Guilt by Silence

by Taylor Smith

  “No one to ask questions.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Did you read the Newsweek article on McCord?”

  Mariah nodded, her eyes narrowing. “Why are you suspicious of McCord, Paul?”

  “Two reasons.” Chaney took the magazine from her and opened it to the profile on Gus McCord. He flipped until he found a picture of McCord and his entourage touring a factory in Russia. “Look at this picture. See this big guy in the background? Have you ever seen him before?”

  Mariah peered at the photograph and at the beak-nosed figure towering over McCord in the rear of the group. She shook her head.

  “I saw him in Vienna,” Chaney said.

  “Where?”

  “In front of Katarina Müller’s apartment building. He was also watching David go in with her that night when I saw them together.”

  Mariah felt the blood run out of her face. “Do you know who he is?”

  “His name is Dieter Pflanz. He’s head of security for McCord Industries. And Mariah,” Chaney added, “he’s also ex-CIA.”

  “It figures,” she said, examining the photo again. “You said you had two reasons for suspecting a link to McCord. What’s the second?”

  “McCord owns forty percent of CBN. Not a majority, but he is the largest shareholder and makes his influence felt when he feels strongly about something. The guy who told me I was getting the ax said it was a boardroom decision.”

  “I still can’t believe they fired you, given the ratings your awards must pull in for them.”

  “McCord’s got enough dirt on every member of that board that he could easily get them to go along with canning me. And they’re paying me off handsomely, I can assure you.”

  “To buy your silence,” Mariah said. “So how come you don’t stay bought, Chaney?”

  He grinned. “Just plumb dumb, I guess.”

  Mariah smiled and glanced around. The place was filling up. “Did you bring your laptop computer?” she asked.

  “It’s in the trunk of my car.”

  “You won’t miss it for a while?”

  “I happen to be between assignments. Why do you need it, Mariah?”

  “It’s getting a little crowded in here. What do you say we get our bill and go for a walk on the beach?”

  They scrambled down wooden steps and over the rockpile breakwater that protected the shore road from high storm tides. Mariah wrapped her woolen scarf tighter around her neck and rammed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat.

  “Not much like the beaches of your youth, is it?” Chaney said, watching the waves crashing on the sand. Crusts of ice covered the rocks strewn at the edge of the beach. The sky was overcast and the North Atlantic wind blew cold.

  “No. It even smells different—saltier, somehow,” Mariah said. “I’ve been coming here with David for years, but I’ve never been able to enjoy swimming in this water. Even in August, it’s freezing—to me, anyway, although the locals think it’s fine. All the same, this beach carries a lot of happy memories for me. A lot more than California ever did.”

  She stood quietly for a moment, staring at the surf slamming against the beach, her lips pressed tightly together. Then she looked at Chaney and headed up the beach at a brisk pace. His long legs pulled him up beside her in a few strides.

  “I think you’re right about McCord,” Mariah said. “I think he’s involved in some kind of funny business.”

  “Why? What do you know about him, Mariah?”

  “I stumbled across something last week. I was doing a quick paper on terrorist arms suppliers after those three bombings in London, Paris and New York. Our satellites had picked up a possible shipment of arms out of Libya. We couldn’t prove it because the arms—if that’s what they were—disappeared en route somewhere. But there was evidence of involvement by a shipping company that a McCord subsidiary bought up last year.”

  “What happened to your paper?”

  “It was sanitized. The information on the McCord link never made it past the front office. They were right, I suppose—the evidence was flimsy. But I’ve still got a gut feeling something’s going on there.”

  “This is serious, Mariah. McCord’s being touted as presidential material. He was at the White House last week, and there are rumors that the President might pull the rug out from under the Vice President and support McCord if he decides to run next year.”

  “I know.”

  “Why would McCord get into running arms? The guy’s got more money from legitimate sources than ten men could spend in a lifetime. He’s Mr. Philanthropy and he’s got political ambitions. It doesn’t make sense. But then,” he mused aloud, “why was Dieter Pflanz spying on David and Katarina Müller in Vienna? And what’s the link to the attack in front of Lindsay’s school?”

