TIME
The phone clicked off and Kelly wished nostalgically for the moment when his biggest problem was Jack Bauer. She would do it. He found it hard to believe, but he had heard the fear in her voice. She would sacrifice her vote for the sake of her career, and although Kelly was not privy to politics inside the Beltway, he guessed that her vote would influence others.
Blackmail. God, he hated politicians. He settled into his chair, wondering what the hell he could do about it.
“I hope you don’t mind meeting early, but otherwise the day’s full,” Mitch Rasher said as he stepped out of the way and let the Attorney General into his hotel suite.
Quincy was wearing a two-piece suit and tie to Rasher’s wrinkled polo shirt and jeans. “No problem,” he said crisply, “I was up anyway. No thanks,” he added as Rasher motioned to the pot of fresh coffee on the table.
The suite was big, but not opulent. Rasher habitually rejected any show of status. The man who had been called “Barnes’s brain” lived like he had no body. Staffers in the West Wing called him “the Hermit” because he sometimes spent days closed up in his office, working on arcane political strategy, sacrificing sleep (which everyone admired) and personal hygiene (which everyone regretted). He would show up to strategy sessions with his shirttails half-tucked and his tie askew, three days’ worth of beard shading his face. He cleaned up for the cameras when he had to, but he preferred to avoid the limelight altogether. Rasher derived some perverse personal joy from being the man behind the curtain, and wanted no media dogs exposing him as he tugged at the strings of power.
Rasher bit off a chunk of bagel and flopped down on the couch.
“Two days, Mitch,” Quincy said, settling himself easily into a chair opposite. “That’s not much time, even for you guys.”
“It could be two hours,” Rasher replied through a mouthful of bagel. “We’ve done all the arm twisting we’re going to do, Jim. I told you that before Frisco. No more going out on a limb for this one. We’ve already taken too much heat on military spending and the tax thing.”
Quincy tugged at his shirt cuffs, fingering his cuff-links. “It doesn’t make sense, you know. You’ve made this Administration all about homeland security. You told me to go after this bill. Now you guys are benching yourselves in the fourth quarter when you should want to win the game more than anyone.”
Rasher liked sports metaphors as much as the next guy. “Yeah, but sometimes when the game is lost, you sit your starters down so they don’t get hurt.”
The Attorney General stared at Rasher, who just chomped his bagel and smiled back. Rasher’s balding head gleamed in the light of the corner lamp, giving him an angelic aura. But the grin beneath it was from another place. It was the juxtaposition of the halo and the leer that bent Quincy’s thoughts at just the right angle. “Oh shit,” he said.
Rasher’s grin widened. Quincy knew him for what he was, of course. He was Mephistopheles. He was Iago. He was Machiavelli. He was the engineer within the White House fortress who kept the hapless other side constantly in disarray. But Quincy hadn’t considered, until that moment, that Rasher’s formidable powers could be directed inward as well.
“You want the bill to get killed,” he said.
“Come on, Jim, I never said that.”
“No, you wouldn’t say it. But it’s true. You want it killed. But what if something actually happens? What if there is a terrorist attack and it turns out we could have prevented it with more powers of investigation. What then?”
Rasher examined his bagel and flicked away a sesame seed. “That’s the good part. We just blame the other side for denying us the powers we clearly needed.”
“But if it goes down right now, you’ll look like—” He was going to say,
Lucky for him, he had a few aces up his sleeve. He recovered himself. “It may not work out how you think. I think I’m going to get the bill passed.” He checked his watch. Almost twenty after. “In fact, I can almost guarantee it.”
Rasher shrugged. “Okay. Then when it passes we just take the country’s temperature. If they’re still against it, we veto it and look good. If they’re for it, then we sign it and look good.”
Quincy said, “Then you’ll look like tag-alongs. My suggestion would be to let the President get out ahead of the issue. He needs to see which way the parade is headed so that he can get in front and lead it.”
Rasher lost interest in his bagel. “Thanks for the political advice, but you can’t guarantee squat. You’re down fifty-two to forty-eight and that’s
“Your guys have been wrong before,” Quincy said.
“No,” Rasher replied coldly, “they haven’t.”
“Well, they are this time. I’m predicting a flood of last-minute switches. I think it’ll surprise you, and you’ll get caught flat-footed. I’ll get this thing through, and I’ll get the credit, and there’s no way you’ll consider a veto.”
Rasher yawned. “Anything else?”
“No.” Quincy stood up, willing himself to walk casually to the door. He opened and closed it without saying goodbye, and only in the hallway did he allow his face to collapse into a scowl of rage. That bastard. Quincy had known they were abandoning him on NAP, but he’d never considered that they were actually going to let him hang for it.
Well, he thought, he had some surprises for them. His first plan sounded like it would work. And if it didn’t, Plan B was already falling into place.
It had taken a few minutes for Nazila to throw on some clothes, then she and Jack had driven north from Pico into Beverly Hills. Beverly Drive took them up through the heart of the little enclave, and Jack followed Nazila’s directions into the actual “hills” themselves — a group of low rises and high trees that managed to hide several hundred immense mansions north of Sunset Boulevard. Soon enough, as the sky turned from dark to pale yellow, they pulled up in front of an enormous, flat-fronted monolith, one of dozens that had sprung up in the past few years. Locals called them “Persian palaces” because they were the preferred residences of wealthy Iranian immigrants.
Jack stared at the mansion, then looked at Nazila. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“He is not a terrorist,” she said for the thousandth time. “He has friends who sympathize with his troubles.”
“We searched for him for six months and he was living here.” Ramin Rafizadeh, fugitive from justice, lying in the lap of luxury.
She turned toward him in her seat. “You don’t understand, Jack. The people who live here came to the
U.S. to get away from politics. None of them are terrorists. A lot of them are no more Muslim than you are. They don’t feel any connection to the Taliban and they’ve never set foot in a madrassa. You show them a terrorist and the first thing they will do is turn the other way. The second thing they will do is call the police. But do you know what makes them more afraid? You. People like you who arrest their sons.”
Jack’s lip curled. “Don’t start with that politically correct bull. I’m not going after some grandmother from Boise when most of the danger is coming from the Middle East.”
“We know that!” Nazila said. “That’s why we put up with the looks on the airplanes, and the double-takes in restaurants, and the questions from the police. But your laws go too far, and you know it.”
Jack had stopped listening to her. Standard operating procedure had become second nature to him, and while they both talked he had been scanning the street. At first nothing looked out of place — wide lawns, quiet houses, a few cars and a satellite dish installation van parked on the street. The cars were mostly expensive, but there were a few low-end Toyotas and Kias. These would be housekeeping staff arriving to wake the household up for
