Sphere Of Influence Read online

  When it had looked almost certain that he would end up doing some jail time on a trumped-up charge, the political climate had suddenly changed. A new president was elected and his best friend ended up as the White House chief of staff Suddenly he'd found himself transformed from scapegoat to golden boy. At the time it had seemed like his luck was finally turning around. Now he wasn't so sure.

  "Mark?"

  Beamon spun his chair around to face a man of about thirty-three with FBI-issue hair and suit. He had his head poked into the conference room but seemed reluctant to enter. Probably a bad sign.

  "Bill. Good to see you," Beamon lied. "Come on in." He did, albeit a bit hesitantly. Beamon watched carefully as the younger man closed the door and slowly crossed the . room, finally taking a seat and placing a thick folder in the center of the table. .

  "Got your black hood and scythe in there?" Beamon joked. At least, he hoped it was a joke.

  No response. Another bad sign.

  Every couple of years or so the FBI field offices had a team from headquarters descend on them and plow through every investigation, budget, report; and management decision, carefully second-guessing each one. Right now it was Phoenix's turn. Bill Laskin was the chief of the inspection staff that had been looking under the hood of Beamon's office for the last two weeks. And, for better or for worse, he was doing a hell of a thorough job.

  "We're about winding down, Mark," Laskin said, pulling a thick document from the folder in front of him. "We've finished our draft report." His tone suggested that it wasn't entirely complimentary. "I thought we could go over a few of the points and then you could look at it and give it some. . . some thought." Beamon grabbed the report unceremoniously, paging through as its author squirmed uncomfortably. With each page of neatly typed criticism he could feel what little strength he still had draining away.

  "You know, Mark, last night I was sitting around my of/ fice and I started going through your report on the CDFA investigation." Beamon didn't look up from the well-organized and meticulously documented report. Maybe he could find an appropriate quote for his tombstone when he finally had that well-deserved stroke.

  "Why?" "Because it was an incredible case. I mean, thousands of people died. The pressure must have been unbearable. I can't even imagine how you were able to hold it together and resolve it so quickly." The case Laskin was referring to was the most infamous of Beamon's career. An ex-DEA agent had decided to try poisoning the U. S. narcotics supply to stem the use of illegal drugs. It had worked.

  "Bound to* happen, I suppose. Frustrating job, the DEA," Beamon said, his mouth feeling increasingly dry as he continued through the pages.

  "The report's really clinical, though," Laskin continued.

  Beamon flipped a few more pages. "Clinical?" "What I mean is . . . well, I'm curious. . ." "Spit it out." Laskin cleared his throat. "How did you feel about the whole thing?" That finally made Beamon look up. "What do you mean 1" "I mean, drug use was plummeting. People were dying, sure, but drug use was dropping like a stone. If you hadn't caught those guys, would people have just stopped using?

  In the end, would lives have been saved?" Beamon stared past the man at the wall. It-was tempting to talk about his old cases, his old triumphs. But those things were past. He wasn't the FBI's whiz-kid investigator anymore. He was a grown-up-a SAC.

  "I was just following orders," Beamon said, affecting a thick German accent. The attempt at. a joke sounded strained, even to him.

  "No, seriously, Mark."

  "I am serious," Beamon said quietly, sliding a finger beneath the back of the report and flipping it closed. .

  The young man took the hint and just nodded, eyes glued to the document lying on the table. He seemed to have lost his ability to blink. .

  Laskin was clearly a fan-something he'd proven over the last two weeks by being more knowledgeable about Beamon's past investigations than he himself was. The younger generation of agents liked to joke about people fro~ Beamon's era, calling them "the gun toters" and decrying their lack of sophistication while secretly worshiping them.

  In many younger agents' minds Beamon was the last of the old-school investigators-the hard-drinking, chainsmoking, sometimes arrogant men who had created the larger-than-life myth of the FBI agent. The truth was less romantic. Beamon couldn't help feeling that this wasn't his FBI anymore. That he'd been left behind.

