Fly by Wire

Chapter NINE

President Truett Townsend walked quickly through the West Wing corridor, his usual morning entourage in tight formation — three Secret Service agents, Chief of Staff Martin Spector, and two aides. Townsend was a tall man, and his long strides forced the others to nearly trot to keep up.

The presidents energy level was already high, having been raised by his morning workout. He alternated each day — an hour of weight training or forty-five minutes on the treadmill. It kept him trim, but that wasn't why he did it. Townsend had come to find that his daily session in the White House gym was the only time when he could think without interruption, no one trying to slip him a memo or whisper in his ear. He'd made far more good decisions on the squat machine than in his regular bipartisan congressional meetings.

As he approached the West Wing conference room, Townsend slowed. A phalanx of Marines and Secret Service surrounded the entrance. Discreetly embedded in the frame of the entryway was a collection of security sensors. Townsend passed through and a distinct beep sounded. Without hesitation, he went back out to the hall, raised his arms, and one of the Secret Service men scanned the president of the United States with a hand wand as if he was a commoner at the airport. The offending contraband turned out to be a stainless steel cork-puller he'd inadvertently stuffed in his jacket pocket the night before.

"Sorry, guys. My bad."

"Not at all, Mr. President. You're clear."

It was a drill that none of Townsend's predecessors, nor their staff members, would ever have tolerated. But it had been one of this president's first directives. If he went through security, everybody did. The move brought some grumbling from his staff, but it had gained Townsend immediate standing with his security detail. As he'd put it to them, "If you guys can put your lives on the line for me, the least I can do is make your job easy."

Followed by Martin Spector, Townsend entered the conference room where the participants of the Daily Intelligence Briefing, or DIB, had already assembled. The director of national intelligence, heads of the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were all present. The vice president was abroad, fostering goodwill in the Far East.

As Townsend entered, JCS Chairman General Robert Banks came to rigid attention. The rest all stood and clasped their hands in front, the parallel civilian posture. This was another of Townsend's decrees. He didn't get any personal thrill from it, but there were always military officers at these meetings, and if they were going to show respect for the office of commander-in-chief, then so could everyone else.

The president took his seat at the head of a large conference table, his shoulders framed by a sagging American flag on one side and the presidential standard on the other. Townsend broke into a smile as he looked expectantly at the crowd. His face was not classically handsome, but more often described as having "character." His nose was a bit too large, close-cut hair mocked a receding hairline, and deep vertical furrows framed his mouth. There was an air of the West about Truett Townsend, a no-nonsense pioneer quality that had served him well during his campaign. He had proven wrong the adage that only candidates from big electoral states could reach the top. Amid a faltering economy and the federal budget nightmare, the electorate was in another of its "change" moods, and no one on the ticket was as far removed from D. C.'s chronic ills as the two-term senator from the frigid, bison-roamed wilds of Wyoming.

"Good morning, everyone," said the president. Even his voice came from the frontier — no silky orator's inflection, but a rich rumble of Rocky Mountain granite.

"Good morning, Mr. President," replied the chorus.

Everyone settled in and Townsend nodded to the DNI, Darlene Graham. "Go ahead, Darlene."

Graham was a tall, big-boned woman with long dark hair and a sultry voice — Townsend had always thought she'd have looked and sounded right at home leaning on a piano in a smoky nightclub. Graham had spent twenty years working her way up the intelligence community ladder, and she was guiding things confidently after eighteen months at the helm of the country's combined intelligence post.

She began her briefing. "We had a relatively quiet night, sir. There were a few skirmishes in the tribal areas of Pakistan — the government forces are cracking down again. We suspect it will last for a week or two, then things will die off. We have good Predator coverage on the area, just in case any of the cockroaches try to scatter into Afghanistan."

The president nodded his approval.

Graham went on, "There was a market bombing in Khandahar, a few IED attacks on remote roads — the usual chaos. Oh, and two defectors came over from the North Korean army. Not a big deal, but at least it's not the Middle East."

"Thank God," the FBI director said.

There were a few questions, which Graham fielded knowledgeably, and then a projection screen came to life at one end of the room. She began to manipulate a remote control. "Mr. President, you asked me yesterday for an in-depth briefing on the man who is quickly becoming our biggest thorn." A photograph of a very familiar face filled the screen, the same picture that was plastered on bounty posters all over Iraq. "We all know his face."

