“Because he knows you and trusts you. He’ll be more honest with you. I’m sure he won’t tell you everything, he can’t afford to. But he might betray himself if you tell him you found papers among your husband’s things that mention the lobbyists and some Arab deals. And he won’t know what you’ve found, so he’ll have to bluff his way through, but he might tip his hand, or implicate himself. I think that’s what they’re hoping.”
“I wish I didn’t have to do it.” Alix’s heart went out to her. “He’s coming here for dinner, probably on Saturday,” she said mournfully, and after what she knew now, it would be the last time. He should never have continued to put Bill’s reputation at risk. She had incorrectly assumed that whatever deals he had made were a thing of the past, not that he was continuing. He had sworn to Bill there was no money involved, and he was trading favors, which was bad enough. This was infinitely worse.
“Are you going to wear the wire?” Alix asked her again, and Olympia looked shaken and unsure.
“I have to think about it,” she repeated. “Tell them I’ll let them know.” Alix handed her Pelham’s card, and told her to get in touch with them directly. She had delivered their message. It was all she could do. The rest was up to Olympia and the CIA. Alix was off the hook, and Olympia Foster was on it, but so was Bill. And Olympia had lost her only friend. Alix felt desperately sorry for her.
Chapter 9
The following day, Alix got another threat in the mail at the network. It was the same theme as the first two. If she didn’t stop meddling in politics and stay away, someone would kill her. It was simple and clear. But she had made no inquiries about Clark and the lobbyists in weeks. Why were they still threatening? She talked to John Pelham about it, and he assured her they had gone underground with their investigation. But the threats were continuing. What else were they hiding or afraid she would expose? And who was writing the letters?
Faye had three shifts of bodyguards per day at Duke, and Alix had at least one shift now too, and was still staying at Ben’s, and longing to go back to her apartment. She could only go there with the bodyguard to pick up clothes and take them to Ben’s. And she had insisted that she didn’t need security when she was with Ben. As an ex–Navy SEAL, Ben had a license to carry a concealed weapon and he knew how to use it. He carried a gun now when he went out alone with her, or brought her to work in the morning. It made her uneasy just knowing he had it on him, especially at night in his apartment. She used the bodyguard at work in case someone showed up at the network.
By then, Olympia had contacted Pelham, and agreed to wear the wire when Tony came to dinner on Saturday night, as she had thought he would. Alix had been sure that she would do it, for Bill’s sake. Olympia had met with the Clandestine team to brief her on what she needed to say and ask him. She was going to play heavily on her innocence, and follow their script to the letter. She felt like a monster, but if Tony were guilty it would hurt Bill. She wondered if he’d really go to prison. It seemed hard to believe, and she knew her children would be devastated too. He was their idol, and he had a young wife who was pregnant again. Everyone was going to get hurt because of what he’d done, even innocent children, like his two very young ones, and even his unborn baby. Instead of being there for them and Megan, he would be in prison, probably for a long time.
Felix decided he wanted Alix and Ben out of town again by the end of the week. With the threats against her, it was too stressful for her and everyone else to keep her in New York. Ben never let her out of his sight now, except in the bathroom. He was her own private bodyguard. And an agent of the FBI was at her disposal whenever she needed him.
There had been a massive flood in New Orleans when a levee broke again. The damage wasn’t as bad as after Hurricane Katrina, but the city had been declared a federal disaster area in a state of emergency, and Felix decided he’d rather have Alix there than in New York. Things were getting too tense over Tony Clark.
After talking to Felix, the CIA agreed to let her leave town, as long as they could reach her, and they suggested that Ben remain armed. Olympia Foster was being cooperative with them, although she was terrified of the dinner with Tony, and wearing the wire. The CIA had promised her that nothing dramatic would happen at dinner. She would make a few casual comments and see what they elicited from him. Probably a few vague responses and lies. The panic would come later, after he left her, when he tried to figure out where the leak was and how bad. He would never suspect Olympia of cooperating with the CIA to ensnare him. And by the time he knew, they would arrest him and he’d be in jail. They were already poised with a secret grand jury waiting to hear evidence to indict him, and a judge to sign a warrant at any hour. All the pieces of the machinery of justice were in place, depending on what he said on Saturday night, and did after he left. Clark had no idea what was coming, the National Clandestine Service was sure of that. And the Director of National Intelligence was aware of the situation too. Nothing like it had ever happened with a Vice President before.
