The screen faded to a telephone number. Frankie sat still, not knowing how to react. Nick Geller was dead. Nick was dead. Although she had to keep telling herself her Nick died a few weeks earlier. It wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t some bizarre and crazy mistake. The President had just confirmed that Nick was dead.
Her phone rang. “I’m okay, Mom,” she said.
“Hi, Frankie, it’s Paul.”
“Paul?”
“Paul Turner, Deputy Director FBI?”
“Oh yes, Paul. How can I help?” she asked absently.
“One plane?” he asked. “There were ten thousand of them heading here!”
“Well, there were ten thousand emails.”
“That’s not what the NSA guy hinted at,” said Turner.
“The President said one plane, that’s a few hundred.”
“So Nick Geller, the man who handed us our asses on a platter over and over again, injected forty-nine people with Ebola on one plane?”
“What are you saying, Paul?”
“He never said which plane. He said a plane and then didn’t give the flight number.”
“You think there’s more than one?”
“I think there are a lot more than one. Have you still got all the flight details?”
“Yeah, they’re here in front of me. I’ll check which ones land and which ones don’t.”
“Excellent. I need to board my flight to Miami, I’ll call you when I land.”
Frankie logged on to each of the airports and ticked off flight after flight throughout the day as each one landed safely. By 5:00 p.m. and with a only a few flights due to land which, in fact, had not even left Europe until after the President’s speech, she had yet to find a single flight on her list that had not landed safely.
Frankie checked the news websites and they all carried the story as their headline but listed the flight simply as a ‘United Airlines flight’. All five hundred and thirty seven passengers and crew were presumed lost. A list of the victims who were on board the flight had been published. Over two hundred and twenty innocent victims had perished, yet not one relative was being interviewed. There were no scenes of mass weeping or anguish at the arrivals gate at the airport. The news was focused almost entirely on how the virus threat had been lifted and almost three hundred jihadists, the most radical jihadists alive, had been stopped in their quest to destroy America. The loss of two hundred twenty Americans was being downplayed. It seemed the belief was that the victims had already been infected by the Ebola virus and that it was almost a blessing that they had perished in a plane crash rather than die an agonizing death. No further details about the innocent victims had been released, no ages or addresses, just a list of names that the President had pledged would be immortalized forever in a memorial.
By 6:00 p.m., Frankie began to wonder how long it could take to fly to Miami, having still not heard from Deputy Director Turner. At 6:30 p.m., she knew she would never hear from him again.
The breaking news that the man who had led the investigation and foiled Nick Geller’s plot was to be appointed Deputy Attorney General flashed on Frankie’s TV screen. A beaming, newly minted Deputy Attorney General Paul Turner stepped forward. Frankie spotted Secretary of Defense Harry Carson in the background of the shot.
She turned off her TV, packed a bag that would fit in her Porsche and drove out of Washington for the last time. Her destination: Colorado.
Chapter 90
Harry Carson paced the corridor outside the White House Situation Room. His position was one that few knew and even fewer understood. He solved problems before they became issues. A new problem had arisen. One that was way beyond his normal remit and as a result, he had asked for a special meeting with President Mitchell and Secretary of Defense Bob Hammond. Finally, the meeting that was delaying his access began to break up. The attendees filed past him warily. Harry Carson was a man few ever wanted to see in their department. If he was there, something big was about to happen.
With the room finally empty of all but the two men he needed to see, Harry entered the room, closed the door behind him and ensured that any recording devices were switched off. President Mitchell and Bob Hammond watched the unshakeable Harry Carson fuss around the room checking the devices with some concern. Harry Carson was unflappable, emotionless, nerveless. But he was obviously worried, which could only mean one thing: They should be very worried.
“Jesus Christ, Harry! What the fuck is wrong?” asked Bob, unable to wait any longer.
“Gentlemen, these are chatter graphs,” he said, laying out a number of charts on the large conference table. “And when I say chatter, it’s the level of communication from areas of known terrorist organizations. It’s a gauge of how active the terrorists are.” Both members of his audience nodded. “This is the graph up two weeks ago.” He tracked a fairly uniform pattern with his index finger, no spikes or curves, just a fairly flat straight line. Both nodded again.
Carson put down a new chart. “This is from then until today, Monday.” He pointed to a massive spike in activity.
“Yes,” said the President. “The CIA has told us it’s to do with the Caliph Zahir al Zahrani announcing some new offensive. They expect the levels to drop back in the next few days. They don’t have the support or power they once had.”
“One part of that’s correct. Al Qaeda is not as powerful as it once was and alone it’s not the concern it once was.”
“And the other part that’s not correct?” asked Bob.
“That the levels will die down,” he said somberly. “Zahir al Zahrani has a plan, a dream it would seem, to join with all of the other jihadist organizations across the radicalized world and create one army fighting for Allah.”
“Never going to happen,” scoffed Bob. “Too many factions and differences between them.”
Harry pulled out another chart. “I asked some very clever guys to drill down into what they could of the chatter. There is one shit load of crosstalk between organizations that we would never have thought possible. This is real, gentlemen,” cautioned Harry sternly.
“Okay, Harry, you’ve got our attention,” said President Mitchell, sitting more rigidly in his chair.
“So what’s the plan?” asked Bob.
“The plan?” asked Harry.
“The plan, Harry, you know, the one you don’t enter a room without.”
“Oh, that plan,” he smiled, walking to the door and opening it. “You can come in,” he said to someone in the hall.
“President Mitchell, Secretary Hammond, let me present to you the most traitorous son of a bitch this country has ever produced, Nick Geller.”
Chapter 91
“Nick,” said Secretary Hammond.
“Mr. Secretary,” replied Nick.
“You know each other?” asked President Mitchell, still confused as to what Harry was proposing.
“Nick is one of our guys in Defense Clandestine Services, one of our very best.”
Nick proudly squared his shoulders. “Thank you, Mr. Secretary.”
“I thought you said he was a traitor?” asked the President.
“Not yet, but by the time I’ve finished with him, his own family, if they were still alive, would hate him,” said Harry confidently.
“Perhaps I’m missing something or just being particularly stupid today but what exactly the fuck is it you’re planning to do?”
“Hijack Zahrani’s plan.”
“Surely we want to stop it?” asked the President in frustration.
“And then we’d have to stop them again the next time, and again and again. And then what would happen the time we didn’t stop them?”