by Mike Lawson
“Admiral, are you positive he was talking about assassinating Governor Falah?” the president asked.
Wilcox turned to his man Dillon Crane, and Crane said, “We’re as positive as we can be, Mr. President. It was a very short conversation and there’s always a risk in translation, but three of our best translators have listened to the intercept. And our conclusion is consistent with other intelligence acquired by Director Mentor’s people.”
The president now looked over at the CIA director. The man was reported to be brilliant, but Bradford found him physically disgusting. He was grossly overweight, his face was always shiny with perspiration, and his clothes looked as if he’d slept in them. Bradford had liked Mentor’s predecessor a lot better, a man named Jake LaFountaine, but LaFountaine had resigned unexpectedly earlier in the year.
“Admiral Wilcox is correct, sir,” Mentor said. “One of our assets has confirmed that Wafa wants the governor out of power.” When the president didn’t say anything, Mentor continued. “Our problem with Governor Falah is that he’s afraid to take on the Taliban and has become an actual hindrance to military operations in his province. If Wafa replaces him, which is quite likely, he’ll be much more inclined to support our objectives in the region. All he cares about is money.”
“But he grows opium,” the president said.
“Yes, sir,” Mentor said.
The issue now hanging over the conference table like a noxious cloud was should the U.S. government warn Governor Falah that Wafa was trying to assassinate him or should they allow the assassination to take place, giving them a chance to put a more malleable person in power. Bradford could tell that the president was furious to be put in the position of having to decide this matter, and Bradford didn’t blame him. It wasn’t as if Falah was the president of the country; he was a relatively minor politician and a bad one, at that. After this meeting was over, Bradford was going to chew out Wilcox like he was a boot camp seaman instead of a three-star admiral.
Wilcox knew that the right thing to do was to let Wafa kill the governor, and he should never have brought this issue to the president’s staff. The problem with Wilcox, though, was that he was a damn three-star Boy Scout. If he was given a lawful order to nuke Australia, he’d execute it without hesitation, but if he had to do something that was morally ambiguous—on the difficult-to-interpret fringe of the law—he was unwilling to shoulder the burden unilaterally even when he knew the outcome was in the country’s best interest.
It was because of men like Fenton Wilcox that Charles Bradford employed John Levy.
Before the president could commit himself, Bradford said, “Admiral, could you please repeat what Wafa said on that intercept?” After Wilcox had done so, Bradford said, “Mr. President, I don’t think you should decide anything at this time. One interpretation of that phone call is that Wafa is planning to kill Falah. But another interpretation could be—well, let me put it this way. The other day I was talking to a friend about something my wife did, and I said, ‘I could just strangle that woman.’ I suppose that could be interpreted as a legitimate threat on her life, but in reality I was just venting my frustration.”
Bradford noticed Dillon Crane smiling slightly, and he figured this was because Crane was bright enough to know what Bradford was doing: giving the president a way out. Wilcox opened his mouth to object to Bradford’s last statement, but before he could, the president said, “What do you recommend, General?”
“I recommend that we continue to monitor Mr. Wafa’s actions and communications for just a bit longer.”
Long enough, in other words, to give Wafa a chance to blow Falah to kingdom come with a roadside bomb.
Bradford could see that the president liked this answer because the burden of responsibility had now shifted to Bradford. If Falah was killed, and if the subject of this meeting ever became public knowledge—which was extremely unlikely—the president would be able to say he had been relying on the judgment of his military advisors, and they had advised him badly. Before the president even had a chance to say anything else, Bradford said, “Well, okay,” in an I’m-glad-that’s-settled tone, and then, to change the subject, he turned to the CIA director. “Sam, I saw something in yesterday’s briefing package about the Chinese upgrading their submarine sonar equipment. After the president leaves, maybe you could tell us all a little more about that.”
