Secrets of State (8 page)

“I want to ask you about a particular NSA piece. Here's the reference number.” He handed Andy a slip of paper on which he had scribbled the intercept's catalogue number. It took only a few minutes for Andy to retrieve it from the system. He read it and whistled softly.

“Dynamite stuff. I didn't think the lovely and charming Mrs. Chandra had quite so much kick to her curry.”

“She doesn't,” Sam replied. “That piece is a fake. That conversation never took place. I want to know how it got into the system and why.”

Andy looked skeptical.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because the time frame is wrong. She could not have made that call when the DTG says she did.”

Andy looked at it quickly.

“Saturday night? Where was she?” He paused for a minute while the gears in his brain turned. Andy's brain worked extremely fast and he was well trained in the art of connecting data points into a coherent story.

“She was with you, wasn't she? You were making the beast with two backs with the Indian political counselor.” He looked around quickly and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The married Indian political counselor. Married to a guy who could have you killed and leave your body for the crows, by the way. Jesus H. Christ, what a stupid thing to do. If DS finds out . . .”

“Yeah. If. This has to stay just between me and you, Andy. Okay?”

“Sure, Chief. No worries. You absolutely sure she didn't sneak in a quick call when you were in the can?”

“There was no phone and no cell reception. No way to make a call from where we were.”

“Or to be tracked,” Andy suggested. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Analysis.”

“Of what?”

“Do you remember what I taught you about cockroaches?”

“That if you see one on the kitchen floor there are a thousand hiding in the walls.”

“Which means that if this report is fabricated it's almost certainly not the only one. There are probably a thousand like it hiding in the system, and I want to know which ones and whether there is any kind of pattern to the information.”

“Good God. Do you have any idea how hard that will be to do, even with the whole office working on it?”

“Not the whole office. If I wanted to put a big team on it, I'd have my guys do it. I want to keep this very quiet until I know what's going on. I want you to do this on your own.”

“Why me?” Andy asked, perplexed.

“Because I trust you. And because I think you can do it.”

Despite himself, Andy smiled at the compliment. Sam knew Andy looked up to him. It was an obvious button to push, even if it made him feel sort of scummy to manipulate the young analyst like that.

“What's the time frame on this?” Andy asked.

“Right away.”

“Give me a week.”

HAVANA HARBOR

FEBRUARY 15, 1898

S
ound carried near water, and the music from the chamber orchestra playing at one of Havana's waterfront clubs was so clear that it could have been coming from the foredeck. The parties seemed to go on all night in this town. Havana was the capital of Spain's most important overseas possession, the jewel in the Spanish crown. But Spain was a fading power, its glory days were long past, and the empire was rotten and sclerotic. As surely as day follows night, the Old World empires would be shunted aside by the muscular young power of the United States. It was only a matter of time.

Machinist's Mate Second Class Nathan Oliver stood listening to the music on the main deck in the shadow of the port-side gun turret as though the shade would somehow help cut the steamy tropical heat. The orchestra was passable. Not up to the standards of London or even New York but passable. Oliver hummed along softly to Johann Strauss's
Kaiser-Walzer
. There were not many grease monkeys in the U.S. Navy who would have recognized that piece of music, but Nathan Oliver was not really a machinist's mate. For that matter, neither was he really Nathan Oliver.

For the last two months, however, he had lived on this ship, learning its routines and its quirks, getting to know its crew of 355 men and boys, and being careful to think of himself as Nathan Oliver, machinist's mate.

He had bided his time, waiting for the moment he knew would come.

Oliver had been chewing on an unlit cigar. He would have liked nothing more than to light it up, but fire discipline was something that Captain Sigsbee took seriously and Oliver could not afford a run-in with one of the petty officers. Not tonight. He had a schedule to keep.

With a small twinge of regret, he tossed the unlit cigar stub over the rail into the inky black waters of Havana Harbor.

It was time.

He slipped quietly through the hatch and down the ladder to the second deck. From a utility closet, he retrieved a small wooden box that was stashed away discreetly in the corner of the top shelf. With the box tucked under his left arm, Machinist's Mate Nathan Oliver walked calmly and purposefully to Coal Bunker Number One. The room inside reeked of coal dust and sweat. When the ship was under way, as many as a dozen men would be crammed into this room shoveling coal into the chutes that led to the boiler room. There, other men stripped to the waist against the heat would feed the coal into the insatiable furnaces that produced enough power to propel the great white ship at speeds of up to sixteen knots.

