Puzzle by Nora Phoenix
40
They’d been called to the White House, a first for Ryder, who felt like he was dreaming as he followed the Secret Service agent down the hallway of the West Wing, Branson on his heels. The place was humming with activity, and they passed multiple staffers hurrying to whatever it was they were on their way to. A meeting, most likely. Most of the jobs here consisted of endless meetings, Ryder had been told.
“Here we are.” The agent gestured to her left. “The Roosevelt Room.”
Already? Damn. Ryder had hoped they’d be able to walk around a bit more. Not that he would express anything of the kind. “Thank you,” he said instead because manners and all.
They weren’t the first to arrive. Coulson was talking to Calix in hushed tones, and Seth was already seated at the table, as were all the bigwigs from their previous emergency meeting. Only this time, the president would join them. Ryder hadn’t been told why the meeting had been convened, but he had a suspicion, considering what he’d uncovered the day before.
“Want to sit here?” Branson pointed at two chairs in the back, farthest away from where the president would presumably be sitting. Branson knew him well.
“Yes, please.”
The room quickly filled, and then the president walked in, and everyone hushed. Amazing how one man—or maybe one position—could have that effect.
“Let’s get started,” the president said, checking his watch as he sat down at the head of the table. “Not to be rude, but technically, I have two more meetings I’m supposed to attend right now.”
“Trust me, Mr. President, you’ll want to be here for this one,” Coulson said. Everyone hushed. “But first, I'd like to introduce you to Branson Grove and Ryder Treese. Branson has been the key analyst for Hamza Bashir for the last five years, and Ryder joined the team recently as a forensic accountant. Both have been instrumental in the progress we’ve made.”
Ryder’s cheeks were on fire with all eyes on him, but the president sent him a friendly smile. “Thank you both for your service to your country and the sacrifices you and your families have made. This nation owes you much.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Branson said. “It’s our honor, sir.”
Thank fuck Branson knew what to say because Ryder had been tongue-tied there for a minute. Under the table, Branson bumped his knee as if to say he knew. Such a sweet gesture and Ryder relaxed.
“Mr. President and everyone else, we’ve reached a crucial point in the investigation,” Coulson announced. “We are confident we have sufficient evidence to indict the key suspects for their roles in the Pride Bombing, the assassination of President Markinson, and the murders of Annabeth Markinson and Sarah Bradbury Shafer.”
A wave of gasps traveled through the room, and Ryder’s heart skipped a beat. This was it. This was the moment they had all waited for, that they had worked so hard for. This was the culmination of years of effort to find the culprits…and now they had them.
“Wesley Quirk was released on bail last week, and while he’s on suspension from the Baltimore PD pending trial, he’s still welcome at the shooting club. Our undercover agent there overheard a conversation between Quirk and Steve Duron yesterday. In it, Quirk and Duron mentioned orders from George Washington to take care of the weak links. George Washington is the code name Kingmakers used on the PPN forum, most likely Basil King. We suspect that the weak links they referred to are Naomi Beckingham and her boyfriend, Ralph Durrick.”
“I assume taking care of is a euphemism for killing them?” the president asked.
“That’s a reasonable assumption, Mr. President. It’s a clear sign they’re feeling the heat, and they’re getting scared, trying to get rid of potential witnesses against them. For obvious reasons, we want to avoid that. But there’s more. Ryder, can you summarize what you discovered yesterday?”
He had to present it himself? In front of the president? Holy shit, couldn’t Coulson have given him a heads-up? Under the table, Branson’s hand found his thigh, squeezing as if to say he believed in him. At least, that was what Ryder told himself. He could do this.
“Yes. Of course.” He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled, forcing himself to focus on the facts, the numbers. “The first financial transaction between Kingmakers and the Alhuriya Group, the company El Sewedy’s father owns, was in 2013. They purchased arms and munition. Ever since there have been regular transactions for various military supplies. That means there’s a well-established connection between Kingmakers and El Sewedy senior.”
He did a quick check around the room to make sure everyone was still with him, relaxing when no one seems confused.
