But I gave him the best comeback I could. Silence.
Not Valerie, though.
“What about outstanding parking tickets?” she deadpanned. “Does he have any of those as well?”
“No, but he does have a dead guy in his bathtub. I forgot to mention that,” Karcher said, his voice tinged with what could only be described as glee. Extra creepy on a guy his size. “The police searched his apartment yesterday.”
“You know, if there was only some way I knew you were telling the truth, some type of method,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be something? I mean, what wouldn’t we all give for that?”
Karcher deflected her with a chuckle, but it was quickly drowned out by something else I was hearing.
My head was suddenly filled with footsteps, only they were more than steps. They were strides. Crespin was running, his breathing heavy as if he were in a full sprint. I knew Valerie could hear it, too, but she kept right on talking to Karcher. Stalling him.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something that I really, truly wished I hadn’t.
CHAPTER 103
NO! NO! NO!
I wanted so desperately to signal her somehow, wave my hands and tell her she had to stop. But I was helpless; I knew I couldn’t. It would be like yanking the pin on a grenade.
The waitress. Betsy. Ponytail and rolled-up sleeves. She was heading to our table.
“Huh, looks like we have a party of three,” she said, pulling up between Karcher and Valerie. She was half distracted, clutching her order pad while searching for a pen in the deep pocket of her apron. “If you’d like, I can move you all to another table.”
“No, that’s okay, I was just saying hello to these guys,” said Valerie, flashing a polite smile. “I’ll be getting up in few seconds.”
But from the moment I felt the tap on my foot underneath the table, I realized this wasn’t just a figure of speech. Valerie was giving me a signal. In a few seconds, she really was getting up, and the reason was right in front of me. Literally.
Our waitress, Betsy, was directly in the line of fire.
I stole a peek at Valerie’s sunglasses now folded on the table, the lenses angled up toward my face.
The only question was whether or not Karcher had noticed, too.
Asked and answered.
Karcher’s eyes lit up as he glanced at me. He saw it. Or, rather, he didn’t see it. The red dot on me from the laser sight was gone, blocked by the—
“Now!” yelled Valerie.
She had Karcher in no-man’s-land, his hand swinging. For a fraction of a second, he was undecided where to aim his gun.
A hell of a lot can happen in a fraction of a second.
Valerie lunged for Karcher as I sprang from my chair, the sound of Crespin in my ear, still sprinting, matching the pounding of my heart.
Betsy had no idea what was happening; she immediately jumped back based on nothing but reflex and fear of the unknown. I was heading right for her, no stopping, the M on her apron the target of my dive.
I could feel the wind being knocked out of her as I tackled her to the ground, the crack of a rifle shot from only-God-knows-where splitting the air above us. But nothing more.
Small comfort. Oswald’s first shot in Dealey Plaza missed, too.
I turned my head, looking up to see Valerie still struggling with Karcher, each with a hand on the other’s gun. He outweighed her by nearly a hundred pounds, but she’d gotten to her feet first and had the leverage. For how long, though?
“Stay down!” I barked at Betsy, as if there were a chance in the world she was about to get up.
No, that was my job now.
Palms down, I began to push off the ground, my eyes trained on Karcher. His face and neck were a mishmash of muscle and tendon straining for all the strength he had. Slowly, his gun was moving back toward Valerie. She had about six inches to live.
That was when I saw it. The only thing that could make things worse. And only one word came to mind to warn her.
“Red!” I yelled.
I don’t know what came next, what I heard or what I saw. But Valerie knew what I meant and knew her geometry, and as the second shot echoed in my ears I saw her step back and take Karcher with her, the dot jumping from her back …
To his.
The only red now was blood. Lots and lots of it. Karcher fell to the ground faceup and only inches from Betsy, who shrieked in horror as she caught sight of the gaping hole in his barrel chest from the exit wound.
“Drop it! Drop your weapon right now!”
Valerie and I turned to each other and then up to the rooftop down the street. It was Crespin in our ears. He was done running. I don’t know if God actually knew where the shots were coming from. But now Crespin did. He’d reached Karcher’s sniper.
“I got him … it’s over,” he said, catching his breath. “It’s over.”
Of course, if that were only true …
BOOK FIVE
TRUTH OR DIE
CHAPTER 104
FRANK KARCHER had been the master of making all sorts of things disappear. People. Problems. His moral compass. But the one thing he couldn’t cover up was his own death.
Instead, others were going to do it for him. At least, that was the way it was playing out.
There were a dozen witnesses to what happened outside the Mallard Café, and they all knew what they’d seen. When the police arrived and a couple of detectives fanned out to ask what had happened, each and every one had an answer.
But none of them knew why it had happened. Same for every news outlet that rushed to the scene. Karcher’s death was the stuff of headlines and lead stories, but the whole truth hadn’t gone public yet.
The question now was whether it ever would.
“I feel like a kid waiting outside the principal’s office,” I said.
Valerie leaned forward, glancing at the closed door to our right. “Yeah, and your parents are already in there having the adults-only talk, right?”
“Exactly.”