With the ship at anchor in the harbor, however, the bunker would be empty. Or at least it should have been.

When Oliver stepped through the hatch, he saw the broad back of a sailor bent over a broken pipe in the far corner of the bunker.

“Hey there, Nathan,” the sailor said, when he looked over his shoulder and saw who it was. “Did they send you to help me out?”

“They sure did, Chester,” Oliver replied to his fellow machinist's mate, Chester Ott. “How does it look?”

“The pipe is pretty mangled. I think we'll need to replace the whole section. Pass me the wrench, would you?”

“Sure thing.”

Oliver set the box down on top of a pile of bags stuffed with coal and picked up the heavy pipe wrench that was leaning against the wall. It was easily as long as his arm.

He walked over to stand behind Ott.

Chester had turned his attention back to the broken pipe, and he did not see Oliver raise the wrench over his head with two hands as though he were holding a baseball bat.

“What's in the box?” Chester asked.

“A surprise.”

The wrench contacted the back of Ott's skull with a dull, wet thud. The sailor sprawled forward, his face slamming into the bulkhead. He fell over on his side, probably dead. If not, he would be soon enough.

Oliver pulled the device out of the box. Carefully. He was used to working with explosives, but this was like no bomb he had ever seen. A dozen sticks of dynamite were wrapped around a conical sphere of metal. The shape was supposed to concentrate and magnify the blast wave. It was the latest thing. Built to pierce armor. He pressed the open end of the cone against the forward bulkhead and wedged the device firmly in place with heavy bags of coal, being careful to leave room for the fuse to breathe. The fuse had been precut and measured to exactly ten minutes. On the other side of the bulkhead was the locked magazine where the battleship's six-inch shells were stored. He lit the fuse with a match and hurried out of the bunker and up the ladder to the main deck. Without hesitating, he vaulted over the rail and fell feetfirst into the harbor, keeping his legs straight and his arms at his sides to minimize the splash.

The water was blood warm. Within moments, he was swimming as hard as he could to put as much distance between himself and the ship as possible. He was a strong swimmer and fast. Even so, the blast was powerful enough to set his ears ringing. Looking over his shoulder, he could see the ship leap out of the water and come down with her back broken. Almost immediately, she began to settle to the bottom.

Oliver felt only slightly more regret for the death of the ship and its crew than he had for tossing a perfectly good cigar into the harbor. It was just a job. He did not know why it had to be done, only that it was part of a larger design that was not his concern. That sort of planning was for the Governing Council. He was just an operative. He continued swimming. A launch would be waiting for him at the harbor mouth to pick him up. Mr. Smith had made the arrangements.

A few short weeks later, the United States declared war on the Kingdom of Spain as the emperor of the yellow press, William Randolph Hearst, incessantly urged the American public to “Remember the
Maine
.”

THE PENTAGON

APRIL 2

I
t was a shame,
Garret Spears thought to himself. He had had such high hopes for Sam Trainor. He was smart and tough and unafraid to challenge established positions and butcher sacred cows. His public put-down of that blowhard Newton was proof enough of that. Sam would have been a solid contributor to the team. Spears needed a deputy, someone to help manage the workload of the operation. There was Weeder, of course, and there was no denying that the Commander had a certain valuable skill set, but he was hardly a great thinker. No, Spears needed an intellectual equal, someone who would push him in private and who could represent him effectively to others in the group. Sam had the right capabilities, just not, it seemed, the right mind-set.

They called themselves the Stoics. They had not chosen that name, they had inherited it. The group was old . . . very old . . . with roots that stretched back to the time when the American elite had felt themselves to be the direct successors to the Greeks of Periclean Athens. The Stoics believed in the power of remorseless logic. Sentiment was the enemy of reason. Only clear, crystalline logic could ensure the security of a great nation like the United States. Even the Shining City upon a Hill had an engine room that was by nature of its responsibilities dank and fetid. Someone, Spears reasoned, had to keep the lights on.

They did not meet often. They were all busy senior officials with complex lives and tight schedules. Finding time to meet was never easy. Moreover, every meeting was a calculated risk. What they were doing was important. But it must remain secret. The candy asses in Emily Lord's White House would not understand the importance of their work or the role the group had played throughout the history of the Republic. The general public, of course, needed to be kept in the dark about the actions of those entrusted with their security. They wanted to be kept in the dark if you really thought about it. Let them stay fat and happy and ignorant, secure in the protection provided for them by men like him.

