from his face, but alarm bells were jangling all over the place. McCann had been a traitor who’d financed the hit on a Chinese general in Pyongyang, and before that was the moneyman behind a scheme to smuggle forty kilos of polonium-210 across the border with Mexico. When Todd’s father-in-law confronted the man in a safe house just outside Washington, the DDO had pulled out a pistol and it had been Todd who’d opened fire, killing him. There’d been a lot more to it than that, of course, but to this point they’d not been able to figure out where McCann had gotten the money. It was a puzzle.

“You have my attention, Josh,” he said carefully.

“I’m in the middle of something really big. Maybe even a shadow government. These guys have influenced elections, got federal judges removed from the bench, made sure some top banks and big financial companies got federal backing — bailouts just like what happened to Chrysler and just about everyone else a couple of years ago.”

“Planning a coup?”

Givens shook his head. “Nothing so messy or dramatic as that. I think they’ve already accomplished what they set out to do. They’re running things right now. Or at least the important stuff. Guys from the Federal Reserve are in the club, along with a couple of four stars from the Pentagon. This cuts right across the board.”

Givens looked away for a moment, apparently overwhelmed by what he was saying. When he turned back he’d come to some decision.

“What?” Todd prompted.

“Could be the bastards engineered nine/eleven.”

This was getting over the top for Todd. “Do you know how crazy that sounds? Just another conspiracy theory. Our guys deal with that kind of shit twenty-four/seven. Doesn’t get us anywhere.”

“Look what they’ve accomplished,” Givens said.

“Tell me.”

“A direct reduction of our civil liberties, for one. For Christ’s sake, libraries and bookstores are supposed to inform the FBI what fucking books we’re reading. Now you tell me who’s crazy?”

“What do your editors over at the Post have to say about it?”

Givens dismissed the question with a gesture. “These aren’t the Woodward and Bernstein days. We don’t run partial stories hoping the exposure will make other people come forward. Everyone’s gotten too smart.”

“Who have you shared this with?” Todd was having a lot of doubts. He and Givens hadn’t been close, but the guy had never seemed nutsy. And his investigative pieces in the Post had seemed first rate. But this now made no sense.

“No one. Not even my wife, Karson. Not until I have everything nailed down.”

“Okay, I’ll look at your disk,” Todd said. “Then what?”

“How did McCann die? What was he working on?”

Todd spread his hands. “Even if I knew something like that, which I don’t, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it.”

“Especially not with a reporter.”

“Something like that.”

“Give it to your father-in-law then. From what I hear he still carries some weight.” Givens looked down at the entryway again, as if he was expecting someone. “Hell, I don’t have anything solid yet. All I have are a lot of disconnected facts. Sudden changes in government policies, resignations of some key people here and there, upset elections in two dozen key states over the past couple of years. It’s all on the disk.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Todd said. “But I can’t promise anything. You’ve gotta understand that, Josh.”

“Do what you can,” Givens said. “What you think is right.”

His iced tea came, and he drank some of it then got up. “I trust you, man. I think you’re the only person in the world I can trust.”

“I’ll call you if I come up with something,” Todd said.

“Not at the paper,” Givens said. He handed Todd a business card. “Call me at home.” He gave Todd a long, hard look then turned, went downstairs, and left the restaurant.

TWO

Tim Kangas, thirty-one, medium height and build, thinning light brown hair and ordinary brown eyes, laid a twenty-dollar bill on the downstairs table after Givens hurried past and left the hotel. His partner, Ronni Mustapha, picked up the nylon sports bag on the chair between them and casually reached inside and switched off the shotgun microphone’s recording circuit. They’d heard everything.

They’d been following the Washington Post reporter for three weeks, waiting for the tipping point, which had apparently happened just minutes ago. An article in the newspaper would have meant next to nothing, but his meeting with a CIA officer, especially one with Van Buren’s connections, could possibly be devastating.

“Get the car,” Kangas said, and Mustapha, an ordinary-looking man in his late twenties with deep-set dark eyes and an easy, pleasant smile when he was in public, took the bag and left directly behind Givens.

No one would suspect he’d been born in Saudi Arabia; when he was five his parents had immigrated to Atlanta, where he’d completely assimilated, down to a soft Georgia accent. Nor would he be pegged as a CIA- trained NOC, non-official cover, field officer, the same as Kangas, who’d been born and raised in southern California. Both of them knew how to lie, how to fit in, how to fade into the woodwork, how to be anyone at anytime.

They had been picked for the program because both men had been born with a fiercely independent streak, exactly what the Company wanted. But after six years in the field, Kangas in Central America and Mustapha in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran — his parents had insisted that he learn Arabic as a child — they’d become too independent, which was all too common. And they’d also gotten fringe, over the top and in the end too brutal. Each was credited with half a dozen or more unauthorized kills of Enemies of the State and the Agency had pulled them