Conspiracy

by Stephen Coonts

  “Is this some sort of code?” Lia asked, passing the sheets to Dean.

  John Mandarin, the Secret Service special agent in charge of both the McSweeney investigation and the inquiry into Forester’s death, frowned.

  “We think those are directions. Interstate 84, Taconic Parkway, U.S. Route 44, and State Route 82. It would be how to get to Pine Plains.”

  “But he didn’t go to Pine Plains,” said Dean. “He went to Danbury.”

  “Nearest approved hotel,” said Mandarin. “He would’ve gone first thing the next morning. Had an appointment with the police chief there.”

  “Is this the last notebook?” asked Lia.

  “It’s the only notebook. Far as we know.”

  Mandarin was the classic Secret Service agent. He was average height, weight, and build. While his last name indicated that there were Chinese ancestors somewhere in his family’s past, his face mixed Asian and European characteristics so well that it would have been impossible to place him in any genetic pool without a DNA test. He wore a brown suit, a white shirt that appeared to be graying around the collar, black shoes and socks. His accent was as bland as a midwestern television announcer’s, and when he spoke he kept his hands perfectly still. In total, Mandarin was a veritable Zelig who could fade into even the most convoluted background.

  “Can we see another of Agent Forester’s notebooks?” asked Lia. “Something to compare it to?”

  “I have to tell you, we really don’t see much of a connection between Forester’s death and the McSweeney assassination,” said Mandarin. “State police called Forester’s death a suicide. FBI looked at it and they agreed.”

  “What do you think?” Dean asked.

  “Officially, the matter is still open. But unofficially …” He shook his head.

  “Our angle is the e-mails,” said Dean.

  “Yeah, I know. Another wild-goose chase.”

  Something about the way Dean stared at the Secret Service agent reminded Lia she loved him. It was an intrusive, unwelcome thought—a distraction when she should be working—but it was difficult to banish.

  Mandarin went to a nearby file cabinet to see what he could find. He returned with two pouchlike folders. Besides typed reports and disks, there were stenographers’ notebooks filled with notes.

  Lia checked the pads. If anything, there was even less detail in them.

  “Are you positive this is the only notebook he used for this case?” Lia asked, pointing to the one Dean still had in his hand.

  “He never did anything in Pine Plains,” said Mandarin. “Killed himself first. Believe me, we’ve gone through his things. It wasn’t in the room, or at his house. Lousy business,” added the agent. “His wife seemed to be a bitch, but he’s got kids, you know? He wanted custody, and she wouldn’t budge. Probably why he pulled the plug.”

  Mandarin pressed his lips together, then looked at the floor. He had the air of a man who would trade half a year’s salary to get another assignment.

  “Can we have a copy of the notebook?” Lia asked.

  “Yeah, I guess. Take a couple of days. You’ll have to fill out a form and then—”

  Lia snatched the notebook from Dean’s hand and started toward the copy machine.

  “What are you doing?” asked Mandarin.

  “Filling out the paperwork,” she said, pulling up the machine’s cover to begin copying.

  20

  AMANDA RAUCI GOT up from the couch and walked to the kitchen. Her eyes had finally stopped burning, but her head still felt as if it were filled with straw. Her whole body did.

  The bottle of Tanqueray had only a finger’s worth of gin left in the bottom.

  God, she thought, did I drink all that?

  Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.

  Amanda rubbed her forehead, then poured the last of the gin into her glass. She hadn’t gone out of the apartment since coming back after discovering Forester’s body. She hadn’t even gone to the funeral.

  She couldn’t have trusted herself. She was sure his ex-wife had driven him to this.

  Amanda drained the glass in a gulp. Then she went to the window in her living room and pushed it open. The air smelled damp, as if it was going to rain soon. A motorcycle revved in the distance. As it passed, she heard the soft chatter of some children walking on the trail that ran behind her condo.

  Why would Jerry kill himself?

  He wouldn’t. She knew in her gut that he wouldn’t. There was just no way—no possible way—that he would kill himself.

  Maybe if he didn’t think he’d see his boys.

  But he’d never do this to them. Never.

  Or to her.

  But what other explanation was there?

  A fresh wave of self-pity swept over her. Even though she knew that’s what it was, even though she hated the emotion more than anything, it left her helpless. She stared blankly out the window, eyes unfocused.

  “He didn’t kill himself,” she said finally. “He didn’t.”

  Amanda pushed the window closed. If she’d said those words once, she’d said them a thousand times in the past week and a half.

  Amanda’s vacation had a few more days to run; then she’d be back at work. She had to pull herself together before then. She had to stop drinking.

  “I’ll try another shower,” she told herself. “And then make a plan.”

  21

  LIA LET DEAN ask the questions. Mrs. Forester seemed to respond better to him. She was almost flirting, in fact.

  Mrs. Forester readily admitted that she and her husband had been in the process of getting a divorce. Nor did she hide the fact that they hadn’t gotten along for several years.

  “Does it make sense to you that he killed himself?” asked Dean. They were all sitting in the small dining room, around a battered, colonial-style dinette set.

  She picked a nonexistent piece of lint from her sweater before answering. “No, Mr. Dean, it doesn’t.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose he did kill himself. But honestly, it wouldn’t have been over the divorce. Jerry wasn’t emotional like that. We didn’t get along, and this was the logical next step. Divorce, not suicide.”

  “Was he concerned about custody or money?”

  “He was always concerned about money. As for custody, he could care less about the boys.”

  “When will they be home?” Dean asked.

  “I’d prefer if you left them alone,” said Mrs. Forester. “I’d greatly prefer it.”

  “All right,” said Dean.

