Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [89]
They bounded up the stairs, ignored the salute of the uniformed Marine at the top, and entered the plane. Pauling glanced to his left, into the cockpit, where the three-man crew, dressed in blue Air Force flight fatigues, were still calmly going through their preflight routine. The Secretary’s chief of staff, Eva Young, greeted Hoctor as they moved through the aircraft to the conference table, where Mike McQuaid and Air Force weapons expert Dr. Herbert Shulman were seated. Leaving the area as they arrived was Phil Wick, who, as State’s assistant secretary for public affairs, was a familiar face on TV. Hoctor started to introduce Pauling when Rock entered.
“Madam Secretary,” Hoctor said. McQuaid and Shulman stood.
“Please, sit,” Rock said, plopping a thick file on the table and taking the seat reserved for her.
“Madam Secretary, this is Max Pauling,” Hoctor said.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “We’ve met before.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pauling said, extending his hand across the table.
Rock locked eyes with him as she took his hand, dropped it, opened the folder in front of her, and quickly read a secured e-mail Eva Young had handed her on the way to the airport. She looked up from the document and said, “The situation with the Jasper Project has changed. Dramatically!”
“How so?” Shulman asked.
McQuaid started to respond but the secretary cut him off. “One of the members of Jasper’s group, a young woman, has been shot and killed,” she said, “by someone inside the compound.”
“That’s verified?” Hoctor asked.
“Yes. The schedule for an assault on the ranch has been moved up. Six hours.” She looked at her watch. “Five hours now.”
“Madam Secretary,” Hoctor said, “maybe you’d better let Pauling here report on what he’s come up with.”
Everyone paused as the sound of the jet’s engines being fired up broke the relative silence of the conference room.
Rock turned to Pauling and cocked her head, an invitation to speak.
“I managed to trace the source of the missiles, Madam Secretary,” Pauling said.
“Oh? You work fast.”
“In this sort of operation, speed counts, as you know,” Pauling said.
“Obviously, the source was Russian.”
“They were made here,” Pauling said, “and sold through the Russian so-called mafia. Arms dealers.”
“To the Chinese.”
“That’s not what my informants told me.”
“The FBI’s undercover agent who infiltrated the Jasper ranch reported that the Chinese were involved, didn’t he?” She directed the question to McQuaid, the president’s terrorism man.
“Yes, ma’am. That’s what we’ve been told by Director Templeton.”
Rock said to Pauling, “You’re saying the FBI is wrong.”
“Not my place to say they’re wrong. All I’m doing is reporting what I learned from my Russian informants.”
“Maybe we should just let him tell us what he’s learned,” McQuaid said.
“Go ahead,” said Rock, sitting back.
“Could I have that paper, Tom?” Pauling said to Hoctor, who pulled it from his pocket. Pauling read it, cleared his throat, and said, “I was handed this note by my Russian contact. He’d been given it by the arms dealer who sold the missiles. According to him, missiles from the batch used in the attacks on the planes were sold to a Canadian buyer. They were brought into the U.S. on a Canadian fishing vessel, specifically to Bath, Maine.”
“And transported out to Jasper in Washington?” Secretary Rock asked.
“No, ma’am. The Canadian buyer told the arms dealer the missiles were going to a right-wing group in upstate New York, Plattsburgh, New York, to be precise, on the Canadian border. A group called the Freedom Alliance.”
“I’m not familiar with it.”
“A small but particularly violent group,” McQuaid said. “We’ve recently been taking a closer look at it.”
“Is this Freedom Alliance tied to Canada?” Rock asked.
“Its members move back and forth across the border, Madam Secretary. Many of them live in Canada but are U.S. citizens.”
The Secretary closed her eyes, opened them, and took in the men at the table one by one, coming to rest on Tom Hoctor. “What do you think?” she asked him.
“I think the FBI might