support Mad Jack when they had a look at the New York files.
But it still left Culver exposed. He’d sought the dispatch of an Echelon agent on a mission for which the legal standing was questionable at best. More importantly, it was a mission the President had expressly forbidden. There was no parsing the language to obscure the fact that the Chief of Staff had disobeyed a direct order from James Kipper, and in doing so had probably broken enough laws to see him jailed until sometime after the heat death of the universe.
That wasn’t great. But even worse was the fact that with Monroe compromised, Blackstone was aware, at least to some extent, that he too was exposed. If he knew that Echelon had his files, he was entirely capable, in Jed’s opinion, of seceding from the union. If he wasn’t aware of what they had on him, he might try to cover it up by simply disposing of the woman and turning her presence in Texas back on Seattle. This was what a guy like Wales Larrison called ‘blowback’. The deputy director sounded calm, even sanguine, on the line from Vancouver. Jed supposed he was used to these things blowing up in his face. After all, he’d seen most of his network in France rolled up back in ‘03. Caitlin Monroe was the sole survivor of that betrayal.
Although the best outcome to the immediate crisis would be for Monroe to disappear, while leaving Jed with enough documentation of Blackstone’s villainy to destroy him at his leisure, the White House Chief of Staff knew he had to act quickly to maintain some semblance of control.
‘The Federal Center down in Temple,’ he said. ‘Talk me through what kind of assets we have down there, Mr Director.’
*
‘Really. This is fascinating, and not at all creepy,’ Caitlin continued. ‘But really off topic. You asked what I hoped to achieve? I want to know what the fuck went wrong in New York.’
Blackstone shifted uncomfortably in his chair and shot a glance over at McCutcheon, before trying to cover up his loss of self-control with bombast.
‘What happened in New York, young lady,’ he said in a lecturing tone, ‘is that President Kipper learned a harsh lesson in the realities of life. He had been running down the defences of this country, selling off some of our finest assets in the worst sort of dime-store auctions, and in New York the chickens came home to roost.’
Caitlin stared at him for two seconds. Long enough for him to squirm.
‘Sweet suffering disco Jesus,’ she said. ‘Could you be any more patronising or cliched?’
Blackstone bristled but had no chance to reply before she spoke again.
‘Your administration signed a salvage contract with a Turkish shipping company controlled by a man called Ahmet Ozal. Save the bluster. If I didn’t already know that, we wouldn’t be here. The contract wasn’t notarised in America. But I did obtain a copy in Europe. Ozal provided ships to transport jihadi fighters across the Atlantic and into New York. He was also responsible for springing Bilal Baumer from a French prison cell in Guadeloupe, where he’d been rotting away quite nicely, thank you very much.’
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ protested Blackstone.
‘No, it’s history,
She was ready for him this time when he exploded.
‘IT WAS
‘Governor …’ McCutcheon warned.
‘The hell with her,’ snapped Blackstone, his cheeks turning bright red. ‘I will not be traduced in my own house. I will not have my patriotism questioned by the likes of this mercenary whore.’
‘Good for you, big guy,’ she said. ‘So, the jihadi nutjobs you paid twenty-five million dollars to invade America and kill a couple of thousand of your fellow citizens while, incidentally, making one hell of a mess of midtown Manhattan - what was up with that again?’
‘I am sure the Governor will tell you it was all a horrible mistake. It wasn’t meant to turn out that way. And he would be right in that …’
Caitlin’s face distorted into a rictus of animalistic rage as she spun around to confront a new presence in the room.
He stood, dressed casually in jeans and a pink polo top. His accent was German, but he had worked on it assiduously and could have passed for a New Jersey native. His Ottoman heritage betrayed him only in so far as his olive skin stood out in a roomful of Anglo-Saxons who had endured a long winter.
Bilal Baumer positively beamed at her.
‘Caitlin,’ he said. ‘It’s been too long.’
53
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
‘Tusk Musso has a bunch of special ops-capable Rangers down there,’ said Wales Larrison. ‘Most of them with experience in village fighting in the Middle East and a tour of Manhattan.’
‘That sounds excellent,’ said Jed. ‘Wake Tusk up and tell him we have an agent needing extraction. Hostile extraction.’
Larrison hesitated long enough for Jed to know there was a ‘but’ coming.
‘The reason most of them are down in Temple, Mr Culver, is to recover from Manhattan. I know most of the civilians down there consider it a hardship posting because of the relationship with Fort Hood, but for those troopers, thirteen months of escorting survey teams around the countryside is akin to a vacation.’
‘Vacation’s over, Mr Director,’ Jed snapped. ‘Get Musso out of bed, and get their asses on the road. Now!’
‘With all due respect, sir, we don’t even know if Agent Monroe is under duress.’
‘When people say “With all due respect”, Mr Larrison, in my experience they mean anything but. So I’m not going to bother. You tell me she went in, under cover. She cracked their system, uploaded the data, and now she’s gone offline, but you can track her, or at least her handset, to Blackstone’s residence. I know you intelligence types hate to make assumptions, but I think we can safely jump to the conclusion that the brown stuff has well and truly hit the fan and we have a limited amount of time to clean this shit up before we’re all covered in it.’
To Larrison’s credit, he didn’t back down. ‘If that is so, Mr Culver, sending a stick of Rangers in to kick down the Governor’s door isn’t going to help. But it will surely escalate the problem. I would suggest that if we must intervene, we maintain the minimum possible profile. Sergeant Milosz is awaiting a signal to extract Monroe. We do not have a secure channel to him, but we can still contact him. By telling him to find a safe channel and briefing him in. It will take time we may not have, but I guarantee it’s a better idea than starting a civil war.’
A worsening headache added to Jed’s misery. A steady, growing pain that felt like somebody boring a knuckle into his temple. His hands shook and six slices of four-cheese pizza sat heavy in his gut, leaving him feeling clammy and nauseous.
‘Right,’ he said, exhaling sharply. ‘I’m not going to tell you how to do that. Just get it done. And you’re right, of course. I’m sorry. Kicking in the fucking door and killing every motherfucker inside probably isn’t going to help. No matter how satisfying it might be to contemplate. My apologies, Larrison. I just …’ he fought back the urge to vomit and a painful surge of indigestion, ‘it’s just that we’re so close to nailing this I don’t want it to fall apart at the last moment. So let’s get on it.’
Culver hung up the phone without saying goodbye. Dizziness almost knocked him back to the mattress when he tried to stand, forcing him to lean against the wall and suck in a couple of long draughts of air. When the dark blurs at the edge of his vision receded, he pushed himself off into the small en-suite bathroom and ran a hot shower. He needed to clear his head and think. And maybe throw up properly.
Fucking pizza, he thought. I’ve got fucking food poisoning from that four cheese son of a bitch. He leaned against the sink and struggled to draw in a lungful of air. His reflection in the mirror looked wretched. He was positively green, and dark black pouches stood out under his eyes. He shook off his own problems, however. He had more important things to deal with.
Incomplete information. That was the problem.
Monroe had done her job. She had punched through Blackstone’s defences, and although Jed had not seen the data, Larrison assured him it was enough to bring down the Governor for good. So there was that. It wouldn’t be a matter of just dropping the file on his desk and telling Mad Jack that he was going down. It would have to be handled with some finesse. It might even mean giving the bastard a way to escape honourably. As much as Jed