  Mariah frowned and kicked at a piece of driftwood. “Some people in the Company think the attack in Vienna was meant for me.”

  Chaney stopped cold. “What do you think, Mariah?”

  “It could have been,” she said quietly, tracing a line in the sand with her boot.

  “Why? What were you into over there?”

  “Not much, for the most part. That’s the irony of it,” Mariah said. She walked on and Chaney followed. “I’m from the analytic side of the Company and we don’t get to go overseas as a rule. I wangled a station assignment because I wanted to go to Vienna with David. But I wasn’t part of the covert ops brotherhood and they barely tolerated my presence in the station. Most of what they had me doing there was paper handling—sifting through intelligence reports. They also gave me a couple of very low-priority assets to handle—nothing earthshaking.”

  “There must have been something else, though.”

  She nodded. “I met a Russian physicist at one of David’s office parties. It turned out that she had knowledge of a secret Soviet nuclear weapons program.”

  “And she spilled her guts to you?”

  “It was a sad story. She had grown up near a nuclear weapons research facility and may have suffered damage from exposure to radioactive waste. When she volunteered to provide information, I was allowed to debrief her because I had more expertise in the area than anyone else in the station and she and I had already established a rapport.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “We ran her for about a year and a half, and then she just disappeared. Failed to show up for a meeting one day and never returned to the IAEA offices. Vanished. When the IAEA made inquiries, the Russian embassy said she must have defected in the confusion when the Soviet Union was breaking up, but neither we nor any of our allies could find her. We’re pretty sure the KGB got her. They’ve never really ceased operations, despite the cosmetic changes they’ve gone through since the Soviet breakup.”

  “And then your car was attacked in front of Lindsay’s school and you were supposed to be in it.” Chaney stopped walking and pulled on her sleeve, turning her to face him. “Mariah, how could you not have seen a possible link? Why didn’t you suspect earlier?”

  “I did!” she said angrily, shaking her arm loose. “It was the first thing I thought of! But taking care of David and Lindsay was my priority, so I turned to the one person I trusted to keep watch on the follow-up investigation.”

  “Frank Tucker.”

  “Yes. He’s been with the Company for thirty years. He started out in Operations, but he switched to the analysis side of the house when they discovered his wife had leukemia—they couldn’t travel anymore. He’s been my mentor and one of my best friends for sixteen years. I would trust him with my life, Paul.”

  “But he lied to you.”

  “I don’t think he did—not exactly. At first, he believed it when he told me it was an accident. Later, when he began to suspect the truth, he kept it from me to protect me. That’s what he said, and I don’t think he’s lying. After you showed up at the nursing home that night, I tried to get into the Company files on CHAUCER.”

  “CHAUCER?”

  “Tha
t was the code name for the Russian source I was running.”

  “And? What happened?”

  “I was locked out. And I think Frank was, too—from part of it, anyway.”

  Chaney watched her for a moment. “Mariah? Why did you ask me to bring my laptop up here?”

  She sighed deeply and turned to watch the waves again. “I stole the CHAUCER file,” she said finally. “Don’t ask how, I just did. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Before I left home, I glanced at it long enough to see that there were subcompartments set up after I opened the original. I’m guessing that Frank doesn’t have access to them and that’s why he’s in the dark about what happened. But I need to study the file to be certain.”

  “And then what?”

  “I’m not sure.” She turned her gaze on him. “Are you really going to Phoenix?”

  “Yes, after I see Jack, my son. I’m flying from New York to Phoenix tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Do your parents really live in Arizona?”

  “Yup.” Chaney watched her watching him and the corners of his mouth rose slightly. “And yes, I’m planning to backtrack to New Mexico, if I can give those baby-sitters the slip again.”

