Director Comey said, “So that’s where Spenser put his bomb? In a mess of tungsten?”
“Yes, sir,” Nicholas said. “I imagine Spenser and probably Tate managed to deliver it in a shipment of metal—maybe even tungsten. It would be totally disguised. The agent undercover with COE told us the new bombs had tungsten components, and would be near on impossible to distinguish it from the rest of the metal.” And Nicholas would bet Nigel’s best bottle of Scotch Spenser had done it during the blackout when everything was down, all the cameras, everything, security precautions heightened but handicapped.
Mike read his mind, more likely their brains were running on the same track. “I’m betting Spenser and Tate took down the power grid so they could have easier access to the plant.”
Nicholas said to Mike, “And some very creative coding by Woody Reading at Juno that made the blackout spread so quickly. Hard to control an overload of outages like we had.”
Sherlock said, “We’ll start tracking all the tungsten shipments over the past week.”
Stunned silence continued in the conference room. The sheer enormity of the explosion, the complete destruction, it was hard to take in.
Mike said, “Matthew Spenser’s final roar and no one was hurt. That’s got to be a win for us.”
All the phones in the room began to ring.
? ? ?
Ten minutes after the annihilation of Yorktown, Vice President Sloane called Mike. She said only, “Thank you both for what you did today.”
The vice president was actually thanking them, live, on Mike’s own cell phone? Her heart speeded up. What an amazing feeling. “You’re welcome, ma’am,” and that sounded stupid, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Do you have any further word on the whereabouts of Zahir Damari?”
“I’m sorry, no, ma’am.”
“We have Homeland on the lookout for him. About half my advisers and half the CIA believe Damari will pack it up since it would be suicide for him to try and attack me now, with the entire world watching. However, I plan to be on the side of the other half who tell me he simply never gives up, not in his DNA. You can bet all my staff are on alert until he’s caught. Which assessment do you agree with, Agent Caine?”
“I come down with the side that says let’s take extreme care. Damari is the type of killer who has backups for his backups. Yes, he’s out there, somewhere, and he’s got a plan.”
“Thank you. Now, actually, I’m also calling you two to tell you the president would like to thank you himself for saving his life. He, and I, of course, would like you to join us at Camp David this evening. We’re having a small dinner, cocktails prior. It will be casual, only staff, a few people from the Hill. The president was planning on being at Camp David this weekend to, ah, recover from the peace talks. We’ve simply moved his schedule around to get him there a day early. Given what we know about Spenser and his group breaking into the POTUS scheduling, the prevailing wisdom says if we change our plans, there’s no way Zahir Damari can surprise us.”
Mike said, “But, ma’am, I didn’t think the president and vice president were allowed to be at Camp David at the same time.”
Callan laughed. “Well, what the public doesn’t know won’t hurt them. Tony Scarlatti, you remember him, my head of security? He felt it would be smart to keep me on a different schedule, too. Since it’s not protocol, we think it will be the safest place for me to be. Secret Service will pick you up—some of Tony’s guys—and we’ll chopper you in. Trust me, you don’t want to spend the afternoon hours driving up there, not in our traffic. This is much more efficient. You’re at the Hoover Building?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you so much for the invitation and the transportation.”
“The car will be there in thirty minutes. And Agent Caine? Thank you again. What you and Agent Drummond managed to do today, it will not go unrewarded.”