“Kostin,” Art corrected.
“Yes. Mr. Kostin.”
“So he came over, it didn’t work out, and he went on his way,” Art said. “Is that the simple picture?”
“That is the picture,” Royce answered.
Very straightforward, Art thought. And very clean. Too clean. “You make drugs here.”
“No, we design them here,” Royce corrected. “And we prefer to call them pharmaceuticals. Several other facilities actually produce them.”
“Pharmaceuticals deal heavily with chemicals, correct?”
Royce nodded at Art’s question.
“Are you a chemist?”
“A chemical engineer.”
“I assume, then, that you know what chemicals would be required to make what Mr. King was making,” Art said.
“The basic ones, yes,” Royce confirmed.
“Would those chemicals be available here?” Art asked. “Would the equipment needed to manufacture nerve gas be available here?”
“Agent Jefferson, there is absolutely no way that Mr. King could have made that poison here,” Royce responded, showing more animation than at any time so far in the conversation. “Absolutely no way.”
“I don’t think he did,” Art said. “But could he have acquired either the chemicals or the equipment here?”
Royce shook his head emphatically. “Absolutely not. It is a violation of our regulations, and federal regulations, to allow that to happen.”
“Mr. King was not following too many regulations,” Frankie reminded him.
“Still, any pilferage would have been noticed, reported, and stopped,” Royce assured the agents.
Frankie knew it was time for a new tack. “Does the name Frederick Allen mean anything to you?”
Royce’s head shook as he recrossed his legs. “No. No it doesn’t.”
Frankie sensed something in the response, or a lack of something. A challenge was warranted. “Are you very sure?”
Royce cleared his throat. “Young lady, I am a man with many friends, several of whom share the name Frederick. But I can assure you that there is no Freddy Allen among them.”
Bingo. “All right.”
Art had caught it, too. It was amazing how the simplest of things could give someone away. But this was not the place nor the time to pursue it any further. In fact any additional questioning was useless for the moment. But not for long.
Frankie looked to her partner. “Is there anything else you need to ask?”
“No. Not right now.” He turned to Royce. “We may have some more questions, though, if any new information comes up.”
“Of course,” Royce said, nodding obligingly. “I will cooperate in any way I can.” He pushed off one arm of the sofa, coming to his feet. “Knowing that my former employee decided to go into so sordid a profession leaves a black mark on my judgment. I want to exorcise that, if possible. For my own peace of mind.”
“Of course.” Art and Frankie stood, each politely thanking the CEO of Royce Pharmaceuticals for his time, and, silently, for much more. They left his office and followed the same security guard who had escorted them in back out, exiting the headquarters of the multimillion-dollar corporation into a blustery fall breeze that had kicked up while they were inside.
“He was lying through his teeth,” Art said once outside. “Hey, good snare, partner.”
“Would you call someone named Frederick Freddy if you didn’t know them?”
“He didn’t call Richard Dick,” Art answered. “Now all we have to do is find out how and why this guy was mixed up with Allen.”
Whatever the executive’s motivation was in becoming involved with Kostin and, she was sure, Freddy Allen, one obvious connection to the affair was very apparent to Frankie. “Money, partner.”
“But why?” Art wondered. “I want to know everything we can about this guy. Especially about his finances.”
“His visit to Russia, too,” Frankie suggested.
“Good idea. Have the liaison group in D.C. run that down if they haven’t already,” Art directed. “Have them find out how long this trip he took was in the works, who his contacts were, where he went, et cetera.”
“Will do,” Frankie said, unlocking the Chevy and getting behind the wheel. Her right hand went immediately to the heater.
“This whole thing doesn’t feel right,” Art said as he closed the passenger door. Scared wasn’t the word to use, at least not yet.
* * *
Harback gestured once again to the slate-gray unit after finishing his spiel. “SunSnow knows how to make things right.”
“That’s an understatement,” Stanley commented, looking over the layout of the area and the entire system. Simple in some respects, but for his purposes there was still the nagging problem of getting to this point without sounding any alarms in those workers who were bound to see something. Whoever was going to actually place the stuff couldn’t just ask Harback to...or could they? “Ray, this is absolutely what I think my clients in Thailand are going to need. Your setup fits the bill as far as I can see. You know, what would really help is if I could get some pictures of this level and the main system. Stills and video so I could ship them over to the architects and engineers in Bangkok to convince them. Is there any way I could send a couple of my guys up next week sometime to take some shots?”
“Sure. No problem. I’d be glad to point out what they should be shooting.”
Stanley patted the bigger man appreciatively on the shoulder. “You may have just saved my clients a hefty refit.”
“No problem at all.”
“Well, there will be a very generous consulting services fee coming your way.”
Harback chuckled, the joviality drowned out by the constant noise. “I appreciate that.”
“Is Wednesday all right with you?”
“The day before Thanksgiving?” Harback asked, mentally checking his schedule. Most in the building would be heading out early that day. The load on the systems would be minimal. “Morning okay?”
