In Washington, the rain was even heavier when they arrived, but a limousine was waiting and they were taken through at once and on their way, moving along Constitution Avenue toward the White House. In spite of the weather, there was a sizable crowd of demonstrators, a kind of moonscape of umbrellas against the rain, shepherded by police.
“Which war are they protesting against?” Clancy asked.
“Who knows? There’s some sort of war going on in nearly every country in the world these days. Don’t ask me, Clancy. All I know is some people seem to make a profession out of protest.”
The chauffeur lowered the glass screen that separated him from them. “Too difficult from the front, Mr. Johnson. May I try the East Entrance?”
“That’s fine by me.”
They turned up East Executive Avenue and stopped at the gate. Blake leaned out and the guard, recognizing him at once, waved them through. The East Entrance was much used by White House staff, especially when wishing to avoid the media. The limousine pulled up, Blake and Clancy got out and went up the steps. A young marine lieutenant was on duty, and a Secret Service agent named Huntley greeted them warmly.
“Mr. Johnson, Clancy. You’re looking stretched, if I may say so.”
“Don’t ask,” Blake said. “We spent most of the night stranded by fog at Kennedy, and the President’s expecting us.”
“You know where he is, sir, but I’ll lead the way. It’ll give my legs some exercise.”
The President’s secretary, a pleasant woman in her mid-forties, admitted them to the Oval Office, where they found Jake Cazalet in shirtsleeves at the desk, working his way through a raft of documents, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He glanced up, smiled.
“The return of the heroes. Have you eaten?”
“Early breakfast at Kennedy. Congealed scrambled eggs and fries at five-thirty, and that was the VIP lounge,” Blake said.
Cazalet laughed and turned to the secretary. “We can manage our own coffee, Millie, but speak to the chef and find them something exotic like bacon sandwiches.”
“Of course, Mr. President.”
She withdrew, and the President said, “Okay, gentlemen. Let’s hear the worst.”
“The worst didn’t happen, Mr. President. The worst would have been Morgan shooting you from the first-floor window of Gould amp; Co. when you got out of your car outside Senator Harvey Black’s town house to join him for dinner.”
“Which invitation I canceled on your advice a week ago. You said then you wished to handle this business yourself. No one from the FBI, no police, no military. Even the head of the Secret Service was excluded, which makes it puzzling that you got away with using Clancy in this affair.”
Clancy intruded. “I was served a presidential warrant, Mr. President, so I had to do as I was told.”
“I have a stack of them in my safe,” Blake said. “All signed by you.”
“Really. And you just fill in a name?”
“Correct, Mr. President. You know how the Basement works.”
During the Cold War, when it appeared the Communists were infiltrating at every level of government, the then-President had invented the Basement as a small operation answerable only to him. Since then, it had been handed from one President to another. It was one of his most valuable assets. All other agencies were tied up in rules and regulations, the legal system. This was not. The presidential warrant cut through the crap. People thought Johnson was a deskman. In fact, he had a file of names of ex-FBI and Secret Service men he could pull in on an ad hoc basis. He could connect at any time with General Charles Ferguson in London, who ran a similar organization for the British Prime Minister.
“I can, in effect, kill for you,” Blake went on. “I can have, for example, someone like Morgan disposed of without a trace, but only if I’m left alone to do things my way. The war on terrorism can’t be won unless we’re willing to fight back on our own terms. Fight fire with fire.”
“And where does that leave the rule of law?”
“I’m not sure. People at Al Qa’eda would have their own answer to that. All I know is that we won’t beat them by playing patty-cake.”
“Okay, I take your point. Tell me about this Morgan business. You said you didn’t want me to know too many details before. Tell me now.”
“It was Major Roper who came up with it.”
“Yes, I know about him. The bomb-disposal hero who ended up in a wheelchair.”
“And made a new career for himself in computers. Anything you want in cyberspace, Roper can find for you, but his great gift is developing new programs in which millions of facts can be overviewed in seconds. Take your evening out with Senator Black. The computer imaged that town house on Park Avenue, the surrounding properties. He then tapped in to every detail about the buildings, what was going on there, the personnel involved, and so on.”
At that moment, Millie came in with a tray and the bacon sandwiches. “They smell good enough to eat, Millie. I might have one myself. Eat up, gentlemen, but carry on, Blake. What’s so special about what Roper’s up to, surely our people can do that?”
“Frankly, not as brilliantly as he can. His programs can show given nationalities, religious backgrounds, family, anything you want, and all at lightning speed. It also indicates anomalies, things that shouldn’t be. It means his computer is thinking for itself and making deductions, but doing it at a speed beyond human comprehension.”
“Conceptual thought by a machine. Quite something,” Cazalet said.
“Anyway, to cut it short, the computer threw up the nationalities of the people working in the area of Black’s town house, which were many. Some of them were English, and Roper, interested, cross-referenced the identities, passports, birthplaces and religions, and in no time at all, one Henry Morgan, who’d been working as a security guard at Gould amp; Co. opposite Black’s house, popped up. He was English, but with a Muslim mother.”
“Really. Is that unusual?”
“Just enough so that what Roper saw next rang bells: Morgan was a highly qualified pharmacist with a master’s degree, who also taught at London University, and he entered our country on a tourist visa.”
It was Clancy who put in, “So why does a guy like that take a job as a security guard, Mr. President – and on a forged green card?”
“Something else Roper discovered.”
“Everything about us is on some sort of record these days,” the President said. “So General Ferguson tipped you off.”
“No, there was more to it than that. Ferguson found Roper’s discovery interesting enough to check it out a little on his side. He sent his assistant, Detective Superintendent Hannah Bernstein of Special Branch at Scotland Yard, to visit Morgan’s home address in London. She discovered that the mother was in a wheelchair after a bad automobile accident that had killed the father five years ago. Bernstein posed as a welfare officer to gain her confidence. Discovered many interesting things.”
“Such as?”
“The mother had been disowned by her family for marrying out of the Muslim faith. Her son had been raised a Christian. After the accident, however, she rediscovered her faith and her son would take her to the local mosque, where she was received well. And the truly interesting thing was that she said her son had discovered Islam himself, and embraced it.”
Cazalet was looking grim. “So it all begins to fit.”
“Especially when she said he’d gone to New York on vacation.”
“Has Ferguson taken it any further?”
“No, he’s waiting to hear from us.”
Cazalet nodded. “So Morgan obviously arrived on somebody’s orders.”
“Exactly. An organization in the UK with some sort of contacts in New York.”
“Why didn’t you arrest him the minute you got the story from London?”
“I wanted to see where it would lead, and Charles Ferguson agreed. It was highly unlikely he was just a
