“Bingo. I got your man. Let me track his file and I’ll call you back in the morning with an update.”
“You’ve got my number.”
“Had it,” she added for good measure in her sexiest voice. “And by the way, congratulations. Hope she’s good.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You have a sweetheart. I heard it in your voice. What you said.”
“Oh, you are good.”
“You used to think so. Anyway, I am Army intelligence.”
“I’ll say.”
“Good luck, Roarke. Maybe it’ll be this time.”
“Thanks, Penny. Thank you.”
Roarke had barely enough time to pick up groceries for dinner. He dashed to DeLuca’s Market near the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets, bought two fresh blue fish, enough greens for a salad, one tiramisu because he thought they could find a fun way of eating it, and a bottle of Mt. Eden Merlot. With the bags in hand he walked up Beacon Hill to prepare dinner like a regular Bostonian.
Meanwhile, O’Connell worked on a soggy tuna sandwich left over from lunch while he continued to run down his phone numbers. He’d started late in the day, so there were at least two-thirds of the calls left over for the morning.
At 10 P.M. he called it quits. At 10 P.M. Roarke and Katie were lost in each other’s arms.
Teddy Lodge read the draft of his acceptance speech. It was pure poetry. Newman was right. This new girl had real talent; like Jenny’s. Not that he was surprised. He knew it was no accident. Nothing in their world was.
“A few word changes, a phrase here and there. I’ve redlined them. Otherwise it’s great,” Lodge told Newman. “I want to meet this woman.”
“All in good time, Ted. Keep your eye on the prize. Maybe after Thursday,” the campaign manager and chief of staff insisted.
The congressman didn’t like being told what to do. It was in his voice when he snapped back. “Thursday night. At the reception.”
“Okay. Okay. And you won’t be disappointed.”
Friday 15 August
“Hello, this is Michael O’Connell. I’m a reporter for The New York Times. And I’m on a deadline.”
He liked to begin his calls with a sense of urgency. It made people feel important; especially the ones who wanted to see their names in print.
But call after call delivered the same response. He scratched out names and numbers all morning until, through a restaurant owner in Marblehead, he found an old man who remembered a man, who might know a woman, who had a friend, whose uncle was a barber in Marblehead. “Call Ciccolo’s. He always put pictures of the kids on the wall. Maybe one’s still tacked up.”
O’Connell considered it nothing short of a miracle that the shop was still around. The 65-year-old son of the original barber, Nick Ciccolo, now ran it.
“Teddy Lodge, you say. Jeeze, you mean the one running for president? That one?”
“That’s the one,” O’Connell answered.
“Hold on a minute. I’ll check,” the barber said. The minute was actually seven, filled with the worst Mantovani renditions imaginable, all filtered through the phone lying next to the radio.
“Hello. You still there?” Ciccolo asked when he came back.
“I’m here. Any luck?”
“It was pretty high up. That’s why it took so long. One of my customers had to help me. Thanks, Shelley,” he threw to the man at the shop. “I had the feeling that we had something.”
“And?”
“This goes way back. But I sort of remembered the old man coming in with his kid. I got a mind for that sort of thing I suppose.”
“And?” O’Connell demanded.
“And I found one.”
“Great!” The reporter showed his excitement. “What’s it look like?”
The barber laughed. “Well, it’s like a hundred other pictures of first haircuts. But it’s sure him. Dated and everything. The kid was bawling his eyes out. His father is standing behind him trying to quiet him down.”
“I love it. Can I borrow the picture?”
“Well, it does leave a weird spot on the wall. The paint’s all faded around it.”
“Sorry. I can get it right back to you.”
“Yeah, I know but,” the barber stopped and O’Connell felt what was coming. This was all about money now.
“One hundred?” offered O’Connell quickly.
“I dunno,” the barber replied.
“We normally don’t pay anything. But since it’s a presidential candidate, how about two-fifty.”
“Five hundred?”
