"I don't know. But the bottom line is that whoever is behind the assassination attempt owns someone in the Secret Service. If it is Wintergreen and Flanagan, it means that while every agent in the Service is out looking for me, they can be pulling strings to set up the next assassination attempt."
She realized that Garrison was winning her over. Not that anyone could ever tell for sure whether someone was lying. She knew it was always a judgment call, tempered by one's experience. She had teamed from investigating other conspiracies that the facts were often hazy. She would have to make a decision by what she felt in her gut. But there were other issues she needed to clear up.
"Pete, I'm the one who searched your apartment. What was C-4 doing there?"
"Someone planted it."
"How did they bypass your alarm system?"
An expression of surprise crossed Garrison's face. "I didn't even think of that ... my alarm."
"And the landlady came over immediately. If someone had broken in earlier to plant the evidence, it would have set off the alarm and she would have heard it too. Pete, this doesn't jibe. No one broke into your apartment."
"Who was there during the search?"
"Rachel Kallenstien and Wintergreen."
"I've never heard of Wintergreen going into the field. After the Cleveland assassination attempt, he stayed in his office and let PRD handle the whole investigation." Garrison was referring to an incident that had occurred months earlier. A man in a Cleveland tavern had shot out of a tavern window as the Presidential motorcade passed by. There had been a Presidential security uproar, with rumors of assassination plots and foreign agents, but in the end, the investigation had revealed nothing more than a drunk who thought taking a shot at the Presidential motorcade was a good idea.
"This is a major Presidential threat case involving an agent," she said. "Maybe Wintergreen wanted to make sure that the investigation was done right."
"Where did you find the C-4?" he asked.
"In the refrigerator."
"You walked into the apartment and went straight to the kitchen?"
"We walked in. The alarm went off. Kallenstien found the alarm wire and disabled it. We began searching."
"Right then?"
Breckinridge closed her eyes and concentrated. "Come to think of it, Wintergreen went into the other room to make a phone call. Rachel and I checked the bedroom and bathroom, then we decided how we were going to conduct the search."
"You and she were together?"
"Yes?"
"Where was Wintergreen?"
"I told you. On the phone."
"In which room?"
"The kitchen."
"Then you and Kallenstien began to search. You went in the kitchen and opened the refrigerator?" Garrison sounded far away to her.
"And there it was." The thought that flashed through her mind was of Cape Cod. She'd been yachting through a fog bank with Rachel Kallenstien and some other friends. Breckinridge had seen something through the grayness - a glimmer of metal in the distance - that had turned out to be a tugboat. She'd narrowly averted a collision. But at first there had been only a glimmer.
"There is something else," she said in a distracted monotone. "I didn't think anything of it at the time, but later."
"Yes..."
"It's about the C-4. I took it out of the refrigerator. The first thing that came to my mind was how could you be involved in something like that? I was overwhelmed and sad ... disgusted actually. But later, when I got home and went to bed, I was thinking about the search and something occurred to me. It was about when I took the C-4 out of the refrigerator. It wasn't cold. I thought that maybe I was so tired I had imagined it. But thinking back-"
"Wintergreen planted it. It had to be him. That's why he wanted to come along on the search. He wanted to salt me. And there is something else. Shortly before Charlie Meriweather was killed, Flanagan asked him to handle an off-the-record investigation. Delores Meriweather told me it bothered Charlie so much that he decided to retire.
"Martha, will you help me?"
"Count me in."
"If you get caught helping me, you could end up in the bag-"
"I know."
"Dig up everything you can on Hightower. There has to be something that ties him to Wintergreen and/or Flanagan, or someone else in the Secret Service. Hightower is known in Bakersfield as Eddie Richardson."
She took out a pen and pad and wrote the name.
"How will you and I stay in touch?"
"I'm staying at the Watergate, Suite 1303. Ask for Jonathan Hollingsworth."
"How did you that arrange those digs?"
"The, uh, First Lady took care of it for me."
"The First Lady is so convinced of your innocence that she helped you come up with a hideout?"
"I went to her and asked her to speak with the Man, to try to convince him to replace the detail with military agents until this is resolved. The problem is that the Man is convinced of my guilt."
"Understandable-"
"Martha, other than me, you're the only one who knows about this. If something happens to me, you'll have to carry the ball."
She nodded. "Be careful, Pete."
"You too." He reached for the door handle.
"Pete, you forgot something."
"Sorry," he said, and handed her the gun.
Breckinridge shoved it into her holster.
Garrison got out of the car, and she watched him as he hurried toward the stairwell. She felt a chill as she assimilated what he'd told her. She didn't know where the danger might come from, but it was there. It was someone in the Secret Service. She still found it difficult to imagine Wintergreen and Flanagan being involved, but if she'd learned anything as an investigator, it was to be guided by the facts. If she hadn't been the one to find the C-4 at Garrison's apartment, she would have never believed Garrison. Now it was only she and he and the First Lady against Flanagan, Wintergreen, and God only knows who else.
