An instant later, my face was stinging from a backhanded strike. I was tempted to explain that I didn’t mean it but I knew I wouldn’t be believed: Lies need conviction to stick.
I turned away. We were coming in low over the city. Air traffic control took us on a sightseeing tour. I could see a bunch of lights through the cloud, but the effect was like a sock on a bank robber’s face and I still couldn’t recognize the place through it. Suddenly a patch of clear night sky opened up below the wingtip. I looked down and saw clearly where I was. Familiar monuments lit up stark and white instantly nailed this city of empire. Christ, Washington, D.C.
Mystery number two cracked.
My heart began to pound. I felt it muscle up against my ribs, wrestling for space. D.C. That meant I had a very good chance of cleaning up this mess. Though, of course, shortly thereafter I would be dead.
FORTY-FOUR
The aircraft touched down without incident, which surprised me as it always does, and taxied up to and then inside a hangar. No immigration, no homeland security checks. That meant whoever was in control could pull powerful strings, but I already knew that.
The Rolex guy lifted the latch on my seat belt and motioned at me to stand. I did as I was told without causing trouble. I’d antagonized them enough and baiting them would only get me beaten up some more. Who said I can’t learn?
The pilots shut down the engines and an ape cracked the hatch. I was shuffled down the stairs, across the hangar floor, and into the back of a black Suburban, accompanied by my simian buddies. The air was warm and humid. With all the rain, I expected it to be cold, like Germany. I was sandwiched in the backseat of the vehicle between a couple of thousand dollars of Italian suit. The windows fogged up almost instantly, but I could still see through the windshield. There wasn’t much traffic on the streets. We came to a fork in the freeway: right to Andrews AFB, left to the city. We turned left.
The pickings were still slim in the conversation department. We drove in silence toward the halo projected by the city’s lights onto the low cloud above it. The place was pretty much deserted at this after-midnight hour and seemed lit up for a party where the invitations hadn’t been sent. I passed some time again trying to work out who these people were who had, at various times over the past few weeks, done their best to kill Anna and me. In their suits and earpieces, they looked like Secret Service types, but the suits made them look uncomfortable, like kids dressed by their grandmothers for church. I pegged them as mercenaries or, in the lexicon of current PC military job speak, “security.”
The Suburban took it slow, just another government car. No need to hurry. The Potomac was a river of black glass throwing up rippling colors of reflected light. We paralleled it for a couple of miles before crossing the bridge to the city’s heart. Here the monuments were easy to pick out: the Jefferson Monument and then, as we crossed the river, the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument beyond it.
This case had given my feelings about national pride, embodied by these grand architectural displays, a bad shake. I was sorry to say I now viewed these symbols as props in a show. They represented an ideal, but not a lot more.
The driver followed the signs to Pennsylvania Avenue and then to Massachusetts Avenue. A couple of ancient Chevys full of rust and young partygoers rolled past, the rap music so loud it made the droplets on the Suburban’s windows fizz. Two black guys, naked to the waist, hung out the windows and shouted at us. One of the apes gave them the bird. The White House appeared for an instant as we turned in an intersection. It stood white and clean, bathed by innumerable spotlights. How anyone inside got any sleep was beyond me.
We turned onto Massachusetts and stayed on it for a while, heading for higher ground. The buildings we passed were imposing and impersonal: lots of columns, celebrations of power, a conveyor belt of concrete wedding cakes. I knew where we were headed: The U.S. Naval Observatory. It occupied the hill filling the windshield, its illuminated telescope dome looking like a giant’s lost golf ball among the trees. The driver pulled in to the driveway of Number One Observatory Circle, home of the Vice President of the United States, Harmony Scott’s daddy, Jefferson Cutter.
