were no windows and, in fact, the entire room was a kind of vault more secure than any bank’s. It was easier to maintain security here, of course, four floors down from street level in the warren of tunnels, passageways, and rooms that honeycombed this part of the nation’s capital. For a good many years, now, the joke circulating through official Washington was that the city was like an iceberg; nine-tenths of the place was below ground, hidden where you couldn’t see it.
And beyond the reach of laser eavesdropping devices or cruise missiles or remote-piloted microdrone assassins. Even the president, these days, spent more of his time in the hardened bunkers of the old Situation Room Complex beneath the White House than he did upstairs in the exposed Oval Office. Especially these days, with a dozen terrorist groups sworn to strike at Satan America, with the threat of war looming so large and desperately close.
“Have a seat, Monty,” Gray said, gesturing. Other men were already filtering in and taking their places at the table. Admiral Gray had met Warhurst personally in the basement lobby and walked him through the security gates. Now, for the first time, he found himself inside the National Security Council’s main conference room, a place he’d heard of often enough but never seen.
Since 1989, the National Security Council had been organized into three subgroups; the NSC Principals Committee was the senior of these, tasked with coordinating and monitoring all national-security policy. Currently, it was chaired by Louis Carlton Harrel, the president’s national security advisor. Its regular members included John Matloff, secretary of state; Archibald Severin, secretary of defense; Arthur J. Kinsley, director of central intelligence; Charles Dockery, the president’s chief of staff; and Admiral Gray, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Other people might attend at the president’s invitation, and that was the case for Warhurst, who’d received a scrambled call from Harrel himself only two hours ago.
Harrel was the last to arrive, hurrying through the vault door with a wave to the guards to seal it off behind him. Warhurst didn’t know the man personally. He was a tall, kindly faced black man in his late fifties who had the reputation for being one of the sharper and more aggressive of President Markham’s personal advisors.
“General Warhurst,” Harrel said, taking his seat at the head of the table. “Allow me to express, for all of us, our sincere regrets about your son. We know how you must feel, and we appreciate your being with us this morning, despite your loss.”
Memories burned, but Warhurst held them in check. “Thank you, sir. My son gave his life for his country and for his fellow Marines, and I’m proud of him for that.”
“We’ve asked you to come here,” Harrel went on, “because of this remarkable message we understand reached us through the daughter of one of the Marines with the MMEF.”
“Yes, sir. That would be Kaitlin Garroway.”
“You’ve seen the message?” Matloff demanded. He was a lean, white-haired, hawk of a man in his sixties. He touched a key on his wrist-top, and the display screen on the wall lit up with the Garroway message.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what do you make of it?”
“I’d say it’s legitimate, Mr. Secretary. My people have already checked it out, and I’ve spoken at length both with Colonel Fox and with Garroway’s daughter. Both are convinced that this is a genuine message.”
“Now, Colonel Fox is Garroway’s commanding officer, is he not?” Matloff said. “This, this first sentence of the message isn’t exactly the sort of thing a military officer writes to his superior, is it?”
“Major Garroway and Colonel Walter Fox are old friends, Mr. Secretary. They were both mustangs, and they were stationed together several times, in Japan, and at Camp Pendleton. According to Fox, they maintained a good-natured rivalry, especially after Fox passed Garroway up on the promotions list. The, ah, language of that first line was intended to convince Fox that it was, indeed, Garroway who was writing it.”
“Why all the damned cryptic gobbledygook, General?” Severin demanded. “It was my understanding that this message was transmitted in some kind of secret code.”
“A Beale code, Mr. Secretary,” Arthur Kinsley said with a smile. “I gather that Garroway used it to keep parts of his e-mail correspondence with his daughter private.”
“So why use indirect language? I don’t understand some of this stuff at all. Red Planet? We know he’s on Mars….”
“Beale codes,” Kinsley pointed out, “are among the most secure codes there are, since, to crack one, you have to know which book is being used to provide page, line, and character numbers for the correspondents. Even so, any code can be broken with enough information. Major Garroway might have been afraid that the wrong people would intercept this.”
“It’s my feeling, Mr. Secretary,” Warhurst added, “that the major was playing it safe. He’s a careful man with a high security clearance for the electronics and communications work he does, and he’s well aware of what codes can and cannot guarantee. The cryptic references are probably there just in case one of the UN security agencies had already cracked his code. He’d been using it throughout the cycler flight to Mars, after all, and it’s possible that someone had picked up on it. His use of circumlocutions is designed to sidestep any automated search program set up at Mars, something set to flag any transmissions of the words ‘Heinlein Station’ or ‘UN’ or ‘Candor Chasma.’ His use of ‘Red Planet’ doesn’t mean Mars, Mr. Secretary. That’s the title of a book written almost a century ago by a writer named Robert Heinlein. Heinlein Station. ‘Blue boys’ means the UN. ‘Complete openness’ is ‘candor,’ as in ‘Candor Chasma.’ He’s telling us exactly where he is going.”
“Can you tell us, General,” Harrel said, “what the devil ‘Derna’ might refer to? We’ve had our staff looking it up, and all they can find is the obvious geographical reference to the city in North Africa.”
“The shores of Tripoli, sir.” Warhurst managed a smile. “Any Marine would pick up on that right away.” He proceeded to tell them briefly about Presley O’Bannon and his 1805 march through the desert.
“Your conclusion, then,” Harrel said when Warhurst had finished the tale, “is that Garroway is marching from Heinlein Station across some…how far is it?”
“Almost four hundred miles,” Kinsley replied.
“He’s crossing four hundred miles of Martian desert to Mars Prime?”
“That is the way I would read it, sir,” Warhurst replied.
“The real question then,” Matloff said, “is what Garroway intends to do once he reaches Mars Prime. He doesn’t make any cryptic references to his plans in this message, does he, General?”
“I think that’s clear enough from the context, Mr. Secretary,” Warhurst replied. “He says he ‘capped’ the guards at Heinlein Station. That’s old-time infantry slang for ‘shot’ or ‘killed.’ The Derna reference suggests he plans on taking Mars Prime, the way O’Bannon took Derna.”
“Damn it, General!” Matloff exploded. “What kind of mad dog is this Garroway? We’re not at war!”
“It would appear that Major Garroway believes differently, John,” Harrel said gently. “What do you think, General?”
“He obviously couldn’t say much,” Warhurst replied.