“Eight would be good,” Stanley said.
“Perfect.”
Stanley reached his hand out, shaking Harback’s firmly. “Perfect.”
Harback escorted his guest back to the ground floor and noted the appointment. Stanley thanked the man one final time, sincere in his appreciation. If only he knew, Stanley thought with a smile as he crossed the lobby, his eyes squinting at the glare from the front—
“Damn,” Anne Preston said, her armful of books now at her feet after the collision.
“I’m... I’m sorry,” Stanley apologized, squatting to help the lady pick up her books. “I didn’t see you. The glare kinda blinded me.”
“It was an accident,” Anne said. “I should have seen you.”
“No, I was...” Stanley looked up from the floor, seeing the lady’s face for the first time. She’s African. He hadn’t been this close to an African in years. In fact he couldn’t remember touching an African woman, even accidentally like this. “I... I’m sorry. I... I’ve gotta go.”
Anne gathered the books as the young man handed them to her with haste. She stood from a crouch and watched him hurry from the building as if he’d just seen a ghost, then let the strange incident fade as she continued on to her twelfth-floor office.
SIX
Bulls
The forty-hour week, legislated many years before for the benefit of American workers, was but a long-forgotten dream for those gathered in the Oval Office this Saturday morning. There was coffee in a shining server, which rested on a silver tray at the center of a low table. Two platters, one of fruit slices and the other stacked with croissants, were on either side of the tray, and from the two couches and the single highback chair that framed the arrangement hands would occasionally reach in and partake of the light morning meal.
The president, sitting straight in the highback, held a saucer on his lap and sipped at the cup of Colombian blend as the man who would run his campaign fo
r reelection, once the bid officially got under way the week after Thanksgiving, ran through a thumbnail sketch of the strategy developed over the summer months. Listening with the president were the secretary of state, the White House chief of staff, and National Security Adviser Bud DiContino, three men he saw as a troika of wisdom and honesty that could be relied upon without fail.
The outline of the route the campaign would take through the electoral minefield, presented by Earl Casey, the presidential campaign general chairman, was given as a courtesy to those men closest to the chief executive.
It was laid out for their perusal, comment, or criticism, and, as expected, it focused heavily on domestic issues. The voters, burned by promises of such in the past, as well as a still sluggish economy that refused to rebound to prerecession levels, were as skeptical as they had ever been, Casey told the group. As a political operator Casey was the best, saying what needed to be said, seeing what warranted attention, and spinning what required finessing. This was his first presidential campaign, but seven sitting governors owed their positions to the man, and the Democratic strategists had convinced the president that Casey and the team he could assemble were the ones who could keep the party in the White House for four more years.
Bud DiContino, however, saw some wrinkles in the carefully crafted plan.
“What about the unexpected?” The NSA asked. He saw Jim Coventry’s head move slightly in agreement.
“In what form?” Casey responded.
“Well, take what’s going on now for example,” Bud said. “Say that a week before New Hampshire we find out that this Kostin fellow is actually a Russian spy sent here to supply homegrown terrorist groups with nerve gas.”
“I hope that’s not a suggestion of what’s possible, Bud,” Casey said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s ludicrous,” Casey answered.
“Then pick another possibility,” Bud challenged the thirty-eight-year-old political wunderkind. “Iraq. Iran. Mexico. The IRA. Hezbollah. South Africa. Israel. Which one? You know, it doesn’t matter, which is my point. The unexpected, the thing that you would not have predicted with all the best intelligence, will rear up and slap you across the face just like this incident has.”
“And like now it will be controlled by the proper part of the government,” Casey said.
Bud would have loved to let Casey know what was still facing the country, but he had no need to be privy to that information. “The voice of the president is sometimes the only sound some people hear when things get dicey. If the Iranians ‘accidentally’ loose a missile at one of our ships in the Gulf, Drew Meyerson is not going to be the one the American people will want to hear from, and he is not the one the Iranians will need to hear from. That’s nothing against the secretary of defense, it is simply a statement of fact that it is somewhat disingenuous to believe you can cast the president as a domestic manager who can delegate responsibility for the crises of tomorrow to his advisers simply because an election is looming. It’s disingenuous, and it’s dangerous.”
“I tend to agree with Bud, sir,” Coventry said. “Thinking in purely political terms, I believe the strategy Earl’s laid out could backfire.”
“How so?” the president inquired.
“For the same reasons Bud just presented,” Coventry answered. “If you are set up as focused entirely on the domestic agenda and reality rears its head and draws your attention away, you become a target for your opponents.”
The president considered the statements of his national security adviser and secretary of state while sipping his coffee. “Ellis?”
The chief of staff, his white shirt only three hours in use and already wrinkled, looked to the leader of his country, the man he had grown up with in the Golden State. “If you want pragmatism, Mr. President, then I agree wholeheartedly with Bud and Jim. But a campaign is not about pragmatism, like that or not. It’s about ideology and image. A segment of the electorate buys ideology, another buys image. And it’s the image factor that is going to be the challenge for you.”
