Michael Walsh - Early Warning

Even so, Tyler had nearly blown one of the nation’s most valuable resources-the Central Security Service’s Branch 4 clandestine operation, and in particular the agent known as Devlin. And then there was Bill Hartley’s suicide, which had left him without a single Senator he could either trust or reliably bribe. The presidency thing was a lot harder than it looked. No wonder Caesar had nudged the Roman Republic toward the Empire.

“Sir?” Manuel’s question brought him out of his fog.

“Yes, Manuel?”

“Will there be anything else this evening?”

Tyler looked at his manservant; funny how here, in the heart of the world’s greatest democracy, the president still had man-servants. He was about to say something when the phone buzzed softly. That was Manuel’s signal to leave. He bowed and backed out of the room, closing the door and leaving the president alone with whatever problem was now announcing itself.

It was Millie Dhouri, his private secretary, calling from the Oval Office. “Yes, Millie, what is it?”

“Mr. President, I have Director Seelye on the line. He says it’s urgent.”

Tyler wished that Manuel had made it a double. Calls from Seelye could never be good news. “Patch him through, please.”

“Yes, sir.” There was a short pause, with a faint crackle on the line, as the security of the connection was verified and the scrambling devices activated, and then Lt. General Armond “Army” Seelye-the Director of the National Security Agency-came on the line.

Tyler spoke first: “How bad is it?”

Seelye did not seem surprised in the least by the president’s opening gambit. “Unknown at this time. Apparently, there’s been a major security breach at NYPD CTU. They were blinded for several minutes by a coordinated DoS attack, most likely Chinese in origin.”

“The Chinks are always doing that sort of thing,” Tyler interrupted. “They’ve been in our shorts for years: at DoD, the Agency, even the power grid and water supply. I thought you guys were supposed to be doing something about that.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Seelye’s voice; even scrambled, the sting was audible. “We are, sir. But as you know, despite the reorganizations post 9/11, interservice agency cooperation is still a reformer’s fantasy and a bureaucrat’s nightmare. And, in any case, NYPD acts alone.”

That much was true. The New York Police Department had become a stand-alone, off-the-shelf operation, completely independent of the nation’s intelligence establishment. How exactly that had happened was unclear, but it didn’t really matter at this point. The clannish Irish-and every cop on the NYPD was at heart Irish, no matter what his or her ethnicity-were deeply suspicious of the Washington outsiders and, after Atta & Co. punched two huge smoking holes in the ground of lower Manhattan, were in no mood to trust Langley, Fort Meade, or the Pentagon ever again.

“Who’s in command of the CTU these days?” asked Tyler.

“Captain Byrne, Francis X. Byrne,” replied Seelye. “Old-school to the end. Father was a cop, KIA. Plenty of write-ups and citations. He’s also been best buds with the commish since they were young detectives together. He’s bulletproof.”

“So we know nothing about their operation.”

“Not really, no sir.”

Tyler sighed. What the hell was the point of having multiple intelligence agencies under the vague aegis of the Director of National Intelligence and the cumbersome Department of Homeland Security? The whole thing was a giant cluster fuck. If he survived the fall campaign, it was something he was going to have to fix. Especially when a city cop shop could tell all of them to go pound sand.

The hell of it was, the CTU was probably the best-equipped counterterrorism operation in the world, even better than the Israelis’. They had the latest equipment, state-of-the-art computers, and the top techies, including a cadre of former hackers who had been persuaded to join the force in lieu of a stretch at Auburn or Dannemora. By contrast, the FBI was making do with the un-networked equivalents of the old Trash 80s and Kaypros, and even the vaunted NSA was still behind the WYSIWYG curve on some of its older terminals. It was a wonder, Tyler reflected, that given the determination of America ’s enemies to strike and strike again that there were any buildings standing in Washington and New York at all.

“…and there’s a reason for that, which goes beyond their insularity,” Seelye was saying.

“What’s that?” Talking to Seelye exasperated Tyler, but given their shared past, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Seelye stayed until he quit, or until Devlin asked for his resignation. That was part of the deal, too.

“Byrne’s brother, Tom.”

“Go on.”

“As in Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Thomas A. Byrne.”

“Oh, shit. Don’t tell me that asshole is our guy’s brother.”

“That’s what they say the ‘A’ stands for, yes sir.”

How and why Tom Byrne was still with the Bureau, not to mention how and why he had risen as far as he had, was one of Washington ’s great mysteries. Not since Hoover himself had a SAC been as roundly and as cordially despised as Tom Byrne, and yet he had continued his unimpeded rise through the ranks. “Haven’t you got anything on him?”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment as Seelye chose his words. “Plenty of stories, mostly about something that went down years ago. Something that seems to have involved both Byrne brothers. But if anybody knows anything, they’re either not talking or sleeping with the fishes. Which is weird, because…”

“Because?” prompted Tyler.

“Because the two brothers hate each other’s guts. They’re like two guys, each with a loaded gun at the other one’s head, knowing that no matter who pulls the trigger first, they both get their heads blown off.”

Tyler saw the outlines of a possible play. As Seelye had told him in the middle of the Skorzeny business, he really was getting the hang of the intelligence game. “Sort of like you and me, in other words.”

“You could put it that way, yes, sir,” Seelye said.

“Not to mention Devlin.”

“Let’s not, if you don’t mind, Mr. President.”

“You don’t like him very much, do you?” asked Tyler. “Is it because he’s hard to like?” Tyler was still smarting from his confrontations with Devlin.

“It’s not that he’s hard to like,” replied Seelye. “He’s impossible to like.” He wondered if the president would get the reference to the original Manchurian Candidate and immediately decided he would not.

He did. “The first version really was much better,” said Tyler. “Did you know I was one of the Chinese workmen who laid the track on this stretch?” This president was always full of surprises.

“Nonetheless, Maryland is a beautiful state.”

“So is Ohio, for that matter-so level with me. Where’s Devlin?”

The thought crossed Seelye’s mind that somehow Tyler had found out about his true relationship with the man known as Devlin-how he had in fact raised him after his parents’ death in 1985, trained him to be the perfect operative, kept him off the grid and in his pocket until…until the Skorzeny business came out into the open. The only other person who knew was Howard Rubin, the former Secretary of Defense, but he had retired to his farm in Maryland six months ago. Seelye and Rubin had never been particularly friendly, but he felt for the man when Rubin had called him up one afternoon to tell him of his impending resignation. “When a couple of guys with a suitcase nuke can take down a whole country,” Rubin had wondered, “what’s the point of a Defense Department?” Especially one that, for reasons of political cowardice, wouldn’t fight back.