A Dark Perfection Read online

  The Blood Moon.

  Pale, shimmering, eternal.

  4

  Jack O’Neill, lead federal prosecutor for the 18th Judicial District, depressed the buttons on his remote another time. The channels on his vintage plasma flipped from the newscast and back to the ballgame.

  Could you believe it, the Chicago Cubs, finally in the World Series? From the roof of his brownstone, he could sometimes hear the cheers from Wrigley Field.

  But today was not about baseball. All of the pennants and flags at the ballpark were at half-staff.

  The country was on edge. The world was on edge.

  When the first reports on the theater bombings rushed across the screen, and the pictures joined those of 9/11 in our seared collective memory, he did what we all do: he called those closest to him.

  “Hey dad, you see it?”

  “Yeah, it’s awful…”

  The same calls had happened everywhere.

  And yet, in the here and now, there was only the waiting – for our leaders to compose themselves, adopting their real and fake faces; for the cascading reassurances; for the still more gruesome pictures that, somehow, we could not turn away from. And then would come the dead calm, as we waited for a reason for it all, if it ever came.

  A CNN news anchor repeated, “We’re still awaiting further updates. At this point what we know is at approximately 7:34 p.m. last night, central standard time, twenty-five to thirty massive explosions…”

  Nothing new.

  He turned to FOX-X.

  “The president is scheduled to give an address at nine o’clock tonight to the joint houses of Congress. To recap, our reporters on the scenes in Iowa and North Dakota report that the bombing locations are being highly restricted, as one might expect. Still, as part of our Special Alert Coverage, we ask that you stay with us for the most concise and balanced…”

  He turned back to the ball game. Four-to-three, the Cubs were up in the bottom of the seventh.

  They’d considered cancelling the game, but the president was defiant and the nation had followed.

  The phone rang.

  “Hey, Jack.”

  It was Chicago Police Detective John Harnett.

  Harnett and O’Neill had worked together on several gang task force prosecutions and had become good friends over the years.

  “After the game, you want to meet up for a beer?”

  O’Neill looked up at the television: mid-inning. It was Monday and he had a lot of work tomorrow. On the other hand, getting out would probably be a good idea.

  He watched the end of the game, flipped off the set and headed down to the street. On the way to the pub, he stopped at the local newsstand. He noted a subtle nervousness in the people as they reached for the magazines and newspapers.

  There existed two distinct times when people tried harder to be who they wanted to be, the person they thought they were – on Christmas Day and following a threat crisis. Someone passes you that newspaper you were reaching for and says a few kind words. Someone smiles a bit easier. Someone opens a door for a person they’ll never see again.

  Today was different; like a hanging mist, the threat was still among us.

  A woman giggled nervously to her boyfriend on a street corner as O’Neill passed. The people were all biding time, waiting to see what would happen.

  As he pushed open the heavy doors to O’Donoghue’s Pub, he saw Harnett at the far end. Taken apart brick-by-sacred-brick and transported from Dublin to Chicago, the polished wood and burnt peat had always been welcoming friends.

  “Hey, Jack,” Harnett motioned. He already had a pint set up on the bar.

  “Thanks, John. What do we call that?”

  “A little Belgian ale. Pat and Sean say it’s something new, just tapped. Thought I’d try it out on you first.”

  O’Neill laughed and pulled up a stool. “So, how are Bonnie and the kids?”

  “Doin’ good. We’re all road-tripping down to Starved Rock State Park next weekend and then on to the in-laws for a short visit.”

  “The operative word being, short?”

  “Hey, I just keep saying, How about those Cubs? Actually, her dad, Jim, he’s finally letting go of a lot of it.”

  Harnett and his wife had eloped straight out of high school and it had never been entirely forgotten.

  “How’s Rodriguez going?” Harnett asked.

  “You remember the Scarlotti trial, from last year? About the same.”

  “Set to go?”

