An American flag and the Oregon State flag stood on either side of the main door to Senator Carson’s suite of offices on the second floor of the Dirksen Building. Visitors entered a reception area where a young man and a young woman greeted them when they were not dealing with a constant flood of telephone calls. When the Senate was in session, the waiting room was usually filled with vacationing Oregonians who wanted to say hello to the man they had helped to elect and with constituents and lobbyists who wanted something from him.
When a senator moved in, the office was deconstructed, then rearranged for the senator’s needs. Walls went up to create offices of various sizes for the staff. A door in the reception area opened into a narrow, crowded corridor that ended at Senator Carson’s large corner office. A cubicle occupied by one of the legislative correspondents, who answered the letters the senator received every day, formed a barrier between the corridor and Brad’s office.
The offices for legislative assistants were small but looked different, depending on the occupant. All were furnished with bookshelves, gray metal filing cabinets, and desks, but some of the spaces were neat and well organized, while chaos reigned in others. Brad’s office was in between these extremes. His desk was neat, but he was starting to use the floor as extra filing space, and it would not be long before it resembled an obstacle course.
Much of the Senate’s important work begins in committees, which review legislation and oversee the executive branch. One of Brad’s jobs was to help Senator Carson prepare witnesses who were going to testify in front of one of the committees on which he sat. The testimony of these witnesses was received in writing the night before they were going to testify but was embargoed to the press. Brad was preparing a list of questions to ask a witness who was going to testify in favor of an immigration bill the Judiciary Committee was considering when the senator sent for him.
Senator Carson had hired an interior decorator, and his office now had a regal look. A credenza filled with books on various subjects on which the senator had to be educated stood under a window with a view of Union Station. A set of chairs with polished wood arms and burgundy upholstery sat along a wall decorated with photographs, framed newspaper pages, and awards that highlighted important events in the senator’s business and political careers. Across the way, a long, comfortable sofa sat kitty-corner to a second, smaller sofa and opposite two high-backed armchairs. A coffee table holding two coffee-table books with photos of Oregon’s spectacular scenery stood between the large sofa and the chairs.
A recess with a flat-screen monitor and a computer keyboard occupied another wall. Senator Carson sat in front of the recess behind a large wood desk and listened while Brad briefed him on the witnesses who would testify about the immigration bill. They had been talking for twenty minutes when the senator’s secretary buzzed to tell him that Senator Elizabeth Rivera of New Mexico, the chairperson of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, was holding on line 3.
Jack Carson was a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the United States intelligence community, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Security Agency, among others. Since 9/11 the importance of this committee had increased, and he made sure that his constituents knew that he was important enough to have been made a member.
“Good morning, Betsy,” Carson said as soon as they were connected. “What’s up?”
“We’re convening a special session of the SSCI in one-half hour. Can you make it?”
“I’ll be up,” he told Senator Rivera.
When the call ended, Carson buzzed his secretary. “Francis, do I have a meeting at ten thirty?”
“You’re scheduled to meet with a delegation of Oregon filbert farmers.”
“Shit! Look, I’ve got an emergency meeting with Intelligence. Can you get Kathy to cover for me?”
“Sure thing.”
“Have her mention national security. I hope the filbert growers won’t be too pissed off at me for not being able to hear their gripes in person. And send Luke in, will you?”
The senator turned to Brad. “Come with me, Brad. You’ll find this interesting.”
“Are you sure I can go?” Brad asked. “I don’t have a top-secret clearance.”
“I’m a U.S. senator, which means I can do pretty much anything I want. You’ve got a law degree, and I don’t. And I want my lawyer with me.”
B rad entered the most secure room in the Senate through a pair of unmarked frosted-glass doors and found himself in a waiting area decorated with pictures of men and women who had served as the chair of the SSCI.
“You’ll have to leave all of your electronic devices,” Lucas Sharp said as he took out his BlackBerry and handed it across a wooden barrier to a stern-looking Capitol Hill policewoman, who placed it in one of many cubbyholes that filled the wall to her left. Brad emptied his pockets and followed the senator and his chief of staff through a door into a corridor with bookshelves on the right and an alcove on the left with a telephone and a small round table surrounded by four chairs.
The door to the hearing room was open. Looked at head-on, it appeared to be a normal wood door, but Brad could see that it was steel and had the thickness of a door to a vault. On his way to the door, Brad walked by a conference room with a regular phone and a secure, encrypted phone.
In the center of the conference room was a long rectangular table furnished with comfortable high-backed leather chairs. A plaque identified each senator’s place at the table. The room was swept daily for bugs, and the walls were thick enough to foil anyone trying to hear what went on. No personal electronic devices were allowed, but there was a television at each place with a view of the Senate floor so the senators could see if they were needed for a vote. The television could also show videos of drone strikes in Afghanistan or other top-secret operations. Chairs lined the walls behind the senators, and Lucas told Brad these were for
the senators’ aides. While Sharp was speaking, Brad noticed a man sitting at the far end of the conference table. Brad recognized him as someone he had seen on TV.
Dr. Emil Ibanescu, the deputy director of national intelligence, was a balding, middle-aged man with a sallow complexion. He was wearing an expensive tailored suit, but his paunchy build made it look lumpy. Ibanescu’s parents had emigrated from Romania when Emil was seven. He had graduated at the top of his public high school class in Brooklyn with a perfect grade-point average. Scholarships had covered his tuition at Harvard, where he earned a PhD in record time. Ibanescu spoke many languages, most of them fluently, and had fast-tracked through the CIA. When the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was formed in 2005 to oversee and direct the National Intelligence Program, Ibanescu was tapped to serve as a deputy director.
“Something must be up if Emil is here,” Lucas said. Carson took his seat without comment. Brad and Lucas sat behind him with their backs to the wall, and an aide shut the door.
“Let’s get started,” Senator Rivera said. “Dr. Ibanescu is here to brief us on a very real threat to our national security. Emil, why don’t you take the floor?”
“Thank you, Madam Chairperson.” Ibanescu’s speech betrayed a faint hint of Eastern Europe. “In the past year, we have received information from multiple sources pointing to the strong possibility that a major terrorist operation is under way in the United States. We are facing two obstacles. First, we know the event is scheduled to take place in the near future, but we have not identified the target. Second, we are convinced that the group that is behind this plot is centered in Pakistan, but the group is not al-Qaeda or any other known terrorist group. This means that monitoring these known terror networks has not provided the information we need to foil the plot.”
“It doesn’t sound as if you’ve made much headway here,” said Senator Allen McElroy of Alabama.
“That’s true. Because this plot is the work of a small unknown group, many of our methods of gathering intelligence have not been particularly useful. However, there is some good news. We have obtained one solid lead in the past few days. InCo, an Oregon company, may be involved in laundering money that is being used to finance part of this operation.”
Behind Carson, Lucas Sharp shifted in his chair.
“Our evidence is not conclusive,” Ibanescu continued, “but we’re putting together an affidavit for a search warrant for the company records. Hopefully we will know more in the next few days. The purpose of this briefing is to let the committee know about this potential event. If it happens, there could be as much damage to the national psyche as there was after 9/11, and we want you to be prepared.”
Ibanescu’s report continued for twenty minutes more. By the constant movement behind him, Carson could sense that Lucas Sharp was uneasy. Carson looked over his shoulder and Sharp caught his eye. He was very tense.