  "Take some time looking that over, Mark. I'm interested in your comments. Obviously it's not set in stone. I think there are some areas where your ASACs could be giving you more support. . . ."

  Beamon pulled out a cigarette and lit it despite the ironclad no-smoking policy in the building. "No."

  "What?"

  "Whatever's wrong with this office is my doing."

  When Beamon glanced up from the inspection report in his lap, the office looked deserted. The sun was still streaming powerfully through the window behind him, reflecting off a clock that read six P. M. Taking off his reading glasses, he squinted through the glass wall that made up the front of his office. No one.

  He shrugged and perched the glasses back on his nose. Normally the complete disappearance of his staff would be worth looking into, but the inspection report he'd spent the better part of the day reading had deadened pretty much everything in him, including his normally overactive sense of curiosity.

  He reached over and picked up the untouched pastry D. had brought him, examining the almond-encrusted dough, damp with butter. These had once been his absolute favorite, but now the thought of eating it--or anything else for that matter--turned his stomach.

  He tossed the pastry in the trash can and flipped to the next, and hopefully more positive, page in the report. After a quick scan it turned out to contain another sharp criticism of his number two that was, unfortunately, completely untrue. Beamon took a red pen from his desk and crossed through it. In the margin he wrote a brief note as to why the deficiency that had been uncovered by the inspection staff was, in fact, his own fault.

  Sighing quietly, he flipped back through the report and scanned the similar commentaries scrawled on nearly every page. He couldn't help wondering if he was writing himself out of a job.

  "Mark?"

  Beamon looked up at the young woman hovering nervously in the doorway to his office.

  "Sorry, Mark, I don't mean to bother you, but we thought you might have the inside track on this thing." Beamon threw the inspection report on the desk. Enough for tonight--another ten pages and he was going to have to relocate to the ledge outside his window. "Thing? What thing? And where the hell is everybody?" She looked at him as though he were asking trick questions.

  "We're all in the back, watching the news. Don't you know what's happened?"

  Beamon shrugged and she nodded toward the television bolted to the wall. He pulled a remote from his drawer and flipped it on. When he looked back toward the doorway, he saw that the young woman had slunk away.

  MSNBC's Forrest Sawyer looked a little haggard as he leaned forward heavily on his desk. A logo across the bottom of the screen read "The Latest Threat."

  "I think we have time to bring up the picture and audio one more time before we take you to the White House." Sawyer faded out, replaced by a still image that shimmered slightly on the screen. The exposure was a little dark, apparently lit only by a low sun filtering through dense overcast and distant mountains.

  "The geological formation in the background has been preliminarily identified as the Wind River Range in Wyoming," Sawyer's disembodied voice said. "MSNBC, as well as a host of other news agencies, have received copies of this photograph and are having it reviewed by experts in the field. So far there is nothing to suggest that it is anything but genuine. . . ."

  Beamon walked around his desk and jumped up on a chair to get a closer look at the photo on the screen.

  The subject of the picture was something that looked like an overly simplistic artillery gun. It was nothing more than a large metal cylinder attached to a
two-wheeled trailer. A man in traditional Arab garb, with his face obscured by swaths of white cloth flowing from his turban, stood between the gun and an open crate containing what looked like a ten-foot-tall rocket.

  A scratchy hiss became audible through the television's speakers, followed by a heavily accented male voice. "Our targets are many: shopping malls, office buildings, schools. . . . We also have Stingers sold to us by your CIA to destroy airliners...."

  And that was it. Obviously a man of few words. The image switched back to Forrest Sawyer.

  "We're taking you to the White House press conference now," he announced as the screen flickered, finally stabilizing on an image of Charles Russell standing behind a lectern adorned with the presidential seal.

  "We don't have a great deal of information yet, so this is going to be brief," Russell began.