She nodded. “Par for the course, I’m afraid. The only way to know your worth in this town is the level of classified info you’re allowed to hear. The whole loaf or just a slice.”
“Or in my case, only a few crumbs,” I said.
“Hey, I’m not in there, either. That makes us both a couple of muzjiks,” she said.
“Muz-whats?”
“Peasants. The word for Russian peasants, actually.”
“Of course.”
“Also, one of the highest-scoring words in Scrabble.”
“Now you’re just showing off,” I said.
“Scrabble was big in our house growing up. My father played it every Sunday with my sister and me to build our vocabularies,” she said. “That’s one reason why I know the word.”
“Muzjiks, huh?”
“Yep. Use it on your first turn and it’s worth a hundred and twenty-eight points.”
I waited for her to continue. She didn’t.
“And a second reason?” I asked. She’d said that was one reason why she knew the word.
With the look she gave me, I suddenly realized this wasn’t mere idle chitchat. Valerie was finally answering the question I’d asked when we first met. Who are you?
There was no one around us in the hallway. Still, she looked both ways as if crossing the street. “I was stationed in Moscow,” she said.
But the way she said it, I knew. “CIA?”
She nodded.
“How long ago?” I asked.
“It feels like forever.”
“What happened?”
“Someone decided to tell the world our deepest, darkest secrets because he didn’t like the way we got them. Consequences be damned.”
So that was who she was. Valerie Jensen had been an undercover CIA agent. “And you were exposed….”
“Hundreds were, all over the world,” she said. “More than a few were killed, too. Not that it ever made the news. I was luc
ky. It wasn’t like a woman could ever be in Tehran or Kabul.”
“Still,” I said. “Moscow.” Putin had never struck me as the forgiving type.
“Thankfully, money will pretty much get you anything you need there, including a way out through Finland in the middle of the night,” she said. “Funny, though. After all that, where does our whistle-blower first gain asylum?”
Russia.
“So how did you end up with the NSA?”
“It was a bit like the Island of Misfit Toys. No one else had any use for us. All the covert training and nowhere to use it,” she said. “Except here at home, of course.”
“Another thing that will never make the news,” I said.
“That depends, I suppose.”
“On what?”
“On how well you can keep a secret.”
I had to laugh. “Imagine that,” I said. “You’re not even the best secret I’ve got going right now.”
“All the more reason why we’re sitting here.”
“Yep. A couple of muzjiks.”
Valerie laughed back, and for a minute, it was as if we were able to forget where we were and why.
Actually, it was only like ten seconds. Right up until the door opened next to us and an older woman with gray hair stepped out and peered over her horn-rimmed glasses with a perfunctory smile. She was Clay Dobson’s assistant.
“You two can come in now,” she announced.
CHAPTER 105
THE ONLY way I ever thought I’d set foot in the White House was on a guided tour with a bunch of people wearing fanny packs. Shuffling along the velvet ropes, I’d stare into all the capital R rooms. The East Room. The State Dining Room. The Blue, Red, and Green Rooms decorated by Jackie Kennedy.
Still, when the tour was over, the closest I’d ever get to the Oval Office was a postcard in the gift shop.
Now I was literally a few feet away from it in the West Wing—the office right next door. The office of the president’s chief of staff.
And if Owen was right, the man ultimately responsible for the deaths of Claire and our unborn child, as well as countless others.
But that was a big if. As in, if only there were some actual evidence.
“Ian, do me a favor and scoot over on the couch there for Mr. Mann,” said Dobson, orchestrating from behind his huge desk. Make no mistake. This was his office, his meeting, his seating chart. He’d already motioned for Valerie to take the other armchair next to Crespin.
Ian—as in Ian Landry, the president’s press secretary—promptly scooted over on the couch to make room for me.
“There you go,” he said. “Best seat in the house.”
It was a little strange to see Landry out from behind the podium of the Brady Room. To watch him take questions from the press was to know there wasn’t anything he couldn’t spin. It was a talent all the more remarkable given that, unlike previous press secretaries, Landry didn’t hide behind the façade of plausible deniability. Rather, he’d claimed from day one that he knew everything that happened in the White House.
After all, President Bretton Morris had won election by promising to level with America at all times. “Hard truths, and no easy fixes,” he was fond of saying in his campaign commercials. And with nearly a billion dollars spent on advertising, he’d said it an awful lot.
“Would either of you like any coffee?” asked Dobson.
“No thanks,” Valerie and I answered in unison.
“All right, then. Let me start by telling you what I told Jeffrey,” Dobson said, pointing to Crespin in his charcoal-gray suit. “The president has no knowledge of this meeting. If he did, it would never be happening. Instead, Ian would be in the press room telling the world everything about Operation Truthseeker, or whatever stupid name this damn thing probably had.”
Seamlessly, Ian Landry chimed in. “The president would sooner sacrifice a second term than try to sweep something like this under the rug.”
“And trust me, that’s not hyperbole,” said Dobson. “Unfortunately, though, this is about more than just favorability ratings and politics. This is about national security. And Frank Karcher has seriously threatened it.”
I listened very carefully to what came next.