She got out of the car and walked back to Secret Service headquarters replaying the conversation. By the time she arrived, she'd accepted what it all meant. Her initial confusion and dismay at the jumble of facts and events had transformed itself into cold fear.
At her desk in Protective Research Division, Breckinridge found a pink envelope with a D.C. postmark. It was addressed to her and marked PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL. She opened it. It was a letter from Delores Meriweather. Her handwriting was clear - a nearly perfect cursive style - and written in blue ink with what Breckinridge guessed was probably a fountain pen. Delores apologized for having been rude to Breckinridge, and explained that her life had turned into a confusing mix of feelings and memories but she believed she would survive.
At the bottom of the letter, Delores mentioned that she had finally gone through Charlie's papers, a task that she'd been avoiding because she didn't think she had the inner strength to face reading them. She'd discovered that there might have been more to the White House "politics" that had been bothering him before his decision to retire from the Secret Service. She enclosed a copy of a letter Charlie had written two days before his death.
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
To Whom It May Concern:
When Gil Flanagan first recruited me to plant a transmitter and voice-activated recorder in Helen Pierpont's room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, I believed the investigation to be legal and proper. Flanagan assured me that Director Wintergreen had given him the assignment and that it involved a defense contractor getting inside information on contract bids. Flanagan also told me that the President had been briefed on the matter. I planted the bug in Pierpont's room believing that I was acting legally, as part of a sensitive investigation.
After the President's New York visit was over and the Presidential party was on its way to the airport, Flanagan told me to retrieve the transmitter and tapes from Pierpont's room. Her suite was situated between the Presidential suite and a staff room. Adjoining doors interconnecte
d all three rooms. I retrieved the tape and listened for a few minutes. It was of the President and Pierpont spending the night in Pierpont's room, having sex and discussing the President filing for divorce from the First Lady the moment he left office.
I confronted Flanagan and told him I didn't appreciate being lied to and drawn into what was obviously an illegal operation under false pretenses. He said it was all a mistake and he would set up an appointment for me to talk to Director Wintergreen, who would explain the other details of the case.
When I returned back to the White House, Wintergreen avoided me. I'm writing this because I may find myself in front of some Congressional committee asking questions about why I bugged the President. At any rate, yesterday I sent a memo to Wintergreen telling him that if he didn't want to meet with me, I was going to ask for an appointment with the White House Chief of Staff.
(Signed)
Charles Meriweather
Breckinridge read the letter a second time, then picked up a file folder and found Delores Meriweather's number in it. Breckinridge dialed the number. The phone rang twice.
"Hello."
"Delores, this is Martha Breckinridge. I received the letter."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't want to talk on the phone, Delores. But I am on top of it. Whatever you do, tell no one about the letter. No one. Will you promise me?"
"Does this mean that Charlie may have..."
"It's too early to make any assumptions. But I am going to get to the bottom of it. I'll call you the moment I come up with something. You have my word on that."
"I won't say anything."
"Thanks, Delores."
"Okay. You know something, Martha? I ... I always hated this town."
"Good-bye, Delores."
Breckinridge put the receiver down. The next person she called was Kallenstien. She found her eating dinner and asked her to return to the office.
Kallenstien arrived at the office about twenty minutes later, and Breckinridge showed her the letter.
"This letter is dynamite, Martha. Major dynamite."
"Do you agree that this means something is wrong? Something inside the Service?"
"Yes. Without a doubt."
Breckinridge nodded.
"Rachel, I'm about to tell you something that is going to knock your socks off. Something about Pete Garrison. Can we speak in confidence?"
"Meaning what""
"That after I tell you something about him I am going to ask you a question, and all I ask is that if you choose to not go along with my theory, you will forget everything I have told you. Forget it forever."
"Okay. Drop it on me, sister."
Sitting at her desk, Breckinridge reiterated what Garrison had told her, fact for fact. As Kallenstien listened, her eyes got wide. When Breckinridge had finished, Kallenstien left her desk and walked to the coffee machine, where she made a pot of coffee and put it on the burner. She walked back across the room and plopped down in a chair.
"If anyone else had told me this I would have thought they were crazy," Kallenstien said.
"Rachel, I know this is risky and that things could turn the wrong way. We could end up on trial ... or worse. I can use some help, but if you don't want to throw in with Garrison and me, I'll have no hard feelings."
"You know what I was thinking just now?"
"How nice it would have been if you would have been on vacation this week."
****
CHAPTER 26
AT MIDNIGHT, BRECKINRIDGE was still in her PRD cubicle, engrossed in doing computer records checks: extensive, detailed record examinations that involved examining every case file in which Frank Hightower was mentioned. She had been cross-referencing each case to his Secret Service informant file.
"The federal and state databases for Hightower's arrests have nothing in them to connect him to anyone in the Secret Service, other than Garrison," Breckinridge said.
"And all the entries in his informant file were written by Garrison - all generally favorable, by the way," Kallenstien said poring over some paperwork. "Hightower was a reliable informant. There were entries for up to two years ago; then the entries stopped."
Breckinridge stood and stretched.
