Breakpoint (3 page)

“Perhaps. But still no claims of responsibility?” Sir Dennis said, pouring a snifter of Napoleon Cognac.

“Oh, there are plenty of claims of responsibility, Sir Dennis,” Rusty injected. “Al Qaeda of North America, which does not exist, the Aryan Separatist Army, which barely exists, and the Merpeople for a Clean Ocean, which might as well not exist.” Catching Susan and Jimmy in his peripheral vision, MacIntyre waved them into the library. “Sir Dennis, Brian, these are the SP Branch folks I mentioned.” There was a round of handshakes.

“Now, James, as a policeman,” Douglas asked Foley, “wouldn't you say that this took real skill? Ten truck bombs over five states and no one caught, no one killed? And the beachhead switches they left untouched—they were so old and decrepit they weren't worth bombing. They obviously knew that.”

Catching a perplexed look on Foley's face, MacIntyre responded. “Susan and Jim are not read in yet, Bri. I just called them.”

“Well, you have to admit, Rusty, this was a very well planned and sophisticated operation,” Brian said, turning away from Foley. “Many players.”

“Right. The explosive was a shitload of RDX, hard to get hereabouts and hard to get into America in large amounts without somebody in Customs noticing. And here's the latest I just got from the Watch—Navy now says that in addition to the beachhead attacks, there were undersea explosions. So even if they rebuild the beachheads, it won't be enough. The fiber has been cut underwater, and that's hard to repair.”

“That says nation-state to me,” Sir Dennis asserted. “I didn't think China was that capable.”

“Could be they had help.” Rubenstein exhaled a cloud of Cuban tobacco smoke. He plopped down in a large, green leather chair and looked up. “Well, SP Branch, that's your job, and you'd better find out fast. Because whoever's responsible, I can guarantee you this attack today is not the last.”

“Us?” Susan asked, looking at Rusty and Jimmy. “But—there's a whole big bureaucracy out there set up to do exactly this.”

“You mean the Keystone Kops?” Rubenstein said. “Oh, they'll be out there, don't worry about that. FBI, Homeland Security, the works. But while they're stumbling all over themselves as usual, we'll do our own…nonconventional exploration. I need someone smart, agile, quick, and that's you. We must find out who is doing this, because they obviously know how to hurt us, figured out where our weak spots are. And this is unlikely to be a one-off. What's your legendary instinct tell you, Russell?”

Sir Dennis, Brian Douglas, and Rusty shifted, forming a semicircle facing the seated Sol Rubenstein. “With this many people involved in the attack and the preparations—must be at least a hundred—its a nation-state or a large terrorist network, or both,” said Rusty. “I agree, it's most likely China, but we can't rule out Iran and Hizbollah, getting back at us for the beating they got two years ago in Islamyah. It would probably take that long to put a strike like this together. Or the Iraqi Revenge Movement.”

“Of course, we need to look at all possibilities,” Rubenstein said from behind a cloud of smoke.

“Quite right, Solly,” agreed Sir Dennis, producing a series of instruments to pack and light his Peterson pipe. “You have your people charge hard, and Brian and his boys will do the same, separately. We'll compare notes in a week or so. But we must be swift. Whoever they are, these people have done enormous damage to the global economic system already. And they seem to know our dirty little secret.” He looked at all of them. “The Global Village is held together by a very few, very fragile strands. Cut them and the thin veneer of civilization disappears. Like a puff of Latakia.” He exhaled, lifting smoke from the Turkish tobacco in his Petersen. A small gray cloud floated toward the fireplace and was gone.

 

In the parking lot outside the embassy, Jimmy Foley recovered his Harley Fat Boy and walked it over toward his new bosses. Susan ignored his presence. “Rusty, you don't have to tell me this is a big deal. I get that. What I don't like is that we aren't part of the big, formal investigation. We're outside the tent, picking up the dropped popcorn. That's bullshit.”

