smiled diffidently: “It will work out, you see.”
* * *
Near a small town in Pennsylvania, six miles north of Camp David, Highway 16 runs through rolling hills and open woodland, past the foot of a low mountain called Raven Rock.
A casual visitor turning off the highway onto Harbaugh Valley Road wouldn’t see much: a wire mesh fence and a narrow track off to one side, and a sign warning of a restricted area. But if they drove up the road a couple of miles it would be another story—assuming the armed guards didn’t stop them first. Tucked away behind the trees on top of the mountain there was a huge array of satellite dishes and radio masts. And beneath the ground, buried under many meters of bedrock, lay the Raven Rock Mountain Complex, home of the Alternative National Military Command Center, the 114th Signal Battalion, and the emergency operations centers for the army, navy, air force, joint staff, and secretary of defense.
Of course, a casual visitor wouldn’t have seen the visitors arriving in the back of unmarked black Lincoln Town Cars with smoked windows, that sat oddly low on their suspension. They wouldn’t have seen the thick steel doors that opened inside the low, windowless buildings, or the downward-sloping tunnel that cut into the ground, or the elevators and cranes and the blast doors set into the side of the tunnel. Indeed, there was no such thing as a casual visitor at the concrete-and-steel-lined installation embedded in the ground beneath the motel and golf club buildings.
Welcome to the Undisclosed Location.
In a compact, brightly lit conference room ninety feet below the ground, the vice president sat with his advisors, watching television. They had a lot of television to watch; a rack of six sets covered half a wall, flicking through channels on a twenty-second cycle. Bloomberg, CNN, Fox News, and C-SPAN played tag with the Cartoon Network and Discovery Channel on four monitors; two others were permanently tuned to NBC and the view from a traffic camera overlooking a street intersection in Dupont Circle.
The vice president leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms, and glanced at the skinny Yalie with his lapel-pin crucifix and rimless spectacles. “This is the boring part,” he confided. “We used to come down here and game these scenarios every month or so during the nineties, you know. All weekend long. Used to be the Russkies on the other side, or the Iranians. They’d set up their opening move, we’d set up our response, and then we’d see how it all played out, whether or not we locate and kill the threat before it activates, which branch of the crisis algorithm we go down. The trouser legs of terror.” He chuckled, a throaty laugh that terminated in a bubbling cough. “So. Do you think they’re bluffing?”
Dr. Andrew James glanced past his boss, at the empty chair where State’s assistant secretary ought to be sitting if this session wasn’t classified FAMILY TRADE–only. “I couldn’t say for sure, sir, but that phone call sounded promising.” He gestured at the desk telephone in front of him, beige and stuffed with buttons with obscure labels that only made sense to the NSA eggheads who designed these gadgets. “The call terminated promptly.”
“Good,” WARBUCKS said vehemently. “Gutless bastards.”
“We don’t know for sure that it terminated as intended, sir,” James warned. “The adversary’s INFOSEC is pretty good for an amateur operation, and the bugging transcript from contact FLEMING indicates at least one of them was concerned about the bait phone.”
“They got the message, either way. Bart, is there any noise on the Continuity side?”
“Nothing new, sir.” Bart, a graying DISA apparatchik, was hunched over a laptop with a trailing cable patched into a wall jack—a SIPRNet connection. “They’re all just standing by. SECDEF is aboard KNEECAP on the ramp at Andrews AFB, standing by for JEEP with short-notice takeoff clearance. BOY WONDER is in the EOB as usual. Uh, message from SECDEF. He wants to know if you’ve got an update.”
“Tell him no”—WARBUCKS stared at the wall of televisions, then reached behind his left ear to adjust the multichannel earpiece—“but if they don’t send us a message within the next twenty-four hours I think they’re probably going to fold. I just want him where—want backup. This
Dr. James’s BlackBerry buzzed for attention. Glancing down at its screen, he froze. “Sir.”
“Speak.”
“SIGTRADE just issued a RED FLASH—some kind of coded signal. It’s running through their network—” The machine buzzed again. “Uh, right. Something is going on. Post six reports surveillance subjects all just freaked. They’re moving, and it’s sudden.”
WARBUCKS closed his eyes. “Round ’em up, then. That’s plan—which plan—”
Another aide riffled hastily through a ring binder. “Would that be HEAD CRASH, sir? Track and disable immediate, then hood and ship?”
“That’s the one.” WARBUCKS nodded. “Send it,” he told Bart. “And tell them I want hourly head counts and updates on everything—misses as well as arrests.”
* * *
In private, behind locked doors, the discussion took a different shape.
“Sit down, Jim. Have a whisky?”
“Yes, please.” James Lee settled into the overstuffed armchair and waited while his father—Elder Huan’s nephew Shen—filled two crystal tumblers from a hip flask and ensconced himself in the room’s other armchair. His den was furnished in conventional Western style, free of exotic affectations or imported reminders of the Middle Empire here; just two overstuffed armchairs, a battered mahogany bureau from the inventory of a retired ship’s captain, and a wall of pigeonholes and index files. The Lee family’s decidedly schizophrenic relationship with New Britain was tilted to the Occident, here; but then, Dad had always been a bit of an Anglophile. “How’s Mother keeping? And Angelina? I haven’t seen them lately—”
“Neither have I, Jim. We write, regularly—Xian says all is well and they’re enjoying the peace in the summer house near Nan Shang.” Nan Shang in what would be California, two worlds over—or the Middle Empire in the world where the eastern seaboard belonged to the marcher kingdoms. With the fiscal crisis in full flow, and latterly the riots and disorder, many of the family’s elders had deemed it prudent to send their dependents away to safety. While the Lee extended family were nothing like as prominent in the West as the six Eastern families had become in the East, their country estates were nevertheless palatial. “The postal service is still working. Do you want me to —”
“No, I’m sorry, Father. Just curious. You wanted a chat?”
“Yes.” His father was silent for a few seconds. Then: “What is your opinion of the doctor? Did you have an opportunity to form an opinion of him during your stay with the cousins?” During the six months during which James had been a pampered hostage.
“I didn’t know him well, Father. But—you want my honest opinion? He’s a worm. A most dangerous, slimy, treacherous worm.”
“Strong words.” The lightness of his father’s tone was belied by his sour face. “Do you have reason for it?”
“I believe so. I don’t think he told Eldest any outright untruths, but nothing he said was quite right, either. He was telling the truth when he said he was the personal physician to many of the Eastern cousins’ womenfolk, but he was also … not as put-upon as he would have you believe. He said he earned the undying hatred of the woman Helge—and he was telling the truth there, too. But Helge didn’t impress me as being anybody’s fool. She’s neither naive nor stupid, and when we had time to talk—there’s something unpleasant underneath this excess of servility on his part, Father. I can’t tell you precisely what he’s hiding, but he’s hiding
“That much was obvious from his performance.” Shen took a sip of whisky. “I don’t think Mei is serious about finding him a wife—unless she means to set the Widow Ting on him.” James flinched; avoiding cousin Ting and her dangerous games had been one of his wiser moves. “I gather she’s itching to marry again. That would make … three? Four? No matter. It is perfectly clear that the doctor is as twisty as a hangman’s noose. What your uncle would like to know is—can he deliver what he offered?”
“I don’t know.” James paused. “You may know more than I, Father. Is it true that Helge is with child?”
For a long moment his father stared into his tumbler. “It might be so.”
“Because.” James licked his lips. “Before the Per—before the youngest son’s rebellion, she was held prisoner and securely chaperoned. And I met the heir to whom she was betrothed.
