Kodiak Sky

CHAPTER 16

“Hello, Drexel.” Bill Jensen leaned down to pat the golden retriever. It was a big, handsome male with a light blond, perfectly brushed coat. “Good boy,” he said before extending his hand to the man the dog had come with. “That’s a great-looking animal, John.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jensen.”

“Call me Bill, John. We’ve known each other too long and been through too much together.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bill chuckled wryly as he pointed at a chair. “Sit down, son.” There would be no breaking Ward’s formality tonight.

Ward was one of Red Cell Seven’s nineteen field leaders. Blond like his dog and slightly shy of six feet tall, Ward was in his late thirties. He’d been inside RC7 for sixteen years, and he was as loyal as a man could be, just like all the others inside the cell, Bill thought to himself. At this point the unit had 209 agents, the most in its history. And they were all as committed to the cause as any group of men had ever been.

“What can I do for you tonight?” Bill asked as he and Ward sat down on opposite sides of a small table.

“This is a little difficult.” As Ward eased into his chair, he nodded for the golden retriever to lie down beside him on the floor. It did so obediently, putting its huge head on its paws while it gazed up at Ward with big brown eyes. “Sorry in advance for what I’m about to ask. I don’t want to irritate you, Mr. Jensen.”

Bill winced. He felt old enough these days without a man who was almost forty addressing him as “mister,” especially on his birthday.

Unfortunately, Bill understood. He was in his sixties, but he’d always felt like he looked younger than his age — until recently. In the last nine months his hair had gone completely silver and gray, and the creases at the corners of his eyes and mouth had dug deep. That quickly he was looking older than his age instead of younger.

That had struck him squarely between the eyes this morning as he’d stared long and hard into the bathroom mirror of this cabin in western New York State that he and Shane Maddux were using. The face staring back looked old, very old. Perhaps the pressure involved in all this was finally getting to him. And being away from Cheryl for so long was making that pressure seem twice as bad. But he had to keep running Red Cell Seven. No one else could, at this critical stage in the cell’s history. They were under attack from too many directions.

“You won’t irritate me, John,” Bill said reassuringly. “What’s the problem?”

“I need to understand how we justify ourselves,” Ward replied candidly.

Bill hadn’t been expecting a philosophical question, because John Ward wasn’t one to get lost in those weeds. “Well, I—”

“No, no,” Ward interrupted. “I didn’t mean it that way, sir. I meant pragmatically,” he explained. “What gives us the authority to act as we do?”

“Okay.”

“We’ve got rumors in the ranks, sir. Some of the men are worried about facing serious criminal charges, given the way we operate. They keep reading about all these congressional inquiries going on all the time, and after a while it hits home. And then we get all these pronouncements from President Dorn about how the interrogation techniques we use will not be tolerated and that those who use them will be prosecuted.” Ward shook his head. “Dorn isn’t doing this country any favors.”

“I know it,” Bill muttered as he glanced at the mirror hanging on the wall above the fireplace. Maddux was watching from the other side of the wall. “This’ll help,” he said confidently, withdrawing a single piece of faded paper from a large envelope lying on the table in front of him. He’d anticipated the reason for Ward’s visit tonight, with Maddux’s help, of course. “Take a look.”

Ward leaned forward to get a better look at the document Bill had just slid across the table.

“Read it,” Bill ordered, motioning. Ward couldn’t possibly have finished it that quickly. “Take your time. Go on.”

When he’d read the document thoroughly, Ward nodded. “It’s the Executive Order from Richard Nixon. I’ve heard about it, and I appreciate what it says here about us being immune from prosecution. But how exactly does that—”

“Hold it up to the light,” Bill instructed. “Now focus on the lower left-hand corner,” he said after Ward picked it up.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Look through the page, like you’re looking at one of those 3-D pictures.”

Ward chuckled. “I can’t do that thing, sir. I’ve tried before.”

“You can do anything you put your mind to, John. Focus.”

Ward was silent for nearly thirty seconds as he held the paper up and stared. “My God,” he finally murmured, “I see it. It’s a seven. Tiny, but it’s clearly a seven.”

“That’s right. Roger Carlson had it attached to the document back in the nineties.”

Bill thought back to the day twenty years ago that he and Carlson had labored up Gannett Peak to retrieve that original Order from the cave. And then a week later they’d scaled the mountain again to put the document back after the imprint had been affixed to it. Roger had never let the Order out of his sight the entire time it was away from the cave — except when he slept, and then he kept it in a locked briefcase that was handcuffed to his wrist.

“Only a few individuals in the world know that document exists,” Bill continued. “Nine of them are the Supreme Court justices.” He took the paper back and replaced it in the envelope as he glanced again at the mirror. “The justices know about Red Cell Seven, they know about the document, and they know what to look for on the document. If anyone ever tried to prosecute us for anything, this document would be presented to the justices in a private session of the court, and whoever had brought the charges would be arrested immediately. And I do mean whoever, and I do mean immediately.” The obvious implication was that “whoever” included anyone in the executive branch, and Bill could actually see the confidence working its way back into Ward’s expression. “Believe me, John, as long as we have this document, we are absolutely immune from prosecution of any kind.”

Ward nodded. “Thank you for explaining all that.”

“What is it, son?” Bill asked. A nostalgic look had crept into Ward’s face.

“I was just thinking about Mr. Carlson. He was a great man. I miss him.”

“We all do. And you’re right, John, Roger was a great man.”