Conspiracy

by Stephen Coonts

  “This is a replay,” said Rockman. “It aired live about ten minutes ago.”

  “Why did the Secret Service tell McSweeney about the Vietnamese connection?” asked Telach.

  “I don’t know,” said Rubens, turning to go back to his office and find out.

  106

  “HOW THE HELL did that get into the media?” roared Gideon McSweeney as he walked down the hallway after the press conference. Aides scattered; two hotel workers froze, sure that he was going to punch them in his fury. “And why the hell didn’t they tell me! Jesus H. Christ.”

  “Relax, Senator,” said Jimmy Fingers. “I told you. It’s not going to hurt you.”

  “The hell, says you. ‘Elect this man and start a war with Vietnam!’ There’s a slogan for you.”

  “You’re overthinking it,” said Jimmy Fingers. “People are going to admire you. For one thing, it reminds them you were a war hero—”

  “Don’t give me that war-hero crap, Fingers.” McSweeney pointed his finger at his aide, waving it as if it were a stick. “You know how something like that can backfire. And I was not a hero. Heroes died. Those guys were heroes.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself, Gideon. Relax. This will blow over.”

  McSweeney grabbed Jimmy Fingers by the arm. “Don’t tell me to relax.”

  The look in Jimmy Fingers’ eyes was as sharp as a slap in the face. McSweeney let go of him, then exhaled slowly.

  “I’m sorry, Jim. You’re right. I’m overreacting. I’m not sure why.”

  “Pressure of the campaign. You’ll get over it.”

  “Thanks.” McSweeney tapped his aide and began walking again. “You’ve been working out?”

  “Not really.”

  “Has Frey called you back?”

  “I haven’t spoken to anyone except his aide. He wouldn’t confirm or deny.”

  “You get me Frey. Make sure it’s him. I want to give him a piece of my mind.”

  “I put the call in as soon as I heard the first question.”

  FREY DIDN’T CALL back for another half hour. By then, McSweeney had sat down for dinner with a group of county party leaders. Jimmy Fingers sent someone to get the senator and in the meantime spoke to Frey himself.

  “Let me give you a heads-up here,” he told the head of the Secret Service. “The senator is really, really hot about the leak.”

  “I’m not too happy about it myself.”

  “I calmed him down. I told him it wouldn’t have come from you. I am right, ain’t I?”

  “Of course I didn’t leak it. Did you?”

  “Me?”

  “My aide Paul Quantril says you were asking about rumors.”

  “Why would I leak it?”

  “Where did you hear the rumors?” Frey’s voice still had enough of an edge to it to tell Jimmy Fingers that he thought it had come from him.

  “A reporter. I don’t know what his source was, but I can guess it was the White House.”

  “The White House?”

  “There are people there trying to make the Vietnamese look bad,” said Jimmy Fingers. “I assume this was part of their agenda. They don’t like Senator McSweeney, either, but I don’t think that entered into their calculations.”

  Jimmy Fingers looked up and saw Senator McSweeney striding across the suite room. The aide he’d sent to fetch McSweeney was nowhere in sight, clearly having been left in the dust.

  “Brace yourself,” Jimmy Fingers told Frey before handing over the phone.

  107

  “THE LEAK DID not come from us,” Frey told Rubens. “Less than a dozen people are even aware of that theory.”

  “Where do you think it came from?”

  “I’m not sure. James Fahey, McSweeney’s ferret-faced right-hand man, thinks someone in the White House leaked it, trying to make points against Vietnam. Personally, I think he said that to keep suspicion off himself. He called my office saying he’d heard rumors a few hours before this came out. They call Fahey Jimmy Fingers because he’s got his fingers in everything,” added Frey. “He’s always playing some angle.”

  “I would not necessarily rule Mr. Fahey’s theory out,” said Rubens.

  “Who?”

  “Without evidence, I would hesitate to accuse anyone,” said Rubens, though he had an obvious candidate: Bing. “There are some agendas there that this would play into.”

