Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,111

then slid into the passenger seat as she leaned forward and held out a set of ignition keys.

“Looking for these?”

54

The White House, Washington, DC

USA

FRED KLEIN SLIPPED THROUGH the door to the White House’s private residence and saw the president in his usual position on the sofa. He was about to greet Castilla by his first name but then spotted the top of a man’s head protruding over the back of a broad leather chair.

Castilla had personally called him about an emergency—not a word the almost preternaturally calm man often used. Klein had assumed that it was a Covert-One matter, but those meetings were always one-on-one affairs explained away as two old friends getting together to talk about old times.

“Mr. President,” he said respectfully, closing the door behind him.

Castilla didn’t rise, but the man in the chair did. When he turned, it took all of Klein’s discipline to keep his expression impassive. Major James Whitfield.

“I’m not sure if you two have ever actually met,” Castilla said. “But I assume that introductions aren’t necessary.”

Neither man spoke as Klein walked to his usual chair, mind working through every possible explanation for the man’s presence.

“Jim here called me because he thought it was time for us to put our cards on the table,” Castilla said.

“I thought he already did that at Randi Russell’s cabin,” Klein countered.

Whitfield mulled his response for a few seconds. “And now three good men are dead.”

“But not a certain army doctor and CIA operative.”

The anger and suspicion on Castilla’s face wasn’t anything new—he was the leader of the free world. What had changed was that Klein couldn’t be sure it wasn’t aimed at him.

“Enough,” the president said. “Major, you told me you wanted to have a frank discussion. Well, let’s do it. You have the floor.”

“Thank you, sir.” Again, he hesitated, but his resolve was clear when he locked eyes with Klein. “As I think you’ve become aware, I run an organization that protects the interests of the military and ensures the country is as well defended as it can be. We operate on similar unstable legal ground as your group—which is why I’m willing to admit any of this.”

“Mutually assured destruction,” Klein said.

“I hope not, Fred—we’re on the same side. But I don’t have to tell you that it’s a difficult business. In going through the background of your Jon Smith, I can see that you’ve been forced to make tough decisions. And like me, you’ve probably made a few mistakes along the way.”

Over the last few days, Klein had gathered a substantial dossier on the retired soldier, piecing together a probable history of his organization and making connections between him and the Pentagon officials supporting him. But it seemed that Whitfield had been similarly occupied and equally successful. The questions were, what did he want and how could they get out of this particular standoff without tearing the country apart?

“All right,” the president said. “I think we all understand the position we’re in. Now, what do you know about Merges in Sarabat?”

Klein was relieved that Castilla hadn’t mentioned North Korea or Morocco. Apparently, he wasn’t prepared to lay their entire hand on the table. Would Whitfield hedge similarly?

“It was a military field test done by Dresner prior to releasing the unit. I don’t know the exact details because I’m not a scientist and this is just one of hundreds of experiments and tests that we helped fund during development.”

“So you’ve known about this technology for a long time,” Castilla said. “Much longer than we have.”

Whitfield nodded. “I became aware of it almost twenty years ago when it was a skunkworks project in one of Dresner’s subsidiaries. The research looked promising and the military applications were obvious.”

“Obvious enough for you to support it through black funding from the Pentagon.”

“It wasn’t a project that was far enough along to get the government funding it needed. There was less than a fifty-fifty chance that Dresner could pull it off. And he wouldn’t accept public funding from the military anyway. In the end, I persuaded him that it was the only way he was going to get his dream financed and that we’d keep it completely out of the public eye.”

“And in return, he would create a military version and give us exclusive rights to it,” Castilla said.

“That’s exactly right, sir.”

“At a high cost, though. People died in Afghanistan. Women and children.”

Whitfield gave a jerky nod. “Two Afghan villages were unfortunately wiped out. But neither my organization nor any branch of the