  She nodded. “I think I should go to New Mexico, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s a link there, I’m sure of it. I know the area and I know some people who could be helpful,” she said.

  “You’d leave Lindsay?”

  “For a few days. She’s fine here with David’s family and until I know what’s happening, I’d feel better if she was out of the line of fire. Whatever’s going on, it’s me they’re after, not her. Let’s see if we can’t distract them a little.”

  “How will you slip away?”

  “I’ve got an idea. If it works, I’ll meet you in Albuquerque in two days. At noon on Sunday, in the plaza of the Old Town. Is that all right with you?”

  “It’s fine with me, but are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’m tired of having to walk around with this in my pocket.” She half pulled out the pistol that Frank had left in her coat the night of his party. Chaney’s eyes dropped and then grew wide as he watched her shove it back inside. “Enough is enough, Paul,” Mariah said grimly. “Let’s nail these bastards and get them out of our lives.”

  He nodded. “I’m with you.”

  16

  Two days later, Mariah stood in an early-morning line-up at Logan Airport in Boston, waiting to purchase a ticket for Washington, D.C. There were two weeks to go until Christmas, but the rush was already beginning, with students and grandparents traveling in great numbers to take advantage of sale fares before the high-season blackouts.

  Glancing around casually as the line inched forward, Mariah spotted her watcher leaning against a wall down the concourse a little way, reading a newspaper. It was one of the two who had been trading shifts in front of the Tardiff home in Dover for the past several days. Now that she was on the move, she knew he would keep her under surveillance until she boarded her flight and then call ahead for a pickup watch at the other end.

  She had told Lindsay and the Tardiffs that she was going home for a few days to clean up some work at the office and to pick up some Christmas things that she had forgotten in the rush of making the funeral arrangements. David’s parents, sensing her restlessness, had thought she simply needed the time alone. Lindsay had found Mariah’s plans a little surprising, but she was snuggled into the pampering environment of her grandparents’ home comfortably enough not to mind her mother’s absence for a short time.

  “I have a reservation on the seven o’clock flight to Washington-Dulles,” Mariah told the ticket agent when she finally reached the counter. “Mariah Bolt.” She pulled out her credit card and handed it to the agent.

  “Bolt—Bolt, yes, here it is,” the agent said, looking up from her computer screen and smiling. “Any baggage today, Ms. Bolt?”

  “Just a carryon,” Mariah said, indicating the briefcase in her hand.

  “Fine.” The agent handed Mariah her ticket and credit card. “That’s flight 381, boarding in about five minutes. You should go straight through security to gate 21. Have a good flight.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  She headed off down the terminal toward the gates, slipping into the women’s rest room just before the security control area. Inside a cubicle, Mariah set her case on the floor and took Frank’s semiautomatic out of one pocket of her trench coat and a roll of duct tape from the other. Pulling the plastic bag out of the waste receptacle on the wall, she slid the gun into the bottom of the bin and secured it there with a strip of duct tape, then replaced the liner bag. She reached in with her hand to arrange the bottom of it around the form of the gun, then wadded up some tissue paper and dumped it on top. Depositing the duct tape into the briefcase, she gave the toilet a diversionary flush, then headed out of the cubicle again.

  After passing through security control, Mariah paused at a newsstand, observing out of the corner of her eye as the watcher flashed an identity card to one of the guards in the security area and walked around the electronic gates—he was obviously armed. She was still at the stand when he walked by her, seemingly oblivious, and settled himself into a chair near the gates, taking up his newspaper again.

  By the time she reached gate 21, the flight to Dulles was boarding. She held back until all the passengers had come forward, then joined the end of the line. An attendant at the gate ripped the stub off her boarding pass. Mariah trailed the crowd slowly working its way down the ramp until they turned the last corner leading to the aircraft door, out of sight of the departure lounge. At a moment when the attendants’ view was blocked by the oncoming line of passengers, she slipped out the ramp service door, down the steel staircase and onto the tarmac. She walked under the aircraft and toward the terminal baggage handling area, then stood against the building, looking back at the plane.

