Lady Liberty (28 page)

Or were you still hiding?

Wringing out her skirt at the water’s edge, she paused and dragged her fingers over her skull, through her wet hair. The truth wasn’t pretty, but she had to face it. She had shut down her personal life, and she had been grateful to feel compelled to give David her promise on her conduct. It gave her a license not to risk loving anyone again. And she honestly had convinced herself that her career would be enough—that she would feel fulfilled. But she had been wrong. Gold help her, she had been so wrong. This thing with Westford wasn’t just lust.

“Sybil.” Westford appeared between two fat bushes. “Hurry.”

Sensing his urgency, she scrambled into her shirt and jacket, slipped to her knees in the wet sand, jerked on his socks, and then rushed to him.

He crossed his lips with a fingertip, dropped to his
knees in a thicket of mature palmettos, and whispered. “We’ve got company. Dig.”

Dig?
She fell to her knees beside him, scooped mud into a heap. Following his hand signals, they dug two trenches under the lush leaves of dense, spiny bushes. He motioned for her to lie in the first trench. Twisting, she slid inside, for once grateful for the recent downpour and thick brush.

Silently, intently, Westford shoved dirt over her. “Smear your head and face,” he said, his voice a faint whisper of sound.

They worked quickly, methodically, until they both were under the bushes and buried up to their necks in mud. The birds chirped in the treetops and the squirrels leapt branch to branch, tree to tree. Sybil’s heart pounded in her ears, and the reason for Westford’s drastic measures appeared from around the bend.

Three men walked down the narrow shore and then fanned out into the brush. Through the leaves, she watched them move. All were dressed in black and were carrying equipment that, she assumed, included heat-seeking sensors, since they kept glancing at them. And all three men were heavily armed.

President Lance finished taping his weekly public radio chat and removed the mike from his lapel. Whether they did more harm than good was a topic of hot debate among his staff, since they aired on Friday nights and gave the weekend talk-show circuit fresh fodder that gathered steam by Monday.

Barber stepped over to him, bent low, and whispered. “They need you in the Sit, sir.”

“Thank you, everyone,” David said, then headed toward the Situation Room.

Sam Sayelle rounded the corner. From his rumpled look, he had been as overworked as the rest of them in the last few days. He’d also had a collision with a cup of coffee and, judging by the stain on his shirtfront, he’d lost. David whispered to Barber, “Any new word on the Dean family?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Sam.” David slowed his steps. “I understand you alerted us to the Dean family situation. I appreciate your taking the initiative and checking it out.”

“Any luck locating them, sir?”

“I’m hoping so. We’ll keep you posted.” David increased his pace, to avoid having to talk around more questions he couldn’t answer, then entered the Situation Room. The two dozen men and women seated around the conference table rose to their feet. “Please, sit down.” David took his chair at the head of the table.

Commander Conlee cleared his throat. “Mr. President.”

David had always liked Conlee. He was in his fifties with short, spiky gray hair and a face that had seen too much misery and too little laughter. Conlee was dependable and forthright, and he never licked boots. He called things as he saw them, which was no small part of the reason he wore a chest full of medals and deserved every one of them. Conlee didn’t impress easily, and he never backed down if he was right. Not such good traits on the diplomatic side of government business, but admirable traits for a commander. No one on the planet understood covert operations or operatives better than Donald Conlee. “Go ahead, Commander.”

“Minutes ago an unknown party locked down A-267. So far there has been no interference with operations or any attempt to infiltrate our systems. We have nine authorized personnel locked in their individual offices in the outer rim and two locked in its reception area: Lieutenant Gibson and Senator Marlowe.”

“What was Cap doing there?”

“Pulling a no-notice inspection, sir,” Conlee said. “There’s an added complication with the senator, sir. Dr. Richardson will brief you on that.” Conlee gave Richardson the go-ahead nod.

“Without getting into medical jargon and double-talk, please.”

“Of course, Mr. President,” Richardson said. “Simply put, Senator Marlowe is a diabetic and he’s overdue for an insulin injection. He can’t get out of the outer rim, and we can’t get in to give him one. Right now the senator isn’t feeling well, but unless we can get some insulin into him soon, he is going to get worse. The longer the delay, the more severe his condition will become. Bluntly speaking, sir, he could crash.”

Another complication David did not need. “Define crash.”

“He could lapse into a diabetic coma, sir. Or he could die.”

Richardson sat down, and David laced his hands on the tabletop and shifted his gaze to Conlee. “Can’t we override this infiltrator’s lockdown commands?”

“No sir,” Conlee said. “Our controls have been rendered useless.”

“So we’re sitting ducks?”

“That’s a fair assessment of our current position, sir.”

“Someday someone is going to have to explain to me why the most powerful nation in the world is so vulnerable it loses control of its own assets.”

“Forty percent budget cutbacks for three years in a row has a formidable impact, sir,” Conlee said. “Vulnerability is just one of many challenges created.”

Agreeing, but not inclined to debate, David returned to the matter at hand. “Is the inner hub intact?” He was almost afraid to ask.

Conlee cleared his throat, obviously not eager to respond to this one. “Intact but empty, sir.”

“What?” The
inner hub was never empty.

“Captain Mendoza was on duty,” Conlee explained. “Immediately after Senator Marlowe left the hub, the site locked down. Mendoza was at his station then. But when the lockdown completed, he was gone.”