FORTY-FIVE
I couldn’t help but notice, as I was hauled out of the truck, that at least compared with every other building in the vicinity, Cutter’s residence was dark. Maybe his spotlights weren’t working this evening. I was escorted up onto the veranda and past the front door to another around the side. I guessed this must be the captives’ entrance, just like the servants’ entrance, only lower on the social ladder. A pair of snips was produced and the cuff-locks clipped off. I rubbed my wrists. I could run, but I knew I wouldn’t get far. Besides, I had a score to settle with the Toe Cutter, although I knew the game inside would be heavily rigged in his favor. We all stood there in the darkness for a handful of seconds. Then the door snicked open, the slatted blinds rattling softly against their windowpanes, revealing two men. My escort handed them my badge, which they checked with a penlight and then returned to me. I hadn’t realized that it had been removed from my pocket. The men standing in the doorway were dressed in suit pants, white shirts, and loosened ties. Secret Service, no mistake. They wore cologne, a dead giveaway. They waved a metal detector over me to satisfy themselves I wasn’t packing. No words were said at any time during my transfer so I gathered I must have been expected. When I turned around, my escort had melted into the night without making a sound.
The house was more than darkened; it was blackout darkened. Not so much as a candle flickered, although I noted many diodes glowing from various unidentified electrical gear in almost every room I was led through.
The place smelled cool and clean with a mixture of sandalwood, beeswax, and linseed oil. It was the smell of old money, and lots of it. I guessed the place was full of art and antique furniture, not the stuff most people buy, but things inherited or bought at auctions, won with the crack of a gavel. The floor, however, was relatively new. This was an old building, built in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the original boards would have been creaking like an old man’s bones by now. I gave myself a mental kick. I was about to meet the man considered by many to be the most powerful force in American politics. And I was pondering the history of the floorboards? The bump on the head was obviously affecting me worse than I’d thought.
The men took me down the back of the building, up a flight of stairs, and through several doors. My eyes were used to the darkness now. This was a big house. I tried to remember the route in case I needed to leave in a hurry. I wished I had some string I could let out, or bread crumbs like in that fairy tale. Maybe I’d stayed too long in Germany and the place had rubbed off.
Eventually, one of the men produced a key and unlocked a heavy wooden door. I was pushed inside and shoved into a chair, an expensive leather chair that sighed as I sat. A light was turned on and I found myself in what I assumed was a study, or library. The place reminded me of Abraham Scott’s: There was lots of wood paneling, oil portraits of various men—many from earlier centuries who, with their powdered wigs, bore an uncanny resemblance to the Queen of England—and books. Lots of books.
“So, Special Agent Cooper…good to meet you at last,” said the man standing in a corner behind me. I turned. I recognized him from innumerable press photos and television interviews. Jefferson Cutter reminded me of his daughter, only he was much thicker-set, as if his genes had been spliced with those of a wild boar. He had very little neck that I could see, his shoulders seeming to merge with his jowls. For an old guy, Cutter was still physically powerful—fitness being the current Washington fashion. It was the eyes that were most disconcerting—cold and battleship gray, identical to Harmony’s. He snapped shut the book he had open, replaced it on the shelf, and took a seat behind a broad antique desk, the kind topped with burgundy leather. Within easy reach was a large, full bottle of XO cognac, the top removed, and a glass half full of the vile stuff beside it. “Now, Special Agent Co
oper, what exactly is it that you think you’re doing?” He picked up the glass and drank a couple of mouthfuls as if it were water, rolling it around like mouthwash.
“As I believe I was assigned this case at your request, Mr. Vice President, I think you already know.” Fuck this guy. Veep rhymed with creep and I told myself not to be intimidated.
“Yes, indeed. I’d conveniently forgotten that,” he said, tsktsking, shaking his head, scolding himself. “And have you found what I set you out on the path to uncover, the identity of General Abraham Scott’s killer?”
“Yes.”
“Then your job’s done, is it not?”
“It’s not that simple, sir,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Knowing who did the killing and being able to prove it are not the same thing.”
“Ah, yes. The burden of proof.”
“There’s also another pesky little detail called motive.”
“The reason or reasons why.”
“Yes, sir.”
