Baltimore, Maryland
Saturday, August 28,
10:15 A.M.
Time Remaining on
Extinction Clock: 97 hours, 45 minutes
Mr. Church closed his phone and laid it on
the desk in front of him. He was a big man, broad shouldered,
blocky, strong. There were gray streaks in his dark hair and old
scars on his face, but rather than serving to reveal his age they
stood as marks of use; their presence toughened him in ways the
people who knew him could recognize but not
define.
For over a minute he sat with his big hands
resting on either side of the phone, which sat just off-center of
the green desk blotter. He might have been a statue for all the
animation he betrayed. His eyes were only shadows behind the lenses
of his tinted glasses.
To his left was a glass of water, no ice.
Beside it was a plate of vanilla wafers. After he’d sat for two
full minutes, Mr. Church selected a cookie and bit off a piece,
munching it thoughtfully. He brushed a crumb from his red
tie.
Then he swiveled in his chair and reached
for his office phone. He punched a code to engage the scrambler and
then entered a special number. It was answered on the fourth
ring.
“Brierly,” said a crisp male
voice.
“Linden,” said Church, “I know you’re busy,
but I want you to listen very closely. This is a Brushfire Command
Protocol.”
“Ah,” said Brierly, “it’s you. I was hoping
you lost my number.”
“Sorry to disappoint. Please verify that
you’re on active scramble so we may proceed.”
Brierly made a sound that might have been a
curse, but he verified the scramble. Linden was the Regional
Director of the Secret Service and was directly responsible for
overseeing the safety of the President while the Commander in Chief
was in Walter Reed for his heart surgery. One slip and Brierly
would be working out of a field office in the Dakotas. A successful
job, on the other hand, could be the last résumé item needed for
the step up as overall Director of the Secret Service, which would
make Brierly the youngest man to hold that office. The hot
money-and the heavy pressure-was on him during the current
crisis.
“Here is the Brushfire code,” said Church,
and recited a number-letter string that identified him and his
authority to make this call.
Brierly read back the code, moving one digit
and adding another.
Church repeated the code and made his own
two-point change.
“Verified,” said Brierly. “Brushfire
Protocol is active.”
“I agree,” said Church.
“You just activated a Presidential Alert, my
friend. We’d better have missiles inbound or Martians on the White
House lawn. You do know what’s happening today?” Even with the mild
audio distortion of the scrambler, Brierly’s sarcasm was clear as a
bell.
Church said ten words: “The Vice President
is trying to take down the DMS.”
“What?”
Church explained.
“Jesus H. Christ, Esquire,” Brierly growled,
“the President will fry him for this. I mean fry him. Even if he
has the Attorney General in his corner, Collins can’t possibly
believe that he’s going to make a case against
you.”
“He seems to think so.”
“This is weird. I know him pretty well, and
this is not like him. For one thing, he doesn’t have the balls for
this.”
“Then he grew a set this morning. For now
let’s assume he wouldn’t attempt this kind of play if he didn’t
have some interesting cards in his hand. What they are and how
he’ll ultimately play them is still to be seen.”
“I’m starting to get a bad feeling about why
you called me.”
“Listen to me, Linden. If the VP gets
MindReader he also gets everything stored in MindReader. Take a
moment and think that through.”
Brierly didn’t need a moment.
“Christ!”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you take it offline? Dump the hard
drive and wipe it with an EMP?”
“Sure, and we’d lose active tactical
analysis on forty-six terrorist-related database searches,
including the two assassination plots your office sent to us. If
MindReader goes blind, then so does the Secret Service, a good
chunk of the DEA, CIA, FBI, and ATF, and Homeland will essentially
have its head in a bag. We lose our data sharing with MI6 and
Barrier, not to mention certain agencies in Germany, Italy, and
France. We’d be playing Texas hold ’em with blank
cards.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Church. you should
have shared this system with everyone from the
start.”
“Really? You’d personally like to see
everyone from the VP on down have total access to your records?
You’d want to grant everyone in every agency the ability to read
all secrets and access all files without leaving a footprint? You’d
want all of the President’s personal business made
public?”
“I-”
“Two words, Linden: ‘Houston Marriott.’
”
Brierly hissed, “Don’t even
joke.”
“I’m not joking, and I’m not threatening.
With the President out of power, MindReader and the DMS are
vulnerable. I’ll hold the line, but I don’t think either of us want
to see what happens if this turns into a shoving match between the
NSA and my boys.”
“They have you outnumbered and outgunned,
Church.”
“You’ve met Major Courtland and Captain
Ledger, I believe. You’ve seen them in action. Where would you
place your heavy bets?”
“This isn’t the O.K.
Corral.”
“It shouldn’t be,” Church agreed, “but the
VP is making a hard play. He’s well organized, too, and using a lot
of field resources. None of this went through e-mails or active
command software packages, so he must have set it all up via cell
phone or word of mouth. He knows enough about MindReader to do an
end run around it for this operation.”
“You sound calm about it,” Brierly
said.
Church bit a cookie, said
nothing.
“You’re describing a coup.”
“No, this isn’t directed against the
President, and the VP will probably yield power in the proper way
and at the proper time. But ultimately this could bring down the
presidency. Maybe the VP knows that, maybe he doesn’t. but the
effect will be the same. So, indirectly this is an attack against
the President.”
“No kidding.”
“This is time critical for another reason,”
Church said. “We’ve just started picking up the threads of
something that could be a significant threat. That’s Threat with a
capital T. We’re probably already coming into this late-that’s the
nature of these things-but with all of my people dodging the NSA or
gone to ground we could fall completely behind the curve. I need
the Vice President to call off the dogs so we can get back to
work.”
Brierly sighed. “What do you want me to
do?”
“What do your loyalties suggest you
do?”
“Switching jobs sounds good right now. I
hear they’re hiring at Best Buy.”
Church crunched his cookie, drank some
water, waited.
“It’s not like I can strong-arm a doctor and
force him to revive the President. He’s in recovery now, but there
are protocols.”
“Yes, and Brushfire is one of
them.”
“I’m going to lose my job over
this.”
“Not if the President takes control before
we lose MindReader.”
Brierly was a long time thinking it through.
Church had time for a second cookie.
“Okay,” Brierly said, “but when the
Commander in Chief is back on the checkerboard I’m going to dump
all the blame on you.”
“Not a problem.”
“And what if we fail? What if the Veep gets
control of your records?”
“That might require alternatives you cannot
hear from me. Not even unofficially.”
Brierly cursed.
“Linden,” said Church quietly, “this is not
a fight of my choosing, and I don’t know why the VP is risking so
much here, but we cannot let MindReader be taken. It’s your job to
make sure I don’t need to get creative while trying to keep
it.”
“ ‘Creative’ doesn’t sound like a very nice
option.”
“It isn’t,” said Church. “So let’s both do
what we need to do to keep that option off the table. I’ll do what
I can for as long as I can, but I’d like to hear a clear weather
report from you soon.”
“Okay. I’ll find the chief of surgery and
see if I can appeal to his patriotism.”
“You know my number,” Church said, and
disconnected.
He set the phone down on his desk blotter.
He laid his hands on either side of it and sat quietly in the
stillness of his office.