The Leviathan Effect (6 page)

There was something in his tone that sounded rehearsed and unfamiliar. Not really him. It was eerie. He sounded a little too officious, as if he were playing a Cabinet member in a stage play rather than actually being one. That’s what she was thinking as the procession of cars passed through the gates of the government’s intelligence headquarters in McLean, Virginia.

T
HE ASSASSIN FOLLOWED
Jon Mallory at a distance to the Grosvenor Metro station parking garage—the same route they had taken the day before. He parked his black Range Rover one level above where Mallory parked, and watched from the fourth level as he crossed the street to the subway station.

He had visualized how this would go—the look of surprise turning to panic after Mallory saw him—although he’d expected to have another day of surveillance before taking action.

The assassin had learned the other man’s patterns: Mallory did not take his car downtown; he always parked here and rode the Metro; probably he was going to the
Weekly American
offices again; most likely he would be back within two hours.

He had already intercepted the encryption code from Mallory’s car fob, creating a master key that enabled him to hack open his door lock with the press of a button. When Mallory returned, the assassin would be in the back seat, waiting for him.

Certain images from the last assignment played like loops of film in his mind now as he waited: the woman stretching in the shade, wearing a pink, long-sleeved zip-up jacket, navy leggings, New Balance trainers. Walking down the gravel path with a slight bounce; crossing the aqueduct to the towpath, where she checked her watch just before starting to jog; her short blonde hair flapping, incandescent for a moment in a sudden shaft of sunlight.

He had waited patiently for her. Choosing the moment judiciously. Startling her as she opened her car door. Tapping her arm, and then showing her the back of his wrist; asking his innocuous question: “Do you have the time?”

There had been an instant of hesitation, her face damp and mottled from running. And then a long moment of fear, as Dr. Keri Westlake’s eyes went again to his hand and saw the cloth glove. Followed by the heat of anger. He had pulled the soaked rag from his jacket pocket and shoved it into her face, forcing her to breathe the sweet-smelling isoflurane while he pushed her head down into the seat. He moved in on top of her, his knee stabbing her belly and groin. He had seen the sudden swell of anger in her cornflower blue eyes; the hard downward tug of her mouth, as if she were trying to lift something that was too heavy. Felt her bony fingers clutching desperately at him. He had watched as her pupils dilated and her breathing became slower and ragged. And, finally, her eyes shut. Pre-empt completed.

He had wanted her to stay alive a little longer. But he had kept her in the farmhouse for more than twenty-four hours anyway, returning to her twice before putting her in the ground. That had been his secret; a fringe benefit, unknown to his commander. It was the first time he had made love to a dead woman. Just thinking about it now sent a charge through him.
Yes, I’d like to try that again
, he thought.

But he reminded himself that he needed to stay in the moment, focused on the current assignment. To protect the mission.

Slumped in the back seat, he watched a woman walk past through the tinted windshield of Mallory’s car, dressed in a charcoal-gray business suit, carrying a briefcase. Then two men, in three-piece suits.

It wouldn’t be much longer. He could just imagine it.

J
ON
M
ALLORY TURNED
right out of the Foggy Bottom Metro station and walked along I Street toward the offices of the
Weekly American
magazine. It was a crisp afternoon in Washington, the sky a hard blue, the leaves shedding.

He scanned the pedestrian traffic, alert for anyone who might be watching, and the street, for a dark SUV perhaps. He’d walked this same course the day before, seeing it all with different eyes; indifferent eyes. There had been a reversal since then: the story he’d been chasing was suddenly chasing him.

Jon rode the elevator to Roger Church’s corner office on the second floor. He sat in the familiar burgundy guest chair across the desk from his longtime editor.

“I need to leave this with you,” he said, handing Church an envelope. “I’m hoping my brother will come for it shortly. But I also want you to know about this.”

