His wife should be grateful if anything.
Mason was a man who had always had it all; wealth, adulation — he had played varsity basketball to much acclaim before going into politics — and now fame and power. He had come from a prosperous, rich family background and had never wanted for anything in his entire life.
Except one thing, and one thing alone — the presidency itself.
He had been worried last year, when he had still been serving Abrams as Sec State, that everything he had been working towards might all come crashing down. He had leant his subtle support to Jeb Richards, the Secretary of Homeland Security, during the terrorist crisis; and when it had turned out that Richards was a traitor, in bed with the man who’d plotted America’s annihilation by bioweapon, he had been terrified that he would be tarred with the same brush.
But luckily, his political instincts had caused him to cut his ties with Richards even before his role in the affair was known, and he had thus avoided the stigma of association — his elevation to Vice Presidential nominee was proof enough of that.
However, Mason sometimes wondered whether Abrams’ seemingly generous gesture towards him was entirely what it seemed; for as Vice President, the truth was that he actually had rather less work to do than he’d had as Sec State. There was no truth to the oft-heard accusation of the office being mere window dressing — as Vice President, he did have a lot of work to do — but it was also true that the work was a little more public relations-based than what he had become used to.
Still, it was work he enjoyed, and put him one step closer to his dream — Clark Mason, President of the United States of America.
He was in the White House now, on his way to a meeting with Abrams and wondering idly what it would be like to live here as Commander in Chief, when he almost bumped into the man leaving the Oval Office.
Mason did not recognize him, but saw that he was well-dressed, sharp, smart. His face looked a little strange though, almost as if he’d been wearing make-up.
‘Oh, excuse me,’ said the man apologetically, stepping to one side with a smile. ‘I was just leaving.’
‘That’s quite alright,’ Mason said with a patrician smile of his own to the younger man, ‘I must have been daydreaming, not paying attention to where I was going. A sign of my age, I’m afraid.’
‘It was my fault, really,’ the other man said, extending a hand. ‘I’m Alan Sandbourne,’ he said by way of introduction.
Mason took the man’s hand and shook it warmly, although his mind was already turning circles. Although he knew the name, he had never met him before; and yet there was something undeniably familiar about Alan Sandbourne’s voice, something which raised the hackles on the back of Mason’s neck.
‘Doctor Sandbourne,’ Mason said amiably, ‘of course. Of the Paradigm Group. I’ve read your work, it’s very good.’
‘Thank you,’ came the reply, seemingly pleased with the flattery. Or was he? There was something about the doctor that seemed not quite right, something off-key, something undeniably familiar, and not in a good way.
The president’s secretary arrived at the door to the Oval Office, ushering Mason inside. With a shrug, he turned. ‘Well Doctor Sandbourne,’ he said, ‘it was a pleasure meeting you, but duty calls.’
‘Of course,’ the doctor said with a smile, and then the door was closed, and Mason was alone with the president.
Doctor Sandbourne, however, was still the only thing on his mind.
Why was his voice so damn familiar?
It was, Mason decided, something that he would have to find out.
Cole relaxed into his studded leather wing-back chair, tucked into a corner of the mahogany-paneled study which looked out over the affluent neighborhood of Woodland-Normanstone Terrace.
He was almost close enough to see the Vice President’s residence at Number One Observatory Circle, just on the other side of the park, and the thought of the VP gave Cole pause. It had been the first time he’d met Clark Mason today, and yet Cole had sensed some sense of familiarity in the eyes of the man.
Cole knew that Mason had been in the National Security Council meetings when he’d been providing verbal radio communications to them during the bioweapon crisis; had he recognized Cole’s voice? Would that be possible?
And if so, would it be a problem?
Cole sighed and sank back even further into his chair, his body weary from lack of proper rest after his ordeal with Aryan Ultra, and surveyed the room in which he sat, the home in which he now lived, letting his mind wander.
The leafy suburban terrace in which Cole’s Georgian townhouse apartment was situated was as far removed from the beach house he’d occupied with his family in Cayman Brac as that palatial home had been from the trailer parks of Hamtramck where he’d been born; but it suited his current needs, and his current position.
He sipped at a glass of thirty-year old Macallan, all too aware that he was engaged in all the trappings of his former mentor, Charles Hansard. The whisky, the colonial-era luxury, heading his own intelligence unit right here in Washington — it was all Hansard.
And yet it was Cole too, he had to admit; over the years, his tastes had changed, and wasn’t that only natural? But sometimes the similarities grated on him; Hansard had been the man who betrayed him, ordered his death and the deaths of his wife and children. But Hansard had had taste too, and Cole supposed that years of exposure to the man and his ways had subconsciously rubbed off on him.
He could only hope that the influence only extended as far as drinks preference and interior décor; for despite his brilliance, Hansard had been sick and twisted in the worst of ways.
But he was being needlessly doleful; he’d chosen the area because it suited the background of Doctor Alan Sandbourne. It was close to Georgetown University, his alter-ego’s alma mater and the location of a long teaching stint, it was within easy commute of the White House, and the headquarters of the Paradigm Group — and Force One — was only a little further north in Forest Hills.
He’d been there for most of the day after his meeting with Abrams, collating and sifting through intelligence reports and media analysis, searching for the best way to approach the combined missions Force One would have to carry out.
He’d also spent time contacting his agents around the country, men selected for Force One missions by Cole himself. They were still — on paper at least — working for their units of origin. Delta Force, Marine Force Recon, Army Special Forces, SEAL Team Six, the CIA’s Special Activities Division, Air Force Special Tactics Teams, Army Rangers; Cole had selected only the best of the best. They stayed with their units and trained with them to keep sharp, but Cole made sure that — despite their operational and training commitments — he still had a core team available at any time, ready for action. They would be covertly seconded to Force One, often while on official leave, perform their missions, then return to their units with nobody being any the wiser. Some of the older, more seasoned members of those teams might have hazarded a guess as to where their colleagues were going, and what they were doing, but such professionals would remain forever silent — they knew the importance of such covert operations, and would never do anything to jeopardize them.
Cole was pleased that Jake Navarone was already on his way; he’d come to rely on the man over the past few months. He was resourceful, capable, and motivated — a winning combination.
Four other operators were en route to DC as well, to make up the six-man team that Cole had decided was going to infiltrate the Chinese mainland — Cole himself being the sixth.