“I never knew about any deal offered to Bruno. And I sure as hell didn’t know he knew about your mother working for us.”
“Jack didn’t know, either. He said he would have stopped the op if he had.”
“We would have, yes.”
“If my mother had found out that Bruno could have outed her, could she have offered a deal to him without you knowing about it?”
“She had no authority to do that. She was a mole, she didn’t represent the government,” replied Bennett. He paused and looked pensive. “But I came to know your mother pretty well. She was smart and cunning beyond her years, and what we were asking her to do made her even more so, simply to survive. I think it’s possible that if Bruno approached her and let her know that her cover was blown, she might have pretended to promise him a deal in order to keep her secret. God, she must have been scared. Bruno Vincenzo was one of the mob’s heavy hitters. No one knows how many people that bastard killed.”
Pine considered all of this and said, “I think you’re probably right. So Bruno kept his mouth shut and thought he had a deal. But that deal didn’t come through. Meantime, my mom, my dad, my sister, and I go into hiding. Then Bruno gets arrested and jailed. But before he goes to prison, he writes Ito a letter laying out some of his grievances. And he asks Ito to see him in jail. I think it was at that time that he told Ito we were in Andersonville, which we probably were by then.”
“Do you think Bruno also knew about your locations while you were in WITSEC, and was the catalyst for those attacks?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible. But the mob has long arms. They could have paid off people connected to WITSEC to reveal our locations.”
“What do you know about Ito Vincenzo?” asked Bennett.
“He ran an ice cream parlor in Trenton and was never in trouble with the law. But then I have proof positive that he came down to Georgia, almost killed me, and took my sister. She’s never been seen since.”
“What happened to him?”
“He came back to Trenton after a few months’ absence. He explained that away to his wife and workers by saying he’d been to Italy. Then years later he disappeared again, and this time he never came back.”
Bennett sat back, looking like he had aged ten years in the last couple of minutes. “This is all so extraordinary. It’s like waking up from a bad dream to find yourself in a nightmare. A real one.”
“So the question becomes, how did Ito, a man with no criminal or other helpful connections, find us in Georgia?”
“I think it’s obvious, like you suggested. His brother told him where you were.”
“I agree,” said Pine. “But how did Bruno find out?”
Bennett shook his head. “As I said before, we could never determine the leak.”
“One other thing, Mr. Bennett, did Jack tell you . . . about him and my mother?”
Bennett stiffened and set his drink down. “I’m not sure what you mean?”
Pine drew a long breath, glanced at Blum for a second, and said, “Well, for instance, that Jack is my father?”
Bennett’s expression was one of total shock. He abruptly stood and swayed a bit. His agitation was so great that both dogs started to whine, perhaps sensing their owner’s distress.
“Your father? But that means—”
“Yes, he and my mother were together right before she met Tim.”
Bennett slowly sat back down. “Jesus, maybe that’s why he broke up with Linda. I never could figure that one out.”
Now it was Pine who looked stunned. “Linda? Who’s Linda?”
“Well, back then she was Jack’s fiancée.”
CHAPTER
35
JOHN PULLER KNOCKED ON THE DOOR of General Pitts’s office suite, but when the door opened it was not the aide who had previously greeted him.
“I’m CWO John Puller with CID. General Pitts asked me to meet with him today,” said Puller. He looked over the woman’s shoulders and froze when he saw the moving boxes piled up.
The aide was a woman, in her late thirties, with short dark hair and a trim physique.
“General Pitts has been reassigned, Chief Puller.”
Puller’s jaw went slack. “Reassigned? He’s vice chair of the Joint Chiefs.”
“Not any longer.”
“Where was he reassigned to?”
“That is classified.”
“Who took his place?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“You’re not at liberty to say why you’re not at liberty to say?”
His pointing out the utter absurdity of what she was saying seemed to have an effect on her. She looked down, pursed her lips, and composed herself. “I freely admit that this situation is unusual.”
“It’s off-the-charts unusual. I met with General Pitts on an extremely sensitive matter one day ago. He was going to investigate this matter and told me to meet him here. Well, I’m here. And he’s not. What does that tell you?”
“I was just assigned to this post this morning. I’m not even sure who the new vice chair will be.”
“This whole thing stinks to high heaven,” said Puller. “What the hell is going on? And don’t tell me you’re not at liberty to say.” He never once raised his voice, but his calm, professional manner seemed to unnerve the woman.
She looked over his shoulder, motioned him into the office, and then closed the door.
“Chief Puller, I don’t know what’s going on, but I agree, it does stink to high heaven. However, keep this in mind, if they can pull a four-star like General Pitts at a moment’s notice, what can they do to someone like me? Or, more to the point, someone like you?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what they tried to do to me. They came to my apartment with machine guns and shot the hell out of the place. And it’s only by the training the Army provided me that I’m standing here talking to you.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah, I would take some help from God right about now. So maybe you’ll get off easy. They’ll just ship you off to Antarctica instead of trying to kill you like they did me.”
