Mounting Fears

by Stuart Woods

  WILL FINISHED SPEAKING in Chicago and was driven in a motorcade back to the airplane. It always embarrassed him to drive down an empty street and see people stopped at every corner to let him pass.

  Back on the airplane he got Kitty and the head of his Secret Service detail together. “I’ve told you both about this before,” he said, “but nothing has changed. I’m still stopping traffic for miles around when I’m driven anywhere, and I want something done about it.”

  “Mr. President,” the agent said, “we’re doing the minimum we have to to ensure your safety.”

  “The minimum is an armored limousine, four Secret Service cars, half a dozen local police cars, and a platoon of motorcycle police?”

  “The local cops want to participate in the motorcade, sir, and to tell the truth, I’m glad to have them clearing the way.”

  Kitty spoke up. “He’s right, Mr. President. If we cut down the security and you were harmed it would be a stain on the Secret Service for decades.”

  “All that security didn’t help Jack Kennedy,” Will said, “and it didn’t even help George Wallace.”

  “A lone gunman in a high place is always a problem, Mr. President,” the agent said, “and the motorcade was traveling slowly, so that the crowds could get a good look at President and Mrs. Kennedy. Lee Oswald got a good look, too. That’s why we have to keep up the speed of the motorcade. George Wallace was shot because he didn’t follow the plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “The first two rows at any event are always people we know or have cleared. Governor Wallace broke through the first two rows in his enthusiasm for shaking hands, and Arthur Bremer was waiting for him with a gun. If he had followed the plan, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Look, Mr. President,” Kitty said, “I know you feel embarrassed by this, but you can’t ask the people who have the responsibility of protecting you to do less than what they feel is necessary. This is not going to change, and you just have to get used to it.”

  Will was relieved to see Moss Mallet standing at the door. “That’s all, thanks,” he said to the two people, while waving Moss in.

  “Mr. President, we have the results of the first poll since Bill Spanner was nominated. You’re favored by fifty-one percent of the American people to forty-five percent for Spanner.”

  “Moss, what is going on? Two weeks ago I had a sixty-two percent approval rating, and now there’s only six points between me and the upstart?”

  “He’s a fresh face, Mr. President. He’ll get old quickly, and the polls will reflect that. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Then why do you look so worried, Moss?”

  “I was just worried about telling you the news. Believe me, it will get better.”

  “Thanks, Moss. I’m going to take a nap now. Please put that DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door on your way out.”

  Moss left, and Will stretched out on the bed, but he didn’t sleep.

  33

  LANCE CABOT GOT INTO HIS OFFICE AT CIA HEADQUARTERS IN LANGLEY, VIRGINIA, at seven a.m., as usual. He had been deputy director for operations for some months now, and he had just begun to feel he had a firm grip on the job when his direct line rang.

  This line was there so that station heads and, sometimes, field agents could go directly to the DDO, in extraordinary circumstances, and whenever it rang, Lance got tense. He picked up the instrument. “Hello?”

  “Lance, it’s Owen Masters in Panama City. Can we scramble?”

  Lance pressed the scrambler button. “Good morning, Owen, we’re scrambled.” Lance didn’t like Masters a hell of a lot. As a young agent he had found the man to be opinionated and rude. The only reason he had left him as station chief in Panama was that the man had only a few months until his retirement.

  “Something has come up I think you should know about. Yesterday morning a dead body was discovered on the deck of an oil tanker that had passed through the canal en route to Galveston.”

  “Anybody we know?”

  Masters ignored the question. “The body was taken off by the Coast Guard and flown to Panama City, which has the only medical examiner in the country. When an American dies in the Canal Zone I routinely get a call from a cop I know on the Panama City force, and this morning, on the way to work, I met him at the morgue and had a look at the body. It could be an accident, but it’s more likely a homicide.”

  Lance was annoyed. Why on earth would a station chief take an interest in a local homicide? He repeated his question. “Anybody we know, Owen?”