Dobson explained the protocol of what happens after the death of active CIA personnel, especially someone on Karcher’s level as the National Clandestine Service chief. Basically, anything and everything having to do with his life gets searched, reviewed, raked over, and then raked over again.
“The problem in this case,” said Dobson, “is that it’s like having the fox guard the henhouse. We don’t know how deep this runs at the CIA—who was involved and how many—but if the guy shooting at you from that rooftop yesterday is any indication, it doesn’t bode well.”
“He’s an agent with the Special Activities Division, Karcher’s former unit within the CIA,” explained Crespin.
“Then, of course, there’s the young man at the center of all this.” Dobson looked down at an open file as if searching his notes for Owen’s name. “Yes, Owen Lewis,” he said. “Who, as of right now, is nowhere to be found.”
Damn, Skippy, nowhere to be found. Where the hell are you, Owen, and what’s with the secret fishing expedition? You’re up to something, but what?
I waited for Dobson to look at me in light of his mentioning Owen, but he didn’t. Instead, he reached for another file on his desk, this one featuring a bright red stripe across it.
“But back to Karcher and the issue of national security,” he continued. “I’m pretty sure I could lose my job, if not worse, for what I’m about to share with you, but since that’s the least of my problems this morning, we’ll be making an exception.” He paused to take a sip of coffee, staring at us over the lip of the mug. First at Valerie. Then at me. “Besides, according to Crespin here, if it weren’t for the two of you, things could’ve been a lot worse.”
And with that, Dobson opened the file.
CHAPTER 106
THE FIRST thing he held up was a color photograph, measuring roughly eight by ten. It could’ve been a head shot for a leading man, albeit one more suited for Bollywood than Hollywood.
“This is Dr. Prajeet Sengupta,” said Dobson, his exaggerated diction suggesting just a trace of xenophobia. He then read from the file in bullet-point fashion. “Born in India, educated here in the States. Stanford undergrad, Harvard Medical School. Currently a staff neuroscientist with the New Frontier Medical Institute in Bethesda, specializing in ionotropic and metabotropic receptor manipulation in the human brain.” Dobson paused, looked up. “If anyone knows what that actually means, be my guest.”
I didn’t. Not exactly. Still, it wasn’t hard to see where this was heading.
Sure enough, according to Dobson, Prajeet Sengupta was the missing link to the serum, the guy Karcher had used to turn Owen’s research into an injectable polygraph machine. One question, though, and I didn’t hesitate with it.
“How do you know this?” I interrupted.
Dobson nodded slightly as if he’d expected me to ask that. “Again, this isn’t for broadcast, but before the CIA could do its reconnaissance on Karcher’s apartment, including his hard drive, I got in there first.” He corrected himself with a raised palm. “Not me personally, but a special investigator with the FBI. Working unofficially, of course.”
All the while, Dobson was still holding up the picture of Sengupta. It was a posed photograph, most likely taken on behalf of the medical institute where the doctor worked. I could picture the website, complete with a glowing bio underneath his good looks and warm smile. Nowhere would his moonlighting efforts be mentioned.
Then—poof!—he was gone.
Dobson lowered the photo, only to lift another one from the file. Exhibit B, apparently.
“Now meet Arash Ghasemi,” he said.
The only thing the two pictures had in common was the size. Instead of a posed head shot, this one was courtesy of a zoom lens from an angle that sug
gested the photographer was somewhere in the Middle East he really shouldn’t have been. Black-and-white and a bit grainy, it was still clear enough to tell that Ghasemi was the opposite of Sengupta in the looks department. More to the point, Ghasemi had pretty much been hit by the ugly stick. Repeatedly.
Again, Dobson read from the file. “Born in Iran, educated in the States. Stanford undergrad; MIT graduate program, nuclear science and engineering. Then, days after accepting a job with General Atomics in San Diego, he suddenly split town and returned to Iran.”
The subtext of that last sentence was crystal clear. Arash Ghasemi was now working for the Iranian nuclear program.
Less clear was whether it was by choice. And even less clear than that was what this Iranian nuclear engineer had to do with Sengupta, the Indian neuroscientist.
Until I replayed Dobson’s descriptions of the two in my head. Word for word. And the one word—the one school—he’d mentioned twice.
“Stanford,” I said.
“Very good, Mr. Mann. You win the Samsonite luggage,” said Dobson. “You see, this is a tale of two roommates.”
CHAPTER 107
HE HAD it all right there in the file, right down to the actual dorm where they first met freshman year. Arroyo House in Wilbur Hall.
Prajeet Sengupta and Arash Ghasemi had become fast friends at Stanford. Put them most anywhere else in the world and they had little in common. Under the bright glare of a California sun, however, they might as well have been brothers. Two strangers thrown together in a strange land.
By sophomore year they had become roommates, all but inseparable, including rushing Sigma Chi together.
“And if you’re looking for a reason why Ghasemi trusted Sengupta so much—even twenty years later—look no further than that fraternity,” said Dobson.
The handsome and more gregarious Sengupta had been tapped to pledge. But Ghasemi had been passed over. That is, until Sengupta made it very clear that they were a package deal. Sigma Chi couldn’t get one without the other.
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