Power Down (59 page)

He sprinted down a long driveway, covered in snow, that seemed without end. His lungs burned as the cold air bit at them and at his throat, along with years’ worth of cigarettes and Jack Daniel’s. But he didn’t slow, even when he crested a hill, heard ocean, saw lights. The snow seemed to be lightening. Windows twinkled far in the distance. He had a downhill pitch now and he kicked even harder toward the house. As he came closer, the largest home he’d ever seen came into view, a stunning mansion that stretched left to right in a vista around a large circular driveway. There must have been a hundred windows on the three-floor expanse. Shingle and dark shutters as far as he could see, painted with snow.

There in the driveway, behind a fountain that sat in the middle of the circle, sat the dark outline of the Mercedes, still running, door ajar.

Dewey ran to the Mercedes with the machine gun extended in front of him. A trail of blood from the open door intermingled with tracks through the snow. He sprinted to the front door of the house, which was wide open, following the path of blood on the ground. He continued in through a large dining room, then a dimly lit hallway.

He felt pain in his head, but ignored it as he moved toward the target.

He had only himself now, and whatever he could bring.

Throughout the house, he could hear ocean pounding angrily against the shore.

At last, he came to the light. In a large room at the far end of the mansion, dark green walls, a blazing fireplace. Then the terrorist, Fortuna, his back to him.

Ignoring the blood that coursed down his lips from his nose and ears, and his hands still sticky with the other terrorist’s blood, Dewey kicked in the French doors and stepped into the large, warm room. He aimed the HK UMP at Fortuna. Fortuna turned in the chair. In his hand, a shiny silver object that looked like a television remote.
Detonator.
He held it up.

Had he pushed one already? More? All of them?
Dewey wondered.
Or is he bargaining for his life?

Fortuna appeared ashen, almost white under a sheen of perspiration. He panted in short bursts. Still, under it all, Dewey could see the face of the man he was; the sharp outline of his nose, hair slightly long, brushed back. Even near death, there was a charisma, composed in part by his looks, and by eyes that penetrated Dewey from half a room away. Looking down at the tan carpet, a large pool of blood surrounded the area beneath the chair. From his waist down, Dewey could see that the terrorist’s pants were drenched in crimson. He stared back at Dewey, holding the detonator in his hand.

From this close, Dewey could see that Fortuna’s gloved index, middle, and ring fingers were poised above three of the buttons near the detonator’s bottom.

“This button sets off a bomb at Staples Center in Los Angeles,” said
Fortuna, barely above a whisper, obviously in extreme pain. “This one will trigger a massive bomb that’s in a locker at O’Hare.”

“The third?” Dewey asked.

“The third. That one wasn’t easy.” He paused, struggling to take in air. “There’s a bomb in a closet at the Supreme Court in Washington. We needed a woman to do that. Karina.”

Dewey kept the machine gun trained on Fortuna. He stepped forward into the room.

“Put the weapon down,” said Fortuna. “And don’t move.”

Dewey walked forward, ignoring Fortuna’s demand, finger on the trigger and gun aimed squarely at Fortuna’s head.

“Put the detonator down,” said Dewey.

Fortuna grimaced at a spasm of pain. “I’m just the beginning,” he said. “The tip of the spear. You can’t stop it. My father, my brother. They will come behind me. They won’t stop.”

“I have brothers too,” said Dewey. “A hundred thousand brothers. This is nothing new to us. We’ve dealt with your type before.”

Fortuna’s eyes moved from Dewey to the detonator to the flow of blood in his lap. He was minutes away from bleeding out, and they both knew it.

“Is it medical attention you want?” Dewey said.

Fortuna opened his mouth, then shut it. Shook his head.

“Not very convincing,” said Dewey, “or you’d push those buttons, kill a few thousand more people, before I empty this HK into your head.”

“It was never about the people,” said Fortuna.

“Right,” said Dewey, anger in his voice. “Yet you killed my men. You’ve killed thousands already.”

