by Kyle Mills
“Much easier than you imagine, I think. I only ask three things. First, that when your name is cleared and you are reinstated to the FBI, you resign.”
Beamon nodded. “What else.”
“That you accept the job Roland offered you.”
Beamon felt his eyebrows rise at the repeated offer of a million-dollar-a-year job. After a moment of consideration, though, he realized that taking a job at such an exorbitant salary would certainly give the impression of collusion, should he ever decide to make any of this public. It also kept him in a place where he could be watched. Hallorin once again proved that he was not a stupid man.
“We respect efficiency, Mark,” Peck cut in. “You’ve proven your abilities and we like to hire the best”
Beamon bent forward in a hint of a bow, acknowledging the compliment “You said three things. By my count, that’s two.”
“Darby Moore.” Peck again.
“What about her?” Beamon asked, though he already knew. He turned to fully face Peck, suspecting that Hallorin wouldn’t speak on this subject himself.
“Her motivations are too murky, Mark. Too unidentifiable. She’s completely unpredictable, uncontrollable….”
Beamon nodded silently. It was true, she was all those things. But he’d kind of grown attached to her. It would take more than the promise of a seven-figure salary and a get-out-of-jail-free card to condemn her to death. He’d accept nothing less than a spot on the PGA tour.
“So what do you think of our offer?” Hallorin said.
He turned back to face the senator. “Can I think about it?”
Confusion flashed briefly across Hallorin’s face, as Beamon knew it would. How could a man like him understand? In Hallorin’s mind, he’d just offered everything that mattered: money, power, and reputation. How could he fathom that Beamon would throw all that away for a young woman whom Hallorin undoubtedly couldn’t differentiate from a bum staked out on a sewer grate? And with a little bit of misdirection, Beamon could use that confusion to buy a little more time. Not that he knew what he was going to do with it
“Mr. Beamon,” Peck said, obviously as perplexed as his boss. “We have the file. I believe that taking a high-powered, high-paid job is your best option. Particularly in light of the fact that you have no other options.”
Beamon pretended that he didn’t hear, keeping himself focused on Hallorin. “Don’t get me wrong, Senator. I recognize the position I’m in and I’m inclined to take your offer. I just want to make sure that I make a deal that works for me.”
Hallorin’s smile was nearly imperceptible. They were back on ground that he’d traveled—David Hallorin understood negotiating. “You want to raise the price, Mark? You don’t have anything to sell.”
Hallorin was right. Beamon had been hopelessly outmaneuvered. When he’d finally stepped back to take in the big picture, it had been too late.
How had any of this happened? How had Hallorin and Peck outsmarted Tom Sherman so easily? Not the shadow of the man that Beamon had left hiding in the wilds of Manassas, but the young Tom Sherman who had damn near taken over the Bureau before he was thirty-five.
The more he thought about it the more it nagged at him. Sherman said he’d never considered the possibility of a third-party candidate coming to power, but that didn’t really make sense. Why was Hallorin the only man who could effectively use the information the file contained?
“Fine,” Hallorin said. “Take a couple of days to consider your position. Speak to Roland when you’ve come to a decision.”
fifty
Mark Beamon stalked up the steps to Tom Sherman’s Manassas house and threw the front door open. None of the lights were on, but he knew Sherman was there. Hiding from his past. Where the hell else would he be?
Beamon moved purposefully through the semidarkness, but the house was empty. He slid open the glass door that led onto the back deck and found Sherman wrapped in a blanket, gazing out over his land. He didn’t turn around when Beamon took a position behind him.
“Beautiful sunset,” Sherman said simply.
“Lovely,” Beamon said, moving forward to face his friend. “I talked to Hallorin.”
“I knew you would.”
Despite the red glow coming from the mountains, Sherman’s face seemed pale and drawn.
“He didn’t strike me as a stupid man, but I’m not sure he’s actually the brains of that outfit. He’s got this little leprechaun working for him—”
“Peck,” Sherman said. “Roland Peck.”
“That’s right. Peck. I figure it was him.”
“Him?”
“The one who’s been running circles around you. Who found the file you worked so hard to hide and figured out a way to use it.”
Sherman didn’t respond.
“What was it, Tom, about ten years ago that we flew over to Saudi Arabia on that terrorism case? You remember that?”
Sherman nodded, but still seemed far away.
“You took a fucking umbrella,” Beamon said, letting his voice grow to a dull shout “You never, never, get caught short! You have a contingency plan for everything!”
“I was barely thirty when Hoover died,” Sherman protested. “How could I anticipate the rise of a man like David Hallorin? Tell me. How?”
“Fuck David Hallorin! What if the Democrats had found the file? They’d have burned everything that had to do with their people and used it against the GOP. What would you have done then?”
“I hid the file so that couldn’t happ—”
“But it did happen! And you’d have planned for that, wouldn’t you?”
“Hoover was dead….” Sherman’s voice was starting to shake a little. “I was all alone on this—senior management was running hard and fast I had to make a decision quickly—”
“Come on, Tommy! The Democrats have the file! What do you do? What do you do?”
