May 3
1322 Avenue of the Americas
Midtown Manhattan
CIA Station NYC
New York City
5:07 P.M. EDT
Billy Carson was still a bit breathless from his exertions, having completed the three blocks of his crosstown sprint in what would have been an impressive time for a much younger marathon runner. He was perspiring only lightly. Had not the emergency generator in the building’s sub-basement powered the freight elevator, it might have been a different story: The staircase was steep, and the CIA conference room to which he had been urgently summoned was on the fourteenth floor.
But one responds with all due haste, when a President beckons.
“Is NSA sure of this?” the latter personage demanded. “The Russians are responsible for the computer virus?”
“Mr. President,” Carson said, “call it ‘60 percent sure.’ Ms. Hansen has our initial analysis; it isn’t conclusive, but we feel there’s a far better case to be made against them than the Iranians. It’s a matter of capabilities. We know the Russians have the expertise for something on this scale, and Iran has demonstrated nothing at this level of sophistication.”
“There’s Iranian—Farsi, I mean—in the trigger code,” the President countered.
“Hell, Joe—I can speak French, but that doesn’t make me a Frenchman.”
The voice belonged to Larry; the tone of a man whose relationship with the other was so long, so deep, so convoluted that neither defined the other as either ally or antagonist. Any distinction was long since moot, if only because that over the years the relationship had encompassed both extremes many times. The CIA veteran and the new President had arrived in D.C. as rookies within months of the other, both far younger and innocent, neither still so.
Larry sat along the wall in a chair behind April Hansen, who simultaneously winced at the first-name usage and offered thanks to whatever clandestine deities existed that Larry knew the Commander-in-Chief for decades enough to get away with it.
Nonetheless, her eyes widened in horror at Larry’s next words.
“Look, I know you want to kick the ass of somebody for this thing,” Larry said. “You think I can’t hear it in your voice? But you’re the damn President now, and that goddamn means you no longer have the luxury of popping off every time you open your mouth. Listen to the man, Joe; hell, it’s what you pay people like us for.”
“Fuck you too, Larry. You’re fired.”
Larry grinned back. “You can’t fire me. I’m Civil Service.”
“Sweet Mother of God. Okay, Carson—lay it out for me.”
“Sixty percent sure,” Carson repeated.
“I can’t bomb Russia on three-in-five odds,” the President said, then in an afterthought, “if we were to retaliate against anybody at this point, I mean.”
“No, sir,” Carson said.
“So? What am I supposed to do with your so-called ‘analysis,’ Carson? Wait and see? Are these cyber attacks continuing?”
“There’s been no further intrusion attempts since the initial Condition Zombie,” Carson said. “We’re dealing with the effects of the virus, but the triggering seems to have been both limited and a sort of ‘hit and run’ incident, sir.”
“I’m not hearing an answer to my question from any of you.”
The President noticed Larry, leaning forward and talking low into April Hansen’s ear. He saw her frown, pondering what the veteran was saying.
“Want to share anything, you two?” he said, loud and demanding.
“Sir, Larry has an idea that might—”
Larry took that as assent—or at minimum, permission. He spoke up, his voice at a level roughly equivalent in volume and tone to that of the President’s question.
“You’re walking in a crowded hallway and somebody gives you a hard shove in the back,” Larry said. “You don’t know a hundred percent who did it, but you turn around and see a guy who’s been pushing you around for a while—and he has a big fat grin on his face. Let’s say that makes you feel 60 percent sure. What do you do?”
“I knock him on his butt. Are you seriously suggesting that with Russia I—”
“No, that’s not what you do. Not unless you want things to go full-escalation, maybe turn into a major fistfight where everybody gets real bloody. But you might give him a shove right back. Something that lets him know you’re nobody’s patsy. Lets him think you know who did it, even if you really aren’t sure.”
“A bluff, you’re saying.”
“You’re a lousy poker player, Joe; I’ve played it with you, so I know. But you’ve never shied away from a 60 percent chance the other guy might fold his hand. Maybe it’s not time to raise the pot … but a ‘call’ might not be a bad idea here.”
The President of the United States turned to Billy Carson.
“Can we do that? Can we smack the Russians in the face in their own language? Just a light tap?”
“If you’re asking if we can trigger the virus we have in their systems—limited basis, sir—as a … a demonstration of what we could do…”
Carson paused. “Yes, Mr. President. We can.”
“How fast?”
“Select a target, sir. We’d be able to hit it five minutes later.”
“Then make whatever preparations you need to, Carson. It’s what, about 1 a.m. over there in Moscow? I’m shaking Putin out of bed, getting him on the Hot Line. Soon as you tell me your people are ready to go.”
“To say what, Mr. President?” Hansen asked. A vision of mushroom clouds flitted across her mind, and was gone just as quickly.
“I’m going to tell him I want this virus crap stopped immediately. And to show him just how serious I am, I also want every goddamn light in Moscow out, five minutes and thirty seconds after I hang up the goddamn phone.”
“Lights out for how long, Mr. President?”
“Until I say otherwise. If this little bluff goes south on us, people, the lights may end up going off everywhere. For a long, long time.”