She turned to acknowledge Foley. “I'm sure Jimmy here is a great detective, but you give me one guy, and the Bureau is putting thousands on this, and you expect me to compete?” Foley flashed an ingratiating smile that made him look like a teenager. And that somehow made Susan more mad.

“Look, both of you, you have an important part of this,” Rusty said. “You are not supposed to be competing with the other agencies. You're doing it our way, small and smart, unconventional, iconoclastic and separate.” He put one hand down to Susan's shoulder and one up to Jimmy's. “We've seen before what happens when there is groupthink: WMD in Iraq. Look, there's more to this than Sol wanted to say.” Rusty scanned the embassy lot to make sure that no one was within earshot. “The President is ripshit that this happened. He doesn't understand how we can spend over eighty billion on intelligence and law enforcement, and then some outfit plans and executes a series of bombings like this, and we didn't catch it. For one thing, he doesn't understand why these internet nodes were unprotected.”

“Good question,” Susan agreed. “Why do we leave important places unguarded?”

“That's something we need to rethink,” said Rusty. “Meanwhile our operating assumption is that this whole thing is China achieving escalation dominance.”

“Excuse me, sir, but what's that?” Jimmy asked.

“It means they not only hurt us, they demonstrate that they can hurt us a lot more, they can escalate in ways that we don't expect. That way, we're deterred from doing anything against them,” Susan explained.

“Right. In this case, deterred from helping Taiwan, if China's next move is to attack Taiwan and stop them from declaring independence. But this President is not going to
be
deterred.” Rusty looked from Susan to Jimmy, making sure they understood his implication. “FBI and Homeland have the lead, they'll crash away investigating. But there are two large tasks that we don't trust them to get right. That's where you in Special Projects come in. There were not a bunch of Chinese agents running around the country preparing these bombings, we'd have known about it. They hired somebody. Your first task is find out who.

“Second, somebody figured out an Achilles' heel in our technology and national infrastructure, one we obviously hadn't recognized ourselves. They will probably do it again. Before they do, you must find out what their next target is likely to be. FBI and Homeland will probably focus on refineries and bridges and things like that. But this was an attack on our technology—that's where we've got to look.”

Susan nodded and smiled. She knew he was right; they had to avoid groupthink again. It had been way too costly before. And they had to focus on protecting what mattered now, in an information age, not back in the twentieth century.

“Sounds good to me,” Foley said. He turned to Susan. “See you in the office in about an hour, boss.” He grinned and moved off with his Harley.

Rusty read Susan's irritation. “Foley is not what he seems, Susan. Forget that surface attitude. The Commissioner told me he's the best detective they've had in years. He only loaned him to me to give Foley some Washington experience. The skills you have will complement each other well.” He could see that she wasn't convinced. “Just crack this case for me, Susan. Crack it fast. The Bureau, Homeland, they're looking for the keys where the streetlights shine. You go into the shadows.”

2100 EST
Special Projects Office, Intelligence Analysis Center
Navy Hill, Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C.

They had been reading reports for five hours when Jimmy Foley suggested he make them some snacks. From the little office kitchenette, he called out to Susan, “You know what I still don't get? I thought Taiwan was independent?”

Susan Connor looked up from an ATF report on her flat screen. “Yeah, well, it is, for all practical purposes. Has been for almost seventy years, since the Nationalist Party fled there from the mainland when the Communists took over. But they maintain the fiction that they are still a province of China. And so does China. Beijing wants them back someday, like Hong Kong. Whenever Taiwan says they're going to formally declare that they are no longer part of China, Beijing goes nuts.”

Foley did not reply, but there was a continued clanging of pots and pans from the kitchenette. Susan went back to her report and yelled in the direction of her new staffer, “Man, there is one shitload of explosives stolen in this country every year. You know that, Jimmy?”

“Uh-huh,” Foley responded from the break room. “Most of it gets sold back to construction firms on the black market. Come get your dinner.”

