House Divided

by Mike Lawson

  “That’s possible, of course, but it doesn’t matter. We were using encrypted com gear and we never mentioned any names.”

  “Encrypted com gear,” Bradford repeated. “John, what’s the one organization in this country that might be able to listen in on an encrypted transmission?”

  Levy was silent for a moment. “The NSA,” he said.

  “Yes, the National Security Agency. And where are they headquartered, John?”

  “Fort Meade.”

  “The NSA helps design encrypted communications systems used by the military. And if they develop an encrypted system, you know damn good and well they know a way to break the encryption. They have to be able to do that in case the enemy gets their hands on our gear.”

  Levy shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t buy it. The radios we used have a Type I encryption system with a 256-bit encryption key. It would take the NSA a million of hours of computer time to break the code, assuming they could ever break it.”

  “Do you know that for a fact, John? Even I don’t know the latest advancements in NSA encryption technology. What I do know is that they’re always light-years ahead of the people using the radios.”

  Levy nodded his head. He knew Bradford could be right.

  Neither man said anything for a moment, then Bradford said, “I think I’m going to have someone poke around a bit over at the NSA.”

  “Sir, that could be a mistake. Right now the only thing anyone knows is Witherspoon was driving a stolen ambulance and two soldiers from Fort Myer were reassigned to Afghanistan. And if the NSA had heard something, wouldn’t they have told somebody? Wouldn’t they have alerted someone here at the Pentagon, or maybe even the White House?”

  Bradford laughed. “That’s the last thing they’d do, because then they’d have to admit they were conducting an illegal eavesdropping operation. But they might initiate their own investigation.”

  Bradford looked out at the Asian pruning the rhody again. Now the gardener was just standing, head cocked, studying the bush, like a painter assessing a work in progress. Bradford supposed that bush-trimming was an art in its way, and again he envied the man his task.

  He turned back to Levy. “John, let’s consider the worst case scenario. Let’s assume someone—the NSA, whoever—knows Witherspoon and those two other soldiers were involved in Russo’s death. Let’s even take it a step further. Let’s assume they know Russo was meeting with Hansen. Is there anything you said that night that would have told them why Russo and Hansen were meeting?”

  “No, sir. Absolutely not.”

  “And Russo didn’t leave anything behind that says why he and Hansen were meeting?”

  “No, sir. Hopper searched Russo’s house after the operation and I had searched it before, as soon as we knew that … that General Breed had talked to Russo.”

  Bradford could tell Levy was still very much bothered by Martin’s death.

  “And as for the reporter,” Levy said, “the Post has repeatedly stated that they have no idea what Hansen was working on prior to his disappearance.”

  “I agree,” Bradford said.

  “And there’s no way to prove the two soldiers we shipped out were involved in the operation. There’s no evidence that they were at the memorial and, with Hopper handling the case, no evidence will ever be found.”

  Bradford was silent for a moment. “John, our biggest liability at this point is those two soldiers talking.”

  “They won’t, sir. I know those men. They won’t ever discuss what happened that night.”

  “I’m not sure we can afford to take the risk.”

  Levy didn’t say anything for a moment, then he looked directly into Bradford’s eyes. “Sir, I am not going to do anything to harm those soldiers.”

  There was no doubt Levy meant what he said. Killing Martin Breed on his deathbed was one thing, and even eliminating Witherspoon, a man who would most likely have spent the rest of his days as a vegetable, was different from killing two loyal soldiers who had only followed orders. At least that’s the way Levy would see it. When things settled down a bit, he needed to talk with Levy some more about the sacrifices that men in their positions were sometimes required to make. But not now.

  “I’m not asking you to harm them,” Bradford said. “All I’m saying is that you need to make sure those men understand the importance of not talking to anyone, and if anyone tries to talk to them, they need to let you know immediately. Can you get word to them where they’re stationed now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. For now, just keep tabs on everything. Keep in touch with Hopper at the Bureau and tell Colonel Gilmore to call you if he gets any more inquiries about the sentinels. And I’ll do a little quiet probing over at the NSA.”

