by Stuart Woods
“I quite understand, Capitбn, and while we would, of course, be glad to hear that Mr. Masters’s killer had been caught and punished, we are cognizant of the difficulties involved in such a case. I would be grateful if you could forward a copy of your final report to me through the embassy.”
“Of course, seсor.”
“I would ask you, in your report, to be aware that his widow will read it and not to include any unsupported supposition that might cause her distress.”
“Of course, Mr. Cabot. You may be assured that I will be discreet.”
Lance thanked the man and hung up, still thinking fast.
“Terrence Cotten will be here shortly,” Holly said.
“Call him and tell him to go back to his crosswords,” Lance said. “There’s no point in sending another man down there for just a few months.” He got on his computer and consulted his classified telephone directory, then made the call.
“Todd Bacon,” the youthful voice said.
“Scramble,” Lance replied.
“Scramble.”
“Todd, it’s Lance Cabot.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve talked with the chief investigator from the Panamanian National Police,” he said, “and I’m afraid we’re in something of a bind, here.”
“How can I help, sir?”
“Let me explain. The chief investigator believes that Owen was involved in some nefarious activity that resulted in his murder.”
“No, sir,” Bacon said. “He wouldn’t have assigned me to find that man, if that were the case.”
“Todd, have you been through Owen’s desk and files yet?”
“I’m in the middle of that now, sir, and I’ll be finished shortly.”
“So far, have you found any written reference to your assignment in his papers or on his computer?”
“Ah, no, sir,” Bacon replied.
He’s beginning to get the picture, Lance thought. “The man Owen assigned you to find is known to the Panamanian National Police,” he said, “though not by name. It is their view, though not officially, of course, that Owen was in business with this fellow and that the deal went south. Owen’s next step would have been to eliminate the man, which may be why he ordered you to find him, but the tables were turned and it was Owen who was killed. It’s possible that, in observing the man last night, you inadvertently did something that tipped him off that Owen was after him. So…”
“God, I hope that’s not the case,” Bacon said, sounding shocked.
“Don’t worry about that, Todd. At least you didn’t become involved in Owen’s extracurricular activities. There’s something else to consider, as well. While Owen had Agency life insurance, there is a much larger payment to be made to his widow, if this were a line-of-duty matter. Since we have no hard evidence that it wasn’t line-of-duty, the director is desirous of Mrs. Masters receiving that payment, as it would make a substantial difference in her standard of living.”
“I believe I understand, sir.”
“Good. This is going to require great discretion from all of us. And since I believe I can count on your discretion, I’ve decided not to send a replacement to fill Owen’s position. Instead, I’m appointing you station chief for Panama and the Canal Zone.”
“Why, thank you, sir,” Bacon responded, obviously stunned.
He would be less stunned after he had thought about it, Lance thought. “I’ll send you another man to fill in, Todd. He’ll probably be right off the farm, so he’ll be green, but I’m sure you can bring him along. Pick another of your personnel to fill your assistant station chief’s job, and let me know whom you’ve chosen.”
“I’ll do that, sir. It will probably be Nesmith, since he’s next senior to me.”
“Fine, I’m sure he’s a good man and a good choice. I’ll be in touch Todd, and my congratulations.” Lance hung up.
Holly was looking at him. “You think that’s going to do it?”
“It fucking well better do it,” Lance replied.
50
Katharine Rule Lee left her office for the drive home a little after six. Normally, she worked on papers and reports during the drive, but she had left all of that on her desk or in her safe. She had something else to think about, and she didn’t want to be distracted, not even by the thought of sixty people en route in the black of the Afghan night to the Pakistani border. Her driver seemed to sense that she was deep in thought and did not wish to be disturbed with chat.
Kate was now able to admit to herself that Teddy Fay was still alive, and she was pretty sure he had killed Owen Masters, but she didn’t know why. Lance Cabot knew, but he wasn’t going to tell her unless she pressed him, and she couldn’t afford to press him. She couldn’t afford, in fact, to know that Teddy Fay was alive.
***
Teddy was supposed to have died in a small aircraft crash off the coast of Maine, but the FBI had tracked him to New York, where he was supposed to have died in the collapse of a building under construction. Later, he had been rumored to be on the island of St. Marks, in the Caribbean, and Lance Cabot had dispatched a team to find him and, presumably, kill him.
She had thought the Fay problem had ended when the small yacht he had owned was witnessed in a sinking condition, and no body had been found. But now he had been spotted in Panama by a tourist who knew him, and she had produced an old photograph. She presumed that no copies of that photograph existed, since Holly Barker had confiscated all the copies and the negatives while posing as an FBI assistant director.
The only official threat now was Assistant Director Kerry Smith of the FBI, and he couldn’t prove that Teddy was still alive. No one, in fact, could prove it, and Teddy wasn’t going to turn himself in. Her only choice seemed to be to sit on the Teddy Fay problem until after the election. If it came out then, well, she was good at damage control.