“My what?” Susan laughed and got up to see what the NYPD detective had been up to. “Jesus, Jimmy, you trying out for
Iron Chef
?” she gasped as she surveyed the spread on the little table. “Pasta à la pesto. Where's some Mick learn Italiano?”

“You mean some Mick cop, don't you?” Jimmy smiled and pulled back a chair for his new boss. “Five boys in my family. I'm number two, and for some reason Dad tagged me as the cook.”

“And Mom?”

“Died when I was ten. Dad worked 'til dinner every night. Lawyer. So I got the dinner ready. After a while, even a bunch a guys get sick of pizza or beans and franks. So…”

“Hmmm…nice pesto. Lots of garlic.” Susan spoke while eating. “I hereby forgive you for not working harder researching the case.”

“Who says I haven't been researching the case, boss?” Jimmy said, putting down his knife and fork. “You want to know what I've found out so far? The Fibbies are all over the trucks, VIN numbers, tracks, witnesses, explosive residue. They have twelve hundred agents on it already in a little over twelve hours. They've given it a major-case name—Cybomb; catchy, right?—and put an assistant director in charge. And so far they got dead ends, bupkis. For their part, NSA is going back over all the calls originating near the beachheads around the time of the explosions. Nada there, too.”

Susan was impressed, but assumed that Jimmy had a source in the FBI who had simply read him a summary written for the assistant director. That did not count as research, as far as she was concerned. She had been spending the hours since they'd received the new assignment trying to understand the importance of what had been destroyed. “Okay, good, but we have to get to the why before we can find the who. Why does somebody want to reduce communications to Europe and Asia? The internet is still working here. It's slow from all the messages wandering around cyberspace that can't be delivered, but it's working. So who and why? An attack like this must hurt China, too. We've got to figure out why they'd do it.”

Foley shook his head, rejecting the question. “Look, I figured that's what the FBI and NSA were doing, going after China. Like Rusty said, the Chinese army isn't running around Jersey. Maybe they hired someone. Maybe misled them, a false-flag operation. So I'd look for that. Also think about the Unabomber in a way. Kaczynski was a whacked-out professor who wanted to stop technological advance. So what does he do? He starts sending bombs to other professors at universities around the country…professors pushing technological advance.” He shrugged. “Something to think about. Also the fact that the Fibbies never caught him until his own brother dropped a dime on him.” He went back to his pasta.

“Okay, so…little mail bombs fifteen years ago on college campuses and ten really big truck bombs today at internet nodes—one guy then, dozens now.” Susan cocked her head and squinted. “And the connection is…what?”

“Come on, boss. What's cyberspace? Technology. The Chinese are after our technology. Stealing it first. Now for some reason blowing it up. Here, don't forget your salad. Good balsamic,” he said, passing a little bottle across the table. “I did a search on incidents at technology-related facilities over the last twenty-four months. There's been an interesting pattern over the last six months. A cyberspace company or biomed lab has gone up in a fire or explosion of some sort almost every month for the last six. That big fire at the data centers on the Columbia River last month? The Bio Fab in San Diego? A place at MIT just last Friday.”

She stared at him, locked eyes. The dumb-cop routine was an act and she had fallen for it like some stereotypical Washington bureaucrat. Foley gave her a cherubic little smile that revealed two dimples. Then he winked. She tried hard not to be charmed like everybody else in the office. She was the supervisor, damn it.

“Okay, Detective. What have we got on those incidents? Has the Bureau opened a major case on them, too?” Susan realized her voice was too flat, too professional. She should be friendlier. Even if he had caught her up with his big-jock act, he had also cooked her a not bad dinner, and using the office kitchen.

“Nope. Six minor cases, and mainly it's the local PDs and fire marshals investigating. The FBI hadn't seen the pattern; still hasn't.” He shook Parmesan flakes over the pasta on his plate.

Susan digested the new information, and the pasta. “If those other attacks are related and we can find out who did them…we might be able to answer both of Rusty's questions: who the Chinese have doing their dirty work and what kind of things they are likely to attack next.”