Sedition (A Political Conspiracy Book 1) Read online

  “Did you get a phone call?” Ings asked as two of the guards yanked him to his feet. “Did someone call you and tell you I was here?”

  “Something like that,” one of the guards said as the men started escorting Ings back toward the nearest guardhouse. “How did you know?”

  Ings decided to exercise his right to silence.

  “How did you know?” the guard repeated, tugging on the cuffs, and Ings almost lost his balance as he trudged forward.

  Ings thought about whether or not to blow the plot by ratting out the knight. It would be a fair turn. But what good would that do?

  He knew that their plan was in jeopardy, that a diversion might be the only way to fool the feds, given the possibilities of what they might know. There were always necessary sacrifices in war.

  Revolutionary martyr Major General Joseph Warren sacrificed his life at the battle of Bunker Hill. A single father of four, he died from a musket ball to the head a full year before the colonies declared their independence. It was his calling. And this was to be the drunk’s calling. The knight was asking him to be General Warren. Lost on Ings was the reality that he’d been duped by someone he believed to be a trusted friend.

  But he would not talk; he would not risk the plot. He knew deep down that Sir Spencer believed he was the only one capable of the task.

  The professor wouldn’t have the stomach for it; the artist was nearly as weak; the AG was AWOL; Sir Spencer couldn’t do it. Ings was the only one capable.

  Chapter 37

  Matti searched Davidson’s journals, speed-reading much of the scribbled text. She ran her finger down the center of each page as her eyes flitted from left to right, focusing mostly on nouns and verbs. Flipping page after page, she could not find any information about which of the conspirators would place the calls to trigger the phones. Davidson didn’t list any phone numbers.

  She knew the phones would utilize one of two types of cellular network technology. They would either rely on Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) or Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). GSM was the worldwide standard for cellular data transmission. CDMA was more popular in the United States. Matti remembered from some of her studies for previous NSA analyses that more than a billion people utilized GSM. A quarter of that number used CDMA. But because CDMA was more widely used in the US, the chances of the Daturans using that type of technology were more likely.

  Additionally, third generation, or 3G, networks used CDMA because of the additional bandwidth for data transmission. She also knew that CDMA was used in a lot of military applications, which included antijamming and secure communications.

  Matti knew if she couldn’t stop the Daturans from placing the calls to detonate the bombs, her only alternative was to prevent the calls from connecting. She needed a computer. She didn’t have time to go home or find an Internet café.

  Looking around the coffee shop, she fixed her eyes on the grubby, FHM-transfixed college student. At his feet was an unzipped backpack that revealed a laptop computer. It would do.

  Matti pinched her cheeks with her thumbs and forefingers and licked her lips. She stood to adjust her assets and then walked with purpose to the unshaven misogynist. He refined his posture and snapped shut the magazine as Matti approached his table. He pulled an earbud from his right ear and then rubbed his chin.

  “Hi there,” Matti said, placing her palms on the table and leaning in slightly.

  “Hey.” He smiled. “What’s up?”

  “Yeah.” Matti rocked back and forth on her Gore-Tex Merrells. “I hate to ask this, but I really need to get online, and I noticed your laptop…”

  He was polite beyond what she had expected. “No problem. It’s got a Wi-Fi card. There’s free Wi-Fi here. It’s fully charged. You should be good to go.” He reached down to pull the computer from his bag. “How long do you need it?”

  “Ten minutes?” Matti reached for the computer. “Maybe fifteen?”

  “That’s cool.” He tried to smile and rubbed the scruff on his chin again. “Whatever you need.” He was watching her denim clad hips sway gently back and forth as she walked.

  “Twenty minutes tops,” Matti called as she walked back to her seat, looking at him over her shoulder. “I promise.” She blinked quickly two or three times before turning her head and retaking her seat across the room. Matti liked her newfound sexual confidence. If the NSA could use it to their benefit, so could she.

  “I’ll be here!” He waved at her, replaced the earbud, and reopened the magazine.

