Whiplash

32

Within hours of Nuri’s return from Blemmyes Village, his discovery and theory had been disseminated to a small coterie of analysts and officials in Washington, D.C. The news focused a great deal of intelligence for the analysts, giving them a framework to arrange a veritable warehouse worth of data.

It also alarmed Breanna, Reid, and everyone else who heard about it.

The machined aluminum was now identified as part of a tool holding a centrifuge assembly. To grossly oversimplify the process, the tool could be used to separate elements of different atomics weight from each other. Such a tool was needed in one step of the process of extracting “special” uranium from “regular” uranium. The special uranium — an isotope with a different atomic number — could then be used to create an atomic bomb.

Jasmine was now viewed as part of a much larger, more important project. It could also be seen as one of several similar operations around the world, directly related or not. At least three possibilities had already been identified.

But the data raised a large number of new questions. Assuming there were other processing plants, where were they? How did material get from one location to another? Was the intention to stockpile the material, or was bomb construction contemplated — or maybe even under way? Where did this occur?

Breanna contemplated all of these questions the next morning as she waited for Jonathon Reid’s car to pick her up at the Pentagon. She expected them to be raised at the hastily scheduled briefing she and Reid were going to give to the National Security Council. The council had already been scheduled to meet; they were added to the agenda when their information was added to the daily intelligence report.

The one question Breanna hadn’t contemplated was the one Reid asked as soon as she slipped into the back of car: “Do you think it’s time we turned this over to traditional channels?”

Surprise was obvious on her face.

“Whiplash is still experimental,” explained Reid, who’d been considering the matter even before Nuri reported in. “The unit is very small. Something of this magnitude is beyond its scope.”

“I wouldn’t call Whiplash experimental.”

“Whatever we call it, we didn’t anticipate this big a situation when we sent Nuri out,” said Reid. “Or Danny Freah and his people. We were looking at a bugging and surveillance operation, nothing more. The next step is more involved.”

“No, the next step is to gather more information.”

“We’ll have to destroy the plant.”

“They can do that as well. But we don’t want to do that yet, do we? We need to flesh out the entire network. We don’t know how big the operation is there, not to mention where else it’s operating.”

“A huge undertaking,” said Reid. “One for a very large, and experienced, task group.”

“Danny Freah can run this. He’s had experience. Especially with nuclear warheads.”

“I’m not questioning him or his ability,” said Reid. “The scope of the project is simply greater than what we foresaw. We need more people.”

Reid was also concerned about Nuri. The CIA officer had been selected as the program’s first operative primarily because of his comfort with the technology and his familiarity with Africa. He had barely three years of experience with the Agency, and before that was in college. While he’d done fine so far, at this point it made sense to bring a more experienced officer onto the scene.

“I can see more people,” said Breanna. “Obviously, these other leads have to be examined. But we have people in the field. They’re doing a good job. We can’t pull them off.”

“Who coordinates the mission? Who compiles the data?”

“We do. It moves forward exactly as it has.”

“You don’t understand the scope,” said Reid. “Or the politics.”

“What politics?”

Reid stared at the glass divider that separated the hybrid-powered Town car’s passenger compartment from the driver. Many members of the Agency considered him an old school idealist, but he thought of himself as a realist. As much as he hated Agency and bureaucratic politics, as much as he isolated himself from them, he nonetheless realized they had to be taken into account at all times.

“You’re DoD,” he said, referring to the Department of Defense. “I’m Central Intelligence. Whiplash is split between those agencies. It starts there.”

“And we can end it there.”

“No. We can’t.”

“Do you want to be in charge?” Breanna asked. “Is that it?”

She felt her cheeks starting to flush. She was trying to control her anger, but it wasn’t easy. She liked Reid, but she felt he had ambushed her in an attempt to get an advantage in a ridiculous bureaucratic game. It seemed out of character, or at least out of sync with the way he had acted until now.

“Depending on where this goes, we may have hundreds of people in the field, and thousands behind them supporting them,” said Reid. “We don’t have the infrastructure to pull off a large operation. It’s simply a matter of size.”

“You have the infrastructure, at CIA, as deputy director. Is that the point?”

“I’m not deputy director.”

“He’d run it through you. So you take Whiplash out of the loop and run it on your own?”

“It’s possible that would happen,” admitted Reid. “But that wouldn’t be my recommendation. We would turn the entire matter over to Operations, and let them handle it the way they’ve handled missions like this in the past. Some of the people who worked on sabotaging the original Iranian program under the previous administration—”

“There’s a recommendation,” said Breanna bitterly.

“They’re experienced people. Some of the results were not that good. Some were. In any event, there’s a structure set up, institutional memory—”

“But that’s just the point, Jonathon. Everything we’ve done — Whiplash, MY-PID, the other gear — everything is an attempt to break out of the old mode.”

