“If you want to feed your pitiful family, you’ll get on your feet and return to work!” Komari ordered. He signaled for a fellow worker, little more than a slave, to help him up.
“Do you see what happens when you fail?” Komari shouted to the other twelve half-starved men. “You are punished. This time, one of you. This time, he lives. The next time, you will all feel the bite of my stick. And two of you will die.”
Amjad spit out the blood that had filled his throat, and forced himself to a wobbly stance. He diverted his eyes for fear of further reprisal.
“From now on, you will triple your output because you have shorted me. And it will be the finest Shabu you have ever produced.”
No one dared object.
“I don’t care which one of you is guilty. You all share the burden. Everyone works harder, or you die a traitor’s death.”
Komari had another stop to make — an arms supplier twenty-five kilometers away, across a stretch of calm seas. He would be lucky if he got half his order of AK-47s, 40-mm GP-25 under-barrel grenade launchers, Russian-made VSK-94 sniper rifles, semi-automatic high-velocity 9x21mm Gyurza pistols, and the most prized possessions: Stinger missiles.
He would not be getting the tube-fired missiles he sought or all of the Kevlar-piercing ammunition. The new cache provided him with less than enough weapons to turn his growing army into a formidable force. Komari also had to buy food and medical supplies for his men. Because of failures on the manufacturing side, his dream of raising a mighty sword for Islam and striking a deadly blow in Allah’s name was delayed. The Christians in the Malukus would live awhile longer, perhaps through late August. Then he would cleanse his beloved islands of the pagans. Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch blood would flow from the fishing villages into Jakarta’s gutters. A reborn Indonesia, a fully Muslim Indonesia, would rise, and the world would acknowledge the name Komari.
As Komari brushed by Amjad Mohammad, the beaten man struggled to stand. He kept his eyes lowered, but a small curl formed at the corners of his mouth. It made his swollen face hurt. It wasn’t the kind of expression that suggested happiness. It was more relief. However, Komari read only insubordination.
A smile? He dares to ridicule me? In one swift move, Komari unholstered his pistol, and with absolutely no remorse, put a bullet in the forehead of the slave laborer.
“Let that be a lesson for all of you. I am Commander here. I will not abide insolence.” To his own shocked men, he demanded, “Take him out.”
“Alma, get me in.”
In the first months of Lamden’s presidency, Alma Coolidge had already put through calls from the county’s biggest political egos and the world’s greatest leaders. In order to reach the President of the United States, they went through her first. Everyone. Congressmen, kings, dictators, prime ministers, department heads, and Boy Scout leaders. Most people knew her by her first name. The FBI chief did. She could distinguish between a calm greeting, noting no real sense of urgency, to a rapid-fire, curt hello, which didn’t invite any small talk in return. She measured the importance of each call by the tone of the first words. She’d been tutored by the best, Louise Swingle.
The FBI director’s intent was unmistakable. He didn’t invite anything other than a proper business response.
The president’s secretary clicked to a screen showing the day’s calendar. “Five forty-five, sir?”
“Earlier.”
It wasn’t a question. Robert Mulligan needed to see the president immediately. Alma didn’t ask for a reason. She quickly scratched a note to herself on her phone log. She’d move a meeting with an FCC commissioner.
“Thirty-five minutes, Mr. Director? Twelve fifty?”
“Good.”
“Can I have any lunch waiting for you?”
“No.”
His answers were all short and deliberate. The hair on the back of her neck prickled her skin.
“And would you like Mr. Gilmore there?”
“No.”
The president felt better when his chief of staff, his confidant, was present. She thought he might want to reconsider.
“Are you certain?” she said matching his delivery. Telling more than asking she continued, “You know that the president values his opinion.”
“Thank you, Louise. Tell him I want fifteen minutes alone. After that, he might want to have Billy around, Evans, and, hell, maybe the CIA chief and the whole National Security Council. I’m on my way.”
Robert Mulligan scanned the notes he took over the telephone from the LAPD officer. His folder also included an e-mail jpeg of the victim. It would be difficult for the president to view, but part of the process of identification was confirmation. Henry Lamden would have to look at the startled and pained expression on a young and beautiful face: an expression frozen forever. Fingerprints and dental records would also provide indisputable proof.
Mulligan framed his thoughts in the backseat of the six-minute chauffeured drive from the Hoover Building to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. On some level, Meyerson’s death was like hundreds if not thousands of others every year: a woman attacked and killed in the act of robbery, rape, or attempted rape. He could have someone research the exact statistics, but it didn’t matter. What made her death different, notable, and newsworthy, was the fact that this victim worked in the White House, directly under the eyes of the president. And then there was his other concern.
Right after talking to Ellsworth, Mulligan ordered his Los Angeles team to work with the LAPD. With his next call, he sent his most experienced D.C.-based investigator to Meyerson’s apartment.
Alma Coolidge tried to read the FBI director’s expression as he entered. There were no signals, but there were no pleasantries either. The FBI head usually chatted with the 58-year-old mother of five. He’d normally ask about her children and grandson, her mother, and her husband who worked as a cab dispatcher. Not today.
“Alma.”
“Mr. Director.”
She didn’t get anything more. He hurried past her desk, only calling out a thank you with his back to her.
He knocked on the door.
“No need, you can just go in, sir,” she said. “The president is waiting for you.”
Coolidge had alerted Henry Lamden that the FBI director had been absolutely insistent on seeing him right away. Not ever liking to be blindsided, a carryover from his days as a battleship captain, the president asked if Mulligan gave her any reason for the unexpected visit.
“No, sir. I tried.”
The “no” meant trouble. He could feel his heartbeat quickening.
As Mulligan entered, the president’s secretary could see Henry Lamden gazing out the window. She understood that somehow the very act of looking into the Rose Garden instinctively became a way to deal with the unknown. The openness of the grounds provided every president the way to surround impending troubles with natural beauty, if only for a moment.
Mulligan closed the door.
“Mr. President, thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
The president didn’t turn around. As if reading the FBI director’s thoughts, he began, “Imagine what Lincoln thought as he looked out these windows. Do you think he found any solace in the Garden while America was at war with itself? What about Woodrow Wilson, when he desperately tried to convince the country that the League of Nations was a good and necessary idea? Or President Kennedy, at the brink of a third World War? Where were his thoughts? Out there? Wishing he could be playing in the fall leaves with his daughter, Caroline?
Lamden slowly walked away from the window, and greeted the man he had asked to stay as head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “I understand you have something urgent.”