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Death, in this forsaken place, could come in countless forms. Geologist Charles Brophy had endured the savage splendor of this terrain for years, and yet nothing could prepare him for a fate as barbarous and unnatural as the one about to befall him. As Brophy’ s four huskies pulled his sled of geologic sensing equipment across the tundra, the dogs suddenly slowed, looking skyward. “What is it, girls?” Brophv asked, stepping off the sled. Beyond the gathering storm clouds, a twin-rotor transport helicopter arched in low, hugging the glacial peaks with military dexterity. That ‘s odd, he thought. He never saw helicopters this far north. The aircraft landed fifty yards away, kicking up a stinging spray of granulated snow. His dogs whined, looking wary. When the chopper doors slid open, two men descended. They were dressed in full-weather whites, armed with rifles, and moved toward Brophy with urgent intent. “Dr. Brophy?” one called. The geologist was baffled. “How did you know my name? Who are you?” t “Take out your radio, please.” “I’m sorry?” ‘ “Just do it.” Bewildered, Brophy pulled his radio from his parka. “We need you to transmit an emergency communiquš. Decrease your radio frequency to one hundred kilohertz.” One hundred kilohertz? Brophy felt utterly lost. Nobody can receive anything that low. “Has there been an accident?” The second man raised his rifle and pointed it at Brophv’ s head. “There’s no time to explain. Just do it.” Trembling, Brophy adjusted his transmission frequency. The first man now handed him a note card with a few lines tved on it. “Transmit this message. Now. Brophy looked at the card- “I don’t understand. This information is incorrect I didn’t—” The man pressed his rifle hard against the geologist’s temple. Brophy’ s voice was shaking as he transmitted the bizarre message. “Good,” the first man said. “Now get yourself and your dogs into the chopper.” At gunpoint, Brophy maneuvered his reluctant dogs and sled up a skid ramp into the cargo bay. As soon as they were settled, the chopper lifted off, turning westward. “Who the hell are you!” Brophy demanded, breaking a sweat inside his park& And whas was the meaning of that message!” The men said nothing. As the chopper gained altitude, the wind tore through the open door. Brophy’ s four huskies,still rigged to the loaded sled, were whimpering now.
“At least close the door,” Brophy demanded. “Can’t you see mv dogs are frightened” The men did not respond. As the chopper rose to four thousand feet, it banked steeply out over a series of ice chasms and crevasses. Suddenly, the men stood. Without a word, they gripped the heavily laden sled and pushed it out the open door. Brophv watched in horror as his dogs scrambled in vain against the enormous weight. In an instant the aninmals disappeared, dragged howling out of the chopper. Brophy was already on his feet screaming when the men grabbed him. They hauled him to thedoor. Numb with fear, Brophy swung his fists, trying to fend off the powerful hands pushing him outward. It was no use. Moments later he was tumbling tov.ard the chasms below.
I
Toulos Restaurant, adjacent to Capitol Hill, boasts a politically incorrect menu of baby veal and horse carpacclo, making it an iromc hotspot for the quintessential Washingtonian power breakfast. This morning Toulos was busy—a cacophony of chinking silverware, espresso machines, and cellphone conversations. The maitre d’ was sneaking a sip of his morning Bloody Mary when the woman entered. He turned with a practiced smile. “Good morning,” he said. “May I help you?” The woman was attractive, in her mid-thirties, wearing gray, pleated flannel pants, conservative flats, and an ivory Laura Ashley blouse. Her posture was straight—chin raised ever soslightly—not arrogant, just strong. The woman’s hair was light brown and fashioned in Washington’s most popular style-the “anchor-woman” -a lush feathering, curled under at the shoulders... long enough to be sexy, but short enough to remind you she was probably smarter than you. “I’m a little late,” the woman said, her voice unassuming. “I have a breakfast meeting with Senator Sexton.” The maitre d’ felt an unexpected tingle of nerves. Senator Sedgewick Sexton. The senator was a regular here and currently one of the country’s most famous men. Last week, having swept all twelve Republican primaries on Super Tuesday, the senator was virtually guaranteed his party’ s nomination for President of the United States. Many believed the senator had a superb chance of stealing the White House from the embattled President next fall. Lately Sexton’s face seemed to be on every national magazine, lus campaign slogan plastered ail across America: “Stop spending.Start mending.’ “Senator Sexton is in his booth,” the maitre d’ said. “And you are” “Rachel Sexton. His daughter.” How foolish of me, he thought The resemblance was quite apparent. The woman had the senator’s penetrating eyes and refined carriage—that polished air of resilient nobility. Clearly the senator’s classic good looks had not skipped
generations, although Rachel Sexton seemed to carry her blessings with a grace and humility her father could learn from.