Bradford returned to the Pentagon still annoyed by the meeting at the White House. He was so damn tired of it: inexperienced, gutless civilians meddling in military matters; a Congress that delighted in making him beg for money and men; a Secretary of Defense who cared more about awarding contracts to his cronies than he did about the quality of the equipment they were buying. The only people he had any respect for were those like himself: men who had given their blood—and too often their lives—to defend this country. Men like Martin Breed.
He spent the next half hour in his office editing the eulogy he would deliver at Martin’s funeral. It was a good speech. It gave Martin the tribute he deserved and paid homage to the man he had been. It praised him without exaggerating in any way his dedication, his love of country, his boundless patriotism.
His only regret was that he could only speak to Martin’s public record.
He couldn’t talk about the truly great things Martin had done.
9
A man and a woman, both dressed in blue scrubs, approached the main doors of the hospital. They were chatting with each other, the woman laughing at something the man had said, then punching him lightly on the arm as if he was teasing her. The man was white and slender, about five foot eight. He had curly dark hair, a thin mustache, and a small goatee. He thought he looked like Johnny Depp. He didn’t. The woman was black, a bit shorter than the man, stocky, her dark hair streaked with blond highlights. She wore large framed glasses, what she called her Elton Johns.
Entering the hospital, the man went toward the elevators and the woman toward the admissions desk. She made sure the hospital ID badge she wore was visible.
“Hey, sorry to bother you, sweetie,” the black woman said to the gray-haired white woman—a hospital volunteer—sitting behind the information desk. “This doctor, you know, he calls the lab, talkin’ all fast. He sounded like he was Indian or something. Anyway, he tells me to go get blood from some John Doe head trauma in ICU, but he didn’t tell me the room number and he hung up before I could ask. Can you look it up for me, honey? Some of these doctors, they’re so rude.”
A moment later the black woman stepped away from the admissions desk and held her left wrist up to her mouth. “Confirmed. It’s Room 5116,” she said.
The goateed male who had accompanied the black woman into the hospital was already on the fifth floor where the intensive care unit was located. He approached the door to room 5116 holding test tubes and disposable syringes in his hand. He turned into the room, then immediately stopped when he saw four people standing over a bed. He heard a man, a doctor he presumed, say, “I’m pronouncing at 9:17 A.M.”
The man backed out of the room and waited in the hall until a nurse came out. “Hey, I’m Gerry,” he said to the nurse. “From the lab. What’s going on? I’m supposed to get blood from that guy.”
“Sorry. He’s gone. They’re getting him ready to take down to the morgue. They’ll get all the blood they need during the autopsy.”
“What happened to him?”
“Don’t know,” the nurse said. “He was in a coma but doing fine, when all of a sudden his blood pressure dropped like a rock and we lost him. Pathology will have to tell us why.”
The man thanked the nurse and walked back toward the elevators. He checked to make sure no one was nearby and then muttered into his wrist. He concluded by saying, “There’re too many people up here. We’re gonna have to go to Plan B. I’ll let you know when they take him down to the morgue.”
He walked over to the nurses’ station. From there he could see the entrance to room 5116. He looked for the n
urse he’d been talking to—she was kinda cute—but she wasn’t there. He started to chat up one of the other nurses, a little blond who looked like Renee Zellweger from the waist up—and like a Budweiser Clydesdale from the waist down.
The black woman quickly left the hospital and returned to a van parked in a loading zone. She stepped into the back of the van and stripped off the scrubs, tossing the hospital ID badge into a gym bag. Beneath the scrubs she had on a white blouse and dark blue pants. She put on a jacket that matched her pants, ripped the blonde-streaked wig off her head, and put on one that was henna colored. She replaced her Elton John jumbo frames with serious black-framed glasses. She needed to look the part. From the gym bag she pulled out another ID, this one in a badge case.
She was waiting by the elevator when the doors opened to let off a man pushing a gurney. On the gurney, covered by a sheet, was a body.
“Hold it,” the woman said. She snapped open the badge case. “Arlington P.D.”
“What?” the man said.
“I said, Arlington P.D. Is this the John Doe from ICU?”
