Oppose Any Foe

Susan stared at Kurt. “Was it related to Don Morris?”

Kurt shook his head. “We don’t know. But it happened about two blocks from the apartment of Trudy Wellington. Wellington has disappeared, as you know, but it seems that Stone went to her apartment as soon as he landed from interviewing Morris. The whole thing is very… unusual.”

Susan took a deep breath. Stone had saved her life more than once. He had rescued her daughter from the kidnappers. He had saved countless lives during the Ebola crisis, and during the North Korean crisis. He had even done the world a favor and assassinated the dictator of North Korea while he was there. He was an invaluable asset to Susan’s administration. More than that, he was Susan’s secret weapon. But he was also unstable, he was violent, and he appeared to involve himself in things that he shouldn’t.

“Anyway,” Kurt said. “We have him here, and he has a report to give. I think we should break in the new Situation Room right away and debrief him.”

Susan nodded. It was almost a relief to have something to sink her teeth into. The Situation Room here at the White House was a dedicated space, nothing like the converted conference room they had been using at the Naval Observatory. It was a totally renovated and updated command center, with the latest in high-tech wizardry. It would expand their strategic capabilities tremendously – or so she was told.

The only problem? It was underground, and Susan liked windows.

“Give me a few moments to get changed, okay?” Susan indicated the fancy, one-of-a-kind designer dress she wore. “I don’t know if this thing works for an intelligence meeting.”

Kurt smiled. He made a show of looking her up and down.

“Nah. Come on. You look great. People will be impressed – you came right in from the dedication and went to work.”

* * *

Luke rode the elevator with a crowd of people in suits, down to the Situation Room. He was tired – he had spent two hours being interviewed by the DC cops, then caught a few hours of fitful sleep. He had missed the dedication ceremony entirely.

Things like the rebuilt White House and its reopening just weren’t on his mind. He barely noticed the place, or the crowds ooohing and ahhhing over it. He was lost in a forest of dark thoughts – about himself and his life, about Becca and Gunner, and about Don Morris, his choices and the end to which he had come. Luke had also killed a man last night, and he still had no idea why.

The elevator opened into the egg-shaped Situation Room. It was smaller and more cramped than the former conference room they’d been using over at the Naval Observatory. It was also less ad hoc, less tossed together. The place looked like the command module on a Hollywood spaceship. It was set up for maximum use of the space, with large screens embedded in the walls every couple of feet, and a giant projection screen on the far wall at the end of the table. Tablet computers and slim microphones rose from slots out of the conference table – they could be dropped back into the table if the attendee wanted to use their own device.

Every plush leather seat at the table was occupied – mostly with middle-aged, overweight decision makers. The seats along the walls were filled with young aides and even younger assistants, most of them tapping messages into tablets, or speaking into telephones.

Susan Hopkins sat in a chair at the closest end of the oblong table. At the far end stood Kurt Kimball, Susan’s National Security Advisor. A sprawl of usual suspects took up the seats in between them.

Kurt noticed Luke enter and clapped his big hands. It made a sound like a heavy book dropping to a stone floor. “Order, everybody! Come to order, please.”

The place quieted down. A few aides continued to talk along the wall.

Kurt clapped his hands again.

CLAP. CLAP.

The room went dead quiet.

“Hi, Kurt,” Luke said. “I like your new command center.”

Kurt nodded. “Agent Stone.”

Susan turned to Luke and they shook hands. Luke’s big hand swallowed her tiny one. “Madam President,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

“Welcome, Luke,” she said. “What do you have for us?”

He looked at Kurt. “Are you ready for my report?”

Kurt shrugged. “That’s why we’re here. If it weren’t for you, we’d all be upstairs enjoying the festivities.”

Luke nodded. It had been a long day, and it was still early. He wanted to finish this up and go out to the country house he had once shared with Becca. Everything was too much right now, and what he most wanted to do was take a nap. Just nap on the couch, and maybe later, in the late afternoon, sit outside with a coffee and watch the sun set over the water. He had a lot to think about, and a lot of planning to do. An image of Gunner appeared in his mind.

All eyes were on him. He took a deep breath. He repeated what Don had told him. Islamic terrorists were going to steal nuclear weapons from an air base in Belgium.

A tall heavyset man with blond hair raised a hand. “Agent Stone?”

“Yes.”

“Haley Lawrence. Secretary of Defense.”

Luke had known that. But until this moment, he had forgotten it.

“Mr. Secretary,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

The man gave a slight smile, almost a smirk. “Please share with us how you think Don Morris obtained this intelligence. He’s in a federal high-security facility, the highest security we currently have, held in isolation in his cell twenty-three hours a day, and has no direct contact with anyone except the guards.”

Luke smiled. “I think that’s a question for the guards to answer.”

A ripple of laughter went around the room.

“I’ve known Don Morris a long time,” Luke said. “He’s probably one of the most resourceful people alive in the United States at this moment. I have no doubt that he receives intelligence, even in his current location. Is it accurate intelligence? I have no idea, nor does he. He doesn’t have any way to confirm it or discredit it. I guess that’s our job.”

He gave Kurt a sidelong glance. “Those are all the details I have. Any thoughts?”

Kurt paused for a moment, then nodded. “Sure. This will be a little bit on the fly, but mostly accurate. Belgium has been much on my mind in recent years, for obvious reasons.” He turned to an aide standing behind him. “Amy, can you bring us up a map of Belgium? Key in on Molenbeek and Kleine Brogel, if you don’t mind.”

The young woman fiddled with her tablet, while another aide turned on the main display monitor behind Kurt. A few seconds passed. The monitor ran through a few internal tests, then showed a blue desktop. A quiet buzz of conversation started again.

Kurt watched his aide. She nodded to him, and then he looked at the President.

“Susan, are you ready?”

“Ready when you are.”

A map of Europe appeared on the screen behind him. It quickly zoomed in to focus on Western Europe, and then Belgium.

“Okay. Behind me, you see a map of Belgium. There are two locations in that country I want to call your attention to. The first is the capital city, Brussels.”

Behind him, the map zoomed again. Now it showed the dense grid of a city, with a ring highway circling it. The map moved to the upper left-hand corner, and several photographs of cobblestone streets, a government building from the nineteenth century, and a stately and ornate bridge over a canal.

He turned to his aide. “Bring up Molenbeek, please.”

The map zoomed again, and more photos of streets appeared. In one, a group of bearded men marched carrying a white banner, fists pumping the air. The top of the banner had Arabic characters written in black. Below that was the apparent English translation:

No to Democracy!

“Molenbeek is a suburb of about ninety-five thousand people. It is the most densely populated section of Brussels, and parts of it run as high as eighty percent Muslim, mostly of Turkish and Moroccan descent. It’s a hotbed of extremism. The weapons used in the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack were cached beforehand in Molenbeek. The 2015 Paris terror attacks were planned there, and the perpetrators of that crime are all men who grew up and lived in Molenbeek.”