The men and women around the table shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
On her right, Dianne Greenwood, the House Minority Leader and a close friend for over forty years, shook her head. “It’s preposterous.”
“Really?” Barbara asked. “What do we know about Area 51? Not a single one of us has ever visited the base.”
“Just a minute,” Lampert said. “General Silva is a friend of mine. I asked him point blank a few years ago about Area 51. He has visited the base, and he assured me the only work going on there was drones and stealth aircraft. I trust Silva.”
“Do you?” Barbara asked. “Maybe he doesn’t know.”
“How could he not know?” Paul Burrow said. Burrow was a junior senator who had wormed his way onto the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and was a constant thorn in her side. “You called us all here for an unsubstantiated leak?”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it,” Gary Simmons said. Simmons was a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and one of her staunchest allies. He rubbed his hand through his white hair and frowned. “I helped review the black budget last year—”
Adam Ford, Simmons’s counterpart in the House and the youngest member in the room, said, “We’re not supposed to know where the money went. That’s the point of the black budget.”
“It’s not a blank check,” Simmons said. “There must be some oversight. Every four years, a member of the House sits in on the classified appropriations. Most of the black budget is broken down into the secret programs sponsored by each department. But there have always been line items that don’t lead anywhere. Those programs are in the tens of billions. When I asked for those programs’ code names, the Joint Chiefs…”
“They what?” Barbara asked.
“They clammed up,” Simmons said.
Lampert turned to Simmons. “They didn’t say anything?”
“Well,” Simmons said, “I kept asking, and they finally said some items had never been named. Not in over fifty years.”
“You let that stand?” Lampert demanded.
“I… well… you know how it is.”
“That is the problem,” Barbara said. “For too long, we’ve let things slide.”
Ford stood up. “I don’t want anything to do with this.”
Lampert turned Ford. “Sit down, Adam. You were in the Army, weren’t you?”
Ford’s jaw clenched. “I never saw a group like that leak described.”
“You served in Iraq,” Barbara said. “It was all over your campaign videos.”
Ford squinted at her. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“Think back to your time in Iraq. According to the leak, members of this group have been active all around the world, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. Did you ever see anybody that didn’t seem… like the regular Army?”
“You’re joking,” Ford said. “Do you know how many CIA officers, SEALs, and Delta Operators were bouncing around Baghdad? You could barely keep them all straight.”
“You never worked with anyone that might have belonged to this group?”
“I don’t… look, there were lots of shady guys, men who weren’t regular Army, but they always had the right clearances and the right amount of pull with the officers.”
“How would you hide a group like this?” Burrow asked.
“Operational cover,” Ford said. “Make them members of the CIA or Delta. Hell, recruit members from the CIA or Delta. They’d be perfect candidates.”
“I can’t believe we’re seriously considering this,” Simmons said. “This is treason.”
“No,” Barbara said. “Treason is the president violating the Constitution. This leak is real. I think the Office of Threat Management is the president’s personal paramilitary, and I think every president since Truman has used them to fight around the world. Even, I believe, within the United States.”
Lampert leaned back in his chair. “You think the Office of Threat Management exists, and they’re operating out of Area 51? That’s crazy.”
“I spoke with Jim Kellerman—”
“You spoke to the director of National Intelligence?” Lampert asked. “You’re insane. What if he worked for them?”
“I thought you said it sounded crazy.”
Lampert frowned. “What did Kellerman say?”
“Someone has been bugging his office. The D/CIA, too.”
“If that’s true,” Ford said, “then how do we know they’re not bugging us right now?”
“Why do you think we’re meeting here?” Barbara snapped. “This room is rarely used, and Kellerman had it swept before the meeting.”
“If the information in that leak is accurate,” Burrow said, “then we aren’t safe anywhere. Am I the only one that actually read that leak? This group has deep pockets, highly trained personnel, and the president’s approval.”
Nancy Schreck, the House Majority Leader, spoke up. “I’ve known the president since he was a state senator. There’s no way he would sanction a group like this.”
“Until a few days ago,” Barbara said, “I felt the same way, but power is a funny thing. I’ve never known anyone to willingly give it up. Have you?”
She was met with silence as the other members stared down at the table. Finally, Lampert said, “I know some of you don’t think highly of me, and God knows I’ve made enemies, but I’ve always believed in this nation. Our laws. Each and every one of us took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. We cannot let this stand. Congress must act.”
Barbara nodded. “I’m sure the president thinks he is using this group to keep the country safe—”
“If we investigate this,” Ford said, “it could threaten the country. It’s not like we haven’t bent the rules ourselves…”
“At what cost?” Barbara asked. “We agreed to the warrantless wiretapping, to the renditions in Italy and France. We agreed to the CIA’s work in Iran. But domestic spying? Targeting citizens without due process? Killing people? We argue to ourselves that it makes us safer, but no more. The president is elected, not coronated. He’s not a king, and he’s certainly not God.”
There were glances around the room, and the members began nodding.
“Once we open this investigation,” Lampert said, “there’s no turning back. Do we all understand the consequences?”
Ford looked like he wanted to bolt for the exit, but he muttered through gritted teeth, “We do.”
“We can’t have any holdouts,” Barbara said. “We all have to agree.”
Around the table, the other members of the Gang of Eight raised their hands in affirmation.
Chapter Sixteen
John sat on his bed in nothing but his boxers, staring at the featureless gray wall, when someone knocked on his door. He stood and winced in pain. The skin around the stump of his left leg was red and inflamed, and he wondered if it was from cancer or just a natural consequence of the osteointegration.
Doesn’t really matter. It just hurts.
He limped to the door and opened it to find Kara, still in her scrubs, waiting for him. When she saw his face, she frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Besides the fact that I’m dying?”
She brushed past him, and he gently shut the door behind her. “No, that’s okay, come in.”
She turned to him, and her face softened. “I didn’t know about the cancer.”
“Sure.”
“I didn’t!”