CLOAKED DECEPTION

  ©2024 TIMOTHY ZAHN

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  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  THE FIRST DAY

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  THE SECOND DAY

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  THE THIRD DAY

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  THE FOURTH DAY

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  THE FIFTH DAY

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  THE SIXTH DAY

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  THE SEVENTH DAY

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  THE EIGHTH DAY

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  THE NINTH DAY

  Chapter 35

  THE LAST DAY

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  The room was small and dark. The only light came from the soft glow of a simple reading lamp resting on a corner of the equally simple desk. Set in the wall across from the desk was a tiny but serviceable window, and when the general entered the building an hour earlier, it had been a gloriously clear day. But the window was heavily curtained, and not even a glimmer of the sunshine outside was getting through.

  The room appeared dusty, as if it hadn’t been used in months. Perhaps it hadn’t. Certainly, the starkness of the place was in sharp contrast to the pomp and ritual that was so much an integral part of the present occupant’s public life. Perhaps he only used this place for special occasions—when secrecy was required.

  This was certainly a special occasion, the general thought grimly. And secrecy was absolutely required.

  There was a movement at the desk. The general turned from his unseeing contemplation of the curtained window as a middle-aged man in an oddly rumpled outfit turned over the final page of the proposal. The rumpled clothing, again out of place with his public life, also seemed to fit the room.

  For a minute, the other man continued to gaze at the open folder, as if by sheer force of will he could change it or perhaps make it go away entirely. But the folder stayed as it was. With visible reluctance, he lifted his eyes to his visitor. “There’s no other way?”

  The general suppressed a sigh. They’d been over this so many times in the past few months. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt to go over it again. “You’ve read the reports,” he said, pitching his voice to the same low level. There was something about the room that discouraged loud speech. “We’ve tried every quiet method we can think of. His protectors are simply too good.”

  “Good enough to stop a sniper’s bullet?”

  “Do you want him to become a martyr?” the general countered. “Because that’s what an assassin’s bullet would do. A bullet or any other obvious and overt action. It has to be done subtly, or the threat he stands for will gain momentum we may never be able to stop.”

  “Subtle? Subtle?” The other slapped a hand down on the folder, the sharp crack painfully loud in the enclosed space. “This is your idea of subtle?”

  “When you kill one man, motives are easily traced to their source,” the general said stiffly. “When you kill a thousand, the sheer number of possibilities makes any certainty impossible.”

  “A thousand,” the rumpled man murmured, looking down at the folder again. “Will it be only a thousand? Or will it be tens of thousands? Perhaps even hundreds of thousands?”

  “Not hundreds,” the general assured him. “Almost certainly not even tens. Remember, the building is surrounded by a great deal of open space, and the yield of the weapon is extremely small. This is very much a surgical strike.”

  “Or what passes for a surgical strike in the nuclear age,” the other said. “There’s no other way?”

  “If there was, we wouldn’t even be discussing this.” The general sternly throttled back a wave of impatience. “Our only other choice is to sit back, do nothing, and watch one man bring down the nation. To sit back and do nothing as the work of decades collapses into ruin. To let the lives of our founders be just so much wasted sacrifice and blood. If he succeeds—if we let him succeed—there will be nothing left but chaos.”

  He stopped, his ears ringing, suddenly aware that he’d raised his voice past the room’s natural tolerance for noise. “And that chaos wouldn’t stop at our borders,” he continued more quietly. “Never forget that. Within the year, it would spread across the continent. Within two years, perhaps, the entire world would be in the same state of ruin.”

  The rumpled man gave him a cynical smile. “A nice speech, General,” he said. “Carefully designed to stir the emotions, strengthen the resolve, and quiet the fears.”

  “I assure you, I didn’t mean it that way,” the general said stiffly. Sometimes he forgot how astute this man was at reading people.

  “Of course not,” the other said, almost as if he believed it. “So now it’s a matter of our small handful of patriots saving the world from chaos, is it?”

  “I wasn’t exaggerating, sir,” the general said. “You know the situation even better than I do. It has to be done. For the good of the nation.”

  “Yes,” the other said with a sigh. “I was simply wondering how well that line of argument will play at our trial.”

  “There won’t be any trial. Any publicity would automatically mean failure. We can’t afford failure.”

