The recollection made Nick smile briefly; then it occurred to him that he would never again share in Lisa's infectious sense of humor. He finished his drink with one gigantic swallow and chewed on an ice cube. So why would she hide the blue binder?
And why hide it from him, of all people? It made no sense.
After finding the binder so cleverly hidden, Nick had expected to find something earth shattering in its contents, perhaps somehow involving him, but in reality there hadn't been that much inside. There were a list of names and a notation written in block letters that said Tucson Bliss? Written below that, also in block letters that were barely readable because they had been smudged before the ink had dried, was another notation that might have said Stringers or Stingers or maybe even Singers.
The binder contained copies of e-mails that had obviously been taken off someone's hard drive, presumably someone who worked at the Pentagon. The e-mails went back and forth between a guy name Michaels and an unnamed person in a coy, roundabout manner, eventually culminating in an agreement to meet last week at a park in Washington. The name of the park hadn't been specified in any of the e-mails, but Nick guessed it would be easy for someone familiar with the area to deduce the location. He had been to Washington only a few times, none of them recently, so it was all a mystery to him.
That was it, the sum total of the binder's contents. Nick had no idea what Tucson Bliss might mean or what sort of singers (or maybe stingers or stringers) had been involved in Lisa's investigation. To the best of his knowledge, Lisa had never been to Tucson in her entire life and would not have considered it blissful even if she had. She hated extreme heat, and for that reason Nick couldn't imagine her ever using the words Tucson and bliss together in the same sentence.
All of which brought him back to his original question: Why hide the material from him? It was not like he could decipher the meaning of any of it. Besides, what difference could any cloak-and-dagger stuff going on in D.C. possibly make to an air traffic controller living and working in Merrimack? It just didn't make sense.
Was it possible Lisa had been involved in something illegal?
Instead of the material in the binder being part of an investigation she had been working on at the time of her death, could it be that she had hidden the binder in their house, away from his prying eyes and anyone else's?
Nick felt a ball of unease forming in the pit of his stomach.
His beautiful wife of five years, the only woman he had ever really loved, was dead less than a week, and he was entertaining a possibility that he would never have even considered before he had found the binder. Guilt gnawed at him for even thinking it. He knew her better than that. But still, why else would she have hidden it and in such a perfect spot? If she had not been run down by that goddamned beer truck, he would never have found the material in the first place. He wished he hadn't.
He laid a ten-dollar bill on the tiny circular table and walked out of the bar and through the terminal, paying no attention to the throngs of travelers jostling him on all sides. It was time to face the long drive back to his empty house. Nick walked slowly to Logan Airport's Central Parking garage and slid into his car, his mind hundreds of miles away at a Pentagon building he had never even set foot inside.
Chapter 16
"It's time to discuss the next step." Tony gazed into the faces of his men, using his intense dark stare to capture and maintain their full attention. "We have been training and preparing for months--
years, even decades, in the case of some of us--to ensure our readi-ness for this moment.
"No doubt you are all wondering what was inside this briefcase that was so important we spent ten thousand dollars of our valuable resources to purchase it." Tony didn't bother mentioning the obvious--that he had then murdered the seller and stolen their money back. "I am sure you are familiar with the expression 'information is power.' If that is the case, then the information inside this briefcase has increased our power exponentially."
He pulled a simple road map out of the case with a flourish and spread it out on the desk in front of them. "What do we have here, Mr. Waterhouse?"
Brian glanced at it. "It's a map of a driving route between Tucson, Arizona, and Fort Bliss, Texas."
"Exactly. Thank you. Can anyone tell me what significance Tucson has to us?"
No one answered, so Tony continued. "Tucson is the home base of the company that has been contracted to produce Stinger missiles for the United States military. These shoulder-fired missiles are manufactured at their plant in Tucson, then delivered to bases all over the country, including Fort Bliss, Texas. Currently the missiles are undergoing minor software modifications request-ed by the U.S. Army. Thursday night a small shipment of those modified Stingers will leave Tucson in a nondescript Army cargo truck, to be delivered to Fort Bliss for inspection and approval before the full-scale manufacturing process resumes.
"Thanks to my contact--excuse me, my deceased ex- contact--at the Pentagon, Mr. Nelson W. Michaels, we have in our possession all the information we need in order to intercept this delivery. We know when the missiles are being shipped to the base in Texas; we know the exact route that will be taken by the truck carrying the missiles; we know how many men are going to be handling the delivery; we even know their names and ranks and what they look like."
Tony traced with one finger an area outlined on the map in red marker and trained his intense stare on Joe-Bob Warren. "What are we looking at here?"
Joe-Bob returned Andretti's stare unblinkingly. "Well, unless I miss my guess, that's where we're going to take the missiles away from the United States Army and make them our own."
Tony smiled and nodded, and as he did, Dimitrios cleared his throat.
"What is it?" Tony asked.
