by Joe Gores
He wandered around the sprawling Georgetown campus until he found the library, old and almost spooky, and went around behind to go inside. In the computer room, he logged onto the internet. Called up the New York Times and the Washington Post coverage of the president’s recent successful campaign, starting with the Democratic Convention. Paused at the frontpage picture of Wallberg with his wife Edith and their grown children after he accepted the nomination. Their son, 30, a lawyer in St. Paul; their daughter, 27, finishing a psych PhD from University of Chicago. The nuclear family intact. Hiding what secrets?
Thorne chose an array of stories to make it look convincing, and started printing. Getting more background on Corwin would make sense to Hatfield. As they printed, he quickly and surreptitiously sent an e-mail to an old Ranger buddy named Victor Blackburn who had lost part of one hand in Panama and until retirement was riding out his career behind a desk. His job gave him access to many of the Army’s most sensitive files.
He and Victor had seen – and done – some shit in Panama that had welded iron bonds of friendship between them. They had been half crazed from weeks under the pressure-cooker canopy. Sitting back to back, getting eaten alive by whatever insects were flying around or mooching over them from the leaf-litter in which they squatted, the rain coming in bursts like rifle fire. And Thorne once had arrived while Victor was being tortured for intel and had ended the torturers before they could end Victor.
His e-mail to Victor was short and to the point:
Victor: Anything you can dig up on a Halden Corwin (?NMI?) who maybe had a troubled childhood and suddenly quit junior college in 1966 to go into Special Forces and volunteer for a crack sniper team in Vietnam. Why he volunteered for service, how good he was, what he did after he got out. Word is he became a mercenary, but I need confirmation and as many details from as many places as you can find.
Thorne
He sent it, deleted it, then left the work station for the men’s room so a studious-looking woman with big hornrim glasses could stroll by his table and note the printouts.
He carried them back to his hotel in the gathering dusk, stopping in the lounge for a drink and surreptitiously watched the Feebs drop visual on him for mobile surveillance outside the hotel in case he went out again. Which told him that his room phone was bugged by this time, also.
Only then, unobserved as far as he could tell, did he go to the desk to ask for any other mail. There was another manila envelope, this one hand-delivered. No sender’s name on it.
Was it from Johnny Doyle? In his room he tore open the envelope with an urgency that surprised him. He realized that he just had to know whether his go-to guy had come through or not.
11
It was from Doyle: photocopies of the Terminous Market phone records for the day of the murders and the two weeks preceding. Obviously conned out of a phone-company employee so there would be no telltale paperwork. Probably a drinking buddy. Social engineering.
Several local calls either to or from the Tower Park Marina, the attached Sunset Bar and Grill, and the adjoining trailer park. Three outgoing long-distance calls to suppliers, four incoming from them. Paydirt was calls from various cities in the western states each Tuesday and Thursday at two p.m., the last three from the same LA phone booth. The calls to Nisa.
At noon on November third, election day, a call had come from an unknown number in LA two hours early. The instant Nisa heard the voice, according to the Terminous Market proprietor, she had cried, ‘You!’ and slammed down the receiver. Corwin, telling his daughter he had found them?
Had to be. She ‘real quick’ made several calls of her own – starting at 12:04 p.m. – trying to track down someone, who was hard to reach, at the elegant Marquis Hotel in Beverly Hills. Obviously Jaeger, who had said that when she got him, he grabbed two private security guards and tried to get to her. Because of bad weather, they arrived too late to save her and her husband.
How had Corwin known where to find them? And once he knew, why call her? He was maybe psychotic, but not demented and not dismissable. He had withdrawn when he had suffered the loss of his wife, had brooded, alone, in the great north woods until someone shot him. Deliberately, he came to believe. Finally, that it was his son-in-law. So he went looking.
Revenge. Revenge within Corwin’s own moral code. Totally understandable to Thorne. A moral code that could explain the phone call he never got a chance to complete. Almost chivalric.