  “If I find the person, I’ll break them in two.” Most people grew calmer as they talked; Frey seemed to do the opposite. “If they leaked this, what else did they leak? And what will they leak tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” said Rubens.

  After they exchanged some calmer details of the investigation, Rubens hung up and walked to the center of his office. His back was knotted in a dozen places, and he could feel a headache coming on. His yoga teacher had suggested a routine to loosen his spine and help him relax.

  Obviously, the leak had come from Bing, thought Rubens as he slipped off his shoes. Bing was the only person who had anything to gain from it. She’d do it cleverly, of course—an aide would have lunch with a reporter, drop a strategic comment, and that would be that. Plausible denial intact.

  Rubens was just beginning a tiger pose when his phone rang. He got up slowly, and saw that it was Bing.

  “Senator McSweeney was just asked at a press conference about the possibility that the Vietnamese government wants to kill him,” she told Rubens when he picked up.

  “Yes, I saw a tape of the press conference,” said Rubens. “I have been wondering who alerted the media.”

  “Was it you?”

  Rubens’ back muscles immediately spasmed.

  “I can’t even see the logic of asking me that question,” said Rubens, his tone nearly as stiff as his back. “Unless you’re trying to turn suspicion away from yourself.”

  Bing was silent.

  “Is there anything else?” said Rubens finally.

  “I’m still waiting for the Vietnam report.”

  “There is nothing to report. As I told you the other day, there is no connection between the assassination attempt and the Vietnam government.”

  “That’s all you have?” Bing asked. “Nothing more.”

  She hung up. Less than thirty seconds later, Rubens got a call from the White House.

  “The President wants to see you,” said Ted Cohen, the chief of staff. “And he wants to see you now.”

  “Yes,” said Rubens. “I suspected he might.”

  108

  THE NEWS OF the attack on the station where he had ordered the woman held reassured Cam Tre Luc in an odd way. It confirmed that the man who had surprised him in the bordello was an American spy. This restored some of Cam Tre Luc’s dignity; it would have been unbearable if the man had been simply a businessman or private citizen, as the official entry records and his sources at the hotel suggested.

  Not that he was going to let Mr. Dean get away with it.

  On the contrary.

  Cam Tre Luc spent several hours checking personally with the officials who oversaw the immigration checks at all of the country’s airports, not just Saigon. He called the chief of the local police and gave him a full description of the man, adding that his apprehension would be rewarded in meaningful ways. Finally, exhausted, Cam Tre Luc went to bed.

  His eyes began to close even before his head slipped back on the pillow.

  Cam Tre Luc realized that he was becoming an old man. This was a good thing in Vietnam; people respected a man with silver hair, appreciating his wisdom and making allowances for his failings. How much better would that aura seem, he mused, when he apprehended an American spy ring?

  Very possibly he could move up to a national position. He saw himself in Hanoi—then his vision dimmed completely as he fell asleep.

  The next thing Cam Tre Luc knew, a hand was pressed over his mouth and he was being hauled upright in the bed.

  Light shined in his eyes.

  Charles Dean stood before him. Cam Tre
Luc tried to yell for his bodyguards, but the hand clamped over his mouth would emit no noise.

  “Your bodyguards are tied up,” said Dean. He repeated what he had said in roughly accented Vietnamese. “I want to talk to you.”

  Cam Tre Luc shook his head.

  “All you have to do is listen,” said Dean. He pointed at whoever was holding Cam Tre Luc, and the hand slipped from his mouth.

  Cam Tre Luc yelled for his men.

  “They’re not going to come,” Dean said in English. “I told you. They’re tied up.”

  “I understand your English better than your Vietnamese,” Cam Tre Luc told Dean as he started to repeat himself in Vietnamese. “Your accent is horrible.”

  “Why did you arrest Qui Lai Chu?” asked Dean.

  “She is an enemy of the people.”

  “She’s a translator. She has nothing to do with me.”

  “You are a spy.”

  “I came to your country to solve a murder. You helped me.”

  “I helped you?”

  “You did,” said Dean. “And I’m grateful.”