“Ellis, things are getting better,” Coventry said. He wasn’t an economist, but he understood enough to be able to intelligently analyze the numbers coming from various agencies.
“Tell that to the guy in California whose job was just sold to China along with the steel plant he worked in for twenty years,” the chief of staff countered. “Because that is the guy the media will have endless interviews with, along with every naysayer the opposition can drum up. You can’t ignore image by throwing numbers out that are supposed to convince people who see hurt on the tube every night that things are really okay. That is also disingenuous.”
Casey saw that the chief of staff’s argument had scored some points with the two critics of his strategy. “And, Mr. President, the economy is only part of the domestic agenda that people are crying for action on.”
The president nodded and bent forward, setting the cup and saucer on the coffee table. “I know. Crime.”
“Exactly,” Casey agreed. “You’ve made only minor dents in the overall crime rate, and coupled with big incidents that grab the headlines the image is one of stagnation on this front.”
“Nothing happens overnight, Earl,” the president said.
“The election of a new chief executive does,” Casey reminded the president, and the rest of those gathered. “Look, we not only have to deal with what you have done, are doing, and will do on crime, we have to be able to respond to the big failures. Take the case of that Barrish asshole this week. What happened there?”
“The legal system worked in its most flawed way,” Bud said.
“Wrong,” Casey said. “For my purposes, which include keeping your boss in this job, it means an animal walked. That is what the voters see, and they also see it as a failure by the Justice Department to do its job, and they know who hires, supervises, and fires the attorney general.” Casey unashamedly pointed a finger at the president. “This man, Bud. Ultimately, when the voter goes into the booth to pull the lever, he remembers things like his next-door neighbor being out of work, he remembers four little girls lying dead in a church, and he remembers very clearly the image of John Barrish leaving court a free man. Those are the things he remembers.”
The chief of staff leaned in to take the floor. “You know, relating to what Earl just said, I had a meeting with Rabbi Levin—”
“How is he?” the president asked, interrupting. “I didn’t have a chance to see him.” Aside from the donations the rabbi could deliver, the president genuinely liked the man.
“He’s fine,” Ellis said. “He was just here for a few hours yesterday. Anyway, he had an interesting story. His synagogue was sponsoring some sort of seminars on racial tolerance. The attendance was entirely white until a couple of nights ago, when the father of one of those little girls showed up.”
“Oh my God,” the president said.
“He told Levin he came because he said he was starting to hate as much as the people who killed his daughter.” Ellis paused for a moment, out of necessity. The emotion was real, as real as it had been when Levin shared the story with him. “The man was destroyed. So was his family. And he was there, begging for help without saying a word.”
“Did someone get him some help?” Bud asked.
Ellis nodded. “The person giving the seminar, a psychiatrist from UCLA, I think, is going to do whatever she can...free of charge.”
“Thank God there is still some altruism out there,” Coventry commented.
“Mr. President,” Casey began, “this is the kind of thing that will make or break you in the eyes of the voters. This man and how others perceive the future.”
Bud felt that his point had just been completely superseded by emotion, and he had a hard time arguing with that reality. One couldn’t help but be moved by that story and the people involved.
But there were other stories yet to be revealed that could have a greater impact on a larger number of people. It wa
sn’t a thought meant to minimize the tragedy of a horrid event, just a statement of fact.
“Mr. President, a great many things external to this nation can have an impact on events internal,” Bud posited. “We are living with that now. A former Russian scientist was involved in the manufacture of chemical weapons on our soil. The event itself may be a domestic issue, but at least part of it began an ocean and half a continent away.”
He was the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Millions, arguably billions of people depended on his steady hand to keep them free, and he was sitting among his advisers discussing how best to keep his job. On the hierarchy of things vital to the nation it seemed very mundane to the president, but he had jumped willingly into the political arena many years before. From this vantage, though, with nowhere left to go but down, the hoop jumping and spin doctoring, farcical as it sometimes seemed, was life. It was reality.
“Earl, you said the State of the Union speech is going to be the jumping-off point,” the president recalled, letting the debate of the previous moments take a backseat. “Why?”
“It’s your strong point,” Casey answered. “You convey ideas and feeling through words better than any president since FDR. We have to seize on that strength to get a running start. Remember, you’ll have an audience of a hundred million that will be watching you in a setting that is very presidential. That’s something Paul Collins and Moe Stone don’t even have as a campaign tool.” Collins, the Republican senator from Florida, was practically pre-anointed as his party’s nominee some eight months before their convention. Moe Stone, on the other hand, had only to anoint himself. The former Republican congressman, seizing on a populist groundswell, was almost certainly going to run as an independent, and polls indicated there was enough support for his message of traditionalism and values to put him on the ballot from Hawaii to Maine. “Between next week when you formally announce and the State of the Union in January we’ll be running a slow court press, building anticipation of the speech.”
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