—
Ben and Alix got on a plane to New Orleans on Thursday morning. She was relieved to get out of town, and so was he. The tension had become unbearable, waiting for the dinner to happen, Olympia to play her role, see how Clark would respond, and what he would do after that. And the death threats against Alix were the last straw. She was delighted to get away and be on assignment, even to a flood. They checked in to a motel at the airport, rented a car, then got as close to the flooded area of the city as they could and got into a police boat wearing their press badges. Ben had the videocam rolling the entire time to show the damaged areas, and they stopped to pick up people wading through the water or swimming, and several large dogs, along the way. It was a long, grueling night, and they were both exhausted and wet, despite their high boots and rain gear, when they got back to the motel at four A.M.
They were up again at seven and dressed by eight the next day. Alix turned on the TV, while Ben went to get coffee at a nearby Starbucks, and he returned with cappuccino and cinnamon rolls for both of them, which they ate while watching the news on TV, when it was suddenly interrupted by a news bulletin from North Carolina. The scene on the screen was one of chaos, with students running and screaming, the sound of gunshots ringing out as the cellphone video they were watching danced crazily, while the person holding it ducked behind some form of obstruction with their arm still held out and the video rolling. It only took a second to realize what was happening. It was a campus shooting, and the announcer and a band of text across the screen said that fourteen students had been killed in the first few minutes and twenty-two injured, three more students and one teacher had died on the way to hospitals, and the shooter had committed suicide. There were a total of nineteen dead so far, and it had happened half an hour earlier at Duke University.
News teams were on the scene by then, as students and professors hugged each other and cried. They ran the video again as Ben and Alix watched in silent horror. What if Faye had been at the scene? Alix set her cup down on the table and stared at the screen with a sense of panic, as the announcer said that all that was known of the shooter was that he had left the university for reasons of psychiatric disability six months before, had been hospitalized briefly, released, and returned to the school to work as a maintenance man on the grounds. It was a classic scenario of a young person who had exhibited mental problems for a long time, been identified, and then slipped through everyone’s fingers. A former fellow classmate said he had talked about building a bomb in his apartment from instructions he got on the Internet, and the classmate had thought he was kidding, so he never reported it to anyone. His parents had not been reached yet for comment, and among those he had shot was his former girlfriend, who was in critical condition at a local hospital. Alix started calling Faye immediately on her cellphone. It kept ringing and no one answered. What if she was dead?
Alix’s terror was palpable as she rambled to Ben. “It’s always so goddamn obvious. Everyone knows h
ow crazy they are, and they don’t do anything about it, and then suddenly nineteen people are dead and twenty-two injured and…” She stopped talking as she watched a young girl being carried on a stretcher with paramedics running beside her. She was crying and screaming and her face was covered with blood, and it took Alix only an instant to realize that the face covered with blood was her daughter’s. She saw them put the stretcher in the ambulance, which took off at high speed with siren screaming as they switched to another scene of students hugging each other and crying. Alix was on her feet instantly, looking terrified. “Oh my God!…Oh my God, Ben…that was Faye!” Suddenly the campus tragedy they’d been watching had a whole new meaning. She looked at Ben with wild eyes, not sure what to do next. “I’ve gotta go…oh God, Ben, that was Faye!” Ben grabbed her by the shoulders to try to slow her down and calm her.
“She’s alive. You just saw her. She’s okay.” He tried to get through the haze that had engulfed Alix when she saw her child’s face on the screen. Only a mother would have recognized her, her face was so covered in blood. And where was the FBI bodyguard? “We’ll call the hospitals right now,” he reassured her, as Alix pushed him away to grab her purse and rush for the door.