  “A few things here and there. Sgt. Powell is coming in tomorrow for final witness prep.”

  “How long this time around?”

  “Two weeks, not much more, pretty straight forward. If we can just keep the witnesses lined up.”

  “You mean, alive?”

  “That’s the ongoing problem. Better this time around, though. We finally have the Bureau lending some help. Took a few phone calls.”

  Harnett finished his stout.

  “When did you get here?” O’Neill asked. “Ready for another? By the way, this Belgian is pretty good.”

  “About twenty minutes ago. I’d planned on picking up the little one from softball practice, hear the last innings over the car radio, but Bonnie called and said she had it covered, so I wandered over early. Hey, can you believe them blowing it – again?”

  The bartender ventured over and asked Harnett if he was ready.

  “Sure, that ale he’s got.”

  “On the positive side,” O’Neill said, “they’re still up a game and we’re at home. Hate to say it, though, I’m starting to get that ancient feeling.”

  Harnett had grown up spending his summer afternoons in the Wrigley Field bleachers and was as superstitious as the next Northsider. He rapped on the bar, “Best not to go there. No use taunting the gods.”

  “You said a two week trial?” he continued. “Sounds fast. The judge up to her old games?”

  O’Neill smiled. “Actually, she’s turned out to be a nice lady. Tough, too.”

  Harnett took a sip. “Yeah, Rodriguez, now there’s a nasty piece of work. You know, I was down at the jail the other day processing a perp and out he walks, that same cocky strut. I understand that this country has its share of problems, but if people really knew the terrorists we’ve got right here, domestic terrorists, it would spook them good.”

  A hanging silence came over them.

  Terrorists.

  “So, what do you think?” Harnett finally said.

  O’Neill rotated his glass on the bar. “No way around it, we took a hit. We’ll bounce back.”

  “What does that friend of yours have to say, Osborne?”

  O’Neill and Osborne had been football teammates in high school. They’d lost track of each other through college, but had become close friends when they ran back into each other at the FBI academy. They then rose together as special agents assigned to the counterterrorism task force.

  “Not sure. I generally try to stay clear. I’ll give him a call after it passes a bit.”

  Behind them, the big screen’s volume was turned up by one of the patrons and the bar became silent. The news anchor’s voice rose and faded off. They turned on their stools.

  The picture was grainy, trees whipping in a dark evening breeze. The image becomes centered on a traffic crossing as a boy in a baseball cap navigates the sidewalk, skateboarding out of frame. It is eerie that there is no sound. At the edge of the image on the street corner is a theater. It is one of the older ones, The Riviera Cinema, having held on since the 1940’s. The boy reenters the light of the street lamp.

  In a flash eclipsing the sun, the building ignites.

  The image snaps to black.

  †

  Upon assuming office, each of our presidents is told of the things they did not know – of the historical events and images that are held secret and apart from the masses, who would not understand.

  These secrets are secured in the so-called “Black Box,” itself hid
den in a vaulted room beneath the Oval Office. Among the things inside the box are the secret diaries of each of the preceding presidents, from Truman onward.

  Walker remembered turning to one of these pages. “A president looks out at the world. From the eyes of the cameras, the world stares back. It’s up to you, of course, what you do with it…”

  He looked out and felt a rush of power from the world.

  Like a glass sea spread before him, the members of Congress were standing and vigorously clapping, ready for war. Hoots rang out from the GOP side of the aisle. In the gallery, the mother of Johnny Gibson, a young boy who’d been lost in Omaha, dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief passed by the First Lady.

  Walker turned and shook the hands of Vice-President Palmer and the Speaker of the House and strode confidently from the chamber. Unusually, he walked out without shaking more, his mind set straight ahead.

  He was gripping the mantle as commander-in-chief, the response, thunderous.

  The president’s motorcade quickly returned to the White House and he proceeded down the hallway towards the SID elevator.

  Osborne was waiting for him, “I met with the Fed Chief today, as we discussed.”

