“I gotta tell you, Chair Force,” the big Cajun muttered as he walked beside Quinn, his shadow all but blocking out the sun. “This place always gives me a case of the jumps.”
“It’s hallowed ground,” Quinn mused, thinking of the friends he knew who rested here. He often wondered if they might not be the lucky ones. “Sacred.”
“I reckon that’s it, l’ami,” Thibodaux said. “I get the same feelin’ when Camille drags me to church. Makes me feel all… I don’t know… mortal and shit. I hate it.” He shot a glance at Quinn. “So, you were followin’ numb-nuts again, weren’t you?”
Jericho nodded. He hadn’t mentioned the fight to anyone but Palmer, but the scabbed cut under his eye and slashed leather on his jacket were evidence enough.
“He’s the damned Speaker of the House,” Thibodaux said, ignoring the damage as if he expected Quinn to show up looking like he’d been dragged behind a truck. “Half the country holds him up as a hero for savin’ us from sleeper spies.”
“I know.” Quinn walked on without looking up.
“I guess the old man still says no to just killin’ the SOB.” Thibodaux’s wife was a devout Catholic and allotted him only five non-Bible curse words a month. For a Marine gunnery sergeant, his language bordered on crystalline.
“Not without more information.”
“How about he’s an orphan like the rest of the moles, with a history that’s a blank slate before he was fifteen years old?”
“That’s not the point.” Quinn shrugged. “Palmer agrees that Drake’s dirty. He assures steps have been taken to isolate him from anything that could compromise national security. He just wants to know what Drake’s up to — who’s controlling him — before we take any… permanent action. He’d like to take him down politically if possible.”
“Roger that.” Thibodaux nodded in agreement. “But this rat bastard is Teflon. We’d have to find him in bed with a dead woman or a live boy… ”
Ahead, Winfield Palmer looked down from near the top of the hill, at the base of the white amphitheater. Special Agent Arnie Vasquez of the Secret Service stood under the shadow of the marble colonnade, back a few feet from his boss but within arm’s reach. Quinn marveled at the way the former Marine made executive protection look easy. He knew from experience it was anything but.
As the president’s national security advisor, Win Palmer rated a small but full-time protective detail. As the president’s longtime friend and confidant from their days as cadets at West Point, he got the pick of the litter from the U.S. Secret Service — and he’d chosen Vasquez for his discretion as much as his skill at arms.
“Uurrah,” Thibodaux grunted as they approached.
Vasquez returned the greeting, giving a conspiratorial wink to his fellow Marine. He greeted Quinn with a polite nod. He was, after all, merely Air Force — a wing waxer.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Palmer said. His face turned down in a ruddy frown. He wore a dark suit with a conservative black and yellow striped silk tie. Slightly balding, with close-cropped sandy gray hair and arms folded across his chest, he could have been someone’s father, angry over some house rule infraction.
“The bombings are all over the news,” Quinn offered. “Hitting the U.S. and Russia simultaneously… makes things interesting.”
“Interesting is a hell of an understatement,” Palmer said. “The markets have taken a nosedive and banks all over the country have reported long lines of people wanting to withdraw their cash. People don’t feel safe — over a hundred thousand travelers have canceled airline tickets in the last hour alone. Congress is already talking about demanding X-ray body scanners at every port of entry.”
“How do you talk about demanding?” Thibodaux scratched his head. “My experience, you either demand or you don’t.”
“We’re talking about Congress,” Palmer said.
“Do we know where the material came from?” Quinn asked, eyes locked on the precise movements of the “Old Guard” 3rd Infantry soldier marching, machinelike, thirty yards away. Behind the ramrod-straight young man, carved on the front of the white marble tomb was the inscription: Here rests in honored glory, an American soldier, known but to God.
Palmer took a deep breath. “Maybe,” he said. He handed his smartphone to Quinn. “The Bureau got this from the security cameras in Helsinki. It’s dated yesterday.”
Quinn and Thibodaux crowded around the phone to watch a young woman move from the long queue of travelers and step through the metal detector. There was no sound with the video, but from the security screener’s reaction it was clear the machine had alarmed. The video blinked to show a change of cameras. In this view, the girl could be seen lifting her shirt and pointing to a piece of jewelry in her navel. The female security officer administering the secondary screening passed a hand wand over the young woman’s belly, then sent her on her way.
The video complete, Palmer resumed his explanation. “Preliminary reports say the bombs in both California and St. Petersburg were conventional Semtex salted with plutonium. Analysis points to material manufactured by the Soviets. The girl in the video came in from Helsinki yesterday. She died within hours after hitting American soil. According to the story she gave medical staff, she swallowed the material in condoms, believing it was cocaine.”
Quinn rubbed his face, feeling a sudden weariness creep into his bones. “I was in Helsinki earlier this year,” he said. “They have state-of-the-art radiation detectors. I’m surprised she didn’t set off the alarms.”
“Alpha and beta radiation would have been stopped inside her,” Palmer said. “Gamma would have been detected, but if she swallowed the material immediately before passing through customs… theoretically she could have made it into the U.S. before she became ‘hot’ enough.”
“Now hang on one damned minute.” Thibodaux grimaced as if he’d just eaten a bitter pill. “You mean to tell me this girl ate plutonium?”
Palmer nodded. “Sources inside the Kremlin tell us a college student in St. Petersburg died of the same sort of radiation poisoning. So far the media hasn’t gotten wind of it, but an art dealer in Manhattan was found dead in her apartment this morning. FBI confirms it was radiation and that she’d been to Helsinki.”
“I’m guessing she had a belly button ring,” Thibodaux said.
“That means more material out there for another dirty bomb,” Quinn said. “Odd. It’s as if they want the mules to be found — otherwise they could have just killed them when they off-loaded the merchandise.”
“Uncertainty spreads terror almost as well as violence,” Palmer said. “But that’s not the worst of it.”
Thibodaux gazed across the field of crosses, shaking his head. “There’s something worse than people eatin’ plutonium?”
“One week ago we received two encrypted texts from an agent in Uzbekistan. The first was five words long: ‘Contact made. Suspect Yaderni Renit.’ ”
Thibodaux’s head snapped around. “A portable nuke?”
Palmer raised a sandy eyebrow. “I had no idea you spoke Russian, Jacques.”
“As a point of fact, I do not, sir.” Thibodaux shook his head. “But I do speak threat. I can understand ‘Kill the Amercanski’ and ‘Let’s cut his ass’ in fifteen languages. Nuclear bombs fall into that category.”
“You said there were two texts?” Quinn prodded. He knew Palmer liked being prompted to ensure people were engaged in the conversation.
Palmer gave a deep sigh. “Looks like he was cut off mid-message. ‘Martel theory appears corre…’ ”