“Uh, yeah. I’m takin’ him to—”
“I need to get his fingerprints. We’re still trying to ID him.”
“Well, can’t you wait until I get him to the morgue?”
“No.”
She didn’t want to take the fingerprints in the morgue; there were likely to be more people in there and she wanted to minimize the number who saw her. Before the gurney pusher could say anything else, she pulled the corpse’s right hand from beneath the sheet and pressed the hand down on an inkless fingerprint pad. She flipped the pad over, repeated the procedure with the other hand, put the fingerprint pad into a plastic bag and into her purse, then pulled down the sheet, exposing the man’s head. She used her cell phone to snap a picture of his face, although it was horribly bruised and swaddled in bandages.
“Thanks,” she said to the gurney pusher, and walked away.
When the black woman arrived back at the van the white man was already sitting behind the wheel waiting for her. He no longer had a mustache or a goatee. She climbed into the van, told her partner to get going, and opened her cell phone.
“Claire, it’s Alberta,” she said. “I got his fingerprints and a photo that probably won’t do us much good, and I’ll transmit everything in two minutes to that freak, Lorene. But the guy was dead when we got to the hospital.”
“Dead?” Claire said.
“Yeah. A nurse told Darryl he was doing fine when all of sudden he flat-lined on ’em.”
“Claire, I got an ID on that guy.”
Lorene was one of Claire’s few female technicians. Her hair was dyed jet black, chopped off at the ends as if it had been trimmed with gardening shears, and she used a white makeup base that gave her the pallor of a day-old corpse. Her fingernails and lipstick matched the color of her hair.
Claire couldn’t even imagine what people would think if they knew that this woman—though not in person—routinely provided information to the secretary of Homeland Security.
Claire took the printout from Lorene and looked at it. “Jesus,” she muttered. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but this sure as hell hadn’t been it.
Lorene said, “Uh, if you don’t need me …”
“Be quiet,” Claire said. “And quit snapping that gum.”
Claire’s eyes fixed on an unseen horizon as she tried to comprehend the information she’d just been given. Refocusing her gaze on Lorene, she said, “I want you to get into the Pentagon’s personnel records for the Third Infantry Regiment stationed at Fort Myer and …”
“We may have a serious problem,” Levy said.
Bradford looked up from the report he’d been reading on the new Chinese mid-range missile, a missile with a guidance system almost identical to a similar American missile. He was convinced that every defense contractor in the country was infested with Chinese spies. He was also convinced—he was absolutely positive—that someday the United States would go to war with China. He was sure whatever problem Levy thought he had wasn’t as serious as his problems with the Chinese, but Levy wasn’t a man given to hyperbole.
“What problem?” he said.
Levy sat there flexing his big hands, the expression on his face solemn as it always was. Bradford knew Levy’s family history, but did the man always have to look so grim? Charles Bradford rarely smiled, but even he smiled more than Levy.
“Gilmore called me,” Levy said.
Gilmore was a colonel stationed at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, and he commanded the Third Infantry Regiment. Charles Bradford had personally selected him for the position. Other army personnel were not surprised at the interest Bradford had taken in selecting the regimental commander of the Old Guard because Bradford had once held that position for a short time. People would be very surprised, however, if they knew how Bradford had changed the Old Guard’s mission.
“He said he received a call from a woman,” Levy said, “a Staff Sergeant Marian Kane over at the Pentagon. She was calling about the two men I used on the Russo problem.”
“You mean the men you shipped out?”
“Yes, sir. Sergeants Pierce and Gannon. Anyway, Kane knew that Gannon and Pierce had been reassigned and she said her boss wanted to know who had authorized the transfer. According to Sergeant Kane, her boss was upset because these men were not supposed to be rotated out of Fort Myer for at least a year. Gilmore naturally said he couldn’t help her, that he didn’t get involved every time some low-ranking soldier was reassigned, and then he called over to the Pentagon to see if a Sergeant Kane really works there. He discovered that there is a Sergeant Marion Kane in personnel—but that’s Marion spelled M-a-r-i-o-n, and Sergeant Kane is a male. Whoever called Gilmore screwed up.”
