John Thompson - Armageddon Conspiracy

“Anything interesting?” Jenkins asked, trying to mask her anxiety.

The man told her that the earlier pictures seemed to show nothing at all, but several from the past week showed figures.

“What time were they taken?” Jenkins asked.

He said they were taken shortly after sunrise and just before sunset. The infrared shot showed what seemed to be three figures—possibly two inside the cottage and one outside in the trees.

She thanked the man for his quick response and ordered her own copies. She hung up then printed copies of Kosinsky’s searches and read each of them more closely. She saw that Fred Wofford was the president of Biddle’s company and along with Biddle was on the national board of the New Jerusalem Fellowship. Betty Dowager was an executive assistant at the same company, and Owen Smythe had been a portfolio manager there. Kosinsky’s search on the New Jerusalem Fellowship described a church dedicated to the most radical and fundamental form of Protestantism with a focus on the approaching End of Days.

She thought again about DeVito’s memo, saw how the dots seemed to connect, and suddenly she absolutely needed that cigarette. She rushed out of her office, went through security, and took the elevator to the lobby. She spotted the glow of a cigarette outside the revolving doors, the smoker an African American woman who worked for the Border Patrol. “Can I bum one?” she asked as she came barreling out.

The woman threw her a resentful glance, but after a hesitation reached into her purse and brought out a pack of Marlboro Light 100’s. Jenkins snatched one then pulled out the gold-plated Zippo she always carried whether she was smoking or not. She lit the cigarette, took a long, greedy drag then exhaled. “Thanks,” she said as the smoke streamed from her mouth.

“No problem,” the woman said, though her eyes suggested the opposite.

Jenkins turned and stared out at the dark Newark streets as she smoked. The nicotine hit her system and calmed her, while underneath she could feel her brain starting to crank. She winced at the thought of once again bringing Prescott Biddle’s name to her superiors, but then she quashed her fear.

The skeptics would ignore everything—the money, the satellite photos, the multitude of bodies, and the interrelationships of the people. Coincidence they’d say of the New Jerusalem Fellowship and Genesis Advisors connections. They’d insist the figures in the satellite photos were gardeners or houseguests. Jenkins no longer gave a damn. Her instincts were rock solid.

She recalled a 60 Minutes segment she’d seen a year earlier, where the leader of a radical Christian group calmly explained that his goal was to create strife in the Mideast “in order to hasten the coming of Armageddon.”

A person would have to be insane to want that, Jenkins thought, but Biddle’s church embraced that craziness. She thought about the Turner murder/suicide. What if it hadn’t been a psychotic tragedy but a bizarre sacrifice intended to protect a secret? A secret involving eight hundred and fifty million dollars? Protect it from whom? Possibly DeVito? If this line of thinking was right, how did Brent Lucas and Owen Smythe figure in? Could they be dupes or scapegoats intended to divert attention from the real reason for the theft?

She shook her head, still wanting to poke holes in DeVito’s logic because politically, it was poison. Then suddenly everything clicked, and the whole thing hit her: POTUS! The President’s visit was tomorrow!

Jenkins had a good half-inch of unsmoked cigarette, but she flicked it away and started back into the building.

“If you gonna bum one, at least smoke the damn thing,” the woman snapped.

Jenkins ignored her. She had far bigger things on her mind. She was thinking that tonight, immediately, regardless of consequence, she had to pull together a group to find out if there were terrorists on Prescott Biddle’s estate.

And then in the next second she finally understood why DeVito and Kosinsky had said nothing about the satellite photos.

“Holy Shit!” she exclaimed, and she broke into a sprint and headed toward the elevator doors.

LONG ISLAND, JULY 1

FRED LUCAS SAT IN THE passenger seat of Kosinsky’s truck and scowled at the thousands of headlights on the Long Island Expressway. Nine thirty at night, yet traffic crawled in both directions.

“Long Island,” he groused as Kosinsky pulled off the expressway and stopped at the pumps of a self-serve gas station. “I’d rather live in Afghanistan.”

Kosinsky shrugged. “I’ve lived here all my life,” he said. “You get used to it.”

“You’re nuts.”

Kosinsky gave a wry smile. “I’ve had that thought a few times tonight.”

Fred grunted in agreement. He hated what was about to happen, but then he thought how some Arab shitbirds had killed Harry. Now, tonight, they were going up against the same kind of people. He didn’t think he’d want to keep on living if something happened to Brent.

He opened his door and climbed out of the pickup. An empty five-gallon can sat in the truck bed. He took it out, unscrewed the top, and waited while Kosinsky ran his credit card through the pump.

“Regular or high test?” Kosinsky shouted over the freeway noise.

Fred looked up and smiled. “Like it matters,” he yelled. He had a fireman’s bias that most cops were full of crap, but this was a guy he could get along with, even one he could like.

He squeezed the handle and heard gas stream into the can. Thirty years putting fires out made it impossible to do this with an easy conscience. Still, he’d been over it in his mind and knew this was probably the only way. Besides, it was for Brent—and Harry. Suck it up you old bastard, he told himself.

NEWARK, NJ, JULY 1

AGENT JENKINS SLAMMED DOWN HER phone, grabbed a tissue, and wiped her oily forehead at the hairline. She needed a shower, and her stomach was a seething mess. For the past thirty minutes she’d been intermittently calling DeVito’s house phone and cell phones, ditto for Kosinsky’s. There were many possible explanations for why neither of them answered. They might be bowling, out to dinner, or at a movie. They might not be together, only she knew they were.

“Shit,” she whispered, as she finally made her decision. She dialed a Washington number then put her right hand under her nose, sniffing the residual nicotine on her fingers. God, what she’d give to light up right now.

After two rings, the night duty officer answered. She identified herself and said she needed to be patched through to whichever Executive Assistant Director was on duty. As he was no doubt instructed to do—because EADs did not like being disturbed in the evening—the duty officer asked several times whether a lower level person couldn’t suffice. After his fifth attempt to sidetrack the call, he put her through.

Jenkins heard the tremor in her voice, but at least she knew this particular EAD to be forceful and decisive. She told him without preamble about the missiles, the stolen money, the lengthening chain of murders that appeared loosely associated with Prescott Biddle, the satellite photos, and her conclusion that a raid on Biddle’s estate was required to prevent an assassination attempt on POTUS the following day.

To his credit the EAD did not mention chain-of-command issues or ask her why she wasn’t calling her titular boss in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. “Agent Jenkins, do you have any idea of the shit storm this will create?”

“Yessir,” she said.

There was a long silence before the EAD spoke again. “I’m sure you’ve considered the impact on your career if this proves unsubstantiated?”