Tom fingered the saltshaker for a few moments. “I don’t think he likes or respects him much. Doesn’t like his friends, either.”
Marchetti nodded. “I’m willing to take a chance if you think he’s okay, but it could sure blow up in our faces.” He scanned the menu again for a few minutes. “He have anything to add about the guys who fired at us?”
Tom glanced at his notes. “The shooter, Gautreaux, spent his first night on the island at the Garden Plaza motel in Lihue–the same day you and Vicki checked into the St. Francis. It’s a fleabag place in a seedy part of town in which people aren’t likely to ask, or answer, questions. According to the desk clerk, Gautreaux asked for a quiet room on the second floor near the access road. He paid in cash but gave the clerk a correct license plate number on the registration card, which helped Kalani track him down.”
“Was he alone?” Marchetti asked.
“As far as they know.”
“When did he check out?”
“The next day, mid-morning–about twelve hours before your encounter that night.”
“The police go through his room afterward?” Janine asked.
“Yeah, combed it top to bottom and found nothing. The maid didn’t find anything, either. Not even a candy wrapper.”
“How about the driver–anything more on him?” Marchetti asked.
Tom nodded. “Prints on the driver side door handle matched what they had for Delfino in the NCIC database. Law enforcement, hospitals, and medical personnel on the other islands have been notified to be on the lookout for him, but no luck yet.”
Marchetti shook his head. “Probably too late. He’s either dead or back on the mainland by now.”
“Or in a safe house somewhere,” Tom added.
“Perhaps,” Marchetti conceded. “I so want to get that bastard.” He studied a local artist’s sketch of Kauai on the back cover of the menu and made a mental note of the location of the Garden Plaza motel relative to the shooting.
“They also found Gautreaux’s cellphone,” Tom said. “The disposable type. No outgoing calls indicated, though they could’ve been wiped clean. Two incoming calls, both originating from a North Texas area code.”
“They trace the numbers?”
“Still working on it, but it too could’ve been a prepaid phone.”
“The FBI might be able to help out there,” Marchetti said, “if Kalani makes a request to Washington or Quantico.”
Tom shrugged. “He mentioned it, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen.”
“Yeah, don’t hold your breath,” Marchetti said. “He have anything further to add about Brad’s death?”
Tom shook his head. “I mentioned we might try convincing the FBI to look at that case, too–particularly the ‘Boston-brakes’ aspect of it. Kalani said he had no problem with us doing that but asked that we not interfere with the Kauai police investigation.”
Marchetti said, “Which is none right now, but fair enough.”
“Correct.” Tom shrugged. “He did confirm, however, something interesting Janine had mentioned.”
Janine put her menu aside and sat upright.
“You told us there had been an unusual number of unexplained deaths on the island the past couple of years.”
“Right, and still unexplained.”
“Kalani said the same thing and mentioned a death that happened just a few months ago.” He checked his notes and continued. “On the Kalalau Trail near Kokee State Park.”
“I remember,” Janine said. “The police called it an ‘unfortunate accident’ on a treacherous stretch of trail. I know the area and agree, it is difficult and dangerous in spots.” She flipped over her menu to the sketch and pointed to an area on the northwest side of the island.
Tom looked over her shoulder.
“It’s extremely narrow at this point,” she continued, “with a sharp drop-off to the rocks several hundred feet below. It’s also well marked, however, with several prominent signs warning hikers of the danger. You’re a fool if you ignore the warnings any time, but especially when the trail is wet.”
“You’ve been on it?”
“Yes. It’s particularly bad at a point they call ‘crawler’s ledge,’ midway along the trail.”
Tom nodded and continued, “Kalani claims he never went along with the accident finding. Says he still considers the case open. Apparently, there was another hiker several hundred yards ahead who saw two guys there a few minutes earlier and described the victim perfectly. To this day, however, nobody knows who this mysterious second man was–or where he is now.”
“Interesting,” she said. “If Kalani is questioning the official finding, that’s news to me. I’d assumed we’d never hear anything about it again.”
“Why wouldn’t they be honest about it?” Tom asked.
She settled back in her chair. “The police and governor do their best to keep our tourist industry from getting a black eye.” She paused. “We had another weird incident at that same spot a couple of years ago. A local drifter, hippie-type guy, pushed a Japanese tourist off the cliff for no apparent reason. At least, that was the finding.”
Marchetti turned to Tom. “Did Kalani indicate whether the victim in this recent case was an experienced hiker?”
“Nope, nothing about that.”
“Even if he was,” Janine said, “he could have been at that location by mistake.”
“How’s that?” Tom asked.
“The first few miles are moderately strenuous, but then the trail splits into two different paths. One fork, to Hanakapiai Beach, is relatively easy. The other becomes the Kalalau Trail and is for serious hikers only. It’s brutal.”
“And that’s where this crawler’s ledge is located?”
“Right. According to Silva and subsequent newspaper reports, he got to the seven-mile marker on the Kalalau Trail, slipped on a muddy area roughly three feet wide, and fell to the rocks below. Autopsy showed a fractured skull, serious brain injuries, and multiple bruises over his head and body.”
