Code Word: Paternity, A Presidential Thriller (4 page)

Chapter 5

Crisp in a navy suit, President Martin
looked into the faces of the bedraggled White House press corps, crowded and
hot in an underground concrete box, overflowing into a mildew-speckled
corridor. Excitement, fear, anger, exhaustion, and a sour odor infused the
humid air.

Sam
thinks it’s too soon for a press conference
, Rick thought,
too
risky because we know almost nothing, but dammit, I need to engage them. It’s
bad enough I’m in this hole in the ground. I can’t hide!

I
might as well begin with one who’ll probably be reasonable.

“Helen?”

“Mr. President, take us inside your head
for a moment. What are you feeling, what are your priorities, how are you
handling this shock yourself?”

“Helen, I’m saddened beyond words by this
tragic event. Ella and I have seen the same pictures most Americans have on
television and the Internet. It’s heartbreaking—and also infuriating! As I told
the nation last night, this country is going to support the victims, rebuild,
deal with the killers, and take steps to keep this from happening again, not
only to Americans, but to any people!”

The instant he stopped speaking shouts
filled the air. He picked a question that served his purpose, pointing to a man
in jeans and a wrinkled pink oxford, sleeves rolled up to forearms.

“Mr. President, if it was al-Qaeda do you
believe they are capable of having made that bomb, or did some country sell it
to them?”

Rick considered Paternity and the
probability that it would soon provide an answer. “I’m not an expert in this,
but while I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that al-Qaeda has the expertise
to build such a bomb, I think the odds are they acquired it, most likely by
theft, but perhaps with the knowledge of a nuclear-armed country.”

As reporters scribbled, a booming, angry
voice cut through the clamor that followed his answer. “Mr. President, your
administration failed to protect the American people!”

Shifting his gaze to the rear where a
damp stain marked the wall, the president saw a man whose name he didn’t
recall.
Well, it didn’t take long to get
to that
, he thought, and said, “Please repeat your question.”

“Mr. President, the Martin administration
failed to protect the American people from this attack, despite years of
warning that terrorists could get a nuke. Why? What went wrong?”

Several journalists exchanged knowing
glances.

He and Sam had crafted his answer, but
Martin paused as if considering before saying, “Yes, the government did fail to
protect the American people. Today the government is led by my administration,
and having been president of the United States since January I
accept responsibility.”

Several shouted questions were
follow-ups, but he didn’t want to go there and instead answered a sharp-faced
woman who said, “What about our nuclear forces—have you put them on high
alert?”

“I don’t think our nuclear-armed subs,
bombers, and missiles are the most important part of our response right now. As
a precaution we have put our military, including nuclear forces, on higher
alert. But it’s really others—the police, the FBI, Customs and Border
Protection, the National Guard—that are the most important at this point.”

“Mr. President, are you saying that
nuclear deterrence has failed?” Rick knew the answer was yes, but he wasn’t
going there until he had answers for the follow-up questions, so he was glad to
hear others shouting about Las Vegas.
Pointing to one of them, Martin said “I think you asked me about Las Vegas, but I didn’t
hear your question clearly.”

“Mr. President, Americans want to know
how many people have been killed and injured and what’s being done right now to
help the victims and their families.”

“I’m sure they do. Right now we don’t
know the numbers, although they are certainly in the hundreds of thousands.
Greater Las Vegas
has—had—a population of about a million. The scale of this attack, plus the
danger to rescuers from radioactivity, is delaying our efforts to identify or
even count the dead and assist the injured. FEMA, with the strong assistance of
the Nevada National Guard and surviving Las
Vegas first responders, has established an assistance
perimeter around the city. Survivors who are able to reach this perimeter are
decontaminated and given medical treatment and other assistance. Our military
is helping, too; evacuation by C-17 cargo planes has begun.

“As we all are horribly aware, there are
injured people in the high-radiation area, the no-go zone, who are unable to
walk out. Rescue personnel can’t reach them because radiation would be fatal to
them, as it will soon be to those survivors. They will inevitably die, either
from their burns and wounds, or from radiation poisoning. To their great
credit, rescuers—particularly helicopter crews—have volunteered to enter the
no-go zone anyway. But the hard truth is that wouldn’t save a single victim and
would not only cost their families the lives of those brave men and women, it
would cost the country their desperately needed skills.”