“When you come to our countries, what do you do?” asked Fortuna, eyes meeting Dewey’s. He paused to let another wave of pain pass. “Vietnam? Afghanistan? Iraq? Lebanon? You are so powerful it doesn’t matter that in the plain light of day, when you take away the names of the countries, what you are doing is no different. Except that you are an entire government. Thousands of men, pouring in, with permission, permission because
you yourselves make the rules!
And you destroy lives. You destroy whole towns.”

“I don’t speak for my government.” Dewey tried to anticipate where Fortuna’s mind was drifting. As much as he wanted to shoot him, it would almost surely result in at least one detonation. He tried to buy time. “Who do you speak for?”

Still keeping the detonator in front of him, Fortuna smiled faintly. “When I was four, my mother took me to the sea, the beaches near Costa Brava,” said Fortuna. “It’s the only memory I have of her. Her name was Rhianne.” He inclined his head slightly toward the wall behind Dewey, where a tall oil painting hung. A stunning, dark-haired beauty standing in a white sundress, holding the hand of a small boy.

“Your soldiers patrolled that part of my country,” continued Fortuna, anger seemingly fueling his strength. “That day, we walked all the way home. She bought me ice cream at the beach near Costa Brava. One of your soldiers whistled at her. She—” Fortuna stopped abruptly, then continued. “She . . . pulled my hand, quickly, toward home. They told her to stop. She was scared. There was nothing in her bag.
There was nothing in her bag!
”

Fortuna stopped. He pulled his hand up from his stomach. He stared for several moments at the thick red that coated his gloves.

“They shot her,” he whispered. “Just . . .
shot
her. My mother.
Do you understand now?
”

“Yes, I understand,” said Dewey calmly, eyes locked on Fortuna’s. “We all have losses. I lost my boy, a woman I loved. But killing doesn’t bring them back. I wish it would. I’ve killed a lot of people. When you see the life go out in someone’s eyes, someone you just killed, maybe someone who deserves to die even, you hope the life will go out in you too. But it doesn’t.” Dewey paused. “Did taking down Capitana and murdering my crew, did that bring your mother home? Did killing all those people, destroying those places, did that bring her back? Is she here right now?”

Fortuna’s eyes took on a glazed aspect. “It helps,” he said simply. “Maybe another little boy won’t lose his mother. Maybe those soldiers won’t be standing there anymore. If I cripple you, you’ll keep your armies here.” He struggled against the pain again. “If I destroy enough, then perhaps you can worry about
your own. You can stay here, worrying about your own streets, your own buildings, and maybe some little boy in a country that you have no right to be in, maybe his mother won’t be gunned down in front of his eyes.”

“And right now,” Dewey asked, anger in his voice, “at O’Hare? What about the little boy standing in line holding
his
own mother’s hand?”

Fortuna stared back in silence. Suddenly, the detonator dropped to the ground.

Dewey fingered the trigger of the UMP.

“What did I do?” asked Fortuna, looking at Dewey. His eyes fluttered. On the ground, the pool of blood had grown wider.

Dewey gripped the cold steel of UMP in both hands now. Slowly, he raised the weapon level with his sternum. Bending at his knees just slightly, Dewey unloaded the UMP into the terrorist.

“I’ll tell you what you did,” said Dewey. “You picked the wrong country to fuck with.”

THE WHITE HOUSE
THREE DAYS LATER

The small mahogany door cracked open and Cecily Vincent, the president’s assistant, leaned into the Oval Office. “They’re here, Mr. President.”

The president, who was sitting with his boots up on his desk, leaned back and said nothing. He was reading the first draft of the State of the Union speech he would give later in the week.

“When you finish,
Marine One
’s ready to leave.”

“Are they all here?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

It was Saturday afternoon in early January, a rare snow falling on Washington. He wore blue jeans and a Navy blue chamois shirt that his father had bought him at L.L. Bean’s when he was in college, a senior at Columbia, more than forty years ago. It had numerous patches sewn onto it. It was in terrible shape and the Salvation Army probably wouldn’t have taken it. But it was his favorite shirt.

