Debt Bomb Read online

  Acorn struggled to move his mouth. The tranquilizer had quickly taken effect. His eyes froze wide open.

  “I’m sorry, Frank. You know I have my orders just as you had yours. And if I don’t follow my orders, what would happen to me is what’s about to happen to you.”

  Acorn heard every word, but he was paralyzed and couldn’t move even a finger to respond.

  Mason glanced over to Pyotr, who nodded. Mason turned, walked back to his BMW, and drove off. Pyotr slung Acorn over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carried him to a black Subaru Forester parked in the woods one hundred yards away. As they approached the car, Acorn could hear its liftgate begin to open. Pyotr dumped Acorn into the rear of the SUV and wordlessly slammed the liftgate shut. Paralyzed, unable to speak, and his remaining blood draining out the wound in his stomach, Acorn silently watched the light coming through the vehicle’s back window slowly fade to black.

  Andrea was bleary-eyed. She’d barely slept. The events of the previous day, her neighbors berating her and all those elderly people standing on the sidewalk, consumed her thoughts. She would have done anything to stay home and hibernate for the next few months, but duty called.

  On her way in to work she drove past the offices of one government contractor after another, all housed in shiny, new glass- and-steel buildings lining Virginia’s Route 28 and Interstate 66. GovSoft, TechOps, iTech, CloudTech, the signs on the buildings read, meaningless mashups of made-up techno-speak.

  She sagged in her seat thinking about all the people working at these companies. They’re all getting pink slips. And I might as well have signed them.

  She wondered if these names would still be on the buildings in a year’s time.

  As she drove, headlights crept up in her rearview mirror until they were practically on top of her.

  Great, another annoying DC tailgater.

  It was a black Subaru Forester with the special red-and-blue “Diplomat” plates. Diplomat plates always made Andrea nervous. Their drivers had diplomatic immunity and often took full advantage. Andrea changed lanes, wanting the Forester to pass and get as far from her as possible. But instead the Forester hovered at the rear corner of her driver’s side, in the adjacent lane, exactly where he had been when he was tailgating her.

  Why doesn’t he just pass? Stay calm, don’t look at him, think of something else.

  As she drove past the exit for Poplar Tree Park, Andrea thought of her son’s little league team that played on the baseball fields. The kids had no idea the debt bomb was ticking away while they played ball. She imagined the fields with missing bases, collapsed fences, and covered with weeds because there would be no money to maintain them.

  A couple miles later, as Andrea approached the Capital Beltway, she looked in her rearview mirror again. The Forester was gone.

  She breathed a sigh of relief and was about to go back to thinking about her son’s little league when she stopped herself.

  Enough. Enough of feeling sorry for yourself. Identify the problem. Work the problem. Solve the problem. Keep those baseball fields open.

  What is the problem? People not buying American bonds.

  And who instigated the bond boycott? This Pripy at Consortium.

  What on earth is the Pripyat Consortium? No one ever heard of these guys before. How does some unknown bond fund, or group, or consortium, or whatever rally enough investors to torpedo an American Treasury bond auction? This can’t be about finances. Someone is trying to harm the United States.

  Her Google search on “Pripyat” had led her to pictures of the abandoned Chernobyl town Pripyat in Russia.

  Could it be the Russians?

  She had her doubts. Russia didn’t have that kind of bond-buying power. And from her accountant days she knew Russian investors were buying overpriced Manhattan condos, not bonds. Put all the Russian buyers of American bonds together and form a boycott, and Americans would hardly notice. No, it couldn’t be the Russians.

  The Europeans? Sure, they bought American bonds, but why would they want to harm the United States? Even when the Europeans were angry about the Iraq War they didn’t boycott American bonds. Europe seemed an unlikely culprit.

  Japan? No, couldn’t be. Relations with the Japanese were fine.

  Come on, Andrea, think. Remember what you learned in that undergrad criminology class.

  Means and motive. Means and motive.

  Who had it?

  Only one country bought enough American bonds that its engineering a boycott would threaten the United States’ finances and had a burning desire to hurt the United States.

