Code Word: Paternity, A Presidential Thriller Read online

  What he saw was that in a showdown the Americans would make noise but wouldn’t hurt him. It was his skill as a dramatist and producer that revealed this to him, a skill acquired through his compulsive intake of America’s films, talk shows, and political blogs. Americans couldn’t face the images of themselves in battle that filled television, Internet, and films whenever it occurred. Images of the truck-bombed Marine barracks in Beirut soon forced their withdrawal from Lebanon. Images of soldiers’ bodies being dragged through the streets drove them from Somalia, and those images had been burned into American memory by the fine film Blackhawk Down. Another excellent film, Fahrenheit 9/11 had convinced them that their country’s response to the attacks was cynically concocted to enrich the president, his family, and friends. Kim knew a thing or two about making propaganda, and he admired Michael Moore’s craftsmanship in portraying an immoral government. Moore skillfully built his case that war is a means for the upper class to control the lower classes and then drew his conclusion, artfully framed as a question, that Americans should never trust their leaders again.

  Over the last decade Americans had spent themselves as a force in the world, Kim thought. Having gone bankrupt during Bush’s second term, they accelerated their decline under his successor. He would have expected nothing else from a woman! Glenna Rogers had withdrawn America’s army from Iraq, which exploded into civil war. Then she threw both the army and marines—hurriedly pulled out of Afghanistan—back in again to quell it. Before the end—a Shia victory enabled by Iran—six thousand U.S. soldiers were wounded and two thousand killed. No one knew how many Iraqis were killed, but certainly tens of thousands.

  Since their defeat in Iraq, Americans had no courage to use the power they still had. Images formed in Kim’s mind: desperation in the faces of soldiers whose withdrawal to Iraq’s airports had been under constant attack. Screaming women whose families had been pulverized by American airpower. I’ll make a film about this, he thought. It will be better than Blackhawk Down, or even Apocalypse Now!

  Bitterly, Kim recalled how he had tried and failed for years to get a meeting with an American president. He nearly had a visit from Bill Clinton, late in his second term. Clinton had sent his secretary of state, Albright, as a preliminary but then had turned his attention to the Jews and Arabs. Kim felt angry again as he thought of it. Clinton didn’t even send a family member! He could have sent his wife, a powerful figure in her own right, but instead he sent a functionary outside his inner circle. That showed American arrogance and disregard for the dignity of Koreans. When Clinton finally came to Pyongyang in 2009, then an ex-president turned errand boy dispatched to collect two Americans Kim had ordered kidnapped, their meeting hadn’t erased the earlier insult.

  But that would have to wait. Tonight he was considering the latest offer: a billion Swiss francs for two nuclear bombs. In the past, his vision—his inner voice—had said the time was not yet right. This time he knew, as certainly as he knew his own destiny, that it was right. With that much hard currency he could purchase what his dear people needed to plant their feet firmly on the road toward his vision: the Juche society, entirely self-sufficient. And the destruction of two American cities would reveal to all what he already knew: the weakness, self-indulgence, and futility of the United States. After their protector was shown helpless to protect even itself, Koreans south of the DMZ would accept his unification offer, through which the principles of Juche would prove superior and would absorb their democracy. These events would restore the dignity and face he had lost over years of reaching out to the Americans and being rebuffed.

  Still, his muse urged caution. He knew he couldn’t be sure what the Arabs would do. They were crazy—they saw enemies everywhere! Suppose they decided to strike Russia or China or Pakistan, instead of America? He would have the money, but America would still appear powerful to South Koreans and others lacking his own sure vision. Or suppose they struck America with one bomb and used the other against the Russians, owing to some grievance on behalf of the Muslims in Chechnya? Unlike the Americans, the Russians had power they were not reluctant to use—in fact they were proud of it—and would undoubtedly retaliate against him in kind if one of his bombs was used against them. And the source of the bombs, wherever the Arabs used them, would become known. They might try to blackmail him with it, or perhaps just reveal it in one of their theological rants. So, he had to protect himself.