  Beamon ignored him and scanned the line of grave-looking people at the back of the podium, finally settling on a woman with blond hair pulled back into a severe ponytail and a conservative blue jacket and skirt. She was looking dutifully at the politician, but Beamon guessed she wasn't listening to a word he said. He knew from personal experience that she'd be calculating how long she was going to be stuck there, wasting time.

  "We received a copy of the same photograph and audio as the media and it's being examined by the top people in the field. The FBI is taking the lead in this investigation and is already coordinating with the other U. S. and international law enforcement agencies to get on top of this as quickly as possible. As I said before, we don't have a great deal of information yet. We only received the photograph and the tape a few hours ago. Mainly what I want to say to the American people is to stay calm. All we've got here is a picture, nothing more. We need--"

  Beamon pushed the MUTE button and jumped off the chair, backing slowly away as he watched Russell speak soundlessly on-screen. He kept his eyes glued to the television, but barely saw it as his mind focused itself on the problem of the photograph. Why just a picture? Why not use that rocket, kill a few godless Americans? Did it not work? Was it the only one? Were these Arab fruitcakes just real smart? If so, the rocket itself was the least of America's problems.

  When Russell and his entourage finally filed off-screen, Beamon turned and began digging through the papers on his desk. It took a little effort, but he finally managed to find his Rolodex and dial a number from it.

  "Laura Vilechi."

  Now that he'd been kicked upstairs, Laura had taken over as the FBI's investigative savant. In fact, he was the one who had provided her with her first big break, tirelessly defending her against the still slightly chauvinistic organization they both worked for. She was an incredibly effective investigator, though her style was totally different from his. She was the master of detail and procedure--she missed nothing. Where Beamon tended to sneak up on criminals and spring out from the woodwork, Laura just wore them down.

  "You look good on TV. Just the right mix of adoration and submissiveness in Russell's presence."

  "Mark?"

  "None other. I haven't talked to you in a while. Anything new?"

  "Very funny. Nothing I can talk about."

  "Come on, Laura. Throw me a bone. Did they give it to you? Is this officially your case?"

  "No one else wants it."

  Beamon stifled a pang of jealousy. "So, what's the inside story? The picture's real, isn't it."

  "We're still in preliminary--"

  "Don't start. . . ."

  She sighed into the phone. "Okay, Mark. Okay. Ninety percent certain."

  "I knew it. Tell me more."

  "I'm starting to feel like I'm having phone sex."

  "I'm in management, Laura. I've got to get it where I can." "I wish there was more I could tell you. The weapon's a modified multiple-rocket launcher. Normally it would be a bunch of tubes mounted together."

  Beamon tried to picture that. What he didn't know about military hardware was a lot. "Like the ones the Japanese shot at Godzilla with?"

  "A strange analogy, but yeah. Except this one has been torn apart and a single tube has been mounted to a trailer. Less destructive power but more mobile and easier to conceal."

  "Who built it?"

  "We don't know. The rocket has the characteristics of a number of different military models but doesn't really match any one of them. And like I said, the launcher's been heavily modified."

  "Do you know what it can do?"

  "We're guessing a range of about twelve miles, based on averages, and we're pretty sure it doesn't have any guidance system to speak of."

  "What about the payload?"

  "I don't know. Pretty destructive."

  "Conventional, or could it be biological or nuclear?" "Not nuclear in the sense of an atomic bomb, but there is the possibility that it could have radioactive material that would be spread around in a blast. We doubt biological: There are easier ways to deliver that kind of thing." "Well, I guess it doesn't really matter."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Nothing."

  "Come on, Mark. Give."

  "They're not looking to use it. Think about it, Laura--when al-Qaeda knocked down the World Trade Center, we taught the world that the U. S. economy can be brought to a grinding halt by a few guys with box cutters. What did the audio that came with that tape say--that they were going after malls, office buildings, airlines ... businesses. And by marking schools, they get parents to stay home from work with their kids. They'll keep making threats, keep the fear as high as they can. And when talk doesn't do it anymore and people start heading back to work, they'll blow something up. Then they'll start making threats again--milk the explosion for as long as they can until they're forced to blow something else up. How long until our economy implodes?"

