He was ushered into the room, and the door was closed and automatically locked behind him. He looked around the empty room and wondered if he’d been shown into the wrong space. He stopped wondering when Mason Quantrell and Ellen Foster stepped through from an adjoining room.
“Sit, Peter, this shouldn’t take long,” said Foster.
She opened a laptop that rested in front of the chair she took while Quantrell sat beside her. He smiled at Bunting. “How goes it, Pete?”
Bunting ignored him and said to Foster, “Secretary Foster. Again, I have to tell you that I’m extremely uncomfortable with having my chief competitor in the room during a confidential discussion.”
She said demurely, “Peter, we have no secrets from each other, do we?”
“Actually we do. I employ a large number of people who perform very specialized work using procedures, protocols, proprietary soft- and hardware, algorithms, and the like that I have spent years and a great deal of money creating.” He glanced at Quantrell, who continued to stare at him with what appeared to be an amused expression, making Bunting want to reach across the table and strangle him.
Quantrell said, “Well, Pete, under the current structure with the E-Program, all of your competitors have to send off their data collections for your use. I spent a lot of money putting my business together, too. But I share.”
On the contrary, Bunting knew that Quantrell had made only a pretense of doing this over the years and was still collecting his government check. He had simply been waiting for any chance to take Bunting down. And it was clear he thought he had one now.
“Well, Mason, I’m sure if you’d been the one to come up with the E-Program you’d be smart enough to know it’s far better than the way we all used to operate in the Dark Ages. That was when you were top dog on the private-sector side and everybody was going in a hundred different directions at once. You know, when 9/11 happened?”
Quantrell’s patronizing smile faded and he snarled, “You have no idea who you’re dealing with, you little prick.”
“Okay, boys, we don’t have time for schoolyard posturing,” Foster admonished.
Bunting sat across from them and waited expectantly.
Foster entered her password and tapped some computer keys, read the information revealed on the screen, and showed it to Quantrell. He glanced over at Bunting and nodded.
If they were trying to intimidate him, thought Bunting, they were doing a spectacular job of it. But his face remained unreadable. He could play this game, too.
“Do we have an agenda?” he asked. “For the meeting?”
Foster motioned for him to wait just a moment while it appeared she was sending an e-mail. She closed the laptop and looked up at him.
“I do appreciate your meeting on such short notice, Peter.”
“Certainly, whatever I can do,” replied Bunting grudgingly.
She placed her elbows on the table. “I have one pertinent question and I’d like an honest reply.”
Bunting gazed blankly at her. “I hope that you believe I am always honest with you.”
“As it turns out, the question isn’t that difficult, but the answer may well be.” She paused. “Did you have Edgar Roy’s lawyer, Ted Bergin; his secretary, Hilary Cunningham; the director of Cutter’s Rock, Carla Dukes; and FBI Special Agent Brandon Murdock murdered?”
Bunting’s brain momentarily shut down. Then he literally shouted, “Of course I didn’t! I can’t believe you’d even ask the question.”
“Please calm down. Now do you know who did kill them? If so, we really need to know.”
“I don’t have people murdered. I have no idea who did it.”
“Bluster won’t work. Do you know who killed them?” she asked again.
Bunting eyed Quantrell. “Why is he here?”
“Because I asked him to be here. In fact, he’s been quite helpful in piecing some things together for DHS.”
Bunting put a hand on the table to steady himself. “What sort of things?”
“Let’s just say that Mr. Quantrell’s people have done some digging and uncovered some interesting facts.”
“Such as?” demanded Bunting.
“Not prepared to discuss them with you right now.”
“If you’re making accusations, I think I have every right to know what they’re based on.” He shot a furious glance at Quantrell. “Particularly if this guy is involved. He’d kill his own mother to win back the business I took from him because I was smarter than he was.”
Quantrell rose and looked as though he was about to leap over the table at Bunting.
Foster put a restraining hand on his arm and eyed Bunting with contempt. “One more remark like that, Peter, and you’ll force me to take action I don’t really want to take right now.”
“I want the record to reflect that anything this man has told you about me is tainted by the fact that he wants to destroy the E-Program.”
“Willing to take a lie detector test?” inquired Foster.
“I’m not a suspect in the investigation.”
“So that’s a no?” asked Quantrell.
“Yes, that’s a no,” Bunting snapped.
Quantrell smiled and glanced at Foster and shook his head.
She said, “Peter, I hope you realize the serious trouble that you’re in.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Madame Secretary, I really don’t.”
If they had had a heart monitor on Bunting right now, they probably would have rushed him to the emergency room. But then again, he thought, these two assholes might just let him die right on the floor.
“Last chance, Bunting,” advised Quantrell.
“Last chance for what? To sit here and confess to crimes I didn’t commit?” he snapped. “And you, Mason, have no right to demand anything of me, so stop acting like you’re the FBI. It’s pathetic.”
Foster said, “That’s actually not true.”
“Excuse me?” said Bunting warily.
“You know that the private- and public-sector lines have become increasingly blurred over time. Mr. Quantrell’s company has been tasked with uncovering corruption and illegalities in the intelligence arena. For that purpose certain governmental authority has been given to him and his people.”