Sherman finally looked up at him. His eyes were dead without the reflection of the sunset. “Do you know what it’s like, Mark? Of course you don’t. You’ve never compromised, have you? You’ve been satisfied with your little personal victories on your little cases. You’ve never felt any responsibility—or even given a second thought—to anything beyond what’s right in front of your face. I was responsible for the entire Bureau—the policies, the people, projecting where the next threat to America was coming from. I spent the last thirty years as one of the men who led this country. I believed in what I was doing. I believed in all of it”
He started walking toward the door that led into the house. “I have a lot more years behind me than I do ahead of me, Mark. And that’s what I’ve done with them.”
“You’re full of shit. Tommy. Answer my goddamn question.”
He didn’t stop, so Beamon grabbed him by the arm. “The Democrats have the file. What do you do?”
Sherman didn’t pull away, but he also didn’t respond.
“It’s something Hallorin said today,” Beamon said. “He talked about the file and the assured mutual destruction of the people in it. The uneasy peace brought about by equal firepower. That’s the way you set it up, isn’t it, Tom?”
Sherman’s face was still a blank.
“The explosion,” Beamon said, trying to break through to him. “Hallorin tried to save that girl, right? Did you know be set the whole thing up? That’s the man you’re going to put in the White House.”
Sherman reached out and opened the door in front of him, but didn’t immediately step through. “David Hallorin’s evil, isn’t he, Mark? So much worse than all the rest of them. If he falls, America will be saved. Isn’t that right?” He finally met Beamon’s eye. “I’ve always envied your childlike view of the world, Mark. You must sleep well at night”
“What the hell happened to you, Tommy?”
Sherman started into the house, indicating that Beamon should follow. They ended up in the back bedroom, where Sherman pushed his bed across the wood floor and knelt There was an audible click as h
e opened a hidden trapdoor, beneath which was a formidable-looking safe. Sherman worked the dial for a few moments and opened it
“There were two originals made of everything. One went to the archive to keep us all on safe legal ground. The other has been with me all these years. But then, you’d already guessed that hadn’t you?” He dropped the file into Beamon’s outstretched arms. “Here’s your mutual assured destruction, Mark. The day before the election.”
Beamon took a sip of his second bourbon and adjusted the heavy file into a more comfortable position on his lap. Much of it was useless. Suspected communist activity, a threat that history had seen fit to make laughable, made up a good half of it. Money, sex, and drugs made up the rest. The classics just never went out of style.
Beamon had tossed the marijuana-related files onto the commie hoard stack, deciding that it was another formerly heinous threat to U.S. security that looked a little silly in the current context. On the same pile, he tossed the files of men who had never lived up to Hoover’s expectations and those who had already been exposed.
That left him with eight fabulously damaging and exhaustively documented stories on eight extremely powerful men. The most impressive and dangerous, of course, was the one containing the pictures of Robert Taylor, taken by none other than a young Tom Sherman. Beamon shuffled through the randomly ordered photos of the Republicans’ family values candidate one more time—resisting the urge to organize them and see if he could make a movie by flipping through them really fast.
He extracted one of the more artistic compositions of young Taylor and his two naked companions and smoothed it out on top of the file. He stared down at it for a long time, looking for answers in the writhing bodies and the blank stare of that child’s eyes. It was a bomb all right. But how could he set it off without getting caught in the blast?
“She was twelve.”
Startled, Beamon jerked his head in the direction of the voice. Tom Sherman was leaning—sagging—on the doorframe that led into the room.
“I did some background on her and the woman after I took those pictures. She was just a baby. I could have stopped it—my partner wanted to. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
Beamon looked down at the picture again, unsure what to say. “Where … where is she now?”
“She’s dead. They both are.”
* * *
“Is the silent treatment over then, Mark?” Darby said.
He hadn’t much felt like talking after his less than successful meeting with David Hallorin, despite Darby’s probing curiosity. After about an hour, she’d gotten angry and frustrated and they’d spent the rest of the drive to Manassas in silence.
“Yeah, it’s over,” Beamon said, crashing through the lower branches of a tree, swinging the six-pack in his hand like a machete. “But you may be sorry.”
He took a seat in a folding chair across a low burning campfire from Darby. He’d tried to get her to stay in the house, but every time she’d politely declined—saying that she’d rather sleep in her own bed in the back of her truck.
He couldn’t blame her, really. Between him sweating out their uncertain future and Tom sinking deeper and deeper into depression, the atmosphere was getting a little oppressive. The tiny clearing alongside the road that wound through Sherman’s property was downright cheerful by comparison.
“So are you going to give me a beer and tell me what happened, then?”
“That’s why I’m here.” He tossed her a bottle from the six-pack and she deftly opened it on the edge of a rock.
“Well?”
Beamon tried to find the best way to paraphrase his meeting. Darby had finally gotten some sleep and had cut back on the beer a little, bringing some of the color back to her skin and erasing the dark circles that had painted them-selves beneath her eyes. He didn’t want to say anything that could cause a relapse.