Still, they did need to meet face-to-face periodically, particularly as their current operation was perhaps the most audacious and far-reaching in the group's long and storied history. It would have been much easier if they could communicate by phone or e-mail, but the members of the group knew better than most how insecure electronic communication was, and the immortal footprints that e-mail inevitably left behind.

The Stoics did keep records. They were bureaucrats, after all. There was a book, a black leather-bound ledger in which the decisions of the Governing Council were recorded and the outcome of the group's operations assessed. The Librarian was responsible for the book. His name on the Council was more than an honorary title. He was an actual librarian. For more than two hundred years, the Librarian of Congress had been the keeper of the records.

New members of the Council were invited to the library for an afternoon reading the records and learning from the Librarian about the group's history. It was important for newcomers to understand, to see how the Stoics had defended the Republic in its darkest hours and sought creative ways to advance the nation's noble mission. Garret Spears had been read into the program five years ago. He had been in awe of what their predecessors had done.

Some operations had been wildly successful. The destruction of the USS
Maine
at its mooring in the port of Havana had justified the war with Spain and secured America its first overseas colonies. There had also been mistakes and failures, of course, even tragic failures. And at times the group had fallen short of its own ideals. The assassination of Lincoln, for one, had been a consequence of divisions on the Governing Council of the Stoics that had mirrored those plaguing the United States. Passion had trumped logic. After the fact, the Stoics had clawed back some of the ground they had lost, turning Lincoln into a national martyr and symbol of unity. Even so, it had not been the Council's finest hour.

Now the Governing Council was executing an operation that would stand among the most important the Stoics had ever undertaken. It would reshape the world and secure the future of the United States and the American people for decades to come.

During his time in the navy, Spears had done a number of tours in the Pentagon, including as a staff aide to a vice admiral. But he was now in a part of the building that he had never seen before. In truth, he had not been aware that the
floor
existed, a subbasement level excavated in secret in a fit of 1960s Cold War paranoia. Water dripped from exposed pipes overhead, making small puddles on the bare concrete floor. Exposed wiring on the wall seemed to make for an uncertain pairing with the leaky pipes. It was a good thing, Spears decided, that there was nothing organic on this level, nothing that would burn.

The conference room was dated. It was outfitted with the kind of electronics and communication equipment that would have been used to fight World War III in the Johnson administration. The hard metal folding chairs around the table were spotted with rust. Still, it was secure and the Stoics most certainly valued security above comfort.

Spears was five minutes early, but he was still the last to arrive. The Chairman looked at him with unconcealed irritation. He was famous, at least in Washington policy circles, for a militant insistence on starting meetings on time.
Bite me,
Spears thought.
It was easy enough for you to be on time for this meeting; you work in this building.

Spears locked the door behind him and took his seat at the table.

There were eight of them. There were always eight on the Governing Council. Each had a role and a mission. When they moved on from the positions that made them useful to the organization, they were replaced. They were six men and two women. All were white. This was not deliberate, but neither did it disturb anyone at the table. The Stoics considered both racism and affirmative action to be the height of illogic. One of the men wore an army uniform with the three stars of a lieutenant general on his shoulders. The rest were in business attire appropriate for Washington's formal-but-not-flashy ethos. Spears was the only member of the Council not drawing a government paycheck. Two of the members were rich beyond counting from family money, but their positions on the Council were due to their government jobs rather than to their wealth. Spears was the only denizen of the private sector, and his appointment was a sign that even the Stoics were not immune from the push for outsourcing government responsibilities.

Another eight people sat in a row of chairs lined up along the back wall. Each Council member was entitled to one assistant, who could—in extremis—take the principal's place at the table until a permanent replacement could be found. There was a little more color in the back row, an African American woman who was an up-and-comer in the Treasury Department and two Hispanics. The Chairman's assistant was the colorless but capable James Smith. By long tradition, the individual in that position always used the name Smith, although the records were somewhat fuzzy as to the origins of that custom. Spears's backbencher was Commander John Weeder.

“Now that we're all here,” the Chairman began, with only a quick glance in Spears's direction to indicate that he meant it as a rebuke. “Let's get started. Reports, can I ask you to begin with an update on South Asia?”

Real names were never spoken aloud in meetings. This was more than just another layer of OPSEC, it connected the current members of the Council to their predecessors. It tied them to those who had come before.