  “And what did he want in return this time around?”

  “He’s on board. We explained to him his interests.”

  “His daughter’s drug bust?”

  “Yes, we made it go away. She’s a first-timer. She does inpatient rehab, though.”

  “Well, she used to be a good kid. Maybe she’ll straighten up.”

  “Alright,” the president continued, “raid the coin machines and fire up the printing presses. For Christ’s sake, we were just getting out of the last hole we dug for ourselves.”

  Each of our presidents has an agenda when they first enter office, which usually entails paying off major supporters with an ambassadorship, a friendly phone call, or an ear on pending legislation. And yet, as time passes, the gravity of the office brings on the greater causes. As with his predecessors, the weight of history begins to yawn. How would he be remembered? Had he truly helped those who could not help themselves? When his end-moment finally came, how would God see him?

  The president felt this weight each Sunday as he knelt in the National Cathedral, tracing these words, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.”

  All of that would now have to wait.

  He held his hand against the pad and felt the telltale prick. He was beginning to associate the sharp feeling with the knowledge that a world was cupped in his hands.

  At that same moment, Vice-President Palmer, Présage and their in-house pollster and general gopher, Terrence Garb, were walking down the East Wing corridor. Their perfectly shined shoes clicked against the marble floors and then went silent as they met the carpet. Behind them, the clicking of four Secret Service Agents went similarly mute. Security details had been doubled since the theater bombings.

  “So, did you get a hold of that NBC/WSG poll?” Palmer asked Garb, looking down on the smaller man.

  “Not publicly available yet, sir. However, I pulled the wings off one of our editorial contacts and, essentially, the flash-poll shows that 93% highly favored the president’s speech. Drilling down into the numbers, it appears that the public’s confidence in an eventual resolution is high. Of course, nothing has happened yet.”

  The vice-president chuckled. “What, you mean bombing a bunch of Bedouin huts in a remote desert isn’t going to quench the blood lust?”

  Neither answered.

  “Well,” Palmer added, “in my humble opinion, vaporizing Tehran might be a good place to start. We’ll have to see.”

  He looked back at Garb. “Did you get the file?”

  They all knew which file he was talking about.

  “Yes.”

  “And the other?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Présage relieved Garb of the files and they entered the SID elevator, leaving Garb standing in the hallway with his mouth open. They walked down the SID corridor and entered the main room. In the corners, various directors and cabinet secretaries were speaking in whispers, their aides organizing papers on the long table.

  “Good evening, Mr. President,” Palmer said, taking his seat. “Excellent speech, sir.”

  The president moved from a discussion with Osborne and they joined the others at the table.

  “Thank you, Harold.”

  The vice-president went by ‘Hal’ with his friends and he’d never been sure whether the president stuck to Harold for a reason. Palmer scanned the table; in front of each was a similar stack of files, each a wish list. This was an opportunity.

  They were joined at the table by Secretary of State Janet Lewis, who had cut short her pre-G-20 planning meeting in Paris.

  “Good evening, Janet,” the president said. “How’s the jet lag?”

  “Good evening, Mr. President. Not bad. I actually fell asleep on the plane this time.”

  Taking her seat, Lewis offered her good-evenings to the others, ignoring Présage. On the hill, he was known as the Consigliere, for his deadly ability to get things done. He was tall with melting blue eyes and a charming tone. In one moment, his presence could make her feel like the beautiful girl she once was and uncomfortable the next. Between Palmer and Présage, she sometimes wondered who was leading whom.

  The Secretaries of the Air Force and the Navy entered and quickly took their seats. Moira Kilaney, the Secretary of Transportation, scanned her files one more time. Kilaney didn’t normally attend such high-level meetings, but it had been discussed that domestic transportation issues might arise and at the last moment she’d been called.

  “Let’s get started,” the president said. “General Hightower, please introduce our visitor.”

