Washington, D.C., National Security Council Meeting

President Corland had been going over the details of the statement he would make later in the day, to be broadcast to the nation over Internet TV and I-radio. The plan was to reveal the fact that the Chicago crash had been a terrorist attack, though he continued to struggle with how many details should be shared with the American public.

But then he’d been informed of the mall bombing. Forty-five dead. Twenty more in critical condition. Dozens injured. Once again, terror had reached the streets of America.

The president felt burdened, his face more drawn than usual, with even more grayish pallor. “I still plan to make the statement about the Chicago air disaster, but I’m not having any Q&A. No press conference. Right, Hank?”

Hank Strand nodded. A somber stillness pervaded the room, but the quiet didn’t last.

Vice President Tulrude wanted to bring the Mall of America attack into the discussion, and quickly. “Excuse me, Mr. President, I think we need to raise the issue of today’s bombing in Minnesota — ”

“Thank you, Jessica. But no. Chicago first. Okay, folks. I plan to tell the American people that the Chicago crash was an act of terrorism.”

Helen Brokested, director of the Department of Homeland Security, winced and twitched. “Just a reminder, Mr. President. Executive Order number 14,321 directed all executive branch communications to avoid using the words terrorism, terrorist, and particularly Islamic terrorism or any derivatives — ”

“I ought to remember,” Corland broke in. “I’m the one who issued that EO. But I’ve talked with White House Counsel. We’re changing it.”

Tulrude threw a lightning glance over at Hank Strand but quickly regained her composure. That was one she hadn’t been told about. She’d give Strand a verbal smackdown later, in private, for his failure to sneak that political intel to her in advance of the meeting.

National Security Advisor, Admiral William Patch got back to the point. “In your press conference are you going to share any information about the JFK flight?”

“No, Bill, I’m not.”

Patch continued, “How about the RTS aspect? I hope you’re not intending to tell the people that the Return-to-Sender system failed during the Chicago flight. You know where I stand on that. The case isn’t closed. It’s still too early to condemn a pretty remarkable defense weapon — ”

“I have something to say on that issue,” Tulrude snapped.

Corland gave a weary hand wave for his VP to stand down. “I’m leading the band here, Jessica,” he said. “If some of you dislike the tune I’m playing, so be it.”

“Just a word,” she said and struggled to smile.

The president was firm. “That’s one word too many, at least on the Chicago flight. Now I want everyone to hear me. I will be saying nothing about RTS in my statement. Nothing. And it ought to be crystal clear why. National Security. The FAA, NTSB, and DOD investigations are still ongoing on the alleged failure of the RTS, and we’ve got the criminal investigation on some terror suspects still at large.” Then he changed gears. “Okay, now, the Mall of America … this sickens me, ladies and gentlemen. This should not have happened on my watch! Now we’ve got an airplane down in Chicago and people murdered in Minnesota. This has got to stop.”

Jessica Tulrude was squirming.

Corland could see that she was about to come unglued. He finally gave her the nod to go ahead.

“Mr. President, it’s time for us to change strategy. Rather than trying to stop the criminals from killing once they are within our borders …”

National Security Advisor Patch shot out, “Criminals? You mean terrorists? Enemy combatants?”

“I don’t want to argue over semantics. I mean all types of wrongdoers, Admiral,” she barked back. “What I’m saying, Mr. President, is that we have to stop them at the borders.”

Corland asked her to elaborate.

“The BIDTag idea.”

“The Biological Identification Tag?”

“Exactly. For the last eighteen months, the EU has required every citizen in Europe to have one — and they haven’t had a single incident. It’s an effective way to screen out the bad apples. We can do longdistance targeting of every human almost anywhere. And if someone doesn’t have a biotag tattoo, the screen will show that, and we know we have a suspicious individual right away. And when they do have a biotag imprint on their body, we can immediately tell who the person is, any arrest record, travel history, their home address, telephone numbers, social security number, blood type, marital status, religion, everything. All their pertinent data. Screening devices can be set up at the entrances of shopping malls, theaters, every soft target. We now know that the woman who detonated the bomb at the Mall of America had ties to a terror group. A screening device would have picked up her BIDTag — or her lack of one — and either way she would have been spotted. A terror matrix would have been instantly sent to the mall security office and local police. She’d have been stopped within minutes.”

Corland said, “Civil-liberties groups like the ACLU have been screaming bloody murder about this, haven’t they?”

