‘YOU HART?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ She extends her hand. ‘Phone, please.’
Byford digs into her pocket. She knows my concerns. They were in my note about the non-existent blood test. Hetta places her cell in a briefcase with a wire mesh lining – a mini Faraday cage, impervious to signals, in or out. Ours are there already.
The waterfront complex where Byford lives used to be a tobacco warehouse. We’re parked up just inside its heavy wrought-iron gates. I sit in back. Christy is in front, next to Hetta, still brushing the rainwater from the sleeves of her trench coat.
I’ve met Christy three times. She was retired and eking out a living as a lecturer at the Naval Academy in Annapolis when, in the face of one or two raised eyebrows, Thompson asked if she’d be his National Security Adviser. She hesitated before saying yes. She is divorced, has no kids, and there are rumors about her sexuality. She’s smart, dresses smart and sports a fuck-you power hairdo that was probably last seen on Farrah Fawcett. And she and Thompson have known each other since he first arrived in Washington, when they worked together on the Hill.
She hands Hetta the USB.
It takes the spatial frequency pattern-monitoring software less than thirty seconds to compare the photos Hetta had taken on her phone with the ‘official’ imagery compiled by Graham’s forensic unit.
We all lean forward.
On screen are three images that have been picked out by the algorithm.
All three have come from the main body of the cabin. When Hetta noticed that some of the images were missing, she couldn’t, of course, say which – the unique way in which she processes things merely alerted her to the fact that something about the cabin was different.
Now we can see exactly what and where.
The first image to have been flagged appears to be a cutaway of a planet: an outer shell with inner shells that merge in what looks like an orange core. It had been in the top left corner of the wall, opposite the door, and has been replaced by a picture of a soccer stadium.
The second is a black-and-white photo of a man who looks like a young Napoleon – twenty-something, a little swarthy, a lock of lank, black hair across his brow.
The third is an overhead of a building – a drone or spy satellite shot. The resolution is as good as the picture that allowed us to identify the cabin. Unlike the cabin, however, this place appears to be bunker-like and is set in a sort of compound.
There’s an odd look to it – and something familiar: it’s the kind of facility that hits the wires when the Pentagon needs to persuade us that a rogue state has been developing WMDs.
‘These were all removed overnight?’ Byford asks. Like the other members of the National Security Council, she would have been sent the Secret Service’s initial report on the cabin in the small hours, and then updates during the day.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And you’re sure it’s just these three images?’
‘The algorithm doesn’t lie,’ Hetta says.
‘Who removed them?’
‘We don’t know. The Army muscled into the cabin as part of the forensic investigation. Gapes is their man and Director Cabot was under pressure to give Army CID access. In the end, it was agreed we both would have access. I’m hoping you may be able to help us here …’
Byford looks surprised. ‘Me?’
‘I was at the cabin when our relief team arrived. It got there when it was still dark; the Army CID team touched down six hours later. The cabin was a crime scene. Forensics all over it. Nobody entered unless they were suited and booted. Everybody changed and showered in a tent by the lake.
‘As soon as I came off duty, I went down there to clean up. A couple of the Army CID guys had beaten me to it. One male, one female. The guy was in line to take a shower after me. I tried talking with him, but he didn’t say much. There was something about him – about them both …’ She pauses. ‘I have this thing – I hate soap that’s been used by anybody else, so I—’
‘Hetta,’ I say.
‘Yes?’
‘The National Security Adviser has a dinner appointment.’
‘Of course. Sure.’
Hart reaches into her pocket for a small, transparent evidence bag. ‘One of the three hairs he left in my soap. I ran another through our DNA database. Nothing showed. Unlikely, I guess, that he’d have a criminal record. I don’t have access to classified Department of Defense databases.’
Byford holds the bag as if the contents might bite her.
‘We also need to know what the military holds on the guy they tried to palm off as Gapes,’ I say. ‘Who is – or was – Master Sergeant Matthew L. Voss? I guess he must be dead, or we’d have turned something up by now.’
Christy pockets the bag and promises to come back with answers. She turns back to the screen. ‘Whoever these people are, could they know we know these images have been removed?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Hetta says.
‘What about that misogynist son of a bitch?’
Hetta hesitates, unsure if she heard her right. ‘Director Cabot?’
‘Who else?’
Hetta shakes her head. ‘Impossible.’
‘Good. Then nobody else should, outside the three of us.’
Byford dons reading glasses and peers at the screen. ‘So, what have we got? This shell-like thing? Your guess is as good as mine …’
She scrolls to the photo of Napoleon. ‘Same with this guy. And the building? Again, no idea.’
I ask her about the Engineer.
‘According to intercepts this past year, he’s a bomb-maker. Something of a celebrity inside the intel community.’
I ask her why.
‘Because every time we hear his name, we get a bunch of eschatology alongside it.’
‘A bunch of what?’ Hetta says.
‘Allah’s-going-to-come-down-and-blow-up-the-whole-world prophecy stuff.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The intel that we have boils down to the guy being a bomb-maker who moonlights as an itinerant, miracle-working mystic who, in the fullness of time, will come out of the desert to smite down the unbelievers.’
‘Is there any hard data on him?’
‘Precious little. But we didn’t know much about al-Sadr, al-Zarqawi or al-Baghdadi before they popped up on our screens either.’
‘We’re going to need everything our intelligence community has on him,’ I tell Christy.
‘Why? The intel says he’s a joke.’
‘A joke?’
‘Propaganda. To get us looking the wrong way.’
‘Gapes labeled his panel “Proof”,’ Hetta says. ‘In the layer underneath, they found the word pitnatsat, the Russian for fifteen. Does that mean anything?’
Byford shakes her head.
‘What about the bunker?’ I ask.
‘Locating this bunker is going to take some processing, but let’s start by trying to get a match with overheads of suspected WMD sites within the usual borders.’
The Engineer. Gapes. Intelligence and Security Command. Joint Special Operations Command. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Something clicks.
As a para-jumper, I was attached to Special Ops in Iraq. Our taskings came from JaySOC, with units like Reuben’s: not black, exactly, but dark gray. The SEALs were a deeper shade. Then there were the CIA units. But one Army outfit – called ‘the Activity’ – was off the scale. It was rumored to answer to INSCOM.
‘The shell-like thing is a component for a nuclear weapon.’
‘How do you know?’ Hetta says.
The rain on the roof seems to drum a little harder.
The answer is, I’m not sure. I just do.
‘What else do you know?’ Christy looks at us both.
We give her the short version.
‘I’m going to need to get you both cleared,’ Byford says when we’re done. ‘And then we’re going to brief the President.’