“The meeting went well,” he said. “Great, really. He offered to get the FBI to call off the dogs and wants to give me a job for about a mil a year.”
Darby nodded, staring into the fire. “That does sound great. What’s the catch?”
Beamon didn’t answer.
“The offer doesn’t extend to me, does it? I’m too weird and unpredictable. Besides, they still need somebody to take the blame for Tristan.” She looked up at him and saw the surprise on his face. “I’m a quick study, Mark. Did you take the deal?”
“Hell yeah. I told them where you’re camped and then went straight to the Ferrari dealer.” He smiled easily. “I told him I had to think about it”
“So what’s the future hold for Darby Moore, Mark? Anything?”
Beamon tapped his front teeth with his beer bottle for a few moments. “You have some options. I can get you a fake passport that looks better than a real one and help you build a new identity. You can run, try to lose yourself. It’s what you wanted, right?”
She continued to stare into the fire.
“Here’s the downside. They’ll never stop coming—remember Thailand? And no more climbing—it’s the first place they’ll look for you. No associating with your old friends, no going anywhere you might be recognized. You’d have to completely reinvent yourself. Maybe get a job as a stockbroker or something—wear blue suits, drive a BMW. Be a person they won’t be looking for.”
“Where does that leave you? I assume that part of your deal is to give me up?”
“That’s my problem. Don’t worry about it.”
“You said I had options, plural.”
Beamon nodded. “I might have found some leverage we can use. Think of it as a bomb that’ll most likely blow up in our faces.”
“What is it?”
“That’s not important.”
“What if it doesn’t blow up in our faces?”
“There’s a slim chance that it could send David Hallorin down in flames.”
Darby scooted back and leaned against the tire of her truck, suddenly looking very tired again. “So what should I do?”
“I don’t know. Darby … I wish I could help you with the decision, but I don’t think one option is really better than the other. The question is, what do you want to do?”
She stuck a foot out and kicked a small log onto the fire. Beamon could feel the warmth on his face and hands as the flames rose.
“Let me give you a scenario, Mark. There’s a lightning storm coming in. You’re a thousand feet up on an exposed rock face. The leader you’re belaying takes a fall and is unconscious, but the rope isn’t long enough for you to lower him down. What would you do?”
He understood the point she was trying to make. She was telling him that she was completely lost in her current situation—she wanted his help. But it wasn’t his call to make.
“I guess I’d ask you to give me an honest appraisal of my options, and make the decision myself.”
She finished her beer in silence and nodded toward the six-pack sitting in the dirt next to him. He tossed her another one.
“Did you see that BMW driving in front of us on the highway when we were coming back here from D.C.?”
Beamon shook his head.
“The guy had personalized plates that said 3201 or something….” Her voice trailed off as she opened her beer against one of the rocks in the fire ring.
“I don’t think I’m following you,” Beamon said.
“The guy went through all the trouble and cost of getting personalized plates and in the end, all he could think to put on them was the model number of his fancy car. That’s it. That’s all he had to say about his world…. I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that I like my life. I don’t think I’d fit into the BMW crowd.”
“I want you to go into this with your eyes wide open, Darby. I’m pretty good at finding people. But this ambiguous political crap isn’t where my talents lie—this is more Tom’s thing.”
“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“I think he’s a good man. He’
s just having a bad time right now.”
“Darby, let’s try to focus here. I’m telling you that I’ll most likely get us both killed.”
“It’s up to you, Mark. It sounds like Hallorin’s given you the opportunity to walk away from this.”
“I’m not going to hang you out to dry. Darby. You know that.”
“Well then, I think we should stick a knife in that man and twist it”
Beamon leaned back as far as the makeshift camping chair would let him and took a deep breath. The air temperature was dropping fast as the angle of the sunlight became more severe. He held up his beer in a toast. “Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, right?”
She smiled sadly and returned his salute.
fifty-one
“Jesus Christ,” Beamon muttered to himself, and sank further into the leather seat of his rental car. Despite the fact that they were now a good hundred yards away, the press still completely filled his rearview mirror. An enormous semicircle of vans, satellite dishes, and well-coiffed slugs with microphones had put Robert Taylor’s northern Virginia home under siege. Thanks to a combination of erratic driving, sunglasses, and his still slightly swollen face, Beamon had successfully maneuvered his car through them without being recognized. Maybe his luck was finally changing.
He eased the car to a stop in front of a barricade set up in front of Taylor’s driveway. It looked like the local police had done a fair job of keeping the Godless Hordes at bay, but Beamon was still reluctant to roll the window down and give someone with a telephoto lens an unobstructed view. He watched a tired, angry-looking cop come around the barricade and walk toward his car. The man’s annoyance seemed to grow exponentially as he leaned down toward Beamon’s closed window and rapped hard on it Satisfied that the cop’s body would block his face from any prying eyes, Beamon rolled the window down halfway.
“Sir, unless you have an appointment, I’m going to give you precisely two seconds to—”
Beamon lifted his sunglasses and stuck his hand through the half-open window, cutting the man off before he could finish his threat “Mark Beamon.”