"Hell," General Banks said, "the way he posts photos all over his Web sites — its like the guy's got a PR campaign."

Graham continued, "His given name is Abdul Taim. We all know him as Caliph. He grew up in Mosul. A dropout from university, he joined the resistance soon after our invasion of Iraq in 2003. He made his name initially as a sniper, with a reputation for engaging our own snipers. He had some success, I have to say."

"He'd have been no match in a fair fight," General Banks argued. "For a time our shooters were going in with an entourage, then getting left on their own in a hostile urban environment. The locals knew where our guys were and passed it along. If a sniper doesn't have concealment, he's not a sniper. He's a target."

"Point taken," the president said.

Graham continued, "Caliph acquired quite a reputation, and eventually a following. As you all know, about twenty months ago we launched a concerted effort to take him out. We actually received some timely, accurate intel on his whereabouts and a SEAL Team was sent in. Unfortunately, the size of the opposition force took us by surprise and there was a heavy firefight. Still, we thought we had him. One of the team members got an ID on Caliph, took a shot from medium range. Caliph went down, but there wasn't time to confirm the kill before our team had to pull back."

"I know that soldier personally," General Banks said. "He doesn't miss."

Graham said, "None of us here would doubt it, General. But in the weeks after this mission, incontrovertible evidence was received." A new photograph came to the screen, the terrorist lying in a hospital bed. His head was heavily bandaged, his eyes barely open. The mouth seemed to hold a smirk, and to one side was a Baghdad newspaper headlining his demise. "There were other Web postings and a number of firsthand accounts. Our analysts went over it all very carefully and determined that Caliph definitely survived."

"So we almost had him," the president lamented.

"Yes. And not only has he survived, but since that time Caliph has gone to ground."

"We try to squish a pest, and instead we create a legend," lamented Chief of Staff Spector.

"It would appear so," Graham admitted. "Unfortunately, his survival has only magnified his legend. More recent evidence suggests that Caliph has assumed a new role. No longer a trigger man, he has become a leader of sorts, an apparition who is rarely seen but controls an extensive network. We hear his name constantly when we interrogate detainees. By laying low, Caliph has become more potent than ever. He organizes the disorganized, takes loose bands of individuals and turns them into networks with common, coordinated strategies."

Spector asked, "And in your opinion, what are these strategies?"

Graham fingered the remote again. The next picture was of two buckets, both brimming with a gray, glutinous substance. "The photo you see was given to us by Dutch intelligence yesterday. Two days ago, on an anonymous tip, they raided an apartment outside Amsterdam. The tenant was a Yemeni national — at the onset of the raid, the guy blew himself up in a closet with some sort of improvised explosive. The police recovered what you see here. The exact chemistry is still being analyzed, but we think it involves aluminum and an oxidizer, maybe ammonium perchlorate."

"Which gives you what?" Spector asked.

"A high-temperature accelerant. Someone was trying to start a very hot fire."

The president said, "Do we know what this guy's plans were?"

"The Dutch are going over a computer as we speak, but so far they haven't found anything about a specific target. They did, however, find a martyr's video. It is quite clear that this fellow was one of Caliph's followers. He was only in the apartment for about two weeks, but given the level of preparation you see here," Graham gestured to the screen, "we think the strike was very near."

"Why the Netherlands?" General Banks asked.

"We don't know. But there are two other recent arrests that could be related — a Pakistani national who was detained in Indonesia, and an Iraqi picked up on immigration violations in Portugal. Both have been positively linked to Caliph's network, but neither has given any useful information. Chances are, they don't know much — they were just awaiting instructions."

"He's branching out," President Townsend said, "not restricting himself to the Middle East any more "

Graham replied, "It would appear so. Caliph is up to something. Perhaps something very big."

The president leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head. He wished aloud, "If we could only find the bastard."

The FBI director asked, "Do we know how he manages his network?"

Graham said, "Much is done by way of the Internet, Arabic Web sites with coded messages. But there are occasions when direct contact is necessary." She spun to point the remote and a video clip came to life on the screen. A large, shapeless woman lumbered through a busy corridor. Her gait was almost bovine, trundling from side to side as others walked around her. The image was grainy, probably taken by a security camera, and kept replaying in a loop that repeated every ten seconds. Judging by the background, she was in an airport or a train station.