“This is really pretty far out there, but five hundred. Deal. If you throw in a haircut on my next trip.”
“And a credit for the shop?”
“Done.”
“You got a picture, Mr. O’Connell.”
“Thank you. A friend of mine will come by to pick it up. Probably tomorrow.”
“With money.”
“Yes, Mr. Ciccolo. With money.”
“I close at five sharp.”
“He’ll be there. His name is Putman.”
An hour later, O’Connell also scored an old high school yearbook from the daughter of a classmate. It was tiny; a group photo, but Lodge was there. He’d give Putman the addresses for both.
Penny Walker was also on a roll. She found Newman’s military records, information on his wife and kid, and background on the MH-60 K/L Pave Hawk that crashed.
“Take some notes. I can e-mail you the rest,” she told Roarke.
“Ready.”
“When Newman died, the Army convened a panel. There’d been a rash of Pave Hawks going down. Generally fuel leak problems. They were constantly being grounded. The only rub here is that Lt. Newman wasn’t assigned to the aircraft. No orders to board. And it certainly wasn’t protocol for him to hitch a nighttime ride to nowhere. So I made a few calls. There was an NCO who remembered seeing a colonel yelling at Newman to get into the chopper. Newman didn’t want to go. He was supposed to be off duty. But he was being dressed down pretty badly and he obeyed.”
“And the colonel?”
“No record of him signing in.”
“Any inquiry produce this guy?”
“No. A description in the record. That’s all. No positive ID. Someone fucked up ordering him on and then apparently had the rank to cover the thing up after the accident.”
“And the boy?”
“Shuttled around until he got back to the States. The airlines actually lost him on his way between the KLM and American gates at Heathrow. He missed a connecting flight to JFK. Things were frantic for awhile. An airline attendant was supposed to get the hand off at the gate, but somehow missed him.”
“Give that to me again.”
“Geoff Newman was lost at Heathrow. Missing for about an hour. He apparently had the presence of mind to get himself to the American gate. They got him on the next flight and he was met by his only relative, a distant cousin from Portland, Maine, he never knew. Right after coming to the States, his cousin shipped him off to private school in Massachusetts.”
“Harvard Essex Academy.”
“So you know some of this.”
“Bits and pieces. Got any pictures?”
“One. The lieutenant in Germany. I’ll scan it and e-mail you.”
“Nothing of the kid.”
“No. And by the way, you wanted his birthdate, too.”
“Yeah, right,” he said actually having forgotten.
She told him.
“Thanks sweetheart. I owe you.”
“You don’t have enough to make it worthwhile,” she laughed.
Roarke left a message for O’Connell. He got a call back in three minutes.
“What do you have?” O’Connell asked.
“You first.”
“Two addresses for you. One a barber shop in Marblehead. The second, a house in Beverly. Pictures waiting for you at both. But I want copies. Try Kinkos and then FedEx them out. Or
better yet, have them scanned and attached it in an e-mail. The originals have to go back to the owners.”
“Great.”
“Not so great. Bring $500 to the barbershop and another one hundred to Beverly.”
“What?” Roarke asked.
“The price of doing business, Mr. Putman. I figure you’ve got a budget.” He gave Roarke the street addresses. “Now your turn.”
Roarke explained that he also found a photograph—one of Newman’s father, plus information on the helicopter accident and Geoff’s birthdate.
“Fifty-one?” O’Connell commented.
“That’s right.”
“That makes him a few years older than Lodge.”
“So?” Roarke asked.”
“Dunno, just a little odd.” Different ages not in the same class? It was odd, but he left it at that.
Roarke said he’d get everything out in an e-mail after he picked up the pictures. All quid pro quo. “But keep me out of the papers,” Roarke stated, “And I’ll be good to you.”
“A pleasure working with you Mr. Putman.”
“Likewise, Mr. O’Connell.” With that, Roarke recovered his rental car from the Boston Common garage and cruised up to the North-shore.
