Code Word: Paternity, A Presidential Thriller Read online

  The vice president’s voice grated, failing in its attempt to mask ambition with sincerity: “Mr. President, it means more than I can express that you have the confidence, in me, and in yourself, to create a co-presidency. That’s in the country’s best interest. Together, we’ll bring America out of this stronger and better than she went into it!”

  Martin straightened and set his shoulders. Co-presidency! Right in my face. I can’t let that pass!

  “Bruce, there’s no authority in the Constitution for a co-presidency and neither of us can call it that. That is not what I’m saying to you! But you will have the second-largest executive role in this administration, a role without precedent for any vice president.”

  Griffith knew he had overreached but had no regrets, felt no embarrassment. He smiled. “Of course, Mr. President. I phrased that awkwardly, but I know you realize I meant what you just expressed much more accurately. You want Bart and me to work out the details and get back to you?”

  “That’s right.” Martin looked at his wristwatch. “You might as well get started!”

  As he left with the vice president, Bart wondered if they had just made a terrible mistake.

  Chapter 17

  “Sit. Let’s get started—Aaron?”

  The president spoke as he crossed the threshold of the main conference room of the Situation Room, removing his coat and loosening his tie as he moved to his chair for the NSC meeting. Martin had considered including Sam Yu but decided against it; the discussion might cover plans she would need to deny.

  Tuning Hendricks out, Rick thought, how did we let it get this far? We’ve had evidence for over twenty years that the Kims were selling weapons and we’ve known for nearly that long the current Kim had nukes. Those aren’t dots; they’re flashing lights, at least now. But nobody wanted to open that can of worms.

  Hendricks wound up: “So that’s what we’ve got, and we believe it’s conclusive.”

  He looked at the president, who said, “I’m going to leave you to discuss this. I want you to challenge Paternity, because for sure others will.

  “Something more . . .” Martin’s eyes found theirs, each in turn. “I have decided to put the vice president in charge of all relief, recovery and internal security operations. His authority in those areas is now second only to mine. It’s a huge job and without someone of Bruce’s abilities and patriotism to handle it, I’d be so consumed I wouldn’t be able to effectively pursue critical international initiatives.

  “Bruce, thank you for stepping up to the plate on this.”

  Preening, Griffith said, “Mr. President each of us in this room would do anything to help the nation through this crisis. I will dedicate myself to being worthy of this trust.”

  “I know you will, Bruce. There are some details to be worked out, so we’ll keep it under wraps until we’re ready to announce the full scope of your role.”

  As he left, the president frowned: could Guarini and Dorn keep Griffith from grabbing control of the meeting? And the hurt in Sara Zimmer’s face when he’d announced Griffith’s new role—he’d have to take her aside and reassure her.

  After a moment, Easterly said, “Mr. Vice President, you’ve been handed an incredibly tough job. You’ll have my full support.” The others voiced a hubbub of similar sentiments.

  “Thank you all. Now let’s get to work on a plan for North Korea.”

  Dorn spoke quickly: “Yes, well let’s take it step by step, based on our earlier discussion.”

  “What’s to discuss?” said Griffith. “North Korea must be made to pay an appropriate price.”

  Battista said, “Yes, but what’s appropriate, and when and how is the price to be paid? How will our actions be perceived by our allies? By our enemies? We have a lot to consider.”

  “Let’s not make this harder than it is,” said the vice president. “Look, we got a break here. Kim Jong-il is one of the most isolated and disliked leaders on the planet. In fact, he probably is the most isolated and disliked. He’s a brutal dictator who’s allowed his own people to starve. Nobody’s going to feel sorry for him when we nail him. We give him an ultimatum: step down or we take you out!”

  “Does anybody else think that sounds like what the Bushies told Saddam Hussein?” said Easterly, brow furrowed. “Saddam was all of those things, but when we ‘took him out’ as you say, look what happened! We don’t want to repeat that.”