  “And if we find out the NSA did hear us that night?” Levy asked.

  “Then I’ll deal with it,” Bradford said.

  Bradford had to participate in a teleconference with his NATO commanders in two minutes, but he continued to sit at his desk. He didn’t tolerate people being late to his meetings and, consequently, he didn’t like it when he was late. But he needed to do something about the NSA, and right away.

  As he’d told Levy, he needed to know if the agency had any knowledge of the Russo op. He didn’t, however, want it known that anyone at the Pentagon was interested—and he really didn’t want it known that he was interested. He thought about this problem for a moment before he came up with the perfect answer: Aziz. Yes, the Aziz fiasco would provide the cover he needed.

  He picked up the phone, punched in a number, and said, “This is General Bradford. Tell him it’s not urgent, but I need to speak to him.” Forty minutes later, his NATO teleconference was interrupted when the president returned his call.

  “Is there a problem, General?” the president asked, and Bradford could hear the stress in his voice. The man was struggling with two wars, an intractable Congress, and a domestic agenda that appeared to be mired in the mud. He didn’t need another problem—which was exactly what Bradford was counting on.

  “No, Mr. President, there isn’t a problem,” Bradford said. “In fact, I’m calling to suggest doing something to avoid one, and it would be best if the issue was handled by someone outside of the Department of Defense.”

  20

  “We got something on that guy Hopper.”

  Claire looked up. It was the agent she’d assigned to watch the FBI man. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that said POTOMAC ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY over the pocket, and she assumed the shirt was part of whatever ploy his team was using to stay close to the subject, maybe a power company truck outside the Hoover Building or near Hopper’s home. What Claire didn’t like was that he looked hung over, his eyes two bloodshot holes in his unshaven face. She made a mental note to have him checked out. Drunks were a liability.

  “What did you get?” Claire said.

  “Maybe you should just play this,” he said, and offered her a CD.

  “Password,” she said.

  “Feebwatch,” he said. “One word, lowercase.”

  She started to berate him for using a password so closely related to the contents of the CD, but didn’t. She would talk to him about that when she spoke to him about the booze. She inserted the disc into one of her computers and listened to a phone call from a man named DeMarco to Hopper. When the call was over, she said, “So what? So this guy DeMarco is trying to find Russo’s will. What’s the big deal?”

  “Listen to the next phone call,” the agent said.

  I got your message. What’s going on?

  The man speaking was the one who had directed Paul Russo’s execution. Hopper responded by saying:

  It’s about the nurse.

  What happened?

  I got a call from a lawyer named DeMarco who works for Congress. He’s related to the nurse, and he’s trying to find out if the nurse had a will. The thing is, he’s searched the nurse’s apartment at least once and he seems to be following my investig
ation.

  Do you think he’s conducting his own investigation?

  I don’t think so. But I get the impression he isn’t buying the story that Russo was killed because of drugs.

  There was a moment of silence.

  Look, it’s probably nothing.

  It was Hopper speaking again.

  I’m just letting you know because you told me to keep you informed. You might want to put somebody on this guy, but that’s up to you.

  It bothers me that he works for Congress.

  Yeah, it bothers me too, but I don’t think his job is related to this. He’s just the nurse’s cousin trying to settle the estate. If you want, I could make up a will for the nurse. You know, fill out one of those online forms and give it to DeMarco. That would probably get him off my back.

  No, don’t do that. If the real will shows up, that could just complicate things. Anyway, thanks for calling.

  “Were you able to identify the man who called Hopper back?” Claire asked the agent.

  “No,” he said. “We got a fix on his position when he was talking to Hopper and he was in a car on the beltway, but after he completed the call he powered down the phone.”

  Claire made sure the agent had all the assets he needed to stay on Hopper, then dismissed him.

  Her next thought was: DeMarco. Yeah, he might do.

  “We need to spook Hopper.”