Rick thought of his debate with Sam Yu
over whether to suppress the television helicopter video of mutilated bodies
and dying survivors in the no-go zone. He had decided not to suppress it,
partly because it simply couldn’t be stopped—images filled the Internet—and
partly because it was the new reality that the country needed to absorb.

Lights dimmed to a yellowish hue, then
returned to normal. Martin flung a quip, reminding them that he had proposed
legislation to modernize the nation’s power grid. It fell flat. Without the
amenities of the White House press room, or even chairs, the correspondents
were becoming a scrum. As Rick watched, one who crouched to retrieve her pen
nearly became road kill.

Rick considered the shouts, searching for
just the right question. He heard it: “Mr. President, what’s the impact of this
on the lives of Americans?”

Glad that he recognized the questioner,
Martin said, “James, I think it will take some time before we know the full
impact on life in America.
But I believe that as we deal with this, we must use methods within the bounds
of what is best about our country. We will not become a closed and fearful
society. We will not repeat mistaken policies, such as the internment of
Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. We—“

Utter blackness.

 
The journalists, sweaty and claustrophobic,
alerted and started like a herd of antelope scenting a predator. When someone
yelled, “Smoke!” they were off, shoving and elbowing toward the only door,
dimly lit by an emergency light.

Wilson and another agent grabbed Martin
by his elbows, hustled him to a corner, then stood in front of him, weapons
drawn. Things were happening so fast that Martin wasn’t thinking, only
reacting. That suited Wilson
just fine, as he commanded over his shoulder, “Sit on the floor, Mr.
President!”

Chapter
6

Pyongyang
, North
Korea
(DPRK)—Twelve Months Previously.

The Dear Leader lit up and paced his
office.
The Arabs—they were back again,
he
thought. For years they had sought radioactive materials, any materials, from
him. After he detonated a fission bomb inside a mountain, announcing his power
to the world, they began asking for a complete weapon. For years he sent them
away, but they kept coming back, each time honoring him more and offering more
cash for the glorious future of Korea.
And
this
time . . .

Kim knew he possessed wisdom far above
others. He could solve any problem. He offered solutions freely to his
countrymen, in farming, in fishing, in steel-making, in education, giving them
on-the-spot guidance. He was so often disappointed that those to whom he gave
his guidance were unable to carry it out. Despite that, he continued his
patient teaching and kind leadership, as had his father, Kim il-Sung.

Kim crushed his cigarette and lit
another.

Of all his talents, he was proudest of
his skill as a media producer. Encouraged by his father, he had developed North Korea’s
filmmaking resources—the only thing of his the man hadn’t denigrated. He spent
thousands of hours studying the world’s best films, even learning English and
French the better to dissect the filmmaker’s craft. He wrote, directed, and
produced films and entered international competitions. When he needed skills
lacking among his dear people, he ordered those possessing them kidnapped, then
detained and exploited them at Choson Studios, which he bankrolled with gold
from one of his mines.

Kim’s pacing carried him near the closed
door. “Come!” he said in a firm voice. Immediately a uniformed steward entered.
The young man stood about eight inches taller than Kim, with an athletic build.
Like all North Koreans, he wore a button displaying Kim’s photo, as he had
since early childhood.

“Yes, Dear
Leader?”

“Tea!” The man
vanished.

As the Dear Leader resumed pacing, his
mind lingered on the robust young man.
What
a lie—the story spread by Americans and South Koreans that my people are
malnourished and stunted from decades of near starvation!
It was an attack
on him. It was another way they mocked and underestimated him. He had shown
them, when he tested his nuclear bombs and when he fired his missiles across Japan into the
Pacific. Yet, still they refused to acknowledge his wisdom and power. Still
they oppressed and threatened his people, who loved him and depended on him.
Kim thought of that as his own failure and felt ashamed, then angry.

Through the haze of his anger, Kim sensed
the return of the steward. He turned and pointed. After taking a sip, the young
man put the cup on a nearby table. He stood next to it, eyes fixed on the wall,
as Kim paced and smoked. After about a minute Kim looked intently at him, then
dismissed him with a flick of his hand.

Kim continued pacing, now drinking tea.
The Americans were such fools in mistaking
my patience and tenderness toward my people for weakness and irresolution.
No, I am strong,
Kim thought, knowing it
was given to him to see what others did not.