But then why murder Nisa with such sadistic rage? And why, if the man he thought was his attacker was now dead, was he threatening Wallberg? Going back further, why would Mather try to kill Corwin? How could Corwin’s death advance his career?
More likely, as everyone believed, it had been just a random hunting accident, not Damon Mather at all. Corwin had acted on a paranoid obsession devoid of any basis in fact. His stalk of the president was just more delusional behavior.
Stymied, Thorne went back to those calls every Tuesday and Thursday. From Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, finally California. Reassurance calls from someone on Wallberg’s staff? But until Nisa’s panicked calls, nobody had known why they resigned from the campaign, let alone where they were.
Maybe a way to check on that? Thorne huddled over the news reports from the Georgetown library’s computer, laboriously checking the whereabouts of Wallberg’s campaign party against the city of origin of each of those Tuesday and Thursday phone calls.
Huddled around a table in an isolated corner of the Hoover Building’s cafeteria were Hatfield, the bogus homeless man, the two jocks who had been discussing yachts on the Georgetown dock, and the dark-haired woman with studious hornrims who had checked out what Thorne was doing at the library. The rest of the crew, including the bogus hiker with the splendid thighs, was patrolling the streets around the Mayflower. None of them was from Hatfield’s crack Hostage/Rescue team; but these were eager, competent agents or trainees unaware that their surveillance of Thorne was unsanctioned, arguably illegal.
Hatfield pointed across the table at the homeless man.
‘Gary. Has he burned you people?’
‘No way, Boss.’ Gary, really into his dumpster-diving persona, smelled bad. ‘He’s clueless.’
‘He might be hot stuff out in the boonies,’ smirked Jock Number One, who had a rather patrician nose. ‘But in an urban environment he doesn’t know where to look or who to look for.’
Hatfield pointed at blond Jock Number Two, who looked something like a very young Jack Nicklaus. ‘Nutshell his day.’
‘Breakfast at the Mayflower. Up to the fitness facility, worked out, swam. Checked at the desk, got the file on Corwin.’
Back to Jock Number One. ‘Michael?’
‘Walked down to the Georgetown dock, had iced tea and read Corwin’s file. Thought for a while, then left.’
Gary, the homeless man, took it up. ‘Wandered around the Georgetown campus. As soon as he headed for the library, I alerted Charlene so she could be inside ahead of him.’
‘He went to the computer room and logged on to the internet,’ said Hornrims. ‘When he went to the men’s room, I was able to ascertain that he was accessing presidential campaign coverage in the New York Times and the Washington Post.’
Trying to find a pattern of movement that Corwin might also find, thought Hatfield, hoping to get to the intersection of President and assassin before the assassin did. Correct, conventional stuff. Good. Thorne was being predictable.
Jock Number One said, ‘He went back to the Mayflower, ordered room service.’
Jock Number Two said eagerly, ‘Should we access his room to make copies of the articles he abstracted from the newspapers?’
‘Too risky. We have the tap on his phone.’ Hatfield leaned back, feeling smug. ‘Good work, people. Stay on him. Remember, if he takes a crap…’
‘We’re there to hand him the toilet paper,’ said Gary.
When panic struck, Nisa had called Jaeger for help. All of the Tuesday/Thursd
ay calls had originated in cities where Wallberg’s campaign was on that day. So the calls had to be reassurance calls from Jaeger. Who had lied when he said no one knew where they had gone. Acting on his own, helping them hide? Or…
What if Wallberg had come to believe that Mather had tried to murder Corwin? He would have had to drop Nisa and Damon from the campaign and its safety net of Secret Service agents: an assassination attempt stemming from his campaign team, rather than directed at it, would have been disastrous. In that case, Jaeger’s help would have been damage control, keeping Nisa and Damon from the media.
Thorne wished he had a photo of Nisa. He wished he knew whose .357 Magnum it was. He wished he could reconstruct the sequence of events aboard the houseboat that night. He wished, he wished… But none of it was going to happen easily, not with Hatfield’s people following him around like ducklings that had imprinted on him.
