Red Cell Seven (6 page)

“One of them was so stupid he used a real name during my interrogation.”

“How do you know?”

Kaashif rubbed his stomach. It was bothering him a little. “The other one became very angry when the name was spoken.”

“What was the name? Do you remember?”

“Uh, I think it was Major Trav.”

“That sounds like a partial.”

“Perhaps.”

“Could it have been Travers?”

Kaashif shrugged. “It could have been.”

“Think back. It’s important that you—”

“They have too many rules,” Kaashif interrupted, “too many regulations. They have chains of command and due process. They think their Constitution is so grand and so much better than the founding principles of all other societies. They think it makes them invincible.” He laughed confidently. “But what they think makes them so strong is precisely what makes them weak. They cannot react quickly because of their rules and regulations. They cannot be agile like we can, because their Constitution weighs them down. In time it will pull them all the way down. It will be their undoing.”

“Careful. Don’t be arrogant. That’s when we find trouble.”

Kaashif scoffed as the pickup truck moved through the cold, gray dusk settling down onto Philadelphia. “They thought I was actually scared.” He sneered. “I am never scared.”

“Did you tell them anything?” the driver asked. At thirty-four, he was ten years older than Kaashif. “Anything at all?”

Kaashif smirked. “I told them only that I will need to make up my high school calculus test. Which, I guess, I will have to do.” He rolled his eyes. “What a joke. I could take that test in my sleep and get one hundred percent.”

“You will definitely make up the calculus test.”

“Whatever.”

“Do you think he believed you were in high school?”

Kaashif chuckled caustically. “I
am
in high school.”

“Do you think he believed you were seventeen?”

“Absolutely.”

The driver pursed his lips as he checked his mirrors. He wasn’t as confident that things had gone smoothly in the interrogation. He had extensive experience with U.S. intel, and he knew how good they were. And he’d heard of a man named Wilson Travers who could supposedly see into the future. But if Travers was the interrogator and he could see into the future, why would he have allowed Kaashif to go free? It didn’t make sense. The driver checked his mirrors again worriedly. Still, he saw nothing.

“Everything must seem real. The illusion can never be discovered.”

“You worry too much,” Kaashif chided. “Enjoy life a little.”

“I don’t have time for that. Neither do you. That is not why we were put on this earth. We will enjoy ourselves in the next life.”

“Ah, you don’t know what you are talking about. So, how are my ‘mother and father’ doing?” Kaashif asked sarcastically.

“They went to the police this morning and filed a missing persons report. Just as concerned parents would do. As I said, the illusion must seem real. We will arrange for a reunion scene tonight. The story will be that you ran away from home for a few days because they are so strict. Everyone will believe it, most important the agents who interrogated you. They will believe you are too afraid of them to tell anyone the truth about what happened. It will be good.”

“They said they would be watching me. Well, they will see me go into the high school in the morning and come back out in the afternoon. But they will have no idea what I do at night. And then one morning soon I will go into the school, but I will not come back out. Not the way I went in, and they will never know how I slipped away. It will be exactly the way I did last week to see Imelda. That went off without a hitch, and no one ever knew I was gone from school for most of the day.” Kaashif laughed again, this time very loudly. “And they will
never
find me after that. I will be gone forever.” He nodded. “I will have beaten them, and hell will be raining down by that time. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to trample them. I only wish I could see their faces when the hour is upon them.”

“Just do your job. Don’t look at this as a competition.”

“Everything in life is a competition.”

“Keep your focus, Kaashif. Don’t make me—”

“Do you think the U.S. authorities will arrest the two who are playing my parents?”

The driver’s eyes narrowed. “I would, if I were they.”

Now it was Kaashif who checked his mirror. “And the attacks?” he asked. “What of the attacks?”

The driver smiled for the first time since he could remember. “As we speak, Kaashif, as we speak.”

Kaashif glanced over at the driver as his eyes widened. “The hour is upon them?”

“Yes. The decision was made this morning. Hell is already raining down.”

“I’
M SORRY
for all that, Bill.” The president nodded at the door Baxter had just slammed shut. “Stewart can be downright unfriendly sometimes. I know it. But he’s what I need right now.”

“I understand,” Bill answered solemnly.

Troy had never seen his father like that. For a few seconds it had looked like Bill was going to come out of his chair at Baxter when the COS hit him broadside with that thing about Jack—and then piled on with the Rita Hayes reference. If Bill had, Baxter would have been sorry. Even though his father was more than three decades out of the Marine Corps, he was still in excellent shape. His father didn’t get angry often. But when he did and his temper was unleashed, things didn’t go well for the object of Bill’s fury.