  “Eric, this isn’t Iraq! We have the smoking gun—Las Vegas. In fact, it’s the opposite of Iraq! We invaded Iraq to keep Saddam from passing nuclear or chemical or bioweapons to terrorists when he thought the time was right. We didn’t wait to be hit: we prevented a hit. Or some would say, since we didn’t find WMD, we were fooled and fought an unnecessary war. On the other hand, we’ve done nothing but negotiate with North Korea. We waited, and they hit us. What I’m speaking of is hitting back, not a preemptive strike.”

  “Bruce, what do you have in mind when you say hitting back?” Griffith preferred to be called Mr. Vice President, as Anne Battista well knew. Using his first name felt good—petty maybe, but good.

  “Order him to leave the country! I don’t even care if he goes someplace we can’t get him. Just so he goes, and takes his henchmen with him.”

  Easterly waded back in. “Well, putting aside for now the loose ends that would leave, what do you have in mind if, like Saddam, he denies everything and refuses to go?”

  Griffith glared at the secretary of defense. “We remove him forcibly!”

  “And how would we do that?

  “General MacAdoo, what are the prospects if we invade North Korea to remove Kim?”

  “Mr. Secretary, my estimate is that it would be worse than the first time we fought in Korea, and that was a long, bloody slog. And this time around Pyongyang has missiles that could reach Japan and maybe Hawaii, plus, apparently, nuclear warheads to put on them. And there’s South Korea—Kim could pulverize Seoul in a few days using conventional artillery if he didn’t want to use a nuke. Plus, of course, there’s China. The last time they sent over a million soldiers to help North Korea.”

  Griffith leaned forward, face set. “So, instead we send special forces and grab him or kill him.”

  “That’s an option, Mr. Vice President, but I don’t think the odds would be in our favor. North Korea is the world’s most closed, tightly policed society. Kim’s location and movements are extremely hard to know. I’m sure Secretary Easterly will present you with options if asked, but that’s my top-of-the-head thinking on it.”

  MacAdoo looked at Easterly as if gazing at an oracle. Guarini thought again that Mac was a kiss-up, more bureaucrat than general.

  “Mr. Vice President, I’ve thought some about that—not studied it, just kicked it around. On the one hand, it’s a classic special ops mission. But the challenges to a team inserting and lingering undetected until Kim did something that made him vulnerable, like traveling out of Pyongyang to one of his palaces, are huge. I’ll look at it in more detail, but I think Mac just gave a good summation of the risk and odds in general.”

  The vice president glanced down at the table, fiddled with his coffee cup, sighed, then spoke. This time there was none of the hectoring, challenging tone he had just displayed.

  “In that case, we must consider responding in kind. We could take out Kim by destroying Pyongyang with a nuclear missile. That would change the regime and even the score in one move, without a single U.S. casualty.”

  His words washed over them like ice water. No one else spoke or moved.

  Without even acknowledging it, thought Guarini, he’s proposing to forever change America’s relationship with the rest of the world and with itself, with its own soul. But the hell of it is, he’s right, if you consider only meeting the threat and preserving American, South Korean, and Japanese lives. His thinking is so different from Rick’s; he doesn’t see the big picture! That option is going nowhere while Rick is president—but it’s going to appeal to a lot of Americans. We�
�ve got to keep this guy contained!

  Feeling certain that he spoke for the president and everyone knew it, Guarini said, “Well, it might come to that, but there are still options we haven’t discussed.”

  Griffith nodded, tight-lipped.

  “Here’s one,” said Easterly. “We blockade North Korea as a means of preventing any other nuclear weapons leaving the country.”

  “Blockade is generally considered an act of war,” said Battista.

  “So is everything else we’ve been talking about!” said Easterly.

  “I just wanted to be clear about that,” she responded. “I’ll get the department’s lawyers on it immediately. What they tell us might matter a great deal. But that’s about what we call it, not what we do. I think some form of action along those lines may be a good option.”

  Dorn perked up. “OK, let’s examine the blockade option,” he said, drawing a grid on his notepaper. “Mr. Secretary, how does blockading North Korea strike you as to the level of effort and the chances of success?”