Attorney General Cory Hamburg leaned forward. He had a neatly prepared defense for the vice president’s proposal. “That was before the mall disaster and the Chicago shootdown. Mr. President, the polls are clear. Americans are feeling desperate. After all, there’s a basic right not to be blown up. Because the BIDTag isn’t inserted into the body, but is just imprinted on the skin, painless and invisible to the eye, and can only be illuminated by our government screening devices, there is really no Fourth Amendment unlawful search-or-seizure argument. Besides, we’re close to a compromise with the civil-liberties groups. In the BIDTag bill we’ve got in Congress right now, federal agencies would still have to obtain a warrant before we targeted someone for the more enhanced screening that would reveal things like home address, religion, that kind of thing. But no warrant would be necessary for picking up terror-matrix information where there’s a serious threat to personal safety or national security.”

“Privacy?” Corland asked. “What about that?”

The attorney general grinned. “I think the probable-cause legal test we’re proposing fully accounts for your concerns, Mr. President.”

As the rest of the council debated the issue, Jessica Tulrude settled back in her chair. She had managed to get her bio-identification idea front and center. The international community loved her for actively promoting it in the U.S., and when the bombings stopped, and the terror level dropped, she would be the champion. Now all she had to do was get Hank Strand alone and hammer him good. No more holding out on her. He needed to tell her everything about his boss, Corland … that is, if he ever wanted to serve in Jessica Tulrude’s cabinet when she finally pushed Virgil Corland out of the White House.

But then something grabbed her attention like a slap in the face. After closing the BIDTag discussion by saying he wanted more time to think about it, Corland said, “One last item, not on the agenda. Last night I asked our intelligence agencies to round up the best information we have to date on any coordinated efforts between the Russian Federation, Iran, and North Korea in terms of an offensive against the United States.”

The look on Hank Strand’s face showed that this too was something he hadn’t known about.

Corland steamed ahead. “They’re getting me that assessment. Some of you may already know about my directive, some may not.”

The attorney general put a finger in the air. “If I could ask, Mr. President, what’s the source of this concern?”

“Someone who is now a little outside of the Beltway. But former U.S. military. Let’s just say he is a fairly trustworthy source.”

The assistant secretary of state shook his head, apparently sharing the attorney general’s skepticism. He knew that he had his boss’s proxy on this one. “Mr. President, I second Attorney General Hamburg’s surprise that you are implicating Russia in some kind of operational plot against us. Obviously North Korea has been a high-risk state. That’s nothing new. Iran, well, a perennial problem, though the risk is overstated. But the Russians? They sold us oil supplies when our strategic reserves dipped drastically low. We’ve got good trade relations. Our diplomatic relations have never been better.”

Corland was about to respond when the director of the FBI jumped in. “We’ve heard this rumor before, Mr. President. We chased it down awhile back and were satisfied that it was nothing but a tall tale.”

“I’ll leave it at that. No more comments ‘til I get the reports.” Corland had effectively closed the meeting.

Jessica Tulrude glanced at her e-pad digital appointment calendar. Her next meeting was with Attorney General Hamburg. In the previous months she had managed to recruit him to her side. The year before, her control over him had fallen apart after she’d asked him to order a temporary stand-down on efforts to locate Algerian assassin Atta Zimler inside the U.S. Her request, which Hamburg reluctantly granted, was a favor to Tulrude’s good friend Caesar Demas. It was a favor she quickly regretted. Zimler ended up slithering into the United States, murdering a few folks along the East Coast, and causing havoc at Grand Central Station. But in the end, Zimler’s official connection to the murders was covered up, so no harm, no foul. Anyway, when Hamburg threatened to blame Tulrude for the Zimler debacle, Tulrude, red-faced, dressed him down.

“Hamburg, you’re the attorney general,” she had said. “It’s probably an impeachable offense, maybe even criminal, for you to take your law-enforcement orders from the vice president. And if you cause problems, I’ll make sure the media splatters that fact over every Internet news service in America.”

Ever since, Hamburg had been a pussycat. Her appointment with him in forty minutes would be a good chance to remind him how much she still needed his support. She’d also remind him that if anyone challenged either of them on the Atta Zimler matter, they had a retort for that too: If America had had the BIDTag system in place back then, Zimler wouldn’t have been able to enter the U.S. Problem solved.

After Hamburg, Tulrude was scheduled to have a long meeting with some of the president’s economic advisors on the disastrous unemployment numbers to discuss how to stave off riots. Tulrude was trying to figure out exactly how quickly she could grab Hank Strand in between her meetings. She needed to know everything that Corland was up to.