  What he needed was a way to sell the Arabs nuclear bombs but retain control over how they were used. Tonight he didn’t know how to do that, but he knew he would work it out it in good time, as he had the answers to all his dear people’s problems.

  ***

  Austin, Texas—Eight Months Previously.

  General Ray Morales, now Congressman Ray Morales, looked across the breakfast table at his wife, Julie. “So forty years later, I’m a butter-bar again,” he said, using the Corps’ slang for a newly minted officer.

  “Not exactly, Ray! You and I are new to politics, but we’ve got all the life we’ve lived, all the experiences. Neither of us is a rookie, even if they call you Austin’s freshman congressman.”

  “Were you surprised we won?”

  “Not really. First, because you were appointed to fill Lamar Smith’s term last year and we spent a lot of time here building support. Plus, this has been a Republican seat for a long time. And finally, although it’s a topic most people don’t want to think about, you were right about Iraq when the president was wrong—and had the guts to resign over it.”

  “So I shouldn’t feel too cocky about winning?”

  “You mean we shouldn’t feel too cocky about winning? Satisfied, yes, but not cocky.” They grinned at each other.

  “OK, coach, I got it!” Ray drained his coffee and ambled off to shave.

  He had a blocky build, with powerful arms and thighs, overlooked by a broad face with a large, pug nose and a fleshy lower lip above a squarish jaw and broad chin. In repose his lips were usually a straight line, neither smiling nor frowning, both of which he did unmistakably when he wanted. His eyes were piercing, as if he were leading Marines on patrol, missing nothing and appraising everything.

  As he shaved, Ray thought about the situation facing president-elect Rick Martin and Congress, of which he was a very junior member. Although the country’s mood was hopeful, as its citizens anticipated the inauguration of a charismatic man who said that together they would make things a lot better, the economic facts were pretty bleak. And on the international side . . . it was as if Americans had decided to ignore the world and assume it would ignore them.

  When things went to hell in Iraq, about halfway through the calendar-driven withdrawal he had refused to support, the weakened NATO effort in Afghanistan had faded. Special Operations units from several countries remained in the northeast searching for al-Qaeda leaders, but that was about it. And across the irrelevant border, Pakistan stewed and bubbled and lurched, caught in tribal and ethnic hatreds, menaced by both Islamist mujahedin and Hindu India—and possessing at least several dozen nuclear weapons.

  Ray didn’t think the world was going to leave them alone. It was going to settle old scores, real and imagined.

  Morales had met Rick Martin a few times, the contact initiated by an old but intimate connection between their very different lives. That connection was Ella Martin.

  Ray met Ella Dominguez on the Princeton campus after a Princeton vs. Navy track meet in their junior year. Theirs had been one of those episodic, passionate college romances that die after graduation. The sex had been incredible, for the same reason—total focus—that pulled them apart. Ella entered Columbia Law and Ray became a Marine officer. After he completed the grueling Basic Course at Quantico, they spent some weekends together and wrote a few times, and then it was just over.

  Twenty-five years after parting, Ella and Ray found themselves in the same city. He was the new head of Marine Corps Plans, Policy, and Operations, a stepping-stone to becoming commandant, the
top Marine. Senator and Mrs. Rick Martin were already in Washington. Both spouses knew the history and there were no sparks—well maybe one or two, he admitted—but mainly just a fondness and mutual surprise that the paths they had traveled now crossed. He and Rick got along well, if casually, each thinking the other was typical of his profession but somewhat better than the average practitioner of war or politics.

  Now Ray had entered Rick’s political world and wondered whether they would have a relationship. He doubted it.

  ***

  Pyongyang, North Korea (DPRK)—Eight Months Previously.

  The Dear Leader rose from the computer, bouncing to his feet with pleasure. He had discovered the solution, as he always did. He knew how to maintain control over his bombs after he sold them.

