The Rule of Nine (31 page)

M
y contact is Senator Joshua Root,” says Joselyn. “I am telling you this only because I am certain that he has nothing to do with what happened to Herman. I am telling you in confidence and I expect you to keep the secret. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

We are in our room at the Hotel George. I'm still changing my clothes.

“I can't believe what you're saying,” she says. “I've worked with him for years. There has to be some mistake.”

“Did you tell him where we were staying, here in D.C.?”

She nods. “Yes, but why would he do anything like that? What possible involvement could a man like Joshua Root have with someone like Thorn? What would he possibly have to gain? It's not like him. Josh Root is a dove. I know him. He is a gentle man. He hates violence. True, he's had some bouts with serious depression in the last year or so. But he has been treated for that. We all have times when we're not ourselves. God knows what I'll be like when I'm his age. But there's no way he'd be involved with someone like Thorn.”

“What else did you tell him?” I ask.

“I told him about Thorn and the plane, what happened down in Puerto Rico. I told him everything we knew, and I asked for his help, and he agreed.”

I pull on my socks and put on my shoes as we talk.

“When's the last time you talked to him?”

“I tried to call him this morning, just a few minutes ago. I tried his office. They said he wasn't there. I called his house. There was no answer, and his cell phone didn't answer either. I'll try again in a few minutes.”

“Root was the source of your information on the nuclear device in San Diego?” I ask.

She nods. “And his information has always been accurate. He has been nothing but truthful every time I've dealt with him. And he takes a considerable personal risk in sharing such information because it's classified. He could go to prison and he knows it. But he's willing to take that risk because he knows that the dangers the country and the world face by remaining silent are much greater.”

“How did he know about the nuke?”

“He chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There isn't much he doesn't know. There was a Senate investigation after the attack at Coronado. Root's committee held two weeks of hearings behind closed doors. He told me some of the committee members wanted to go public with the information about the bomb. But the administration convinced them that until they knew more about who planned the attack, and how they carried it out, it would be unwise to disclose the fact that there was a nuclear attempt. All it would do would be to cause needless public panic,” says Joselyn. “At least that was the argument.”

“Yeah, and would probably raise a lot of questions about how the administration screwed up,” I tell her. “Wait a second. Wasn't that the committee Snyder's kid…?”

“Yes. I thought about that when I read the news reports on the
murder,” says Joselyn. “Jimmie Snyder worked for Root's committee, but it didn't have anything to do with his death.”

“How do you know?”

“He was on staff, but he was new. He'd only been there a short time. I'm sure he didn't have any security clearance, so he wouldn't have had access to any significant information. He was a gofer. Besides, he wasn't working there at the time he met Thorn, when those security photographs were taken.”

“How do you know that?” I say.

“His father told me. He and I talked after you left the office that day. The day I got sick.”

“So where were the photos taken?” I ask.

“I asked him that,” says Joselyn. “He told me he'd rather not say. He said Jimmie had made a mistake and paid with his life.”

“Violated security protocols, as I recall.”

“Yes, by showing Thorn something he wasn't supposed to see,” says Joselyn. “Snyder made it clear that unless discussing the details would lead him to Thorn, he didn't want to talk about it.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Sheltering his son's reputation, I suppose. Even in death.”

“Where are the pictures Snyder gave us?”

“They are in my briefcase,” says Joselyn. “Why?”

“Why don't you get them?”

“Sure.” She walks over to the other side of the room, looks in her briefcase, and pulls out a manila folder. She opens it and takes out the photos.

We spread them out on the bed. Joselyn lays down on her stomach. I sit. We look at all three photographs for the umpteenth time, two of them showing Thorn and Jimmie Snyder together, the third one, the enlargement of Thorn by himself.

The images are almost ghostlike because of the stark white walls behind them. They look like film frames from one of those movies in which some mortal character plays God in some whitewashed ethereal corporate office that represents heaven. There is
nothing on the walls except the one sign partially obscured behind Thorn's shoulder.

“What's this? It's been bugging me since the first day we saw the photographs, just before lunch at the Brigantine.” I point to the sign over Thorn's shoulder, the words “basketball and weightlifting” clearly visible.

“It looks like a gymnasium,” says Joselyn.

“It has to be here in this city someplace. Are you sure you don't recognize it? You're the Washington insider,” I say.

She shakes her head. “No. I've never seen it before. It doesn't ring any bells.” She tries to read the line below it, the last few words of which are visible over Thorn's shoulder but lost in the glare of light. “It looks as if there's some kind of a plastic sheet or cover over the sign,” she says. “The rest of the sign is blocked by part of Thorn's head and body. Give me a minute.” Joselyn rolls over, sits up, and again walks to where her briefcase is. When she returns, she has a small plastic case about an inch and a half square and half an inch thick in her hand. She pulls on it and a small magnifying glass slides out. She reaches across the bed and picks up the photograph with the sign in the background. She holds the magnifying lens close to the photo and examines the image as if it were a fine piece of jewelry. “Oh, my God! What day is it?”

“Monday. Why?”

“The first Monday in October, right?”

“Yeah.”

“The sign. It's the highest court in the land,” says Joselyn.

“What?”

“We don't have time to talk,” she says. “Come on.” She grabs me by the arm and pulls me toward the door.

H
e sat in the small, dark room watching a tiny television set, the breaking news of the unfolding events over the subway in New York.

“Information is sketchy at this time but it appears that something has happened at a construction site out near the Battery on the tip of Manhattan. There are reports of a shooting between transit police and an unidentified suspect involving some kind of large vehicle, a heavy truck of some kind, and that the area around this construction zone has been cordoned off by police.

