A Time for War (14 page)

Dover looked around, saw a newsstand on the corner of Liberty Street, and bought his entire supply of five disposable cameras. She took pictures of people. She stopped when a second, more ferocious explosion followed a roaring directly overhead, as United Airlines Flight 175 smashed into the south tower. Dover backed over to Zuccotti Park until she could see the shattered face of the skyscraper. She did not turn her camera up to the ragged scar, to the people standing on jagged girders, to those who could no longer endure the heat and choking black cloud. The sound, the physical impact, the impossibility of the images rolling out in a kind of slow motion had paralyzed her torso. Later, when she had the pictures developed, she saw that she had continued to snap photographs—of her feet, of papers landing on the street, of other people's legs—everything below knee-level.

She continued to move backward through the park and reached Broadway, where police officers were starting to block streets, to push people to the east. Dover moved with them, hearing snippets of people who were talking on cell phones—she did not yet own one—and crackling sounds from radios as she passed police officers and firefighters. She reached the East River, where there were herds of business people incongruously mingled with joggers and merchants from the Fulton Fish Market. The burning towers were visible over the tops of the low-lying structures. The Brooklyn Bridge was behind her.

And then the north tower fell. The moan from the mass of people was a sound of such pain as she hoped never to hear again. But it brought her back to life. She still had three unused cameras. She resumed taking pictures of faces and the shared horror and the longing to be in contact with their neighbors. She did not see anyone praying, which she thought was strange. Then she realized the conflict: who could believe in God at a moment like this? That would come later, when people sought meaning in the incomprehensible.

I need to be a part of that process,
she remembered thinking then. That was the moment she turned from the idea of educating a classroom to educating the human race.

With speed born of a strong, sudden epiphany, she literally ran the two miles back to NYU. Before the university offices shut down so out-of-town employees could get home, she gathered up the papers needed to change her major. Then she found a pay phone and called home. Her mother was tearful and relieved to hear from her.

Her father said quietly, gravely, “Now three generations of Griffiths have been to war.”

That was a fact. Her legs gave out as she stood at the pay phone on University Place. She fell to her knees, crying hysterically, and had to be helped to her dorm room by an off-duty campus security guard.

Dover had not regarded the job at the ONI as a logical fit with her experiences on September 11, 2001. It made sense on a certain level: evil men had attacked the nation and she was helping to hunt for other evil men. But it did not satisfy her soul the way taking those photographs had or writing about the experience for her hometown newspaper. The power of journalism was made clear and poignant by the dozens of belts that were sent to her mother's house with notes thanking Dover for her front-page article. She missed that connection with readers, and in a strange way it had given her conversation with Jack Hatfield an unexpected misting of melancholy: she had to imagine that he missed it, too, more acutely than she had. Protecting a San Francisco landmark and thousands of lives as he had saved his city from Islamic terrorists was not the same thing as digging into minds and sparring with words and testing your belief system against that of another. She saw how lost her father was when her grandfather died. It wasn't just the end of making memories. It was the end of a certain, very personal kind of sharing. The same kind a passionate man like Jack Hatfield developed with his listeners.

Dover was not surprised when she received a phone call from administration.

So Hawke is protected,
she thought. Someone inside the government was aware she was investigating and wanted her stopped.

What surprised her was that she was told to report immediately to Commander Carrie Morgan, Protocol Administrator. She had never met the woman, who was several leaps above the officer she reported to in her chain of command. Either she had hit the research jackpot or stepped in “deep doo-doo,” as her mother put it.

Dover hurried to the ground floor executive wing, which she had never had cause to visit. She followed the signs, found room 112, and did not have to wait. Her gut burned with anticipation. Not the good kind, like the night before Christmas, but the principal's office kind. As she walked through the inner door she knew this was going to be a dressing-down. She had seen naval personnel relaxed and she had seen naval personnel in engagement mode. Sitting behind her gunmetal desk, surrounded by three walls of proud citations and photographs with senators, vice presidents, and one president, the fifty-something commander was looking at a brass-framed iPad, a secure unit made especially for the military.

Dover was not invited to sit. She stood in a civilian imitation of “at ease”—her hands behind her back, her spine as straight as nerves would allow, her lips pressed together.

“We're putting you on an open-ended unpaid furlough,” Commander Morgan said, still scanning the tablet.

“Wow.”

The commander looked up, her eyebrows arched. “I'm sorry?”

“That's—I'm sorry, ma'am, but that's Guantanamo-Bay-speak for ‘You're fired.' And for what? For doing my job? For trying to find out if—”

“Stop!” Commander Morgan said.

Dover's mouth clapped shut. That was her dad talking, Master Sergeant Griffith. Her response was reflexive.

The officer set the tablet aside and folded her hands. It was a classic, formal, military, how-dare-you posture. “You have been in contact, on ONI time, on ONI premises, on ONI business, with a hostile source. As per your employment contract, Human Resources will review the matter with your superiors to determine the correct course of action. However, your file will be amended to include that last comment, which I find personally repugnant.”

“Wait—what?” Dover said. She was still working on the first part of the commander's statement. “What ‘hostile'—?” She was utterly confused.

“Jack Hatfield,” the commander said.

Dover smirked. She couldn't help herself. “Do you mean that calling a journalist who has limited media access is more of a threat than finding out if a billionaire international industrialist is playing on an enemy team—a tycoon who has the resources to hire an army to topple a third world government or buy an election?”

“Your investigation of Richard Hawke is not the matter on the table,” Commander Morgan said.

“Ma'am, it
should
be!” Dover said.

“If taken up at all, the question will be dealt with by appropriate staff in appropriate departments at appropriate levels,” the commander said. Her gaze was fixed on Dover. “You know the protocol for contact with outside sources. You check to see if they are on a no-go list before you send an e-mail, place a call, or have a drink with them.”