  “No.” Standing up, the rumpled man walked around his desk to the window. Leaning against the wall, he lifted the edge of the curtain and gazed out. The light sweeping in past his face, the general noted, was diffused and subdued. It must have clouded up. “No one saw you come here?”

  “No one,” the general said. “My car has tinted windows, and I put on a false license. No one will be able to trace any of this back to you. Certainly not with any proof.”

  “For use at the trial that won’t be happening, no doubt.”

  “Sir—”

  “Never mind,” the other said, waving a hand resignedly. “Will there be any difficulty getting hold of the weapon and moving it?”

  “The equipment and personnel are already standing by,” the general said. “The common wisdom, of course, is that such a theft is impossible. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Does it have to be a nuclear weapon?” the other asked, trying one last time. “Why not use a conventional bomb, or even a surface-to-surface missile?”

  “Two reasons,” the general said. The rumpled man knew all this, too. “First, the delivery would be problematic at best. Remember, he’ll be well guarded and moving among other well-guarded people, all inside a large building. The package must by necessity be relatively small, and that small a conventional explosive simply would not be enough to guarantee success.”

  “Not even with this magic invisibility device you plan to obtain?”

  “Not even then,” the general said. “But there’s a second and even more important reason. Conventional bombs, no matter how powerful, don’t really destroy anything, but merely break it into very small pieces. Those who would study the aftermath would be able to piece together enough of the explosive or missile to determine its origin. At that point, those responsible might possibly be tracked down.”

  He
lifted his eyebrows. “At which point, the trial you mentioned most certainly would take place.”

  The rumpled man snorted gently. “And a nuclear weapon is, of course, so much less traceable.”

  “Their relative rarity will actually work to our advantage,” the general said, ignoring the sarcasm. “Trust me on that.”

  “Of course.” The other shook his head. “Trust you. On that, and on so much more.” He sent one last look out the window, and then smoothed the curtain back into place, cutting off the last invasion of even subdued sunlight into the darkened room. “What about the money you’ll need?”

  “It’s already been appropriated from various funds.”

  The dark eyes frowned. “Already?”

  “Yes,” the general said. “Invisibly, I assure you. One of my people is quite good at such things.”

  “And if I now say no?” the other demanded. “What then?”

  “Then we simply put it back,” the general said, striving to keep his voice calm. It wasn’t nearly that easy, of course. A great deal of the money had already been spent over the past months, a detail he hadn’t felt necessary to trouble the other with. “We cancel the operation, send everyone away, and sit back to watch the disintegration⁠—”

  “I know, I know,” the other said, the brief spark of resistance fading away. He was fighting it to the end, the general knew, fighting against the need for this action.

  But the moral twisting was all for show, or for conscience. The end result was no longer in doubt. The general was good at reading people, too.

  “And this—what did you call it? It will be ready in time?”

  “The Cloak,” the general said. “And yes, our man assures me the preparations are nearly complete. The inventors have scheduled a demonstration, in fact, for three days from now.”

  “And your own zero hour?”

  “Our opportunity comes in ten days,” the general said. “We should have no problem meeting that schedule.”

  The other grunted. “I hope your man knows what he’s doing,” he said, crossing back to the desk and sitting down.

  “He does,” the general promised. “He’s an experienced professional, and we’re paying him a great deal of money to deliver the Cloak. And I’ll be there to supervise the entire operation, his part included. I can leave as soon as you make the decision.”

  The rumpled man opened the folder again, leafing uncertainly through the pages. “It’s so complicated. So very complicated.”

  “But necessarily so,” the general reminded him. “And all of the most crucial aspects are ultimately under our control.”

  “Things can still go wrong,” the other countered, looking up at his visitor. “Don’t forget, they’ll be barely a step behind you the entire way.”

  The general smiled tightly. “The operative word being behind. I assure you, one step is all we’ll need.”

  The other dropped his gaze to the folder again. “My son’s going to school near there, you know.”

  “The blast won’t affect him at all.” A wave of relief washed through the general. So that was the real reason for this sudden reticence. Not politics, not even conscience. Just family. “It’s a tactical weapon, with a yield less than a quarter of a kiloton. He may feel the ground shake a little if he’s paying attention. Other than that, he’ll learn about it from CNN like the rest of the world.”

