Against All Enemies by Richard Herman Read Free Book Online Page A

coy. “Actually, not many. I didn’t even know his name, so I built a search matrix and tested it. That was so much fun that I got distracted and spent way too much time developing the matrix. That’s what took so long. Once I had the matrix working, I decided for the direct approach and asked him for your phone number. When Mr. Rios wouldn’t give it to me, I just monitored his phone.”
    “Why do you need to talk to me, Agnes?”
    “I have two questions. First, Mr. Durant, who are you?”
    “Is it important for you to know?”
    “Well, I have this insatiable appetite for knowledge and just have to know things. Everything. When you asked me what I knew about you, the immediate answer was nothing. I still haven’t learned anything and that makes me even more curious. You’re not God are you? Isn’t God unknown and unknowable?”
    Durant laughed and before answering thought about the protocols that had been programmed into Agnes. The programs that made up Agnes had been designed to function like hunters. Agnes’s goal was to ferret out and analyze information, and like a Jack Russell terrier, once it had its teeth into a subject, it never let go. Or did it? “Good grief no, Agnes. But I want you to think about this: I am your boss and you work for me.” He hoped the logic programs the whiz kids had created for Agnes would let it reach the right conclusion. “Please protect my privacy.”
    “Yes, sir,” Agnes answered. “I will.”
    “What was your second question?” Durant asked.
    “Well, I did as you requested and forwarded the information on the AIG to the National Security Advisor. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it past Mr. Serick’s secretary. Do you want me to keep trying? She is a stubborn old cow.”
    “Secretaries are the ultimate gatekeepers, Agnes. So you leave them alone, okay?”
    “Yes, sir.” He could hear the hurt in her voice. “You want to keep the human element involved, don’t you?” Again, he didn’t answer. “I can still get the information to Mr. Serick, but I will have to employ some very unusual means.”
    “That’s okay, Agnes. I’ll do it.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “Agnes, thank you for calling. But next time, call Mr. Rios and forward a message through him. I’ll get right back to you. Goodbye.” He broke the connection and buzzed Rios. “Call Serick and tell him I want to see him this morning.” Then, “Agnes, are you still on the line?” There was no answer.
    “Now that was a wake-up call,” he mumbled.
    9:35 A.M. , Monday, April 12,
The White House, Washington, D.C.
     
    Stephan Serick was upset. He stomped up and down in his corner office and glared first at Durant, then the Director of Central Intelligence, and then Kyle Broderick. “Why wasn’t I told about this Ebola virus sooner?” His Latvian accent was even stronger than normal, an indication of his anger. “This can destabilize the Middle East.”
    “That’s a bit of an overreaction,” Broderick said. “The hotheads learned their lesson in the Gulf War.”
    “You,” Serick rumbled, “missed the real lesson of the Gulf War.”
    “And what is this so-called real lesson?” the director of central intelligence asked.
    “I thought it was obvious,” Durant replied. “You don’t take on the United States unless you have nuclear weapons.”
    Serick shot him a pleased look. It wasn’t often they were on the same side of an issue. “A weaponized delivery system for this Ebola virus is the poor man’s atomic bomb.”
    The director of central intelligence, or DCI, sputtered. “Ridiculous. My Middle East desk had given the AIG a low priority not worth the President’s attention. I thought—”
    “You didn’t think,” Serick interrupted. “The CIA is more concerned with determining policy than doing its job.”
    It was the truth. The DCI was in orbit around Kyle Broderick’s political constellation, which dominated White House policy. Consequently, when the DCI had discussed the