  It had come to him an hour ago, around 1:00 a.m. as he sat in his private theater, drinking Hennessy Paradis cognac and smoking cigars, watching one of Marlon Brando’s greatest performances, On the Waterfront. The screen framed men working in the hold of a freighter, unloading cases of Irish whisky. One of them, a cocky character named Dugan, pilfered a bottle, joking to his mates about it. That triggered Kim’s insight. Suddenly, he knew.

  A Web addict, Kim went to Google and entered “sea container tracking.” It produced over a hundred thousand hits. Scanning the advertisements on the right of the screen, he read, “Track your assets around the world. RFID satellite tracking.” Kim clicked it. He learned that a small device could report the location and operation of vehicles, worldwide. It had a one-year battery life and gave its owner the ability to track it anywhere in the world as long as it stayed within range of a satellite or a cell phone network.

  Kim laughed as he read on. From any computer anxious parents could locate the family car and see how fast their teenager was driving, as well as obtain a history of locations and speeds. If the parents wished, they could send a signal locking or unlocking the car doors and even disabling the ignition.

  One of those devices could be paired with each bomb, linked to the firing circuit in such a way that, if the device were tampered with, the bomb would be disabled and a small explosive would destroy the bomb and the tamperer. With the device in place and functioning, Kim would know where the bomb was and could, if he chose, disable it. Tomorrow he would tell the Arabs it was a deal, one he of course would dominate by selling old plutonium weapons that had never worked powerfully in tests.

  Having solved the problem, Kim returned to his theater and On the Waterfront. Sadly for Dugan, the Mob killed him for taking their whiskey.

  Later, riding through the deserted streets, Kim briefly considered the U.S. presidential election of the previous week. Since Kim’s view of the world was Kim-centered, he viewed all others as either threats or opportunities. And since all his life he had his way in nearly everything, he tended toward opportunity when assessing people. None could match him anyway, he thought. He had long ago accepted his own genius and his destiny to create the perfect society for his dear people.

  Martin would be another opportunity.

  Chapter 7

  President Martin entered a small, drab room smelling of mildew. Cabinet officers and the few others rose, their faces mostly neutral. Some nodded and smiled slightly as his eyes met theirs. Others didn’t hold eye contact.

  Yesterday’s press conference had ended in fiasco with the power failure and stampede. After Wilson’s command Rick sat thinking, for just a moment, of people trapped in collapsed buildings in Las Vegas. As Martin was pushing away emotions, Wilson had tensed at a voice sounding in his earpiece. He then growled, “No fire, Mr. President, just some fuckin’ idiot with an overactive imagination! We’ll let the herd run away and then walk out of here. The generators will be back up in a few minutes.”

  Today the journalists, not wanting to admit they had panicked over a five-minute power outage, spun a narrative of the administration’s failure to be prepared.

  I’m not going to think about the people in Las Vegas, Rick vowed silently. If I do, I’ll become as paralyzed as Walter there, he thought, contemplating the secretary of education. He slid the memory into the vault where he kept unwanted things.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Now we begin. The day before yesterday was, literally, the first day of the rest of our lives. The country expects us to aid the victims and prevent another attack. With God’s help—and Congress’s—we’ll do that!

  His face earnest, a look he could turn on and off at will but now was sincere, the president leaned forward, fingers interlaced in front of him on the table.

  “I believe that each of you is up to the job. I’m not expecting perfection, but I am expecting best efforts, twenty-four seven. I need to hear what you believe, not just what I want to hear. We can’t have leaks, not only for security reasons but for the other reason we all know. Fear of being hung out to dry causes people to hold back. I pledge to you this is a Woodward-free zone and you must each make the same pledge to me and to each other.”

  A brief ripple of smiles held Rick’s attention, and he missed the frown that flitted across the vice president’s features. Bruce Griffith’s square face and ruddy complexion were topped by longish, white-blonde hair, carefully blow-dried and combed forward to conceal a receding hairline. But acne scars in his cheeks and chin kept him from looking like an aging movie star and seemed to connect him to ordinary folks, saying, “my life hasn’t been all roses either.”