Bunting stared at Quantrell in disbelief. “Is this like the idiot mercenaries in the Middle East who shot first and asked questions later? That was a stunning triumph for America’s global reputation.”
“It is what it is,” said Foster. “And who else would have had a motive to kill those people? Is it that they had found out about the E-Program?”
“Your program,” amended Quantrell. “The one you keep throwing in the rest of our faces.”
“Where exactly is all of this coming from?” asked Bunting.
Foster said, “I’ll tell you. It’s exactly coming from the FBI director. He asked me questions, Peter, questions I was duty-bound to answer. As a result, I’m afraid that you are now a suspect.”
“I see,” said Bunting coldly. “What exactly did you tell the director?”
“I’m sorry. I really can’t say.”
“So I’m a suspect but you can’t tell me why?”
“It’s really out of my hands. I actually tried to protect you.”
Like hell you did. “There’s no proof that I’ve done anything wrong,” said Bunting.
“Well, I’m sure the FBI is working on that right now,” replied Foster.
Bunting digested all of this and said, “Is that all?”
“I suppose it is,” said Foster.
Bunting rose. “Then I better get back to doing my job.”
“While you can,” said Quantrell.
Bunting said, “Six bodies in the barn. Interesting number.”
Quantrell and Foster stared back at him impassively.
“Six bodies. The E-Six Program? If I didn’t know better I’d think someone was playing a sick joke on me.”
As Bunting tur
ned to go, Foster said, “Peter, if by some miracle you are innocent I hope you make it through this in one piece.”
He turned to face her. “I wish the same for you, Madame Secretary,” he said.
CHAPTER
54
BUNTING SPENT THE SHORT PLANE RIDE on his G550 staring out at a large bank of lazy clouds. He barely noticed the plane had landed until the flight attendant handed him his coat and told him his car was waiting. The drive to the city took longer than the flight had. The maid greeted Bunting at the door of his Fifth Avenue brownstone.
“Is my wife in?” he asked the woman, who was petite and Latina.
“She is in her office, Mr. Bunting.”
He found her going over details for another social benefit. He didn’t even know what it was for, she was involved in so many. All good causes, he knew, that also allowed her and her friends to dress up, go to chic places, eat good food, and feel wonderful about themselves and what they did for the people who did not live in twenty-million-dollar brownstones on Fifth Avenue. But that was unfair. His wife had gone to hospitals with no photographers in tow and held AIDS and crack babies for hours because she wanted to help, because she felt compassion for them. She volunteered at soup kitchens and as a reading tutor at a homeless shelter, and she often brought their kids with her so they could see that life was not so wonderful for everyone. They had set up a foundation that funneled money and assistance to the poor and undereducated in the city.
And I do nothing when it comes to that.
But I keep the country safe. That was usually his easy answer to why he didn’t share in his wife’s philanthropic endeavors. But right now it didn’t seem very convincing.
He kissed his wife, who looked up at him in surprise. He hadn’t been home this early in years.
“Is everything okay at work?” she asked in a worried tone.
He smiled and sat down across from her in the exquisitely decorated office that alone had probably cost a quarter of a million dollars.
He wanted to talk to her about his problems, but she would have required the highest security clearances for that to happen. And she had none. Not a one, while he possessed the very highest of all. It was like living with someone from a different planet. He could never talk about work with the woman he loved. Never. So he simply smiled, even though he wanted to scream, and said, “Everything’s fine. Just thought I’d come home, spend some time with you and the kids.”
“Oh, well, I have to go out to a benefit at Lincoln Center. It’s so beautiful what they’ve done with the restoration. You need to go with me sometime.”
“Right, I will,” he said vaguely. “Sometime. And the kids?”
“They’re at my sister’s house. Remember? We talked about this. They’ll be back tomorrow morning. We did talk about it,” she added gently.
Bunting’s smile faded. I’m an idiot. I basically run the nation’s intelligence grid to keep all Americans safe and I don’t even know where my own kids are.
He tried to laugh it off. “Right. I know. I’ve got some things to do in my study.”
He went to his bedroom, dropped his two-thousand-dollar jacket on the floor, undid his three-hundred-dollar tie, poured himself a drink from the minibar in the adjacent sitting area, and gazed out the window at the darkening skies. Fall had settled in with cooler temperatures and fouler weather. It only added to his depression.
He looked around the confines of his bedroom, which had been personally designed by someone who went by only one name and was written up all the time in the sorts of magazines Bunting never read. Everything was elegant and in its place and spic-and-span clean. His entire home could be in a magazine. But it never would be because of what he did for a living. The country’s spy heads expected their hired lackeys to tiptoe through life, not run screaming down the halls with money clutched in their fat fists.
He also had a library of handsomely bound leather books, many of them first editions of wonderful fiction penned by storied writers from the past. Or so he’d heard. The one-name designer and his wife had purchased them all in a single lot. He’d never actually read any of them. Didn’t have the time. He wasn’t much into fiction. Cold, hard facts ruled his entire existence.
