Andrew Britton - The American

His fingers tapped out an irregular beat on top of the document as he considered. It would be a shame if the report turned out to be worthless after all. There was a wealth of knowledge at his fingertips. Page four told him that there would be thirty-six cars in the motorcade. Pages five through ten gave him the order of the vehicles, and a circled paragraph on page seven informed Vanderveen that the sixth vehicle in the procession would contain the president of the United States. Brenneman’s Cadillac would be neatly tucked in between a GMC Suburban carrying four Secret Service agents and a backup limousine. The fourteenth vehicle would carry the Italian prime minister, and the twenty-first would contain the French president.

Despite what he had told the Director while deep in the caves, Will did not think it likely that he would manage to include all three of the targets in the blast radius. In fact, he had come to realize that it was almost an impossibility. The separation between the vehicles was just too great.

At the same time, the devastation that would be unleashed by a 3,000-pound bomb on a crowded city street was completely unpredictable. Even Will Vanderveen, with his intricate knowledge of blast theory and physics, could not be certain of the final result.

He was looking forward to finding out, though.

Vanderveen walked toward the entrance to the barn and stared out across the fields. He absently studied the tree line in the distance and wondered if that would be a reasonable place to bury Milbery’s body and conceal her vehicle.

TYSON’S CORNER, VIRGINIA.CAPE ELIZABETH.HANOVER COUNTY

The Terrorist Threat Integration Center first started life at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but was moved to a state-of-the-art facility in Tyson’s Corner when construction on the new building was completed in spring 2004. As one of many changes made within the American intelligence community following the disastrous events of 9/11, the joint venture was initially staffed by more than 125 people from the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, and the State Department. Although the people now assigned to the TTIC have full access to the resources of their parent agencies, the main goal of the facility is to sort incoming information into usable intelligence, as opposed to actually going out and gathering credible information in the first place.

It was this distinction that was troubling Naomi Kharmai as she slumped in her chair and stared at the pile of maps and papers lying before her. Despite the fact that the full measure of the center’s resources had been dedicated to the search for Will Vanderveen, very little progress had been made in the past two days. She had first realized how difficult it would be during her own preliminary research, when she discovered that 381 farms under 180 acres had been sold the previous year in Hanover County alone. And that was just one out of the 135 counties in the state of Virginia. The worst part of all was the limits on their search parameters: if Ryan was mistaken about any part of Vanderveen’s intentions, they could very well be looking in the wrong place entirely.

For the third time in the last hour, she swiveled in her seat to look for Ryan. The room was filled with people hovering over computer screens, talking into telephones, standing over fax machines, and generally trying their best to do the impossible: find one man who could be anywhere in three states with a combined population of more than 13 million people.

She saw Deputy Director Harper standing across the room in deep discussion with Patrick Landrieu, the director of the TTIC. Naomi couldn’t be sure, but it looked like they were arguing about something. That’s not a good sign, she thought to herself as she continued to scan the room for Ryan.

She finally gave up and tried to focus on her map of northern Virginia. Taking another sip of lukewarm coffee, she stared through bleary eyes at the myriad of roads. After much debate, she had finally decided to focus her efforts on the six counties directly north of Richmond: Caroline, Hanover, Spotsylvania, Stafford, Prince William, and Fairfax. Her specific interest was I-95 running north into Washington, and she had branched out her search according to Ryan’s suggestions: anything more than 5 miles away from the interstate had been immediately removed from the list, along with any property larger than 180 acres.

What she was left with was a staggering list of 564 farms sold in six counties in the past three months. Naomi shook her head in disgust as she lifted a thirty-page fax from the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation, only to slap it back down a second later without reading a word. She was about to reach for another sheet when she realized that someone had slumped down in the chair next to her.

Her eyes opened wide when she saw the state he was in. “Oh my God, Ryan! Where have you been? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

He ignored her as he reached over to grab the coffee from her desk. “Anything come up yet?”

Her eyes drifted over his clothes — the same jeans and T-shirt he had been wearing the day before. His face was covered with at least a week’s worth of stubble, and his eyes were red-rimmed and raw. He looked exhausted. “Nothing yet. Sixty-seven people are working on this, and that’s just in this room. I’m starting to think it’s impossible.”

He snorted and said, “Of course it’s impossible. The whole thing is a huge fucking waste of time.” She watched as he drained the Styrofoam cup and tossed it onto the desk in front of him. “You don’t know this bastard like I do, Naomi. He could be anywhere. He could be sitting in this room, for all we fucking know. He’s just too damn good at what he does.”

His voice had gotten louder with each passing syllable. When he stopped talking, Kharmai was aware of the silence around her. She looked up to see that the deputy director had crossed the room and was standing right behind them. Harper leaned down to whisper something in Ryan’s ear, and she watched as both men walked out of the room a few moments later.

With a heavy sigh, she turned her attention back to the fax pages in her hand and tried to block out the cacophony around her that soon returned to its elevated pitch.

Jonathan Harper stood outside the glass doors of the CT watch center and jabbed a finger into the younger man’s chest. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Ryan? I needed you here four hours ago. This was your idea, remember? What’s the problem?”

“I was wrong, John,” he snapped. “It’s all bullshit. We’re not doing anything. We’re just sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop-”

“That’s all we can do at this point. We can’t exactly go house to house and ask for William Vanderveen, can we?”

Kealey pushed a hand through his lank hair. “No, I…” He shook his head as he searched for the right words. “Jesus, I don’t know. I just think we could be doing more.”

Harper’s voice dropped as he reached out to squeeze the younger man’s shoulder. “Look, you made some good points yesterday, threw out some good suggestions, but I still need you. I listened to what you had to say because I trust your judgment. I know it’s too passive for your taste, but I think this could work. In any case, it looks like our best option for the moment.” He saw that his words hadn’t changed anything. It was time to take a shot in the dark. “Something else is bothering you. Katie?”

When Kealey looked away, Harper knew he had it right. “What happened?”

There was a long pause. “She walked out on me at the hotel, went back to the Cape. She said she couldn’t handle it…”

“She’ll come around, Ryan.” The dark gray eyes came up to meet his own. “She knows the deal. I went through the same thing with Julie a thousand times when I was in the field. The sooner we finish it, the sooner you can get back to her. That’s how you have to look at it.”