Roy readjusted his glasses. He looked like the absentminded professor addressing a class. “Because now it goes far beyond mere supply and demand and price points. If the criminal element knows it can’t rely on the integrity of Afghan poppy production it won’t buy from them under any circumstances. It also has the added benefit of the drug cartels being very angry with the Taliban for ruining a year’s worth of heroin production. That’s billions of dollars. The cartel will take its revenge with the result that many of the Taliban’s higher-ups will end up dead. With poppy production out of play other crop possibilities become viable, none of which will yield nearly the same amount of money to terrorists fighting us. Farmers will still be able to make a decent living, and the cartel will have to search for another source of heroin ingredients. Win-win for us.”
“Pretty impressive,” said Michelle.
“I can see the forest and every tree in it. It’s an ecosystem of sorts where everything impacts everything else. I can see how things connect to one another, no matter how unconnected they might seem.”
Michelle sat back. “You would absolutely rock on Jeopardy.”
Roy looked alarmed at the thought. “No, I’d be too nervous. I’d get tongue-tied.”
“Nervous?” exclaimed Sean. “That’s just a game show. You’re deciding policy for the United States of America.”
“But I’m not competing with anyone. It’s just me. It’s not the same.”
“If you say so,” replied Sean, who looked thoroughly unconvinced of this.
“We have satellites positioned all around the globe. Much of what I see on the Wall are real-time video of events in every country.” He paused. “It’s a little like being God peering down at his creations, seeing what they’re up to, and then flinging down fire and brimstone to those who most deserve it. I don’t really care for that part of it.”
Michelle stared into the fire. “I bet. And it creeps me out that there are people watching everything you do from hundreds of miles up.”
Sean said, “They’re not watching everybody and everything, Michelle. With over six billion people on the planet that would be impossible.”
She looked at Sean. “Oh yeah? Well, they can keep eyes on whoever they want to. Remember when we went out to Edgar’s house? No one followed us. No one could have seen us from the ground. But those goons still showed up. They knew we were there somehow. I bet they have eyes in the sky on Edgar’s home.”
Roy looked at her and said, “Eyes in the sky on my house?”
She said, “Yep. As far as I can see it’s the only way it could have worked.”
In the firelight Roy’s eyes seemed magnified behind the glasses. “Do you think the satellite was watching my house 24/7?”
Sean glanced at Michelle. He said, “Twenty-four/seven? I don’t know. Why?”
Roy just kept staring at the fire and didn’t say anything.
Finally what he was getting at dawned on Sean. He said, “Hold on. If that’s the case, how did the satellite not see the people planting the bodies in your barn?”
Roy stirred and turned to him. “There can only be one answer to that, of course. Someone ordered the satellite to look away at the precise time it was being done.”
“That would leave a paper trail. And that would take some pretty heavy authorization,” said Sean.
“Like the secretary of DHS,” said Roy.
CHAPTER 79
“GIVE ME THE status. Bad?”
Mason Quantrell sat in a deep leather seat of his luxurious private jet that was actually a Boeing 787 Dreamliner customized for its fortunate owner. It had a painting of the fleet-footed Mercury on its tail representing the symbol of Quantrell’s company. The jet was far larger and more costly than Peter Bunting’s Gulfstream G550. Yet as a billionaire Mason Quantrell could easily afford the most expensive toys on the market. And in truth Uncle Sam had footed a large part of its cost.
“Pretty bad,” replied the only other person in the passenger cabin.
James Harkes sat back and sipped a glass of water while Quantrell was already working on his second bourbon and water. The CEO looked haggard, with quarter-moon bags under his eyes.
“She’s going to come at you hard, Mr. Quantrell.”
Quantrell spread his hands helplessly. “But after our last meeting things seemed fine. And then I got the call from Bunting. Right in my office, no less. The ballsy prick. He dared us to trace him.”
“And you couldn’t?”
“No,” Quantrell said glumly. “The bastard was always good at the cloak-and-dagger stuff. Did you know I recruited him out of the PhD program at Stanford?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“He was in Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship before that. He did college in less than three years. Was already on people’s radars for some white papers he’d published on the rising threat of global terrorism and how best to deal with it. The work was very specific. He very nearly predicted 9/11 twenty years before it happened.”
“So he came to work for you?”
Quantrell nodded as the plane banked left and began its initial descent. “For three years. He did a great job, really turned things around for us. Hell, I was grooming him back then to run the whole damn company. But he had other ideas.”
“The E-Program? Seems like you would have jumped on that.”
“I would have but he never gave me the chance. He left, started his own business, and quickly moved up the pecking order of contractors. I have to admit his stuff was good. No, it was better than good. And then he took it up to a whole other level with the E-Program.”
“Ecclesiastes,” said Harkes. “The E-Program?”
“What? Oh, right. Didn’t know the man had a biblical side to him.” Quantrell downed the rest of his drink. “And then he sold the concept to the folks that mattered in D.C. Now the rest of us have been eating his dust for years.”
“Ever think of suing?”
“No grounds. He developed the stuff after he left me and he never violated the noncompete we had. Way too smart for that. No, I hate him because I don’t like to lose. And with him around I’ve been losing. A lot.” He put his empty glass down and buckled his seat belt as the plane hit some turbulence. “But Ellen Foster can hurt me a lot more. And I’m not talking just dollars and cents.”
“Yes she can,” agreed Harkes.
“President gave her carte blanche.”
“Yes he did.”
“Collateral damage? Meaning me?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“But she has to tie it into Bunting and the others. How does she plan to get to them?”
“She has an ace in the hole,” noted Harkes.
“Who?”
“Megan Riley.”
Quantrell sat forward, looking astonished. “The lawyer? She’s one of Ellen’s people?”
“No. She was kidnapped from Maine. Foster is holding her somewhere.”
Quantrell rubbed his chin. “This really is extraordinary.”
“Yes it is,” agreed Harkes.
“She kept me out of the loop on that.”
“Me too, until now.”
“And Foster is planning to use her to get to Bunting and the others? How?”
“Playing on their guilt. And their conscience. Riley is an innocent victim in all this. If it’s played right, we can use her to draw them out.”
“And Foster wants to survive all this with her reputation and Cabinet position in place?”
“Yes she does. I told her it would be hard but not impossible.”
“Does she require my termination as part of the plan?”
“Desires, but does not require,” was Harkes’s diplomatic reply.
“Then we have an opening.”
“I think we do. A very advantageous one for you if we play it just right.”