Her husband didn’t know any of this, of course, and she had to keep it that way. By the time she reached the White House, she had made and reconfirmed that decision.
At least, she thought, Teddy Fay was out of the country, and nothing he could do there would affect the election.
***
Teddy Fay, meantime, was working on his laptop in a Covington, Georgia, motel room, reading the schedule of the Reverend Henry King Johnson on his very nicely constructed and informative website. One question that lay heavily on Teddy’s mind was: Did Johnson have Secret Service protection? His guess was that Johnson did not, because he had not run in the primaries and didn’t loom large enough in the polls.
Johnson was traveling a lot now, raising money and working to get on the ballot in as many states as possible. That made him a moving target, but his published schedule also made him predictable, and that was good enough for Teddy.
He noted that the Reverend Johnson was due on Amelia Island, Florida, for a convention of black undertakers in a week. He knew something about Amelia Island: it was a golf-oriented upscale community near Jacksonville.
Then he noticed something else on the reverend’s website: he was to perform a marriage ceremony the day before on Cumberland Island.
Teddy Googled Cumberland Island.
***
Martin Stanton checked into the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver, which dated from its days as a cow town, and rapped on the door to the adjoining room. Liz opened it and gave him a big, wet kiss. “More later,” she said. “I have some phone calls to make.”
“Before you do that, order yourself dinner from room service,” Stanton said. “We don’t want them delivering two dinners to my suite.”
“Right,” she said.
Stanton closed the door, ordered his own dinner, and went to get a refill for his pen from his briefcase. As he opened it, he heard his secret cell phone vibrating, and he picked it up. “Yes?”
“It’s me, baby,” Barbara said.
“Good to hear from you,” Stanton replied, not entirely convincingly.
“That sounded like something you’d
say to a campaign contributor,” she pointed out.
“I’m sorry, hon. It’s just that they’ve had me on a breakneck schedule for three weeks, and I’m sort of operating on autopilot. How are you? What are you up to?”
“Well, I’ve started my new job at Justice, and now it’s up to you and Will Lee to get reelected, so I won’t get fired by a Republican attorney general early next year.”
“We’ll do our best,” Stanton said. “We’ve got to keep you in work.”
“And I bought a house,” she said proudly.
“Well, that was fast. Where?”
“On a beautiful block in Georgetown,” she said. “It’s tiny, having been previously occupied by a Republican congresswoman who didn’t think she could be reelected, and you’re going to love it. It’s the sexiest place you ever saw!”
“Then I look forward to sex in it!”
“Oh, me too, baby! I’m aching for you.”
“Then let’s not wait. What’s wrong with now? Are you alone?”
“No, I’m with you.”
“Then get your clothes off,” he ordered.
“You, too.”
“Are you naked now?”
“I am. How about you?”
“I am.” He was not, but the two of them proceeded to have phone sex until Barbara climaxed noisily. Stanton had to pretend, because his mind and his cock, which were co-located, were both in the room next door.
The doorbell rang. “Kid, there’s somebody at my door,” he said into the phone. “Gotta run.”
“Bye,” she had time to say before he ended the connection.
Stanton went to the door and let the room-service waiter in, signed the ticket, and went to wait for Liz to wheel in her dinner.
He had been turned on, in spite of himself, during the phone sex, and now he would spend that pent-up energy on Liz.
When she rolled her tray in, she was naked, and they dined that way.
***
Todd Bacon sat at his new desk in Owen Masters’s old office and leafed through a file marked “Golf in Central America,” and looked at the photograph of Teddy Fay. Todd had lied to Lance Cabot when he had told him that he had destroyed it. Who was this guy? he wondered. Some drug dealer, like the cops said, or just some hit man? But if he was any of that, why would Owen care about him? It seemed obvious to Todd that Owen had wanted the man killed, so he must have been a danger of some sort, but what sort?
He pored over the two pages of notes that Owen had kept in a haphazard way and found references to Ned Partain. He was the reporter from that tabloid who had been found dead on the ship. Owen hadn’t mentioned him, but Todd had seen a reference to it in the daily news digest circulated inside the embassy.
Then, down at the bottom of one page, he saw the entry, in block capitals: PARTAIN/TEDDY?
Teddy? Teddy who? And then something clicked in Todd Bacon’s mind.
51
Will was finishing a meeting with the Secretary of Agriculture when his phone buzzed, contrary to his instructions. “Yes?”
“Mr. President,” his secretary said, “the director of Central Intelligence and the chief of naval operations are here to see you urgently.”
Will didn’t like the sound of that combination. He checked his schedule. “All right, just push everything back as necessary and send them in.” He shook hands with the secretary of agriculture and apologized for the interuption.
Kate and Admiral Halstead entered the Oval Office and were waved to a seat.
“All right,” Will said.