“I have to go to her!”
Ben held her arm in a firm grip and forced her to sit down on the bed.
“Let’s call the hospital first. She’s alive, Alix,” he repeated sternly to fight her obvious panic. She nodded dumbly and started sobbing, as he looked up local hospitals in the area of the university, but no one had her registered yet and the scene at the hospitals was pandemonium, as reporters continued to broadcast from the campus with updates. Ben called Felix in New York then and explained what had happened, and that Alix had to leave immediately to get to her daughter.
“The earliest I can get someone there to replace you is tonight,” Felix said, apologetically. “Is Alix’s daughter okay?”
“She’s among the injured. It looked pretty bad on-screen, we just saw her,” Ben said in a low voice. “Alix is very upset.”
“You can leave tonight,” Felix said, trying to figure out who to send to replace them. As always happened in a crisis, he was short-staffed that day and had all his best people out on stories in the field and he couldn’t recall them fast enough to relieve Alix. A five-alarm fire had killed six firefighters in Brooklyn, and the chief of police had just quit after a fight with the mayor. It never failed.
Ben hung up and told her that Felix had promised to get someone there by that night, and Alix looked at him in a fury and leapt to her feet again. “Fuck Felix! I’m not waiting till tonight. My kid is hurt, and she could be dead by now. I’m leaving here on the next plane and I don’t give a damn about the flood.” Ben could see that, he was caught in the middle, and he wasn’t going to let her leave alone. She was in no condition to be reasonable or even face what might happen when she got to her daughter. The television droned on behind them as Alix yelled at him in rising panic.
“We can’t just walk out of here, Alix,” he said in a soothing tone, which got him nowhere. She was beyond negotiating about it, and he didn’t blame her.
“Watch me!” she said in an irate tone. “I’m not staying here for another minute.” She called the airline herself then and discovered that there was no flight to Raleigh-Durham until six o’clock that evening. She was even more desperate after that, and Ben made a rapid decision. They both knew that Felix could use local feed for the day if he had to. It wasn’t a stellar solution and didn’t look good for the network, but the flood wasn’t top of the news now anyway. It had been preempted by the shooting at Duke.
“I’ll call Felix. He can use the local broadcasts here,” Ben said calmly. It was more important for them to be at Duke now anyway. For Faye, and the network.
“How am I going to get out of here?” Alix said, crying harder. “And where the hell was the FBI guy?”
Ben wondered if he had been injured too.
“I’ll drive you. Pack your stuff,” he told Alix, having made the decision. His phone told him it was a thirteen-hour drive, which was the best they could do for now. He had a tense conversation with Felix, and told him there was no other choice. Alix wouldn’t stay, and he was going with her. Felix knew when he was beaten and gave up trying to convince Ben to wait until that night. He was pissed, but he couldn’t force them to stay there in the circumstances. Ten minutes later, their bags were in the car, and the TV was still on when they left the room and drove away after paying for the room, as Alix looked at him gratefully.
“Thank you,” she said, as he headed toward the highway. “Are we both getting fired?” she asked Ben as they drove, he was driving fast, and she was a little calmer.
“Do we care?” He glanced over at her, and she smiled a wintry smile.
“No, we don’t. Or at least I don’t. I’m sorry if I got you in trouble,” she said sincerely. He was a good friend as well as a great work partner.
“Fuck that. I’m sorry your daughter is hurt.” They were on the highway twenty minutes later, going just over the speed limit, as Alix called the hospitals again, and an hour later, they found her, but Alix couldn’t talk to her. All the trauma unit nurse would say was that she had a head wound and was in serious condition.
“Oh my God, she must have been shot in the head,” Alix said, as panic washed over her again, and she wished she could call her mother, but she didn’t want to terrify her, with too little information to balance what she did know. She would call her when she got there and had seen Faye. And she was hoping the shooting wouldn’t be reported in France, or at least not yet, which gave her time to learn the facts before contacting her mother.