  Matti was the one now oblivious to the activity around her. She navigated the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi network and connected to the Internet. She used the search engine task bar at the top right of the screen to speed up her efforts.

  She typed “cell phone jammer” into the small text box and hit enter on the keyboard, watching intently as the results populated the screen. She picked a random link that appeared to have relevant information and started reading.

  She learned the Vatican had installed cell phone jamming technology for the papal conclave to choose the new pope in 2005. They were trying to prevent anyone from leaking information to the outside world about the balloting process.

  She also learned that the British government considered a mobile cellular security bubble to accompany President Bush during a visit to London in 2003. The bubble never materialized, but it would not have been unprecedented had it happened.

  Jamming cell phone signals was relatively easy, Matti deduced. And she learned that frequency jamming devices were readily available on the Internet. They cost as little as three hundred dollars. Matti didn’t have time to consider that.

  She also read about a military technology that could wipe out all combatant radio or cellular transmissions. It was called WolfPack and was deployed in the air through an unmanned system. According to the Department of Defense, WolfPack could deny an adversary use of its communications while not interfering with friendly military and commercial radio communications.

  That wouldn’t work. If she couldn’t even get her boss to listen to her, she certainly couldn’t rely on anyone at the Pentagon to take her call. And if they did, she knew they wouldn’t act quickly enough.

  Then she came across an article from the Register, one of the world’s largest online technical publications. It was from February 2008 and was titled, Taliban Demand Nighttime Cell Tower Shutdown. Reporter Lewis Page wrote that the Taliban was threatening to attack mobile phone companies in Afghanistan unless cellular signals were stopped at night. According to Page, hardline Islamic militia believed that cell towers were being used to locate and track Taliban gunmen. Matti now had her plan.

  She quickly searched for a website that could map the cellular towers closest to the Capitol. Finding one pretty easily, she identified a host of towers within close proximity. There were five towers along K Street, northwest of the Hill; one at the Benning Power Plant east of the Capitol; one at the Metro Police Station on Indiana, northwest of the Capitol; and another half dozen were dotted south of the Potomac in northern Virginia. While there were thirty-eight cell phone towers and antennas in the District, she needed to focus on a small area closest to the Capitol. Matti decided to narrow her search to the towers along K Street.

  Given what she knew about where the Daturans lived, worked, and tended to gather, she figured that the call would be coming north and/or west of Capitol Hill. That wasn’t a given, but she had little with which to work and even less time in which to do it. Using the touchpad on the laptop keyboard, she zoomed into the map of the tower cluster and found one on Thirteenth Street NW belonging to AT&T.

  “GSM,” she mumbled. She took a calculated guess that it wouldn’t be the right tower given the carrier’s technology, and she moved to the tower on M Street.

  “T-Mobile,” she noted. It was one of only two towers held by that company. “Probably not…” That left three likely towers in Matti’s mind: one on L Street, one on DeSales, and one on K Street.
All three towers were on leased space atop privately owned buildings. Matti made a mental note of the three addresses for the towers. They weren’t far apart. She might have time to get to all three of them if she hurried.

  “Hey,” she called over to the college student.

  “Yeah?” He was already looking at her when she called to him.

  “How do you want me to close out of your computer?” She’d already erased her browsing history from the laptop’s memory.

  “Just take it back to the homepage and leave it on,” he said, trying ineffectively to appear blasé.

  “Will do.” She nodded. “I’ll be finished here in a second.”

  She used the touchpad to guide the cursor to the task bar atop the screen and clicked on the home button. The screen went blank as it reverted to the preset home page in the computer’s browser. The website PLAUSIBLEDENIABILITY.INFO popped onto the screen.

  “Does everybody read this ridiculous site?” she muttered to herself. “It’s so crass.” She looked across the room to see the site’s intended demographic staring at her unapologetically. She turned her attention back to the screen.