"Ah, I'm sure you would have thought of this," Dimitrios stammered, "but don't they ship those missiles in pieces? We might be able to hijack certain portions of the Stingers, but they won't do us any good without all the parts, right?"
"Normally, yes, that is true," Tony answered. His men were sharp, for soft, spoiled Westerners at least, and he appreciated that.
"In this case, though, the missiles are being shipped in one nearly complete little package. This particular transport vehicle will contain everything necessary to fire Stinger missiles with the exception of the guidance system, without which the missiles are useless."
Dimitrios shook his head. "So my question remains un-changed: What good will they be to us if they have almost everything we need?"
Now Tony actually chuckled. "I said the missiles are useless without the guidance system. I didn't say we don't have the guidance system. A couple of years ago a similar military transport vehicle was hijacked while driving a similar route between Tucson and Fort Bliss. Would anyone care to speculate as to what that truck was carrying?"
A buzz of anticipation filled the room.
"We have the guidance system for the Stinger missiles already,"
Joe-Bob said wonderingly.
"Bingo, as you Americans like to say."
Jackie piped up, his normally high-pitched voice rising a couple of octaves. "So we're going to use these Stinger missiles to shoot down an airplane?"
"That is exactly correct," Tony answered. "But not just any airplane. The president is flying into Logan International Airport in Boston very early next Sunday morning. We will be removing him from office. Permanently."
"The president? The president of what?"
"What do you think?"
Stunned silence filled the room as the significance of Tony's statement began to sink in.
"The president of the United States?" Joe-Bob whispered.
"We're going to shoot down Air Force One?"
Tony's eyes glittered like hard black diamonds as he turned his cool smile on his small band of revolutionaries--the group that was about to change the course of history. "That is correct.
President Cartwright is scheduled to celebrate the reopening of a histo
ric church in Boston. I have learned that he will be flying into the airport around 5:00 a.m. next Sunday in order to arrive at the church in time to attend a sunrise service. He is then scheduled to lunch in the city with some of his major political contributors before flying back to Washington in early afternoon.
"Of course, as we now know, he will do none of those things, because he will be dead, lying at the bottom of a smoking hole in the ground just shy of Logan Airport. With a little bit of luck, perhaps people in the city will be killed as well, but that remains to be seen."
Chaos erupted and then died down immediately when Tony held up a hand to silence his men.
Brian shook his head. "But how will we know where the plane is going to be and when to fire the missile? It's a big sky out there."
Tony smiled again. "We'll know because we're going to tell the pilot where we want him to go."
Chapter 17
The doorbell rang, and Nick walked across his living room, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He had just finished washing and drying the few dishes generated by his solitary dinner--it would take a week to fill up the dishwasher all by himself, and washing the dishes by hand was a way to kill his loneliness and boredom for a few minutes. He glanced at the clock hanging in the living room as he approached the front door. Nine o'clock exactly. Right on time. He wasn't sure why, but Nick had expected the FBI agents to be late.
He swung the door open wide and saw a man and a woman standing on the small stoop outside and almost laughed out loud.
The two agents looked like polar opposites. The man was tall and wide like a football player, with thick dark hair and a serious look on his face. The woman was petite and slim, with auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail and a wide, disarming smile lighting up her delicate features. She reminded Nick of an Olympic gymnast he had seen on TV as a kid. Her name escaped him, but she had possessed a similar smile that the television cameras loved.
They haven't even met me yet, he thought, and already they're doing the good-cop/bad-cop thing. He smiled politely and said, "Hi, I'm Nick Jensen, and you must be the FBI agents I was told to expect.
The Merrimack Police said you would be coming at nine."
"Yes, sir. I'm Special Agent Kristin Cunningham, and this is my partner, Special Agent Frank Delaney." They flashed their government IDs at exactly the same time in a move that had to have been choreographed. "We were advised by the Merrimack Police Department that you were in possession of valuable information possibly relating to national security. Is that true, Mr. Jensen?"
"Not exactly," Nick answered. "Honestly, I'm not really sure what I have, if anything, but I assume the police must have called you for a reason. Anyway, thank you so much for stopping by.
Please come in, and I'll let you determine for yourselves if what I've found is of any significance or not."
After going back and forth on the matter for a couple of days, Nick had finally decided to call the police and tell them about the mysterious blue binder and its contents. What he had found was probably nothing, but for Lisa to have stashed away evidence relating to an ongoing investigation at the Pentagon was so unlike her that the discovery gave Nick serious concern.
No sooner had he read the words Tucson, Bliss, and Stingers to the Merrimack cop on the telephone than the whole tone of the call had changed. The cop instantly dropped the casual, almost bored tone he had affected in the beginning and had asked a few more perfunctory questions before telling Nick that he could expect a call from the FBI regarding his unusual discovery. That call had come less than thirty minutes later, and tonight's meeting had been hastily planned.
