“What if? . . .” she asked wistfully.
“What if what, Carol?”
“What if nature came up with something to knock the human population back?°”
“The Gaea Hypothesis?” That made him smile. The idea was that the earth was itself a thinking, self-correcting organism that found ways to regulate the numerous living species that populated the planet. “Even if that’s valid-and I hope it is, really – I’m afraid that we humans move too fast for Gaea to deal with us and our work. No, Carol, we’ve created a suicide pact, and we’re going to take down everything else with us, and a hundred years from now, when the human population worldwide is down to a million or so people, they’ll know what went wrong and read the books and look at the videotapes of the paradise we once had, and they’ll curse our names-and maybe, if they’re lucky, they’ll learn from it when they crawl back up from the slime. Maybe. I doubt it. Even if they try to learn, they’ll worry more about building nuclear power reactors so they can use their electric toothbrushes. Rachel was right. There will be a Silent Spring someday, but then it’ll be too late.” He picked at his salad, wondering what chemicals were in the lettuce and tomatoes. Some, he was sure. This time of year, the lettuce came up from Mexico, where farmers did all sorts of things to their crops, and maybe the kitchen help had washed it off, but maybe not, and so here he was, eating an expensive lunch and poisoning himself as surely as he was watching the whole planet being poisoned. His quietly despairing look told the tale. He was ready to be recruited, Carol Brightling thought.
It was time. And he’d bring some good people with him, and they’d have room for them in Kansas and Brazil. Half an hour later, she took her leave, and headed back to the White House for the weekly cabinet meeting.
“Hey, Bill,” Gus said from his office in the Hoover Building. “What’s happening?”
“Catch the TV this morning” Henriksen asked.
“You mean the thing in Spain?” Werner asked.
“Yep.”
“Sure did. I saw you on the tube, too.”
“My genius act.” He chuckled. “Well, it’s good for business, you know?”
“Yeah, I suppose it is. Anyway, what about it?”
“That wasn’t the Spanish cops, Gus. I know how they train. Not their style, man. So, who was it, Delta, SAS, HRT?”
Gus Werner’s eyes narrowed. Now Assistant Director of the FBI, he’d once been the special agent in charge of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team. Promoted out, he’d been Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta field division, and now was the AD in charge of the new Terrorism Division. Bill Henriksen had once worked for him, then left the Bureau to start his own consulting company, but once FBI always FBI, and so now, Bill was fishing for information.
“I really can’t talk much about that one, buddy.”
“Oh?”
“Oh? Yes. Can’t discuss,” Werner said tersely.
“Classification issues?”
“Something like that,” Werner allowed.
A chuckle: “Well, that tells me something, eh?”
“No, Bill, it doesn’t tell you anything at all. Hey, man, I can’t break the rules, you know.”
“You always were a straight shooter,” Henriksen agreed. “Well, whoever they are, glad they’re on our side. The takedown looked pretty good on TV.”
“That it did.” Werner had the complete set of tapes, transmitted via encrypted satellite channel from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid to the National Security Agency. and from there to FBI headquarters. He’d seen the whole thing, and expected to have more data that afternoon.
“Tell them one thing, though, if you get a chance.”
“What’s that, Bill?” was the noncommittal response.
“If they want to look like the local cops, they ought not use a USAF helicopter. I’m not stupid, Gus. The reporters might not catch it, but it was pretty obvious to somebody with half a brain, wasn’t it?”
Oops, Werner thought. He’d actually allowed that one to slip through his mental cracks, but Bill had never been a dummy, and he wondered how the news media had failed to notice it.
“Oh?”
“Don’t give me that, Gus. It was a Sikorsky Model 60 chopper. We used to play with them when we went down to Fort Bragg to play, remember? We liked it better than the Hueys they issued us, but it ain’t civilian-certified, and so they wouldn’t let you buy one,” he reminded his former boss.
“I’ll pass that one along,” Werner promised. “Anybody else catch on to that?”
“Not that I know of, and I didn’t say anything about it on ABC this morning, did I?T’
“No, you didn’t. Thanks.”
“So, can you tell me anything about these folks?”
“Sorry, man, but no. It’s codeword stuff, and truth is,” Werner lied, “I don’t know all that much myself.” Bullshit, he almost heard over the phone line. It was weak. If there were a special counterterror group, and if America had a piece of it, sure as hell the top FBI expert in the field would have to know something about it. Henriksen would know that without being told. But, damn it, rules were rules, and there was no way a private contractor would be let into the classification compartment called Rainbow, and Bill knew what the rules were, too.
“Yeah, Gus, sure,” came the mocking reply. “Anyway, they’re pretty good, but Spanish isn’t their primary language, and they have access to American aircraft. Tell them they ought to be a little more careful.”
“I’ll do that,” Werner promised, making a note.
“Black project,” Henriksen told himself, after hanging up. “I wonder where the funding comes from??. . .” Whoever those people were, they had FBI connections, in addition to DOD.What else could he figure? How about where they were based? . . . To do that . . . yes, it was possible, wasn’t it? All he needed was a start time for the three incidents, then figure when it was the cowboys showed up, and from that he could make a pretty good guess as to their point of origin. Airliners traveled at about five hundred knots, and that made the travel distance . . .
. . . has to be England, Henriksen decided. It was the only location that made sense. The Brits had all the infrastructure in place, and security at Hereford was pretty good-he’d been there and trained with the SAS while part of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, working for Gus. Okay, he’d confirm it from written records on the Bern and Vienna incidents. His staff covered all counterterror operations as a normal part of doing business . . . and he could call contacts in Switzerland and Austria to find out a few things. That ought not to be hard. He checked his watch. Better to call right away, since they were six hours ahead. He flipped through his rolodex and placed a call on his private line.
Black project, eh? he asked himself. He’d see about that. The cabinet meeting ended early. The President’s congressional agenda was moving along nicely, which made things easy for everyone. They’d taken just two votes-actually, mere polls of the cabinet members, since the President had the only real vote, as he’d made clear a few times, Carol reminded herself. The meeting broke up, and people headed out of the building.
“Hi, George,” Dr. Brightling greeted the Secretary of the Treasury.
“Hey, Carol, the trees hugging back yet?” he asked with a smile.
“Always,” she laughed in reply to this ignorant plutocrat. “Catch the TV this morning?”
“What about?”
“The thing in Spain-‘
“Oh, yeah, Worldpark. What about it?”
“Who were those masked men?”
“Carol, if you have to ask, then you’re not cleared into it.”
“I don’t want their phone number, George,” she replied, allowing him to hold open the door for her. “And I am cleared for just about everything, remember?”
SecTreas had to admit that this was true. The President’s Science Advisor was cleared into all manner of classified programs, including weapons, nuclear and otherwise, and she oversaw the crown jewel secrets of communications security as a routine part of her duties. She really was entitled to know about this if she asked. He just wished she hadn’t asked. Too many people knew about Rainbow as it was. He sighed.
“We set it up a few months ago. It’s black, okay? Special operations group, multinational, works out of someplace in England, mainly Americans and Brits, but others, too. The idea came from an Agency guy the Boss likes and so far they seem to be batting a thousand, don’t they?”
“Well, rescuing those kids was something special. I hope they get a pat on the head for it.”
A chuckle. “Depend on it. The Boss sent off his own message this morning.”
“What’s it called?”
“Sure you want to know?” George asked.
“What’s in a name?”