  Cam Tre Luc asked the American what he wanted.

  Instead of answering, Dean told him that he wanted a guarantee that Qui Lai Chu would not be harmed. Cam Tre Luc made a face.

  “Do you have a fax machine?” Dean asked.

  “Fax?”

  “A facsimile. It makes an image on paper and transmits over a telephone line.”

  “I know what a fax is,” said Cam Tre Luc.

  “Do you have one?”

  “In my office downstairs.”

  “Let’s go.”

  DEAN WAITED AS the machine beeped and began to whir. The machine was at least twenty years old and used thermal imaging paper instead of inkjets or a laser. But the image that came through was clear and legible. Dean took the first sheet as the cutter slid across and deposited it on the tray.

  “This is a CIA pay list, from 1966,” said Dean. “If you read English as well as you speak it, you can figure out the rest.”

  Cam Tre Luc’s face turned pale as he looked at the paper.

  “If I find out that Qui Lai Chu is hurt, the entire file will be sent to Hanoi,” said Dean. “I don’t think that will do much for your career.”

  Dean nodded to Karr, who let Cam Tre Luc go.

  “Maybe you ought to call off the dogs at the airport,” Dean added, grabbing the other two pages as they came through the fax machine. “I’d hate to think how they might interpret these pages if I have to hand them over at the airport.”

  109

  “I DON’T CARE who you are,” said the librarian. “I’m not going to allow you to take the hard drive.”

  “What’s your fax number?” Lia said.

  “Our fax?”

  “I’ll have a subpoena faxed right to you.”

  The librarian frowned, then took another tack.

  “If I let you have the hard drive, which I’m not saying I’m going to do, that means my patrons are out a computer,” she told Lia. “What am I going to tell them?”

  “What if I got you a new hard drive?” said Lia.

  “And you set it up? The network administrator spent two whole days getting one of our machines to work the last time we had a crash.”

  “I guarantee we can do it faster,” said Lia.

  The nearby fax machine rang and then began to print. The librarian went over to the machine.

  “How did you do that?” asked the librarian. “I thought you didn’t know our number.”

  Lia shrugged. “I have friends in high places.”

  “Let me call the town attorney and make sure this is legal.”

  “Please do,” said Lia.

  TWO HOURS LATER, Lia cradled her sat phone to her ear, pretending to use it as Robert Gallo talked her through the installation process. Gallo had already made a copy of the working data on the original drive; once Lia was ready, he downloaded a compressed version to the drive. As she was waiting for the files to reconstitute themselves, Lia handed off the original drive to a state trooper who had promised to take it to the airport, where a courier would pick it up and fly it to Crypto City.

  “Done,” Lia told the Art Room as the library’s card catalog appeared on the screen. She hung up the phone and got up from the computer.

  “You better go tell Chief Ball that you took the drive,” suggested Telach. “He’s bound to find out.”

  “Should I ask him why Amanda ran the credit check?”

  “Hold that back. Maybe there’s something on the drive that will make it obvious.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Are you talking to me?” asked the librarian, who had come over without Lia noticing her.

  “Just to myself,” said Lia.

  “Sounded like some conversation.”

  “You should hear when I disagree.”

  “HE DIDN’T SAY when he would be back. Gone a few days. That was the message he left.”

  “And he didn’t say where he was going?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  Lia stared at the Pine Plains police dispatcher, trying to figure out if the blank look on her face was real or phony. It was hard to tell.

  The phone rang before Lia decided. The Pine Plains police dispatcher pulled her thick-framed eyeglasses up off the bridge of her nose, then turned and answered the phone, preening her frosted curls as she picked up the receiver. Lia felt as if she’d been dropped into the middle of a Mayberry RFD rerun on Nick at Nite.

  “Pine Plains PD. Dispatch speaking… . No, I’m afraid he’s not… . Yes, Marge, I recognized your voice. I’m sure we could get one of the part-timers over to direct traffic when you have your bake sale. When is it?”

  “Lia, can you talk?” asked Telach.

