White House Page 2

  McGarvey signed the document without reading it and handed it back. A brief look of annoyance crossed the general counsel’s face.

  “What’s going on in the Sea of Japan that has you worried enough to offer me Ryan’s old job? If it’s Japan, you have a lot of good people in this building who know more about them than I do.”

  “Your name was put up two months ago,” Danielle said. “But the decision was to give you five or six months to catch your breath after Moscow.” Danielle shrugged apologetically.

  “There was an underground nuclear explosion in North Korea twelve hours ago,” Murphy said. “It was at one of their abandoned nuclear power stations on a deserted section of their east coast. A place called Kimch’aek.”

  “Was it a test, like India’s and Pakistan’s?”

  “That’s how it’s going to play when the story breaks later today. The White House is going to stonewall it, at least for the time being, because frankly nobody knows what the hell to do. At the very least calling it an underground test is going to put a lot of pressure on Kim Jong-Il.”

  “The Japanese are already screaming for help,” Doyle said. His mood was brittle. “They want us to move the Seventh Fleet into the Sea of Japan as a show of force.”

  McGarvey watched the interplay between them. “If it wasn’t a test, what was it?”

  “The North Koreans were using the place to stockpile what we believe were five working bombs. Three days ago they started moving something out of there in a big hurry, and then this happened.” The general looked tired. “There were North Korean soldiers there, and civilian technicians, when the blast occurred. Maybe as many as two hundred of them.”

  “An accident?”

  The general shook his head. “The skipper of one of our Seawolf submarines on patrol in the area spotted a Japanese MSDF submarine about five miles off the coast, possibily communicating with someone in the power station. Could be they sent a team ashore to verify what the North Koreans were storing there.”

  “Either that or it was a kamikaze team,” Doyle said.

  “If it had been a test, Pyongyang would have made a statement by now,” Danielle put in glumly. “It’s not something Kim Jong-Il would sit on.”

  “The Seawolf radioed back that the Japanese submarine was damaged in the blast and sent up an emergency beacon. The Japanese are sending rescue units.”

  “Which the North Koreans will try to block,” McGarvey said. He thought that he’d lost his capacity for surprise. But he wasn’t so sure now.

  “It gets worse,” Murphy said. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. “Within two hours of the explosion, a pair of Chinese Han class nuclear submarines were spotted leaving the inlet at Qingdao and heading into the Yellow Sea.”

  “Not much of a threat. They’re rust buckets.”

  “It’s more of a political statement, I should think,” Danielle said.

  “Are we going to send the Seventh Fleet out there?”

  “The President is considering it,” Murphy said after a brief hesitation. “But for the moment the bulk of the fleet is still at Yokosuka. If we send them into the Sea of Japan, Kim Jong-Il will take it as a direct threat.”

  “So what?” McGarvey asked. “He won’t attack us or Japan, he’s not that stupid. And sending the Seventh would be a clear message: Back off. Even the Chinese would stand down just like they did a few years ago when Taiwan held its elections. Nobody is going to start a shooting war over there. And North Korea has lost its nuclear weapons.”

  “The explosion had an estimated yield of twenty kilotons,” Doyle said. “One bomb. We think they had five, four of which they’d managed to move out of there.”

  “I don’t buy it, General,” McGarvey said. “They’re not going to start a war they couldn’t win.”

  “Unless they’re nudged,” Doyle said. He took a couple of photographs from a folder and handed them to McGarvey. “Do you recognize either of these men?”

  Both pictures were of the same two old men seated across from each other in what appeared to be a Japanese teahouse garden. They were dressed in expensive-looking business suits. In one photograph a geisha girl was serving them something, and in the second picture she was gone.

  McGarvey looked up. “Should I know them?”

  “The man on the left is Hiroshi Kabayashi, who controls the Bank of Kobe. The other man is Shin Hironaka, the former director general of defense. They were part of the group that, along with Sokichi Kamiya, nearly brought down the government two years ago, and damned near got us in an all-out shooting war with Japan.”