“That’s impossible,” a puzzled Barber interjected. “There is only one way in or out. Mendoza had to have walked past the senator.”

“Senator Marlowe disagrees.” Conlee frowned and leaned forward against the table. “I don’t claim to understand the logistics, but the statement from Lieutenant Gibson matches the senator’s statement. They both say Mendoza was at the station and at no time passed the senator, which he would have had to do to exit the inner hub. They say he just vanished.”

David stared at Conlee. “Mendoza could be our leak.”

“We have no evidence of that at this time, sir.”

“Keep looking.”

“Yes, sir.”

The surveillance camera in the inner hub was focused on the control desk, away from the door. If at the onset of the lockdown Mendoza had moved to the door and had stayed there, then he wouldn’t be visible on camera, but the heat sensors would detect his presence. “Have we run diagnostics?”

“Simple and complex, sir.”

So the heat sensors hadn’t located him either. “How long will it take our engineers to run a stand-down cycle?”

“They’re not sure yet. Apparently, whoever did this planted viral triggers throughout the system. To neutralize them, the engineers have to do a frame-by-frame cycle inspection. It could take days.”

“We don’t have days.”

“I’m aware of that, sir. We’re seeking alternatives.”

“Alternatives? Is that it?”

“It’s all we know at this time, sir.”

“I want hourly updates and all crisis reports personally.”
David slapped his hands against the tabletop. “Anything else?”

“Yes, sir.” Barber leaned forward, laced his hands atop a yellow-lined pad. Nothing had been written on the page. “I would speak to you privately about this, but privacy is a moot point, since everyone here has heard about it already.”

“That includes the press, sir,” Winston added, looking pensive.

“It’s about Vice President Stone,” Barber said.

“What about her?” Had the media somehow learned they had released news of her death without confirmation?

“What she did with Peris and Abdan has raised serious concerns about her competence.”

David did his best to keep his temper in check. “Incompetent how?”

Barber’s face went red. “She’s having cookies and milk and a note delivered to their leaders every night to keep them in Geneva.”

“Cookies and milk.” Winston blew out a disgusted grunt. “In a single stroke, she’s set back diplomatic relations twenty years.”

David slid Winston a warning look to hold his tongue. “So I take it her strategy failed and the leaders have left Geneva.”

“Actually, it’s worked, sir.” That came from an amused Commander Conlee.

“Then her strategy, while unusual, has proven to be both effective and successful.” The president didn’t blink. “Let me remind you,
we
couldn’t get either of them to the negotiating table. She did.” He paused, but no one disputed him, so he went on. “As it happens, I’ve heard from both Peris and Abdan again today. They’re charmed by the vice president’s gesture and they’re mourning her death.” He slid forward on his chair in a deliberate attempt to intimidate both Barber and Winston. “Something is wrong when our vice president
gets more concern and respect from foreigners than from her own people. Think about that.”

“There’s more, sir.” Barber glanced nervously at Winston, then back to the president. “If we want to avoid a political bloodbath, we need to address the matter quickly.”

Another Watergate or Whitewater, they did not need. David’s stomach soured. “What specifically is the matter?”

Barber’s lips flattened to a slash. “The ethics committee has received a violations complaint against the vice president, sir.”

Sam had been standing near the elevator for the past fifteen minutes, debating whether to ride up to Cap’s office and tell him what had been going on. He was tempted, but Conlee had made no bones about promising to kill Sam and anyone he told about the broadcasts. Putting your own head on the chopping block was one thing, but putting someone else’s there gave a man reason to pause.

He stared above the elevator at the lighted numbers, wondering what he was doing here. He had done fourteen broadcasts for Conlee now, and he’d talked with Karla about the Dean family half a dozen times, without hearing anything except “No sign of them yet. Frankly, we need a break.” The kidnappers hadn’t made contact, and Sniffer hadn’t found a clue. With each broadcast and each call from Karla, Sam had become more convinced the FBI, or whoever was working the case on the federal level, had squelched the local police investigation. Karla hadn’t said a word about input from the Deans’ extended families or friends, and Sniffer had determined on first-contact attempts that no family, friends, or neighbors—none of them—had any idea anything was amiss. Sam had debated and decided to keep his mouth shut and not risk approaching Conlee or Cap Marlowe with a thing. He saw no way around that now.

So what are you doing here?

Good question. The elevator moved down to the fourth floor. He hadn’t considered going to Cap’s office this time. But then he had run into President Lance, who hadn’t been exactly forthcoming with information about the Dean family, and it hadn’t escaped Sam’s notice that neither Barber, nor Winston, nor Lance had so much as hinted at the broadcasts. Not that the president would say anything outright, but typically Barber or Winston would. What really had bothered Sam was that the president had walked on as if everything were fine, and he had had the strongest feeling that Lance didn’t know about the broadcasts or that he was doing them.

What if Commander Conlee was working with Sybil Stone and this treason business was valid? What if they weren’t makeshift saviors but the most corrupt politicians on the Hill?

Yet treason didn’t fit with the content of the broadcasts. It didn’t fit her, either. Why feed her updates on the Peris and Abdan peace talks and on a terrorist-attack crisis that had happened only God knew where? Sam had watched every resource like a hawk, but he hadn’t seen anything about an attack. Or any reference whatsoever to A-267. What was it? Where was it that the country was being covertly attacked?