  Claire said this as she paced Dillon’s office and she made him think of a walking pipe bomb, some completely unstable device that could detonate at any moment.

  Claire Whiting just sucked the tranquillity out of any room she entered.

  “I think we should use this guy DeMarco,” she said.

  “Use him how?”

  “We’ll give him something that’ll make him suspicious of Hopper. I mean, he’s already suspicious; you can tell by the sound of his voice that he doesn’t believe Russo was dealing drugs. So we’ll give him something else. We’ll tell him no autopsy was performed on his cousin and Hopper lied about Russo being killed with a handgun. Or maybe we tell DeMarco the night Russo died he was meeting with a reporter from the Post, and the reporter’s disappeared.”

  “How would you leak all this to DeMarco?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something out. But the idea is we give him something that’ll make him call Hopper again and make Hopper meet with whoever’s controlling him.”

  “That could be rather dangerous for Mr. DeMarco, don’t you think?” Dillon said.

  Claire stopped pacing and looked at Dillon. The expression on her face said and your point is?

  “We actually don’t have to use DeMarco directly,” she said. “We’ve recorded his voice and I can have a guy imitate him. Then Hopper will run to his boss. Or maybe Hopper’s boss will send people to watch DeMarco …”

  “And maybe kill him,” Dillon tossed in.

  “… but we’ll be there covering DeMarco, and we’ll follow these people right down the rabbit hole.”

  “No, Claire. I don’t want this DeMarco person involved, and I definitely don’t want him killed. Let’s leave him out of this, for the time being.”

  Claire opened her mouth to debate this directive but, before she could, Dillon asked, “Tell me what else you’ve learned.”

  Claire stared at Dillon for a moment, making no attempt to hide her annoyance. She was probably thinking how things would be different if she had his job. “We checked traffic cameras,” she said. “There wasn’t one right near the Iwo Jima Memorial but there was one half a mile away. The camera caught Hansen’s car going through the intersection half an hour after Russo’s body was discovered.”

  “What about before Russo was killed? Did any of the cameras show Hansen going toward the memorial?”

  “No. We looked at cameras on the most likely routes from Hansen’s apartment to the memorial, but none of them picked him up. He’s a local boy, so maybe he knew some back-road way to get there. Or maybe he didn’t drive from his apartment.”

  “And I take it you couldn’t see who was driving the car.”

  “No. Just the license plate. I don’t know why they don’t set up those fucking cameras so you can really see what’s going on.”

  “They’re designed to catch people running stoplights, Claire, not to spy on the citizenry.”

  “Well, that’s pretty damn shortsighted, if you ask me.”

  “So you don’t really know who was in the car, Hansen or the people who might have killed him.”

  “No, but you have one hell of a coincidence. Hansen goes missing the same day as the hit, and half an hour after the hit his car is spotted near the memorial. That’s good enough for me. They popped Russo and Hansen, and whoever was in charge took Hansen’s body. Then, while all the cops were looking at Russo’s corpse, one of the guys on the hit team comes back and picks up Hansen’s car.”

  “And did what with it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, exasperated with Dillon’s mania for detail. “They took it to a wrecking yard and squeezed it into a little metal cube. Or they took it to a chop shop and had it cut up into a hundred pieces. It’s gone, just like Hansen, and neither will be found again. Hansen’ll be like that old-time reporter you like so much.”

  “Do you mean Ambrose Bierce?”

  “Yeah, the guy who walked into Mexico and disappeared. And that’s what they’ll say about Hansen twenty years from now: he was on to something big and he vanished.”

  Dillon liked to quote Ambrose Bierce, one his favorites being: An idiot: a member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence on human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.

  “I also had an agent search Hansen’s apartment,” Claire said, “but she didn’t find anything helpful. She said the place might have been searched before she got there, but Hansen was such a slob it was hard to be sure.”

  “I know Hansen’s laptop went missing with him,” Dillon said, “but could he have e-mailed something from it?”