  “I thought they were in jail.”

  “These pictures were taken ten days ago in Nagasaki,” Doyle said. “About thirty miles south of the Japanese navy base at Sasebo where we think the disabled submarine came from.”

  McGarvey studied the photographs, a flood of memories coming back to him. The old men looked happy, even confident. Conspirators again, or just two old friends having tea?

  “They call themselves superpatriots,” Doyle said. “Unfortunately that’s about all we’ve found out about them so far.”

  “Who’s running operations these days?”

  “Dick Adkins,” Murphy said. “He’s a good man, but he doesn’t have your operational experience. Something he himself admits. Dick recommended that you be offered the job, and I agreed with him. We all did.”

  McGarvey handed the photographs back to Doyle.

  “Well?” Murphy asked.

  “Convince the President to get Seventh Fleet out of Tokyo Bay, then have Tokyo station find these guys, kidnap them if need be, and find out what’s going on. But don’t screw around. It looks as if you don’t have much time.”

  “I meant the job offer.”

  “I’ll think about it,” McGarvey said.

  “Goddammit,” Doyle said.

  “I said I’ll think about it, Tommy.”

  Murphy nodded after a moment. “Very well. But as you say, we don’t have much time, so don’t take too long.”

  “I won’t,” McGarvey said.

  Doyle got to his feet. “I’ll take you downstairs.”

  Murphy stopped McGarvey at the door. “The DO is in shambles, Kirk. It’s gotten beyond Dick’s control. We need someone like you to put it back together.” The general ran a hand across his eyes. “It was Ryan.”

  There were a dozen things McGarvey could have said, but he held his reply in check. Howard Ryan had hurt a lot of good people because of Murphy’s blind devotion to expediency. The former DDO had been a wizard on the Hill. The CIA had been run into the ground under his leadership, but relations with Congress had risen to an all-time high.

  The Farm: Williamsburg, Virginia

  Elizabeth McGarvey crossed the creek fifty yards behind the operational exercise area and, keeping a narrow strip of woods between her and the edge of the confidence course, raced to the rear of a complex of concrete bunkers. She held up against the bole of a large tree to catch her breath and tuck her medium blond hair in her fatigue cap. The noon sun was behind her so that anyone looking her way would be partially blinded.

  She was a pretty woman of twenty-three with intelligent green eyes, an oval face with high, round cheekbones and a slender figure hidden by a black jumpsuit. She exuded self-confidence. Her mother, who came from old West Virginia money, and her father, who had been a field officer with the Central Intelligence Agency before she was born, were divorced. Because of the separation, her parents had overcompensated with love and permissiveness so that she was spoiled. She was used to making decisions for herself.

  By now the instructors would be wondering where she had gotten herself to. The object of this exercise was for her to approach the bunkers, take out the two guards, get inside, kill the commandant, steal his briefcase and get back out to the ops center in the safe zone.

  But it was a trap. They knew which direction she was supposed to be coming from. She’d found that out last night by breaking into the operation
officer’s computer.

  Stepping out from behind the tree, she ran the last twenty-five yards down a gently sloping grassy field to the featureless back wall of the west building.

  In the distance she could hear the rattle of small arms fire on the range and the crump of an explosion, then another. She loved this, every minute of it. Her mother warned that if she wanted to attract a man she would have to exchange her war paint for makeup. But unless she found a man like her father, she didn’t care.

  At the end of the bunker she took a quick look around the corner. Two guards were hunched down behind a sandbag barrier. Impossible to take both of them out before an alarm was sounded.

  Change the rules. She’d read her father’s record; he’d never played by any rules except his own. It was one of the reasons he’d survived in the field for so long.

  She laid her head against the rough wall for a few moments, going over everything she’d learned from the CIA field officer trainers for the past three months since Moscow. A wicked smile finally curled her lips. When all else failed, try the unexpected. She could almost hear her father saying something like that.

