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“That is good. As it turns out, the Oracle was right about the Corporation posing a potential threat. They did manage to escape Insein Prison, a feat I don’t believe has been accomplished by many.”

Abdul recalled his meeting with Cabrillo in Singapore. He’d had a feeling then that the man was dangerous. That reminded him of another loose end that needed seeing to. “What of Pramana?”

“We’re going to see him now. That is the reason for our delay here in Jakarta. I knew after his failure in Singapore that you would wish to speak with him. It was only your quick thinking that prevented it from becoming a fatal mistake. Once your chat is over we’ll head to Europe with the crystals. Oh, what about Croissard?”

“Weighted down and tossed into the Malacca Strait.”

Thirty minutes later the sleek Mercedes limousine pulled into the parking lot of a run-down warehouse on the outskirts of the teeming city of ten million. The lot was cracked and weed choked, and the building looked as though it hadn’t seen paint since the Dutch granted Indonesia its independence.

“I can’t believe that fool Pramana didn’t have tighter control of his people,” Mohammad said, his temper beginning to grow.

Some of the enforcers he employed came from the Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah. In fact, Pramana had accompanied him to England and had carried out the torture of William Cantor. What Abdul hadn’t known is that when Pramana sent two of his men to the Singapore meeting as lobby backup in case something went wrong, they brought suicide vests on the private jet with the intention of killing the very men Abdul was there to meet. Abdul didn’t know the reason or particularly care. He supposed it was to avenge the fellow Muslims the Corporation had killed in Pakistan. Abdul himself had warned them all about how good these operators were, so perhaps they’d decided to martyr themselves by taking out such a formidable foe.

It mattered little. What mattered was that Pramana had betrayed them either deliberately or by not being able to control his men, and they’d nearly ruined everything. Had Mohammad not realized the situation and quickly improvised another explosive device with gunpowder from his pistol and chemicals he found on a maid’s cart, he felt certain that Cabrillo would have realized the meeting had been a trap and not taken the contract. The third blast he’d set off in the casino had been just enough to convince the two Americans that they had been in an unfortunate place at an unfortunate time.

“If you don’t mind,” Bahar said when Abdul swung open the car’s door, “I’ll remain behind.”

“Of course.” Mohammad stepped out into the humid air and unsheathed the knife he kept strapped to his forearm.

18

WASHINGTON, D.C.

THREE WEEKS LATER

THE PRESIDENT’S SECRETARY HAD BEEN WITH HIM FROM the very beginning when he decided to parlay his up-by-thebootstraps story and gift for oratory into a political career. He put his law practice on hiatus and ran for mayor of Detroit and won in a landslide when his opponent had withdrawn from the race to “spend more time with his family.” The truth was, his opponent’s wife had found out her husband had been cheating and was preparing divorce proceedings. From there he did two terms in the House and another in the Senate before launching his presidential run. Eunice Wosniak had dutifully followed him from his one-man practice to the mayor’s office and on to Washington, and now to the most powerful post in the world.

She guarded her boss almost as fiercely as his chief of staff, Lester Jackson. Jackson was a Washington insider who’d latched onto the president’s coattails early on and never relinquished his grip.

While she had a support staff of several dozen under her, one of the tasks Eunice insisted upon performing herself was giving the president his coffee when he strode through her office on the way to his. She’d just finished adding milk—the First Lady insisted on two percent, but it was actually whole milk poured into a two percent carton—when her fax line rang.

It wasn’t without precedent, but faxes were somewhat archaic in today’s world so the machine usually sat mute for weeks on end. When it had spit out a single page into the tray, Eunice scanned the contents, bewilderment turning to genuine concern as she read.

This had to be a hoax, she thought.

But then how did the sender get this line? It wasn’t listed in the White House directory because of all the prank faxes sent to the president, along with the prank letters and e-mails. Those were all screened off-site. Only a few dozen people had easy access to the fax machine behind her desk.

What if this wasn’t a hoax? The very idea sickened her. She sat heavily, barely noticing the hot coffee she’d spilled in her lap.

Just then, Les Jackson strode in. His hair was frosted at the temples, and his eyes were starting to retreat into wrinkled pouches, but he still moved like a much younger man, as if the stress and strain of his job invigorated him rather than wore him down.

“You okay?” he asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Eunice wordlessly held up the fax, forcing Jackson to reach across her desk to get it. He was known as a speed-reader and had the single page finished in just a few seconds.

“This is bogus,” was his opinion. “Nobody can get that information. And the rest is just typical jihadist drivel. Where did it come from?”

He let the piece of paper flutter to her desk.

“It just came through on my fax, Mr. Jackson.” Though she’d known him for years, she insisted on formality with her superiors. Jackson did nothing to dissuade her from that particular habit.

He considered that for just a moment, then dismissed it. “Crackpot with your fax number. Bound to happen.”

“Is someone sending you dirty faxes, Eunice?” the president asked with a knowing chuckle.

Two years into his first term hadn’t taken much of a toll on the man. He was tall, with broad shoulders, and such a captivating voice that audiences were still enthralled with him even when they disagreed with his policies.

Eunice Wosniak shot to her feet. “No, Mr. President. It’s nothing like that. I, eh ...” Her voice simply trailed off.

The president picked up the fax, pulled a pair of cheater glasses from the breast pocket of his Brooks Brothers suit, and settled them on his aquiline nose. He read it almost as quickly as his top aide. Unlike Jackson, the president blanched, his eyes widening. He reached into his hip pocket and removed a piece of plastic about the size of a credit card. It had been exchanged with a similar one by an NSA courier as soon as he’d left the presidential apartment. It was a morning routine that never varied.

He broke open a seal and compared the numbers printed on the card inside with those that had been written on the fax. His hands began to tremble.

“Mr. President?” Jackson asked with considerable concern.

The little plastic card was nicknamed “the biscuit.” Issued to the president every day since shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, it contained a series of numbers that was generated randomly at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, by a secure computer. This was the presidential authentication code to launch nuclear weapons.

Without doubt, these numbers were the most closely guarded secrets in the United States.

And someone had just faxed today’s code to the Oval Office.

“Les, call together the National Security Council. I want them here as fast as humanly possible.” While someone possessing the codes couldn’t possibly launch a nuclear weapon, the very idea that the biscuit codes were no longer secret was the greatest breach of security in U.S. history. This alone called into question the level of protection of all other areas of national defense.