“I don’t know what to tell you except I’m sorry.”
“I represent the uniform. I represent the Army and by extension the American people. This is not a cliché to me. We all took an oath.”
“And I worked hard to get where I am. I don’t want to lose my job, or my career.”
“Well, that’s good,” said Puller. “Because you’ve already lost everything else, including your self-respect. For me, no job is worth that.”
He left and walked briskly down the hall.
He had always loved coming to the Pentagon. He felt safe, comfortable, reassured simply by walking around here. He was surrounded by people who were on the same mission he was: keeping America safe, doing the right thing in a selfless manner. It might have seemed corny, but it was how he had led his life. Yet now Puller felt like he had just parachuted into North Korea or Iran. Everyone he passed could be the enemy, an informer, part of the “them,” whatever them was.
Okay, Puller, it’s time to get really serious.
He ducked into a restroom stall, took out his phone, turned it off, took out the SIM card and put it in his pocket. Then he dumped the phone in the trash.
He picked up his pace, hit the exit, and picked up his pace even more. He grabbed the first metro car he could, later changed trains, and rode it to Vienna, Virginia. Along the way he kept up a vigilant watch for anyone attempting to keep him under surveillance.
There, he walked through the station, reversed course, took another train, switched trains at another station, headed toward Springfield, found a nearly empty train car, jumped off at an interim station, stopped and watched for anyone else getting off there, then grabbed a cab and directed it to an electronics store on the Reston Parkway.
Inside he purchased a GSM network prepaid phone. Outside he
called the number to activate the phone, without giving any personal information.
He punched in a number well-known to him. It was a number that could not be traced or hacked, or at least it would not be easy to do so. Right now, he had no choice. He needed help.
“Bobby?”
“Hey, little brother, how’s it going?”
“I’ve got an issue.”
“Not Dad?” Robert Puller said quickly, his buoyant attitude instantly turning serious.
“No. Give me two minutes to fill you in. No interruptions, just listen, then give me some advice on the other side.”
Puller actually took a little more than three minutes to tell his brother everything. From the disappearance of Tony Vincenzo, to the murder of a CID agent, to the death of Jerome Blake, to the murderer being a cop or impersonating one, to the stonewalling of his investigation by folks at the state and federal levels, to the yanking of a four-star general from his position as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. To being attacked and almost killed in his apartment.
When he was done Robert Puller said nothing for about thirty seconds. John Puller could almost hear the wheels of his brother’s formidable intellect absorbing all of these facts and putting everything together, almost like an FBI profile, or a string of DNA, before arriving at if not a solution, then at least some sound advice. But his first response surprised Puller.
“Why the hell didn’t you call me after you got attacked? I’ve been off the grid in a bunker the last two days doing cybernuke drills. But you could have tried to call, dammit.”
“I survived, what was there to tell? I just need you to focus on what I just told you and help me, Bobby.”
More silence passed between them. Finally Robert said, “Okay, the level of influence required to take out a four-star right from the Pentagon twenty-four hours after you met with him is sky-high, John. There aren’t many suspects to consider, the players are very few.”
“If they can yank Pitts I can’t be far behind.”
“They tried to punch your ticket, permanently, at your apartment. At the same time they were yanking Pitts’s assignment. They could do that and no one’s going to care for very long. There are enough four-stars. And a CWO in the field was expendable. But ironically, if they tried to reassign you when you’re working on an investigation, guess what?”
“What?”
“That has whistleblower status written all over it. You’d be in front of a congressional committee telling the whole country what these people don’t want anyone to hear.”
“I hadn’t thought about that angle.”
“Because you don’t give a crap about politics, but in my position I have to pay attention to that.” He paused. “Hold on, John.”
“What?”
“A story is coming over the wire with your name on it.”
“What does it say?”
Robert responded after reading through the article. “Okay, that was smart on their part. There’s reporting based on anonymous sources that the attack on you was orchestrated by elements of a Mexican cartel, high-ranking members of which you helped put in prison three months ago after they tried to infiltrate an Army base in Texas and recruit soldiers as operatives for the moving of drugs into the U.S.”
“Anonymous sources?”
“It’ll be all over the web in a few minutes. Trolls will swarm it, people on every conceivable side will slice and dice it. By the time they’re done half the country will think you tried to shoot yourself with a machine gun.”
“But where does the truth come into all this?”
“It doesn’t. Social media has absolutely nothing to do with the truth. It has to do with making shitloads of money off ads trying to sell people crap they don’t need. But the terrible by-product of that is giving a global platform to the absolute worst elements of society. The result is that ‘truth’ is whatever you can convince people it is. It’s exactly what Orwell wrote about.”
