Hansard breathed deeply, trying to break it all down in his mind. He knocked the cap off the bottle of cognac and poured a triple measure into the glass on the mahogany desk, then drank it down in one and poured himself another.
Cole had done it; he had survived long enough to cause a problem.
But all he had done was to save the President — and her assassination was just going to be the icing on the cake, really. Even with Abrams still at the helm, she might be convinced to increase defence expenditure in light of the development of a combined Russian-Chinese opponent. The contracts might still be signed, and Hansard’s new Cold War might still be able to go ahead. Not in the exact way it had been planned, but it was still salvageable — if Cole never had the chance to give his information to the President.
Hansard considered the matter — Cole was an escaped prisoner who had broken through the White House protective detail and fired his gun towards the President. Surely it would appear that Cole was trying to kill her, and Mancini had been killed drawing his own gun as he tried to protect her? Cole’s efforts would be regarded as being an attempted Presidential assassination, and it was therefore unlikely that Cole would gain access to her, at least in the short term.
He picked up his phone and dialled Elizabeth Harden. She must not have found where they had taken Cole, not managed to use Barnes and Davis as per his earlier instructions. But she would have to find him now, silence him one way or another, no matter what it took.
As the phone rang and rang, Hansard watched the replays of the event on the television screens. The camera angles were now being examined back in the studios, and cross-cuts were being made between Mancini and Cole, until it was clear that it was the President’s own bodyguard who had tried to kill her, and it was Cole that had saved her.
Damn.
The phone was answered then, a rough male voice on the other end of the line. ‘Who is this?’ the voice demanded.
‘This is Vice Admiral Charles Hansard, Director of National Intelligence. Who the hell is this? I’m trying to get through to Dr Harden, where is she?’
‘I’m sorry sir, Agent Johnson, Secret Service. We’ve found her unconscious. Two of our agents are down too.’
Hansard thought quickly. Two of their colleagues, maybe even two of their friends. ‘Agent Johnson, listen to me very carefully. The man who did this is extremely dangerous. We cannot afford for this to go to trial. I hereby authorize you to find him and ensure the matter is dealt with in a robust fashion. You get me?’
‘Yes sir,’ the man answered straight away, and Hansard was gratified to hear the positive response. The promise of revenge might be enough without having to offer a cash incentive. ‘That sounds like —’ Agent Johnson paused, and Hansard thought he could hear a disembodied electronic voice in the background, presumably the man’s radio. Ten seconds passed, then twenty as Johnson listened to his radio, before coming back to the phone.
‘Mr Hansard,’ he said in a more measured, controlled voice. ‘What is your current location?’
Hansard’s blood went cold, and he slammed the telephone handset back in its cradle.
They were already on to him. And if they were on to him, they would also be on to the rest of them.
He grabbed up his secure cell phone and keyed in a single line message — RED TWO FOUR — and then sent it to a special call group.
It was the emergency code for full mission abort, the order to drop everything and escape immediately; the whole plan was burned, and the Alumni might be burned along with it if they didn’t make a hasty exit.
Hansard put the phone in his pocket, downed the cognac in one smooth action, grabbed his coat, and followed his own advice.
He was going to get the hell out of there just as fast as he possibly could.
Damn that bastard. Damn him to hell!
36
‘I guess I owe you a huge debt of gratitude, Mr Cole,’ Abrams said as she sat across from her saviour in the relaxed peace and quiet of the Oval Office.
‘Don’t think anything of it, ma’am,’ he said, anxious to get on with the briefing so he could try and get to his family. ‘Just hear me out.’
As he had been taken away from the Press Briefing Room, Cole had started listing names, reciting the Alumni list, asking for them to be arrested, or at least for their locations to be confirmed. Even as Cole was being handcuffed and secured, he was pleased to see one of the agents take his garbled warnings seriously enough to start radioing through instructions — could the location of the following list of people please be confirmed? It was nice to see professionalism was still alive and well in some quarters; the agent might not have any idea why such a thing was important, but it might possibly be relevant in the future investigation into the attempted assassination of a United States President, and was thus worth following up.
Cole had been manhandled through the White House again, this time ending up secured in the Press Secretary’s office, just a short distance from the Press Briefing Room.
The attitude of the agents towards him was one of hostility and barely controlled violence. It was just a matter of minutes though, and a radio message received through their earpieces relaxed their demeanours completely; although still suspicious, they had obviously been told he wasn’t the bad guy.
Cole had asked again and again to see the President, but to no avail. But then a thought had occurred to him.
‘Tell her the Asset wants to see her,’ he had told the nearest agent, and then — much to his surprise and relief — his request was granted just five short minutes later.
And now he sat before her in the Oval Office, china cup of specially brewed coffee in his hands. He knew her own mind must have been going at a thousand miles an hour, her emotional state off the charts — her own bodyguard, a man she had entrusted her life to for the past two years, had just tried to kill her — but Cole could detect almost no hint of distress in her manner. She was cool and calm, just as she appeared on TV, although she looked at him with a barely concealed curiosity.
‘So what is it you need to tell me?’ she said at last.
37
An hour later, Cole’s briefing was complete. In addition to a verbal explanation of the events, Cole had also shown her on a computer his entire collection of evidence from the downloaded files.
Ten minutes into the briefing, Abrams had called in the Director of the Secret Service and demanded the immediate arrest of all the names on the list. She also asked for Elizabeth Harden to be taken straight into an interview room as soon as she regained consciousness.
Half an hour later, the meeting was again interrupted as Grayson came back in, saying that none of the people named on the list had been found. It was almost as if they had been warned, and fled at the last minute. He was instructed to order a nationwide alert for them, and left again to make the necessary arrangements.
As Cole drew to an end of his briefing, Abrams regarded him with her intelligent eyes. ‘You’re really quite a man, Mr Cole,’ she said in admiration. ‘And something of a legend. The Asset …’ She trailed off, deep in thought, and Cole wondered if his services had been used by Abrams herself at some stage in the past. It was more than likely, he decided.