The phrasing was precise, implying the failings of previous administrations to control the actions, and then reminding the president that it was now his office. VanOwen had practiced the right pace and inflection in her bathroom mirror that morning.
“No one has been able to keep them on a short enough leash,” she continued.
“Why not? And don’t give me that crap about Church having blackmail material on everyone, because I don’t believe it.”
“Church is a very large, very aggressive dog,” said VanOwen. “Not everyone who has sat in the Oval Office has had the physical strength or the strength of will to jerk back on his leash.”
“To hell with that. I’m not afraid of him.”
“No, sir, you are not.” She paused. “Mr. Church isn’t the only barking dog, though. There is Aunt Sallie.”
“Who? That black woman? The one that looks like Whoopi Goldberg? Who cares about her?”
“Exactly right, sir. She’s nothing,” lied VanOwen. “And there is Church’s number-one hotshot. Captain Joe Ledger. I gave you a briefing on him, too.”
“Right, right. He’s the one who killed Howard Shelton. I liked Howard. Howard was a good guy. Golfer. Decent handicap.”
“Howard Shelton was an American patriot. At most he should have been called to explain his actions. Instead Joe Ledger executed him and later claimed it was justified.”
The president sipped his soda and seemed to stare through the middle of nowhere for a few moments.
VanOwen leaned a little closer. “Mr. Church, Aunt Sallie, and Joe Ledger destroyed M3. They prevented America from benefitting from these new advances in defense technologies. The DMS is still in operation and operates under a charter established by executive order.”
“But not my order.”
“No, Mr. President. Not your order.”
He turned to meet her eyes. “Can we cancel their charter?”
“Not easily,” she said. “And if we did, there’s too good a chance it would draw congressional attention to your plan to rebuild the Majestic program.”
“Can we defund them?”
“Not as such, sir.”
“Then what?”
“Mr. President,” she said, “there are other ways to handle this situation.”
“Do I need to know what that means?” he asked.
“You know the phrase ‘plausible deniability’?”
“Of course.”
VanOwen gave him a radiant smile and said nothing else.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They hung like spiders from the ceiling. Both of them dressed all in black, armed with guns and knives, dangling from silk threads. Silent as the death they had brought with them.
The castle had stood for more than a thousand years, perched on a ridge between deep ravines and skirted by dense forests. Wars had raged around it and in it and past it, but the citadel endured and the memory of clashing steel and the screams of men seemed to be trapped like ghosts within its walls. Maybe more so down here, far below the grand halls. There were secrets built into the walls. Hidden rooms, concealed corridors and passages, vaults and tombs that even the historians and the UNESCO custodians had never found. Some were so skillfully built that it would take the outright destruction of the fortress for anyone to find them.
That had nearly happened, and still might. The fighters of ISIL had destroyed so many places like this. So had President Assad, who indiscriminately bombed historic sites with the same abandon with which he rained down death on rebel camps and civilian towns. The fact that Saladin’s Castle survived for so long had nothing to do with any respect for history or the memory of the warrior of Allah who had fought back with such intelligence and ferocity against the Crusaders. No, this place survived because it was never important enough to destroy, and its position in this remote part of northwest Syria made it of little value to anyone in the current war. Some refugees found shelter there, thinking themselves safe within the partially collapsed walls.
They were wrong. They were not safe here.
“They’re not coming,” whispered one of the silent invaders. Although male, he was the shorter of the two.
“They’re coming, Harry,” soothed his companion. She spoke quietly rather than whispering, because whispers carried farther.
“This harness is cutting into my nuts,” complained Harry Bolt.
“Stop squirming,” suggested the woman, Violin, without much sympathy. “And be quiet. Listen. ”
There was a sound; a clink of metal. Then the careful steps of rubber soles on stone. The soft whisk of clothing. More clinks and clanks. The sounds of people who thought they were alone.
Violin reached out a hand and gave her partner’s arm a small, reassuring squeeze. Be ready, it said, and she felt Harry tense. He was often nervous, which made him clumsy despite the months of intense training she had given him. Training that was superior to what he had gotten during his years in the Central Intelligence Agency.
Since they’d begun traveling together, Harry Bolt — born Harcourt Bolton, Junior — had grown as a fighter, deepened his knowledge of espionage tradecraft, and gained in practical experience. Even so, he was a liability in almost every crisis situation. Violin accepted that and never took him into a situation where his shortcomings would tip the odds too far the wrong way. Until today. She’d intended to do this job with a full Arklight team, but the timing did not work and Harry was the only one available.
The intruders below were a mixed bag of ex-military working for the Turkish black marketer Ohan, and experts brought here to solve the mystery of this place. What unified them all was that they were thieves of time. Of antiquities. Of history. It was possible they were merely corrupt; but Violin’s intelligence reports suggested they were looking for something truly and deeply dangerous. If that was the case, then this reconnaissance would have to turn into something else.
“Here,” said a voice, speaking Arabic with an Iraqi accent. “Come on, give me some light.”
Several flashlight beams flicked on, chasing the shadows back but a little. The light didn’t illuminate very much, and certainly didn’t reach all the way to the vaulted ceiling. A dozen men came hurrying through the darkness. She recognized their leader, a fierce man known as Ghul, who was Ohan’s trusted lieutenant.
“I don’t see anything,” complained one of the experts, a geologist from Saudi Arabia.
Ghul laughed. “That’s what you’re supposed to see.”
“We’ve scoured this place half a dozen times,” said another of the research team, a structural engineer. He spoke bad Arabic with a heavy Irish accent. “There’s nothing left to find, mate. Anything of value here is either already in museums or it’s been destroyed by the ISIL madmen.”
But Ghul shook his head. “No. This is something that was not meant to be found.” He tapped the fourth researcher, a birdlike man with a pointed beard and professorial glasses perched on the end of a beaky nose. “It’s time. Tell them.”
Violin knew this man, too, and he was why she had been sent here. Professor Ali Nasser, formerly of the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, where he had spearheaded several important research expeditions in the Middle East, including four in Syria. Before the war, Nasser had been one of the world’s most respected scholars on the Crusades in general, and the related artifacts of this region in particular. His book on the relics of Antioch was still required reading in universities around the world, and it retained its validity even though Ali’s personal reputation had crumbled when he was first arrested for selling artifacts to the black market. His fellow academics had banished him, treating him like a heretic for sins against scholarship. Violin thought it sad that such a man would have descended to this level. On the other hand, it might make what she had to do so much easier. Contempt was a weak barrier to violence and was more often a firm shove in the direction of action.