Tripoli, Libya
The report made it from Abahar Kharrazi’s office to his brother Fadi’s desk well after Roarke and D’Angelo had left the country. Each brother had infiltrated the other’s offices at various levels. This time it paid off for the younger brother.
“Tomás Morales. U.S. national. Photographer. Suspected spy. Detained. Questioned. Released.” The brief contained surveillance photographs, detailed reports from his tails, and the summation justifying his dismissal.
Fadi studied the images. He was troubled. Why would an archeological photographer be taking pictures of his street? And his building? Especially an American?
“I want to know who this Morales is,” he shouted to his aide, Lakhdar al-Nassar.
“Find me this man.”
Al-Nassar ran an Internet search. In time, he came up with Collingsworth Publishers in England. His call to Collingsworth confirmed the employment of the man named Morales. Simultaneously, the CIA was notified of a second backtrack from an accented man. In fifteen minutes they had determined that the call originated from Fadi Kharrazi’s media center in Tripoli.
Al-Nassar typed up his findings and presented them to Fadi. The younger heir immediately read the report and threw it back at his assistant.
“I said I want to know who this man is, not who he says he is! This man is not a photographer, he is a spy working for the devil.”
Fadi considered dialing the man in Miami directly, but remembered his last warning. Instead, he encoded a message in a photograph and posted a special notice on e-Bay.
During one of his daily surfs through the net, Ibrahim Haddad saw the tickler. He downloaded the photograph of a 45-year-old Omar Sharif from “Funny Girl.” Embedded within the pixels was a cryptic message from Fadi. As Haddad read it he considered how much Fadi was his father’s son.
He wanted Haddad to know that the Americans had sent someone in. If his brother’s OIS goons were too stupid to recognize it, he certainly wasn’t. Haddad doubted the assumption. Nonetheless, he had long ago realized that their operation had more reason to fail than succeed, so he took everything very seriously, as if his life depended on it.
Haddad had one contact in the FBI so deeply placed he rarely called. Today would be the exception.
Boston, Massachusetts
At Katie’s house, Roarke fulfilled his part of the bargain. Through a dummy AOL screen name he created, he e-mailed the photograph and information to O’Connell that Penny had sent him. Then he used Katie’s scanner to make jpeg files of the photo of Lodge and his father he’d picked up at Ciccolo’s and the admittedly poor yearbook picture from the classmate. Roarke attached them to a note and fired it off to Touch Parsons at the FBI labs in Quantico.
Later, under the covers and between breaths, he told Katie he had to go back to Washington the next day.
“Not if you can’t get out,” Katie said playfully reaching down and pulling him between her legs. He responded instaneously, as he had so many times over the past two days and nights.
“I really love having you here…and there,” she whispered in his ear as they moved. He especially felt the there part as she squeezed her muscles around him. It was the first either of them used the word love. He knew what she really meant.
“Me, too. But I’ll come again.”
“And again,” she said.
“And again, and again,” Roarke replied.
“I can make sure of that.” Which she did.
CHAPTER
35
Denver, Colorado
Tuesday 19 August
“I call for the delegate vote,” boomed Wendell Neill over the public address system.
Cheers filled the Denver convention center. Posters sporting pictures of Lodge and Lamden bobbed up and down in the aisles. The network cameras caught the wildly enthusiastic demonstration supporting the Democratic Party ticket.
Governor Lamden controlled a great many votes. Although he could have released them, too many supporters had worked too hard to just give them up. Even Lodge agreed. So until the state-by-state delegate count came to South Dakota, Lamden led. But when the Tennessee Democratic chairman stood a rumble began to grow on the convention floor. It started with stomping, then cheers, then the call for “Ted-dy! Ted-dy! Ted-dy!” The chairman tried many times over the next fifteen minutes to regain control of the hall.
Finally, Wendell Neill’s voice cut through. “Will the delegation from Tennessee please cast your votes,” Neill called out.
