Rules of Betrayal

11

It was past midnight when Frank Connor returned to his town house on Prospect Street in Georgetown. Mounting the stairs, he paused at the front door long enough to punch in the alarm code and watch the pinlight turn from red to green. Despite the alarm and the two-man security team parked somewhere up the street to keep watch on him, he had few illusions about his safety. He’d been in the business long enough to forget more enemies than he could remember. If someone wanted him dead, he would die without seeing his assailant.

Safety was one thing. Security another.

Instead of unlocking the door and stepping inside, he put his fingers to the brick just below the alarm and slid it to the right, revealing a second numeric touch pad. This was his own alarm, a motion detection system set to register any activity inside the home and notify him privately. He was pleased to see that the light burned amber. All clear. It wasn’t his life he was worried about so much as the information inside his home.

He tapped in his six-digit code-his mother’s birthday-and then thumbed the brick back into position. With a muted click, the door opened automatically. Connor stepped inside and set down his briefcase in the vestibule. A single lamp burned in the living room, casting light on a chintz couch and an antique Quaker chair. The house was decorated in traditional bachelor style, which meant there was really no style at all. Still, he was careful to follow the dictates required of a ranking official who’d maxed out on the Special Executive Service pay scale long ago. He had an oak dining set and fine Meissen china. He had a mahogany secretary and prints of old U.S. sailing ships. There were no photos of friends or family anywhere in the house. He had none that he cared about. The only piece of furniture he gave a hoot about was his old leather recliner, dating from his days as a law student at the University of Michigan.

Connor was a man of habit. As always, he walked to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk, turning the lights on and off to mark his progress through the house. Next he went to his second-floor den, sat down in his recliner, and made himself watch one of the late-night television hosts’ monologue. Ten excruciating minutes passed before he rose and walked up the last flight of stairs to his bedroom. He drew the curtains, changed into his pajamas, then lay on his bed, leafing through an issue of Foreign Affairs, not seeing a single word.

In his mind, a single phrase played over and over. Someone is watching.

At twelve-forty he turned off the lights. Frank Connor’s official day was over.

Five minutes later, he threw off the covers, lumbered out of bed, and walked through the bathroom and into a musty back closet reserved for discarded clothing. Pushing aside a few moth-eaten blazers, he set his shoulder against the wall and pushed. The wall spun on a gimbal to reveal a comfortable study beyond, outfitted with green carpeting, a sturdy desk, and a large captain’s chair. The room had come with the house, courtesy of its original owners, abolitionists who had helped slaves escape on the Underground Railroad. (There was a secret stairwell, too, leading to a garden shed on an adjacent property. He was not the first occupant interested in escaping from prying eyes.) The air inside was cool and smelled of lemon. He pushed the wall back into place and pressed a button that secured the door with a sixteen-inch titanium rod. Safe in his private office, Connor sighed. He could finally go to work.

He sat down and logged onto Intelnet, his agency’s secure server. His first order of business was to access his mailbox. He was pleased to note that the Strategic Air Command had finished cleaning up the picture of the American munition that Lord Balfour had shown to Emma. Computer processing had sharpened the focus tenfold, and as he gazed at the weapon he could make out the rivets on its steel skin.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he whispered.

Peter Erskine was right: it was no five-hundred-pound conventional bomb. Not by a long shot. An attached simulation showed what the weapon would look like when freed from the snow. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of military technology would recognize it as a cruise missile. SAC had labeled the weapon an AGM-86.

Connor had more than a rudimentary knowledge of military technology. Before joining Division, he’d worked as a procurement officer for the Defense Department and spent much of his time with companies like General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Lockheed. He knew all about a cruise missile’s specs. He knew that it could fly close to the speed of sound with a range of over a thousand miles. He knew it could be launched from a ship or dropped from a plane, and that either way it could hit a target the size of a Volkswagen Beetle with 98 percent accuracy. He knew that it could carry a conventional warhead containing high explosives or a nuclear warhead with a yield of up to 150 kilotons, ten times the size of the bomb that fell on Hiroshima.

One hundred fifty kilotons.

Connor sat up in his chair. He felt short of breath. A sharp pain speared his chest and he stiffened. Desperately he opened his mouth to breathe, to relieve the profound discomfort, but an immense, unyielding pressure had clamped down on his chest. His throat and lungs were paralyzed.

And then it was gone. The pressure lifted. The pain vanished. Connor sucked down a draft of air, feeling his entire body come back to him. The episode had lasted fifteen seconds.

Stress, he told himself as he stood and poured himself four fingers of Mr. Justerini and Brooks. Anyone would feel the same if he’d just gotten a glimpse of Armageddon.

One hundred fifty kilotons.

He lifted his glass and toasted a world gone to hell.

He was aware that the air force had lost nuclear weapons on a few occasions, but to the best of his knowledge it had recovered them without incident. He also knew that as a safety precaution, the air force had halted all bomber flights with armed nuclear weapons in 1968. The cruise missile in question wasn’t manufactured until the 1970s. Logic therefore dictated that whatever Balfour had found, and wanted Emma to help retrieve, was not an armed nuclear weapon.

But where was logic in explaining how that kind of weapon, either conventional or nuclear, had ended up high in the mountains of Pakistan or India in the first place?

There were two things that Frank Connor had learned during thirty years of government service: people lie, and anything is possible. He took these as the fundamental truths of his profession, and it was his ruthless exploitation of both that had fueled his climb to the directorship of Division.

Which brought him back to the present.

Somewhere there was a bomb, possibly nuclear, and somehow he had to get it.

He glanced at his wristwatch. The time was 1:23. It was an appropriate time for a mission to begin.

Connor logged off Intelnet. For a while he sat in the dark, contemplating the events of the day. Unlike Erskine, he was more concerned about Emma Ransom than about the discovery of the cruise missile tucked away high in a distant mountain range. For the moment the missile was contained. It was a threat. It posed near unimaginable danger if in fact it carried a nuclear payload, armed or otherwise. But any imminent danger was a way off.

On the other hand, Emma Ransom was either dead or faced torture and imprisonment. Either prospect pained him greatly.

Emma was special. Emma had sacrificed. Emma had given of herself, as he had given of himself.

Connor rose and crossed to the far corner of the room. With difficulty, he kneeled and pulled back a section of carpet, revealing a safe with a biometric lock. He opened it and retrieved a sturdy leather-bound volume. He needed a breath to regain his feet, and several more to make it back to his desk. Seated, he cracked the volume and turned the pages slowly, staring at the photographs affixed to each page.

Against every rule of practice, Frank Connor had assembled an album of every man and woman who had worked as an operative at Division. There were only photographs. No names. No dates. Just faces. Still, it was a fundamental breach and he knew it. He had no excuses. His heart needed none. They were his family.

He stopped at a page halfway through and looked down at the young woman with twisted auburn hair and spectral green eyes. She looked so young. Not innocent. Emma had never been innocent. But young and eager, and, by God, so willing. He had never known anyone so capable and so driven.

He closed the book and raised his eyes toward the ceiling. Something stirred inside him. Not sorrow. Certainly not guilt. He had forsaken his conscience years ago. Something stronger. A call to duty. He owed her.

Connor picked up his phone and placed a call to the Middle East. A male voice answered.

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

“I’ve got an assignment for you,” said Connor. “Strictly off the record.”

“Isn’t it always?”