Call to Treason

FIFTY-SIX

The effects of chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile gas are instantaneous. It inflames the soft tissue of the throat, causing it to burn and swell. Within seconds, victims begin to experience dizziness and acute nausea. And it causes the eyes to water and sting. Even if an individual could keep his eyes open, the finely dispersed particles hung in the air like a thick, slow-moving fog.

Rodgers and his marines were wearing goggles to protect their eyes. They did not bother bringing breathing apparatus from the Apache. They had determined that the winds up here would clear the room quickly once the windows were shattered. They would hold their breath and remove the occupants, carry them some distance from the cabin.

Approaching the structure had been easy. With the deputy’s help, the men moved along the sides that had no windows. Lieutenant Murdock used a MiFOP, a miniature fiber optic periscope, to look into the room. A suction device the size of a large housefly contained a small camera. Once that was attached to the window, the user could back away to a secure location. The fiber-optic lens relayed an image to a receiver that was the size of a computer mouse. Each of the marines was able to study the room and the position of the occupants before moving.

While Rodgers and five of the men crept toward the front door, the other two men positioned themselves to hurl the gas. In less than a minute, Kenneth Link and his companion were outside. Two marines secured the kidnapper with double-lock handcuffs while Lieutenant Murdock called for the Apache to come to the ridge. Rodgers used a secure point-to-point radio to inform Jack Breen of the rescue. He told him not to notify anyone else until they were airborne. He did not want reporters converging on this site until after they had left. When Rodgers was finished, he borrowed a canteen from one of the marines. He indicated for two of the men to stand off to the side as he led the admiral toward a nearby tree stump. Link sat, and the general handed him the canteen. Wheezing, the admiral took a short swallow and then poured water into a cupped hand. He rinsed each eye in turn.

Rodgers was glad that he was not holding a weapon. He had a feeling he was not going to like what Link had to say.

“Thanks for the save, Mike,” Link said.

“Not a problem.”

Link blinked hard to clear his vision. “How the hell did you locate me?”

“The kidnapper had a partner,” Rodgers informed him. “He told us where you were.”

“I figured this guy could not have been acting alone,” Link said. “Where did you find him?”

“In Senator Orr’s suite,” Rodgers said.

Link took a longer swallow of water. “Is the senator okay?”

“He’s fine,” Rodgers said.

“Good.”

Rodgers crouched beside the stump. “He did not have you tied up in there,” the general said.

“No,” Link said. “He said he had a gun, that he would shoot me if I tried to get away.”

“Admiral, why don’t we mothball the bullshit and talk about what happened?” Rodgers suggested.

“Sure.”

“No, I mean what really happened,” Rodgers said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Stone told us everything,” Rodgers said.

“Oh? What did he tell you?”

“How all of this was a plot to stop Senator Orr’s candidacy, an operation to kill the USF.”

Link looked at Rodgers. “Did he?”

Rodgers nodded.

Link glanced around. The two marines were standing twenty or so yards behind him. The tall, yellow grasses hissed lightly, and wind filled the field with a low yawn that would mask their conversation. The admiral looked down.

If a man is lucky, there is at least one moment in his life that Rodgers called the cornerstone. It is when a man has to make a decision based on principle not on personal security. It was a single building block that shaped the rest of his life. It was a moment he would look back on with pride or with regret. Rodgers had seen cornerstones in combat, when the decision was typically more one of instinct than a deliberative process. Some men froze under fire, others put the risks behind them and charged. The ones who choked never got over it. The ones who acted felt like gods for however many decades — or seconds — remained of their lives.

Admiral Kenneth Link was facing a cornerstone. Rodgers could see it in his bloodshot eyes. He was trying to decide whether to finish the lie he had just begun, which he might or might not be able to make stick. Or whether to embrace the truth and acknowledge the war he had apparently been fighting.

“Did Stone tell you that Senator Don Orr and Kat Lockley planned the murder of William Wilson?” Link asked.

“He did.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I’m not sure,” Rodgers admitted. “Why would the senator and Kat have done that? And why would he have confided in you?”

“We were his staff, his close advisers,” Link said. “And he felt that his plan left him bulletproof. As for why he would do it, hate, for one thing. Politics for another. Orr felt that a tawdry death, a heart attack in the middle of sex, would destroy not just the man but the head of steam people had built for his fiscal plans. He believed that having it happen right after the Georgetown party would call attention to the USF. It would give him a platform to enunciate the differences between himself and the other Euro-friendly presidential candidates.”

“But Op-Center screwed that up.”

Link nodded. “Orr did not anticipate that Darrell McCaskey would discover the puncture wound. The son of a bitch wanted attention, not a murder charge.”

“If you knew this, why didn’t you go to the police?” Rodgers asked.

“We did,” Link said. “Detective Howell was reluctant to move against Orr without conclusive evidence.”

“He could have seen the wound.”

“That would not have implicated Orr,” Link said. “Just Lucy, who was doomed anyway because she gave Wilson and Lawless the injections. Besides, Howell was being blackmailed—”

“The gay date rape charge.”

“Yeah.”

“You could have gone to the FBI, or given the information to Scotland Yard,” Rodgers said.

