Conspiracy

by Stephen Coonts

  119

  “IT’S ONLY IN the last ten years that this has become practical. The exact methods we use weren’t even around then, I don’t think,” said the FBI specialist as she scraped the inside of Jason Cedar house’s mouth. “You’d be amazed at what the scientists can do.”

  “I am amazed,” said Ambassador Jackson. He guessed that the technician had been in middle school a decade before.

  “Mummm, too,” said Jason.

  “Hold on, sweetie,” said the FBI technician. “Almost done with you. Have to be very careful about contamination with these tests.”

  She slipped the probe—it looked like a Q-tip that retracted into a pen case—into a small plastic container, screwing it closed. She’d taken a dozen samples.

  “All done. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “Uhhh-uh,” said Jason.

  “What we’re going to do with this is a Short Tandem Repeats test. STR. It’s a kind of PCR protocol, where the DNA replicates itself. Of course, we may have to fall back on the mitochondrial test. We’ll do a whole series. Not likely to get an error—unless there was contamination.”

  “Yeah, but, uh, this is going to prove my uncle is the one that’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery, right?” said Cedar house. “Because my mom would want to be sure. She’s a little concerned since you called,” he added, turning to Jackson.

  “It should be able to confirm it,” said Jackson.

  “Every family has a certain amount of DNA that they share,” said the FBI expert. “And they inherit it. Now let’s say Robert Tolong was your father rather than your uncle. Then the odds that a match was a coincidence would be one in a quintillion, assuming we were using STR. In this case, the odds will be a little less, but they’re still way up there.”

  “Quintillion is one with eighteen zeroes,” said Jackson, who had heard the entire lecture on the way over.

  “It will take us roughly six hours to pull the results together,” added the technician. “The actual DNA cycling is three hours; that’s where the time is, because you need enough strands to do the actual test.”

  “Cool. Can I have dinner now?” asked Cedar house.

  120

  CHIEF BALL HAD a cover story all ready, but the clerk at the car rental counter didn’t even bother looking at the name as Amanda Rauci’s credit card cleared the scan. He was too busy selling the optional insurance.

  “I guess I’ll take it,” said Ball as soon as the man glanced at the card. “The insurance.”

  “Can’t be too careful,” said the clerk happily. He slapped the card through the reader and handed it back to Ball without checking the name.

  In the old days, the days when he was back from Vietnam, Ball would have immediately driven down to the worst ghetto in the city and sold the car for cash and, with luck, a new ID. He’d quickly acquire a whole set of phony identification—license, credit cards, Social Security number, anything and everything he needed.

  But he was too old for that, and not “hip” to the local scene. He didn’t know where the chop shops were, and certainly wouldn’t have known who to trust. He didn’t even know if you could make money doing that anymore.

  Looking tough when you were sixty wasn’t nearly as easy as when you were twenty. If he looked like anything now, it was probably a cop: an old, has-been cop.

  He’d fallen down a rat hole. Plunged down.

  He’d never felt like this, not even in Vietnam.

  He thought of Amanda Rauci, and his hands started to tremble.

  Just drive, he told himself. Just drive.

  121

  RUBENS WAITED UNTIL he had reached his office to call the President. Even so, it was only just 6:00 A.M. The switchboard operator gave him Mark Kimbel, the most junior aide to the chief of staff.

  “Mr. Rubens, what can we do for you?”

  “I have important information for the President,” said Rubens.

  “Important enough to wake him up?”

  “No,” said Rubens. “But he should call at his earliest convenience.”

  President Marcke called Rubens back an hour later.

  “What’s going on, Billy?”

  “The man who was identified as Sergeant Tolong and buried at Arlington National Cemetery is not Sergeant Tolong,” said Rubens.

  “Is it Ball?”

  “We’re working on that,” said Rubens. The FBI had been unable to obtain DNA samples to match relatives; tracking them down, obtaining and testing samples, and most of all doing it with the legal paperwork necessary to be used in court would take some time.

  “Assuming you’re right, linking this Chief Ball and Tolong won’t actually prove that McSweeney was involved in the theft of the money, will it?” asked Marcke.

  “No, sir. As I said, there may in fact be no link.”

  “Which would mean he would get away with it, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think the senator’s reaction would be if someone told him what you know now? In other words,” explained the President, “if you said that the attempt on his life may have had something to do with the theft of money in Vietnam, and that we think he’s being pursued by one of the men.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “As we saw with the Vietnam information, word will leak at some point,” explained the President. “Let’s see if it will give us some advantage. Don’t mention that we suspect he may have ended up with the loot, or is otherwise involved.”

  122

  THE CUSTOMS AGENT came up to Tommy Karr’s belt.

  “Could you and Mr. Dean come with me, Mr. Karr?” she asked.

  “Now how do you know I’m Tommy Karr?” said Karr, suppressing a laugh.

  “I was told to look for the biggest man on the plane.”

  “Got you there,” said Dean, shouldering his carry-on bag.

  The diminutive customs agent led them around the side of the row of customs stations, through a door, and into a hallway that was part of a secure area at Los Angeles International Airport. Another customs agent met them and asked to see their passports.