  The large red, black, and blue banner across the top of the page forced Matti to refocus her eyes. And even then she still wasn’t clear on what the headline meant.

  “MAN ARRESTED FOR DROPPING BOMB BAG AT ARLINGTON!”

  What?

  She maneuvered the touchpad and clicked on the headline. A news page appeared with few details.

  “EXCLUSIVE! PDINFO has learned that security at Arlington National Cemetery has arrested a 62-year-old man in connection with a suspicious device believed to be an explosive. The man was arrested after a tip call and was taken into custody without incident. We’re not sure if the man knew he’d be blowing up people who are already dead. Developing…”

  They’re diverting attention, she thought. They know that we know what they’re doing.

  Her eyes darted back and forth, not focusing on anything particular as she processed what was happening.

  At least they THINK they know what we know.

  Chapter 38

  “James has been detained,” Sir Spencer announced, enjoying the double meaning of the turned phrase. He stood behind the bar, fixing himself a scotch. Edwards and Thistlewood sat across from him, half-expecting he would pour them a shot each. He didn’t.

  “What do you mean detained?” Thistlewood snapped. “I thought we were all supposed to be here.”

  “Yeah,” chimed Edwards, “and where’s Bill? Is he out?”

  “He is.” The knight had his back to the men as he replaced the bottle on the shelf behind the bar. He turned to them as he wiped his hands on his jacket.

  Thistlewood noticed that the coat was a thousand-dollar Brooks Brothers Golden Fleece Black Watch smoking jacket. And it looked somewhat ridiculous.

  “Back to Jimmy,” Thistlewood redirected, “where is he?”

  “He’s detained,” repeated the knight as he took a sip and then pursed his lips at the cheap sweetness of the drink. “That is to say, he’s been arrested.”

  “What?” both men said in unison, nearly leaping over the lacquered rosewood.

  “Calm down,” the knight said dismissively. “It’s part of the plan, my good men.”

  He was playing with them, as he had for years, only now he could tell they were cognizant of it. He could sense their distrust of him and their sudden wariness.

  “The plan,” he continued as he turned his back to them again, searching for a finer bottle from which to drink, “is to take power. The way to do that is to upset the succession. The way to do that is to effect our fantastic plan. And none of those wonderful things would be possible without James’s sacrifice today.” He pulled a large brown decanter from the top shelf. It was a bottle of Cutty Sark Golden Jubilee. He spun back to the rosewood bar and poured a glass.

  “I think I can also speak for George here,” Thistlewood said, thumbing his left hand at Edwards, “in saying that we’re both lost.”

  The knight put his right hand in the waist pocket of the smoking jacket and sipped from the glass. “Mmmm…oak, I think.”

  Edwards was tired of Sir Spencer’s gamesmanship. Enough was enough. “Sir Spencer, could you please enlighten us as to what’s going on? We’re at the zero hour here. The casket is nearly at the Capitol and the guests are in the rotunda.” He pointed to the television mounted on the wall behind the knight and above the bar. The sound was muted, but they could see the gathering crowd inside the Capitol and the procession’s proximity to it. They were maybe an hour away from detonation, and the knight was playing with their heads.

  “I took a calculated risk, good men.” Sir Spencer licked his lips and leaned onto the bar surface with his palms pressed flat. “As we discussed at the opening last night, we do not know what the feds know and what they don’t. I felt as though a last minute diversion might tip the scales back in our direction, so I sent James on a mission.”

  Just then, Edwards noticed a “BREAKING NEWS” graphic flash across the television screen behind the bar. He grabbed the remote to his left, turned off the mute and turned up the volume.

  “We have breaking news from Arlington National Cemetery, the site of tomorrow’s funeral for President Foreman,” newscaster Vickie Lupo’s voice said as her large head filled the screen. She held a piece of paper in front of her, alternating glances into the camera and at the script as she read the news. “We have confirmed authorities have arrested a man on suspicion of placing a bomb near the site of the funeral.” Lupo leaned into the camera and presumably adlibbed, “This is amazing, people. I cannot believe someone would be so foolish as to try this right now.”