He bedded down at 2:30 a.m. and tossed and turned for an hour, almost afraid to seek sleep. But when it did come, no nightmare rode it. His subconscious must have thought he was doing something right.
Gustave Wallberg stood at a window in the Oval Office as if watching, through the lace curtains, the small army of gardeners making the wide expanse of White House grounds bright with spring flower borders. Actually, he was seeing last night.
Edith, his chickadee-quick wife, sitting on the edge of the bed in one of her usual shapeless nightgowns, watching him remove the fancy brocaded robe she had given him for Christmas.
‘What’s bothering you, darling?’
He said, ‘Politics and polls, sweetheart, inspired by our friends across the aisle, hinting that I’m staying inside the Beltway because of terrorist threats, implying that I’m afraid.’
‘Polls! Politics!’ She put her arms around him. ‘You aren’t afraid of anything on earth! You are my fearless lion.’
That’s when he made his decision.
‘I’m meeting with Kurt and the staff tomorrow to announce that we will be making a swing through the top red states with a major domestic or foreign policy announcement at each stop. Shake ’em up a bit.’
He turned from the window: suddenly he had seen, reflected there, not Edith, but Nisa. Nisa, waiting for him in the little motel out by the Minneapolis airport with the grotesque faded pink fake-flock wallpaper, naked in the bed that brayed and banged the wall in delight at their passion…
But Nisa was gone. Dead and gone. And he was alive.
12
Doing laps in the hotel pool, Thorne decided he’d ditch the Feebs following him. Their surveillance was almost insulting, it was so slipshod. He hit the shower, stood under pounding water that was first boiling, then icy, towelled off, dressed.
Yes, ditch them, but in such a way that they couldn’t be sure it had been deliberate. Then what? A movie? A bar? Until Wallberg ventured beyond his iron ring of security inside the Beltway, he could only wait. As he was sure Corwin also waited.
Then he had it. Ditch his minders, meet Johnny Doyle as if by chance, hint about his need for the murder-scene forensics.
Wallberg met his people at noon in the basement conference room. Jaeger, Hatfield, Crandall, and Quarles, with Johnny Doyle bringing people things they wanted. No official record of the meeting: the audio and visual recorders were turned off.
It had been put out to staff that it was a housekeeping, not a security, briefing. These were done every morning by the National Security Council: National Security Advisor Gelson Hennings, head of the White House Secret Service detail Shayne O’Hara, and the heads of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, and NSA.
‘You have two weeks,’ Wallberg told the people assembled in the room. This had been his style as governor. People did their best work under pressure. ‘Then we make a major swing through the top red states. I need input from all of you on where to go and what to say when we get there. At the end of it, I want the themes of this administration’s first term in office succinctly spelled out for all to see.’
‘Two weeks! That doesn’t give us time to—’
‘That is all the time you have, Kurt. Inform the cabinet and the Secret Service. Keep the speech-writers busy. Get out the front-men to set up the press arrangements. Have O’Hara coordinate with local police, Homeland Security, and the FBI.’ He grinned his famous grin at Hatfield. ‘The rest of the FBI.’
‘This is about Corwin,’ Hatfield exclaimed.
‘Yes. Corwin. I need your assessment. Is it safe for us to make public appearances outside the Beltline?’
Now was not the time to hesitate. ‘I and my men now know how he escaped in the California Delta in November, Mr. President, and how he eluded us in California’s King’s Canyon in March.’ Hatfield did not say that it was Thorne who had worked out Corwin’s methods. ‘With what we now know, he will be unable to mount any viable assassination attempt.’
Doyle was behind the wet bar, unnoticed by anyone, a ghost of times past. When the President ordered them to get front men out, he felt his own surge of emotion. He would get his old job back! As of this instant, Thorne was gone from his radar.
Jaeger was intense. ‘You are saying, Terrill, that Hal Corwin is still alive and active in his desire to assassinate the President. So the danger from him is still very real.’
‘Real, but assessable, like that posed by foreign terrorists and white supremacists and anti-abortion activists and other right-wing kooks. Once we know the sites, Mr. President, I and my men will evaluate the potential danger at each stop.’