probably carry him to the White House. On cue, his eyes would well with tears and then, an instant later, they would clear, opening a window to an impassioned Soul, extending a bond of trust to all. It’s all about trust, her father always said
. The senator had lost Rachel’s years ago, but he was quickly gaining the country’s. “I have a proposition for you,” Senator Sexton said. “Let me guess,” Rachel replied, attempting to refortify her position. “Some prominent divorce looking for a young wife?” “Don’t kid yourself, honey. You’re not that young anymore.” Rachel felt the familiar shrinking sensation that so often accompanied meetings with her father. “I want to throw you a life raft,” he said. “I wasn’t aware I was drowning.” “You’re not. The President is. You should jump ship before it’s too late.” “Haven’t we had this conversation?” “Think about your future, Rachel. You can come work for me.” “I hope that’s not why you asked me to breakfast.” The senator’s veneer of calm broke ever so slightly. “Rachel, can’t you see that your working for him reflects badly on me. And on my campaign.” Rachel sighed. She and her father had been through this. “Dad, I don’t work for the President. I haven’t even met the President. I work in Fairfax, for God’s sake!” “Politics is perception, Rachel. It appears you work for the President.” Rachel exhaled, trying to keep her cool. “I worked too hard to get this job, Dad. I’m not quitting.” The senator’s eyes narrowed. “You know, sometimes your selfish attitude really–” “Senator Sexton?” A reporter materialized beside the table. Sexton’s demeanor thawed instantly. Rachel groaned and took a croissant from the basket on the table. “Ralph Sneeden,” the reporter said. “Washington Post. May I ask you a few questions?” The senator smiled, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. “My pleasure, Ralph. Just make it quick. I don’t want my coffee getting cold.” The reporter laughed on cue. “Of course, sir.” He pulled out a minirecorder and turned it on. “Senator, your television ads call for legislation ensuring equal salaries for women in the workplace... as well as for tax cuts for new families. Can you comment on your rationale?” “Sure. I’m simply a huge fan of strong women and strong families.” Rachel practically choked on her croissant. “And on the subject of families,” the reporter followed up, “you talk a lot about education. You’ve proposed some highly controversial budget cuts in an effort to allocate more funds to our nation’s schools.” “I believe the children are our future.”
- Rachel could not believe her father had sunk to quoting pop songs.
- “Finally, sir,” the reporter said, “you’ve taken an enormous jump in the polls these
- past few weeks. The President has got to be worried. Any thoughts on your recent
- success?”
- “I think it has to do with trust. Americans are starting to see that the President
- cannot be trusted to make the tough decisions facing this nation. Runaway
- government spending is putting this country deeper in debt every day, and
- Americans are starting to realize that it’s time to stop spending and start mending.”
- Like a stay of execution from her father’s rhetoric, the pager in Rachel’s handbag
- went off. Normally the harsh electronic beeping was an unwelcome interruption,
- but at the moment, it sounded almost melodious.
- The senator glared indignantly at having been interrupted.
- Rachel fished the pager from her handbag and pressed a preset sequence of five
- buttons, confirming that she was indeed the person holding the pager. The beeping
- stopped, and the LCD began blinking. In fifteen seconds she would receive
- a secure text message.
- Sneeden grinned at the senator. “Your daughter is obviously a busy woman. It’s
- refreshing to see you two still find time in your schedules to dine together.”
- “As I said, family comes first.”
- Sneeden nodded, and then his gaze hardened. “Might I ask, sir, how you and your
- daughter manage your conflicts of interest?”
- “Conflicts?” Senator Sexton cocked his head with an innocent look of confusion. “What
- conflicts do you mean?”
- Rachel glanced up, grimacing at her father’s act. She knew exactly where this was
- headed. Damn reporters, she thought. Half of them were on political payrolls. The
- reporter’s question was what journalists called a grapefruit –a question that was
- supposed to look like a tough inquiry but was in fact a scripted favor to the
- senator–a slow lob pitch that her father could line up and smash out of the park,
- clearing the air about a few things.
- “Well, sir...” The reporter coughed, feigning uneasiness over the question. “The
- conflict is that your daughter works for your opponent.”
- Senator Sexton exploded in laughter, defusing the question instantly. “Ralph, first
- of all, the President and I are not opponents. We are simply two patriots who have
- different ideas about how to run the country we love.”
- The reporter beamed. He had his sound bite. “And second?”