“Send in Chiles and Putnam. I want to get this over with. Tell the young lady to wait.”

The president took his boots from on top of the desk and sat up. He stood behind the large cherry desk as the door opened.

Louis Chiles, the director of the FBI, and Roger Putnam, the secretary of state, walked in. Putnam was dressed in tan, wide-wale corduroys and a heavy sweater. He looked like someone’s grandfather, dignified and professorial. Chiles wore a suit, looking more like a corporate executive than the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

The two men had been here many, many times before. Today, Putnam looked mildly inconvenienced. Normally, a Saturday in January would find him at his ski house in Jackson Hole, but he’d canceled all his winter trips the day he returned from Saudi Arabia. Chiles had the demeanor of a Boy Scout at his first camp out: excited, surprised, elated, still blown away by the experience of actually being allowed to come into the Oval Office.

“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” said Chiles as he walked in. Putnam simply nodded when he made eye contact with the president. The president said nothing, and didn’t return Putnam’s gesture. He watched as the two men sat down.

The two men sat down across from each other on the two large Chesterfield sofas in the middle of the Oval Office. The president remained standing behind his desk.

Putnam knew what was coming. He probably could’ve written the words the president was about to say.

Chiles was about to be blindsided.

“Mr. President, I have a complete debrief on ‘the Fortuna affair,’ as the press has dubbed it,” said Chiles.

“I’ll keep this short,” said the president, pointedly ignoring Chiles. “Because I
have
to keep it short. Because I have to get on a goddamn plane and fly for seven and a half hours so I can go and kiss King Fahd’s ass for a day and a half and clean up the fucking mess you two made.”

“But, Mr. President—” said Chiles.

“Shut the hell up, Lou,” interrupted Putnam quietly.

But Chiles forged ahead. “Mistakes were certainly made, but it was the FBI that ultimately broke the plot.”

“The FBI?” said the president incredulously. “The same FBI that failed to foresee the destruction of Capitana, Savage Island, Long Beach, Bath Iron Works? The attempted assassination of Teddy Marks? The
FBI that jumped to incorrect conclusions and helped drive this man”—he nodded toward the secretary of state—“to make accusations against a staunch American ally, accusations that created what is now a full-blown energy crisis?”

Chiles somehow continued to maintain his positive glow, smiling and nodding his head as the president spoke. “I understand, Mr. President, and I want you to know it won’t happen again. We’ve all learned—I’ve learned—some very valuable lessons. Already, we’ve convened an interagency group—”

“You’re fired,” interrupted the president.

“But . . . I’ve got four and a half years left in my term—” said Chiles.

“You’ll resign today. I want a resignation letter signed before you leave the White House.”

Chiles was silent. For the first time, his smile dissipated and a look of shock overtook his face. He sat back. He reached up and loosened his tie. He rubbed his eyes.

“You worked hard,” said the president. “Resign and go out, if not a winner, at least with dignity. I won’t say a bad thing about you and I’ll do everything in my power to prevent an investigation of your conduct as FBI chief. I’ll help you land somewhere, some professorship somewhere, private equity, a law firm, whatever.”

Chiles continued to rub his eyes. Milton Academy, Harvard College, Harvard Law School, Debevoise & Plimpton, the District Attorney’s office for the Southern District of Manhattan, the U.S. Attorney General’s office, Assistant Director of the FBI, Director of the FBI. He stood face-to-face with his first failure, a big failure, a failure for the ages.

“I understand, Mr. President,” he whispered, looking up. He stood up and walked to the president’s desk. “It’s been a pleasure and an honor to serve you, sir.” Chiles extended his hand. The president reached out and shook his hand.

“Thank you, Lou.”

Chiles walked to the door and left.

Putnam leaned back in the couch. He reached his arm up and stretched it across the back of the big Chesterfield, toward the president. “Well . . .”

The president continued standing.

He’d known Roger Putnam for more than two decades now. The first time the president ran for governor of California, the time he lost, Putnam had been the junior senator from the state. Putnam had endorsed him, despite the fact that the president was only thirty-four years old and had no political experience.