He showed the two agents into the small living room, where they sat side by side on the couch. Nick eased himself into a stuffed recliner Lisa had placed at an angle facing a wooden coffee table directly across from the couch. She had claimed that the setup of the furniture increased the "intimacy" of the room--feng shui or some such shit--and promoted good conversation. Nick supposed he was about to find out if that was true.
"Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea? A glass of water?"
"Thank you, but we're fine," Agent Cunningham said. She appeared to be the designated talker of the pair, which was okay with Nick because the guy didn't seem to have much personality at all.
"Okay, then." He picked up the bright blue binder he had placed on the coffee table prior to the arrival of the agents. "I guess we should get right to it. My wife worked at the Pentagon as a civilian auditor prior to her death--"
"We know," Agent Cunningham replied quietly. "We're very sorry for your loss."
Nick sat back, surprised. "Thank you very much, but how do you know about my wife?"
She smiled. "Oh, it's no big deal, just a little quick research before visiting, Mr. Jensen. We like to be prepared."
"Oh yeah, of course. And it's Nick."
"Nick, then."
"Anyway," he said, taking a deep breath, "I found this material very well hidden in a closet after Lisa's death. I'm assuming it is something she was working on before she died, but I can't make heads or tails out of any of it."
"Okay," Agent Cunningham answered. "But why call the police?"
"You have to understand something about my wife. She was one of the most straightforward people you could ever hope to meet. Deception wasn't her thing. If she was stashing this stuff here, I can only assume she was afraid someone in Washington would find it. And if she was being that careful, then that tells me she felt she had stumbled onto something very big, something potentially dangerous, and she was trying to decide what to do with the information. While she made up her mind, she wanted to safeguard the material the only way she could, by hiding it here, hundreds of miles from the Pentagon."
The two agents shared an uneasy glance, which was not lost on Nick. Again Agent Cunningham spoke. "Some of this is conjecture, Mr. Jensen--"
"Nick."
"Sorry, Nick. As I said, some of this is conjecture, but there has been the growing suspicion in Washington that someone inside the Pentagon has been selling classified information regarding United States weaponry to terrorist organizations, both inside and outside this country.
"The word Stingers mentioned inside this binder refers to a type of weaponry belonging to the U.S. military. It appears your wife had uncovered evidence implicating one or more persons inside the Pentagon in the sale of classified information regarding Stinger shoulder-fired missiles, and the FBI--not to mention the Department of Homeland Security and all law enforcement agencies--takes this very seriously."
"What happens now?" Nick asked.
"We have to seize this binder as well as all the other material you collected. We'll share it with Homeland in an attempt to determine whether your wife may have discovered the identity of the person or persons leaking information from inside the Pentagon.
Based on what I see here, it would appear as though she had."
Nick's blood ran cold. He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to his next question but couldn't stop himself from asking.
"Earlier this evening I was informed by a homicide detective from the Merrimack Police Department that my wife wasn't killed in a car accident as had been previously assumed. He told me they believe she survived the crash, but someone murdered her as she lay helpless in her car. Did she die because of the material contained in this binder?"
Agent Cunningham hesitated. She shook her head. "Not necessarily. To my knowledge, the police have not developed any theories yet regarding your wife's murder. It may well have been unrelated to this information. That assessment could change, pending results of the ongoing investigation. But what doesn't change is the fact that she was working on something potentially critical to national security.
"I have to ask if you would permit us to take your wife's laptop back to the office for forensic analysis as well. It's entirely possible, even likely, that there is more information on her computer that could help us discover the identity of the Pentagon leak. We can't
force you to release the computer to us, but it could be critical to our investigation that we examine it. We will provide you with a receipt for everything we take and will return it to you as soon as we possibly can after it has been wiped clean."
"Of course you can take it," Nick said, getting up to retrieve the computer. He wasn't buying the bullshit story that Lisa's death had been unrelated to her work at the Pentagon. It would be a coincidence of monumental proportions if that were the case, and Nick wasn't a big believer in coincidences. Ultimately, though, it didn't really matter to Nick. Lisa was dead, and she wasn't coming back.
Nothing changed that. The FBI could have her fucking computer forever if they wanted it. They could wipe it clean or not; he didn't care. He certainly wasn't about to use it or even look at what was on it. At least not now and maybe not ever. It was just too painful.
Nick walked into the master bedroom and retrieved Lisa's laptop. He handed it to the two agents, who gathered up everything on the coffee table and headed toward the door.
Agent Delaney had still not said a word during the entire visit.
Nick decided maybe they weren't playing a good-cop/bad-cop routine at all, but rather Agent Cunningham was the one with the brains in the partnership, and the man knew it. Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt and all that.
The pair paused at the front door. "We'll get everything back to you as soon as we can," Agent Cunningham said again almost apologetically. "Thank you for making that call to the police. You did the right thing. Hopefully we can use this information to help avert a serious tragedy before it occurs."
Final Vector Page 6