  Checking her paintball pistol to make sure that it was ready to fire, she stuffed it in the web belt at the small of her back, then unzippered the top of her jumpsuit and pulled it down around her waist, making sure that she could still reach her gun.

  She pulled off her sports bra, stuffed it in a pocket, took a deep breath, then let out a shriek and leaped around the corner.

  The two guards, caught completely by surprise, turned toward her, their mouths dropping open as she leaped around like a crazy woman, frantically slapping her arms and shoulders and back.

  “Ants!” she screamed desperately. “Ants! Help me, I’m on fire!”

  Both men leaped over the sandbag barrier and came running, their paintball rifles slung over their shoulders. They were not much older than she was, both of them ex-Green Berets.

  When they got within five feet, Elizabeth pulled out her pistol and shot both of them in the chest, bright orange paint covering their fatigue shirts, stopping them in their tracks.

  “Shit,” said the guard whose name tag read Jones, falling back.

  “Sorry, gentlemen, but you’re dead,” she told them sweetly, as she holstered her pistol. “Now, if you’ll be so good as to lie down, with your heads turned, I’ll get dressed.”

  Jones laughed. “I may be dead, ma’am, but I’ll be damned if I’ll turn around.”

  The other instructor, named Gomez, was laughing too. He shook his head. “They warned us that you might try something cute.”

  Elizabeth put her bra on and pulled up her jumpsuit top and rezippered it. “Macho pigs,” she said brightly, pulling out her pistol again.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jones happily agreed.

  The flag of Iraq flapped gently in the light breeze above the entryway as Elizabeth ducked inside. She waited a full minute for her eyes to adjust to the relative darkness before sprinting down the narrow corridor. She flattened herself against the wall next to the commandant’s door, then rolled left, kicked it open and burst into the small office, sweeping her gun left to right.

  The briefcase sat in plain sight on top of the unoccupied desk and even before Don Billings, the instructor playing the role of the commandant, stepped out from behind the door and wrapped his arms around her, she realized her mistake.

  For an instant she tried to struggle free, but then willed her body to go limp in his arms. “Dammit,” she said softly.

  “Nice try, McGarvey, but I was watching from up front,” Billings drawled. He was from Memphis, and the first time she sat in on one of his classes she’d pegged him as a smarmy, oily bastard. His hands were on her breasts. “Nice,” he said in her ear.

  She slowly turned in his arms and raised her face to his, her lips parted in a seductive smile. “I’m glad you approve,” she told him, her voice husky.

  He started to kiss her, when she grabbed his testicles and squeezed hard. His face turned white and he reared back on his tiptoes.

  “Nice balls,” she said, then she let go, stepped back and shot him in the chest at point-blank range. “You’re dead.”

  Billings was enraged. “Fuck,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Keep your hands to yourself, Mr. Billings,” she said. “Next time I won’t be so gentle.”

  “This exercise is over.”

  “Tell it to your wife.”

  “Goddammit, your approach wasn’t in the scenario.”

  Elizabeth laughed, the look on his face was rich. “Neither was yours.”

  She grabbed the briefcase, slipped out of the office, waved merrily at the two guards, then made her way back across the creek. It was Friday, the late-summer weather beautiful, and as she walked she sang a little French song her father had taught her on one of his infrequent visits when she was a young girl, the day and nearly everything about her life just now absolutely perfect.

  Kirk McGarvey parted the venetian blinds in the ops officer’s office as Liz marched up the hill, her shoulders back, the briefcase in her left hand, the paintball pistol in her right as if she were willing and able to take on the world. His heart swelled with pride. The failure rate for the exercise she’d just successfully completed was almost one hundred percent.

  “She’s on her way up,” he said, turning back to the ops officer.