“Reports,” a career professional with three decades of experience at the CIA, was the twenty-fourth person and the third woman to carry that name on the Council. She was responsible for intelligence and had perhaps the most analytical mind among the eight.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Reports said. Her face was long and thin, and reminded Spears of a greyhound. “The rise of the Islamists in Pakistan is accelerating. Talwar is effectively captured by the clerics, and the traditional role of the military as a bulwark against Islamist influence is eroding. The army has sponsored Islamist groups for decades and used them as proxies against India. What's changed is that the military establishment can no longer control the extremists in the way they used to. Tensions between Pakistan and India are as high as they have been since the midseventies, but Rangarajan is doing everything he can to defuse them. He doesn't want the war that Pakistan is offering.”

“We need the war as the trigger for Cold Harbor,” Plans commented. He may have been a brilliant academic, but Spears thought that the man responsible for strategic planning on the Governing Council had an annoying habit of stating the obvious.

“Yes,” Reports replied calmly. “That is why we have developed the intel-sharing program. It is also the reasoning behind our current delicate undertaking.” She put a slight emphasis on the word
reasoning
. For the Stoics, reason was both their touchstone and their shibboleth. Plans's intervention had been laced with frustration and anxiety, emotions that had no place in the Council's deliberations. It was an artful put-down.

For Spears, the rest of the brief on developments in the region tracked pretty closely with what he had already read in the assessments that Sam's South Asia Unit had prepared for Argus. Reports's analysis may, in fact, have been drawn directly from those same products. The world of intelligence could be unwittingly circular, and there was always something of an echo-chamber effect in analytical judgments. Irrespective of the sourcing, it was clear that Pakistan was a basket case, a failed state in all but name that was slipping inexorably under the control of the Islamists.

When Reports had finished with the brief, the Chairman looked at Spears. “Operations, can you update us on the progress your team is making?” Spears was Operations, or “Ops,” responsible for translating the Council's decisions into action. It was a position he shared with some of the most exalted, if controversial, figures in American history. Allan Pinkerton had held the job during the Civil War. Colonel House had served as Operations during the Wilson administration. Harry Hopkins held the title during the Second World War, even as he had been living in one of the upstairs bedrooms at the White House. Spears was conscious that the history books would never group him together with these lions of the American experience. He was anonymous. A gray eminence. But, the operation he was spearheading would—he knew—be greater than anything that they had accomplished in his position. It was elegant. Visionary. And it was a shame that the world must never know.

“The wheels are turning, Mr. Chairman,” Spears said. “Everything is in train.” Spears smiled at this private joke. There was a level of granular operational detail that the Council did not need to know.

“But this is a complex op,” he continued, “and it will take time to come together. We have identified a number of possible time slots for the final stage, with the earliest opportunity approximately a month out. The initial meeting between our Indian and Pakistani assets was successful. The Indians have set it up as a false flag. Masood and the HeM think that they're dealing with Middle Easterners who have purchased access to the . . . material. There will be no direct transfer. The Hand of the Prophet will have to make the next move on its own timeline. This obviously limits our ability to dictate the pace of events, but it significantly reduces our risk profile. The information we have made available to HeM, however, is time-sensitive. They will have to move quickly if they are going to move at all.”

“They had better move pretty damn quickly,” Plans said vehemently. “We've all seen the Cassandra projections.”

Spears nodded. It had been almost a year since the oddly mismatched pair of academics from Agilent Industries had presented their preliminary findings to the Council. It was only a matter of time, they had predicated with high confidence, until a nuclear bomb exploded in an American city as an act of terror. The massively powerful computer system and clever algorithms that Agilent had funded had been equally clear about the origin of the weapon itself. The bomb that would destroy an American city and kill hundreds of thousands of American citizens would come from Pakistan. Agilent was, in reality, a front company registered in the Bahamas and controlled by the Council. So, for that matter, was Argus Systems. The Council made use of the tools it had and made the tools it needed.

“There is precious little time,” the Chairman agreed. “But we are moving as quickly as is possible under the circumstances. We all approved of the plan and the schedule that Operations outlined for us. Now is not the time to second-guess. It is the time to look for loose ends, anything we may have missed that could jeopardize the success of the operation. Does anyone at the table have a useful contribution to make in this regard?”

“I believe that I might,” the Vice Chair remarked.