Church opened the envelope. He unfolded the paper inside and looked at the list of seven names. Church was a tall, thoughtful man with a mop of silver hair and a highly attuned sense of curiosity. Before taking over the
Weekly American
, he’d earned an international reputation as a reporter, writing for the
Times
of London and for
The Economist
.

“Okay,” he said, looking up at Jon. “Who are they?”

“Men and women who knew too much, evidently.”

“About the same thing?”

Jon shrugged.

“What links them, then?”

“That’s the story,” he said. “I don’t have it yet. What I know is that all seven are gone. Four dead. Three missing. Going back about nine years.”

Church looked again at the list. Jon told him the rest, leaving out the parts that he wanted to tell only his brother, the parts that he
carried on a flash drive in his pants pocket. Mallory was a veteran journalist, good at asking questions and telling stories. Occasionally, he became part of his own stories; he wasn’t so good at that.

“And where did this come from?” Church said.

At the bottom of the list were three initials. DKW. Dr. Keri Westlake.

“That’s the woman who gave it to me,” he said. “She’s a physicist, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Maryland. A proponent of weather modification and geo-engineering research.”

Jon had had an appointment to meet Keri Westlake again on Friday, September 30. But when he arrived at her office in College Park, her door had been closed and locked. No explanation left behind.

“Until this morning, I thought it was just information,” Jon said. “Which may or may not have added up to anything. But this morning I learned that her home was broken into and her computers were accessed. Files and emails copied and erased. Some of which would probably tie her to me.”

“Learned how?”

“Police sources.”

“And her whereabouts?”

“She’s a missing person.”

“Hmm.” Church tugged at his sleeve, processing what Jon was telling him. “So you feel you’re a part of this chain now?”

“I do. I don’t think I should stay at my apartment. So I’m going to disappear for a few days. Try to figure things out.”

“Can I find you a place to stay?”

“No. I don’t want to get you involved.”

Church watched him. “Have you told police about the list?”

Jon nodded, knowing that it was probably too complicated, too dispersed in space and time, for police to get their hands around it, at least for a while. What he really wanted was to talk with his brother Charles, a former CIA case officer and private intelligence contractor. Dr. Westlake had even suggested that he contact Charlie. But Jon had left a series of messages for him over several days and received no reply. It was possible, he knew, that the messages hadn’t been received. His brother had disappeared, too, in his own way, on his own terms, years earlier.

“Have you told anyone else?”

“No.”

“Not Melanie Cross?”

Jon shook his head, felt his face flush, and smiled. “No.”

“Good.”

Jon’s on-again, off-again relationship with Melanie Cross was off again, following a brief, ill-fated recent attempt to live together. Melanie was also a reporter, a smart, disturbingly attractive woman with an unhealthy competitive streak.

“I’m seriously thinking about getting a dog,” Jon added.

Church allowed a rare smile. He looked at the names again. “So where will you go?”

“I’m going to play it by ear until I hear from my brother. I’ll contact you by email. Try to send a first installment of the story in a few days.”

“Based on …?”

“Police sources. Research. Some notes Dr. Westlake gave me that I haven’t figured out yet.”

Church studied him. “Want to talk about it before you go?”

Jon looked out at the street and felt anxious, thinking about Keri Westlake’s warning.
There’s a story here, and it must be told soon
. The sun was going down among the buildings of Foggy Bottom. The outside seemed unwelcoming all of a sudden; the inside a cage, safe.

But Jon knew he needed to get on the road.
Simplify
. His brother’s mantra.

“Not yet,” he said.

Church frowned. Jon knew that if he stayed and talked, his editor would try to convince him to come up with a different plan. Instead, Jon stood.

“Be careful,” Church said.

“I will.”

Outside, Jon blended in with the flow of pedestrian traffic. Students, faculty, state department employees. He thought ahead to his next steps. He’d retrieve his car from the Grosvenor station, drive onto the Beltway, head south into the night, hook up with I-95, turn in late at a highway motel.

At G Street, a car stopped incongruously in the crosswalk, blocking his way.

“Jon Mallory!”