“Right, but I never thought a guy who saved a city would be
on
that list!”

“Saved by vigilante, unilateral action, the way he does everything,” the commander replied, rapping a knuckle on her tablet. “Jack Hatfield is an inflammatory, anti-authority voice whose help we
do not
solicit and whose favor we
do not
nurture.”

“Ma'am, if you'd heard the call, you'd know I said some of those same things to Mr. Hatfield—”

“We did not listen to what you had to say, nor is the tone of your contact the issue.”

“I understand, but I'm only trying to explain the
reason
for my call—and that reason is important—”

“We're finished here, Ms. Griffith. You will be contacted within a week as to the final disposition of this matter.”

“Commander,
please
let me finish. I'm worried that Hawke technology may have taken out our chopper
and
an FBI vehicle.”

Commander Morgan regarded the young woman flatly. “Do you have evidence to support your claim?”

“Well, no. That's what I've been trying to explain. Our files are bare. I contacted Hatfield to see if
he
had specific information about Squarebeam technology interfering with electronic systems.”

“Did he?”

“He did not,” Dover admitted. “He was going to check with FBI contacts.”

“Did he do so?”

“Yes.”

“What did they tell him?”

“Nothing,” Dover said—though she knew she was doomed. “They—they said they were going to look into it.”

“You're aware that we have FBI contacts,” Commander Morgan said. “Pretty good ones, in fact. Director Steve Russell. You've heard of him?”

“I have.”

“You grasped, to some degree, that Mr. Hawke is a person of considerable influence in both governmental and military circles. One who might not appreciate being investigated.”

“I did.”

“You knew something of Mr. Hatfield's reputation as a loose cannon who has a vendetta against people like Richard Hawke and Lawrence Soren.”

“Ma'am, I wouldn't put them quite in the same category—”

“And that Mr. Hatfield has been banned from travel in Great Britain, one of our closest allied nations, whose Royal Navy Service Police provide us with a substantial flow of useful data.”

“Yes.”

“Yet in light of all that, it did not occur to you that contacting Hatfield might be reckless and irresponsible, given the fact that your search is not only largely outside your job description but involves a man who has security clearance far in excess of your own.”

“I was focused on trying to understand a problem that killed thirty-eight SEALs,” Dover said, exasperation in her voice. “Before it could kill again.”

“A
potential
problem,” the commander said. “A hypothetical link. One that I suspect even you would not have classified as Red Level Urgent.”

“No,” Dover said. “Not yet.”

“‘Not yet,'” the commander said. “We are in the business of connecting dots, not drawing free form. And we have people on the ground in Afghanistan researching the problem. We have top analysts in Washington studying all possibilities. You have created a needless manpower distraction by raising a red flag. The door is behind you.”

Dover stood there. She had that same paralysis she had experienced at the World Trade Center. Something wrong, destructive, and completely unexpected had shaken her world and her confidence. She didn't know where to turn or how to get it back.

A hot, impatient look from the officer got Dover moving. Her body turned and her legs moved but her brain was still looking down at the woman's hard expression, turning the words over and sideways. She was able to comprehend the logic. Don't jump to conclusions. But as they had learned in events ranging from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, sometimes the ladder is missing rungs. If you don't leap, you stand still.

Because she was being sent home pending a departmental review, Dover did not have to suffer the indignity of being escorted from the complex by armed MPs. She was allowed to get her bag from her desk—under the cross-armed, unsympathetic gaze of her supervisor, Lieutenant Commander Ward—and nothing more. None of her coworkers in adjoining cubicles looked up as she passed.

I guess they connected the dots,
Dover thought bitterly.

She walked to her car, got in, and sat there. She was too angry to punch the wheel. She might damage it. And crying wasn't her style. Watching fellow human beings jump from windows of the World Trade Center was something she'd wept over when it hit her as she called home that dark day. This was simply enraging.

The ONI would still be monitoring her personal calls—which, it occurred to her, was probably the main reason she had not been fired, so they would still have a legal claim to her privacy. So she could not call Jack Hatfield from her cell phone or send him an e-mail. But that wasn't going to stop her.

The last time Dover had a lot of downtime, between customers wanting to know where to find a book at the Strand, she had written a play. This time, she intended to do something more ambitious.

She was going to see if her suspicions about Hawke were right.

San Francisco, California

For Maggie Yu, the basement of the grocery store was more than just a storage area. It was a temple in which she revealed her soul and connected with those that stretched back nearly 1,500 years.

The cellar was just four cinderblocks, a cement floor, and two central, rusted iron support pillars that reinforced the beamed ceiling against earthquakes. The only construction Maggie's father had added was a small oak closet in which they kept the cleaning supplies. Lit by two bulbs hanging at either end and slightly longer and wider than a trolley car, the basement was filled with ever-changing columns of wooden crates and cardboard boxes, all of them piled and arranged haphazardly to create a maze-like space. Those aisles were barely wide enough to walk through, which is why Maggie liked them. In the back of the basement was a Diebold safe Johnny had purchased at auction when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake forced the condemnation of a warehouse in Santa Cruz. Something had told him to buy the knee-high iron box: researching the serial number, he discovered that it had originally belonged to a failed Chinese bank in the 1880s.

Maggie came down here every day in the afternoon, took off her shoes and socks, changed into the traditional white
gi
that hung on a hook beside the closet, donned her well-worn black belt, and spent a half hour practicing her kung-fu forms. Barefoot, she did not stop if she stepped on an apple stem or crate splinter or nub of concrete. In combat, one could not afford to be distracted by the unexpected. She would simply shift her weight slightly to minimize the discomfort. It was a philosophy that applied to life as well as to combat.