“I did not ask him to run G-2 lines on you guys,” Dorn said. “In fact, I didn’t even know he had. You are obviously both above that kind of thing,” the president said, gesturing at them. “It won’t happen again. I promise you.”

“It doesn’t make me comfortable that your chief of staff is so against Red Cell Seven,” Bill said stoically. “But what makes me even more uncomfortable is that he knows about it at all. You promised me—”

“Don’t worry about Stewart. He doesn’t get this. And
that’s
putting it politely.”

“What have you told him?” Troy asked.

“Nothing. And I will tell him nothing. I made a promise to your father,” Dorn said, gesturing at Troy, “and I intend to keep it.”

Troy glanced at Bill. He didn’t want to be disrespectful, but there were people risking their lives out there every minute. They had to come first no matter what.

“I’m serious,” Dorn continued when he saw doubt in Troy’s expression. “Basically, all Stewart Baxter knows about RCS is its name. That’s all I told him.” The president hesitated. “But remember, he’s been around Washington a long time. Knowing Stewart as well as I do now, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had another source. He seems to have sources on everything.”

That didn’t sound good. In fact, it sounded like an easy way for Dorn to absolve himself of any guilt for giving Baxter information he wasn’t supposed to. There wasn’t any way Troy or his father could confirm or deny it, either. Baxter certainly wasn’t going to admit it if they asked him.

“Any chance Baxter could have set up listening devices in here?” Troy asked, looking around.

The president smiled wanly. “You guys really are para—”

“Any chance?” Bill interrupted. “I’m going out on a very long, very thin limb just by being here. I am violating procedure, and believe me, there are people watching this meeting from the cheap seats who question my view on this. But I’m confident it’s the right thing to do.”

The president shook his head. “No chance of any bugs. The Secret Service swept the office thirty minutes before you got here as part of their new routine since the assassination attempt. They found nothing, and I’ve been in here ever since.” Dorn began coughing hard, and Bill started to get up to help. But Dorn waved him off. “I’m okay,” he said as Bill eased back into the chair. “I need to know everything about Red Cell Seven. If you guys are more comfortable getting out of the West Wing and going into the private residence to talk about it, I understand.”

Troy and Bill glanced at each other and nodded.

“Let’s do that,” Bill said. “I’m sorry if that seems like overkill, but we have to be very careful.”

“No, no, that’s fine. I understand.” Dorn grinned. “Can one of you guys give me a push?”

“L
ET
’
S GO
, H
ARRY
,”
Travers urged as he climbed back into the passenger seat. He and Boyd had stopped to fill up the van at a gas station outside Wilmington, Delaware, on their way back from Philly. “If we hustle we can make DC by seven.”

“Relax,” Boyd retorted as he opened a three-pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and gulped the first one down whole. “Man, that’s good,” he muttered, licking his lips as he reached forward to turn the key.

“You better cut down on that stuff, Harry. You’re starting to get a little heavy in the—”

Travers cut his jab at Boyd short. Something didn’t seem right. It was nothing he could put his finger on, but his sixth sense was suddenly going crazy.
Trust your instincts.
Then, through the windshield, he saw two young men sprinting for the van.

CHAPTER 6

“I
SN
’
T THIS
one of the places President Clinton brought that intern?” Bill asked. The large room was piled high with cardboard boxes identified by country name with black marker.

The three of them had ridden an elevator up to the third floor of the White House—from the kitchen on the ground floor—and then headed to this storage space, which was in a corner of the building. Troy had pushed Dorn’s wheelchair from the West Wing to the residence with three Secret Service agents hovering around them the whole way, including the ride up in the elevator.

The Secret Service agents were gone now. They were waiting in another room well away from this one. Bill had insisted on their leaving as a condition of talking to Dorn further about Red Cell Seven. The president had agreed, much to the intense aggravation of Richard Radcliff, the agent in charge.

In this room were stored many different china patterns, silverware sets, and crystal used for formal state dinners. The elevator the three men had just used ran directly between the ground floor and the little-used third floor. It didn’t stop on the state floor or second floor and was used mostly as a means of transporting the formal dining room ware. However, the still-lingering rumor was that, during the Clinton administration, it had also transported a covert human cargo named Monica, so she could come in through the kitchen mostly unnoticed and meet the president on the third floor, bypassing the other residence floors where she might run into someone she shouldn’t.

President Dorn shook his head. “I’m not commenting on that, Bill. Mr. Clinton was a tremendous president and a great man. It’s not for me to speculate on innuendo.”