“Those transactions provided me with various bank accounts associated with Kingmakers and with father and son El Sewedy. On one of these, we hit the jackpot. Corey and I were able to trace the transactions back to a US bank account Kingmakers owned, and when we subpoenaed the transactions from that account, we found more accounts associated with Kingmakers. Between November 2015 and November 2016, a total of fifteen million dollars was wired from Kingmakers to El Sewedy. Between June 2020 and September 2020, another five million was sent. These periods correspond with the time frame of the Pride Bombing and the assassination of President Markinson, respectively. We have irrefutable financial evidence Kingmakers paid El Sewedy large sums of money that can serve no other purpose than to pay for services rendered.”
“Jesus Christ.” Calix leaned back in his chair, his eyes bulging. “Fifteen million dollars. That’s the price they paid for the Pride Bombing. That’s how much the lives of 153 people were worth, including my Matthew…”
His voice broke at the end, and much to Ryder’s surprise, the president took Calix's hand in his and held it as they all waited until Calix had composed himself again.
“I know how you feel,” Seth said quietly. “I had the same sentiments when I heard.”
Calix took a deep breath. “I apologize for letting my emotions get the best of me.”
The president shook his head as he let go of Calix’s hand. “No, Cal. This is personal. We can be professional about this while still acknowledging the losses we've experienced.”
“You're right.” Calix took another deep breath. "Thank you. Mr. President."
“Thank you, Ryder. Fantastic work from you and Corey. There’s more,” Coulson said, and everyone focused on him. “With the information we found on that forum, we were able to trace everyone who was a part of that PPN group. As far as we can tell, none of them were involved in executing any of the plans, but they sure as hell encouraged them. And considering they knew about a presidential assassination ahead of time and didn’t do anything to stop it, we can prosecute them for that.”
“Coulson, can I ask something?” the president said. Coulson nodded. “The one aspect that’s still a tad fuzzy to me is the relationship between PPN and Kingmakers. Is Basil King truly a right extremist? If not, how did he end up with this group?”
“That’s an excellent question, Mr. President, and one that had us scratching our heads as well. As far as we can tell, Basil King isn’t right-wing. Yes, he’s a conservative, but not that extreme. He’s an opportunist, though, and we suspect he used his existing connection with Jon Brooks to court PPN. Or maybe even founded it, making everyone believe he supported that ideology.”
“But why?” Calix asked. “Why throw up that whole smoke screen?”
“So he could blame them when things went wrong. He needed foot soldiers, a scapegoat, in case the domestic connection was ever discovered. He never expected us to find him, but he’d counted on the possibility of Quirk being traced back to PPN. If we did, he’d throw them under the bus. In all likelihood, they don’t know about Kingmakers. To them, George Washington is someone in the DC area who has the clout to make things happen. The guys who work for Kingmakers know. Steve Duron, Laurence Paskewitch, they know. Quirk, we’re not certain of, but we’re leaning toward no. Time will tell.”
“So the bottom line is that it really was all about the money,” President Shafer said softly. “All of it. The Pride Bombing, the assassination, even Annabeth and my Sarah…just for money so they could make a profit in the future.”
“Yes.” Coulson sounded apologetic. “Yes, it was, Mr. President.”
“We knew this…” Shafer gestured with his hands. “We’ve known this for a while, but now that we have all the facts, it’s somehow still a shock.”
“It is,” Seth said. “Even when we know what humans are capable of, we’re still hurt and disappointed when our worst fears are confirmed.”
“We have two more facts we want to share with you all,” Coulson took over again. “The first is that we have a positive ID on Steve Duron from people who worked on the other floats in the same building in May and June 2015. They recognized him from his picture and identified him as Ryan Wallace, which matches the name Milan Bradbury was given for the man who spent a few weeks in the South Bronx. Steve Duron placed the two big bombs, no doubt about it. Their misdirection worked for a long time, but in the end, we still found the real culprits.”
“That’s great work, Coulson,” Calix said. “You and your team should be extremely proud.”
“It was a team effort,” Sheehan said, and even Ryder picked up on the underlying butt hurt. “I don’t think it’s fair to single out Coulson and his team when more people have worked on this…and he wasn’t the agent in charge of the investigation.”