  “Not exactly, but he’s an American journalist, in a manner of speaking, who works for a rag called the National Inquisitor, based in D.C. Know it?”

  “Vaguely. It’s gossip, isn’t it?”

  “Right.”

  “So how does this interest us, Owen?”

  “I went through his effects. His name is Edward Partain, American. He had quite a lot of cash and credit cards on him, so it wasn’t a robbery.”

  Lance was getting ready to hang up, when Masters stopped him.

  “And he was carrying a photograph of Teddy Fay.”

  Lance was stunned. He took a moment to collect himself before he spoke. “There are no existing photographs of Teddy Fay,” he said. “He removed them from all the databases before he started assassinating right-wing politicians.”

  “There’s at least one photograph now,” Masters replied.

  “And how do you know the photograph is one of Teddy Fay?”

  “Because I knew him when I was a field agent. He outfitted me for a couple of missions—fake passports, driver’s licenses, credit cards—that sort of thing. He was the top guy in Tech Services.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Twelve, fifteen years.”

  “And how old is the photograph?”

  “I’m not sure. Five to ten years, I’d guess.”

  “Have you mentioned this to anybody in your station?”

  “No. Nobody’s in yet.”

  “Then don’t. Scan the photo and e-mail it to me now.”

  “Will do.”

  “Did you get the original or a copy?”

  “I got the only one on the body.”

  “Send it to me in an overnight pouch, and don’t make any copies,” Lance said.

  “Okay. The e-mail just went out.”

  “Did the police know anything about this Partain?”

  “He had a hotel bill in his pocket from a fairly elegant small hostelry, so they went there and turned over his room. The only odd thing was that he had a receipt for an envelope deposited in the hotel safe, and there was twenty-five thousand dollars in cash in it. It was odd, because he had another five grand in traveler’s checks in his jacket pocket, plus a grand or so in cash and half a dozen credit cards. The police talked to the hotel bartender, who said Partain had a drink with a guy the night before last, somebody he met there in the bar.”

  “Description?”

  “American, six feet, a hundred and seventy, fifty-five to sixtyfive, and balding, with a comb-over, thick eyebrows, and mustache. Wore heavy-framed glasses.”

  Disguise, Lance thought. “All right, Owen, I’ll get back to you.” Lance hung up and sat, thinking, for a couple of minutes. This was trouble. He’d certified Teddy Fay as dead to the director, and since her husband was president and was running for reelection, she wasn’t going to like hearing this report. Teddy Fay had “died” before, then turned up on the island of St. Marks in the Caribbean last year, before being thought dead again aboard a sunken yacht in deep water.

  The president had withheld the information from the public that Teddy Fay had turned up alive twice after being confirmed dead, and if this broke now it could torpedo his reelection, which meant that Katharine Rule would no longer be director of Central Intelligence and, since Lance was her handpicked boy, his prospects for holding on to his career wouldn’t be so hot, either.

  Lance picked up the phone and called Holly Barker, whose office
was adjacent to his own.

  “Yes, Lance?”

  “Come in here, please.” Lance turned to his computer, found the e-mail from Owen Masters and printed out the photograph.

  There was a knock on the door between their offices, then Holly walked in. Since he had been promoted, she had become his most trusted assistant. “Good morning,” she said. Holly was tall and newly slender with short-cropped hair and a firm jaw. She was a retired Army officer who had been chief of police in a small Florida town when Lance had discovered her, recruited her, and seen her trained. She was also one of a tiny handful of people who had actually met Teddy Fay.

  Lance handed her the photograph. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Holly looked at it carefully. “No, who is he?”

  “Owen Masters in Panama says it’s Teddy Fay.” Lance related Masters’s phone call.

  “It could be,” Holly said, “but I never saw Teddy except in some sort of disguise, and he was very good at it.”

  “Owen knew him fifteen years ago, when they were both at Langley.”