  “I’ll have to get the details, but it appears doable and I see no reason it wouldn’t be successful. Aaron, am I correct in believing that not much moves in or out of North Korea anyway, by sea or air, I mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  “OK,” said Easterly, “a nuclear weapon in a confined space is hard to hide from an alerted and well-equipped search party with plenty of time to work. The ships would be pretty easy. Dealing with aircraft could be tough. Once one is airborne from Pyongyang we’ve either got to shoot it down or force it to land for inspection or take possession of it as soon as it reaches its destination. That could be tricky. Suppose it lands in China, or Iran?”

  Battista leaped in: “North Korea has two land borders. Probably to the south we could induce the South Koreans to cooperate with the blockade and even assist us—although that’s not a given. But China in the north? I don’t think so. I think our blockade would have a big hole in it unless we persuaded the Chinese to participate.”

  “So,” said Dorn, “blockade is feasible but not effective unless the Chinese and the South Koreans do their parts. Not so good as it appears at first.” A spoiler’s sly smile flitted across his face, but Easterly ignored the jibe.

  Dorn said, “I think the group has developed several options: forcing Kim out by political pressure backed up by the threat of force; capturing or killing him with a special forces operation; blockading North Korea to prevent Kim from sending more nukes out to terrorists; using a nuclear weapon to kill Kim and thousands of residents of Pyongyang, thereby creating regime change.” Dorn looked around the room expecting conclusion, but Guarini stuck a foot in the door he wanted to close.

  “Hey, Aaron and Scott,” said the chief of staff. “We haven’t talked about CIA playing an operational role in this. Have you got capabilities for snatching Kim, or for anything else that would help us here?”

  Hitzleberger responded immediately, and everyone saw his pleasure in taking up a topic about which he had more expertise than his boss, Hendricks. They all knew he hated the fact that CIA now worked for someone other than the president. “We have nobody inside North Korea. We do have formal intelligence-sharing agreements with South Korea. We also have assets inside the South Korean government who pass us additional snippets of what their agents—who are very good—learn about the North.”

  “How about using those Predator drones of yours, like you used to take out al-Qaeda leaders?” Guarini made a pistol of his right hand and leveled it at Griffith. Battista stifled her smile.

  “Sure, Bart. They could be part of the mix, but the North Koreans have an air force and plenty of SAMs. The drones couldn’t loiter over the DPRK the way they do above northeast Afghanistan. They’d be shot down. We could keep ’em on alert in South Korea and send them north to support an op there—assuming the South Koreans allowed it—but they might be detected and alert Kim that something’s up. Conditions are just not good for drones.”

  “OK, thanks, Scott.” Guarini looked around the table, the others’ silence acknowledging his authority. That peacock! thought Griffith. Never been elected dogcatcher, never heard a shot fired in anger; my three senate terms and

  Purple Heart . . .

  Guarini ignored Griffith’s obvious feelings. “This has been a very useful first discussion. The president will study John’s report of the options carefully and will want to discuss them with you soon. I don’t need to tell you that any option involving a nuclear strike will be last on his list, at least for the present.

  “There’s something else I think he wants discussed: what should be our strategy with the information that Aaron’s just given us, that the bomb was North Korean?”

  Dorn winced at his oversight as chairman but said, “Right you are, Bart!” He glanced at his notes as he spoke. “I believe we concluded that going public quickly was the right approach. Another point of interest is that we should share Paternity data with the IAEA. Because they’ve done so in the past, we can assume that Britain, France, Russia, and China will collect samples and do analyses of their own. And we’re going to face doubt because of the debacle over Saddam’s WMD.”

  He’s such a technician, thought Guarini. I wonder if he’s the right guy for these times. He spoke: “I think the first thing we need to recommend is the approach the president should take. Is he just going to announce this, or is he going to follow the announcement with his plan of action?”