“Lucy still would have taken the hit,” Link said. “And if she pointed fingers, Kat would have been implicated. Willingly, I might add. She is devoted to the senator. Orr might have been splashed with blood by association, but maybe not enough to derail him. Which voters would have mourned an arrogant, successful, anti-American British entrepreneur? No, Mike. We needed to stop Orr permanently.”

“And how would you have done that? By killing him?”

“If necessary,” Link admitted. “You don’t understand, Mike. I’ve been watching this guy since I was in naval intelligence. I used to sit in on hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The man I saw in these meetings was not the benign Texan ordinary Joe he presented to the voters. He reminded me of Joseph McCarthy. Xenophobic, suspicious, aggressive. He said that whenever he went home, he took walks in the desert and had visions of what he thought America should be. ‘Fortress America,’ he called it. Our national borders not just secure but closed, our resources maximized, our enemies cut off from financial aid, crushed, or left to beat each other to death. What he was selling to the American public was a cleaner version of that. But I knew he intended to accomplish that by any means necessary.”

“So he was McCarthy and Stalin,” Rodgers said. “Neat trick.”

“You don’t believe me? Ask anyone who was at those meetings,” Link went on. “Ultimately, I was the only one in a position to do something about it. I watched him with the help of Kendra and Eric. When the mood of the country turned isolationist and Orr saw a real opportunity to win the presidency, he took it. That was when we made our move as well.”

“You got close to him in order to stop him.”

“That’s right,” Link said. “I had two options. I could have taken him out before he hit Wilson, but that would have made him a martyr to like-minded isolationists. So we chose to let him hook himself, then just reel him in. At the Company we ran operations like this worldwide.”

“I understand all that,” Rodgers said. “What I don’t understand is why you tried to run this on your own.”

“How many people do you let in on a top secret operation?”

“That depends,” Rodgers said. He was growing angry. “If my option was to trust someone like Paul Hood or blow up his goddamn organization, I’d trust Paul Hood with my secret.”

“But you were also working with Orr and Kat!” Link said. “You went out with her. We didn’t know how you felt about them. If we told Hood, he might have told you, and you might have told the senator. You and I weren’t exactly getting along, Mike. I was pushing to find out where you stood.”

“Talking would have worked better.”

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe,” Rodgers snapped. “Your decision killed one of my people!”

“I’m always sorry about collateral damage!” Link shot back. “But politics is war, and in wartime, people die. Innocent people. I read your file, General. You have seen that firsthand. We’re soldiers, and our primary job is to defend our nation. Sometimes decisions have to be made quickly. They have to be made by people under stress, by people who are trying to keep one eye on the endgame and one eye on the best way to get there. That is what I did.”

“You rolled a tank over your own soldiers,” Rodgers said.

“That happens, too, doesn’t it?” Link said.

“In retreat, when the battle plan is in disarray,” Rodgers said.

“Whatever disarray we experienced was Op-Center’s doing!” Link said, raising his own voice. “We needed a few more days to carry this operation out, to make sure that Orr was stopped. I made a command decision about Op-Center. We used the EM bomb instead of conventional explosives because we didn’t want casualties. Your man was not supposed to be in the room when it went off.”

“Another indication that you made the wrong decision,” Rodgers said.

“We stopped Orr, didn’t we?”

“Sure.” Rodgers motioned the marines over. “Can you stand, Admiral?”

Link rose. “Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you to the San Diego PD,” Rodgers said. “This is for them to sort out with the D.C. Metro Police.”

“Right. I would like to know one thing, though. You do understand what we did, don’t you?”

The marines arrived, and the admiral suddenly seemed like a different man. It was not uncertainty in his voice, or regret. Perhaps it was a hint of fear as the reality of his situation settled in.

“Why does it matter what I think?” the general asked.

“Things didn’t exactly work out the way I planned,” Link replied. “I’ve got one hell of a drop in front of me. A lonely drop.” He grinned uneasily. “You’re a scholar. Who was it who said that solitude is great if you’re a wild beast or a god?”

“Francis Bacon said that,” Rodgers told him. The general moved in closer. “Admiral, I understand what you did. I just don’t agree. A nation is defined by its laws, not by vigilantes and rogue operations. You hurt people to enforce your own vision of the greater good.”

“What about saving the nation from a tyrant? You don’t think that was a worthwhile goal?”

“It has been one of the greatest goals of some of the greatest men in history,” Rodgers said. He was trying to give the admiral something. “I just don’t agree that the shortest path is always the best one. The singular thing about this nation is that we make mistakes but invariably correct them. Maybe Orr would have become a political force. He might even have become president. But the national mood would have shifted. We are a rough and impatient people, but we ultimately do the right thing.”

Link’s grin turned knowing. “So you would have ratted us out to Orr, wouldn’t you? Talking instead of pushing — is that what you would have preferred?”

Rodgers did not answer. He did not know.

“I am content, then,” Link said. “I did the right thing.”

The Apache had landed in the clearing, and Rodgers told the marines to escort the admiral toward it. The general followed them. He thought about Link’s question as he walked.

He had a feeling he would be thinking about it for quite some time.