Dark Zone by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page A

nothing more. They are very sensitive, and at the moment they have what we want. Where’s the Russian plane?”
    “On its way,” said Rockman. “We may have to bribe the people at the terminal again.”
    “Do it.” Rubens looked at Telach. “Whatever it takes, Marie.”
    “Thank you,” said Telach.
    Rubens wanted to stay, but the meeting was far too important.
    Surely his boss could handle it. Rubens’ place was here.
    “We have the terminal manager back,” said Rockman. “He says there was a mix-up in papers, but she is fine.”
    “Tell him there is another plane on the way. Imply very strongly that she must be on it. No—state that directly. And there will be no repercussions so long as she is. And alive.”
    “Go,” said Rockman to the translator. The runner looked at his screen—the words were being translated there by a special program—then held up his thumb.
    “I’m going to the White House,” Rubens told Telach. “Keep me informed.”

    Traveling to the White House with his boss, Vice Admiral Devlin Brown, meant a quick helicopter ride rather than the more tiresome car caravan down to D.C. It also meant a few minutes of uninterrupted conversation, a rare occurrence in a typical workday.
    “I saw the General this morning,” said Rubens as the helicopter, a specially equipped civilian version of the Sikorsky Blackhawk, lifted off.
    “How is he?” asked Brown.
    “Very bad,” said Rubens.
    “A shame. A friend of mine’s mother had Alzheimer’s. She was very violent toward the end.”
    “He’s not that, thank God. Not in his nature, I think.”
    “A feisty old bird like him, not violent?” There had been several directors between Brown and Rosenberg, but many tales about him still circulated.
    “I don’t know if he was so much feisty as determined,” said Rubens. “If you crossed him, I would imagine then it might seem like uncomfortable.”
    “I hope you stick up for me as well when I’m packed on the top floor of a nursing home.”
    “His daughter has gone ahead with her threat,” said Rubens. “I expect the suit will be filed any day. I’m to talk to the attorney about it tomorrow.”
    “She really is a piece of work, isn’t she? Very greedy. How much is his cousin worth?”
    “Fifteen million, in that neighborhood.” The General stood to inherit everything his slightly older cousin owned when he died. The cousin was also in a nursing home and suffering from Alzheimer’s; physically, he was in somewhat worse shape, and not given very long to live.
    “If we make it clear that she can have access to the money, will she drop the suit?”
    From Brown’s point of view—and the NSA’s—the proceeding wasn’t about the General at all. The General had a vast store of personal papers and other effects, presumably containing a great deal of information about the agency. It was rumored that he had been working on a memoir before he got sick. Rubens’ protests to the contrary, General Rosenberg was a feisty old bird, and it was very possible that he had recorded his thoughts on a wide range of agency projects. The agency had a series of confidentiality agreements and the resources to legally prevent anything he wrote or said from being published, and there was no question it would move to do so if necessary. However, discretion was always the better part of valor as far as the NSA was concerned, and heading off a potentially messy—and public—confrontation was infinitely better than arming the men in black with subpoenas and sending them to confiscate a moving van’s worth of uninventoried papers, notes, tapes, and computer disks.
    But in this matter, Rubens was not acting on the agency’s behalf.
    “I don’t know that there is a basis for compromise with her,” said Rubens.
    “She’s that much of a witch, eh?” asked the admiral.
    “Stubborn. Like her father,” he answered.
    “Is his care adequate? Perhaps we could arrange for him to be moved to the facility