  Griffith said, “Bart, he’s got to say what he’s going to do! He can’t just say he’s going to think it over. He doesn’t have to position it as the full response or go into detail, but there’s gotta be payback for what the North Koreans did to us.”

  Happy to tweak the vice president, Battista said, “Bruce, the North Koreans didn’t necessarily do this—they probably provided the bomb to others.”

  Christ! thought Griffith, she’s so legalistic. “Anne, we don’t know who actually detonated that bomb and might never know. It would be disastrous to focus only on the perpetrators. The world would conclude that there’s no penalty for enabling terrorists to nuke us! We have to treat the North Koreans just as if they planted the bomb and pushed the button. We can’t afford to make a distinction between nations who provide WMDs and the individuals or groups who use them.”

  He smiled bleakly. “We should announce that Las Vegas was destroyed by North Korea. That would really wrong-foot them! Force them to make a case, if they can, that it was al-Qaeda or Hezbollah, or whoever!”

  Battista’s lip curled. “But that’s completely contrary to the principles of our laws! We don’t hold the manufacturer of a pistol responsible when someone uses it to kill a convenience store clerk.”

  Griffith rolled his eyes. “Anne, that law is based on the premise—which I agree with—that society must and can stand letting some otherwise preventable murders happen because some of the steps necessary to stop them all are worse than the crimes. But now we’re talking about events that our society cannot withstand. If we can’t prevent nuclear attacks, America is done! And if we have to prevent them solely by defensive measures, that also will destroy us—we’ve seen what happens. We have to deter nuclear attacks, and only one side of the unholy partnership between nuclear powers and terrorists can be deterred!”

  The VP’s fist slammed the table.

  This has gone far enough! thought Guarini. “OK, I take your points. This is going to be one hell of a tough call for the president. I guess that’s why they play that fanfare when he enters the room,” he said, referring to “Hail to the Chief” in an attempt to cut the tension. It wasn’t successful, but he no longer feared Griffith might reach across the table and start shaking the secretary of state by her Hermès scarf.

  John Dorn made haste to end the confrontation. “I’ll write this point up as a key pending issue requiring further consideration. I think that will be all for now.” Fingers moving with the dexterity of a bank teller, Dorn neatly stacked his papers, clipped th
em, and retreated through the door, followed by Hendricks and Hitzleberger.

  Hendricks paused at the threshold and turned to Battista. “By the way, Anne, be sure your lawyers take into account that the Korean War never ended. There’s a cease-fire, nothing more.” He flashed a “gotcha” smile.

  The man is insufferable! thought Battista. Then the vice president stepped toward her. “I’m sorry that I got a little loud. But this really is critical—we can’t let North Korean off the hook!”

  “And we can’t beat them by being like them!” said Battista, eyes boring into his. Griffith appeared ready to let fly, but pulled himself up. “We’ll discuss this again, Madame Secretary.”

  Guarini and Battista were alone in the room.

  “That man is dangerous, Bart!”

  “Maybe, but he might just be right. I hate to sound like Dick Cheney, but Bruce reminded us that this really is an existential threat we’re facing.”

  “You’ve changed, Bart.”

  “Probably. Working for the commander-in-chief is a whole lot different than working for the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.”

  No way is Bart going to lecture me. I’ve been with Rick as long as he has, hung in there when it seemed hopeless and self-destructive to keep fighting Glenna Rogers.

  “No shit, Sherlock, but that doesn’t mean shelving your principles!”

  “I’m not shelving them, but I have to consider the cost of sticking to them!”

  “Remember Lord Acton, Bart?”

  “Yeah—‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’

  “Anne, he had a good ear for a phrase, but, except for one lackluster term as MP, the guy never accepted responsibility for anything other than his own well-being. I don’t deny the aptness and even the wisdom of his observation. But I can’t forget that it was made by someone living in a bubble protected by the immense power of his class and the British Empire. He didn’t find power corrupting when it was his! He may have been a reformer; for sure he was a hypocrite. You should keep that in mind, Anne.”