He held his identification to the scanner, and the big glass front doors unlocked. He stepped out of the blowing snow and into the main atrium. It was open and airy, with tall bamboo trees reaching toward the three-story ceiling. Everything was new and beautiful and high-tech. A stone waterfall greeted people as they entered, etched into the stone a message from Abraham Lincoln: Those who are ready to sacrifice freedom for security ultimately will lose both.
To Stone, it seemed that Lincoln was speaking to him personally. An agency like the Special Response Team was designed for rapid action, at times unfettered by the bureaucracy, the guidelines and the laws that slowed others down. The goal was security, of course, protection of the innocent, but there had to be a balance they were not a law unto themselves. It was important to remember that.
He glanced around the lobby before heading to his office. It was hard to believe. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasnt dreaming. Wasnt that what people said sometimes? Stone didnt go in for that sort of thing, generally speaking, but in this case it was true.
The new SRT headquarters were the old headquarters from years before, but gutted, stripped to the studs, and totally transformed. From the outside, the squat, three-story glass and concrete building looked utterly drab and functional, like a state university building from the 1970s, or an old Khrushchev-era Russian apartment complex.
But the brand new black Bell 430 helicopter hunched on the pad, with a bright white SRT logo on its side, might give a hint what youd find inside the building. There were offices on the first and second floors, and a state-of-the-art conference room and command center that was nearly a match for the Situation Room at the White House.
It had every technological innovation from Mark Swanns fever dreams including its own server farm, an encrypted network from which Swann could easily access spy satellites and data surveillance programs like ECHELON, and a small dedicated room for piloting drones. The workout center (complete with cardio equipment, weight machines, and a heavily padded sparring room) and the cafeteria were on the third floor. The soundproof gun range was in the basement.
The agency had twenty employees, the perfect size to respond to unfolding events fast, light, and with total flexibility. The new SRT was in its infancy, and they were still building teams and working to entice superstars away from private organizations, other government agencies, and the military.
Spun off from the FBI and now organized as a sub-agency of the Secret Service, the arrangement limited Lukes interactions with the federal bureaucracy. He reported directly to the President of the United States, which at the moment seemed to be working out just fine.
Trudy Wellington poked her head out of her office as Luke passed. She was sitting in her wheeled office chair, and had rolled it to the doorway.
Luke, I have something for you, she said.
He glanced down at her and did a pretend double-take. Dont you have a home?
She smiled and shook her head. You know where my home is.
Trudy was his science and intelligence officer, and her office was ten feet from his. Trudy looked slim and beautiful as ever in a green boiled wool coat and blue jeans. She had done away with the big, round, owlish red-rimmed glasses she used to hide behind. Now her pretty blue eyes were front and center. Those eyes always seemed to watch Luke closely.
Trudy was a mystery wrapped in a conundrum. For years, Luke had relied on her for intel and scenario spinning. But things had gotten complicated. After the Mount Weather disaster, after the original SRT boss, Don Morris, was implicated in a plot to overthrow the United States, it turned out Trudy had been in the midst of a long affair with him. She was arrested and held without bail under suspicion of conspiracy to commit treason. That should be enough to disqualify any person from working in intelligence again. Even worse, after she got out of jail, she disappeared. Her whereabouts during the year she was missing was something she refused to talk about. Things were complicated.
Even so, Luke had hired her to work at the new SRT anyway. Trudy and Luke had had their own brief dalliance during the Ebola crisis, something they never talked about and seemed to have put in the past. And Trudy was valuable for her ability to gather intelligence, and to make sense of it when she did. She was, to Lukes mind, the best in the business.
Okay, Luke said. What do you have for me?
Its something from Swann.
Swann is here? Luke said.
She shook her head. Of course not. Its seven oclock in the morning. But hes awake and he sent it to me a few minutes ago. As you know, weve got a short list of people were keeping tabs on. One of these is a man named Mustafa Boudiaf.
Trudy turned into her office and picked up her tablet off her desk. Luke followed her to the threshold. She scrolled through some information.
Mustafa Boudiaf, she said. He lives in Baltimore. Sixty-three years old, American citizen, born in Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence. He came to this country when he was nine. He spent much of his childhood in Algiers, and witnessed atrocities committed by both the French and the FLN.
How do we know that? Luke said.
Trudy shrugged. We listen to his telephone conversations.
Luke nodded. Okay.
Boudiaf appears to be a fundraiser for Islamic extremist movements in North Africa. Swann has tracked him moving large sums of cryptocurrencies on the dark web, and to a lesser extent, across popular crypto trading platforms like Coinbase. Those platforms are unregulated, but easy enough to watch.
Whats his cover? Luke said.
Hes an Uber driver, works nights mostly, often late nights. We believe he meets with donors and other people in his networks under the pretense of picking up fares. Once in the car, theyre free to talk for as long as the ride lasts. Swann has tracked him taking fares up to Philadelphia, northern New Jersey, and New York. He routinely drives into DC and out to Norfolk.
All right, Luke said. Ill bite. Why is he on our radar today?
Trudy raised an index finger.
This morning, at four twelve a.m., just minutes after the plane crash in the Sinai, Boudiaf answered a phone call. Swann said hes been unable to trace back the call, but it came from outside the United States. The man who called spoke in Arabic. He kept it brief. He said a phrase that, translated into English, means, It is done. Then he hung up.
Interesting, Luke said. But probably not enough on its own.
That was one, Trudy said. The second thing is that Mustafa Boudiaf is preparing to leave the country. Three days ago, a moving van pulled up to his house in Baltimore. The workers took a lot of furniture, boxes, and electronic equipment out of the place and drove off with it. Instead of taking the stuff to another house, they took it to a storage facility a storage facility outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Odd, Luke said.
Swann says that two nights ago, Boudiaf purchased one-way plane tickets for himself, and his family, to Algiers. The flight is tomorrow night out of JFK, assuming the snowstorm lets up. The house he lives in is a rental. Very soon, Mustafa Boudiaf is going to be gone, and itll be like he was never here.
Whats your gut? Luke said.
Trudy nodded. He was involved in taking down that plane. Maybe in a small way, maybe in a large way. At the very least, he had prior knowledge the attack was coming. Now hes leaving.