The Solomon Effect

2

New Orleans, Louisiana: Saturday 24 October

3:25 P.M. local time

October Guinness stood in the small side yard of her Uptown cottage, her fists resting against the stiff white cotton of her dobuk. She could hear the chatter of the finches in the limbs of the old live oaks that lined the narrow street, feel the warmth of the honeysuckle-scented breeze against her cheek. Her breathing slowed, became even.

In some ways, Tae Kwon Do was like meditation and remote viewing: each in its own way came down to this, this ability to move into stillness, to connect with the vibrating energy of the universe. She opened her eyes and stepped left into a cat stance, arms flashing down into twin lower knifehand blocks in the beginning of the Taebaek third black belt pattern. She moved effortlessly through side kicks and thrusts, backhand strikes and reverse punches. Turning, she pulled her left foot back to her right and relaxed into the final stance with a smile. She was about to begin her practice again when she heard the first bars of Anchors Away floating through the open door from the kitchen.

Her cell phone. Shit.

If the call had been from anyone else, she would have ignored it. But that particular ringtone meant one thing and one thing only. Scooping up her bottle of water from the nearby garden bench, she raced up the steps to the kitchen stoop, banged open the screen door, and dove for the phone on the counter. “Hello?”

“Tobie. Glad I caught you.” Colonel F. Scott McClintock’s normally mellow voice resonated with barely contained excitement. “I just got off the phone with Washington. They’re finally giving us a tasking.”

She took a quick gulp of water and choked. “You’re kidding, right?”

Under the patronage of Vice President T. J. Beckham, Tobie and McClintock had spent the last four months setting up a small remote viewing program at the Algiers Naval Support Facility across the river from the French Quarter. But up until now, their viewing sessions had all been training exercises. Not even the Vice President’s patronage could keep the project from being regarded by the few people in the intelligence community who knew about it as a waste of money and an embarrassment, rather than as an asset. The assignments she and the retired Army Colonel had been hoping for had never materialized. Lately, the Navy had been making noises about closing down the program and transferring Tobie to a different assignment. In Iraq.

“It’s no joke, Tobie. When can you come in?”

Yanking at the knot in her black belt, Tobie headed for the bedroom, the phone wedged between her ear and one shoulder of her dobuk. “Are you kidding? I’ll be there as soon as I get changed.”

Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C.

“I take it you’ve seen the Navy’s report?” said T. J. Beckham, buttoning the neck of his dress shirt and turning up its collar. The reception at the White House for the Prime Minister of Australia was set to start in fifteen minutes, and the Vice President was not the kind of man to be late.

Once a simple pharmacist at a corner drugstore, he’d entered local politics almost by accident and advanced by what he privately considered a series of flukes, first to the state capitol, and then on to Washington, D.C. Even as the distinguished senior senator from Kentucky, Beckham had nourished no secret aspirations for higher office. But Beckham was a patriot, the kind of man who always did his duty, whether volunteering to serve in Vietnam, or rising from a sickbed to attend an important vote on the Senate floor. When the sudden death of the elected vice president left the office vacant, and his squabbling colleagues could agree on no one but the congenial Senator from Kentucky, Beckham saw his duty clearly and accepted the appointment.

“I’ve seen it,” said the man who now stood in the middle of the Vice President’s office. Tall and lanky, with the long, prominent bones of his New England ancestors, Gordon Chandler had been the DCI-the Director of Central Intelligence-for about as long as Beckham had served as vice president. But unlike Beckham, the DCI was a ruthlessly ambitious man.

Beckham looped his tie around his neck and swung to face the mirror. “Two days,” he said, his voice gravelly with disgust. “It’s been two days since the NSA intercepted a cell phone conversation linking some unspecified but impending terrorist attack on this country with a sunken Nazi sub. Yet it isn’t until this morning that someone gets the bright idea to check on a U-boat I now learn we’ve been monitoring for years? Christ Almighty.” Beckham raised his chin, stretching his neck as he looped the tie into a bow. “And that’s not taking the Lord’s name in vain, by the way. I’m asking for His help.”

Glancing in the mirror, Beckham saw a muscle jump along the DCI’s jaw, but he kept his mouth shut.

Beckham straightened the folds of his bow tie and tried to calm down. “Now that we know the submarine is gone, we can trace it, right? Seems to me, we find that U-boat, it ought to lead us straight to these terrorists.”

“Theoretically. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy, sir. We have a top team working on it. But you have to understand that by now, the terrorists will have removed the cargo from that sub and be long gone. We’ve determined that our resources are better allocated elsewhere.”

“Such as?”

“Right now, the CIA is focusing most of its efforts on suspected links between homegrown radicals and known terrorist groups in Egypt and Pakistan, while the FBI and Homeland Security are rounding up anyone and everyone in this country who might possibly be involved.”

Beckham frowned. “How many people are we talking about here?”

“Does it matter? If we put enough pressure on them, one of these guys is bound to crack.”

Beckham studied the other man’s smooth, complacent face. Chandler was one of President Bob Randolph’s minions, and Beckham didn’t trust him any more than he’d trust a crazy coon dog back home in the hills of Kentucky. “How many have already confessed?”

“A few. We’re checking out their stories now.”

