The Wrong Man (Complete 3-Book International Thriller Box Set)

by Fritz Galt

  Chapter 11

  After kissing Lori goodbye at the front door of the White House as she headed out to hail a cab, President Bernard White watched the ragtag group of protesters as they hurled insults from wintry Lafayette Park. If only he, too, could escape his marble prison and flee down the streets of his nation in a cab.

  He waved at her as she slipped out the gate, and she tossed back a carefree smile. A second later, she was gone.

  Bernard rubbed a forefinger over his lips that still tingled from the touch of her young lips. Did he know what he was getting into, getting hitched to a twenty-something fresh out of college? More importantly, did she know what it meant to marry the President of the United States?

  “She’s a good kid,” a voice said behind him.

  Bernard jumped. After three years in the White House, he still wasn’t used to strangers creeping around his personal abode.

  “Morning, Chuck,” he muttered.

  “With those poll figures slipping, it’s about time to go public with your engagement,” Chuck Romer hinted.

  “She’s not ready for it, yet,” he said.

  “Ready for what? Glamour, interviews, book deals, national politics, geopolitical psychodrama?”

  “No. This,” Bernard said, throwing the New York Times in his face. A picture of the demolished truck in front of the Kodak Theater dominated the front page.

  “Oh, that.”

  “So who were those terrorists at the Academy Awards anyway?” Bernard asked, as he headed toward the Oval Office. “I know what they wanted, but I want to put names on their faces.”

  “Well, they were all al-Jazeera television crew members.”

  “I know they all were al-Jazeera, but who were they really? Islamic Jihad? Hamas? Hezbollah? Al-Qaeda?” he ticked them off on his fingers.

  “I think just actually al-Jazeera TV, sir.”

  Bernard eyed him closely. “Do you mean to tell me that we just blew up six Arab journalists, and that’s all they were?”

  “It looks that way, sir.”

  Bernard paused walking and pinched the bridge of his nose in thought. “No wonder why they hate us.”

  Then he looked up quickly. A justification had come to mind. “But there was a bomb on the truck.”

  “Not a large one…”

  “But a bomb nonetheless,” the president persisted, resuming more confidently down the hall. “What were they going to do with it, nuke insects in their apartments?”

  “It was a very common construction site device loaded with dynamite. It could have been planted, sir.”

  “Planted? By whom?” he asked at the doorway to the office.

  Chuck eyed him carefully.

  “No, don’t tell me,” Bernard said, and rushed toward his desk. “I don’t want to know.”

  He collapsed into his chair.

  “Do you know why this job is so tough?” he said. “It’s all those people who try to be helpful, but only make matters worse.”

  He threw a pen in the air and caught it.

  “They think that a strong al-Qaeda will improve my chances to stay in office. But, by God, I’m not in office for the salary or the power or the prestige. I’d rather have al-Qaeda disappear from the face of the earth than keep this blame job. I’m not hunting terrorists for the sport. I don’t need helpful cronies holding up targets so that I can shoot them down.”

  Chuck pulled up a chair and leaned his elbows against the president’s desk. “Do these cronies you’re talking about truly intend to be helpful, or do they have their own agenda?”

  “I’ve got plenty of hardliners, and their views are all on the record.”

  Chuck shook his head. “Other friends.”

  “Liberals? Are they that underhanded?”

  Chuck continued to dolefully shake his head.

  “Personal enemies?”

  “Name one,” Chuck said.

  Bernard shrugged. He had done nothing but diligently dole out handouts to political favorites and foes alike throughout his career. “Where does that leave us?”

  “I believe someone wants your job, sir.”

  Bernard sat forward, his blue eyes intense. “Who?”

  Chuck studied his shoes, then jutted out his jaw and gave the president a straightforward look. “Attorney General Caleb Perkins, for one.”

  “Caleb?” Bernard said, sitting back with a frown. “I know that he’s ambitious, but I didn’t think he had it in him. Bombs in trucks at the Academy Awards? How would that remove me from office?”

  “Perhaps when the smoke clears, and the FBI investigates, they will find evidence of its origin, fingerprints if you will.”

  “Like whose fingerprints?”

  “Yours.”

  Bernard studied Chuck’s unnaturally young face. How could his chief of staff suspect so much? Suspect in a way that bordered on knowing what happened?

  He thought back to the Academy Awards party he had thrown the previous evening. When William Ford had informed Caleb of the foiled terrorist attack, Caleb had suddenly lost all his previous ebullience. He had shut up and turned morose, hostile in fact. He didn’t react like a man who had pulled off a successful terrorist attack. He would have been pleased, not hurt.

  If anyone, William Ford had been nothing short of ecstatic. If there were fingerprints all over the bomb, they would be William’s.

  So why was Chuck feeding him all this bull about Caleb?

  “This is a serious accusation, Chuck. What direct proof do you have that it’s Caleb trying to sabotage me?”

  “Ask your secretary how Caleb reacted when bin Laden’s fax came in.”

  Bernard leaned on his intercom button. “Gertrude? Please come in.”

  She walked in immediately with her clipped stride hampered by a gray, cowbell shaped skirt. “Yes, Mr. President?”