Cutter sat behind his big fuck-off desk, those gray eyes locked unblinking onto mine, his fingers making a steeple that touched his thin lips. I sat opposite, enveloped by leather, far from comfortable. We sat like that, in an extended period of silence, both sizing up the situation or, more likely, each other. I moved my eyes to the framed oil paintings on the wall behind him, a silent implacable jury. The identities of these men looking down their noses at me suddenly became clear, perhaps because I recognized Dan Quayle’s goofy mug. They were all Veeps, the more recent ones mixed in with others going back to George Washington’s day.
Cutter unlocked one of the desk drawers. He pulled it out, wood squeaking on wood, and produced a triangle of old cheesecloth, which he placed on the table in front of him. He unwrapped it and then took his hand away. It was a pistol, something small and easy to conceal, a Beretta 21 by the look of it. A peashooter, but at this range—half a dozen feet—deadly enough.
“What do you need that for, sir?” I asked, managing to keep the quaver out of my voice, but my Adam’s apple was going up and down like a department-store elevator.
“This? It needs a clean. Tonight’s chore.”
Yeah, right. The thing was polished to within an inch of its life—bad analogy. It was spotless, nickel plating gleaming. Would he use it on me? I’d been wrong in the past about who would and wouldn’t fire a gun at an unarmed person, and I had the scars to prove it.
He picked up the gun and gave it a rub with the cheesecloth. “I’m an insomniac. I used to think sleeplessness was a burden, but I’ve come to think of it as a blessing. While the world switches off for the night, I don’t. Have you ever considered how much you could get done if you didn’t sleep?”
I shook my head. Aside from not being particularly interested in small talk, the thought of working twenty hours or more a day—and in my line it would be without pay—didn’t hold a whole heap of joy.
“No? So…are you going to tell me who killed my son-in-law and why?”
I’d been in better positions in my life. I was locked in a room with a man holding a gun and I was about to tell him some things he wouldn’t enjoy hearing. I wondered whether he wouldn’t enjoy them enough to fire that Beretta at me, after all. “Sir, you know and I know who killed Abraham Scott, and a lot of other people besides.”
“No name? I get it. You’re nervous about telling me. You needn’t worry; this room is completely soundproof. We’ll just keep it all off the record then, shall we? You look like a man who needs to unburden himself.”
“You killed him, Mr. Cutter. You and your business partner, the late Lieutenant General von Koeppen.”
Cutter seemed unperturbed by the accusation, perhaps because he knew it was only that—an accusation, with not a molecule of evidence to back it up.
“And, because I’ve been here in Washington all this time, we’re talking conspiracy to murder, then?” he asked, mock seriously. “Would you care to elaborate on the hows, whys, and wherefores, Special Agent Cooper?”
I was getting happier by the moment to oblige, if just to wipe the sneer off his face. “General Scott was a gliding enthusiast. He spent a lot of time in the sky with a Royal Dutch Air Force captain by the name of Reinoud Aleveldt, an unwitting snitch on the general’s movements. Aleveldt informed von Koeppen that Scott intended having new instrumentation fitted in his glider. Aurora Aviation, your avionics company, performed the upgrade and installation. Some technicians from Aurora arrived at Ramstein with all the right credentials—they’re there all the time anyway, servicing military aircraft—and installed the new gear under the noses of NATO personnel, along with another modification the general didn’t ask for, one that would eventually fail and cause his glider to crash.”
“You should think about writing fiction, Special Agent. You’re very good at weaving a story.”
“Mr. Cutter, I’ve just given you the who. The why is a far more interesting story—and be surprised, sir; you’re the main protagonist in it.” I haven’t even begun to tell you what an asshole you are, asshole. I’d had a shaky start, but I was firming fast. “You conspired with Lieutenant General Wolfgang von Koeppen to murder Abraham Scott because he discovered your plans. Worse than that, he disappointed you.”
“Disappointed? How so?”
“You had him picked out from the start, earmarked for something. He was a young officer—a war hero, no less, who had an impeccable record—working inside the Kremlin. He fit perfectly into your plans. The first step was getting a man on the inside—or better yet, a woman. You had just the person in mind, but there was a problem. He was already married. So you had his wife, Helen, killed. It was easy. I don’t know whether it was the first time you had someone murdered, but the car ‘accident’ worked so well you made it the model for many killings in the years that followed. Then, after a respectable period of mourning, you set up an opportunity for your daughter—the unwitting informant—to meet the promising young widowed officer. You knew your daughter, and you knew what would happen. They eventually got married and then your plans really took off.