“Most men will confess to anything under torture-”

“This country doesn’t torture people, sir.”

“-and in the meantime, the men who really made that phone call are in all likelihood still out there, getting ready to implement their plans.”

“I think you underestimate Homeland Security, sir. We know who our enemies are.”

“Do we?” Beckham shrugged into his dinner jacket. “I think the key to all this is that U-boat.”

Chandler buried a sigh of impatience deep in his throat. “I can assure you, sir, we’ve allocated every resource we can spare to tracing it.”

Beckham gave a slow smile. “Not quite every available resource.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“I’ve asked Colonel McClintock to task October Guinness.”

“You what?”

Beckham smoothed his lapels. “I know your opinion of remote viewing, Gordon. But you forget: if it weren’t for that talented young lady, I’d be dead by now-and so would a lot of other innocent people.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but every intelligence service in this country is already stretched to the breaking point investigating the legitimate leads we have. I can’t in all conscience divert our resources to go chasing after some vision that could very easily be nothing more than the product of someone’s overactive imagination.”

“What about Division Thirteen?”

Beckham watched as a slow, malicious smile spread across the DCI’s face. “I stand corrected. There is one man I could spare.”

Alexandria, Virginia

Jax Alexander stuck the corkscrew in his back pocket, tucked a bottle of Shiraz under one arm, and scooped up two of the Senator’s best crystal glasses. Through the open door to the townhouse’s terrace, he could see the setting sun spilling a path of gold across the river’s sparkling water and hear the screech of the gulls as they wheeled and dipped in the breeze.

“God I love this view,” said Kelly Yardley, going to lean against the low brick wall that ran around the terrace.

Jax set the wine glasses on the ledge beside her and smiled. He hadn’t had much luck with relationships lately, mainly because his job kept getting in the way. But he was hoping things might be different with Kelly. A long-legged Cornell graduate with a quick brain and a ready laugh, she’d been seeing Jax for almost a month now. They had a relaxing long weekend planned, starting with an early dinner and tickets to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, followed by a couple days of sailing in the Chesapeake.

“Who’d you have to kill to get this place, anyway?” she asked as he peeled the foil off the top of the wine bottle.

Built of brick with white trim and louvered shutters, the elegant townhouse overlooking the Potomac River in Old Alexandria was way, way beyond the reach of most CIA operatives. Especially disgraced ones. He eased the cork from the bottle. “Senator James Herman Winston.”

She gave a startled laugh, her nose crinkling in a way he liked. She was smart and funny without being at all pretentious, which was remarkable, considering that she was both gorgeous and a rising star with the biggest lobbying firm on the Hill.

She watched him pour the wine. “I’d heard a rumor your grandfather was Senator Winston, but I didn’t believe it.”

The Winstons were one of those venerable old New England families that could trace their eminently respectable lineage back to Colonial days. Which was why the Senator had never quite recovered from his only daughter Sophie’s short, disastrous marriage to a guitar-playing hippie named Aiden Xavier Alexander. Jax handed her a glass. “He had a hard time believing it himself.”

“Good Lord,” said Kelly, her eyes suddenly going wide. “That means your mother is Sophie Talbot.”

“Well, her name was Talbot the last I checked. But she’s had so many husbands I sometimes have a hard time keeping track.” Sophie had divorced Jax’s father when Jax was four, with a new husband-and a new name-appearing every few years since then. After the disaster of her first marriage, Sophie had made sure all her subsequent husbands were rich, powerful men.

Kelly laughed again. Then her smile faded. “That must have been tough, growing up.”

“Nah. Growing up in the projects is tough. Being shunted off to boarding schools from the age of six is just…” He hesitated, searching for the right word.

“Lonely,” she finished for him.

“Well, yeah.”

They stood for a time watching the breeze billowing the canvas of a small sailboat as it headed toward shore. Jax felt his cell phone begin to vibrate. He ignored it.

“Mmmm,” said Kelly, closing her eyes as she took a sip of the wine. “No one makes wine like the French.”

Jax’s cell stopped vibrating. He turned the bottle so she could see the label. “It’s Australian. A McWilliams.”

She choked on her wine, her laughter ringing out clear and uninhibited. “Oops.”

He smiled, enjoying the way the setting sun brought out the subtle tones of auburn in her long dark hair…and heard the phone in the kitchen begin to ring.

“Sounds like someone’s kinda desperate to get ahold of you,” she said.

Jax set aside his wineglass. “I need to go check on the salmon anyway. Be right back.”

Even before he saw that the number was blocked on his caller ID, Jax knew who it was. Cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder, Jax eased open the oven door. “I’ve got three days off, Matt. Remember? Leave me alone.”

The voice on the other end of the phone gave a gruff laugh. “All leave has been canceled until after Halloween. Or hadn’t you heard?”

Jax reached for the oven mitts. “All leave has been canceled for essential personnel. There aren’t many advantages to being on the DCI’s shitlist, but in this instance, being labeled ‘nonessential personnel’ is one of them.”

“Looks like you’re more essential than you thought. The DCI himself wants you in on this.”

Jax set the hot poaching pan on the kitchen’s marble-topped island with a soft thump. “That sounds ominous. Is he hoping it’ll get me killed, or just humiliated?”

“Maybe both.”