  Bernard phrased his question carefully. “Was the attorney general present when the fax from bin Laden came in?”

  “Yes. He was just entering the office when I received it.”

  “Did he read it?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “And what was his reaction?”

  “He made a photocopy of it.”

  Bernard’s eyebrows shot up. “And what did he do next?”

  “He folded the copy, put it in his pocket and left the White House, Mr. President.”

  Bernard lowered his eyes and stared at the lady’s polished brown pumps. “Thank you, Gertrude. That will be all.”

  When the door closed discreetly behind her, he looked up at his chief of staff. “Caleb has perpetrated a grave breech of office protocol.”

  Chuck did not disagree. “Not to mention a security violation or two.”

  Bernard’s mind roamed over what Caleb had done for him recently. He had shuffled the Chinagate investigation over to a special prosecutor awfully fast, rather than burying the investigation within the Justice Department. Was he colluding with the prosecutor, too?

  “Should I fire him, or ask for his resignation?”

  At that point, Chuck seemed to contradict his earlier stance. “Neither, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  Chuck waved the fax in his face. “Do you want Caleb to go public with this?”

  Bernard sank deep in his chair. It seemed like everybody in his Administration had something on him. The U.S. Trade Representative who set up the China oil for WTO concessions deal, those who set up the faked bombing at the Academy Awards, those like Caleb and Chuck who knew the intimate details of bin Laden’s blackmail fax…

  He had made one small transgression by accepting the Trade Representative’s sweetener into his offshore account. Wasn’t all business taking place offshore anyway?

  But that had left him open to attack from the piranhas. He felt like a giant whale, and the carnivorous fish were keeping him alive only long enough so they could dine on him when the time was right. And with their combined weight hanging onto him, they were dragging him and the entire party to its
doom.

  There was only one solution.

  “Chuck, schedule a nationally televised address for me Monday evening, prime time.”

  “You’re not going to resign, are you?”

  The NCAA Championship Game was just coming on the air, Counterterrorism Director Neal Jacobs realized as he picked up his office phone to make a call. It was a terrible time to bother someone with work, especially when Sports Illustrated was the in-flight magazine on Air Force One. The call would poison the entire escapist effect of a good basketball game.

  Nevertheless, he went ahead and dialed Assistant Secretary of Defense Max Spelling at home.

  “The commander-in-chief wants us to expand our horizons aggressively,” Neal began at once. “Osama bin Laden owns about twenty ocean-going vessels around the world. We can’t afford another Cole. We’ve got to go out there aggressively and find these ships before they pop over the horizon.”

  Max hesitated. “The Coast Guard doesn’t even have the resources it takes to patrol our own ports. We’re using naval vessels to assist them. How do you expect me to deploy even more ships around the world?”

  “I want you to focus on al-Qaeda-owned vessels.”

  “I’m not sure the Pentagon knows which ships are al-Qaeda and which aren’t. They change their names and country of registration on a daily basis.”

  Neal shifted around in his seat, and his eyes fell on the young man who was his al-Qaeda investigation expert. “We may have compiled a list of owners of suspected ships, ship profiles, that sort of thing.”

  “That would help.”

  “I’ll email you that information in the next few hours.”

  “Hey, this new cooperation thing really works!” Max said.

  “Along those lines, we believe that Sean Cooper might be colluding with elements of al-Qaeda. That might be our lucky break. You might call Justice and see if they have voiceprints for Sean Cooper. One of your ships just might pick something up.”

  With snow accumulating on the expressway, it took Caleb Perkins over an hour to reach home in Arlington, Virginia. He took the opportunity to develop the plan that he had just formed at the White House. He would have Harry Black monitor the transactions into the terrorists’ bank account in Riyadh and then he would send the evidence to Stanley Polk. By the end of the day, the Chinagate prosecutor would have enough evidence to make his case against President Bernard White.

  A divorcee for many years, he still had two teenage sons who were home, already glued to the television. Before settling down to watch the championship basketball game, Caleb excused himself from the room and placed a call from the secure line in his study. It was time to gain Harry Black’s trust and have him do some work on behalf of the Department of Justice.

  “Harry, it’s me.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Attorney General. Do you have any news for me?”

  First a tidbit of information to gain Harry’s confidence. “Yes, I do. Our men have intercepted transmissions that place Cooper in Eastern Africa,” he said, grinning to himself at his manufactured lead. Harry would appreciate the information.

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Try this. He’s on a photo safari in Kenya.”

  “Do you have any hotel names?”

  “Nothing specific. I’d pick up Cooper’ trail in Nairobi, though.”

  “Good enough. Thank you, sir.”

  “Ah, there’s one more thing I’d like you to do for me,” Caleb said.

  “Is this part of the contract?”

  “You’re charging all expenses, right?”

  “Yes,” Harry said.

  “Then this is part of the contract. I want you to monitor a bank account at the Royal Bank of Riyadh. Keep track of who’s transferring money in and out of there, and how much. The account number is…” he fished the copy of the fax out of his suit coat pocket. “2834457. Have you got all that?”

  “Yes. I’ll get right on it, Mr. Attorney General.”