“So, how much have you told your chief of staff about Red Cell Seven?” Bill asked.

“For the last time,” the president responded in a steely tone, “Stewart Baxter knows nothing important about RCS.”

“What exactly does ‘nothing important’—”

“Look,” Dorn interrupted sharply, “I can’t keep the FBI blindly looking for my assassin for much longer. I’ll have to let them know Shane Maddux was responsible. I won’t say that directly, of course. That could bring Red Cell Seven into it, and none of us want that. So I’ll whisper it to them anonymously somehow. The thing is, I’m going to have to do it soon. I can’t keep them tied up this way.”

Bill had told the president that Maddux was responsible for the assassination attempt, Troy knew. And he’d told Dorn that Maddux was involved with the LNG tankers that had been heading for Boston and Norfolk. He’d explained that Maddux had done all that to push Congress to give the U.S. intelligence infrastructure broader surveillance and investigative powers at home and abroad, and to incite the American public against terrorism at a time when Maddux believed the population was losing touch with 9/11. With people forgetting the devastation, Maddux believed the country was becoming vulnerable to another attack.

“It’s too much law-enforcement manpower to lock up indefinitely,” Dorn continued, “and they’re going around the clock.”

“Of course,” Bill agreed. “The public demands that the shooter be caught and punished. It terrifies people to think someone could get away with shooting their president.”

“Exactly.”

“Just give me a little longer,” Bill said. “Let me find Maddux and deal with him myself. I don’t want the FBI taking him into custody and giving him any incentive to talk about Red Cell Seven. I can’t have him rolling over on us.”

That made no sense to Troy. Maddux was guilty of terrible things, but he was a patriot. In Maddux’s eyes, Dorn was the traitor because he’d been planning to eliminate Red Cell Seven, as well as seriously limit what “official” U.S. intelligence agents could do to fight terrorism, including the torture of suspects to gain information—which Maddux believed was an essential interrogation tool. Therefore, Maddux didn’t consider it a crime to assassinate David Dorn. Maddux believed that the assassination would save Red Cell Seven and, by extension, the country.

Troy seriously doubted Maddux would ever give away RCS secrets. Even if he thought he could make a deal by doing it and avoid or lessen jail time.

More to the point, Troy doubted the FBI would ever catch Maddux—not alive, anyway. So RCS secrets were safe with Maddux. Troy couldn’t understand why his father would think any other way. But then, Bill was privy to much more information than he was.

Troy doubted anyone would ever take Shane alive. And if somehow his father managed to catch Maddux, he certainly wasn’t going to turn the man over to the FBI—which Dorn had to know.

“All right, Bill,” Dorn agreed, “a little more time.”

“How much are we talking?”

“I’ll let you know before I leak any information about Maddux to the FBI. But that’s all I can promise. Let’s just leave it at that.” Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “Bill, how many individuals defected with Maddux out of RCS?”

“Only a few, and I have people searching for them as well. But when we find Maddux, we’ll find the rest of them.”

Troy disagreed with that, too. But he kept his mouth shut.

Dorn eased back into the wheelchair. “Okay, guys,” he muttered after taking a deep breath. “Tell me everything I need to know about Red Cell Seven.”

Bill glanced at Troy. “Go on, son.”

And Troy glanced at the president. “I want to be as efficient as possible, Mr. President. What do you already know?”

“Your father gave me some information to review while I was in the hospital. It described certain of Red Cell Seven’s activities over the past four decades. And of course, over the last year, since my election, Roger Carlson would report to me face-to-face from time to time. On average, that was about once a month. But he never told me much. He was a crafty man.”

“Experienced,” Bill countered.

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

“I do.”

The president shrugged. “I made the mistake of telling Roger I wanted very specific information. And that I was going to put a buffer between us.”

Bill shook his head. “I doubt that went over very well.”

“No, it did not. He was furious.”

“Knowing Roger, he probably took that as a signal that you were going to shut RCS down.”

“Probably,” Dorn agreed. “And that’s probably what initiated the plot to kill me.”

“I doubt it, sir,” Bill disagreed. “In my opinion Roger Carlson would never endorse a plan to assassinate the president of the United States. I believe that all originated with Shane Maddux, that it was his idea alone.”

“Don’t you think Roger told Maddux what I said?”

“Maybe, but I think Maddux was already planning it before Carlson would have said anything to him.”

“How would Maddux have known before Roger told him?”

Bill shot Troy a knowing look. “You don’t know Shane Maddux the way we do.”

“And I’m very glad of that.” Dorn gestured to Bill. “Did Roger tell you what I said to him?”