  China.

  But if it was China, why wasn’t the guy who announced the Pripyat Consortium bond boycott Chinese? He looked Russian or Slavic or something.

  Andrea dashed to her office after parking so she wouldn’t lose her thought. When she arrived, she threw her coat on the couch, not even bothering to hang it on the door. She went straight to her computer and looked up “Pripyat Consortium.” Links to news articles about the bond boycott appeared. She picked CNN’s.

  At the top of the article was a photograph of the man she’d seen on television announcing the Pripyat Consortium’s American bond boycott. He looked Russian, just as Andrea remembered. But there was something familiar about the man. His face, his build. She could swear she’d seen him before.

  Andrea called Rachel. Normally Rachel made sure she beat Andrea into the office, but Andrea’s insomnia-fueled early arrival meant Andrea had gotten to the office first.

  “Hello?” murmured a groggy Rachel.

  “Rachel, are you up? I’m in the office. We need to talk. You have a moment?”

  “Sweetie, it’s six a.m. What are you doing in the office?”

  “Something about this bond boycott is bothering me,” Andrea said.

  “Something? The whole thing is bothering us,” Rachel replied.

  “The Pripyat Consortium,” Andrea said, nearly interrupting Rachel. “The guys boycotting the bonds.”

  “What about them?” Rachel yawned.

  “The guy in the expensive suit who announced the bond boycott,” she said. “He looks really familiar.”

  “Looked like a typical Russian oligarch to me,” Rachel said. “Thousand-dollar suit and big red drinker’s nose.”

  “No, no,” Andrea said. “There was something familiar about him. His face, or his eyes. Something.”

  “I’m sure the FBI and the intelligence community are investigating it. Want me to check?”

  “Yes,” Andrea replied. “I’d really like them to look into that guy a little more. There’s just something about him I can’t put my finger on. Can we do that?”

  “I have contacts all over this town,” said Rachel. “I know people over at the FBI who can help.” Rachel seemed awake now. Andrea heard a lilt in her voice. Rachel loved being a Washington insider. “I’m sure they didn’t all get laid off. I’ll call them.”

  “It’s probably not every day that the OMB comes in with a request for the FBI, is it?” asked Andrea.

  Rachel laughed. “There’ve been a lot of firsts lately.”

  “One more thing,” Andrea said. “Make sure no one knows we’re asking about this. Tell your FBI buddies to keep this quiet.”

  “Will do,” Rachel replied.

  As she looked out her office window to the White House lawn, illuminated by the morning light, Andrea continued to rack her brain.

  What was so familiar about that Pripyat Consortium spokesman?

  It had rankled her since she’d first laid eyes on him. Now she was determined to find out who he was.

  Mason casually held his BMW’s steering wheel with one hand as he turned into an alley behind an abandoned warehouse in East Baltimore.

  All the years he’d been a Chinese agent and he’d never been part of a killing. He’d spent his life seeking political dominance over others, but political dominance was nothing compared to the feeling of having a man’s life in his hands, of wa
tching Acorn holding his stomach, blood dripping from his fingers, bleeding to death. Replaying it over and over in his mind gave him a nearly erotic frisson unlike anything he’d ever felt.

  He slowly pulled his car up to a garage door on the side of the warehouse around nine p.m., lights off to minimize the chances of someone seeing him. The chipped and faded paint on the warehouse’s side read “Gunther Machinery.” The alley’s broken concrete crunched under the wheels of his car. Some of the narrow plate glass windows were broken and filled with spider webs.

  With Acorn gone, Mason was now the center of China’s unfolding effort to bring down capitalism and the United States government.

  As he put the car in park, he saw spots of dried blood on his index finger. Some of Acorn’s blood must have sprayed him when Acorn was shot. Mason wiped the blood from his finger. He smiled at this initiation rite of an active agent.