- “Second, my daughter is not employed by the President; she is employed by the
- intelligence community. She compiles intel reports and sends them to the White
- House. It’s a fairly low-level position.” He paused and looked at Rachel. “In fact,
- dear, I’m not sure you’ve even met the President, have you?”
- Rachel stared, her eyes smoldering.
- The beeper chirped, drawing Rachel’s gaze to the incoming message on the LCD screen.
coincided in perfect unison with beeps emitted from the chronographs worn by the other two men. Another thirty minutes had passed. It was time. Again. Reflexively, Delta-One left his two partners and stepped outside into the darkness and pounding wind. He scanned the moonlit horizon with infrared binoculars. As always, he focused on the structure. It was a thousand meters away–an enormous and unlikely edifice rising from the barren terrain. He and his team had been watching it for ten days now, since its construction. Delta-One had no doubt that the information inside would change the world. Lives already had been lost to protect it. At the moment, everything looked quiet outside the structure. The true test, however, was what was happening inside. Delta-One reentered the tent and addressed his two fellow soldiers. “Time for a flyby.” Both men nodded. The taller of them, Delta-Two, opened a laptop computer and turned it on. Positioning himself in front of the screen, Delta-Two placed his hand on a mechanical joystick and gave it a short jerk. A thousand meters away, hidden deep within the building, a surveillance robot the size of a mosquito received his transmission and sprang to life. 3 Rachel Sexton was still steaming as she drove her white Integra up Leesburg Highway. The bare maples of the Falls Church foothills rose stark against a crisp March sky, but the peaceful setting did little to calm her anger. Her father’s recent surge in the polls should have endowed him with a modicum of confident grace, and yet it seemed only to fuel his self-importance. The man’s deceit was doubly painful because he was the only immediate family Rachel had left. Rachel’s mother had died three years ago, a devastating loss whose emotional scars still raked at Rachel’s heart. Rachel’s only solace was knowing that the death, with ironic compassion, had liberated her mother from a deep despair over a miserable marriage to the senator. Rachel’s pager beeped again, pulling her thoughts back to the road in front of her. The incoming message was the same. –RPRT DIRNRO STAT– Report to the director of NRO stat. She sighed. I’m coming, for God’s sake! With rising uncertainty, Rachel drove to her usual exit, turned onto the private access road, and rolled to a stop at the heavily armed sentry booth. This was 14225 Leesburg Highway, one of the most secretive addresses in the country. While the guard scanned her car for bugs, Rachel gazed out at the mammoth structure in the distance. The one-million-square-foot complex sat majestically on sixty-eight forested acres just outside D.C. in Fairfax, Virginia. The building’s facade was a bastion of one-way glass that reflected the army of satellite dishes
antennas, and radomes on the surrounding grounds, doubling their already awe-inspiring numbers.
Two minutes later, Rachel had parked and crossed the manicured grounds to the main entrance, where a carved granite sign announced National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) The two armed Marines flanking the bulletproof revolving door stared straight ahead as Rachel passed between them. She felt the same sensation she always felt as she pushed through these doors... that she was entering the belly of a sleeping giant. Inside the vaulted lobby, Rachel sensed the faint echoes of hushed conversations all around her, as if the words were sifting down from the offices above. An enormous tiled mosaic proclaimed the NRO directive: ENABLING U.S. GLOBAL INFORMATION SUPERIORITY DURING PEACE AND THROUGH WAR The walls here were lined with massive photographs–rocket launches, submarine christenings, intercept installations–towering achievements that could be celebrated only within these walls. Now, as always, Rachel felt the problems of the outside world fading behind her. She was entering the shadow world. A world where the problems thundered in like freight trains, and the solutions were meted out with barely a whisper. As Rachel approached the final checkpoint, she wondered what kind of problem had caused her pager to ring twice in the last thirty minutes. “Good morning, Ms. Sexton.” The guard smiled as she approached the steel doorway. Rachel returned the smile as the guard held out a tiny swab for Rachel to take. “You know the drill,” he said. Rachel took the hermetically sealed cotton swab and removed the plastic covering. Then she placed it in her mouth like a thermometer. She held it under her tongue for two seconds. Then, leaning forward, she allowed the guard to remove it. The guard inserted the moistened swab into a slit in a machine behind him. The machine took four seconds to confirm the DNA sequences in Rachel’s saliva. Then a monitor flickered on, displaying Rachel’s photo and security clearance. The guard winked. “Looks like you’re still you.” He pulled the used swab from the machine and dropped it through an opening, where it was instantly incinerated. “Have a good one.” He pressed a button and the huge steel doors swung open. As Rachel made her way into the maze of bustling corridors beyond, she was amazed that even after six years here she was still daunted by the colossal scope of this operation. The agency encompassed six other U.S. installations, employed over ten thousand agents, and had operating costs of over $10 billion per year. In total secrecy, the NRO built and maintained an astonishing arsenal of cutting-edge spy technologies: worldwide electronic intercepts; spy satellites; silent, embedded relay chips in telecomm products; even a global naval-recon network
