For the next five hours Jacob Gadanz took full advantage of what Daniel had unexpectedly made available. Jacob had made his deal with the devil. He knew that absolutely, but he couldn’t help himself. He was weak. He knew that, too. This was the carrot — but there was a stick, too. A very big and very bad stick, which would do immense damage.
He would have to run when he got home, he realized as his pleasure reached the tipping point for the first time. It was the only alternative now. His brother had politely but absolutely conveyed to him that if he did not comply, he would be murdered — as would his daughters. Daniel had not said so in so many words, but Jacob knew his brother. The code was clear.
CHAPTER 25
“Who is your contact?”
“What are you talking about, Mr. President?”
“Don’t give me that, Stewart,” Dorn growled as he glanced out the Oval Office window at a cold, clear late-December dawn that was just breaking over Washington, DC. “Don’t play your goddamn mind games with me.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I really wasn’t trying to—”
“Enough.”
He and Baxter were the only two people in there, since Connie had gone to get a Coke and a cigarette. He was feeling much better this morning despite the Holiday Mall Attacks and the attack on the elementary school in Missouri. He’d actually gotten some decent sleep, the pain in his chest wasn’t as sharp anymore, and he was starting to feel like his old self again — headstrong and convinced he was right about everything. He still had a ways to go to full recovery, but the end of his rehabilitation was finally in sight.
“I’m tired of you doing that to me, Stewart,” Dorn kept going. He was thinking about giving Connie the day off, actually ordering her to take it off. He felt that good; he couldn’t have her listening to a lot of what was said in here today; and he didn’t feel like telling her to get lost every time he needed privacy. “Who told you Bill Jensen was the one who gave the ultimate order to have me assassinated?”
“Sir, I don’t think that’s something you want to—”
“Damn it, Stewart, no more. I want to know, and I want to know now.”
Baxter drew himself up in the chair. “A man I’ve known for twenty-three years. He’s a friend of my son’s. They trained together. They’re close.” Baxter paused. “His name is Shane Maddux.”
Dorn caught his breath.
“Maddux is a member of Red—”
“I know who Shane Maddux is.” Baxter seemed shocked by the revelation, which Dorn enjoyed tremendously.
“You do, sir?”
“He was a member of Red Cell Seven,” Dorn said. “But he defected after he was told by Roger Carlson that I intended to obliterate the cell. He’s a man on the run.”
“Well, that’s true, but there’s more to the story than—”
“Maddux was behind the attempt to assassinate me,” Dorn continued. “He didn’t actually pull the trigger. He had one of his subordinates do that. The kid’s a sniper specialist named—”
“Ryan O’Hara.” It was Baxter’s turn to interrupt, to show what he knew and confirm his credibility. “Maddux told me that, too.”
The president stared at his chief of staff for several moments, wondering who to trust, how much to trust, and when to open up. As he gazed at Baxter, he made his decision. He had to trust someone. It was one of the worst parts about being president. Having to work with Congress was a bitch, too.
“Stewart, I want to destroy Red Cell Seven. Even in the face of what’s going on in this country right now with these terrible death squad attacks, I want to burn RCS to the ground and scatter its ashes to the wind. I don’t care what they’ve done to save this country in the past, and I don’t care how valuable they could be in the future. We cannot call ourselves a great society or a true democracy when we allow a small group of men to live among us who can operate outside our laws and follow their own creed. When we do, they take advantage of it. And I don’t care about some goddamn Executive Order that Richard Nixon signed forty years ago as he was going clinically insane thanks to Watergate. Do you understand me?”
“Absolutely, sir.” Baxter could barely control his smile. Much wider and it would seem unprofessional.
“I’ve been playing Bill Jensen for the last few weeks.”
Baxter exhaled a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank God.” His smile inched even closer to unprofessional. It was teetering on the edge now. “You should get an Oscar for your performance, sir, and I’ll be happy to contact the Academy on your behalf. Let me tell you, I was worried there for a while that you’d actually switched colors and gone to the other—”
“And you were exactly right, up on the third floor of the residence the other day,” Dorn broke in. “They did miss this one. They didn’t short-circuit the mall attacks. They didn’t ID the death squads ahead of time. That’s exactly what they’re supposed to do, and they didn’t.”
“No, they did not.”
The president’s expression turned steely. “Or worse, they intentionally missed it. They ignored it.”
“Sir?”
“They wanted it to happen, they let it happen. They knew about it ahead of time, and they did nothing to stop it because they want more-invasive and aggressive investigative powers over the civilian population. They want Congress to roll over and play dead when U.S. intel inevitably demands greater surveillance flexibility as a result of the Holiday Mall Attacks. At the heart of it, they want unlimited powers to spy on anyone, civilian or otherwise. I wouldn’t be surprised if some very senior people at CIA and NSA were involved in this thing.”
“Jesus,” Baxter whispered.
“Either way, whether they knew ahead of time or not, Red Cell Seven is directly to blame for the bloodshed this country has suffered over the past few days. It’s just another in a long line of reasons to take them down.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dorn gritted his teeth hard. “On top of all that, it’s personal for me, Stewart.”
“How could it not be?” Baxter agreed.
“I will destroy the people who tried to kill me. And I will bring them to justice.”
“As you should, sir.”
“Which presents us with a problem.”
“Maybe not as much of one as you think, Mr. President.”
“What do you mean?”
“Shane Maddux is a friend,” Baxter spoke up, anticipating what his president was about to say. “But first and foremost he is a confidant.”
The president’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand why he’d indict himself to you, why he’d admit his guilt, even if he is a friend and a confidant and believed you would keep his secrets.”
“He claimed killing you was simply an order that came from above. He was only doing what he was told to do in his capacity as the leader of a Red Cell Seven division. He doesn’t look at himself in the mirror as being guilty of anything. He was only being loyal to the chain of command, as he took an oath to always be, long ago.”
Dorn shook his head. “He’s one of them. He can’t be trusted.”
Baxter nodded. “Maybe not, but he can be used.”
“Spin that out for me.”
“Shane Maddux is in no-man’s-land right now, Mr. President, and that’s a horrible place to be. He’s vulnerable, and he’s not accustomed to being in this position. We can take advantage of his weakness.”
“How?”
“Maddux’s defection from Red Cell Seven was cover. Roger Carlson and Bill Jensen believed that Red Cell Seven could not be seen in any way as endorsing the assassination of a United States president. They were worried, and rightfully so, that rank-and-file RCS agents would not accept a course of action that was so drastic and blatantly unpatriotic. They were worried that it could lead to massive defections. So they gave Maddux the go-ahead to create his defection story, whisper it out to some people, as they did from the top as well. And they gave him authority to recruit a limited number of agents to help him.