‘Get to it, people,’ said Wallberg. ‘I want twice daily briefings from everyone involved, starting this afternoon.’
He lingered after the others had left. He hadn’t consulted Jaeger beforehand, though the bond between them went back to that shared decision on election day. A decision that gave Kurt a lot of power. But not even Jaeger knew everything. No one did.
‘Ah… Mr. President…’ He turned quickly. It was Johnny Doyle. ‘You said, sir, that you would be needing front men to go out before your trip. I thought maybe…’
‘Out of the question,’ Wallberg snapped. Crandall and Quarles had keyed him in on Doyle’s drinking problem. He strode out, stopping just short of adding, ‘You fool.’
Halden Corwin drank black coffee as bitter as his thoughts, and clicked the president’s official website on his laptop to make his daily check on any travel plans by Wallberg, and rubbed his aching knee. Who was he fooling? He was half-crippled. Despite daily practice, he might miss his shot even if he got it. Maybe he should just fold his hand, rot here in this one-room cabin where he lived his narrowed life…
He came erect with a jerk, self-loathing forgotten. A travel itinerary! Ten stops in five states in six days, starting two weeks from today. One site leaped out at him from all the towns and cities and rural areas listed. Years ago, unwinding between overseas jobs, he’d gone on a hiking trip near that spot.
Leaving Terry home to mind baby. Memory wrenched an unexpected sob from him. After Terry’s death, he had gone to the site of the hit-and-run on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. Terry was crossing with the green light when a Mercury Cougar knocked her catty-corner across the intersection and smashed her against the second-story window of an office building sixty feet away.
They caught up with the hit-and-run driver a week later. He lost his license for a year. Corwin took a vow to stalk him and take him from his wife as the man had taken Terry from him.
That same night the nightmare started. The THUD of impact, he was running hard across the intersection to catch Terry before she hit the sidewalk. He was too late. As he knelt beside her broken body, she floated to her feet and began to glide away.
He ran after her, calling her name, pursuing her through the hot, devastated landscapes of his mercenary assignments, dead bodies strewn about. She paused to look back at him with great sadness, then disappeared into a grove of mortar-shredded palm trees and was gone. That was when he awoke. Every time.
The nightmare continued durin
g two more years of mercenary jobs before he finally understood what Terry was telling him: No more killing. No more dealing out death in hot countries. No more thoughts of killing the man who had killed her.
He deeded their house to Nisa, went into the north woods to become a trapper and a hunter of animals, not men. The nightmare stopped. The years went by. Then he was shot himself, his attacker’s slugs taking him down, ripping his flesh, leaving him half-crippled, distorted of mind and emotion. He couldn’t hunt even animals any more. His life was over.
But Nisa began driving up to visit him at Whitby Hernild’s little clinic in Portage. As he healed, she invited him down to St. Paul for Christmas. When he tried to find out who had shot him, and why, she had helped him look…
Back to the site of Wallberg’s speech. It would work. He would make it work. Energized, he limped aross the little cabin to get his fleece-lined jacket from its peg on the wall beside the fireplace. He went to the wardrobe he had built to hold his clothes and meager possessions, and got out his gun case.
The rifle, the scope, the ammo that he would use on that day. There was so much newer, better sniper hardware now. The M-40A3 rifle, and the newest night scope, the AN/PVS-10. But it wasn’t the hardware that counted: it was the software, the wiring inside the brain and body that made the great sniper.
From now until he left for the Bitterroot Wilderness Area, all of his practice shots would be made at a thousand yards out, out beyond any imaginable security perimeter, out where even now only a few shooters could go. If he really existed, was the dangerous tracking beast of his dreams one of them? Anyway, no way could he divine where and when Hal Corwin would strike.
Corwin took his rifle out into the cold northern spring day. A vivid flash of memory: going deer-hunting for the first time with his dad so many years before. The thud of hunters’ shots, thirteen of them, and his father saying, there’ll be blood on the snow tonight…