“Which you would expect in a fall like that,” Marchetti said. “Who was the victim?”
“Don’t remember his name–a scientist of some kind.”
Tom checked his notes and said, “A microbiologist named Grigory Volkov. Worked at a lab here on the island.”
Marchetti looked over at Janine. “Know anything about a lab?”
She shook her head. “No, and I’ve been all over this island many times. Brad did mention one in his notes, however.”
Tom added, “Kalani said that about a year and a half ago a man who worked at a place called Plantation House was rushed to the hospital with some kind of weird biological disease.”
Janine put her finger on the menu map. “I’m familiar with it, an old sugar plantation site and home near the southeast coast currently owned by a guy named Kent Hollingsworth.”
“And what happened to this guy?” Marchetti asked.
“Treated at Wilcox Memorial and released,” Tom said. “Kalani said he subsequently left the island and hasn’t returned, to his knowledge.”
“So Sergeant Kalani was helpful, I take it,” Janine said.
“Yeah, gabby little fellow when he’s talking to Tom,” Marchetti added. “Doesn’t care much for me, though. Hurts my feelings.”
“Just a good judge of character,” Tom said.
Janine smiled. “I’m guessing Tom’s one of the few people on the island he likes.”
Tom watched the waitress refill their water glasses, then continued, “We talked about the Volkov case a while longer, and both of us thought it seemed weird–from an investigator’s viewpoint, anyway.”
“How’s that?” Marchetti asked.
“Years ago, important microbiologists from different parts of the country–researchers specializing in infectious diseases and biological agents–were either found dead or gone missing under mysterious circumstances over the course of a few weeks. One was a suicide that didn’t make sense and
looked amateurishly staged; another a Soviet microbiologist who’d defected to the West and was found dead a few weeks later in a parking lot with a high level of arsenic in his blood.”
“Anything come of it?”
Tom shrugged. “Conspiracy theory web sites picked up the events and covered them extensively, until readers eventually lost interest.”
Marchetti thought for a minute. “And a common thread running through all these cases was that the victims were involved in infectious disease research?”
“Yep, the especially dangerous kind. Three American scientists who died during that period worked for medical research facilities receiving grants from an institute conducting black ops research programs for the spook agencies.”
“Now that I have no problem believing,” Marchetti said.
“Right now I don’t see any connection between those cases and Volkov. But there have been a lopsided number of scientists working with viruses who met unexplained deaths in a very short period of time.”
Marchetti shook his head. “Never thought being a microbiologist was such a dangerous profession.”
The three interrupted their conversation briefly to place their lunch orders with the waitress. Once she was out of earshot, they continued.
“Kalani told me one other thing I thought odd,” Tom said. “He was quite sure Brad Vaughn and Commander Kendall did meet up the day of the accident.”
“What?” Janine said and again looked puzzled. “That’s not what Chief Silva told me. He said several times that Brad never made it to his planned meeting with the officer.”
“Well, apparently, a stranger who showed up at the crash scene to help the fire crew extricate Brad’s body claimed he saw him a half hour earlier at a place called Little Fish Coffee in Hanapepe. A waitress remembered Brad being there, also, with a man they knew only as Kendall, a naval officer at the missile base. Said they had a long lunch together and left in separate cars.”
Janine shook her head. “This is maddening. Why would Silva say something different?”
Tom shrugged. “Good question. One thing for sure, though, Kalani doesn’t want Silva to find out he’d told me.”
Marchetti turned to Janine. “Did Brad ever discuss the story he was working on–this false flag idea, I mean–with anyone else you know of?”
“For sure he talked with his editor at the Post–Bob Howard, I think is his name. Howard encouraged Brad to push hard on the story, assuming he had his facts correct.”
Marchetti jotted down the name. “It’s a long shot, but I’ll try to reach him this afternoon.”
Marchetti called the Post main number soon after they left the café. With a six-hour time difference, he didn’t want to wait and catch an editor up against a tight deadline with no time to talk.
After five frustrating minutes of cajoling and pleading, explaining how important it was, the operator finally put him through to the news department.
A gruff voice answered and identified himself only as “Maloney, city desk.”
“Mr. Maloney, my name’s Marchetti, calling from Hawaii. It’s very important I talk with the editor who handled Brad Vaughn’s series of articles. A Mr. Howard, I believe.”
“That would be Bob Howard at the national desk. Hold on.”
After another five minutes, a friendlier voice answered. “May I help you?”
“My name is Mike Marchetti, in Hawaii, calling about Brad Vaughn. I’m with the manager of the hotel where he was staying, who also happened to be a close friend of his.”
“Could you call back in the morning? I’m really–”
“I’m hoping you can spare just a few minutes. We believe Brad may have been murdered.”
There was a long pause and then he answered, “What makes you say that?”
“Circumstantial mostly, but certain things don’t add up. For starters, someone broke into his home for no apparent reason. He also felt he was being followed, and we believe someone deliberately caused his fatal crash.”
“What’s your interest in this?”
