Estevez, because the president’s adviser on national security affairs had called this morning to ask him over for a chat.
“To get all of our cards on the table,” Estevez had said mysteriously, and Callahan had absolutely no idea what the man was talking about, and he said so. “The Hutchinson Island attack. The president wanted me to kick around a few ideas with you.”
The incident concerned the Bureau’s domestic intelligence and criminal investigation divisions, but Estevez said he wanted to start with counterterrorism. “Around two o’clock?”
It was that time now, and Estevez, who was seated on a chair facing two men on the couch, waved Callahan in. “Bill, glad you could make it.”
“Yes, sir,” Callahan said.
A desk and credenza were set in front of a window at one end of the pleasantly furnished office. A small conference table on one side of the room faced the couch and easy chairs.
“I don’t know if you’ve met Marty Bambridge, he runs the directorate of operations over at the CIA.”
Bambridge stood up, reached across the coffee table, and shook hands. “Heard good things about you,” he said.
“Of course I think you must know Joe Caldwell. He’s deputy secretary over at the Department of Energy.”
“You were on
“I’m sorry, Mr. Estevez, but I’m at a total loss why I’m here,” Callahan said, and he looked at the others to see if they were wondering the same thing. But if they were it wasn’t obvious.
“Hutchinson Island, as I told you on the phone this morning,” Estevez said. “And what it could mean for us. Future ramifications.”
“I understand that Kirk McGarvey came over to have a talk with you,” Bambridge said, almost too casually, and Callahan caught a glimmer as to why he’d been called.
“A couple of months ago. Right after Hutchinson Island.”
“Care to share with us the general substance of your meeting?” Estevez said. “It wasn’t a privileged conversation was it?”
“No, not at all,” Callahan said. He didn’t like the position he had been put in, but at this point he could see no way out, nor had McGarvey asked that their meeting be kept confidential. “The NNSA asked him to investigate the incident and he wanted to know what, if anything, the Bureau had found.”
“It’s only natural,” Caldwell said. “He was there when it happened, after all, and he helped limit the damage. Lost his partner.”
“Did he share any early conclusions with you?” Estevez asked.
“He mentioned the Reverend Schlagel who’s been capitalizing on the incident to further his political career. Then, of course, there was the incident at Oslo.”
“The reverend’s people. Both dead.”
“Yes, sir. Anyway McGarvey was suspicious even two months ago about the coincidental nature.”
Estevez exchanged a glance with the others. “He’s a bright man. What else?”
“We discussed Schlagel’s possible connection with a hedge fund manager in Dubai and the UAE International Bank of Commerce. The Bureau has had them under investigation.”
“Anne Marie Marinaccio,” Estevez said. “We know all about her.”
“And that’s about it,” Callahan said. “We agreed that there wasn’t enough evidence to link Marinaccio or Schlagel to a professional who apparently pulled off the Hutchinson Island attack with only one man inside helping out.”
“Yes, we know about that, too,” Bambdrige said.
“Any contact with McGarvey since then?” Estevez asked.
“No.”
“Where are you at with your division’s investigation? Any progress you could share with us?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have a thing other than the probability that the hired gun is someone at the top of his game. Likely international, with a lot of experience and enough intelligence and professionalism that he’s left no tracks which we could use to trace him.”
“We’re running into the same problem,” Bambridge said. “Even Otto Rencke is drawing blanks.”
“What are the chances McGarvey will come up with something useful?” Estevez asked the CIA officer.
“He’s never failed before. Walt Page has a lot of confidence in him.”
“You’re aware that he’s become something of an attachment to Eve Larsen. Almost her personal bodyguard,” the Energy Department’s deputy secretary said.
“He thought that whoever was behind the Hutchinson Island attack would go after her again,” Bambridge said. “Seems he was right. Just maybe he’s using her as a lightning rod.”
What they were saying made a certain chilling sense to Callahan. “The Marinnacio Group deals mostly in oil derivatives,” he said. “And it would be in her best interest, and in the best interest of the major oil-producing nations to limit the development of alternate energy sources.”
The three men looked at him, but said nothing.
“That would include nuclear energy. There’s a rising public sentiment against the thirty or so permits for new construction, a lot of it engineered by Schalgel. So I see where McGarvey is taking it. And it would also include an opposition to Eve Larsen’s project — especially now that she’s received the Nobel Prize.”
“Your point, Bill?” Estevez asked.
“We need to help out. We need to protect her. And Homeland Security and the NNSA need to up the threat level and increase security on all of our existing nuclear facilities.”
“And there is the crux of the problem the president is faced with,” Estevez said. “Besides the fact the guys who tried to take her out in Oslo have been bagged we have to deal with the interim, and we need to provide the solution.”
“I’m not following.”
“In November the President met with Salman bin Talal — he’s the the new Saudi oil minister — here in the White House, mostly about continuing basing privileges for our Air Force, and the Iranian nuclear issue.”
“It was in the news,” Callahan said.
“They were very cooperative,” Estevez said. “The president scored a couple of points. But what wasn’t in the news was Talal’s warning that we not rush so quickly into unproven alternate sources of energy. Americans, he said, aren’t willing to give up their SUVs yet. Coal is unsustainable in terms of carbon dioxide, and it will take a viable oil industry to meet demands. First, he said, switch to all electric transportation — for which oil will be the primary resource alongside nuclear energy. Then on a small scale, investigate alternate energy, because such resources may be as far off as the next century.”
“Nonsense,” Callahan said.
“Of course. But the implied threat was that if we put national resources behind projects like Dr. Larsen’s water wheels, the Saudis and other OPEC nations would began to decrease outputs by substantial percentages. It would place the U.S. in an untenable position.”
“Worse than the gas lines in the seventies,” Caldwell said. “Strangely at Interior agrees.” Strangely Blumenthal was the Secretary of the Department of Interior, which regulated oil drilling.
“Blackmail,” Callahan said.
“Real-world politics,” Estevez said. “We can’t afford to drag our heels on alternate energy research, but we’ve been forced into that position. So unless people like Dr. Larsen can come up with a solution, and I mean a plug-and-play fix, we’ll have to keep hands off.”
“Or appear to,” Bambridge said. “Which is where McGarvey has already been useful, and it’s up to us to keep him in the middle.”
“We can’t give him any overt assistance,” Estevez said. “As I understand it, he may ride Dr. Larsen’s oil rig all the way to Florida, and we won’t stand in his way. He’s doing this on his own.”
“We can let it leak that there may be a romantic interest there,” Caldwell said. “He lost his wife eighteen months ago.”
Callahan thought the suggestion was pure sleaze, but he said nothing.
