William Johnstone: Out of the Ashes

Brady laughed along with his boss. “Well, sir, at least you’ve managed to keep your sense of humor.”

“Only by straining, Hal. And by keeping in mind that in a few months I will be out of this office. Now then, what glad tidings have you to offer?” He lifted his coffee cup to his lips.

“I believe certain factions within the U.S. are preparing to start a war between Russia and China.”

Fayers dropped cup and saucer to the carpet. “That’s a rotten joke, Hal!” He knelt to pick up the broken bits of chinaware.

“It isn’t a joke,” the CIA man said, opening his briefcase, spreading papers on the president’s desk. “You’d better sit down, sir.”

Behind his desk, his face ashen and suddenly shiny with sweat, Fayers asked, “When is… all this supposed to occur?”

Brady shrugged. “I don’t really know, but I would guess within a week. Maybe less. I just put together the remaining bits and pieces of evidence and supposition this morning.”

“Do you want the secretary in on this?”

“Not just yet. You listen first, sir.”

A half-hour later, President Fayers told his aide, “I don’t want to be disturbed the rest of the evening. I’m going to Camp David to rest and to spend the night. That’s all anybody needs to know.”

Sunday evening—Camp David

“Begging your pardon, Mr. President,” General Travee said, after recovering from his initial shock, “but I… just can’t believe it.”

“You’d better believe it, C.H.,” Brady said. “I’ve been working on this for months. In total secrecy. I just didn’t know who I could trust—not even you. But when the computers turned out this new evidence, I… had to come to the president.”

“Why didn’t you come to me before this, Hal?” Fayers asked.

“Because… I believe your staff—a few of them—are part of this. I don’t know which ones. And the secret service; there again, I don’t know which ones.”

The secretary of state, Rees, had flown to Camp David with Fayers. The Joint Chiefs had joined them an hour later, arriving by car. Barry Ringold, director of the FBI, had driven in, followed by Kelly of the CIA and Hal Brady.

“I resent the fact you did not come to me with this information, Brady,” Kelly said.

“There, again, sir,” Brady replied. “Who to trust?”

The two men glared at each other. But Kelly dropped his gaze after only a few seconds. Kelly was a political appointee; Brady was a career snoop with a lifetime spent in the shadows. Kelly was just a bit afraid of the man.

“Now, let me get this straight,” Ringold said. “You want us to believe there are some five to six thousand rebels—organized and trained and armed—in the U.S., ready to move against the government?”

“That is correct,” Brady said.

“They will be working with certain breakaway units of the armed forces?”

“That, too, is correct, sir—as far as it goes. But please bear in mind that many of those units—if not all of them—are not traitorous; they have been misinformed. They do not know the full scope of the story. Only bits and pieces. That is my theory.”

Ringold nodded. “All right. Now, Bull Dean and Colonel Adams are both alive and well, working with the rebels and the maverick units of the military? Goddamn it, Harold! Dean and Adams are buried out there in Arlington. What kind of fairy tale is this? What have you been smoking?”

Brady flushed, opening his mouth to tell the FBI director to go fuck himself, then thought better of it.

Ringold said, “And China is going to declare war on Russia… you say. But you haven’t, as yet, explained how or why that is going to occur.”

His composure restored, temper in check, Brady said, “May I do so at this time?”

“Please do, sir,” Ringold replied, with greatly exaggerated courtesy.

The two men did not like each other, had never liked each other, and would never, in the time left to them, like each other.

Brady looked at each man in the room before he replied, “Because I believe agents, posing as Red agents, will assassinate the Chinese premier and every member of his party when they visit the town of Fuchin next week.”

“And you believe that will prompt a nuclear war between the two countries?” Kelly asked.

“That will be the start of it. Yes. A missile will then be fired from a submarine lying just off the coast of Russia.” He limped to a huge wall map of the world and thumped a spot. “From right here. The sub will fire its missile, or missiles, probably, from just off the coast of Zapovednyy. I have reason to believe there will be more than one missile, single or multiple-warhead type. I also believe the cities of Harbin, Mutanchiang, and Haokang will be destroyed.”

“Why would Russia want to launch a nuke attack against China?” Ringold inquired. “Half the world might well be wiped out.”

“There are many reasons they’d like to,” Brady said. “But just as it will not be Red agents who kill the premier and his party—it will be Americans—it won’t be the Russians who fire the missiles. They will be American missiles fired from an American sub.”

General Travee had been studying the huge map. He said, “Fired from a Stealth-equipped sub, pulled in so close to the coast it would appear the missiles came from Russian soil.”

Brady sat down. “Correct.”

Admiral Divico had been unusually quiet, his eyes studying the map. “We’re in a box,” he said. “We’re in a damned box, unable to do anything about it.”

“What do you mean, Max?” Secretary Rees asked.

Ringold looked angrily at the admiral.

Brady smiled grimly.

“The small-class experimental sub that supposedly sank last year during a test run,” the admiral said.

“What about it?” the president asked. “That was one of our best-kept secrets. All civilian personnel on board. High-paid volunteers with no family, picked by…” he paused. “Who did pick that crew?”

“We did,” Kelly said glumly.

“Several members of the agency who,” Brady said, “have quietly and mysteriously left the city over the past thirty-six hours. No answer at their homes.”

“That doesn’t answer my original question,” Fayers said.

The admiral locked eyes with Brady. “I believe Mr. Brady is about to tell us that sub didn’t sink.”

“That is correct, Admiral. It was spotted last month by one of our operatives. He couldn’t be one hundred percent certain; but certain enough to report it to me. I had had strong suspicions about it all along. The agent was killed just hours after making that report. The sub was taking on supplies, from a ship belonging to—quote/unquote—a friendly nation.”

“Goddamn it!” Ringold said. “What small-class experimental sub?”

“It was top secret,” the admiral said. “Very few people knew anything about it.”

“Well… thanks just a whole hell of a lot!” Ringold blurted.

The admiral shrugged his total indifference as to what Ringold thought. “You didn’t have a need to know.” The admiral then added, “Shit!” Then he put together a string of expletives that made the Watergate tapes sound like children’s nursery rhymes.

“Where in the hell could a sub hide for this long?” Ringold asked.

“This sub could hide anywhere it wanted to hide,” Travee said. “It’s invisible. Sonar can’t detect it. But God, it was expensive to build. Greatest weapon invented in the past fifty years. Came along much faster than its airborne counterpart. For all the good it’s going to do us.”

“All right,” Secretary Rees said. “Do we or don’t we notify the Russians and the Chinese? Do we tell them what we know—what we suspect? Take a chance?”