The First Commandment

“No thank you, sir.”

“How about a drink?”

Vaile shook his head and politely declined.

“Okay then,” said Rutledge, glad to be getting on with it. “You’ve had a chance to look at everything. Let’s have it.”

The DCI withdrew a folder from his briefcase and opened it. “Mark Sheppard is no Woodward or Bernstein in the writing department, but he more than makes up for it in the depth of his research.”

Vaile handed a copy of the reporter’s article to the president and continued, “The attention this piece would have brought to the Baltimore Sun would have sent their circulation through the roof. Based on Sheppard’s notes, the paper was looking for ways they could stretch the story into a series of articles. They’d already planned to recreate the car accident, as well as the takedown of the John Doe hijacker in Charleston -fake FBI agents and all.

“We’re just lucky this guy Sheppard came looking for a statement a week before he was going to press. Had he come the night before, Geoff Mitchell and the press office wouldn’t have been able to put him off while they claimed the White House was looking into it.”

“And you never would have had time to get to him,” said the president as he finished scanning the article.

“Not the way I needed to,” replied Vaile.

“Then we dodged the bullet.”

The DCI shook his head. “Right now, Sheppard’s editors have to be fuming. This story was the best thing to come along for their paper in years and now it’s been torpedoed.”

Rutledge had a feeling he knew where this was going. “You think if we put out the alert on the school buses that might trigger the Sun into running Sheppard’s story anyway?”

“It’s always possible. Though we’ve got all his original source material, they’ve got the notes they took in their editorial meetings. If they suspect Sheppard killed his story under duress, they might smell blood in the water, decide to reinterview his sources, and run it all without his name on it.”

“Then he’d better have been damn convincing when he withdrew it.”

Vaile nodded. “He definitely had the proper motivation, that’s for sure.”

“Yet, you’re still opposed to sending out any sort of Homeland Security alert.”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

The president set the article down on the table. “If an attack does happen, what then? You don’t think at that point the Sun will repackage the article in a way that’s equally damaging?”

“How could they? We’re the only ones who know the full story. What they have is only a small piece of the puzzle, and it’s a piece we can spin. It’ll show we were engaged in a concerted effort, before the fact, to bring the terrorists to justice. Harvath’s already killed two of them, two more are about to be apprehended in their home countries, and we’ve got multitudes of agents in the field trying to track down the fifth and final one. I think we should let this play out.”

Rutledge admired Vaile’s confidence, but unfortunately he wasn’t convinced. “If we learned anything from 9/11, it’s that hindsight is always 20:20. People will demand to know why, if we knew about a threat to school buses, we didn’t put out an alert.”

“Because,” replied the DCI emphatically, “putting out an alert is an admission of guilt. It would tell our enemies that we believed we had broken our word and that we deserved to be hit, which couldn’t be further from the truth.”

The president tried to say something in response, but Vaile held up his hand in order to be allowed to finish. “Rightly or wrongly, our agreement with the terrorists was based on the assumption that the five men released from Gitmo would not use their freedom to strike against us here at home.”

“Of course,” said Rutledge. “We agreed not to hunt them.”

“That’s what’s been bothering me. The more I look at this, the more I believe the terrorists have had other plans all along.”

Chapter 87

“What kind of other plans?” asked Rutledge.

Vaile looked at him and replied, “Those five men must have been very important for their organization to risk so much to get them released.”

“Agreed,” said the president, nodding.

“We’re also worried that they’ve remained important enough that their organization will make good on its promise to retaliate for any of their killings.”

“I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

“Palmera and Najib are both dead, yet nothing has happened so far. Nothing.”

“Well, one was killed in Mexico and the other in Jordan. Maybe their organization doesn’t know yet.”

The DCI shook his head. “Everyone in the neighborhood knew Palmera, and his death was very public. Najib was a member of Syrian intelligence and while I have no idea what the Jordanians might have done with his body, Harvath allowed Al-Tal’s wife and son to live and they are definitely not going to keep their mouths shut. Word like this travels fast. Their organization knows. And yet I keep coming back to the fact that nothing has happened.”

The president thought about it a moment. “For all we know, they’re putting their people in place as we speak.”