  Sitting beside the general was Joshua Rendel. In his rumpled shirt and undone tie he looked no more than twenty years old.

  “I think most of you know Josh already,” the general said. “For those of you who don’t, he heads up the DARPA research wing at the Pentagon.”

  The general smiled over at the pencil-thin Rendel. “And don’t be mislead by those boyish good looks – he’s a certified genius. Came up with the nano-tube stealth body armor idea all on his own. Practically runs everything down at the lab. A good man to have on your side.”

  Rendel stood, shuffling the papers before him and adjusting his glasses. Hightower – never known for gushing – had caught him by surprise.

  “Thank you, general, that was kind. Good morning, Mr. President, distinguished colleagues.”

  Walker nodded slightly. The previous year, with a novel insertion strategy, Rendel had effectively resolved the Mali hostage fiasco, snuffing out a political firestorm for the administration. It was something the president would not soon forget.

  “Strategically speaking,” Rendel began, “what we need to first see is that since 9/11 and the Yucca Mountain attacks our capabilities, worldwide, have increased dramatically. What began as a military operation has become an intelligence gathering one. Essentially, we learned that we could leverage our technological prowess into an intelligence-gathering, tactical approach. This then led to military field advantages. As such, our focus on newer weapons projects – with an emphasis on stealth operation and strike-from-a-distance capabilities – has increased ten-fold in the past five years. These projects are the stacks you have before you. I am here to brief you on their status of operations and how soon we can have them implemented in the field.”

  “The blue folder before you is a rough-out of Project Invisible Hand. As you will note, this project relates to micro-robotic, aerial field weaponry…”

  Commerce Secretary Getz looked down the table, smiling at Rendel, “In standard English, if you could, Josh.”

  “Of course, Madame Secretary. In short, we are trying to develop miniaturized, flying robots – the size of a dragonfly, or even a fly – that we can remotely insert into enemy space and carry out, well, termination
actions.”

  Getz looked quizzically down the table.

  The vice-president interjected, “What he means, Pam, is that we fly one of these mini-robots into the Russian Premier’s bed chamber and sting him in the neck – give him the Ebola virus, or assassinate him right there. And then have the drone self-destruct. As Josh said, actions-from-a-distance.”

  Palmer looked at the president, “Sir, may I?”

  The president nodded, “Of course, Harold.”

  Palmer turned towards Rendel. “Mr. Rendel, as the president and Mr. Osborne are aware, I hold a special interest in this project. Can you give us an update on its progress?”

  Rendel looked sheepish, “Well, as you know from our prior briefings, Mr. Vice-President, we’ve been stuck at a wall for quite a while now, over ten years. We initially thought that replicating the flight capability would be straightforward – design a robot light enough and copy the wing structure. Unfortunately, this was more difficult than we envisioned. You see, we discovered that we’d never understood how a dragonfly, or a butterfly, was actually propelling itself through the air. It was much more complicated than…”

  “How so?” Getz asked.

  “We assumed that the wings simply moved in an up-and-down motion, creating the required lift. But the robots – no matter how light – never flew. Computer modeling later showed us that a butterfly’s wings not only create a downward force, but also create a complex series of spiraling air vortices through the front wings, that the butterfly then flies upon with its rear wings. Here, it’s easier to see.”

  Rendel hit the keys on the screen imbedded in the table and an image flashed up where the satellite map had been.

  The vice-president already knew his own answer, but prompted Rendel for the benefit of the others, “So, why don’t we just replicate the vortices?”

  Rendel paused. “Well, the simple answer is, because it’s chaotic.”

  “You mean, a mess?”

  “No, sir,” Rendel smiled, “it’s chaotic in a mathematical sense. The vortices are non-linear, meaning that the air movements created by the wings are orderly one moment and random the next. The butterfly’s brain is literally balancing between order and chaos in each moment, a near infinite number of calculations that our computers do not, as yet, have the speed to replicate. It’s quite amazing, actually.”