Stephen Hunter - Dead Zero

What the fuck do I do? he wondered. Pray for a miracle?

“All right,” said Swagger, “I got a last little card to play.”

THE ROSE GARDEN

FREEDOM MEDAL PRESENTATION CEREMONY

1922 HOURS

How lovely it was. The flowers seemed endless, their blossoms bright even in the declining light of late summer. A kind of ambrosia filled the air, and there was just a tint of pink glow over the looming silhouette of the Executive Office Building.

The America that counted was here. The president, so charismatic that he even outshone the glowing Zarzi, his wife; the vice president, his wife; and all the others in suits and uniforms: chairmen, joint chiefs of staff; the service chairmen; the director of the Central Intelligence Agency; a dozen powerful senators, some even from the other party in the spirit of ecumenicalism; the cream of the liberal punditocracy from the great papers of the East Coast; the television heads, hair shellacked unto perfection; a variety of Washington-style women, all of whom seemed to have that tawny elegance over slender legs; and an audience consisting of dragooned staffers from the Administration, a sea of littles well primed to clamor and go wow for the TV cameras. All were gathered here to sell the world an important message: this man counts. This man we trust. This is the man who will bring us peace. This is the man we can work with. This is the man who understands. He is, well and truly, our man in Kabul.

He bowed as the president slid the ribbon necklace over his head, and he felt the weight of the huge gold disk added to his neck.

Oh the indignities to arrive at this moment: wanded, x-rayed, touched, even probed. Subjected to chemical tests, sniffed by dogs and men, touched again, touched yet again. But he had signed up for that; it was the price of the moment.

The president finished, speaking so eloquently as was his gift, of a vision of a world without IEDs and young men of any faith bleeding out in the dirt of a far-off country, and then stepped back to hand the lectern over to the Glorious Zarzi for some brief remarks.

FBI INTERROGATION SUITES

HOOVER BUILDING

PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

WASHINGTON, DC

1923 HOURS

They all looked at him.

“Let’s hear it,” said Nick.

“I want you to run a search, Google, or super FBI Google, some high-tech, high-speed data search on the following. See what links there are between our friend Dixson in there thinking he’s a hero and the director of National Intelligence, that guy Ted Hollister.”

“Why?”

“Dixson’s clearly in on this, whatever this is. But he only knows so much and nothing more. He’s told us everything and he thinks he’s a hero. And he ain’t heavy enough to go beyond what he’s done. He knows about the contractors and the policy and that’s it. I got an inkling from something Hollister said at that meeting he might know a little bit more than we think about all this.”

“Swagger,” said Susan, “Hollister was long gone from the Agency before Jared was even recruited.”

“Please. I can’t explain, ticktock, ticktock, time’s wasting. Please: check it out. He said something he shouldn’t have said at the meeting. Let me just see if there’s a link.”

Nick nodded. “Youth movement, prove your worth,” he ordered.

Young people stirred and hustled. Time crept by. Up on the monitors, from a dozen angles, the U.S. Army band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the Rose Garden, and men and women stood with hands on hearts or at perfect salute in tribute to their country.

“Prelim,” said Chandler, reentering. “Jesus Christ, turns out Dixson grew up in Braintree, Massachusetts, where Hollister lived when he was teaching at Harvard, same street, two houses apart. Dixson’s father, Roger, was at Harvard and Harvard Law with Hollister in the sixties. They were both on Law Review . Dixson later got his master’s at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. International Law, taught by none other than his dad’s old friend, classmate, and neighbor Ted Hollister. Immediately after, he joined the Agency-”

“Yes!” said Susan, in a squirt of zeal. “Yes! In those days you only got in with the recommendation of a senior Agency official or ex-official. Someone in the extended family. Jared Dixson was Ted Hollister’s legacy, as we call them in the shop, protected by Hollister’s rep and charisma. Dixson wasn’t working for Jack Collins, not really. He was working for Ted Hollister.”

“Chandler, sit down, catch a rest. Someone else under the age of thirty, call Secret Service White House right this second, see if Hollister’s at the event, he should be.”

“That old man’s in this up to his eyeballs,” said Susan. “And, ahem, allow Princess Perfection to point out to the monster Swagger, he’s not Agency.”

“Once again, you kick my ass, Okada-san.”

“He’s there,” came the call.

“We ought to talk to him. Now, not tomorrow, not next week. Now, ” said Bob.

“We should,” said Nick.

Memphis rose, yelling at Chandler, “Get an SUV outside fast, clear us at the White House. I don’t know how this is shaping up but I think I might need a sniper. Get me a goddamned sniper fast.”

“Nick, they let SWAT go this morning. They’re all home in Virginia resting from the gunfight in Georgetown. I could get you one from DC metro in about twenty minutes.”

On all the screens, the president of the United States came to the podium.

“Hey,” said Swagger, pointing at Cruz, “there’s the best sniper in the world.”

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

1850 HOURS

The six bronze men were gigantic. They struggled with the flag, its three primary colors flapping in a wind, cross-illuminated by many beams of light that illustrated the whole piece, the ripples of muscle, the rents in the metal clothing, the hobnails in the worn combat boots, the twelve-foot rifles, all in the muted, fading green of military glory, its tarnish eroded by the ages.

“Warriors,” said Professor Khalid. “You must honor their bravery.”

“Infidels,” said Dr. Faisal. “Brigands, crusaders, invaders, rapists, and scum.”

“You haven’t learned a thing, have you?” said Khalid.

“The Koran contains all the information I need to know. Other than science, the rest is delusional self-hypnosis on the part of the enemy.”

“Even now, can’t you control your enmity?” said Bilal.

They leaned against the van, which was in the parking lot of the Marine Corps memorial on a hill overlooking the river and the spotlit city that was Washington, DC. If anything, it was more beautiful and beguiling on this warm, comfortable, clear evening than any other. Above, pinwheels and novas blinked across cosmic nothingness, and below the city was a shimmering plain of white buildings, flags flying on many of them, the whole forming a kind of horizontal fusion of light and dark, patterns broken here and there by something of specific edge and shape, such as the spire in the center, and beyond it, the vast dome.

“Bah,” said Faisal. “He talks too much. He enjoys his little epiphanies, his ironies. He is vain and prissy. He has a Western mind. He is not one of us. He thinks too much. He has no internal discipline. He has not learned the fundamental lesson, which is submission.”

“You call it vanity, I call it individuality. Until we learn to value individuality, we will lag behind the West in all things and-”

“If you kill them all, there is nothing to lag behind,” said Faisal.

A few other vehicles dotted the lot, and a U.S. Park Service police car had passed through a few seconds ago, noting nothing, not stopping, and it had then disappeared toward Rosslyn, a banal assortment of skyscrapers that loomed behind them. Up at the monument, a few kids scrambled around, supervised loudly by a father.