Welsh indulged him. "Well, sir, when the alarm is tripped, the signal goes out to the security company over the phone line. I disconnected that outside."
The Senator blinked, and took another gulp from his drink. "But what about the siren that's supposed to be loud enough to raise the dead, not to mention all the damned floodlights?"
"They run on electricity, sir. Before I came in the window I pulled the electric meter to kill the power. Then I went down to the basement and followed the alarm system wires to the breaker box. I tripped the appropriate circuit breakers, then went outside and plugged the meter back in."
The Senator shook his head. "Why did I even bother to buy an alarm system?"
"For peace of mind, sir?" Welsh suggested.
The Senator chuckled. "I've missed you, Rich. You never told me about your criminal tendencies."
"When I tell you the story, sir, you'll understand why I did it this way."
The Senator held out his empty glass. "I have a feeling I'm going to need another of these before you start."
Welsh poured. The Senator made himself comfortable, and then Welsh, pacing back and forth in front of the couch, began his story.
It took over an hour to tell the edited version without any of the incriminating details. When it was over, the Senator got up from the couch and went to the bar. He held up a glass, but Welsh shook his head.
"Incredible," the Senator said quietly. "Absolutely incredible. Are you sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine, sir, but I feel a little like Alice after she went through the looking glass. I'm having to run as fast as I can just to stay in the same place."
"I can understand why."
Now the Senator was looking uncomfortable, and Welsh knew why. The essence of politics was to never commit to a course of action unless absolutely necessary, and maybe not even then. Welsh didn't want the Senator comfortable, so he shut right up. The best way to get a born talker to talk was to stay quiet; they could abide anything but silence.
The Senator brooded over it for a while. "Hell, Rich," he said finally. "When I sent you down there, I didn't expect you to actually find out anything."
Welsh thought he ought to mix the Senator doubles more often. It wasn't often he heard frankness of that magnitude. "Sorry about that, sir. I didn't plan on it."
"We'll get you FBI protection," the Senator decided. "Turn the whole thing over to them. I'll speak to the Director personally,"
"Sir."
"Yes, Rich," he said cautiously, keying on Welsh's tone.
"Sir, if these documents get back in the hands of any government agency, with their classification they're going to disappear back into the black world forever."
The Senator didn't seem to think that would be such a tragedy. "You don't know where this guy Kohl is?"
"No, sir."
"What do you want me to do, Rich?"
"Sir, if there was ever a reason to hold some hearings, this is it."
The Senator thought that over. "Holding hearings and grandstanding at the CIA's expense is one thing," he said. "Being the one who damaged the CIA beyond repair—that's another thing entirely. This is all from the past—we're in a war on terrorism right now. Do you realize how many constituencies would come marching on my office with torches and pitchforks? Even worse is putting yourself in the position where you're the one who's expected to identify what's wrong and make changes."
In wine there is truth, Welsh quoted to himself. You'd never hear all that at a Rotary Club banquet. It was a cold day in hell when you got a chance to step inside a politician's head and watch the political math being done.
He also had a feeling that Senator Anderson had grasped the one essential point of the whole business. The big boys of the CIA didn't hang out in a room full of beer cans and empty pizza boxes and throw darts at a map of the world to see which country they'd fuck with next. When you worked for the government, the first thing you learned is that no one ever did anything their boss didn't want them to do. Every President of the United States had sent the CIA off to do the dirty work he wanted done and didn't want the American people to know about. The cables in Welsh's possession covered four different Administrations of two different parties, which meant bipartisan interest in covering ass.
"So what you're trying to tell me is that you've decided it's a losing hand."
"There's no need for that, Rich."
There were always such excellent reasons for chickening out, Welsh thought. The right thing had a consistent way of being too expensive a proposition.
The Senator seemed about to say something more, but instead got up and walked all the way over to the phone before he remembered that the line was dead. His leather briefcase sat on one of the end tables. He opened it up and took out a cell phone. "I'll call the FBI right now."
Welsh stood up. "Sir, would you give me that phone?"
"Believe me, Rich, this is the best way to handle it." The Senator switched on the phone.
"Sir, would you please put that phone down."
Senator Anderson wasn't one to be told what to do.
Welsh pulled out Nelson's .45 and fired a shot into the wall. Touching off a .45 in an enclosed room was a major attention-getter. The Senator dropped the phone and found a chair so he could take a load off those rubbery legs.
"One time someone asked me what combat was like," Welsh said conversationally. "I told him the only way he'd really understand was if I shot at him while I was telling the story." He bent down and picked up the ejected shell casing, then walked over to the phone. There was a satisfying sound of crunching plastic when he stamped on it.
"Rich..."