  Holly shook her head. “I’m sorry, I just can’t tell. I didn’t know a photograph existed.”

  “Neither did anybody else. I want you to go to the offices of the National Inquisitor this morning, get the negative and any copies of the photograph, and scare the shit out of the editor. I don’t care what you threaten him with or do to him, but see that his paper doesn’t run a word about the photo or Teddy.”

  “What about freedom of the press and all that?” Holly asked.

  “Fuck freedom of the press. You can shoot the guy, if you think you can get away with it. Now get moving.”

  34

  HOLLY WENT BACK TO HER OFFICE, THINKING SHE HAD NEVER SEEN LANCE SO exercised about anything. Normally he was the coolest operator she knew.

  Before she followed his orders she had some prep work to do. She began by going to the website of the National Inquisitor and finding the address of their offices and the name of their editor, Willard Gaynes, then she called Jeannie in Tech Services.

  “Jeannie.”

  “Hi, Jeannie. It’s Holly Barker. I need some quick work.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I want a general sort of court order from a federal judge requiring the National Inquisitor to divulge any and all information I request and to produce any documents and photographs I ask for, and a separate search warrant, signed by the same judge, allowing me to tear apart their offices if they don’t give me what I want. Make the order unequivocal and eyes-only secret, with jail as an alternative and national security as a reason.”

  “How soon?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Gotcha. I’ll get back to you.”

  Holly went back to her computer and began doing searches on the backgrounds of both Willard Gaynes and Edward “Ned” Partain. She found interesting stuff and began reading it. Then she called Owen Masters in Panama City.

  “Masters.”

  “Owen, I’m Holly Barker. I work for Lance Cabot.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Please call your police contact and ask him to see that his department doesn’t call Ned Partain’s editor until exactly noon today. I want to break the news to him personally.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  Masters hung up without further ado.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER there was a knock on Holly’s door.

  “Come in.”

  A woman of about fifty walked in and handed Holly two envelopes. “Here you go,” she said. “The court order has a reasonable facsimile of the signature of Judge Ezra Wolfe of the First District Court, and so does the search warrant.”

  Holly read the court order and smiled. “Nice work,” she said. “Beautiful job on the letterhead, too.”

  “The letterhead is authentic,” Jeannie replied. “We lifted a ream of it from the Federal Printing Office last year. And I made a call to the judge’s clerk, who is on the payroll, so if anybody checks either the order or the warrant, he’ll provide backup.”

  “Perfect,” Holly said. “Thank you, Jeannie. I owe you one.”

  “It’s what we do,” Jeannie said, and with a wave, left Holly’s office.

  AT ELEVEN FORTY-FIVE, Holly walked into the editorial offices of the National Inquisitor and spoke to a woman at the reception desk. “My name is Branson. I want to see Willard Gaynes now.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  Holly reached into her purse and removed an envelope. “Give him this,” she said. “He’ll see me.” The envelope contained a business card identifying Holly as Assistant Director Hope Branson of the FBI.

  “Just a minute,” the woman said. She left the reception room and was back in less than a minute. “He’ll see you,” she said. “Through the door, down the hall to the corner office.”

  Holly followed the directions, opened Gaynes’s closed door, walked in, flashed an FBI ID and sat down.

  “So, what can we do for the FBI today?” Gaynes asked. He was a short, heavily jowled man with oily dyed-black hair.

  “You have a reporter named Edward ‘Ned’ Partain?”

  “Yes,” Gaynes replied. “He’s out of town on a story.”

  “I know,” Holly replied. “In Panama. He’s dead.”

  Gaynes’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute,” he said. He looked at the card Holly had sent him, then picked up the phone and dialed the number on the card, which connected him not to the FBI switchboard but to a facsimile at Langley. “Do you have an agent named Hope Branson?” he asked. “All right, Assistant Director Branson. Please connect me with her office.” He waited, then listened. “Never mind,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  “Now,” he said to Holly, “what the hell are you talking about?”