known as Classic Wizard, a secret web of 1,456 hydrophones mounted on seafloors around the world, capable of monitoring ship movements anywhere on the globe. NRO technologies not only helped the United States win military conflicts, but
father... physically unimposing, anything but charismatic, and he did his duty with a selfless patriotism, shunning the spotlight her father loved so much. Pickering removed his glasses and gazed at her. “Agent Sexton, the President called me about a half hour ago. In direct reference to you.” Rachel shifted in her seat. Pickering was known for getting to the point. One hell of an opening, she thought. “Not a problem with one of my gists, I hope.” “On the contrary. He says the White House is impressed with your work.” Rachel exhaled silently. “So what did he want?” “A meeting with you. In person. Immediately.” Rachel’s unease sharpened. “A personal meeting? About what ?” “Damn good question. He wouldn’t tell me.” Now Rachel was lost. Keeping information from the director of the NRO was like keeping Vatican secrets from the Pope. The standing joke in the intelligence community was that if William Pickering didn’t know about it, it hadn’t happened. Pickering stood, pacing now in front of his window. “He asked that I contact you immediately and send you to meet with him.” “Right now?” “He sent transportation. It’s waiting outside.” Rachel frowned. The President’s request was unnerving on its own account, but it was the look of concern on Pickering’s face that really worried her. “You obviously have reservations.” “I sure as hell do!” Pickering showed a rare flash of emotion. “The President’s timing seems almost callow in its transparency. You are the daughter of the man who is currently challenging him in the polls, and he demands a private meeting with you? I find this highly inappropriate. Your father no doubt would agree.” Rachel knew Pickering was right–not that she gave a damn what her father thought. “Do you not trust the President’s motives?” “My oath is to provide intel support to the current White House administration , not pass judgment on their politics.” Typical Pickering response, Rachel realized. William Pickering made no bones about his view of politicians as transitory figureheads who passed fleetingly across a chessboard whose real players were men like Pickering himself–seasoned “lifers” who had been around long enough to understand the game with some perspective. Two full terms in the White House, Pickering often said, was not nearly enough to comprehend the true complexities of the global political landscape.
“Maybe it’s an innocent request,” Rachel offered, hoping the President was above trying some sort of cheap campaign stunt. “Maybe he needs a reduction of some sensitive data.” “Not to sound belittling, Agent Sexton, but the White House has access to plenty of qualified gisting personnel if they need it. If it’s an internal White House job, the President should know better than to contact you. And if not, then he sure as hell should know better than to request an NRO asset and then refuse to tell me what he wants it for.” Pickering always referred to his employees as assets, a manner of speech many found disconcertingly cold. “Your father is gaining political momentum,” Pickering said. “A lot of it. The White House has got to be getting nervous.” He sighed. “Politics is a desperate business. When the President calls a secret meeting with his challenger’s daughter, I’d guess there’s more on his mind than intelligence gists.” Rachel felt a distant chill. Pickering’s hunches had an uncanny tendency to be dead on. “And you’re afraid the White House feels desperate enough to introduce me into the political mix?” Pickering paused a moment. “You are not exactly silent about your feelings for your father, and I have little doubt the President’s campaign staff is aware of the rift. It occurs to me that they may want to use you against him somehow.” “Where do I sign up?” Rachel said, only half-joking. Pickering looked unimpressed. He gave her a stern stare. “A word of warning, Agent Sexton. If you feel that your personal issues with your father are going to cloud your judgment in dealing with the President, I strongly advise that you decline the President’s request for a meeting.” “Decline?” Rachel gave a nervous chuckle. “I obviously can’t refuse the President.” “No,” the director said, “but I can.” His words rumbled a bit, reminding Rachel of the other reason Pickering was called the “Quaker.” Despite being a small man, William Pickering could cause political earthquakes if he were crossed. “My concerns here are simple,” Pickering said. “I have a responsibility to protect the people who work for me, and I don’t appreciate even the vague implication that one of them might be used as a pawn in a political game.” “What do you recommend I do?” Pickering sighed. “My suggestion is that you meet with him. Commit to nothing. Once the President tells you what the hell is on his mind, call me. If I think he’s playing political hardball with you, trust me, I’ll pull you out so fast the man
