A Better World

CHAPTER 10

In DC, where scrabbling up greasy ladders was in everyone’s job description, there were a lot of ways to gauge power. Budgets and staff were obvious ones, but Owen Leahy found it more telling to look at the trappings, the secondary signifiers. Office size, and which building it was in. If there was a window, or a private bathroom. How close that office was to the boss, senator, or president.

The ability to summon others to a meeting at ten o’clock in the evening.

As the secretary of defense, there were very few people who rated highly enough that he went to their office. And only one who could summon him straight from Air Force One in the middle of a crisis.

Terence Mitchum had moved from the CIA to the NSA, but Leahy would always remember him as the deputy director he’d approached twenty-five years ago. Every time he saw the man, Leahy remembered the nervous wait outside his office, the taste of salt and dirt from licking his fingers to clean off his shoes. Mitchum had made him, and Mitchum could break him, and they both knew it.

Technically, he was the number-three man in the National Security Agency, but org charts lied. If Mitchum wanted the top job, he would have had it two decades ago. Instead, he’d stayed in power while the men and women above him came and went with presidential administrations. From that position, he had directed the careers of countless people, cherry-picking those loyal to him and destroying those who resisted. Forty years of intelligence work, the latter half in an agency so secretive that not only its budget but even its size was classified. Forty years of collecting blackmail and withholding information and burying bodies.

Including 1,143 in Manhattan. The March 12th explosion at the stock exchange in Manhattan had been blamed on John Smith, but though he had planted the explosives, he’d intended for the building to be empty. Smith had even provided media outlets with advance notice of his intent. Leahy couldn’t prove it, but he was certain it had been Mitchum who had squashed the advance warning, muzzling seven news organizations and ordering the detonation of the explosives when it became clear Smith wouldn’t. A brutal, calculated move, like sacrificing a queen in chess. The attack had galvanized the country, and it resulted in the passage of a law that might save it.

“Hello, sir.” Leahy took in the rest of the office, wasn’t surprised to see the third occupant of the room. “Senator.”

“I told you, call me Richard.” The senator flashed one of his camera-ready smiles. “We’re all friends here.”

Mitchum pressed a series of buttons on his desk. The DC night outside the windows shimmered and disappeared as the glass turned black. A mechanical bolt on the door snapped shut, and there was a faint hum, some sort of anti-bugging technology, Leahy supposed. Then Mitchum steepled his fingers, looked over the desk, and said, “We’re losing control of the situation.”

“Sir, I advised the president exactly the way we discussed—”

“What I want to know,” the senator interrupted, “is how the Children of Darwin attacks happened in the first place.”

Richard was an ally, and useful. But sometimes Leahy wanted to strangle him. “That’s complicated.”

“Really? Because it seems simple to me.” The senator shook his head. “I did everything you boys asked after the stock exchange fell. You have no idea how many favors I pulled to get the MOI not only passed, but in a landslide. Walker signed it. So what are you dawdling for?”

“Things have changed since the Monitoring Oversight Initiative passed.” Leahy pulled out a chair. “You may have noticed.”

“I have. Since we provided the legal grounds to microchip every gifted in America, abnorm terrorists have taken three cities hostage. Do I need to point out that if we had implemented that law, instead of just passing it, we’d know who was responsible?”

“You don’t have to tell me how useful the MOI would be. I’m the one who suggested it in the first place. Everything we’ve done to date was building toward it.”

“So why aren’t you making it happen?”

“Clay isn’t President Walker. It’s going to take some time.”

“Time,” Mitchum said. The man said little, and yet those words were always carefully chosen, spoken softly and yet always heard.

“Yes, sir. President Walker was one of us from the beginning. He understood that protecting America would require unconventional means. Clay . . . he’s a professor. His experience is theoretical. He’s uncomfortable with this kind of reality.”

“So, what,” the senator asked, “he’s going to put the MOI in a drawer?”

“That would be his preference. He knows he doesn’t have the votes to repeal it, but he can stall it indefinitely.”

“So how do we jump-start it?”

“We’ll have our moment.” Leahy turned to Mitchum. “Sir, can I ask you something?”

The director raised an eyebrow.

“The Children of Darwin. Are they by any chance a false flag operation?”

Before the director could respond, the senator interrupted. “False flag? What’s that?”

Leahy fought a sigh. Richard, you are going to find that the heights you’ve attained make for a long fall if you don’t understand the mountain. “A covert operation designed to look like its instigated by someone else in order to provide grounds for action.”

“You mean like the bombing in the exch—”

“Senator.” Mitchum spoke softly, but the word was a lash. Richard looked away. The director turned back to Leahy. “No.”

“We’re certain?”

“Yes. The COD are exactly what they appear to be, a group of abnorm terrorists.”

“Good.”

“Good?” The senator bristled. “Good? Terrorists have taken three of our cities, people are starving, and it’s good?”

“Yes,” Leahy said. “These terrorists may be brilliants, but I’m not sure how smart they are. They’ve got tunnel vision. They don’t realize that every move they make is serving our ends.”

“How?”

Leahy ignored the senator. Mitchum said, “Do we know what their next action will be?”

“The leading theory is a biological attack. But it doesn’t matter. Even if they don’t have anything else planned, what they’ve set in motion is enough. With every passing day, the public is howling for action. The president’s hand is being forced.”

“That doesn’t mean it will play our way.”

“Even an intellectual like Clay is going to have to make a decision at some point.” Leahy shrugged. “When he does, it will be through me.”

The senator cut in. “And you’ll make the MOI a cornerstone of that response. I see the method in your madness, but there’s too much madness in your method. We ought to go through channels. Bring it up on the Senate floor, hold Clay accountable in the media.”

You mean make more headlines for yourself. “Too risky. It leaves the door open for people to claim that the MOI justifies the Children of Darwin’s actions.”

“Who would claim that?”

Jesus. Really? “The COD.”

Richard scoffed. “You think they’re going to issue a press release?”

“If they say they’ll return everything to normal if we scrap the bill, do you think people in Cleveland or Tulsa or Fresno will say, ‘No, thanks, we’ll starve for our principles’?” He turned to Mitchum. “Sir, if we open the MOI up for discussion, that’s the ball game. We’re negotiating with terrorists, and from an inferior position.”

Mitchum tapped two fingers on his desk. After a moment, he said, “You’re certain of this, Owen?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve got this under control.” The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he regretted them. Under control? You’re banking on a group of abnorm terrorists and a president with the fortitude of a noodle.

The same thought seemed to be playing in Mitchum’s mind. “All right, Owen,” he said with the look of a lion eyeing a gazelle straying from the herd. “So long as you’re sure.”

Leahy nodded, forced a smile. Mitchum made you, and he can break you.

You better control this—or you’re going to be dinner.