  Paul Isaacson, a big, red-faced Swede originally from Minnesota, laughed. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “I want you to flunk her out, Paul. I want her out of here as soon as possible.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Isaacson said seriously.

  “No, I’m not.” There was a flutter in McGarvey’s gut just thinking about her back in the field.

  “I can understand your reason. My own daughter, Chrissy, is about her age. But hell, Kirk, she’d find a way around me, just like she did this morning.” He shook his head. “She’s not the kind to take a simple no for an answer. Anyway, I’m not going to do your dirty work for you. If you want her out, you can fire her when you take over the DO.”

  McGarvey looked sharply at him. “Where the hell did you hear that?”

  “The word’s out,” Isaacson said. He and McGarvey went way back together. Though Isaacson had never wanted to be chief of station, he’d handled just about every foreign desk at Langley. In one way or another he’d been involved in almost every assignment McGarvey had ever been given. For the past five years he’d been in charge of training the new kids to survive the first couple of crucial years in the field. He’d not lost any of them because those who’d graduated under his tutelage were ready. And he still had an inside track at Langley for the simple reason that he’d trained half of the current staff in Operations, and the other half wished he had. He heard things.

  “Well, I told the general no.”

  “Right,” Isaacson said. He wasn’t convinced. “Are you taking Liz for the weekend?”

  “Unless her class is going to be busy.”

  “Hell week doesn’t start until the twenty-fifth, so we’re taking it easy on them right now.” He popped a videocassette out of the recorder behind his desk and gave it to McGarvey. “Her only real mistake was not checking for hidden cameras.”

  McGarvey chuckled. “She’s not going to be happy.”

  “What about Don Billings? He was way out of line, but if he’d really been an Iraqi commandant it would have been worse.”

  “They’re even. And I expect he’ll think twice the next time he wants to grope a woman.”

  Isaacson gave McGarvey a long appraising look. “Working behind a desk would be different than being out in the field. You’d have to get used to the idea of sending green kids out there, who in your estimation wouldn’t know how to wipe their own noses. Might be some tough calls.” He glanced toward the window. “But it’d be a shame to throw away your experience, even if the Company has treated you like shit. I know a lot of guys over there w
ho’d like to see you take the job. They’d feel more comfortable than they did under Ryan.”

  “I’ll get her back to you Sunday night.”

  “Do that,” Isaacson said. “But give her a chance, Kirk. You had yours, don’t take this one away from her.”

  “Maybe she’d be one of the green kids I’d have to send out.”

  “Maybe,” Isaacson said. “That’s the whole point of this place.”

  McGarvey nodded, then headed out to where his daughter was perched on top of a picnic table with several of her classmates, all of them young men who eagerly hung on everything she was saying. He was even more unsettled than he had been in Murphy’s office this morning.

  It took Liz less than twenty minutes to shower, change clothes and pack a few things, then meet her father outside the barracks where he was smoking a cigarette. It was a few minutes before one, and the Farm was already winding down for the weekend. She looked bright and innocent in a crisp white cotton blouse, short khaki skirt and sandals, her hair pulled back and still damp.

  “Are we having dinner with Jacqueline tonight?” she asked, tossing her bag in the backseat. She had a bittersweet look on her face.

  “We’re meeting her for drinks at Jake’s at four, so we’re going to have to hustle,” McGarvey said. “Do you know something that I don’t?”

  “Just girl talk,” she said mysteriously. “But I’ll let her tell you.” She gave her father a look that said it would be totally useless for him to try to pry anything else out of her.

  The Farm was in Camp Perry off Interstate 64 outside of Williamsburg, about 150 miles south of Washington. Traffic was moderately heavy but moved well.

  When they were away McGarvey gave his daughter the videocassette. “Paul gave this to me. Presumably it’s the only copy.”

  “What is it?”

  “You might want to take a look and then get rid of it. But don’t let your mother see it.”

  Sudden understanding dawned on her face and she looked from the tape to her father. “Hidden cameras?”