Ramez Naam - Apex

Could Julie Stockton have been the target? Or one of the targets? The President seemed convinced. Pryce was reserving judgment.

The nation should have been focused on Westwood Baptist, on solidarity with the city of Houston, on the epic scale of that tragedy, on the clear evil of the PLF, on the President’s message that there would be no compromise, no negotiation with these terrorists.

Instead the videos had come. The leaks.

A video of Rangan Shankari, one of the Nexus inventors, being interrogated, electroshocked, waterboarded, had leaked. It was gruesome stuff, all shown from his point of view.

That alone, Stockton could have weathered. Shankari was a convicted felon, guilty of violations of the Chandler act.

But then another video had been posted, just hours later. This one showed Nexus children in cure experiments, being subjected to aversive therapy as an attempt to flush Nexus from their system, being disciplined by their guards when they tried to bite or claw their way free.

Pryce had winced at that. How could you possibly explain that to the public? And when it was leaked along with plans for long term residence centers for Nexus-afflicted children? Plans that were already being referred to online as “concentration camps”?

However historically blind the comparison, it was resonating.

Text appeared on her slate, letters in green across the glossy black.

[Kaori: DHS IA just got in. Holtzman’s dead. Imagery follows.]

Pictures came next. Pryce opened one, let her eyes scan across the scene, then opened another, and another.

Damn it.

She looked up. From the wallscreen she heard Holtzman say, “PLF is a lie… you created.” A flash of lightning clearly illuminated Maximilian Barnes. Then the image went dead.

“It’s a fake,” John Stockton said, his voice a masterpiece of barely controlled anger. “It’s absurd.”

“Absolutely, Mr President,” a man replied from across the room. Greg Chase. Stockton’s Press Secretary. Trim and ram-rod straight in a sleek grey suit and a healthy tan with the matching blond hair. Never a thing out of place. Always the perfect talking points, whatever policy you handed him. She was never sure whether she loathed Chase or was happy that Stockton had someone like him to do that job.

“Find Holtzman and Barnes,” the President said, “get them in front of the camera…”

“Holtzman’s dead, Mr President,” Pryce cut in.

John Stockton stopped mid-sentence and turned towards her.

“What?”

“I just got the word.” She shook her head, clicked on the image again, pointed her slate at the wall screen, and projected it for them all to see.

“The scene resembles the video we just saw quite closely.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chase’s wheels start spinning, saw him start reaching for an angle, a talking point, as he always did.

“Analysis,” Stockton said.

Pryce pursed her lips. “Two options. One, the video’s legit. Two, it’s a fake, but made by someone who was at the scene. Probably the killer. Probably someone deep inside DHS.”

Stockton leaned back, visibly trying to absorb that, weighing the possibility that some unknown actor had infiltrated the Department of Homeland Security and killed the man who’d saved his life… or that Barnes, a man he’d known for almost a decade, had done it.

“These allegations,” Stockton said. “That we created the PLF…”

“Ridiculous,” Greg Chase said.

“There’s something else you should see, Mr President,” Pryce said. “Scan forward, past the video. There are pictures of documents, what appear to be memos from 32 and 33, the Jameson administration, when you were Veep. And diary entries, purportedly from Warren Becker.”

The deceased Warren Becker, she didn’t add. Warren Becker had been a director in Enforcement Division of the ERD. He’d planned the mission that had dangled Kaden Lane as bait in front of Su-Yong Shu, had tried to plant him as a mole inside her lab. He’d pushed for the snatch and grab to retrieve Lane and his operative from Thailand after things had gone wrong. And then things had gone even worse.

Warren Becker had suffered a lethal heart attack not long after, an apparent victim of stress. Wasn’t that convenient? It had prevented his testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Homeland Security after the debacles in Thailand. It had shielded her from embarrassment. It had shielded the President.

Why didn’t that bother me more? she wondered.

Pryce went on. “Those docs purport to show that the PLF was created as a false flag, authorized to stage missions in the US and abroad, sway domestic and international opinion to support bans on emerging technological threats.”

Stockton scanned forward, his eyes moving, pausing the video, then advancing, replaying, his lips moving, shaking his head. Finally, he looked up. “This has to be a fake. This isn’t who we are. We don’t do this.”

Pryce said nothing.

Stockton frowned.

“Chase,” he said, his eyes still looking at Pryce. “You can go.”

“Mr President…” his Press Secretary started to protest.

“I’ll need you later, Greg,” Stockton said, more gently. “Just give me a minute with Carolyn here.”

Chase swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Pryce waited as Greg Chase left the secured suite, still, centered in herself.

Stillness was a weapon. Composure was a tool.

The door clicked.

“You know something,” the President said.

She shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Then you suspect something,” he said.

Pryce held his eyes with her own. Powerful men withered under her stare. Stockton had told her that once. He’d rattled off a list of generals, senators, directors of three letter agencies, and foreign heads of state that he claimed couldn’t hold her gaze.

He was looking at her now, expectantly.

Pryce spoke. “Only that it’s not impossible, Mr President.”

“We don’t do this sort of thing, Carolyn,” he repeated.

“There are precedents,” she told him. “We’ve run false flags before. We’ve had blowback.”

“I’m the President,” Stockton said. “I’d know. You’d know.”

Pryce pressed her lips together firmly. “In ’62, the Joint Chiefs approved Operation Northwoods. The plan called for staging a series of terrorist attacks on US soil, hijacking at least one US passenger plane, and possibly staging the shoot-down of another. All would be blamed on Cuban operatives, as a way to justify invading Cuba. Each of the Joint Chiefs was on board. The only reason it didn’t happen is that Kennedy vetoed it.” She paused. “Maybe I’m not the only one who knows her history around here. Maybe someone didn’t want to be vetoed.”

Stockton stared at her. He shook his head. Then he pressed a button on the secure phone before him.

“Yes, Mr President?” his secretary said immediately.

“Get me Barnes,” Stockton said.

“I have Acting Director Barnes on the line, Mr President,” Stockton’s secretary said, less than a minute later.

“Barnes,” Stockton said.

Pryce watched and listened.

“Mr President,” Barnes’s voice answered.

If there was anyone Pryce considered more capable of using stillness as a weapon than she was, it was Maximilian Barnes. But just now, the man’s voice, normally completely cool, sounded husky, full of emotion.

Was it real? Or an act?

“I’ve just seen the video,” he said. “I’m innocent, sir. I’m also at your disposal. If you want my resignation, it’s yours.”

“Barnes,” the President answered him. “Where are you now?”

“I’m at my family ranch, sir. I came out here when the evacuation was issued for Zoe.”