She had to assume this was tied to her resistance against the peace talks.
They drove through the security gate, parked in the portico between the White House’s West Wing and the EEOB entrance. She hesitated a second before stepping out of the car. Every minute from now until Damari was captured could be her last on this earth, and didn’t that have a way to focus the brain? She took a deep breath, savored the sweet air slipping into her lungs. She had no intention of letting him kill her.
Her heels clicked against the old marble floors as she walked the winding staircase up to her office. She found herself looking at every Secret Service agent on her detail, wondering if they were working with the enemy, and that was the worst, the loss of trust.
She worked her morning, smiled and shook hands for the meet and greets, got through the dairyland photo op, and finally sat down for her security briefing on the Bayway Refinery explosion and this maniac group COE.
All the faces in the conference room were as familiar to her as her own: the director of National Intelligence, Maureen McGuiness, sweet syrupy drawl, utterly ruthless, and held grudges; the CIA’s director of intelligence, Templeton Trafford, sneaky, more devious than a snake, that was Temp; and the FBI’s deputy director, Jimmy Maitland, stalwart and solid, said what he thought and shut up, lived and breathed FBI when all was said and done.
They all sat silently on the facing chairs and couch, waiting for her signal to begin. They looked serious and jumpy, all except Temp, once a CIA operative, many times on assignment with her in the field, always ready for a good brawl and a clean kill, like she’d been, she supposed, and now he ran the Intelligence Division. Temp always held information close to the vest. He was now sitting with his arm lazed over the back of his chair, his left leg crossed over the right, foot swinging.
Callan raised her hands like a conductor. “Well? Who is behind COE, and what are they really after? And this cyber-attack—are the Russians, the Chinese bankrolling them? At least we know it isn’t North Korea. Jimmy, give us the rundown.”
Maitland sat forward. “Until yesterday, this COE group only worked the fringes, attacking out-of-the-way oil refineries and power grids, threatening any company that worked with Middle Eastern oil. The sheer size of the bombing of Bayway, the fifteen deaths, and the subsequent cyber-attack on the oil companies, driving the oil prices into the tank, trying to get their production offline, this is bigger, they’ve stepped up their game on a massive scale, and, unfortunately, we don’t yet know what it is.”
McGuiness of National Intelligence turned to Maitland and said, her sweet drawl leaking impatience, “Jimmy, why haven’t you identified the ringleader of this group yet? I thought your people had a line on them. We need answers, we need to find out who’s behind this.”
Maitland said easily, “We’re trying to get that information right now, Maureen.”
Callan said, “Good. Now, do we know the full extent of the damage yet? How long the refinery will be offline? And the hack—did they steal anything from the oil companies or was the attack merely destructive?”
Maitland said, “We’ll know more once the final reports are back from the oil companies. And the damage to the Bayway Refinery was, as you all know, severe. It will be weeks before they’re functioning at full capacity again.”