Frankly, the President had not been convinced that Nexus’s fears were grounded in reality, and Callahan had agreed with him. The Nexus representative had not produced any evidence of his fantastic claims about the organization he called the Priory. Only the fact that the manpower and budget allocated to Nexus were so small-and that Eisenhower’s Presidential Directive establishing it was real-had kept him from gutting the group.
Right now Nexus was the furthest thing from Callahan’s mind. She had just returned from a trip with the President to the Middle East, and dealing with the egos that had been crammed into one room had left her exhausted. Her limousine was taking her directly from Andrews Air Force Base to her home.
She was leaning back in the deep leather, leisurely skimming through various reports her aides had handed her when she got off Air Force One. She knew she should have gone directly to the office, but today was her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. She’d missed far too many in the past, and the President had been insistent that she go straight home, with no detours.
She was surprised when the smoked glass dividing her from the driver slid down with a whir.
“Mrs. Callahan.”
All she could see of the driver were his eyes, dark black, in the rearview mirror. His hair was white, his frame slight.
“Yes?” she replied, her irritation at the interruption clear in her tone.
“General Eichen is dead.”
She sat up straighter. “Eichen?” She searched her mind and then remembered. The military officer who had accompanied the head of Nexus to the initial briefing. “What happened?”
“We believe he was killed by the Priory.”
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“I was sent to warn you that the Priory is moving.”
“Who are you?” she repeated. The limousine had stopped at a light. The driver turned and she could see his face. He had to be in his sixties, judging from all the lines in the leathery skin. But his eyes appeared sharp as they regarded her.
“Is it more important who I am or what I am?” he asked. “I’m from Nexus.” The light changed and he turned his attention to driving. “Do you still want to go to your house?”
“What does the Priory have planned?” she asked.
“We don’t know exactly. They’ve been using the Black Budget to develop a system in Alaska called HAARP. A very potent weapon with strategic possibilities. We’ve managed to deny them access to a critical component of the system by locking it down with an NCA code.”
“So the situation is under control?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why did they kill Eichen?”
“He went to HAARP. To see what they were doing.”
“That wasn’t very bright.”
“In retrospect, it wasn’t. But we weren’t sure what they have planned and we still aren’t. That was Eichen’s job.”
“Whose is it now?”
“We need your help in that regard. I can take you to your office.”
“Take me home,” she barked.
How had they replaced the driver? she wondered. And there was nothing in the material she had been given about Eichen’s death. A three-star general getting killed would have surely made her briefing book from the NSA.
“Mrs. Callahan, I think-” the driver began, but she cut him off.
“I want to go home and say hello to my husband and wish him happy anniversary at the very least. Then we can go to the office and find out what the hell is going on.” They were only a mile away from her house anyway, and she saw no reason not to finish the trip.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She’d met her husband early in her Marine career. He was a lieutenant in a line unit while she was the quartermaster officer assigned to the same headquarters. This was in the early days when women in the Marines were few and far between. She wanted to laugh every time she saw some woman in the papers claiming she’d been sexually harassed by some colleague making a comment. The harassment she had faced had been far beyond the scope of comments.
That was until she met Bill one night in the officer’s club. When another officer had committed “rodeo” on her-leaning over, biting her in the ass, and hanging on. She had grabbed a chair and smashed it over the man’s head. He’d come up swinging and Bill had stepped between and taken him out with one punch. After that there was no more rodeo in the O’Club-at least not when she and Bill were there.
He’d given up his career for hers, following her from assignment to assignment, and then here to Washington, where he saw her less than before. She felt she owed him at least a brief appearance before dealing with this strange man.
The limousine pulled into the long drive that led to her house. White fences bordered the drive on either side, and she felt a moment of contentment and not for the last time considered that maybe it was time to retire. The driver stopped in front of the double main door.
“Wait for me,” Callahan ordered as he opened the door for her.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She smiled as she saw the balloons tied to the lights on either side of the door. “Happy Anniversary” on the left and “I Love You” on the right. She felt a stab of guilt for not bringing a gift. There’d been no time on the trip. While others in her position would send aides to do a job like that, she felt it was wrong for two reasons: one professional, the other personal. Professionally, she felt it was abusing an aide to give them such a task. Personally, she doubted if anyone could pick out something that Bill would believe came from her. But as she turned the knob on the front door, she wondered whether perhaps she needed to relax her rules just the slightest bit.
She stepped in and was greeted with the sight of Bill hanging from the chandelier that dominated the large foyer just before the wide staircase. She didn’t even have a moment for the sight to impact her senses when a hand snaked over her mouth and a cloth was jammed in, choking off her cry of dismay.
Powerful arms pinned hers behind her back. She reacted instinctively, stomping down with her right heel where the attacker’s shin should be. She heard a grunt of pain but the arms didn’t lessen their grip. Instead they picked her up and carried her to a large armchair. Padded cuffs were snapped over her wrists, locking her in place.
In that moment when the hands released her and she realized she couldn’t get out of the chair, the reality of what she had seen when she stepped in the house hit her, a jagged razor of pain cutting through her stomach up into her heart. Tears poured and her head dropped onto her chest.
But not for long. A hand from behind gripped her chin between its powerful fingers and forced her head up. A man stood in front of her. He was well dressed in an expensive suit. His face was smooth and unblemished, with clear blue eyes under thick, wavy blond hair. His age was hard for her to determine; anywhere from thirty to fifty was her best guess.
“Mrs. Callahan.” The man went over to the window and with a finger making a small opening peeked through the blinds toward the drive. Through her grief she noted he was wearing thin leather gloves. “Nexus. Led us right to you. We knew they had a point of contact in the administration; they always do. We just didn’t know who.” He let the blind fall back in place. “And frankly, we really didn’t care who. But-” He shrugged. “Things change.”
She turned and looked toward the foyer. She could just see Bill’s feet, dangling four feet above the marble floor. It was real. For a moment she thought she’d been having a nightmare. Now she knew she was living one.
“We had to race to beat you home,” the man said. “We didn’t know who he would be picking up at Andrews.”
She shifted her gaze back to him.
“Ah, yes. I know the questions you have. Who am I? Why am I doing this? Why did I do that-” He inclined his head toward the foyer. He left the room and came back with a dining room chair and set it five feet in front of her. He sat down and turned the lapel of his coat. A pin sparkled. Diamonds and other precious stones on a silver background in the form of an elongated cross.