  “Gee, I don’t know if I have mine,” said Karr, before handing over his brown diplomatic passport.

  “Plane ride put you in a goofy mood?” asked Dean as they were led down the hall.

  “No—twenty-something hours of Abbott and Costello did. I have the ‘Who’s on First’ routine memorized. Want to hear it?”

  Dean declined.

  They were shown into a conference room used by the customs agents for briefings and updates. When the agents left, Dean asked the Art Room what was going on.

  “We think Tolong’s death was staged,” said Sandy Chafetz, who’d taken over as their runner while Rockman got some rest. She explained that DNA evidence had proven that the remains that were brought back weren’t Tolong’s.

  “Our working theory is that McSweeney, Gordon, and Ball were involved in taking the money during Vietnam,” said Chafetz. “And for some reason they had a falling-out. The FBI and the local police are reinvestigating Gordon’s death; it’s very possible he was pushed rather than jumped from that window.”

  “So you think Ball was the one who tried to kill McSweeney?”

  “We’re not sure,” said Chafetz. “It looks from his credit cards that he was there. But we can’t find him now to verify that. There may be another player—it’s possible someone killed him, or he’s just hiding out. Everyone’s looking for him—FBI, Secret Service, and us. Tommy, they want you to join the press corps covering McSweeney. Stay undercover and see if you spot Ball or pick up anything else suspicious. We’ve uploaded photos and other information for you, along with credentials.”

  “I always wanted to be a reporter,” said Karr.

  “What am I doing?” Dean asked.

  “Mr. Rubens wants to talk to you about your assignment himself.”

  123

  AMANDA RAUCI’S CREDIT card had been used the day before to rent a car in Buffa
lo, NewYork; the information was flagged and passed along to the Desk Three analysts as soon as it reached the credit card company from the processing firm, roughly eight hours after the transaction itself. The information led the analysts to request the tapes from video surveillance cameras at the two train stations that served Buffalo, Exchange Street and Depew. Neither station was very large, nor did many trains stop there. But Amanda Rauci had not been spotted.

  A man who might have been Chief Ball, however, had gotten off at Depew, a suburban stop within a few miles of the rental outlet and the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

  “Why would they be traveling together?” Lia asked Rockman when he briefed her after she got up.

  “No idea. There’s a slight possibility that they’re working together to solve this.”

  “I doubt it,” said Lia. “What about the rental place? Did they have a video?”

  “Don’t you think that was the first thing we checked?” said Rockman testily. “Clerk doesn’t remember her. Probably didn’t even look at the card. We’re checking to see if there are other video cameras in the area.”

  “Did the FBI forensic team find anything in her car? Like blood?”

  “Nothing. The car was vacuumed recently; that was about it. You can interpret that any way you want.”

  Lia thought back to Amanda Rauci’s condo. She hadn’t struck Lia as a neat freak. Then again, maybe Amanda had cleaned the car before leaving on a long trip. Some people were like that—they wanted to start fresh.

  Amanda checks out the police chief; then she leaves her car at a train station.

  Maybe she didn’t leave it there—maybe Ball left it there after he got rid of her.

  “You with me?” asked Rockman.

  “Yeah, I’m with you,” said Lia.

  “We’re going to send the clerk an e-mail with Amanda Rauci’s photo and see if he can remember her. You may have to go up there and talk to him. We’ll let you know later.”

  “Peachy.”

  “In the meantime, do you think you could get a sample of Chief Ball’s DNA?”

  “As soon as I see him I’ll ask him to spit into a cup.”

  “A few strands of hair would do it,” said Rockman. “Ask his wife.”

  “You think she keeps it in a locket?”

  “Hair in a comb. Listen, even a sweaty shirt will do.”

  “All right.” Lia dreaded going back to the house and talking to Mrs. Ball; the woman’s pain registered transparently on her face. Whatever the truth, this was going to end very badly for her. Lia, so stoic about pain when it came to herself or the sort of enemies she usually dealt with, suddenly found she had no stomach for inflicting it on a bystander.

  “Check in every hour,” said Rockman. “We’ll call you if there’s anything new.”

  “Fine,” said Lia. She pretended to turn off the sat phone, then signaled the waiter for another cup of coffee.

  124

  SOME GUYS WORE the fact that they had served in the Marines on their bodies—literally with tattoos and more figuratively in the way they spoke and thought and acted. They were lifers, and proud of it, and went out of their way to make sure everyone knew they were Marines.

  Capital M.

  Charlie Dean wasn’t one of them. He’d been an active Marine for a substantial portion of his life—but being a Marine wasn’t all of his life. If the service had helped define him, the key word was “helped.” Charles Dean was a good Marine, but he’d also been more than that. He’d been a successful—and unsuccessful—small businessman, a private investigator and bodyguard, a clandestine employee of the government, a hunter and outdoorsman. While there was a great deal of truth in the old adage that a Marine never became an “ex-Marine,” from his earliest days in the Corps Charlie Dean had known there was more to the world than his drill sergeant would have had him believe.