Bill pushed out his lower lip then shook his head deliberately. “No.”

“Mmm.”

It seemed obvious to Troy that Dorn wasn’t convinced by his father’s answer.

“Roger died of a heart attack,” the president said, “didn’t he?”

Bill nodded. “He was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car outside his townhouse in Georgetown.”

Troy and Bill had talked about Carlson’s death on the way down to Washington. They both suspected Maddux of somehow being involved. The thing was, the coroner had confirmed the cause of death as a heart attack. Despite that, they still weren’t completely convinced. But they’d agreed not to say anything about their suspicions to Dorn.

“How many agents does RCS have?” the president asked.

“Ninety-two,” Bill answered.

Interesting. A month ago Troy had heard the number was ninety-eight.

“Are they divided into units? I mean, how does that work?”

“We call them divisions,” Troy explained. “They include out-of-country terrorism, counterterrorism, interrogation, communications, and assassinations.” President Dorn seemed to have suddenly lost the little color he had in his face. “Are you all right, sir?”

“For a man like me, it’s hard to hear a word like ‘assassinations’ when it comes to activities carried out by people I’m ultimately responsible for. The word ‘interrogation’ doesn’t sit well with me, either, if I’m going to be completely honest. I’m pretty sure I know what that really means.” He glanced at Troy. “Do I? Do I know what it really means?”

“What exactly do you—”

“Do you guys torture people?”

“Yes, sir,” Troy answered candidly, “when we need to, when that option is appropriate.”

“Lord. When can that option ever be
appropriate
?”

Troy and Bill glanced at each other uneasily.

“Don’t worry,” the president spoke up quickly, “I get it. I get the whole lowest common denominator thing. At least, I do now. We have to fight them the way they fight us. Down and dirty.”

“That’s right,” Bill replied firmly. “But Mr. President, the beauty of Red Cell Seven is that you aren’t responsible for us in any way. It’s even better than plausible deniability when it comes to RCS. It’s
genuine
deniability. With all due respect to Stewart Baxter, RCS cannot get you in trouble, no matter what it does.”

Dorn shook his head. “In the end, Bill, I’m responsible for everything and anything that goes on in this country. I can’t use ignorance as an excuse.”

“Yes, you certainly can.”

“No,” Dorn snapped, “I
cannot
.” He nodded at Troy. “What division are you in?”

“Communications.” The president seemed relieved by the answer, though he shouldn’t have been. Troy had killed a few men. Everyone in RCS did, sooner or later, and so far it had been six years inside for Troy. “My division’s also called the Falcons,” he continued. “We deliver instructions and cash to other RCS agents around the world. We never use electronic messages or phones of any kind to communicate the most sensitive data.” He hesitated. “Why did you want to know what division I was in?”

“And what is your role in all of this, Bill?” Dorn asked the elder Jensen without responding.

“I’m a Red Cell Seven associate. Actually, I lead the associate pool.”

“What does that mean? What are associates?”

“We’re a network of RCS support,” Bill explained. “We’re not actually considered agents.”

“Be more specific.”

“Unlike the CIA, the NSA, or any other U.S. intel group that I’m aware of, Red Cell Seven receives no support at all from the federal government, funding or otherwise,” Bill explained. “We’re completely autonomous. We operate that way so there are no opportunities for our enemies, foreign or domestic, to prove we exist.”

“How would they do that?”

“Money trails. An organization like Red Cell Seven, with ninety-two agents constantly on the move around the world, requires a lot of cash to operate. If we took cash from the federal government and the link was discovered, some ridiculous liberal, left-wing Congressional investigation committee might use the evidence to put an end to what has been
the
most effective intelligence group the United States has
ever
operated. But we don’t. We’re autonomous. That’s why you can never be blamed.”

“What gives you the right to operate?”

Bill stared back blankly at the president for a few moments.

Troy’s eyes moved slowly to his father. He wanted to hear this, too. He’d always wondered the same thing.

“He didn’t tell you?” Bill finally asked.

Dorn raised both eyebrows. “He
who
?”

Bill cleared his throat. “You really don’t know?”

“Answer the question, Bill.”

“Your immediate predecessor, Mr. President. He had a meeting with you immediately prior to your inauguration, on the day of, in fact. He communicated several extraordinarily sensitive things to you just before you took the oath. It’s been that way for many years. That tradition is little known, but it happens every time a new president is inaugurated.”

“What did he tell me, Bill?”

“How would I know, sir? The subjects of that conversation are some of the most closely guarded secrets in the world. You were there. You tell me. If you can,” Bill added ominously.