  “Excuse me a second,” Lia said to the dispatcher. She took out her sat phone and walked out into the hallway. “Marie?”

  “The state police found Amanda Rauci’s car at the Rhinecliff train station, about a half hour from where you are,” said Telach. “They just called the Secret Service, and the liaison passed the information over to us. What’s up with Ball?”

  “Doesn’t seem to be in.”

  The dispatcher was just hanging up when Lia returned. “This is a number where the chief can reach me,” said Lia, writing it on a pad. Anyone calling the number would be forwarded to her sat phone. “Can you give me directions to the train station?”

  “Which one?”

  “How many are there?”

  “Well, if you’re going to New York, there’s Millerton and Poughkeepsie.”

  “Actually, I want the Rhinecliff station,” said Lia. “Where do those trains go?”

  “Oh, that’s an Amtrak station. That goes north. You can go south to New York from there, too, I guess, but it’s more expensive, and not as close as Millerton.”

  THE RHINECLIFF TRAIN station was a small, quaint little stop within a stone’s throw of the Hudson River. It had a tiny parking lot at the side, tucked around a curve in the road. Amanda Rauci’s car was parked in a spot close to the walk that led to the station entrance.

  A tow truck was hooking up the car’s bumper when Lia arrived. A small knot of troopers stood near the entrance, talking baseball. Trent Madden, the Secret Service agent who was following up on the Forester case, was with them.

  “What’s the story?” Lia asked.

  “Yanks beat Boston, nineteen to three,” said one of the troopers.

  “Real funny.”

  “Rauci must’ve taken the train this morning,” said Madden. “Engine’s cold. Train goes north to Albany and Canada, or west through Buffalo, and south to New York City. We’re checking all the stations.”

  “She got a really good spot,” said Lia, looking at the rest of the lot. There were places for only twenty cars in the gravel lot; the overflow filled the nearby street and a church parking lot across the way. “Must’ve been here before everyone else.”

  110

  TRUE TO HER word, Qui
had remained at the small club where Dean had left her. She sat alone at a table toward the back, smoking a cigarette. The dim light softened the effects of age on her face; she looked twenty years younger. If rock and roll rather than Asian pop were blaring in the background, Dean might even have been convinced it was 1972 again.

  “You’re back,” said Qui as he sat down.

  “The business is all taken care of.”

  A waitress came over. Qui pointed at her empty glass. “For my friend, a Scotch,” she added in Vietnamese.

  “I don’t want a drink,” said Dean.

  Qui patted his hand, and he acquiesced, though whether out of politeness or some sense that she needed to share something with him, he couldn’t say.

  “What did you do?” she asked in English when the server had gone.

  “I threatened to reveal that Cam Tre Luc was on the CIA payroll during the war.”

  “Was he?”

  “He was.”

  “I guess it’s not surprising,” she said. “People pretend to be pure, but they’re not.”

  “You know Cam Tre Luc?”

  “No. But his kind is very familiar. The leaders of the country. They claim purity.” She smiled wistfully. “But so do we all, don’t we?”

  The waitress came with their drinks. Qui took a sip of hers; Dean did not.

  “We cannot go against our nature,” said Qui. “You couldn’t. I should have realized when he told me that you called that you would come to rescue me.”

  “You’re not implying that I’m pure, are you?” asked Dean.

  “Not pure, Mr. Dean. Just that it is in your nature to try to fix things. You think it is a good trait, but it can cause much harm as well. Good and evil, at the same time. Thank you for trying to fix things with Cam Tre Luc.”

  Dean took the faxed pages from his pocket and slid them across the table to her. “If he bothers you, show him a copy of this.”

  Qui left the papers untouched on the table. Neither she nor Dean said anything for a full minute. Finally Dean rose to go.

  “Thank you, Charlie Dean. I see what my future might have been. Now, I no longer have to mourn for it.”

  111

  “WHAT THE HELL is going on, Billy?” demanded President Marcke as Rubens entered the Oval Office. “Why are the details of a top-secret mission being broadcast on national television?”