"I checked the name Eddie Richardson through the indices and found nothing. There was one data entry that mentioned an Eddie Richardson fitting Hightower's description. But the file wasn't on the shelf. I checked the master file index and it showed that the file had been destroyed routinely because of age." She handed Breckinridge a printout of the file card.
"Martha, there is a J in the file number. Judicial cases aren't destroyed for fifteen years."
"So I noticed. It wouldn't be the first time some clerk screwed up the destruction schedule."
"Strange..."
"Someone cleaned up some files. They wanted to get Richardson's name out of the system."
"If so, they did it the right way. Just stamp the file for destruction." Kallenstien ran her hands through her hair. She looked tired. "Then they didn't have to worry about getting caught tearing up a file by one of the security cameras. It looks like we're out of luck on the Richardson angle."
"You look tired, Rach."
Kallenstien rubbed her eyes. "I could use some sleep."
"See you in the morning."
"You're going to stay?"
"I have a few things I want to finish up."
"If you want me to stay-"
"Get out of here. And thanks, friend."
Kallenstien smiled. "I'm in this for the glory."
After Kallenstien departed, Breckinridge sat at her desk and put her face in her hands to think. She recounted in her mind everything she knew, all the records checks they'd made concerning Hightower and his alias Richardson. There had to be something....
Recalling the fail-safe administrative procedure for deleted and destroyed files, she walked to a record room on the floor below where files scheduled for destruction were kept before being sent for final destruction. Hoping that the clerk responsible for records destruction was behind in her work, Breckinridge spent the next two hours looking through old files, checking the file number on each file folder one by one until her eyes began playing tricks on her. She sat back and closed her eyes and nearly fell asleep. She told herself she would finish one more pile of folders before leaving. It was then that she found the Richardson file. Oddly, its date indicated that the file was less than a year old - that it should have never been marked for destruction in the first place. In it was nothing but two sheets of blank paper and an unlabeled computer compact disk.
She took the CD to her office and inserted it into the CD port in her MacIntosh computer. OPERATION BLUE VELVET appeared at the top of the screen.
She typed the word SYNOPSIS. The screen displayed:
Secret Service joint operation (with, ATF, U.S. Customs, and RCMP) investigating arms smuggling to possible terrorists. Five arrests for possession of illegal weapons resulting in four convictions. Reports and photographic arrest data.
She typed PHOTOFILE.
A camera icon appeared. She double-clicked it.
A digital video presentation began with the title ARREST- (1534 hours) U.S. CANADIAN BORDER, then switched to a grainy film clip showing three men in the front seat of a Cadillac parked in a parking lot. Four men came into camera view running toward the car wearing raid jackets. They had guns out and were holding badges. Pulling open the doors of the Cadillac, they yanked two men from the front seat at gunpoint, forcing them to put their hands on the roof of the car. One man struggled with the officers, and was wrestled to the ground and then handcuffed. The other suspect put his hands on the side of the car and spread his legs. The man in the backseat got out of the car.
He was Frank Hightower a.k.a. Eddie Richardson.
As the two prisoners were led toward a police van on the right of the screen, Flanagan entered camera-view and began speaking with Hightower. The film stopped. There was nothing else on the t
ape.
"Flanagan," she muttered. She typed the words CASE AGENT, then tapped the ENTER key. In the middle of the screen, appeared:
Flanagan, Gilbert
SS Badge # 9236
Flanagan had been using Hightower as an informant. She covered her eyes to think. She knew that the secret to solving a case was to concentrate on known clues and avoid getting bogged down in too much supposition. She knew that Hightower had been involved with someone in the Secret Service; and that the person who'd written the Aryan Disciples threat letter received in the White House mailroom the day Charlie Meriweather had been murdered had left a latent impression on it that resembled a telephone number. Was there some way she could tie the two clues together? Then it hit her. Breckinridge hurried to her desk and rummaged through the Meriweather case file until she found what she was looking for.
An hour later on the tenth floor of an apartment building on Wayne Avenue in Silver Springs, Maryland, Breckinridge knocked on a door. There was a lingering odor of cooked food in the hallway.
A woman in a blue chenille bathrobe opened the door. Breckinridge showed her badge. "I'm Agent Breckinridge, U.S. Secret Service. I apologize for coming here so late."
"Are you the lady who called my sister the other day?"
Breckinridge nodded. "One of my colleagues asked you about your phone number being written on a letter that had been sent to the White House."
"Don't you people ever sleep?"
"This will just take a second. During my investigation I've come up with a name, Gilbert Flanagan. Does that ring a bell with you?"
"I don't think so."
"Are you sure? Someone you may have had contact with in the past? It's very important."
"Flanagan," she said, pondering. "Wait a second."
"Yes?"
"My sister.
"What about your sister?"
"She just got here from Mexico last year and she's been cleaning houses to make a few dollars. She has no car and sometimes I pick her up from where she is working. She has a customer with a name like that."
"Flanagan?"
"I think she cleans his house on Tuesdays and Thursdays."
The Sentinel Page 20