“How does this country survive, then?”
“If you want the truth, John, unless a lot of things change, I’m not sure we do, at least not as the free society we all want.”
“Thanks for the pep talk, Bobby. I really needed it.”
“You asked. And I’m not going to lie to you. So what are you going to do now?”
“I’m not working this case alone. You remember me telling you about Atlee Pine?”
“Yeah. FBI. You think very highly of her.”
“She’s on leave from the Bureau working a personal case that crossed over into mine by virtue of a connection with the Vincenzos.” He went on to tell his brother about Pine’s working undercover at the penthouse, being abducted, waking up next to a dead woman, and almost being killed.
“And this Lindsey Axilrod is in the middle of it?”
“Seems like she set Pine up. And now she’s disappeared.”
“Give me the address of the penthouse.”
“Why, what are you going to do?”
“Don’t ask. And don’t worry, this will not have my personal prints on it.”
“Just make sure it doesn’t.”
“You and Pine are going to remain targets so long as you’re investigating this.”
“We’ve been targets ever since we signed up.”
“This is different.”
“Not to me.”
“Watch your back.”
“You do the same. I have to tell you, I had some trepidation about pulling you into this.”
“Blood is thicker than anything, John. Or it should be. But let’s try not to spill any of ours.”
Puller thought back to the near massacre in his apartment. “Easier said than done, Bobby.”
CHAPTER
36
LINDA HOLDEN-BRYANT?” Pine said into the phone. She was sitting in her car outside of Doug Bennett’s house with Blum next to her.
Jack Lineberry said, “Doug told you about her?”
“Yeah, he did,” snapped Pine.
“Why did he mention her?”
“Why the hell didn’t you mention her before now?”
“There was no reason to.”
“There was every reason to,” retorted Pine.
“Why?”
“You were engaged?”
“Well, yes. For a time.”
“Did you live together?”
“Yes, in New York.”
“When did you break up?”
“Why do you need to know this?”
“I think it’s obvious, Jack, don’t you?” she responded sharply. “In fact, I think when you gave me Bennett’s name, it had occurred to you that her name would come up. Maybe you had thoughts that she could be the mole.”
He started to cough but that wasn’t a deterrent for Pine, not this time.
The coughing subsided and he said, “You give me more credit than you should if you think that.”
“Did you ever talk to her about your work?”
“Of course not. Never!”
“Did you ever work from home?”
“I suppose I did on occasion.”
“Back then there were no smartphones, no computers, no internet really. How did you work from home?”
“I used the phone. A secure line.”
“What else?”
“I wrote memos. Sometimes people came by to see me.”
“While Linda was there?”
“Not always.”
“So some of the time, then?”
“Some of the meetings were on short notice and late at night. What did you want me to do, push her out in the street in her nightgown?”
“Are you sure she was asleep?”
“Atlee—”
“Are you sure she never looked through your briefcase, or eavesdropped on a phone call? Or followed you to wherever you were going to see what you were up to?”
“She knew I worked for the government. And she knew it was . . . secret.”
“But you trusted her?”
“Of course I did, but I took all appropriate precautions. I would never want to put her in danger because she inadvertently discovered some information about what I was doing.”
“There may have been nothing inadvertent about it. So let me ask you again: Why did you break up?”
Lineberry didn’t respond. Pine thought she could hear the quickened beats of his heart over the phone; they seemed to match her own. She glanced at Blum, who was watching her intently.
“Jack?”
“She found out about . . . about what happened.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“She found out about me and Amanda.”
“How?”
“I was never exactly sure. But she confronted me.”
“Jack, if she found out about it, she must have taken steps to find out. Like having you followed.”
“I took precautions.”
“Screw precautions,” barked Pine. “They obviously didn’t work.”
More silence.
In a calmer tone, Pine said, “Did she know that my mother was pregnant? And that you were the father?”
When he said nothing, she added, “Jack, I really need to know this. And you know why. That’s the only way we can find out what happened to Mercy. Just like I told you back in your hospital room. We have to do this together.”
“She knew.”
“So she knew about my mother? I mean, who she was?”
“I never told her about the circumstances.”
“But she knew my mother’s identity?”
“Yes.”
“Did they ever meet?”
“Not to my knowledge. At least your mother never mentioned anything like that.”
“If Linda didn’t tell her who she was, my mother may not have known the connection.”
“That’s . . . true,” Lineberry said haltingly.
“You know where this is leading, Jack.”
“She was not the leak, Atlee. She couldn’t have been.”
“You don’t know that. And from where I’m standing, she is the most probable source of the leak. And she had the motive to sic the Vincenzos on my family.”
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