“Sometimes you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”

“But we did. And now that we see it working, you want to go back to the horse and buggy.”

Reid put his hand on the blue briefing book on the seat next to him, sliding his fingers along the top edge. He realized she did have a point. They were pioneering new techniques for combining covert action and intelligence gathering, using high-tech tools with a streamlined command structure. They had gotten results.

“I will talk briefly about the unit, just enough to let those who aren’t aware of it understand its capabilities,” said Breanna, deciding to move on to what they’d planned to discuss. “You can talk about mission.”

“And when they ask for recommendations?”

“I’ll say we should continue. You can say whatever you want.”

As she stepped from the car to head into the West Wing, Breanna’s personal cell phone rang. She reached into her pocketbook and took it out. Her daughter’s face was on the screen — Teri was calling from school.

Breanna felt her heart stop as she hit the Talk button.

“Honey, what’s up?”

“Mom—”

“She’s all right, Mrs. Stockard,” said a male voice in the background. “Tell her you’re all right.”

All Breanna could think of was that Teri had been kidnapped.

“I fell during gym, Mom.”

Oh, thank God, thought Breanna. “Are you okay, honey?”

“My leg hurts.”

“Is that the doctor behind you?” she asked, her relief receding. “Honey — is that the doctor?”

“Actually, Mrs. Stockard, I’m the nurse practitioner at Day School,” said the man. “Your daughter is okay. I don’t think she broke any bones, but with your permission I’d like to have her taken to the hospital just as a precaution. For X rays. I’ve seen dozens of these, ma’am. Usually this is just a little twist and bruise. They’re out running by the afternoon. But I would prefer to err on the side of caution. I hope you understand.”

“I appreciate that, Doctor—”

“Simon. Nurse Simon, or just Simon.”

“I’m sorry, Simon. Yes, please — she should go to the hospital right away.” Breanna looked up at Reid, who was staring at her with the most concerned expression she’d ever seen on his face. It’s okay, she mouthed.

“We’re going to need you or, uh, someone to meet her at the hospital,” said Simon.

Today, of all days, thought Breanna.

“Someone will be there,” she told him, barely remembering to ask which hospital before hanging up.

“Your daughter?” asked Reid.

“Just a silly sports injury,” she said.

“Do you want me to fill in?”

Breanna was torn between the impulse to run to her daughter’s side and the briefing she was supposed to give.

“Let me get Zen on the phone,” she said. She forced a smile. “I think he’s on hospital duty today.”

Zen was in the middle of a committee hearing when his legislative aide, Steph Delanie, tapped him on the shoulder.

“It’s your wife,” she whispered. “Urgent.”

Zen gripped his wheels — after all these years, he still preferred a nonpowered chair — and backed away from his spot at the table. He caught the eye of the committee chairman, who nodded, then turned and went out into the hall with Delanie. Another member of his staff, Jason Black, stood nearby with a cell phone.

“Probably forgot where I hid the peanut butter,” said Zen, trying to joke as he reached for the phone. “Hey, babe, what’s up?”

“Jeff, they’re taking Teri to the hospital. She hurt her leg. She’s OK, but they want X rays to make sure. Can you go over? I’m — I’m just on my way to see the President and the National Security Council. I’m right outside the door.”

“Where is Teri? Is she OK?”

“Yes, she’s OK. The school nurse called. They want to take her there as a precaution and I said fine. The nurse is a he, by the way.”

“Which hospital, Bree? Is she all right?”

“She’s fine.”

Zen could withstand any amount of pain without whimpering — he might complain, curse, and stomp things with his fist, but never whimper. If his daughter or wife had a cold, however, he suffered incredibly. There was simply no way he could be stoic when either of them was in pain.

“She’s at Dominion,” added Breanna, a little less emphatically. “In the emergency room.”

“I’m on my way. I’m there.”

“Jeff—”

“She’ll be fine Bree. I have it under control.”

Zen hung up. He told Delanie to have the rest of his day’s schedule canceled, then had Jason Black accompany him to the hospital.

Black was just out of college, low enough on the totem pole that a boring job like escorting the senator seemed exciting. Ordinarily, Zen might have regaled him with stories about how boring the hearing had been, or the New York congressman who was rumored to be sleeping with his campaign coordinator, but he was too focused on Teri to think about any of that. He drove himself — he could never have been patient enough to let someone else take the wheel.

Black, sitting in the passenger seat, fidgeted silently the entire way. He longed to ask Zen some questions about his days at Dreamland, but was afraid of offending him. The senator could often be heard complaining to Delanie and others about how boring and stale those stories had become.

A security guard tried to wave them away from the staff parking area as they pulled up.