“I don’t understand,” Bradford said. “Why would anyone be asking about those two soldiers?”
“I did some backtracking after Gilmore called me. I discovered that after Sergeant Witherspoon—uh, died, that—”
“Witherspoon?” Bradford asked.
Levy didn’t speak for a moment and Bradford could sense Levy’s disapproval. “Sergeant Witherspoon,” Levy said, “was the soldier driving the ambulance, the man who was—”
“Oh, yes,” Bradford said. “I’m sorry, John,” he added, and he truly was. He was embarrassed he’d forgotten Witherspoon’s name, a man who died in the service of his country.
“I found out that someone claiming to be from the Arlington Police Department took Witherspoon’s fingerprints before his body was taken from the hospital,” Levy said.
“So what?” Bradford said. “He was a John Doe and the police wanted to identify him.”
“That’s possible. But if the cops had taken his fingerprints, they would have drawn a blank. Witherspoon’s fingerprints are not in any criminal database, and if Arlington tried to access military fingerprint files, they still would have come up empty. As you know, Witherspoon’s prints are flagged, I would have been contacted, and his name wouldn’t have been released to the police without my approval.”
“John, I’m confused,” Bradford said. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the only way the Arlington cops could have identified Witherspoon through his fingerprints was if they had contacts at the Pentagon or the ability to hack into a military data base and override the don’t-release tag on Witherspoon’s name. The detective who was assigned to the case before Hopper took it away from him is ex-military, but he was just a grunt in the marines more than twenty years ago. I think it’s highly unlikely, sir, that this detective or anyone associated with him could have identified Witherspoon. So the big question is this: How did they make the leap?”
“The leap?”
“Yes, sir. What caused them to take the next step? What made them start asking questions about the cadre at Fort Myer after they identified Witherspoon?”
“Maybe they were just checking to see if Witherspoon had accomplices. Looking at ot
her men in his unit would be a logical step.”
“I don’t think so,” Levy said. “The ambulance he stole was recovered when it was wrecked, it wasn’t involved in any crime the police know of, and I doubt there’s some big auto-theft ring in the area dealing in stolen ambulances. No, sir. The cops just wouldn’t have dug this hard for one stolen ambulance.
“General, I don’t know what’s going on here. All I know is that Witherspoon and the two men I used for the operation have been identified and someone is asking questions.”
Bradford could feel a bubble of panic began to form in his chest, which he quickly suppressed—he had never panicked in his life—but there was reason for concern. In the past, there had never been a direct connection between him and Levy’s operations—other than Levy himself, of course, and Levy would never talk. But this thing with Russo was different. He couldn’t separate himself from Russo’s death if the reason for his death were to become known. He started to rise from his chair to … to what? To tell Levy what was at stake? He didn’t need to tell John Levy that.
But before he could say anything, Levy said, “I’m pursuing a lead, sir. I think I can find out who took Witherspoon’s fingerprints.”
“Pursue it fast, John,” Bradford said. “Find out what the hell’s going on.”
10
The lady in charge of the hospice where Paul Russo had worked was a plain-faced middle-aged woman with short gray hair, no makeup, and a prim set to her mouth. She wore a blue skirt with a hem that fell a good two inches below her chunky knees, a short-sleeved white blouse, and she had a small cross on a thin gold chain around her neck. She made DeMarco think of a nun in civilian clothes. Her name was Jane Sealy.
DeMarco explained to Jane that he was trying to find his cousin’s will so he could deal with his estate. At the mention of Paul’s name, Jane crossed herself and then basically told him that Paul had been the saint who walked among us: extremely religious, gave his time and money to charities, loved his fellow man, wouldn’t hurt a fly, and his patients and their families loved him. There was no one better suited, more compassionate, more caring, Jane said, when it came to helping people die.