  And yet if there was one thing that Dean believed in deeply—believed in so firmly that it was rooted to his soul—it was the values that the Corps preached. Some of them had a way of sounding trite or even shallow when explained to someone else, but then, simple things often did. That didn’t make them any less important.

  So the idea that a Marine had stolen from the government and betrayed, maybe even killed, a fellow Marine hit Dean like a blow to the chest. As he thought about Senator McSweeney, Dean recalled the first time he’d been shot, an AK bullet going through the fleshy part of his calf. It had burned like all hell, and sent his body into shock, but the thing he remembered now, the bit of the experience that remained vividly with him, was the disbelief, the sheer wonderment at the wound—the realization that he wasn’t invincible, or charmed, or special, or above the action, or any of the other white lies a man might believe when he went into combat the first time.

  A Marine could betray his fellow Marines and his country. It didn’t seem possible.

  Dean was not naïve. He’d seen plenty of poor Marines and a few out-and-out cowards, not only in Vietnam but also afterward. He’d seen, and at times had to deal with, terrible officers. But this was magnitudes worse. It seemed a product of evil, rather than weakness.

  “You’re not to accuse him of any wrongdoing, or involvement,” Rubens told Dean, instructing him on how to deal with McSweeney. “Simply let him know about Tolong. Study his reaction, but nothing more.”

  Senator McSweeney was now the leading candidate for President in his party; it was very possible that he would beat Marcke in the next election.

  A traitor as President.

  Maybe the assassin felt the same way. Maybe that was why he wanted to kill McSweeney.

  “Mr. Dean, are you still with me?” Rubens asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Charlie, can you do this? Can you talk to him?”

  “Absolutely.”

  It was the same word he’d said when he’d been given the mission to assassinate Phuc Dinh. It was the thing he’d always said, as a Marine.

  125

  “I NEED PICTURE ID for the plane ticket,” said the attendant. “Rules.”

  “Oh yeah, right.” Ball reached into his pocket for his wallet. He’d tried to think of a way around using his actual ID but just couldn’t come up with one. His only solution was to buy tickets to other destinations with the hope of throwing anyone looking for him off the trail.

  “Here you go,” said Ball, pushing his license forward on the counter.

  He hoped they weren’t looking for him yet. Or if they were, that the usual efficiencies of government bureaucracies would mean they wouldn’t find him until it was too late.

  126

  DEAN WONDERED WHETHER Senator McSweeney might recognize him from Vietnam somehow, and vice versa. But there were many captains and many, many more privates, and nothing registered in McSweeney’s face as he shook Dean’s hand and gestured for him to take a seat in the hotel room.

  Nothing clicked for Dean, either. He’d seen McSweeney so many times now in the briefings that it was impossible to visualize him as he was thirtysome years ago. And this was a good thing—insulation from his emotions.

  “I’m supposed to give you the update alone,” Dean told the senator. More than a dozen people were milling around the room.

  “Oh, that’s all right. These people know just about everything about me anyway, right down to the color of my underwear.”

  McSweeney turned to one of his aides and examined the clipboard in her hand. Dean waited until he had McSweeney’s attention again before answering him.

  “I’m afraid my orders were pretty specific.”

  The senator frowned. “This is a pretty busy day.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  McSweeney turned to another aide, who had questions about how to deal with the local press. Dean folded his arms and scanned the room. The Secret Service had blocked off the entire floor of the hotel as well as the one below it, and it was impossible for anyone who didn’t have a confirmed appointment to get up here. The curtains were drawn and the
furniture had been rearranged to make it almost impossible for a sniper to get a good shot from the only building in range.

  But that wouldn’t keep a truly devoted assassin from making an attempt on the senator’s life. The easiest thing to do, thought Dean morbidly, was to blow up the whole damn suite—fire a mortar or rocket round point-blank from across the way and everyone in the room would be fried, Dean included.

  “How long will this take?” McSweeney asked.

  “A few minutes,” said Dean.

  “Let’s go into the bedroom then,” said McSweeney, leading the way.

  Dean closed the door behind him.

  “The President sent you?” said McSweeney.

  “The President ordered the briefing,” said Dean.

  “Well, shoot.”

  “Do you remember Vietnam very well, Senator?”

  THE QUESTION CAUGHT McSweeney completely by surprise. He tried to cover it by seeming annoyed.

  “Of course I remember Vietnam,” he told the NSA agent. “Do you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do very well.”

  Something about Dean’s manner and appearance—perhaps his erect stance, or maybe his buzz cut—told McSweeney that he was a fellow Marine.

  “Where’d you serve?” McSweeney asked him.

  “I was a Marine Corps sniper,” said Dean, adding some of the details of his tour.

  “Jesus, we were in-country at the same time,” said McSweeney, relaxing. He patted Dean on the shoulder and pulled over the chair in the corner to sit down. “Have a seat. Sit on the bed; go ahead. I didn’t know you were a Marine. I should have known. I apologize.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Senator.”

  “You know, I went back to An Hoa a few years ago. Has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth.”

  “I imagine you’re right,” said Dean.

  “You’ve seen some shit, I bet,” said McSweeney.

  “Absolutely.”

  “So what’s going on? Are the Vietnamese really targeting me, or is that all bullshit?”