  “I also want to say that, as horrible as this is, it offers opportunities,” continued Martin. “We need to keep them in mind, and I see that as one of my own key contributions going forward. Maybe, just maybe, other countries will be frightened enough for themselves to get behind a U.S. initiative to really, finally, end the spread of nuclear weapons.”

  The president gestured to National Security Advisor John Dorn, who nodded to Secretary of Homeland Security Sara Zimmer, whose face sagged with fatigue.

  Zimmer’s brownish hair, flecked with grey, hung barely to her shoulders and was tucked behind her ears, revealing high, flat cheekbones and chiseled jaw muscles beneath pale skin. She was just short of gaunt, no fat on a frame that, though normally wheelchair-bound, remained athletic from daily swims. Recalling her army service as pilot of an Apache helicopter gunship, cabinet colleagues readily imagined her swooping low over panicked infantry, cutting them down with efficient, well-aimed bursts of fire.

  “Mr. President, medical personnel and other first responders are still trying to stabilize the situation. It’s chaotic. There was an initial surge of thousands out of the no-go zone into the triage points at the edge of it. We decontaminate them, triage them, move them to temporary shelter, and as soon as possible evacuate those expected to survive. None of that is as orderly as it sounds, as we’ve all seen on TV and YouTube. But that’s our process, and as we get more resources and more experience, it will get better.

  “In addition to police and firefighters we have help from a lot of Eric’s people—paratroopers, medics, engineers, military police, plus helos and transport planes. You want to speak to that, Eric?”

  Secretary of Defense Eric Easterly was a compact man whose broad, flat nose dominated his creased and battered face. The dark pupils of his eyes contrasted sharply with their whites, which in turn contrasted with his mahogany skin. Something hard lurked beneath his polished manner, something that was almost visible every year when he ran in the Marine Corps marathon.

  “Sure, Sara. As you know, Mr. President, we deployed the ready battalion of the Eighty-second Airborne about twelve hours after the attack. They were prepared to jump in, but the C-17s were able to land about thirty-five miles away at Creech Air Force Base. Most of the Seventeenth Airborne Corps is now on-scene, or on the way, to patrol the no-go perimeter and help out with decontamination, first aid, meals—anything they can do. The Transportation Command has already made a few relocation flights getting survivors out.”

  Rubbing her eyes, Zimmer resumed. “I’d like to bring in the surg
eon general to give us the medical and public health picture.”

  The surgeon general, in a chair wedged against the wall, attempted to stand in the space between it and Zimmer’s wheelchair. There wasn’t room. With a shrug, he dropped back into his chair, peering around Zimmer until he made eye contact with Martin.

  “Mr. President, it’s a grim picture. We have tens of thousands of dead and even more injured. Needless to say, we need more medical people and more treatment facilities! Right now, most of the dead are in the no-go zone, but within a few days to a few weeks large numbers of those who were able to reach the perimeter will die, mostly from radiation sickness.

  “That’s a big issue we need to face. Thousands of survivors are going to die. There’s no way to prevent that; all we can do is keep them comfortable.” He sketched quotation marks in the air.

  “While it might seem that the best for them would be to die in a hospital, any hospital, evacuating them will mean the majority will die among strangers. Most families won’t be able to be with them. It’ll also mean returning thousands of bodies to Nevada. And if we put the certain fatalities in hospitals, we won’t have enough beds for people with a chance to survive. On the other hand, if we continue to set up field care units nearby, family members can be with them, and the handling of remains is not such a problem. It won’t be pretty, but I think it’s the kindest and most practical way to go; plus it saves hospitals for those who benefit most from them.”

  Rick glanced at his chief of staff. Bart Guarini’s green eyes flashed out of deep, heavy-browed sockets, screened by partially lowered eyelids. The effect was a bit like a pair of snipers firing from formidable concealment: attract their ire and you die. Bart understood as if it were his own thought: Rick wants some pushback.