What he saw was that in a showdown the
Americans would make noise but wouldn’t hurt
him
. It was his skill as a dramatist and producer that revealed
this to him, a skill acquired through his compulsive intake of America’s
films, talk shows, and political blogs. Americans couldn’t face the images of
themselves in battle that filled television, Internet, and films whenever it
occurred. Images of the truck-bombed Marine barracks in Beirut
soon forced their withdrawal from Lebanon. Images of soldiers’ bodies
being dragged through the streets drove them from Somalia, and those images had been
burned into American memory by the fine film
Blackhawk Down
. Another excellent film,
Fahrenheit 9/11
had convinced them that their country’s response to
the attacks was cynically concocted to enrich the president, his family, and
friends. Kim knew a thing or two about making propaganda, and he admired
Michael Moore’s craftsmanship in portraying an immoral government. Moore skillfully built
his case that war is a means for the upper class to control the lower classes
and then drew his conclusion, artfully framed as a question, that Americans
should never trust their leaders again.
 

Over the last decade Americans had spent
themselves as a force in the world, Kim thought. Having gone bankrupt during
Bush’s second term, they accelerated their decline under his successor. He
would have expected nothing else from a woman! Glenna Rogers had withdrawn America’s army from Iraq, which exploded into civil
war. Then she threw both the army and marines—hurriedly pulled out of Afghanistan—back
in again to quell it. Before the end—a Shia victory enabled by Iran—six thousand U.S. soldiers were wounded and two
thousand killed. No one knew how many Iraqis were killed, but certainly tens of
thousands.

Since their defeat in Iraq, Americans
had no courage to use the power they still had. Images formed in Kim’s mind:
desperation in the faces of soldiers whose withdrawal to Iraq’s airports
had been under constant attack. Screaming women whose families had been
pulverized by American airpower.
I’ll
make a film about this
, he thought.
It
will be better than
Blackhawk Down
,
or even
Apocalypse Now
!

Bitterly, Kim recalled how he had tried
and failed for years to get a meeting with an American president. He nearly had
a visit from Bill Clinton, late in his second term. Clinton had sent his secretary of state,
Albright, as a preliminary but then had turned his attention to the Jews and
Arabs. Kim felt angry again as he thought of it. Clinton didn’t even send a family member! He
could have sent his wife, a powerful figure in her own right, but instead he
sent a functionary outside his inner circle. That showed American arrogance and
disregard for the dignity of Koreans. When Clinton finally came to Pyongyang in
2009, then an ex-president turned errand boy dispatched to collect two
Americans Kim had ordered kidnapped, their meeting hadn’t erased the earlier
insult.

But that would have to wait. Tonight he
was considering the latest offer: a billion Swiss francs for two nuclear bombs.
In the past, his vision—his inner voice—had said the time was not yet right.
This time he knew, as certainly as he knew his own destiny, that it
was
right. With that much hard currency
he could purchase what his dear people needed to plant their feet firmly on the
road toward his vision: the
Juche
society, entirely self-sufficient. And the destruction of two American cities
would reveal to all what
he
already
knew: the weakness, self-indulgence, and futility of the United States.
After their protector was shown helpless to protect even itself, Koreans south
of the DMZ would accept his unification offer, through which the principles of
Juche
would prove superior and would
absorb their democracy. These events would restore the dignity and face he had
lost over years of reaching out to the Americans and being rebuffed.

 
Still, his muse urged caution. He knew he
couldn’t be sure what the Arabs would do. They were crazy—they saw enemies
everywhere! Suppose they decided to strike Russia
or China or Pakistan, instead of America? He would have the money,
but America
would still appear powerful to South Koreans and others lacking his own sure
vision. Or suppose they struck America
with one bomb and used the other against the Russians, owing to some grievance
on behalf of the Muslims in Chechnya?
Unlike the Americans, the Russians had power they were not reluctant to use—in
fact they were proud of it—and would undoubtedly retaliate against him in kind
if one of his bombs was used against them. And the source of the bombs,
wherever the Arabs used them,
would
become known. They might try to blackmail him with it, or perhaps just reveal
it in one of their theological rants. So, he had to protect himself.