He took one flight down to his study and spent about an hour working there. Then, when his concentration continued to wander, he clicked off his computer, rubbed his eyes, and went back upstairs, where his wife was finishing dressing for her night out.
“You can come with me,” she said. “I’m on the board. I can certainly get you a seat.”
“Thanks, maybe another time. I’m really beat.”
She turned around, lifted up her hair, and pointed down to her zipper. “Can you help me, sweetie?”
Before he zipped her up he let his gaze wander down the inside of her dress, to the black thong she wore. He reached his hand down and squeezed her soft butt cheeks.
“I thought you said you were really beat,” she chided him.
“That was before I saw you naked.”
“God, your timing is incredibly poor.”
“I know,” he admitted
After he zipped her up he moved his hand along her smooth back, which made her writhe a bit. She turned to him, smiled. “I shouldn’t be too late tonight if you really want to fool around later. I bought some new lingerie.”
“I’d like that,” he said, momentarily forgetting that people were dropping all around him, and that he was facing professional doom or even an early and violent death. This thought coupled with the seeming domestic bliss of his life made him feel suddenly dizzy.
She kissed him and said, “I’m having Leon drive me over. He’ll wait to bring me back. Or he can come directly back if you need the car.”
“No, I don’t plan on going out. See you later, honey.”
He watched her leave. At forty-six his wife was still a stunner. They’d been married over seventeen years, and it felt like the first year over and over.
I’m a very lucky man. In some ways. Not so much in others.
Time passed and he wandered the house, a second glass of gin he’d poured dangling precariously in his hand. He finished it off, chewed the ice cubes down, sucking in every last drop of alcohol.
Foster and Quantrell were in this together and obviously had been for quite some time. Bunting had moles embedded everywhere, but they’d completely missed that little alliance. The E-Program, despite its proven worth, was going up in flames. And those two were poised to walk out of that fire with their kingdoms not only intact but far larger. And Bunting?
Either I’m dead or in prison. They’ve set me up nicely.
He had called James Harkes and gotten no answer back. It was clear to Bunting what that meant. Harkes was supposed to be his attack dog. But he had returned to his true master now, like Cerberus to Hades.
He rubbed his forehead. Harkes had been a plant. Either by Foster or Quantrell, or both. If he had killed those people? If the FBI thought that Bunting… Enough evidence to send him away forever, he was sure, was all neatly planted. Foster was nothing if not thorough.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. The comforter had been hand-sewn in Italy. It had cost more than Bunting’s first year’s college tuition. He had never much thought about this. And he didn’t dwell on it now. He would buy a hundred such comforters if only he could put this all behind him.
He took a deep breath and smelled the alcohol coming out of his mouth. It tickled his nose, warmed him. He poured another gin, let it wash down his gullet, splash into his gut, and give him a cool burn, like diving into icy water naked.
His phone buzzed. Bunting lifted it from his pocket, gazed at it wearily when he saw who it was. He considered not answering it, then habit took over and he relented.
“Yes, Avery?”
“I just received a call from Sean King. He wants to meet.”
Bunting didn’t say anything. He felt a painful stitch in his chest.
“Mr. Bunting?”
“He wants to meet.”
“I heard that. With you?”
“No, with you.”
Bunting cleared his throat, tried to work some saliva into his mouth. “When?”
Avery didn’t say anything.
“When!”
“He said he’s standing outside your house right now.”
CHAPTER
55
KELLY PAUL LOWERED her binoculars and studied the immediate landscape as afternoon fell away into evening in eastern Maine. She had a pad and pen. She made some notes: numbers, locations of things, degrees on the compass, obstacles, and possible advantages. She looked out to the ocean. The water was calm today. Cutter’s Rock didn’t seem nearly as intimidating from this heightened angle.
She lifted the binoculars once more as the van passed through security and arrived at the front doors to the facility. She adjusted the magnification and studied the writing on the side of the van. Cutter’s must be having an issue with their power system, she concluded. And these gents were here to fix it. They were inside for nearly two hours and then did some work at a second, far smaller building behind the main facility. Later, they came out, put their equipment in the van, and drove away.
Paul lowered her optics when the van passed from sight.
The federal facility, she concluded, was an onion with layers that needed to be peeled away. After Sean had told her about it Paul had had Michelle tell her in detail about the other pair of eyes she’d seen on Cutter’s. She had given Paul the approximate location of these eyes. That was why she was here, to see it for herself. It was a good observation point. She could understand why they had chosen it.
She looked down at the facility plans in her hands. They had been hard to come by. But she had built up many favors over the years and could think of no better reason to use them. She had also learned that Cutter’s Rock had gotten a new director to replace the deceased Carla Dukes. She was certain that this new person had been as carefully selected as the last one, perhaps even more so. She wrote other things down and then used her cell phone to make some calls. She had suspected certain tactical actions were in the works, and her observations today had confirmed that. She needed help. With these phone calls she cashed in more favors and got the assets she needed. It was proof of the work that she had done in the field over the last two decades that not a single person said no, or even questioned why she wanted to do this.
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