EIGHTEEN

There was no tidy ending to the Roundtable meeting. It was the only time that Joshua had failed to forge some kind of consensus before adjourning. Pack McHenry, behind his scrambled image on the screen, ended the session by indicating that his volunteer agents would be at the disposal of the Roundtable, but if no coordination could be forged with Joshua’s group, he said his people would be forced to go it alone.

“The only problem,” the Patriot explained, “is that we lack the resources and political clout of your group. I’m not sure my group of former intel operatives, acting alone, could stop this thing.”

“What do you want from us?” Senator Leander blurted out. “You’re telling us our nation’s going to be blown up with nuclear weapons and that the government isn’t heeding your warnings. So tell us straight … what do you want us to do?”

McHenry didn’t hesitate. “We need you to take the lead. You’ve got a retired four-star general and a former FBI terrorism expert right there in the room with you. Your group is led by an Air Force flying ace who has given the Pentagon the cleverest antimissile device in military history. You’ve got a former U.S. senator and a retired federal judge. We need you to coordinate this, make the judgment calls, forge the plan, and we’ll give you all the assistance we can.” Having turned the responsibility over to the Roundtable, the Patriot signed off.

Senator Leander, as usual, was cynical. After the video was turned off, he complained, “I think the Patriot wants us to take the rap for this little adventure if his intel turns out to be bad. If we go cowboy on this thing, chasing down and harassing some guys who turn out to be vacuum-cleaner salesmen rather than terrorists with a suitcase bomb, who do you think the Department of Justice is going to go after? We’ll all end up serving jail time.”

Phil Rankowitz was astonished. “Alvin, for crying out loud, you know this Patriot group worked with Joshua and Rocky during that Grand Central Station incident. They saved the day. Joshua and his son Cal are both alive because of them — and, of course, because of John Gallagher here sticking his neck out.”

Gallagher looked away. He didn’t handle commendations well.

Beverley Rose Cortez, a self-made billionaire, pledged five million dollars payable immediately as a down payment to “stop these bloodthirsty terrorists.” But just as soon as she said that, she hedged. “But only if you can tell me exactly who the people are, the ones in this nuclear plot … can anyone tell me that?”

As usual, Judge “Fort” Rice had hung back, weighing things. When Joshua asked for his opinion, Rice just shook his head. “I keep going back to what the Patriot said — I jotted it down — he has ‘no assurances’ that the government had followed up on these leads … For me, that’s too vague. I need more. How can he be sure? This is where we have to decide who we trust and who we believe. I can’t accept the notion that the CIA and the FBI would just disregard a threat like this — if in fact it’s a credible one. And that’s a big if.”

Rankowitz wanted Abigail’s take on the judge’s comment. She tried to be diplomatic. “I respect your analytical approach, Judge, your desire for some kind of legal certainty, but I’m not sure that’s the right approach. If this really is an imminent threat, we have to make judgments on the facts as they are presented, not as we wish they were.”

The judge wouldn’t shift. “Burden of proof. That’s the legal standard we ought to use, Abby. For me, legal analysis is all we have to rely on. Bottom line is that he didn’t meet my burden of proof. It was his job to convince me of the facts … and he didn’t.”

Gallagher tried to choose his words carefully. “Judge, remember one thing. This is not the same CIA and FBI that I joined years ago. A lot of it has to do with all the political ropes and chains that have been looped around everything they do now. They’re men and women, brave ones too, working in unbelievably dangerous situations, but now they have to do it in a crazy political and legal straightjacket. The people at the top are the ones responsible for that. Plus, you heard what the Patriot said about the dangerous downside of this new consolidation of the security agencies at the top — fewer people make the decisions. I agree one-hundred percent.”

Joshua suggested that they carry the meeting over to a second day, but people had other commitments. Instead they would link up by encrypted conference call in seventy-two hours. Joshua and Gallagher resisted the delay, but the rest wouldn’t budge. Joshua got the feeling that, as much as the group wanted to believe the threat was both real and imminent, they had too many lingering doubts and that clouded everything.

That night, as Joshua and Abigail sat alone on the back porch outside their bedroom suite, looking at the stars, he expressed his own doubts. “Maybe I should have pushed harder.”

“That isn’t your job.”

“No?”

“Of course not. You chair the Roundtable, you lead the discussion, but these are accomplished men and women. They’re not junior staffers you can order around. They have to make up their own minds.”

“Listen to us … talking as if this was some bad policy in Washington that we want changed. This is a nuclear strike against our nation!”

“I was there, dear, remember?”

“Well, it surprises me you aren’t as agitated as I am … hours are ticking by … men coming after our cities with weapons of mass destruction, and what are we doing? Wasting three days till we meet again by phone.”

“What would you suggest?”

“Something. Anything. Seventy-two hours is an eternity when national security is on the line.”

“What then?”

“I’m calling Pack McHenry, putting together a tighter plan. Then when we have our conference call I’ll lay it all out. An up-or-down vote.”

“A plan in three days to stop a nuclear attack? You don’t even know the target or how the nukes will come into the country … Josh, how are you going to do that?”

He had no idea, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

They fell silent. He looked up and recognized one of the constellations. Up in the black void of the sky were the cold, twinkling lights of Orion. Suddenly he felt tired, but his mind kept clicking and churning.

He changed the subject. “I want to talk to Cal tomorrow.”

“He wanted to see you today, but the minute you got back from New York you buried yourself in your study … then into the Roundtable …”

“Why does that sound a little like an indictment?”

“No. Just a wifely observation. Talk to him, Josh.”

“I will. In fact, I told him as soon as I was done with the Roundtable we’d get together. He seemed okay with that.”

The phone rang. Joshua got up and trotted into the bedroom to catch it.

Abigail could hear his voice growing more animated as he talked.

After he hung up, he came back out to the porch. But he had a startled look on his face. “Abby, guess who that was? Patsy. From the office.”

“The Jordan Technologies Patsy? The new receptionist?”

“Yes.”

“A little late, isn’t it?”

Joshua flopped back down on the chair next to Abigail. A smile was spreading on his face. “You know how you asked me a minute ago how I could pull all this together … a plan to stop this horrendous thing from happening?”

He answered his own question.

“I just got an idea.”