A woman’s voice, behind him. He turned.

The rear door opened.

A man on the sidewalk flashed a handgun and pushed against him.

Minutes later, Jon was sitting in the back seat of the car, watching the city through tinted windows.

T
HROUGH A BULLET- AND
blast-proof conference room window on the fifth floor of the X-shaped building that houses the National Counterterrorism Center, Thomas Rorbach watched the motorcade as it flanked off the Capital Beltway, high beams on, police lights flashing. Two Cadillac Sevilles and four armored Chevy Suburbans snaked onto the Dulles Access Road and through the hydraulic steel gates at 1500 Liberty Crossing. Then Rorbach, who had worked here for the past six and a half months, turned and walked down the antiseptic white hallway to the elevators.

Set behind tall, sloping berms and chain fences fronted by signs reading US G
OVERNMENT
C
ONTROLLED
P
ROPERTY
N
O
T
RESPASSING
, the Liberty Crossing site did not carry the cultural cachet of Langley, longtime headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the Liberty Crossing complex was now the nerve center for American intelligence, housing the National Counterterrorism Center and the ODNI, or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which Harold DeVries oversaw.

Liberty Crossing embodied the government’s efforts to centralize and streamline its sprawling intelligence services after the 9/11 attacks. Here, dozens of analysts from the CIA, FBI, NSA, and various other agencies worked together sharing information and tracking potential threats twenty-four hours a day.

Rorbach, a stocky, pock-faced man in his late forties with wispy blond hair and unusual dark eyes, was deputy defense director for military intelligence, a recently created hybrid position. A former Special Forces soldier, Rorbach had served in two previous
administrations—on the staff of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for international security and as National Security Council liaison for counter-insurgency. He had spent years, too, as a military contractor in the private sector. Twenty-seven hours earlier, he had been asked to become operations director of what was now informally called the “Janus Task Force.”

H
AROLD
D
E
V
RIES WALKED
a pace ahead of Catherine Blaine down the second-floor corridor, their shoes echoing on the shiny tiles. DeVries was a lean, agile man who looked younger than his fifty-two years. He stopped before an electro-magnetic-locked SCIF, where he punched in a code on the keypad and then pushed open the door.

This SCIF was larger and more high-tech than the one at Andrews. Mounted on the encased metal walls were four fifty-six-inch plasma screens. Smaller desk monitors were at each of the twelve settings around the oblong cherry-wood table. The blue briefing booklets in front of the nine people in the room were identical except for the name stamped on the bottom right corner of each.

Blaine took her designated seat in the middle, nodding to several of the familiar faces. The gathering was a who’s who of top-level intelligence officials, including the director of the CIA, the head of the National Security Agency, the White House cyber czar and several deputy intelligence directors. Sitting opposite her, at the center of the table, was Vice President Bill Stanton.

Moments after she sat, Stanton flashed his toothpaste smile and glanced at the notepad beside his desk monitor. “Ladies. Gentlemen. Welcome,” he said. “We’re here for an emergency meeting of the Janus Task Force. And before we get started,” he added, nodding across the table, “we’d like to welcome Secretary Blaine into the room for this evening’s meeting.”

Blaine smiled politely at the Vice President. He was a big, cordial man with thinning white hair, an easy smile and an informality that she liked. No one ever called him William Stanton. Mr. Vice President seemed too formal. He was Bill, a folksy Washington veteran, prone to using colorful, idiomatic language and occasional malapropisms, which sometimes caused people to underestimate him.

“As you now know, folks, we’ve had another breach attributed to our friend Janus,” he said, and held up his blue briefing book. “We’ve
also received some new intelligence over the past eight hours suggesting that an unspecified attack within our borders may be in the advanced planning stages. An attack related to, uh, these breaches. Harry will give us more specific details on that.”

Blaine opened her briefing book and scanned the details. There was an element of theater to having this meeting here, she knew. To show that Liberty Crossing was now where the nation’s seventeen intelligence agencies came together and solved problems.