  The other took a deep breath and closed the folder. “Then I suppose there’s nothing more to say,” he said, handing it back to the general. His eyes, the general noted, didn’t quite meet his. “You said you’ll be leaving immediately?”

  “I can be on a plane for San Francisco in twelve hours,” the general said, studying the dark eyes carefully as he accepted the folder. “There are a few details I need to take care of here first.”

  “Yes.” Turning away, the rumpled man pulled another piece of paper from a small stack on the far corner of his desk. “You’ll keep me informed, of course.”

  “Of course,” the general said, sliding the folder back into his briefcase and backing toward the door. Yes, he was going along with the plan. But he wasn’t convinced. Not really. “Good day, sir.”

  The other only nodded. Quietly, the general left, closing the door on the small, dark, dusty room and the small, rumpled man. He would feel better, the general decided, when this was all over. Which it soon would be.

  In exactly ten days.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE FIRST DAY

  FBI Director Frank McPherson hurried down the White House corridor, moving as quickly as he could without his haste looking obvious, cursing the early-morning D.C. traffic, the lack of proper workmen’s pride on the part of Virginia’s snowplow crews, and President Andrew Whitcomb’s minute-miser quirks. Technically speaking, these informal Wednesday security meetings weren’t supposed to start until seven, and he still had five minutes before the conference room wall clock chimed them to order.

  But Whitcomb’s philosophy was that meetings started as soon as everyone was assembled. Since no one wanted to keep the President waiting, everyone made it a point to be there a few minutes early, with the result that the seven o’clock starting gun had gradually but steadily drifted backwards until the typical opening report had actually been kicking off around six forty.

  So four minutes early, McPherson was as a practical matter sixteen minutes late. Maybe this would set the time clock back to where it was supposed to be, which in itself wouldn’t be a bad thing.

  He only wished it had been someone else who’d done it instead of him.

  The others were indeed gathered around the polished oak table as he strode in. At the head of the table sat Whitcomb, skimming through a file with the State Department logo on it. To his left, National Security Adviser Cynthia Duvall and Homeland Security’s Deputy Secretary Spence Logan were engaged in quiet conversation over an open folder lying midway between them, munching their respective croissants between comments. Logan was a relative newcomer to the group, having taken over from Secretary of Homeland Security Dobbs while the latter recovered from kidney surgery. McPherson knew that Logan and Duvall had clashed on a number of occasions, usually over accessibility issues. For the moment, at least, they seemed to be getting along well enough.

  At the end of the table opposite the President was General Eldridge Vaughn, coordinator of Military Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs. He was sipping coffee as he wrote precise notes on a pad of paper, a barely-touched donut on the plate beside him. To the general’s left, CIA Director Lawrence Cohn was just polishing off what looked to be his second danish as he leafed through a thick folder of his own. The sixth chair, sitting between Cohn and the President, was empty.

  There were quite a few intelligence and analysis groups that weren’t represented at these informal get-togethers, not to mention the various Cabinet heads who figured prominently at the monthly Security Council meetings. McPherson knew of at least two directors and one Cabinet undersecretary who had permanently bent noses over what they considered to be a massive snub.

  But Whitcomb was President, and he got to make the rules. These were the people and agencies he felt most comfortable with, and if this was how he wanted to get his midweek situation overview, that was the way it was.

  Personally, McPherson would be just as happy to let someone else have the FBI’s slot for a while. His days started too early as it was.

  “Mr. President,” McPherson said as he closed the door behind him. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Good morning, Frank,” Whitcomb said, giving him a nod. “I make it still three-minutes-to. Coffee?”

  “Thank you,” McPherson said, dropping his briefcase at the empty place and stepping over to the coffee urn. He drew an aromatic cup of the President’s private blend, giving the pastry tray a longing look but leaving it untouched. Last weekend’s back-to-back dinner parties had added three pounds to his frame all by themselves, and he’d already put off the necessary caloric penance for two days.

  “Let’s get started,” Whitcomb said as McPherson sat down with his cup. “What’s new at the CIA, Larry?”

  “Not much, actually,” Cohn said, opening his folder. “We’ll start with the Middle East.”