CHAPTER SIX
“A National Crisis”
Sunday.
The White House Situation Room was on the ground floor of the West Wing. Two Secret Service Agents stood at the entrance. A Secret Service agent guarded the White House elevator hidden in a pantry off the renovated kitchen, which led to the Secure Room, two floors below street level, lined with lead and designed to withstand a 50 megaton hit.
Adjacent to the Situation Room was the computer room housing a Cray XT5 with over 224,000 processing cores. A wall of monitors cast the only light in the climate-controlled op center, manned 24/7 by a staff of five including two West Point graduates, a Yalie, and two scruffy hackers who’d been recruited by the CIA. The President’s, indeed, most of Congress’ e-mail accounts were subject to unrelenting cyber-warfare.
There were hundreds of malware cells around the world whose sole goal was to disrupt the communications of the United States government. Iran alone sponsored thirty. China had an unknown number. The Russkis were said to have sixteen. Even allies such as Israel, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia tried to look up Uncle Sam’s pants.
Hence the NSA’s Advanced Networks Operations (ANO) team, a group of mostly young computing experts assembled in 2006 to hunt for suspicious activity on the government’s secure networks. Their office was a nondescript windowless room in Ops1, a boxy, low-rise building on the 660-acre campus of the NSA.
Each of the twenty-one computers in the White House computer room was shielded by a metal box and had no connection to the internet or to each other. The shielding was to prevent their disruption by an electro-magnetic pulse. The system ran on a small nuclear reactor unconnected to any outside power grid that had been installed in Spring, ‘02, at then-Presidential advisor Dick Cheney’s direction. There were no wireless mice and no wireless keyboards because those signals could be intercepted and the data captured.
Those entering the room had to surrender their cell phones, laptops, even their remote control car door locks because those devices were all capable of sending and receiving signals. Data was gathered at numerous CIA/HSA agencies around the country and thoroughly laundered through redundant systems before it was allowed to enter the secure room.
Inside the Situation Room, the President sat grimly at the head of a carrier-shaped mahogany table with a Sony iBook softly glowing at his elbow. Each of the seven others seated at the table had a similar laptop tuned to the news feed about the shocking death of Senator Darling in an automobile accident. He was alleged to have been driving alone when he went off the road, rolled down a bank and the car burst into flames. It was possible he was distracted by talking on his phone. The world waited for the autopsy report even as the Appomattox County coroner hinted that there might not be enough left to autopsy.
In reality the senator’s remains had been transported to Bethesda Naval Hospital.
On the President’s left sat National Security Advisor Margaret Yee, FBI Director Howard Lubitch, and CIA Director Luther Brubaker. On his right sat Homeland Security Director General Rolf Panny, Dr. Hayley Gross, a communicable-disease expert from CDC with a Level 5 clearance, and General Arthur MacCauley, head of the Joint Chiefs. At the far end of the table sat WH Chief of Staff Murray Compton.
The room was dimly lit by sconces set low to the lush cocoa pile rug, which along with the insulation removed all sharp objects from the ear. For a moment the only sound was General Panny clearing his throat and the gentle susurrus of the air conditioning. A funk of anxiety permeated the air.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the President said, “As you know Senator Darling did not die from an automobile accident. He spontaneously erupted bringing the total number of these events to six this year. I don’t know how much longer we can keep the lid on. Once this gets out we can expect a firestorm. We don’t know if it’s a disease or a new form of terrorism. We have videos of two of the immolations. These will be issued on a locked disc. They are disturbing.
“I have instructed the NSA and HS to issue a heightened alert.” He paused as if searching for words. “We’re trying to find out how far back these go. I don’t know if you remember--that radical cleric in Cairo two years ago, went down in flames? Al Qaeda took credit.”
Yee raised her palm and let it fall to the table. She was a diminutive Asian woman and had served three Presidents. “Mr. President I learned only moments before this meeting that Dmitri Yakovitch the oil magnate died in a sudden blaze at his dacha on the Black Sea. From the press blackout I assume he spontaneously erupted. That makes seven.”
The President hunched as if expecting a blow. With his rugged face and mane of silver hair he looked like Pixar’s idea of the ideal Commander in Chief. “Margaret will head up this task force. Anything you need just ask. I want you to identify the source of these attacks and neutralize them. Not a word to anyone. If this gets out we will have panic.”
No matter whom he named to head up the task force, some were bound to be disappointed. But there was no objection. Those seated at the table had all long ago learned to mask their feelings behind a diplomatic face.
The President turned to Hayley Gross. “Dr. Gross, is there anything in your experience that would explain this?”
The model-thin Gross, designer glasses perched on her ax-shaped nose, consulted her PowerBook. “John E. Heymer in his book The Entrancing Flame advanced the theory that the victims all suffered from depression and fell into a coma shortly before they combusted. Heymer believed that their subconscious released hydrogen and oxygen molecules within the body setting off a chain reaction.
“Arthur C. Clarke wrote, ‘There’s one mystery I’m asked about more than any other: spontaneous human combustion.’ Some cases seem to defy explanation, and leave me with a creepy and very unscientific feeling. If there’s anything more to SHC, I simply don’t want to know.” She closed the laptop.
“I have been interested in SHC my whole life, but I have yet to find any scientific evidence that the body itself can spontaneously combust. The human body is mostly water. Moreover if your source is correct, Sen. Darling was hardly depressed. Just the opposite.”
The President turned to General Panny who seemed too small for his dress uniform. Pale gray stipple formed a skullcap on his narrow face. “Rolf?”
“What worries me, Mr. President, is that this seems to be some new kind of technology. There hasn’t been enough left of the victims to fill a matchbox, much less provide for an autopsy. Human flesh is hard to burn. Crematoria require a sustained heat of 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit for up to three hours. These combustions appear to generate from the inside out and are complete inside ninety seconds. This requires an incredible source of energy.”
Luther Brubaker cleared his throat. He might have played a kindly family doctor on television but his reputation was of a no-nonsense take-no-prisoners executive who got things done while irritating as many people as possible. He’d been a field agent and had firsthand experience with black ops. “Mr. President, we have been conducting experiments with microwaves, as you know. We have been unable to achieve anything like this and we’ve been at it for twelve years.”
“So have the Russians,” Panny said.
“So have the Chinese,” MacCauley said.
The President fixed his piercing green eyes on Lubitch. “Howard, could there be a connection between Darling’s role as Chairman of the Energy Independence Committee and these attacks?”
“We’ve been looking into this since we got the directive,” the FBI Director said. “These other victims have only a peripheral relationship to the energy industry, if any. Petrovich--that’s new. He was oil. The problem is there’s nothing left after these immolations to autopsy. We’re hoping to get a break on the next one.”
“Mr. President,” Yee said in her soft but perfect voice. “As you know, we employ the Project Genesis system to select the appropriate personnel. We initiated a search pursuant to your directive last night. This morning the program identified the contractor most likely to succeed with an 89% probability, Otto H. White, a retired CIA operative.”
Brubaker’s lips formed a grim line. “Aardvark White? Seriously?”
***