  “No. Hansen used his laptop like a typewriter and when it was time to file a story he’d copy it to a disc and take the disc to work. He never e-mailed anything related to his stories. Maybe he was afraid to.”

  “So another dead end,” Dillon said.

  “Yes. Which is why I need DeMarco for a Judas goat. Please, Dillon. Let me tether his ass to a stake and see who comes to eat him.”

  “No, Claire,” Dillon said. “Find another way.”

  21

  DeMarco knocked again on Betty’s door, and she frowned when she saw who was standing on her porch. He wondered if she’d forgotten who he was.

  “Hi, Betty. Joe DeMarco, Paul’s cousin? Remember?”

  “Of course I remember. Why do people your age always assume someone my age can’t remember anything?”

  Sheesh. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t implying—”

  “Oh, never mind. What do you want?”

  “Well, I was wondering if you’d mind letting me into Paul’s apartment again. I still can’t find his will.”

  And then he told Betty what the lawyer had said, how she might be forced to store all of Paul’s things until Paul’s estate was settled by the state, which could take until the next ice age. He could tell Betty wasn’t too happy to hear that—and she gave him the key.

  There was no Rolodex or address book in Paul’s apartment.

  This whole thing was really beginning to piss him off. He’d just blown a hundred and twenty bucks on a lawyer who’d been no help at all, and now he was wasting more time on a guy he barely knew. And the worst thing was, it was a gorgeous day outside, a perfect day for golf, and he was inside a stuffy apartment.

  The money he’d paid the lawyer made him think he should go through Paul’s bills again. If a lawyer had prepared a will for him, there would definitely be a bill, and since he couldn’t find a file labeled LAWYER, he spent forty minutes looking at old Visa bills and canceled checks. No joy.

  Then another thought occurred to him: h
e kept his really important papers in a safe deposit box at his bank, things like his own will and the deed for his house. But he also had a little fireproof box down in his basement where he put semi-important stuff like his passport, his insurance policies, and his disaster cash. Maybe Paul had a box like that, too.

  He rooted around in Paul’s closets—one in his bedroom, one in his office, and one by the front door. It was a small house and there was no basement. All he found was the usual crap people dump on the top shelves of their closets, things they never use but are too lazy to throw out. He didn’t find a strongbox, but he did find a cardboard box filled with photographs.

  He flipped through the box and saw a picture of his mom, Paul’s mom, and Paul’s Aunt Lena—the person who, if she wasn’t eighty-seven years old, should be dealing with this. Then there were the usual snapshots people take and never look at again: pictures of people sitting at barbecue tables, in front of Christmas trees, posed like they were guests at a wedding or some other celebration. There was one guy who was with Paul in a lot of the pictures, and there were several pictures of the guy standing alone. Hmm, he thought.

  He knocked on Betty’s door again—he could tell Betty was becoming a wee bit tired of him—and showed her the picture of the man he’d found so frequently in Paul’s photo collection. “Do you know who this is?” he asked.

  “Oh, that’s Anthony,” she said. “He and Paul dated for about two years, but they broke up over a year ago. Paul took it very hard. I felt so sorry for him.”

  “Huh,” DeMarco said. “Do you know Anthony’s last name?”

  “McGuire. He lives in Fairfax.”

  An ex-lover. Maybe he’d know if Paul had a will.

  But then he looked up at the sky—that beautiful, cloudless blue sky—and he thought, Life is too short. Look at Mahoney. One day he’s running around, on top of the world, and the next day, with no warning at all, he’s on his back, in a coma, half a step from death’s door. Yeah, life is too short and to hell with Paul, his furniture, and his will. He was gonna spend the afternoon playing golf. He’d go see this McGuire guy tomorrow.

  The small conference table in Claire’s office was piled with paper, stacks of paper, all the records she’d asked her people to pull on Russo and Hopper. And because she didn’t know what she was looking for, she couldn’t tell her techs to go through the papers and find whatever it was she needed to find; she had to do it herself, and the task was taking forever. She was just burning time and it was really pissing her off.