Tink-tinkity-tink. The president rattled his glass again, his eyes narrowing in thought. Five seconds passed. Then ten.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Wake the poor son of a bitch up.”
Dobson and Landry both quickly assured their boss that he was doing the right thing. Then, even faster, they left the Oval Office before he could change his mind.
President Morris was prone to that sometimes. Uncertainty. As a Blue Dog Democrat from Iowa, he managed a straight-shooter persona in public, but behind closed doors, according to “unnamed sources,” he had a tendency to agonize over decisions. His critics relentlessly seized upon this as the ultimate sign of weakness. A particularly scathing article in the New York Observer went so far as to attribute it to his height, or lack thereof. Only two presidents in the past century have measured under six feet tall, the article pointed out: Jimmy Carter and Bretton Morris.
But as he sat behind his desk and waited for Dobson to patch him in with Bass so he could break the bad news, President Morris felt something deep and strong in his gut. Something certain. That this night, of all nights, was going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
Clearly, Dobson hadn’t shared the details of that file in his hands because what was in that file could embarrass the hell out of the administration, if not worse. Giving specifics to his boss meant knowing the truth, and knowing the truth meant accountability.
Rule #1: Presidents don’t get impeached for the things they don’t know.
So leave it at that, right? Lawrence Bass had been involved in something he shouldn’t have been, and whatever it might be was enough to keep him from becoming the next director of Central Intelligence.
There was just one problem, one more thing the president didn’t know. That file in Clay Dobson’s hand?
There was nothing in it.
It was empty.
CHAPTER 31
“WHO IS he?” asked Dobson, pausing before a sip of coffee. At nine a.m. the following morning in his West Wing office, he was already on his third cup of the day. At least three additional cups, if not more, would follow before noon. Always black. Just black. No sugar.
“Maybe it’s better if you don’t know,” replied Frank Karcher, sitting on the other side of Dobson’s desk with his thick arms folded. The current National Clandestine Service chief of the CIA never drank coffee. Nor did he smoke or consume alcohol. From time to time, though, he did give orders to have people killed.
This was the first time the two were meeting publicly, as it were, in Dobson’s office. For the past two years, they had met in secret, a routine that had been no small feat given that the beat bloggers working the nation’s capital made Hollywood paparazzi look like agoraphobic slackers. The empty parking garages after midnight, the abandoned warehouse in Ivy City—that part of their plan was over. It would now be expected that Karcher’s name show up on the White House visitors’ log.
Dobson forced a smile, an attempt at patience with his strangest of political bedfellows. “If I didn’t need to know the guy’s name, Frank, you wouldn’t be sitting here,” he said. “Your mess is my mess.”
Karcher couldn’t argue with that, choosing instead to simply scratch the back of his very large head before opening the file in his lap. This one wasn’t empty. “His name is Trevor Mann,” he began, summarizing in bullet-point fashion. “Former Manhattan ADA with an outstanding conviction rate … left to become general counsel for a hedge fund … apparently that didn’t go too well.”
“What happened?” asked Dobson.
“The firm was sued by one of its largest clients, the Police Pension Fund of New York City. This guy, Trevor Mann, discovered during the trial that the hedge fund managers were withholding evidence that should’ve been given to the prosecution. In short, the cops were getting screwed out of profits.”
Karcher was about to continue when he glanced up at Dobson and suddenly stopped. There was something about Dobson’s expression, although Karcher couldn’t quite peg it. “What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Dobson lied. “Go on. Or better yet, let me guess. The lawyer grew a conscience and sold out the hedge fund managers.”
“Something like that,” said Karcher. “He ended up being disbarred. Now he’s teaching at Columbia Law. Ethics, no less. Just finished his second year there.”
Dobson took another sip of coffee, leaning back in his chair. He knew that Karcher, all six foot two and two hundred and forty pounds of him, could be a sick fuck with a short fuse, if provoked.
But Dobson also knew what they had in common, what had initially brought them together.
A complete and thorough understanding of leverage.
CHAPTER 32
“FRANK, DID you ever take Latin?”
Karcher, a bit wary of the lack of segue from Dobson, slowly shook that large head of his. When he first enlisted in the army over thirty years ago, they had to special-order his helmet. “I’m assuming you did?” he asked.
“Yeah, four years of it at Phillips Exeter Academy,” said Dobson, fully aware of how pretentious that sounded. “And you know what the irony is? The only Latin expression that’s ever had any meaning to me whatsoever in my job is one that most anybody would know without studying the language for a single goddamn day. Quid pro quo.”
Karcher was well acquainted with the expression. He also knew where Dobson was heading with it. But before he could even open his mouth to mount his defense, Dobson went right on talking.
“Last night, I convinced the president of the United States to make you the next director of the CIA. You, Frank. Not the half dozen or so more qualified men at the top of the intelligence world, but you. I did this because this was our agreement, what you got in return for helping me with my plan. And everything was going well with that plan, wasn’t it?”