  “The body of Ned Partain was found aboard a tanker bound from the Panama Canal to Galveston, Texas, yesterday. He appeared to have fallen from some place along the canal onto the deck of the ship.”

  “Was this a homicide?” he asked.

  “Possibly. The autopsy is being conducted as we speak.”

  The phone on Gaynes’s desk rang. “Excuse me,” he said, and picked it up. He was on the phone for less than a minute. “That was the Panama City police. Apparently, what you told me is true.”

  “Tell me why Partain was in Panama,” Holly said.

  “We don’t tell the FBI that sort of thing.”

  Holly handed him the court order. She waited while he read it, then said, “Tell me what I want to know, or you’ll be in the federal detention center in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ve never seen a document like this,” Gaynes said. “Hold on.” He called the number on the letterhead, asked for the judge’s clerk and questioned him, then hung up and turned back to Holly. “What do you want to know?”

  “We don’t like it when American journalists die in foreign countries,” Holly said. “Tell me everything about Partain’s assignment.”

  “Ned was in Panama to interview a man who is believed to be Teddy Fay.”

  Holly snorted. “Teddy Fay is dead,” she said, “confirmed and reconfirmed.”

  “Maybe,” Gaynes said.

  Holly held up the e-mailed print of Teddy’s photograph. “Is this the man you thought was Teddy Fay?”

  Gaynes looked surprised. “Yes.”

  “This man is a CIA officer on assignment in South America. Where did you get the photograph?”

  “From a woman named Darlene Cole, who works for a law firm in town. She knew Fay years ago.”

  “Which law firm?”

  “Barton and Falls,” Gaynes said.

  “Give me all the copies you have of the photo and the negative.”

  “I don’t have the negative,” Gaynes said. “Ms. Cole was cagey about that.”

  “How many copies do you have?”

  “Look, you’re out of line here.”

  Holly handed him the search warrant. “I can have a team of agents
here in half an hour to tear apart your offices, but of course, you’ll be in detention by then.”

  Gaynes went to a safe in a corner of his office, punched a number into the keypad, and opened it.

  Holly watched him and memorized the combination. It might come in handy one of these days.

  Gaynes took out an envelope, examined the contents, and handed it to Holly.

  She found half a dozen copies of the photo and tucked them into her purse. “Give me the card I gave you,” Holly said, “and the court order and search warrant.”

  Gaynes surrendered the documents.

  “You are under a federal court injunction not to speak of this to anyone,” Holly said. “I was never here, do you understand?”

  Gaynes nodded. “I understand.”

  “If you talk about this to anyone on your staff or off, bad things will happen,” she said.

  “All right, all right,” he said, raising both hands. “Will you let me know more about Ned Partain?”

  “The Panama City police will deal with you on that,” Holly said. “Good day.” She rose and walked out of the office, satisfied with her day’s work.

  As she passed the reception desk, a skinny, slightly disheveled young man wearing a backpack was talking with the receptionist. “But I have to see Gaynes right now,” he said. “Ned Partain is out of town, and this is too important to wait.”

  “I told you, he’s with somebody,” the woman replied.

  Holly pressed the elevator button. “Not anymore,” she said. “Mr. Gaynes is entirely free.”

  “What is your name again?” the secretary asked.

  “Felix Potter,” the young man said.

  The elevator arrived, and Holly got on.

  “It’s about some very important tapes,” the young man said.

  The elevator door closed, and Holly rode down.

  35

  FELIX SAT IN THE RECEPTION ROOM AT THE NATIONAL INQUISITOR FOR MORE THAN three hours, getting hungrier and hungrier but determined to see Willard Gaynes. Finally, the receptionist got up and went to the ladies’ room, and Felix saw his chance. He was through the door and into the editorial offices before the woman had a chance to get her knickers down.