“Mr. Chairman. The great State of Tennessee, home to the king of rock ’n’ roll—Elvis Presley, the National Football Champions, the Tennessee Titans, and the finest family values in the nation, proudly pledges all of its eighty delegates for the next President of the United States, Theodore Wilson Lodge!”
Before he finished, the room erupted. Teddy Lodge was now the official candidate of the Democratic Party.
Washington, D.C.
Vigran missed the delegate count. He was working late at the FBI.
The senior researcher had computer access to most of the official cases and a few of the unofficial ones. Tonight he searched the data bank looking for any information on Tomás Morales and Adam Giannini; keywords that he’d learned through a discrete telephone answering service.
The request had been urgent; the first one in years.
Vigran cursed the day he first gave in to the caller and his money. Now with his retirement only three years away, he was particularly nervous. But the man, who always remained anonymous, quoted a figure that made the risk worthwhile. He hoped.
Denver, Colorado
Wednesday 20 August
Governor Lamden gave a rousing speech on the third night of the convention. The platform had been ratified to Lodge’s specifications. The party called for increased spending on public education, health care reform, alternative energy partnerships with oil producing nations, and a number of initiatives for women, the poor, and the cities. He addressed each of them in his remarks and proclaimed Teddy Lodge as the president who would accomplish them all.
The broadcast networks covered the governor’s speech; their first live telecast from the convention floor since breaking in for the South Dakota-Tennessee vote. The cable news channels offered more. Tomorrow, when Teddy Lodge walked to the podium at approximately 8 P.M. Mountain time, 10 P.M. on the East Coast, the networks estimated an audience of 150 million viewers in the U.S. alone.
It was Newman’s idea. “You’re going to be introduced by a woman born on November 22, 1963.”
Lodge figured the date was important. Then it came to him. Holy shit, it’s brilliant!
“And she’s from Dallas. You’ll be swept along like a second Camelot.”
Thursday 21 August
&
nbsp; The congressman loved it. Newman was a brilliant strategist, but this was pure genius. A woman born the day President John F. Kennedy died. November 22, 1963. The anniversary always resonated with Democrats. Well over forty years after the assassination, it still carried incredible emotional impact. “Hell, after she introduces you they might as well swear you right in.”
Alma Franklin, a black city counselor from the Dallas, delivered the keynote address summoning the ghosts of the Kennedys and the promise of the future. When she finished, the crowd erupted in cheers for twelve minutes. Alma won them over and no doubt earned a secure place for her own political aspirations.
Scott Roarke watched on MSNBC from his home in Washington.
Morgan Taylor gathered with Republican Party strategists in the press room. He followed CBS’s coverage, but five networks were turned on.
Katie Kessler tuned to ABC with a glass of her favorite summer wine, a ’97 Kendall-Jackson Merlot.
Chuck Wheaton recorded the speeches on NBC while he was out shooting reactions in Hudson for the Albany affiliate.
Ibrahim Haddad drank champagne and raised his glass in toast to the conservative Fox News Channel for its restrained commentary.
Michael O’Connell roamed the convention floor watching faces and writing notes.
And Haywood Marcus sat on a stool at Locke-Ober, the famous Boston restaurant that catered to people who still wore suits. A TV set was tuned to WBZ, the local CBS affiliate.
At precisely 8:01 P.M. in Denver the overhead lights dimmed in the convention hall and the Vera-lights shot their patterns across the ceiling. A full band struck up “Fanfare for the Common Man” and a single high-powered beam illuminated a deep navy blue curtain.
The intensity in the house built as curtains on the stage parted to reveal a rich red curtain behind it. The music built, then the red curtain opened to reveal another. This one stark white. Instead of parting, it raised as the light source switched from front to back, silhouetting the tall form of Teddy Lodge through a haze of smoke.
Scott Roarke 01 - Executive Actions Page 30
