Position did have its price. Ribbing from former buddies who had been with him in his paddy-pounding days he would accept any day as atonement for the “sin” of reaching the West Wing. Brass heaven, they called it. A job, Bud knew it truly to be. National Security Adviser to the President of the United States. He chuckled softly. Brass heaven, indeed.
“Did I say something funny?” FBI Director Gordon Jones asked over the phone.
“Not you,” Bud said, continuing the mild laugh. “It’s this cup my old unit gave me last summer.”
“The ‘sucking seed’ trinket?”
“Yeah. Damned nostalgia.” Bud set the mug aside and tore the top sheet off his legal pad. “So this chem thing looks wrapped up?”
“Jerry Donovan in L.A. thinks so,” Jones said. “Everything points to a botched transfer of goods.”
“Greed paid off in our favor this time,” Bud observed.
“Freddy Allen played the game that way. We’d been on him for a while. He killed a Treasury agent a year and a half ago.”
Bud swiveled his chair to look out toward Old Executive. “Nothing on the other guy yet?”
“Later today, but, like the brief from CIA said, it does not take a rocket scientist to make this stuff.”
“Then why hasn’t anyone until now?” Bud asked.
“Someone did, five years ago,” Jones revealed.
“I didn’t hear about that.”
“Good. This is the kind of thing that is better kept in the dark. Can you imagine the copycats we’d have trying to cook up nerve gas in their basements and their garages if this was all general knowledge?”
“It is in the open,” Bud pointed out.
“So are the plans for H-bombs,” Jones countered. “But your average Joe can’t get the stuff to make it work. In this case, your average Joe can get the stuff but he’s more likely to kill himself than anyone else. That’s what happened five years ago. Some stupid college kid thought it would be neat to make some VX. He decided to do it small, just an ounce or so, and before he knew he’d done it he was flopping on the ground like a fish. Dead by the time a buddy who’d been helping him got up the nerve to call the authorities. They did the smart thing and sealed it all off until the Army could get some people there. Stupid kid.”
Bud could imagine the FBI director rubbing his temples as he shook his head. “It’s still scary that someone could produce this stuff if they wanted to.”
“I know. But the genie is out of the bottle, Bud. We just have to make sure no one without any real compunction to use it ever gets near it.”
“Sounds more like a hope than a plan,” Bud said.
“We have to start somewhere.”
The NSA tapped his pen on the blank legal tablet and turned back to his desk. “Well, the president will be glad to hear that everything is under control.”
“Is he getting any more sleep?” the director inquired.
“With a baby that just started crawling?” Bud asked rhetorically. “You should see it sometimes, Gordy. The little guy is scooting around the Oval Office like there’s no tomorrow, all while the man running our country is on the phone with Konovalenko or some other world leader. It makes for some interesting background noise.”
“I bet.”
“Anyway, thanks for the update. If anything new comes up let me know right away.”
“Will do.”
Bud placed the handset back in its cradle and brought both hands behind his head. He leaned back and turned again to gaze upon the gray monolith across Executive Avenue. The faded light of the late autumn morning was not flattering to the old building. Some days it looked quite nice; others, like this, it was a drab reminder of what was possible.
So similar to the way the political landscape appeared, Bud thought. His position did not normally lend itself to internal punditry, but no one in the West Wing could deny that the president was suffering from being cast in an unflattering light, much like Old Executive. The vibrancy of a new baby in the White House aside, there was trouble on the homefront. The economy was still sluggish. Jobs had not materialized fast enough for those who were planning to challenge the president in the election the following year. And increasingly the media was focusing on those efforts that were directed at dealing with issues on the international stage and asking, Why not focus on what needs attention at home?
As if the world would just wait until everything improved at home, Bud thought. Still, the president was in a precarious position to begin in earnest his campaign for reelection. He needed to convince the American public that he was making significant strides in putting the domestic economy on a track of long-term growth. The problem with that was that it would yield little in the way of tangible results to hold before the voters as proof. Image and snippets drove elections now. And too often the voter was the recipient only of a filtered, packaged view of what was really happening on the political playing field. That was the way the pendulum had swung, Bud admitted reluctantly.
“Thank God this thing didn’t blow up in our faces,” the NSA said to the empty interior of his office. All the president needed was a crisis in the states. He would have dealt with it, and the media would have crucified him for spending too much time doing so. It was a no-win situation that they would not have to live through now. Bud had no doubt the West Wing was going to be breathing a little easier because of a crisis that entered the arena stillborn. This one was dead on arrival.
Captain Orwell finished decontaminating for the second time since leading the guided tour for Art and Frankie. An hour after their departure it had been for a two-man FBI forensic team, and this last time to finish the work he needed to complete. He stepped out of the containment suit that was like a sauna under the noontime sun and was checked by one of his team for any residual contamination. With a clean bill of health, and still in MOPP suit and breathing gear, he trekked a quarter-mile more to the set of Humvees.
“Damn, it’s hot in this,” he exclaimed as the mask finally came off.
“Just think what it would be like here in summer,” the sergeant said.
“Did you get a good download?” Orwell asked. He had just completed sampling residues in the containers that had once held several dozen chemicals using a remote analyzer. That information was then fed to a computer via a landline stretching more than a half-mile from the lead Humvee to 1212 Riverside.
“Perfect. She’s crunching the numbers right now.”
Orwell pulled his legs out of the MOPP suit and stuffed the sweat-soaked garment into a sealed drum adjacent to the Humvee. “Let’s take a look at what we’ve got.”
The two men climbed through the rear door into an electronics-crammed workspace smaller than the dressing facility of the Humvee one back. Several banks of computers and their associated equipment were mounted against one wall, with two chairs facing them. Orwell took the one with best access to the keyboard.
“She’s done,” the sergeant observed.
“Let’s print some hard copy while we see what we found,” Orwell said. A few keystrokes sent a report to the printer, which began spitting the pages out with just a whisper. The captain, meantime, pulled the identical data up on the screen for viewing.