What he needed was a way to sell the
Arabs nuclear bombs but retain control over how they were used. Tonight he
didn’t know how to do that, but he knew he would work it out it in good time,
as he had the answers to all his dear people’s problems.

***

Austin
, Texas
—Eight Months Previously.

General Ray Morales, now Congressman
Ray Morales, looked across the
breakfast table at his wife, Julie. “So forty years later, I’m a butter-bar
again,” he said, using the Corps’ slang for a newly minted officer.

“Not exactly, Ray! You and I are new to
politics, but we’ve got all the life we’ve lived, all the experiences. Neither
of us is a rookie, even if they call you Austin’s
freshman congressman.”

“Were you
surprised we won?”

“Not really. First, because you were
appointed to fill Lamar Smith’s term last year and we spent a lot of time here
building support. Plus, this has been a Republican seat for a long time. And
finally, although it’s a topic most people don’t want to think about, you were
right about Iraq
when the president was wrong—and had the guts to resign over it.”

“So I shouldn’t
feel too cocky about winning?”

“You mean
we
shouldn’t feel too cocky about winning? Satisfied, yes, but not
cocky.” They grinned at each other.

“OK, coach, I
got it!” Ray drained his coffee and ambled off to shave.

He had a blocky build, with powerful arms
and thighs, overlooked by a broad face with a large, pug nose and a fleshy
lower lip above a squarish jaw and broad chin. In repose his lips were usually
a straight line, neither smiling nor frowning, both of which he did
unmistakably when he wanted. His eyes were
piercing,
as if he were
lead
ing Marines on patrol,
missing
nothing
and
appraising
everything.

As he shaved, Ray thought about the
situation facing president-elect Rick Martin and Congress, of which he was a
very junior member. Although the country’s mood was hopeful, as its citizens
anticipated the inauguration of a charismatic man who said that together they
would make things a lot better, the economic facts were pretty bleak. And on
the international side . . . it was as if Americans had decided to ignore the
world and assume it would ignore them.

When things went to hell in Iraq, about halfway through the
calendar-driven withdrawal
he had refused to
support, the weakened NATO effort in Afghanistan had faded. Special
Operations units from several countries remained in the northeast searching for
al-Qaeda leaders, but that was about it. And across the irrelevant border, Pakistan stewed
and bubbled and lurched, caught in tribal and ethnic hatreds, menaced by both
Islamist mujahedin and Hindu India—and possessing at least several dozen
nuclear weapons.

Ray didn’t think the world was going to
leave them alone. It was going to settle old scores, real and imagined.

Morales had met Rick Martin a few times,
the contact initiated by an old but intimate connection between their very
different lives. That connection was Ella Martin.

Ray met Ella Dominguez on the Princeton
campus after a Princeton vs. Navy track meet
in their junior year. Theirs had been one of those episodic, passionate college
romances that die after graduation. The sex had been incredible, for the same
reason—total focus—that pulled them apart. Ella entered Columbia Law and Ray
became a Marine officer. After he completed the grueling Basic Course at Quantico, they spent some
weekends together and wrote a few times, and then it was just over.

Twenty-five years after parting, Ella and
Ray found themselves in the same city. He was the new head of Marine Corps
Plans, Policy, and Operations, a stepping-stone to becoming commandant, the top
Marine. Senator and Mrs. Rick Martin were already in Washington. Both spouses knew the history
and there were no sparks—well maybe one or two, he admitted—but mainly just a
fondness and mutual surprise that the paths they had traveled now crossed. He
and Rick got along well, if casually, each thinking the other was typical of
his profession but somewhat better than the average practitioner of war or
politics.

Now Ray had entered Rick’s political
world and wondered whether they would have a relationship. He doubted it.

***

Pyongyang
, North
Korea
(DPRK)—Eight Months Previously.

The Dear Leader rose from the computer,
bouncing to his feet with pleasure. He had discovered the solution, as he
always did. He knew how to maintain control over his bombs after he sold them.

It had come to him an hour ago, around
1:00 a.m. as he sat in his private theater, drinking Hennessy Paradis cognac
and smoking cigars, watching one of Marlon Brando’s greatest performances,
On the Waterfront
. The screen framed men
working in the hold of a freighter, unloading cases of Irish whisky. One of
them, a cocky character named Dugan, pilfered a bottle, joking to his mates
about it. That triggered Kim’s insight. Suddenly, he
knew.