  “Hey, lady! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Mariah glanced over to see the ground maintenance supervisor approaching. She ignored him until he was standing right in front of her.

  “Ex-cuse me, lady, but just what the hell do you think you’re doing out here?”

  “Do you mind?” Mariah said coolly. “You’re blocking my view.”

  “Oh, pardon me!” he said sarcastically. “Lady, you better have a good explanation for being down here or the airport cops will be here in exactly thirty seconds.”

  Mariah reached into the pocket of her trench coat, keeping her eyes on the aircraft, and withdrew a small plastic folder. She snapped it open and held it up in front of his nose. “Central Intelligence Agency,” she said. “We have a VIP on this aircraft. A defector, actually, but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that to yourself. We’re just making sure he gets off safely to Washington.”

  The supervisor took the folder from her and examined it, looking back and forth between her face and the photo on the card.

  Mariah held up her thumb. “Would you like to compare my fingerprint to the one on the ID, too?”

  He handed the folder back to her and she replaced it in her pocket. “No.” He peered up at the aircraft and then down at her. “CIA, huh? So how come nobody told me about this?”

  Mariah looked briefly at the oval name tag on his jacket and then turned to the plane once more. “Well—Mr. Figueroa, is it? I’m sorry, Mr. Figueroa. We appreciate your vigilance here, really we do.” She leaned a little closer to him and lowered her voice, never taking her eyes off the plane. “But we’re moving this guy very quietly. He’s already survived two assassination attempts—barely—so obviously we don’t want to advertise his movements.”

  He stood beside her and joined her in her surveillance of the aircraft. “Jeez, you don’t say!” Then he glanced down at her again. “You don’t mind me saying so, miss, how’s a little thing like you gonna stop some assassin?”

  She smiled mysteriously. “Dangerous things come in small packages, Mr. Figuero
a. I’m well trained, I can assure you. And anyway, I’m just one of a team here. This airport and that plane are crawling with our people this morning. We won’t breathe easy till this bird’s off the ground.”

  “No kidding.” Figueroa turned to the aircraft just as the ramp rolled back and the doors were closed. A moment later, a tractor began backing the Boeing 737 out of the gate and toward the taxiway.

  Mariah let out a deep sigh. “Thank God! Gone—and good riddance! He’s someone else’s headache now.” She turned and smiled at Figueroa. “There are days, you know, when I ask myself why I didn’t just take up circus tightrope walking if I wanted this kind of stress in my life.”

  The supervisor returned her smile. “Well, I don’t know, sounds like a real interesting job you’ve got. I’d never have guessed it to look at you, though. CIA,” he said, shaking his head. “Who’d have figured?”

  “Could you point me to the service elevator, Mr. Figueroa? I’ve got to be getting back to the office now.”

  “Sure, no problem.” He led her into the baggage area.

  Mariah heard a whistle. “Hey, Fig!” someone shouted. “Who’s yer girlfriend?”

  “Just ignore them,” Figueroa said, bending toward her. “These guys don’t got a clue about the stuff you gotta deal with these days.” He pulled out a key and called the service elevator, then leaned in and turned the key in the lock on the control panel. “This’ll take you back to the main concourse. Nice talkin’ to you.”

  “You, too. And by the way,” Mariah added, her finger to her lips, “not a word about our defector, please.” Figueroa shook his head solemnly and Mariah smiled. “I’ll be sure to make a note of your cooperation, Mr. Figueroa.” When the door closed, she slumped against the wall of the elevator and exhaled sharply.

  Stepping out onto the concourse again, she noted that the overhead monitors were flashing the departure of Flight 381 to Washington-Dulles. Keeping herself in the middle of a traveling group of high school basketball players, Mariah headed toward the security control area. She arrived just in time to see her watcher come through from the gates, dump his newspaper in a trash can and head out the main exit. Mariah turned back down the concourse and approached the Air West ticket counter.