“She was conscious when we saw her,” Ben reminded Alix, as he kept a foot steadily on the gas and wished they had rented a better car. He was pushing the one they had nearly to its limits. Alix continued to call the hospital every half hour as he drove, but there was no news. They just kept giving her the same information, and the hospital was in chaos, with the injured that had been brought in. Ben had set the radio on a news channel, and the death toll had risen to twenty-one, but thank God they knew that Faye wasn’t among them for the moment. The chancellor of the university had given an interview, and Alix was staring grimly straight ahead. “Are you doing okay?” Ben asked her, and she nodded. He had a look of deep empathy in his eyes and she thanked him again. He was a good man to have in a crisis, he had a cool head and acted quickly, without panic. After a while, he spoke again. “I know what you’re going through,” he said softly. “I had a son who would be a year younger than Faye now.” It was the first time in four years that he had ever mentioned it to her and she was stunned. He was a man of many facets and secrets, none of which he shared easily.
“What happened to him?” She was afraid to ask, but she had to after what he had just said.
“He drowned when he was three. I was away, as usual, on a mission in Libya, it was a hostage situation at the embassy. His name was Christopher. My wife took him to a friend’s house, there were lots of little kids and a pool, he fell in, or jumped in, he was a brave little guy, and they didn’t see him until too late. He’d been dead for two weeks by the time she reached me. I didn’t even get to his funeral. I was pretty harsh with her. She loved hanging out with her friends, and I guess they were all talking and it must have happened very fast. The paramedics tried to revive him, but they couldn’t, and by the time they got there, they said he would have been brain-dead anyway. Our marriage was over after that. She blamed me for being away and never being there with them, and I blamed her for not watching him properly. She was pregnant and lost the baby from the shock, and we never got over it. We got divorced a year later. She has two more kids now. I never wanted more after Chris. He was the cutest little guy you’ve ever seen. I figured I couldn’t go through it again, to have a kid you love that much, and lose him. Chris was it for me. No more kids.” He knew exactly what Alix was feeling or thought he did, and she didn’t kn
ow what to say to him. She put a hand on his arm as he drove, and tears rolled down his cheeks after what he’d told her. Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, too moved by what he’d said.
“It wasn’t your fault, Ben. You were doing your job. And maybe it wasn’t hers either.”
“Probably not. He wasn’t afraid of anything, and he loved the water. I had taught him to swim, but he jumped into the deep end and I guess it was too much for him. But why the hell wasn’t she watching him instead of talking to her girlfriends? I’ve asked myself that for fifteen years. I was angry for a long time, and I took the worst assignments they’d give me, hoping I’d get killed in the line of duty. And then I just ran out of gas, and stopped hating her and feeling sorry for myself. It’s just destiny, I guess, or the way things are written somewhere, like what happened to Faye today. She’ll be okay. She looked alert when we saw her on the screen. And head wounds bleed like crazy, even superficial ones.” Alix nodded, and kept her hand on his arm as he stopped crying.
“Thank you for telling me about Christopher.” She was deeply touched and her heart ached for him. She could see how painful it still was. And there was no way to make it better. Even time hadn’t healed it, and never would.
“I never talk about him. It still hurts too much. I was always terrified something would happen to him because I loved him so much. And then it did.”
“That’s how I feel about Faye. And I always feel so guilty for not being there for her for the first five years, and I’m away all the time and always have been. My marriage was kind of a non-event. We got married so that the baby would be born in wedlock, we wouldn’t have gotten married otherwise. We hardly knew each other. His parents wanted us to get divorced right away. And then he died in the accident. But I fell in love with Faye eventually. It’s a terrible thing sometimes to love someone that much. I wouldn’t want to do it again either. I worry about her all the time, and she hates me for the work I do. She’s always afraid I’ll get killed. And instead, we spend our life in war zones and she’s the one who gets shot on a college campus. How does that make sense? And she had a bodyguard near her somewhere.”
Dangerous Games Page 13