“Just interrupt me if you think I’ve left anything out,” I said. I could see I had Cutter’s full attention. He was frowning, not a happy camper. Good. Fuck you. Sir.
“A father steering his daughter in the direction of a suitable union is hardly a crime, Cooper,” Cutter said.
“No, it isn’t. But your motives had nothing whatsoever to do with Harmony’s happy-ever-afterness,” I replied.
“Then what were my motives, since you seem to know what was on my mind all those years ago?”
“Let’s just zip forward in time. Abraham Scott fulfilled his early promise. He rose steadily through the ranks. Having a powerful politician in Congress working hard on appropriating funds for various weapons programs didn’t hurt his career any. Only there was an unforeseen glitch, something much more difficult to fix than the pesky presence of a preexisting spouse. Abraham Scott was a genuinely honorable man. He was incorruptible.”
Cutter gulped back his drink and then poured himself another belt. “Go on, I’m enjoying myself immensely,” he said.
“All your backroom work paid off. Your boy landed the plum: the command of Ramstein, the biggest U.S. base outside continental America. You already had a guy on the ground there—von Koeppen. He was doing very well for himself, smuggling sex slaves from the old Soviet states to western Europe. Abraham Scott uncovered the operation and launched his own small-scale investigation before you could stop him. He went to Riga, where he met with a so-called Chechen separatist by the name of Alu Radakov, the contact supplying von Koeppen with human cargo for shipment back to Germany in NATO C-one-thirties. Only, when he met up with Radakov, he got a big surprise.”
FORTY-SIX
I flashed back to the moment when Bishop cracked open the final Dungeon level, and then back further to my own experiences with Radakov at The Bump, in Riga. I remembered the way Radakov treated those frightened young gir
ls he bought like cattle. I also remembered the way he killed Russians.
“The general befriended one of the dancers at Radakov’s sideline business, a strip club. I think you might be familiar with her name, at least: Varvara. She managed to get a photocopy of Radakov’s passport and passed it to Abraham Scott. Now it was your son-in-law’s turn to make a mistake. He told you about it, didn’t he? He said he was writing a report on the smuggling operation and sending it to Congress. In terms of a scandal, it would have made Watergate seem like an honest mistake.” While I’d taken a number of leaps in my Perry Mason monologue, they were nothing compared with the one I was about to take. But I had nothing to lose. If I was wrong, I’d get laughed at. If I was right, well, maybe that’s why Cutter had that gun on the desk. So much for nothing to lose. I took a breath and plowed on. “That’s when you tried to recruit him. It’s also why you’ve brought me here. To see if I can be recruited.” I was going to say corrupted, as in this instance they were one and the same thing.
Cutter sat hunched over his brandy, his gray eyes increasingly bloodshot with booze and, I hoped, stress. He was deliberating, silently running through the options. I wondered if I’d be able to dive the seven feet across his desk and get to that gun before he could move his hands the six inches required to grab it, lift it, and exert the two pounds of pressure needed to fire a bullet into my head. This case had left my thirty-four-year-old body feeling sixty-four. I probably wouldn’t even get to spill his cognac.
“You might find this hard to believe, Special Agent Cooper, but I’m pleased that you proved to be every bit as agile an investigator as your record suggests. We need men like you.” He cleared his throat and stood without swaying. He might have been drinking for America, but he apparently had the constitution to handle it. For a second I almost admired him, but the second passed.
“Vincent, the First World War ended the old European empires and began a new one: the empire of the United States. We found ourselves the one superpower in a world exhausted by war. And so the roaring Twenties roared for us like no other nation on earth. Our industrial base, already vast, expanded exponentially. Then the Great Depression struck and brought us to our knees, along with every other industrialized country.”
The Death Trust Page 35