  "We came up with about the same idea. Kind of puts the government in a tough spot. Either whip up the panic, keep people at home, and cripple the economy, or downplay it and force a rocket attack."

  "Any idea who these guys are?"

  "The People's Front of Judea?"

  Beamon laughed, a first for the day. That particular terrorist organization existed only in an old Monty Python movie. He'd always used it as a synonym for the multitude of crazies inhabiting the world. "What are you getting from the--"

  "Oh, shit!"

  "What's wrong, Laura?"

  "Dave's coming. He'll kill me if he finds out I've been talking to you."

  Dave was Dave Iverson, Laura's boss, and a man who hated Beamon with unbridled passion.

  "Jesus, Laura, when is he going to let that go? I said I was sorry."

  "Mark, you put a bra in his suitcase at a conference and his wife found it and left him. Sorry doesn't really cut it, does it?"

  "I swear, people will never let me live that down. It was a joke; how was I supposed to know he was having an affair with a woman who wore that exact size?"

  "Look, Mark, don't call me anymore. I'm serious, okay? I've got a lot on my plate here and I'm not looking for any extra trouble."

  Beamon could hear the pain in her voice. They had been friends for years and it had obviously been a hard thing for her to say. Hard but smart. She'd watched him shoot himself in the foot over and over again and wasn't going to make the same mistake.

  Beamon hung up the phone and flopped back into the papers on his desk.

  Not your case.

  He repeated that to himself precisely ten times to get it into his head. There was no way he was going to be able to get involved. He was a SAC a thousand miles from headquarters. Terrorism was the worst kind of case, anyway. No matter how great a job you did, in no way would it deter the next wacko with an axe to grind.

  Besides, why would he want to get involved in something like that when he could be curling up with an inspection report just bursting with colorful charts and graphs proving conclusively that he was an idiot?

  Chapter 3

  MILES from L. A., in the more or less open desert, the temperature was probably ten degrees cooler
than it was in the city. Despite that, Chet was sweating. A lot.

  He focused on taking slow, even breaths that were shallow enough that the slightly artificial rise and fall of his chest wouldn't be noticeable beneath his soaked shirt. It was a bastardization of a breathing technique he'd seen on some cheesy early-morning yoga show led by an extremely attractive has-been actress in an extremely formfitting leotard. Who knew he'd ever put her principles to use?

  Starting to feel a little calmer, Chet continued to slowly scan his surroundings. The only illumination was provided by a single set of headlights beaming from an idling car. He could see a distance of about twenty yards before the circle of light faded to gray, and then to a black expanse that went on for miles before being broken by the distant lights of L. A.

  "You're Mohammed?" Carlo Gasta said, taking a few steps toward an Arab-looking man wearing dirty fatigues. Chet seized the opportunity to move left a few feet, into a position where the headlights were directly behind him. Hadn't it been John Wayne who suggested that you always keep the sun at your back? The Duke was rarely wrong in such things.

  Although he was standing only ten feet away, Mohammed's age was impossible to determine. His deep-brown eyes had a youthful clarity to them, but what little of his face was visible behind his long black beard looked worn and tired.

  "You're Mohammed?" Gasta said again, his tone hinting at the beginnings of anger. The New York accent and stylish suit that gleamed a little too brightly in the glaring light made him seem hopelessly out of place. By contrast, the man he was speaking to seemed a part of the desert that surrounded them.

  "I am Mohammed." His accent was thick, and for some reason that made him even more imposing. Chet looked past him into the darkness. There was no way this guy was alone. The question wasn't if he had men out there but how many. How many just beyond the circle of light? The man said nothing else, and Chet could see Gasta's head beginning to bob up and down in a mannerism he was unfortunately very familiar with. His boss was starting to get pissed off.

  "What? Do you want to have tea? Where the fuck is it?" Chet tried to will Gasta to stay calm. It had never worked before, but you never knew. If you wished hard enough...