“That’s for staff,” shouted the man, running over as Zen backed from the wheel and pushed the wheelchair into the lift next to the door. “You have to move!”

The door opened. The forklift-like elevator pulled Zen out of the van and began lowering him to the curb. The appearance of an obviously handicapped man gave the guard pause — but only for a second.

“Sir, I’m sorry. You can’t park here,” said the guard, toning his voice down. “It’s for doctors and nurses.”

“I outrank them,” Zen barked, rolling toward the door.

“Now listen,” blustered the guard. “I don’t care if you are handicapped. That’s not where you park.”

Black had to run to catch up to his boss. Zen reached into his pocket as he caught up with him and grabbed his keys.

“Move the van so Barney Fife over there doesn’t have a heart attack. I’d hate for Pete to lose another constituent.”

The electric doors opened and Zen glided inside the emergency room. One thing about hospitals — they were generally easy to get in and out of if you were in a wheelchair.

That was about the only nice thing Zen could ever say about them.

“I’m Senator Stockard,” he announced to the nurse at the desk. “You have my daughter here for X rays.”

The word “senator” jarred the nurse, and for a second she wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth. Before she could say anything, a doctor came out from the office area.

“Senator Stockard, I’m glad you could get here so quickly,” he said as he walked over. “I’m Mike Watson. Dr. Bozzone called me and asked if I’d come down and check out your daughter personally.”

“Who called Billy?”

“Might’ve been your wife, Senator.”

“She’s always a step ahead of me. Where’s Teri?”

Dr. Watson — his name had been a source of jokes since med school — led Zen back through the halls to the X-ray department. Teri was sitting on an examining table, waiting as one of the techs readied the machine. A member of her school staff was sitting in the corner, a magazine on her lap.

“Daddy, what are you doing here?”

“Hey, angel. I was looking for someone to play golf with. The doctors mentioned you were here, so I postponed the game.”

“You don’t play golf.” Teri gave him a mock frown, then leaned down from the table to give him a kiss. “Where’s Mom?”

“With the President.”

Teri frowned. She had expected her mother, not her father. She loved them both, but it was her mother who always showed up at times like this.

Plus, she had said she would.

Zen read the disappointment in her face. “Mom’s working hard,” he told her. “She had something very important today.”

“I know.”

He decided it was better to change the subject. “What, are you bucking for a chair like mine?”

“Oh get out.” She hopped down from the table and began dancing around. “See? I’m fine.”

“Probably, but let’s let the X ray determine that,” said Dr. Watson.

The National Security Council met in a secure conference room well below ground level in the White House “basement,” but the room was bathed in what to the naked eye seemed like perfect daylight. The environmental controls kept the room precisely at 68 degrees, a fact that occasionally irked the President, who preferred a slightly cooler temperature, but allowed it to remain there out of deference to her aides and cabinet members’ comfort.

A rectangular table sat at the center of the large room. A video screen tilted upward in front of each of the thirty-six places; the screens were tied into a conferencing system as well as the secure intelligence intranet. Each seat was equipped with a bank of secure communication lines, allowing text and e-mail as well as scrambled voice and video.

Best of all, the coffee and tea were world-class.

Breanna took her seat near the center of the far side, next to Reid and two spots from the Secretary of Defense, Charles Lovel.

Lovel nodded as she sat. He had started out as an enthusiastic supporter of the program, but lately had been rethinking its direction because of budget pressures. A relatively small part of the Pentagon’s so-called “black budget,” it still represented hundreds of millions of dollars, with the potential to consume much more. Lovel had bought the “multiplier effect” that Whiplash allowed — the idea that the program would pay for itself by encouraging more research and development, implementing high-tech tools faster and cheaper, and saving on manpower costs down the line. But the program was still so new that cutting it would not raise much of an outcry — far less, say, than lopping something like a destroyer out of the budget.

Lovel would have been the first to admit that counting angry heads was a terrible way to set government policy. But he called himself a “big picture” guy, and in the big picture he saw, some terrible decisions had to be made to support the overall agenda.

Breanna sat down and took a small memory card from her pocket. When she slipped it into the slot in the table before her, a keyboard appeared on the screen. She touch-typed her encryption code, enabling access to the files of her presentation, along with additional background and documentation.

She was worried about her daughter. She knew Zen could handle whatever came up — he was always taking care of them somehow. But still, she felt she should be there, reassuring Teri that everything was fine.

The attendant brought Breanna a cup of coffee. As she started to stir it, everyone in the room rose. The President had arrived.

“All right, let’s get to work,” said Christine Mary Todd. A tall woman, she moved with quick strides, shoulders back and head high. In a man, her quick gait might have been considered brisk, her physical style assertive. As a woman, they gave visual ammunition to critics who found her abrupt and distant.