  He got out of his BMW and carefully navigated the broken driveway, avoiding the used needles the local junkies sometimes left behind. Quietly, he walked to the garage door, grabbed the chain attached to the door, and lifted it open. The mice and rats inside the building scattered, light reflecting off the eyes of the small rodents looking at him as they ran for cover. Mason inhaled deeply. The putrid smell of dead animals from the darkest corners of the warehouse filled his nose. He felt a tingling in his fingertips as the scent of death wafted through his nostrils.

  He turned on a flashlight and led himself to the back of the warehouse. The dust and debris under his feet sounded like sandpaper. As he looked from side to side, he saw a few rusted machines and broken machine parts, perhaps left from the Gunther Machinery days. Incongruously, a broken piano sat in the middle of the old shop floor with missing keys and broken, tangled wires. Some old chairs were scattered about, their upholstery torn and stuffing strewn about, probably clawed out by the animals that infested the building.

  He usually came to the warehouse from Capitol Hill dressed in one of his custom-tailored suits. He loved the filthy feel of his high-class slumming. He’d often fantasized about bringing one of his many flings here and going at it right there on the dirt-caked floor. But he knew revealing the warehouse to any of his one-night stands would mean certain death for them both.

  Continuing to the back wall, Mason reached a small stairway, looked around to be certain no one was following him, and descended to the basement. Once there, he pointed his flashlight upward; a single light bulb and cord dangled from the ceiling. He pulled the cord and the light came on.

  Against the back wall was a video screen and a small control panel. The walls were made of old, crumbling brick. The mortar between the bricks was cracked or missing altogether in spots. Rotted wood beams crossed the ceiling, thick enough that they supported the ceiling even with their surface rotting. A single small wooden chair sat in the center of the room facing the screen.

  Mason took a seat in the chair, and at 10:01 p.m. the flat panel screen flickered to life. Xu Li appeared.

  “Crimson.”

  “Yes, Madame Xu.”

  “Has Acorn been dealt with according to my instructions?”

  “Yes, Madame Xu. He was suicided.”

  Expressionless, Xu Li simply nodded in acknowledgment. “His failures were grievous. How could he have misjudged the American public’s reaction so badly? We spent years planning to bankrupt the United States and overthrow capitalism. But the US still stands.”

  Mason, supremely confident in his powers of persuasion, crossed his arms and angled his nose upward as he tried to convince Xu Li that Operation Pripyat had been a success. “Getting a million government workers fired and starving and killing millions of elderly and poor Americans by destroying the social safety net wasn’t nothing, Madame Xu. Operation Pripyat might not have brought down the American government, but we’ve ruined millions of American lives.”

  “Nonsense, Crimson. Operation Pripyat is supposed to bring down capitalism and the United States government. Both remain. The mission has not been accomplished. It is up to you to complete it.”

  Mason’s knees quivered slightly. Xu Li was impervious to his arrogant bluster. He couldn’t buffalo Xu Li the way he had so many weak politicians. With Acorn gone, Mason began to realize that if capitalism and the American government didn’t fall, he would be the next domino to tumble. If Xu Li wanted him suicided, he was as good as dead. He shook his arms and legs to rid them of their tension.

  “You Americans may be reactive slobs, but we Chinese are careful, meticulous strategic planners,” said Xu Li.

  He hated when she waxed rhapsodic about how smart the Chinese were compared to the American brutes. He believed in socialism and exporting the revolution too, yet Xu Li treated him as an inferior second-class agent because he was American. If Chinese agents were clever strategists playing chess and American agents clumsy oafs playing checkers, why the hell did she need him and Acorn?

  “We have a backup plan to destroy the United States government.” Xu Li had moved on. “Though this plan is considerably messier, which is why I wanted to avoid it.”

  Considerably messier. Maybe there’d be more blood than the little bit he’d licked from his fingers. But as much as the thought of murder sent a thrill up his spine, Mason wanted to be certain the plan would succeed.

  “Madame Xu, don’t you think we might want to reassess our planning in the wake of the failure of our first plan?” he asked.

  “You can be a part of the plan or you can be suicided too,” came Xu Li’s curt reply. Coming from Xu Li, it wasn’t truly a reply. It was a threat.