  “Good. I want you to print out the transaction for evidence.”

  Caleb hung up before Harry could ask whom the evidence would indict.

  He returned to his family room where the two centers were just tipping off. Within minutes, his mind was off the long road to the White House as he was swept away by the electrifying action.

  Fully attired in tropical resort wear that Tiffany had purchased for him at Christmas, Hiram slid open the glass door and stepped out onto the hotel room’s private deck. They had an air-conditioned ground floor room with a view of the thick bushes and stout tree trunks of the garden.

  If he stood up straight and looked between several tree trunks, he could make out the ocean’s horizon. The wooden deck was damp from dew, and Spanish moss hung from the thick rope railing. They were in a tropical paradise.

  “We’ve got a coupon for complimentary drinks at the poolside bar,” Tiffany said from the doorway.

  He turned around.

  His redheaded sweetheart was seductively waving the tickets like a fan in one hand and leaning against the doorframe with the other. She wore nothing but a tight white bikini that threatened to turn sheer once wet. Her body was more horizontal than vertical, but that was how he liked her. She was a red-blooded woman of substance, and more of that substance was on display than not.

  He fought a surge of blood to his various body parts and turned his attention to the coupons.

  “It’s not too early to use dem,” he said.

  She swayed away from the room and slid the glass door with one swing of her hips. Then she eased herself under one of his arms.

  He fought the urge to slip his hand around her bra as they padded barefoot down the garden path toward the pool.

  They came to the organically shaped pool with its separate wading area and adult lap area. The aquamarine pool was surrounded by white lounge chairs and red-and-white-striped umbrellas, women fussing over their children and men pouring over their newspapers.

  But what attracted Hiram’s attention most was a lone grass hut between the pool and the beach. A row of four bar stools beckoned to him from the shade of the hut.

  They eased themselves into the rattan seats and Tiffany shoved the two coupons across the bar. A bartender, not unlike the taxi driver in physical appearance and stature, finished drying a glass and came over to them.

  His long, dark Indian fingers took away the coupon. “What’s yours today?” he asked.

  Hiram smiled. The guy not only spoke understandable English, but he knew the lingo.

  Hiram looked at Tiffany and she allowed him to go ahead and order. “How about something local?” he asked.

  “Have you tried our rum and coconut?”

  Yeah, that seemed to fit the bill. “Make it two.”

  Chapter 12

  Harry Black wiped his sleepy eyes, smoothed the wrinkles out of his shirt and felt the stubble on his chin. He had slept in front of his computer all night at his office in downtown Atlanta. Out his window, the city had woken up to a glaze of ice. He was smart not to have tried to return home to his apartment that night.

  He had just ordered Badger and the crew off of Hainan on the double. International flights out of Sanya, China, departed several times a day. He checked the clocks on his office wall. It was just past noon in Atlanta, and predawn in China. Before nightfall, his men would be descending on Nairobi en masse.

  He was sorry to make them work on NCAA Championship day. But what did they care? They were earning a thousand bucks a day for essentially lazing around hotel pools, and could watch the game later on tape.

  The computer’s bare-bones operating system appeared, and he opened Badger’s program. Tracing a bank account was a routine that Badger had perfected, using standard off-the-shelf hacker and eavesdropping software. He keyed in the bank’s name and the account number and waited. The account appeared onscreen, but thus far there had been no transactions that day.

  He kept an eye on any bank transfers that might appear on the compu
ter screen and pulled out the CIA contract that instructed him to track down, neutralize and deliver Am Cit Sean Cooper to Camp X-Ray at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

  The Agency’s insignia on the letterhead was stunningly plain and simple. An eagle’s head, a blank white shield and a compass rose. And yet, the thousands of operatives the Agency had scattered around the world couldn’t find Cooper, and had to rely on a penny ante company like his to do the work.

  It was interesting that the FBI could track Cooper down so quickly and in such a remote location.

  It did help to have FBI agents stationed around the world, lending criminal tracking capabilities that were sorely lacking in the CIA. The Central Intelligence Agency had been built around the specter of dangerous governments. They didn’t have a single criminal detective in their ranks. It would take them years to orient themselves toward tracking down wanted men.

  He stared at the blank white shield on the letterhead more thoughtfully.

  On the other hand, maybe the CIA still had the right approach. The Agency existed to fill blank white pages with facts and considered analysis on subjects around the world that were vital to America’s security and wellbeing. After all, analysis of foreign trends had uncovered the economic woes of the educated Arab public as well as the sentiment of disenfranchisement that had led to the popularity of fundamental Islam among the lower and middle classes. Maybe the root sources of anti-Americanism needed to be addressed, rather than sending out FBI agents on an endless cops and robbers routine that was favored by the gringo gunslingers in Washington. That only seemed to make Muslims around the world angrier.

  He looked up at the computer and checked for activity in the account in Riyadh. Still none.

  He sat back and mused over the mysterious workings of Washington. How had the FBI found Cooper so quickly? They must have gotten a tip from one of their agents at the Embassy in Kenya. After all, a worldwide alert would send Sean Cooper’ photograph to all the FBI field offices around the world.