“Ms. Stockard, Mr. Reid. Very good of you two to come on such short notice,” she said as she sat. The President did not attend every National Security meeting, but had planned on coming to this one for other reasons. News of the nuclear network made her attendance even more critical today. “Who’s going first?”

That was the President’s style — plunge right into the situation without too much fuss. Breanna glanced around, waiting for everyone to settle into their seats before beginning.

“Some months ago, we initiated a joint program between the CIA and Defense that allows us to test and implement new technologies on an advanced basis,” she said. Her voice was stiff, as was her prose. “The program is still in its very early stages, literally only a few weeks old, but we already have important results to share with you. Alarming results. Some of you have received some information already, so I will be brief.”

Breanna looked down at her presentation. She’d lost her place, but decided she didn’t need to read the words. She knew what she wanted to say.

“My associate, Mr. Reid, represents the CIA. We work together. I’m going to very briefly talk about some of our technology and the unit involved, just to give you background on our capabilities. And then Jonathon — Mr. Reid — is going to talk about what we’ve found.”

Breanna described MY-PID in simplistic terms, saying that it was a networked computer system that could be used by operatives in the field. Her description was intentionally bland; the few people in the room with a need to know the specifics already knew them. She then mentioned the Whiplash team, again in very general terms, noting that its full complement had not even been recruited yet.

She made a point of mentioning that Danny Freah was heading the team. His name was familiar to most if not all of the people in the room, adding credibility to the program.

Reid sat quietly, waiting for his turn to speak. Even now, he hadn’t decided what he would recommend as the next step. His boss, mentor, and friend, CIA Director Herman Edmund, had made it clear that he wanted the entire project under CIA direction. Reid had been swayed, at least to some extent, by Breanna’s arguments in the car.

“Excuse me,” said Secretary of State Alistair Newhaven. “Is Whiplash intended as a strike team, or as an espionage unit?”

“A little of both,” said Reid. He turned to Breanna, realizing he’d cut her off. “Sorry.”

“Jonathon is right. It can be both, depending on what the situation requires. In this instance, I’d say the operation leaned toward — is leaning, I mean — toward espionage.”

She paused and looked around the room. A few aides and staffers, lined up along the wall, were brimming with questions, but unless their bosses specifically asked for their input, none would dare ask them. Breanna turned and looked at Lovel, who nodded, then at Michael Bacon, the national security director. Bacon, sitting next to the President, nodded as well, indicating she should continue.

“Our first mission began with a single agent, who was attempting to gather information on an arms network, known as Jasmine, operating in the Sudan,” said Breanna. “The operation — and the CIA officer, for that matter — were chosen primarily because of considerations with the systems we were testing and implementing. We wanted a real-world, real-time situation. After a few weeks we found it necessary to back him up, and so the agenda for the Whiplash team was moved ahead. And that’s where things got interesting.”

She turned to Reid.

“Yes, interesting. My colleague has a way with understatement,” said Reid. He flashed a smile. “Let me give you the headline first: Iran, or perhaps some element of its government, is refining nuclear material in Sudan, we believe in preparation for constructing a bomb.”

If the room had been silent while Breanna spoke, now it was an absolute vacuum, all potential for sound pumped out of it. Reid briefly sketched what they had found, emphasizing that though the intelligence was still very preliminary, it was nonetheless very good.

“We’re not relying on spies here, agents who have an interest in leading us on. These are our own people,” Reid said. “We have radiation sniffers that have data for us. We have purchases. We are still pulling everything together, and admittedly there is much that we don’t know. But the basic finding is unassailable — there is an operation here to refine nuclear material that can be used in a bomb.”

“But Iran has just eliminated all of its nuclear weapons,” said the Secretary of State. “And dismantled its weapons program. We’ve inspected it. We know this is true.”

“They showed us what they wanted to show us.”

“They showed us what we asked for — what the CIA told us to ask for,” said Newhaven pointedly.

“I would note that our estimates show there is a potential for several pounds of material to be missing from the official count,” said Dr. Bacon, who’d consistently been a stickler on this point. The missing material — if it was missing — was not quite enough for a bomb, but it was close.

“We don’t need to debate whether the material is there or not,” said the head of the CIA. “Obviously, we need more information. And quickly. The Iranian president is due here next week.”

This wasn’t news to most of the people in the room, but it was to Breanna and Reid, along with some of the lower-level staff people.

“Yes, Mr. Reid, Ms. Stockard, it’s true,” said the President. “We’ve kept it a secret because he doesn’t want a backlash in his country. But the Iranian president will be here one week from tomorrow.”

“Maybe he plans on bringing a bomb with him,” quipped Bacon as the meeting continued.

Reid pressed his lips together and wondered if that might be more than just a joke.