“I’m an attorney who heard about Vaughn’s death from Janine Nichols, the close friend of Brad’s I mentioned. A retired detective and I are looking into the circumstances of his death and see a whole lot of question marks.”
There was another pause before he said, “Frankly, it wouldn’t shock me. He told me about the break-in and mentioned laying low for a while. Something was up he felt, and he didn’t feel safe on Kauai.”
Marchetti heard Howard mumble something to someone standing close by before he resumed the conversation.
“It’s a sad situation. I really respected Brad, as both a journalist and person. He was about to blow the lid on a blockbuster story, so I’m sure there could have been more than a few people anxious to see him silenced.”
“That’s the way we see it, too. We know about the false flag plan and the exposé Brad planned to do about the abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan.”
“So you’ve got the basic facts already. What do you want from me?”
“Any additional information you might have. Was the false flag idea still being considered at the time of his death?”
“All I know for sure is that Brad got much of his information on the project from a mole inside the CIA. He thought the agent may have been subjected to routine polygraphing and spilled the beans about what he’d told Brad. In fact, the Persian Gulf false flag idea may have been called off at the last minute for just that reason.”
“Anything else in the works?”
“Perhaps. Brad received information from a source that there was, in fact, something big in the planning stages, but he didn’t share it with me–had to do more research on it before going public.”
“The lead investigator with the Kauai police said Brad had plans to meet with a Commander Kendall from the missile base about something, and witnesses confirm they did in fact meet. But both the police chief and Kendall tell a different story. They claim Brad never made it to the planned meeting but rather died in the crash on his way. Brad’s friend, Janine Nichols, seems to think Brad was onto something important and needed to talk to Kendall again before he put the story together.”
“Well, the sergeant is right–they did meet, in Hanapepe–so I can’t guess why the chief is saying something different. Brad called me right after he met with Kendall, disappointed he didn’t get the confirmation he was looking for. He planned to go to Waimea Canyon from there and mentioned a guy named Hollingsworth who he thought was involved in some kind of government operation but didn’t give me any details. I told him to be careful and to make sure he had everything confirmed by at least two independent sources before treating it as fact.”
“And that was the last time you talked with him?”
“Right. A news source in Honolulu called me later that evening notifying me he’d died in a crash. I was shocked and devastated, of course.”
“Understand, and I appreciate your help,” Marchetti said. “I’ll email you my contact info in the morning in case you think of anything else that might be relevant.”
“You do the same. Brad wasn’t officially an employee of the Post but rather an independent journalist with whom we’d had a close relationship. So I have a personal interest in this. If you do come up with something, I’d like to hear about it. We thought the world of Brad and can’t have another newspaper scooping us on a big story involving one of our own people.”
24
Tom and Marchetti both felt it important to find Plantation House and the man named Hollingsworth Brad referenced in his notes. They decided Tom would head that way while Marchetti went over Brad’s material one more time. He wanted to make sure he hadn’t missed anything important concerning Hollingsworth and the military operation Brad talked about.
Marchetti considered the idea of a false flag operation by the US government to lure Iran into a confrontation pretty farfetched. At a minimum, it would require the combined efforts of the military and intel
ligence agencies of at least two countries to pull it off–which seemed next to impossible.
He also knew from news reports that Mossad and the Israeli government, the Saudis, US military, and Joint Chiefs of Staff were all upset enough with McHugh and his policies in the Middle East that at least some radical measures to circumvent his authority were conceivable. To them, Iran was a powder keg waiting to go off, and the White House was wasting precious time dithering with inept diplomacy, picayune sanctions, and harsh language that had already proved ineffectual.
The mullahs were still in charge in Iran and back to enriching at a frenetic pace in order to produce sufficient quantities of uranium in weapons-grade form. They’d already contravened the weak agreements signed following President Obama’s and Secretary Kerry’s negotiations. And most US military and congressional leaders had finally come around to the opinion that tiptoeing through the minefield wasn’t going to stop Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons. Harsher measures, they felt, seemed called for but weren’t in the president’s plans.
Marchetti was about to leave for lunch when his cell phone rang. “Marchetti,” he snapped.
“This is Sergeant Kalani. Just wanted to let you know we’ve located this Delfino fellow.”
Marchetti was shocked to hear from him. “Where?”
“At a girlfriend’s place near Port Andrews. We’ve brought him in on an outstanding warrant for assault. Just a bar fight, but we’ve started questioning him about the shooting.”
“Any luck so far?
“Not yet, but I think we can break him. You said you didn’t know this person?”
“Absolutely. Don’t recognize the name and never met the man to my knowledge.”
“And you think they were gunning for you because of the incident back in Texas?”
“Right, although it was more than just an ‘incident.’ In the process of investigating a murder, we uncovered two groups plotting to shoot down an airliner, for God’s sake. Most of the perpetrators were either caught or killed, but I’m sure there are still a few around looking for revenge.”
“Who were these people?”
“One was made up of Middle Eastern emigrés based in Texas and Oklahoma with ties to Saddam’s Revolutionary Guard in Iraq; the other an assortment of anti-government types that may also have had a connection to the Oklahoma City bombing in ‘95.”
The Omega Covenant Page 15