  Edwards and Thistlewood glanced away from the screen briefly to look at the knight, who was indifferently downing another shot of the Cutty Sark Jubilee. The men returned their attention to the television.

  “We understand from sources,” Lupo was saying, reading from the notes in front of her, “the man left a bag or backpack of some sort near the Pan Am Flight 93 Memorial Cairn, and we are told authorities were tipped off to the bomb threat by an anonymous caller.”

  Edwards looked back at Sir Spencer again, who raised his glass in offer of a toast and grinned, obviously acknowledging the “calculated risk”.

  “I still don’t understand,” Thistlewood said, shaking his head and flailing his arms. Unable to sit still, he looked like a hyperactive child an hour overdue for his Ritalin dose. “What is going on here? I thought you said everything was good? Now Bill is out—whatever that means—Jimmy is behind bars, and we preemptively tried to bomb a graveyard?”

  “Plots are living, breathing organisms, and ours is healthy,” the knight said calmly, looking directly at the professor. “Given the aforementioned events of last night, we needed an insurance policy. I asked James to perform the task because I trust him.”

  The knight was standing with his arms folded across his chest. He sounded affable, but his body language suggested a defensive posture. “The man has kept stolen explosives in his freezer for years on my behalf,” Sir Spencer went on. “He’s cleaned money for me when it was needed, and he was jolly good at keeping secrets. I knew I could trust him to deliver the device and not speak a word about it to anyone.”

  “But you had him arrested,” countered Thistlewood.

  “Did he know you were setting him up?” Edwards asked, beginning to wonder about his own safety.

  “That’s a question of perspective,” the knight said coyly. He looked at his watch. It was getting late.

  Before either of the men could ask for a clarification, he held up the index finger on his right hand while pulling his phone out of the smoking jacket’s left hip pocket. “I need to send a text.” He thumbed a message into the phone’s keypad and hit send.

  *

  Bill Davidson sat in his office with a resignation reserved for men who never had anything to gain. His destiny, he’d determined, was not what he’d hoped
. Falling short of every expectation throughout his life, Davidson knew he was of little use to anyone.

  He swung the chair around so as to close and lock his office door before spinning back to face his desk. He powered down his computer and clicked off the small lamp to the right of the flat-panel monitor.

  Facing the embarrassment of a hooker’s death, a plot to blow up the Capitol, and promise unfulfilled, he opened a drawer on the left side of the desk and pulled out a small shoebox.

  Davidson had kept the box and its contents in the desk drawer for more than a year. Until now, however, he’d never found the right time to employ it. There was always more he hoped to do. Always another sunrise.

  He opened the box and removed two airplane-sized bottles of Beefeater Gin, a gallon-sized plastic baggie, a large rubber band, and a small bottle of pills. The pills were amobarbital, a prescriptive barbiturate given to Davidson when he’d suffered from a short-term bout of insomnia.

  Davidson had taken two antihistamines ten minutes prior. He sighed and uncapped the pill bottle, dumped half of the remaining amount into one of the airplane bottles to dissolve them, and shoveled the other half into his mouth. He uncapped the second bottle of gin and washed them down then stood from his chair to pull a framed photograph from the wall. He sat down again and looked at the picture. It was his favorite snapshot of himself with his father. They were smiling. Their arms were slung around one another. Davidson couldn’t remember where the picture was taken, only that he liked it. He took another deep breath against the growing lump in his throat and placed it face down on the desk in front of the computer.

  He lifted the remaining airplane bottle and swigged the gin/amobarbital cocktail. Then, with tears welling in his eyes, he took the unzipped plastic bag and pulled it over his head. He stretched the rubber band to fit onto the bag and then around his neck.

  Sitting in the office chair, he could feel the condensation of his breath on the inside of the bag. He could smell the gin and taste the remnants of the pills on his tongue and the roof of his mouth.