Secrets of State by Palmer Matthew

Author:Palmer, Matthew [Palmer, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-04-16T07:00:00+00:00

WASHINGTON, D.C.

APRIL 13

Taking classified information home was a cardinal sin in the intelligence world, right up there with cohabitating with a North Korean. For the thousandth time, doubts about what he was doing crept to the surface. Sam brushed them aside. He was faced with a series of open questions, and he had to hope that the answers were in the bag.

He set the burn bag down on top of the coffee table in his living room. He had smuggled it out of Argus in his gym bag. And while there was no reason to believe that anyone other than Shoe and Sara knew what he had done, he did not want to leave the bag in his home for longer than was absolutely necessary.

Sam piled kindling and a few split logs in the fireplace and lit a small block of fire starter. Within a few minutes, the logs had caught and the kindling was crackling. He dumped the contents of the bag onto the coffee table and shaped the pile into a semblance of order. The paper on the top was marked CONFIDENTIAL. It was an assessment from the National Intelligence Office about the ways in which climate change would increase the risk of conflict in Central Asia over the next decade. It was perfectly ordinary. Sam tossed it in the fire.

One by one, he read through the thick stack of papers. Most were uninteresting. A few were from special access programs that Sam did not know existed. These he read carefully. They were far from uninteresting. One in particular that identified possible candidates in Yemen and Somalia for targeted assassination was fascinating, if appalling. When other governments did this sort of thing, it was extrajudicial killing. When the United States did it, on the other hand, it was policy. None of the documents from the burn bag offered any insights into Panoptes, the Stoics, or Andy Krittenbrink’s death. Murder, Sam reminded himself.

After two hours of reading, near the bottom of the pile, he found something different.

Unlike the other papers in the burn bag, this one had no classification markers on it. In fact, it had no markings of any kind. It was just a block of text. A single page. The draft of a speech or at least the fragment of a speech. The first sentence was enough to grab Sam’s attention.

“My fellow Americans,” it began.

There was only one person who would deliver a speech that began with those words. This was intended for Emily Lord. Someone had been working on the speech with a red pen, striking out words and phrases, and scribbling notes in the margin. It was a work in progress.

Sam read quickly through the draft with a growing sense of disbelief. The outline of what the Stoics were planning was becoming clearer, and it both angered and terrified him. It was monstrous. And it made no sense. Why would they do this? Sam’s mind whirled in confusion as he read through to the end. How could he stop it?

He poured himself a drink.

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