“Mr. President,” Kate said, “we have received pretty good intelligence that the missing Pakistani nuclear warhead is in one of a group of eight villages, all within fifty miles of each other, in extreme western Pakistan, along the Afghan border.” She spread a map on the coffee table and pointed.
Will sat up straight. “Isn’t that the area where you think bin Laden and his top people are hiding?”
“Yes, sir,” Kate replied. “And we have refrained from sending people in there because of the objections of the Pakistani government.”
“Well, the presence of a nuclear warhead in that area would place a different color on those objections, wouldn’t it?”
“I should think so,” Kate replied, “but Admiral Halstead and I have a suggestion, and we both believe the Pakistani government should not, in this case, be consulted.”
Will sat back and looked at the two people before him. “And what is your suggestion?”
“We have enough people within chopper range-a combination of Navy SEALs and CIA operatives-to put eight small reconnaissance teams on the ground there to investigate the report of the presence of the warhead. We’d like to put them in there at the earliest possible moment to check this out.”
“How soon is the earliest possible moment?”
“If we go now, before dawn tomorrow morning. They would be choppered to the border on the Afghan side and hike it from there.”
“And when would the teams be in place?”
“By dawn on the following day, without complications.”
Will didn’t need to ask about the complications; the possibilities were multitudinous. “What are their chances of getting in there, getting the intelligence, and getting out without detection?”
Kate and Halstead exchanged a glance. “Better than fifty-fifty,” Halstead said. “Maybe as good as seventy-thirty.”
Will’s stomach felt funny. “If any of those people were captured…”
“In the circumstances,” the admiral said gravely, “their orders would be not to be captured.”
Will stared at the admiral, then back at Kate, whose gaze was steady. “I’ve never given anyone an order like that,” he said.
Kate spoke up. “It’s my firm belief that the circumstances require it.”
“But there’s no time for preparation, is there?” Will asked.
“All these men and women have run multiple rehearsals for missions such as this,” Halstead said. “They are equipped with the latest surveillance and communications equipment, which, I might add, would be destroyed in the event of the threat of capture.”
“The alternative,” Kate said, “is to share our intelligence with the Pakistanis and let them send their people in. They would have the advantage of blending in with the population and would be able to travel openly in daylight.”
“I seem to recall,” Will said, “that a couple of years ago we requested a similar mission from the Pakistanis. How long did it take them to mount it? Does anyone remember?”
“Three weeks,” Kate said.
“And that warhead could be anywhere in three weeks,” Will replied.
“Exactly. It’s entirely possible that we are already too late, that the warhead has been moved.”
“Then we’d better find out,” Will said. “Send them in. I know I don’t have to tell you to take every possible precaution for their safety.”
Kate and Halstead stood up. “Thank you, Mr. President,” she said. “The order will go out within minutes.” They shook hands and left.
Will watched them go and tried to reorder his mind for his next meeting, but it didn’t work.
52
Nelson Pickettanswered the phone in his office at the National Inquisitor.
“Yes?”
“Nelson, it’s Jimmy Pix.” Jimmy Pix (the only name by which Pickett knew him) was a slimy little guy who did dogwork for publications like the Inquisitor, and Nelson had assigned him to follow Martin Stanton’s campaign plane around the Southwest, where Stanton had been assigned to bring in the Hispanic vote.
“Where are you, Jimmy?”
“In Denver. Stanton spoke here yesterday, and he has another appearance today.”
“What have you got for me?”
“I’ve got this: Stanton and his road manager, the lovely Liz Wharton, are in adjoining rooms at the Brown Palace. Stanton has a suite, Liz has the room next door.”
“Are the two connected?”
“They sure are, by a door that needs to be unlocked from both sides.”
“Good start. What else?”
“They both ordered a late dinner last night from room service, and within a minute of each other. The two dinners were delivered to their separate rooms at the same time, and the trays were left in the hallway a couple of hours later.”
“I want photographs of the suite and the other room and the connecting door,” Pickett said.
“Hey, come on, Nelson, we’re talking Secret Service protection here. I can’t get past them and into their rooms, and if I did, I’d end up in a federal prison.”
“All right, then, bribe a room-service waiter or, better yet, a chambermaid to photograph the rooms. Stained sheets would be nice. Tell them to squirt some ketchup on the bedding.”
“That might be possible,” Pix said. “Let me work on it.”
“Do it fast, Jimmy-I’m running out of time.”
“Will do.”
Pickett hung up and phoned a technically oriented man he knew, and gave him an assignment.
***
Gene Pearce hung up the phone and began checking the gear in the work case he traveled with. It contained an assortment of electronic tools and gear, and half a dozen kinds of pickup devices.
He got into his van, which was disguised as that of a plumber, and drove from his Silver Spring, Maryland, home to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was late morning, and he had been told the mark would be at work.
He parked a couple of doors down from the address he had been given, walked to the house, carrying a bag of plumber’s tools and his work case, and rang the bell. He didn’t want to stumble upon the cleaning lady. No answer.