"Yeah, I know," said Welsh. "You can consider this my resignation. Well, we all have defining moments in our lives. You had your chance to be Sam Ervin, but you showed what you were really made of." He turned to leave, stopped, and turned back around. "We'd both better forget this meeting took place. Because if I get any blow-back from the story I told, or my expenses don't get approved in full, you'll see first-hand just what I'm capable of. Sorry about the hole in the wall. A little spackle will cover that right up."
Welsh went out the back door, through the garden, past the pool, and over the security fence. Scanlan had the car door open and the engine running.
"Where to now?" she asked.
"Back to the interstate."
Chapter Forty-Eight
There was one hotel in Richmond with twenty-four-hour room service, and they took advantage of it.
"God, I loved the look on the desk clerk's face," Scanlan said, "when he asked you if we had any baggage. And you said, 'A lot, but no luggage.'" She almost choked on her shrimp cocktail.
"It wasn't that funny," said Welsh.
"Yeah, but at the time." She paused. "Why are you so glum? You knew the Senator probably wouldn't go for it."
Welsh wiped his mouth and set his napkin back in his lap. "You're right. A politician being a politician? I'm more upset than I have a right to be."
"Well?"
"Well, when your dad has a night out with the boys, and the next morning he tells you to wash the car, and you find dainty little footprints on the inside windshield, then you're either going to develop a real tolerance for hypocrisy or a real resentment for it."
"You ever tell anyone about that?"
"Not before today."
"Rich, you are either the most open guy I ever met, or the slickest dog who ever walked the face of the earth."
"You figure out which, let me know."
She shook her head fondly. "What's our next move?"
'Tomorrow we'll drop by a copy center. We'll send one copy of the cables to the New York Times, and another to a producer I know at 60 Minutes."
"Why both?"
"Free market competition. If each knows the other has the story, then even if they wanted to, they'd be too afraid to sit on it. Besides, more people watch TV than read nowadays. We'll send another copy to Nordstrom, that ex-State Departme
nt guy the CIA got fired for passing classified material on your brother to the Congressman. He's working for the Congressman now, and he deserves it."
"I feel good about that. And then what?"
"Not only could I use a vacation, but I think getting out of the neighborhood is a good idea until things settle down a bit and I can get a lawyer friend to talk to the cops on my behalf. What about you?"
"Are you kidding? I've been dreaming about a warm beach and blue water. Let's go to Hawaii."
"Hawaii it is. Gutierrez made a cash contribution to the vacation fund."
Scanlan was grinning at him across the room service table.
"What?" Welsh demanded.
"I forgot to tell you. While you were in talking with the Senator, I was looking through Kohl's case. There was a waterproof pouch taped to the bottom. Inside it were three different passports and sets of identification, and fifty thousand dollars in cash."
"That was his escape kit," said Welsh. "Classic intelligence tradecraft."
"Wait. There was another envelope in there, filled with information about a numbered account in a bank in Liechtenstein. There's six million dollars in the account."
"Crime does pay, doesn't it?"
Scanlan leaned over the table and slapped him on the side of the head.
"Hey! What did you do that for, Maggie?"
"Don't you get it? It's a numbered account. Whoever has the transaction codes and procedures, which were inside the envelope, can transfer that money into any account, under any name, in any bank in the world. Congratulations, Rich, you're now a millionaire too."
"Quite a world, isn't it?" said Welsh, almost lost for a moment in bitterness. "You get screwed for doing the right thing, but killing is always profitable."
"Rich..."
Welsh went off in deep thought, then brightened up a bit. "Remember Raul the professor, back at the Embassy party? I'll give him a call, I'm sure he knows a bunch of worthy Guatemalan charities that could use some blood money."
"Rich, you are not giving that money away. At least not all of it."
"We'll see," he said unconvincingly. "As far as Washington is concerned, I might as well be a leper. Is there a job open as your boy toy?"
She smiled lasciviously. "You meet all the qualifications."
"I always knew I'd find my niche eventually."
"Rich, I'm worried about something. Our relationship has been fantastic, but you've got to admit it's been based on running for our lives and pretty continuous action and adventure. In everyday life are we going to do that couple thing and drive each other crazy?"
"We rolled up in the same tarpaulin in the middle of the fucking jungle," Welsh almost bellowed. "Just what annoying little personal quirks do you think are going to crop up at this stage of the game?"
"Point taken," Scanlan said, laughing again. "It was just in the back of my mind, though. You've got to admit, nothing about us has been normal thus far."
"Anyone can be normal," said Richard Welsh.
THE END
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000, 2011 by William Christie
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-2138-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
William Christie 02 - Mercy Mission Page 29