Dobson paused. It was a rhetorical question, but he still wanted at least a nod from Karcher, something that would make it all very clear. Not that Karcher agreed with him. Screw that. Rather, that Karcher understood just who exactly had the leverage.
So let’s see it, big boy. Tilt that huge melon of yours up and down like a good soldier.
And there it was, right on cue. It was the slightest of nods but a nod just the same, and for a proud man like Karcher, easily more painful than passing a cactus-sized kidney stone.
Dobson continued. “So now you’re here telling me that not only is the kid still alive up in New York, but there’s also a new guy, the boyfriend of the reporter, who might know everything as well?”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Karcher.
“That sounds awfully familiar.”
“Then what do you want me to say?”
“Nothing. I want you to do,” said Dobson. “As in, whatever it takes to clean this up. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Quid pro quo, Frank.”
“I got it.”
The hell he did, thought Dobson. “Quid pro quo!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “I want my fucking quid pro quo!”
Karcher didn’t say another word. Not even good-bye. He stood up from his chair and walked out of Dobson’s office.
Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui.
CHAPTER 33
PARANOIA, I was quickly discovering, has a sound all its own. Loud.
“Christ, do you hear that?” I asked as we walked south along Broadway after leaving the Oak Tavern.
Owen turned to me without breaking stride. “Hear what?”
“Everything,” I said.
It was as if someone had grabbed a giant municipal dial with two hands and turned up the volume on the entire city. The clanking of a construction crane overhead, the idling engines of the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the back-and-forth chatter of the people we passed along the sidewalk—I could hear every single noise Manhattan had to offer, louder than ever before. And each one, I was convinced, wanted to kill me.
“It’s actually pretty cool, if you think about it,” said Owe
n.
That wasn’t exactly the reaction I had in mind. “Cool?”
“Yeah. Three-point-eight billion years of evolution tucked away in your DNA,” he said. “Survival instincts. Hear better, live longer.”
We came to a stop at a DON’T WALK sign at the corner of Fifty-Eighth Street. My neck was craning like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist. We were out in the open, two sitting ducks. “Are you sure it isn’t hide better, live longer?”
“I know how it must seem,” he said, “but we’re actually fine for a bit.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“The Achilles’ heel of the intelligence community,” he said. “They only act on intelligence.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Our two friends from the park are too busy right now turning your apartment upside down. They want to know what you know. They’ll comb through every hard drive you have; they’ll hack your phone records, bank and credit card accounts, anything and everything. Then they’ll wait and hope.”
“For what?”
“For us to do something foolish,” he said. “That reminds me. Can I borrow your phone for a second?”
“Sure,” I said, handing it to him. “Hey! What the hell?”
The kid promptly took my iPhone and dropped it down the sewer. Plop.
“Now we’re fine for a bit,” he said.
I got it. GPS. On or off, it’s always on. In which case …
“What about your phone?” I asked. I knew he had one on him.
“Let’s just say my phone’s configured a little differently.”
The WALK signal flashed. It might as well have been a starter’s pistol. Owen immediately took off, crossing Broadway and heading east on Fifty-Seventh Street. I was struggling to keep up with him in every sense.
“Where are we going?” I called out.
“I told you,” he said over his shoulder. “I need to make a stop. It’s close by.”
I jogged up alongside him. The kid was a workout. “Yeah, but you didn’t say where.”
“It’s right up ahead.”
As we walked another block, I couldn’t help picturing the two guys ransacking my apartment. As unsettling as that was, though, the idea that they were there instead of getting ready to leap out from around the next corner with guns blazing managed to muffle the loudness between my ears. Still …
“If we’re supposedly safe for a bit,” I said, “why are you walking so damn fast?”
“Margin of error,” he said, his shoulders lifting with a quick shrug. “There’s always the chance I could be dead wrong.”
And just like that, the city was screaming into my ears again, right up until the next corner, where Owen stopped on a dime and pointed.
“There,” he said. “That’s where we’re going.”
I followed the line of his finger across the street to a giant glass cube, at least three stories high and just as wide. If it had been shaped like a pyramid, we would’ve been in front of I. M. Pei’s entrance to the Louvre in Paris.
Instead, it was the entrance to the Apple store beneath the concourse of the General Motors Building. Is the kid buying me a new iPhone?
“What do we need to do in there?” I asked.
“What they’re hoping for,” he said. “Something foolish.”
CHAPTER 34
OWEN LOOKED as if he were casing the joint, but only to me. To the rest of the store he simply looked like another Apple fanboy browsing about the tables of iPads, iPods, and iPhones.
I was following closely behind him. “Are we waiting for something?” I finally asked. “Or someone?”
Owen stopped in front of a MacBook Pro, angling the screen toward him a bit before clicking on the icon for the Safari Web browser. I couldn’t tell if he’d even heard me.
“McLean, Virginia,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s where the very first Apple store opened. It was in a mall called Tysons Corner Center in McLean, Virginia.”
“I would’ve guessed somewhere near Cupertino,” I said.