“Jim, as you can see, I am near the site. But police have now moved us back three blocks from where this is happening, so our camera really can't see anything. And now I'm getting word that our helicopter, which was en route, will not be able to get a visual of the location because authorities have cleared the airspace above the site, for what reason we're not sure.

“In addition, subway service into and out of the area has been shut down, and police and emergency services workers are moving as quickly as possible to get people out of the subway. According to
the subway system, they have closed all stations from midtown down to the Battery.”

“Mike, can you tell us, are you able to see any portion of the construction site from where you are right now?”

“Jim, actually I'm not.”

“Mike, we're being told that according to the authorities it's the site of the new Fulton Street transit station.”

“That would be about right, but as I say, they've pushed us back so far that we really can't see anything. Excuse me…just a moment.”

The Old Weatherman watched as the reporter on the screen pressed his finger to his ear and listened as one of his producers told him what was happening.

“We now have a report that the vehicle in question is a large cement truck and that the driver of that vehicle exchanged gunfire with police at the site. According to the information, the driver and a third party were shot, and police sources are now confirming that the driver is dead. As to the identity and condition of the other shooting victim, at this time we have no information.

“And there is more. According to one source, a bomb squad has been dispatched to the scene. For what reason we don't know. But coupled with the fact that the authorities are now evacuating the subway, it doesn't look good. Over to you, Jim.”

“Thanks, Mike. We'll be back to you momentarily. As soon as there's any more information.”

The Old Weatherman reached over and turned off the set. The only thing he needed to know was the fact that the driver was dead. The FBI and local law enforcement would waste the next several hours tinkering with the truck before they extracted the detonator.

They probably wouldn't find out at least for a day or so, until after it was carefully examined, that the detonator itself was defective. The bomb was in fact inert. Its sole purpose was to draw the
attention of the FBI away from what was happening in Washington.

The last thing the Old Weatherman wanted to do was kill thousands of people in a perfectly senseless act of mayhem. He was not a terrorist, no matter what others might think. He had suffered through years of regret for the one senseless act of violence in his youth, the bombing of the bank that had accidentally cost a human life. It had twisted his psyche in ways that he still did not fully comprehend. It was the reason he'd sent Root to warn his old friend Nicholas Merle that it was time to retire, to give up his seat on the Supreme Court. He wanted him out of the way before the man lost his life. But Merle wouldn't listen. The Old Weatherman tried to shake off the thought.

Where was he? He couldn't remember where his mind had left off. It was the detonator. That was it. The bomb's ignition source. The detonator was the key because the FBI would trace it from the manufacturer in Germany to a purchaser in the Middle East. At that point the government would start looking at all the usual suspects. And in all the wrong places.

They would see the whole thing, the distraction in New York, and the real attack in D.C., as inspired by Middle Eastern terrorists, but this time they were using professional mercenaries to carry out the attacks. It all fit. Frustrated by the increasing security and unable to get their own people into position in the United States, the Islamic radicals now would be seen as hiring Western mercenaries who would have less difficulty gaining access and traveling in America.

It was the cover that the Old Weatherman needed, not for himself, but for the president, who knew nothing, but who would now have a free hand to fill all nine positions on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Decapitate the executive branch and the effect would be short term, if at all—but only until the next election. This was true of Congress as well. The present corrupt system of money and poli
tics, of a Washington aristocracy utterly out of touch with the people they ruled—the fiction of a representative republic that no longer existed was far too resilient to bring down in this way, and the Old Weatherman knew it.

But there was one institution of the federal government for which this was not true—the Supreme Court. Because of the lifetime tenure conferred on members of the high court, and the fact that these nine justices held the final word on most if not all of the social and economic controversies confronting the country, it was the one controlling pressure point that could alter the long-term direction of America.

Franklin Roosevelt had realized this during the dark days of the Depression when he contemplated packing the court with additional members all of his own choosing. But politics conspired against him and he dropped the idea.

The court had been badly divided now for years. Most of the controversial decisions depended for their legitimacy on razor-thin five-to-four votes with too many of the decisions going the wrong way. In the eyes of the Old Weatherman, the national economy was dictated by five members of the Federal Reserve Board, none of whom were elected by anyone, with political and social policy determined not by the rule of nine, but by a tyranny of one, a single deciding swing vote on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court was divided along partisan lines in the same way the nation was. Aging liberal members of the court had been required to survive and to defer their retirement until a like-minded president was in the White House in order to preserve their numbers on the court. Conservative members would now be required to do the same, waiting for the next conservative president to retake the White House.

But most of the conservative members of the court were young and would be in place for decades. And while liberals now had their chance to retire, this would not change the balance of power on the court. The only exception to this waiting game was death,
and for the Old Weatherman this happened all too infrequently to alter the formula of justice. He was tired of waiting.

He realized that the opportunity for real change was at hand. A well-timed precision attack on the court, taking out all nine members in a single stroke, would transform the course of history in ways that even the most wide-eyed radical of the sixties could never have dreamed of.

The incumbent president would be able to fill all nine seats on the court at a single stroke, and conservatives in the Senate would be powerless to stop him. The time to strike was now.

The Old Weatherman started coughing, covered his mouth, then looked at his hand and saw blood. It was getting worse. When he'd declined the radiation and the chemotherapy, the doctors had warned him that he wouldn't have long. And for that he was grateful.

As he glanced at the dark screen on the television, the mirrored image was haggard and old. He had been weaning himself from his other medications now for almost three months. It was a cocktail of psychotropic drugs that gave Root the upper hand over the Old Weatherman. Without them the Old Weatherman was the master. Unshaven, and unkempt, wearing a tank top T-shirt, with hair sprouting from under his arms, he saw the image of a traitor and a coward. He saw in that moment of clarity the face of Senator Joshua Root.