“Considering you were all too happy to let Coulson be the public face of the investigation toward me and everyone else to potentially save your own hide should things go wrong, I think it’s only fair he now gets the praise as well,” Shafer said, his voice unusually sharp. “After all, this is the first time you and I meet, Special Agent Sheehan, whereas I’ve seen Coulson at least weekly for the last year.”
Sheehan’s cheeks grew red, and he cast his eyes down, probably embarrassed to death by the public reprimand. Understandable, but he had kind of asked for it by trying to take the credit. Judging by the deadly look the FBI director sent Sheehan, Ryder wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
Coulson cleared his throat. “Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate your kind words. Let me close off with the last bit of information, and this has been a shocking development. We have evidence that General John Doty, the former secretary of defense, not only knew about Kingmakers’ role in the Pride Bombing and the assassination but was also involved in the planning and execution of both. Moreover, he may have been considering a sort of coup, declaring himself president after they’d taken both President Markinson and you out, Mr. President.”
Deadly silence filled the room, everyone too stunned to even gasp. Ryder couldn’t wrap his head around it. A general who had plotted to assassinate the president and vice president? To make himself president?
“We suspect he’s been feeding Kingmakers information, Mr. President,” Seth said. “Classified intel, perhaps. That’s still something we’re looking into, but he may be the mole we suspected having.”
“Thank god we kept him out of the loop on the investigation, then,” Calix said. “At least he didn’t know how close we were to cracking the case.”
“If we hadn’t, I doubt we would’ve gotten this far without a much higher body count,” Coulson agreed. “But this is the case, Mr. President. We all agree we’re ready to make the arrests…but we don’t have eyes on El Sewedy at this moment. Branson?”
Branson sat up straight, letting go of Ryder’s thigh. Huh, had he held his hand there the whole time? Ryder hadn’t even noticed. “He’s fled the UAE, Mr. President, probably alerted we were on his trail, and we suspect he returned to Yemen. It will take us a while to find him again. My guess is he will go to ground.”
“Is there reason to suspect he’s planning anything else?” Director Heeder asked.
“No, sir. None at all. We assume he still has sleepers in the US, and Ryder has already found some payments that will help us track them, but nothing concrete.”
President Shafer leaned back in his chair, taking off his glasses and scratching his beard. Branson didn’t envy him the responsibility of making this call. “Suzy, you on board with this?”
The attorney general nodded. “Fully, Mr. President. I’m confident we’ll be able to get a conviction based on what we have now and even more with the extra information their arrests, warrants, and subpoenas will bring. We’ll employ all legal strategies and put the full weight of the Justice Department behind it.”
“Ella?” the president asked. “Where do you stand?”
“I say we arrest them, Mr. President. We’ll get El Sewedy later. Besides, I don’t know how much of a threat he still is. If he’s doing it for the money, who will hire him after we go public with this?”
Ryder agreed with her line of reasoning. Sure, El Sewedy might still be contacted by real terrorist groups, but even that didn’t seem likely. Crazy as it sounded, those groups would probably look down on El Sewedy and condemn him for the wrong motives. Who would want to be associated with someone like him, someone who had carried out attacks for money rather than out of a true belief, however wrong and distorted that belief might be?
“Calix?” the president checked in with his chief of staff.
“I agree. We have to prioritize catching domestic terrorists over foreign ones under these circumstances. Kingmakers and everyone in their network pose a much higher risk than El Sewedy, and we can’t afford to lose potential witnesses.”
The president nodded, putting his glasses back on, then looked around the room. “Does anyone disagree? If you do, or if you have any concerns that haven’t been addressed yet, please speak up. I need to know I’ve heard all sides and opinions.”
No one spoke, and when Branson did a quick check around the room, he didn’t spot any hesitation or even a hint of disagreement.
President Shafer leaned forward and placed his hands on the table. “Then that’s what we’ll do. Let’s get the bastards. Coulson and Suzy, make sure to have someone from both your departments brief Levar so he knows what and what not to share with the press. The poor guy is about to get trampled.”