“Yeah, I would’ve guessed the same thing.” He was typing a series of letters and numbers into the search bar. It looked like gibberish. “Instead, Steve Jobs opened the first store nearly three thousand miles away from his headquarters.” Owen turned to me. “Interesting, huh?”
“I suppose.”
“Of course, you know what’s also in McLean?” he asked.
This much I did know. Or, at least, I was able to figure it out given the kid’s résumé. “Langley,” I answered.
He nodded. “Just saying.”
With that, he punched the Enter button, the screen instantly going black as if he’d turned it off. Just as quick, it flashed back on with a burst of white and a loading icon I’d certainly never seen before on a Mac or any other computer, for that matter. We weren’t in Kansas anymore.
“Any blue-shirts looking this way?” he asked, typing what looked to be a password.
I looked around. All the Apple store employees in their blue T-shirts were busy with other customers.
“All clear,” I said. For what, though? A Swiss bank account withdrawal? Rerouting planes over Kennedy?
Owen pulled a flash drive from his pocket, sliding it into a USB port and pulling up a video file. Immediately, I recognized the image. The beige carpet, the beige walls, the seamless tunnel of blandness …
Once again, I was back at the Lucinda Hotel.
The angle of the video—looking down—was from the end of the hallway on the seventeenth floor. My first thought was that Owen had tapped into a feed from a surveillance camera, albeit a color one with a super-crisp picture. Why would the Lucinda spring for that? They wouldn’t.
“I attached the camera above the exit sign by the stairs,” said Owen, all but reading my mind. “It’s wireless.”
He interrupted the live feed to cue up the footage from the beginning, back when he first checked into the hotel. He had recorded everything. Every second of every minute of every person who wanted to kill first him and then, later, me.
He was fast-forwarding through it all, but it was all right there, surreal as hell. Claire’s killer arriving. Owen leaving. My showing up, followed by the duo from Bethesda Terrace, who, after wielding their magic pliers, indeed pulled double duty as the world’s fastest cleanup crew, complete with removing Claire’s killer wrapped in a blanket. Perhaps the most unsettling part about that detail was how nonchalant they were carrying a dead body toward the stairwell. Just another day at the office.
Next came the arrival of the police and me again. Or, at least, it would’ve been. Owen had paused the recording, rewinding slowly before stopping on a clean shot of one of our would-be assassins. With a crop, cut, and paste, Owen fed the image into what I gathered was some kind of restricted personnel file of the CIA. But nothing was happening.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath. “So much for the front door.”
That was when things got a bit freaky.
Owen reached into his other pocket, pulling out a small contact lens case. Before I could even ask what the hell he was doing, he’d put a red-tinted lens in his left eye and stared directly into the tiny camera above the MacBook Pro’s screen.
Now, suddenly—open sesame—everything was happening. Pixelated fragments of the guy’s facial features were bouncing from one photo to the next at the speed of a strobe light while charts and graphs measured the similarities. Seizure alert. The screen looked like the love child of a PowerPoint presentation and a pinball machine on tilt.
“This might take a while to get a match,” said Owen, removing the lens from his eye with a quick pinch.
“You just hacked your way into the CIA, didn’t you?” I asked.
He looked at me and flashed the quickest—and guiltiest—of smiles. “Hacked is such an ugly word,” he said.
CHAPTER 35
OWEN WATCHED the screen and waited. I waited and watched Owen. He was doing
that thing again, washing his hands under an imaginary faucet.
And me? What was I doing?
From the get-go, the very beginning, I’d been playing catchup. Who killed Claire? Who was the source she was going to see, and what did he know?
Now I knew. So what next?
It seemed pretty obvious to me. Of course, that should’ve been my first red flag.
“Owen?” I said.
“Yeah?”
His eyes remained locked on the screen. He was barely even blinking. That was fine. He didn’t need to look at me so long as he listened.
“We need to go to the police,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. That makes sense.”
“Good.”
“But we’re not going to.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “They can’t help us.”
“They can at least protect us.”
He threw me a look. “You really think so?”
It had occurred to me. Maybe I wasn’t seeing the big picture, or at least how it looked from his point of view. “You want to go to another paper, is that what you’re saying? Maybe a news network?” I asked.
Finally, he stopped rubbing his hands and turned to me. The words were calm and measured, but the meaning was anything but. To hell with whistle-blowing. This was no longer about going public. This was now personal.
“A decision was made to kill my boss … then Claire … then me … then you,” he said. “And if you can make a decision like that, you’re not worried about the law. You’re above the law.”
Attorneys, especially former prosecutors, generally bristle at the idea of anyone being above the law. Then again, I’d been disbarred.
“What exactly do you have in mind?” I asked.
“The only way to smoke them out is to remain their target,” he said. “Think about it. As long as they’re coming for us …”
“It’s a path right back to them,” I said.
Owen nodded—bingo—before glancing back at the screen. “Now we just need a little background information,” he said. “Always get to know better the people who want you dead.”
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