  “Madame Xu, I think whatever we do will work better if we wait for just a little bit to understand why Acorn’s mission failed.”

  Xu Li stared into the camera. “Are you questioning my decisions?”

  “No, Madame Xu.”

  “Have you forgotten what brought you into my service? How you were adopted from Russia by your parents in Kansas when you were six? How the bank repossessed your family’s farm in Kansas a year later?”

  “No, Madame Xu.”

  The Ministry almost certainly knew he hated thinking about his childhood. He’d spent years building his power and reputation as a political colossus bestriding Capitol Hill. As far as he was concerned, that six-year-old in Kansas was dead and buried. But Xu Li clutched his past tightly and deployed it when needed to stoke his rage.

  “Remember that foreclosure agent telling you to look on the bright side, that you were going to get to move to a city? The auction, that bewildering recitation of numbers and raising of hands that represented the death of your happy life on the farm?” “I know, Madame Xu.” Mason tried to change the topic. “But I think we need to consider—”

  “And you recall the fat, sweaty developer who purchased the farm and immediately subdivided it for custom-built McMansions? Your family’s grimy first apartment in Kansas City? The roaches and ants in the kitchen and rats and mice as big as cats in the bathroom? The broken furniture strewn across the front lawn that passed for your toys?”

  “Madame Xu—”

  “And your adoptive mother’s funeral after she was killed in the factory accident?”

  Mason’s cheeks flushed red. Madame Xu had fully exhumed that six-year-old Kansas boy. Mason balled his hands into fists of anger and clenched his jaw so tightly he was grinding his teeth. His eyes narrowed into an angry scowl.

  “Enough, please, Madame Xu,” Mason begged. “I hate them, I hate the Americans. Tell me the plan, Madame Xu. I want to see America die.”

  “That is better, Crimson. Are you now ready to implement the operation?”

  “Yes, Madame Xu, yes.”

  Xu Li’s psychological onslaught had physically broken Mason. His arms hung limply by his side.

  “Very well. Within the next week we will set fire to the lake.”

  “Jesus,” Mason whispered.

  “When the lake begins to burn, the Americans will need money. Enormous amounts of money. Your job is to
make sure the American government doesn’t get it.”

  “That is why I worked my way up the Appropriations Committee, Madame Xu. I am perfectly positioned to execute your plan. President Murray will not get a dime.” Xu Li’s tour through Mason’s childhood had stoked his thirst for revenge.

  “For your sake,” Xu Li said menacingly, “I hope you are right.”

  The unexpected phone call at two in the morning from the White House put Andrea on edge. It wasn’t as if she were in a deep sleep—that was no longer possible. But it was the tone of Rachel’s normally cheery voice that sent shivers down her spine.

  “There’s a crisis in the South China Sea.”

  “Rachel, Hold on,” Andrea said. She quietly got out of bed. Ryan was working the nightshift at his hospital, but she didn’t want to wake her sleeping children down the hall. She stumbled over to the chair for a sweatshirt and then closed her door.

  “Okay, I’m here,” Andrea said.

  “China’s invading Taiwan and blocking the South China Sea,” she continued.

  China.

  Andrea sat upright. Another puzzle piece snapped into place in her mind. The failed bond auction. The Pripyat Consortium. Now Chinese military aggression. All within a few months? No way was this a coincidence.

  “Why are you calling me?” she asked. “The national security people should be getting the calls, not me.”

  “The national security team is meeting in the Situation Room in about thirty minutes,” Rachel said. “You should be there.”

  “Why?” Andrea was now fully awake.

  “If they decide to defend Taiwan or reopen the South China Sea, it’ll cost money. Lots of money.”

  “Our budget is at stake,” Andrea said.

  “Exactly,” Rachel replied.

  “All right, I’ll be there.”

  Andrea got dressed in record speed without waking anyone. She was leaving the kids and Mamie home without her or Ryan, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Ryan would be home in a couple hours, so maybe no one would even know she’d left.