"This is Fatima Adara. Some months ago, we identified her as Caliphs conduit — his messenger, if you will. She's not very discreet, turns up regularly all across the region. And Adara doesn't make any effort to slip into places quietly — she just uses her Iraqi passport."

"Has she ever been detained for questioning?" someone asked.

"We considered that, but thought it better to let her run in the hope that she would lead us to Caliph. We spot her occasionally. She's not very well trained."

Spector said, "Occasionally? This implies we're not monitoring her continuously."

Graham showed her first sign of discomfort. Her voice went down an octave. "We give Adara a rather long surveillance leash — as I said, hoping that she'll lead us to Caliph. We've lost track of her a few times. But she always turns up again."

General Banks gestured to the screen. "You lost track of that?"

Graham ignored the comment. "She was last seen in Jordan two weeks ago. However, one of our analysts recently made a startling connection. As you all know, we've been trying for some time to track flows of money from the sovereign wealth funds of certain oil-rich states. As petrodollars accumulate, the controllers of these funds are diversifying their holdings into a great number of businesses and investments. They are building companies, universities, even entire cities from scratch."

"Not such a bad idea, if you ask me," said Spector. "Sooner or later the oil wells are going to run dry."

"Yes," Graham agreed. "But we suspect that some of this largesse is being funneled to terrorist groups. And in the course of our watch, we found this—" Graham put one more photo on the screen.

"It's her!" the president said.

The image was high quality, and there was no mistaking Fatima Adara. She was sitting at a table at an outdoor cafe. With her was a middle-aged man — thin hair, pale skin, high Slavic cheekbones.

Someone blurted the obvious question. "Who is he?"

"His name," Graham said, "is Luca Medved. He was actually the target of the surveillance. It was taken two months ago in Marseille, France."

"She was in France?" Spector remarked.

"Yes. It's the first time we've spotted her outside the Middle East."

The president cut in. "So why were you watching this guy Medved? Is he some kind of terrorist?"

"Actually, anything but. I told you we were tracking companies created with oil wealth. Luca Medved is a Russian national. And, among other things, he is the current chairman of the board of CargoAir, the new aircraft manufacturer based in France."

"The chairman of CargoAir?" the president said, clearly taken aback. "He's got an association with Caliph?"

"That's not clear yet," Graham said. "We're trying to find out."

General Banks asked, "Wasn't it a CargoAir airplane that crashed recently?"

"Yes," Graham said, "one went down in France two days ago." She quickly headed off the next question. "Right away we considered a link between this crash and the cache of explosives found by the Dutch authorities. Our experts in that kind of thing don't see any connection — the evidence found in the Netherlands was not what anybody would use against an airliner. You'd never get it past airport security, even as cargo. And early evidence from the crash points away from any type of terrorist involvement."

President Townsend looked at his watch. He had the Indian prime minister in fifteen minutes. Central Asia was a whole new set of troubles— Tibet, Pakistan, free-trade agreements. "All right," he said, sensing Graham was at an end. "Suggestions?"

The CIA director said, "We have to put the word out all over the Middle East and Europe to find Fatima Adara."

The nods of agreement were unanimous.

Graham added, "And once we find her, we can't lose her."

Townsend took this as a measure of self-critique, one of the things he had grown to like about this DNI he'd inherited from the previous administration. "All right," the president said, "see to it."

"What about this link with CargoAir?" Spector asked. "Shouldn't we be watching it?"

President Townsend nodded thoughtfully and looked at Graham. He said, "Someone to take a look at the company? Maybe follow this crash investigation?"

Graham smiled, "I'll take care of it, Mr. President."

Townsend got up to leave. "All right everyone, carry on."

When he got to the hallway, Townsend's secretary handed him a piece of paper listing the names of the wife and children of the prime minister of India. The guy had seven kids. Townsend sighed and began to memorize.

Back in the conference room, DNI Graham edged over for a word with CIA Director Thomas Drexler. "And are we keeping an eye on this crash investigation, Thomas?"

The CIA man gave Graham a coy grin, like a magician anticipating the oohs and aahs that would come from his next trick. "I've already got a man on the job. He just doesn't know it yet."