  The boys’ impressions—and their mother’s, for that matter—weren’t what he and Lia had come for. Still, she found it interesting that no one thought Special Agent Forester was the sort of man who would take his own life. She glanced at the photographs on the wall next to the buffet. They were old family shots; Agent Forester was in several. He looked happy enough.

  So did his wife.

  If he had died the day after the photos were taken, would she have seemed more affected by it? Would she be crying instead of waving her hand dismissively?

  “One thing that we would like to do,” said Dean, getting to the point, “is look at the hard drives on the computers in your house. We’re hoping there might be some information there that would help us.”

  “If you’re looking for a suicide note, you won’t—”

  “Actually, we’re interested in seeing if there might have been a connection to a case that we don’t know about,” said Lia. “We just have to rule everything out.”

  Mrs. Forester sighed. “You know, I’ve spoken to investigators twice already.”

  “We understand. But we need to dot every i,” said Dean. His voice seemed more soothing than normal; Lia couldn’t tell if he was consciously making an effort to be nice or reacted that way to damsels in distress.

  Not that Mrs. Forester appeared in distress.

  “My sons need the computers for their homework,” she told Lia and
Dean.

  “We don’t need to take the computers,” said Dean. “If you have an Internet connection, the whole process can be done in a few minutes.”

  Mrs. Forester frowned, then studied Dean’s face. Obviously, she liked something she saw there, because finally she said OK and got up from the chair.

  “My son Gerald got his computer from his father, so it’s probably the one you should check first,” said Mrs. Forester.

  Lia felt a twinge of anger when their hostess touched Dean’s hand as she showed them toward the short flight of stairs to the split level’s top floor. She knew that was foolish—if anything, Dean should use the attraction to help them get what they wanted. But still she felt jealous.

  The house had been built in the early 1970s. The wood floors were scuffed and yellowed, and there were other signs of age, like painted-over gouges on the baseboards and fixtures that had gone out of style decades before. But it was clean and well kept; even the boys’ bedrooms were well-ordered. To judge from the pennants and photographs on the wall, the fifteen-year-old was a fan of the Nationals and the Washington Redskins. A pair of tickets to an upcoming NASCAR event were tacked to the edge of the shelf over the computer monitor.

  Lia wondered if the boy had been planning to go with his father.

  “Is there a password?” Dean asked as the computer booted.

  “No. Do we need one?”

  “Nah. I don’t use one, either,” said Dean.

  Mrs. Forester leaned close to Dean, her hand resting on his shoulder. Lia stepped around to the other side, watching as Dean brought up the Web browser and signed onto a special page set up by the Art Room. Within a few seconds, the techies back at the NSA were dumping the contents of the computer’s hard drive into their own computers.

  “Did your husband leave any papers behind when he moved out?” Lia asked Mrs. Forester.

  “Just our finances. Nothing to do with work.”

  “Could I look at them?”

  “My finances?” Mrs. Forester straightened. “Why?”

  “Maybe there’s something there.”

  “I really don’t feel like having you snoop through my personal records.”

  “Are you hiding something?”

  Mrs. Forester’s lower lip quivered as she suppressed her anger. Lia held her stare.

  “You don’t have to show us anything you don’t want to,” interrupted Dean.

  Shut up, Charlie, thought Lia to herself.

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Forester.

  “It might be useful,” said Lia. “Knowing about money issues that might have driven—”

  “There were no money issues in our marriage,” said Mrs. Forester frostily. “Jerry was the issue. And you won’t find that in our checkbook. When it came to providing, he did an adequate job.”

  “Did your husband like to travel a lot?” asked Dean.

  “Just for work.”

  “Did he ever go to Vietnam?” asked Lia.

  Mrs. Forester made a face and shook her head.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I think I’d remember something like that.”

  “Did he know anyone who was Vietnamese?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “Was his father in the Vietnam War?” Lia asked.

  “Not that I know.”

  “Could we see the other computers?” asked Dean, rising.

  Mrs. Forester’s tone immediately softened. “There’s only one more. In my bedroom.”

  “Let’s take a look then.”

  “WHY’D YOU GET nasty?” Dean asked as soon as they were outside on the driveway.

  “I wasn’t nasty.”

  “You were a little rough, asking for her finances.”

  “Maybe there’s something in there.”

  “The Secret Service and the FBI would have checked that out.”

  “Why are you making excuses for her?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You’re going pretty easy on her.”

  “Her husband just died.”

  “She didn’t seem that broken up about it. My guess—”

  Dean cut her off by putting his hand in front of her, physically stopping her a few yards from the street. A teenager had stopped on the sidewalk nearby. He looked like a much younger version of Gerald Forester.

  Dean nodded in the boy’s direction, then began walking again. Lia stared to follow.

  “Hey, are you here about my dad?” asked the boy. His voice mixed bravado with anger; he was partly challenging them, and partly pleading for information.

  “We were just checking up on a few things,” said Dean.

  “He didn’t kill himself.”

  The young man held his arms straight down, fists clenched. For a moment Lia thought that he was going to leap at Dean and pummel him.

  “We’d like to prove you’re right,” said Dean. “Can you think of anything that would help us?”

  The question seemed to catch the kid in the stomach, a punch that grabbed his breath.

  Lia misinterpreted the reaction, thinking he had something he’d been wanting to point out but hadn’t until now. Before she realized that he was only trying to hide his grief, she asked if he knew of anyone who had threatened his dad. Tears began rolling from the corners of the young man’s eyes. He pressed his lips together so tightly they turned white. Then he bent his head forward and walked past them, his pace growing brisker until he reached the house.

  22

  AGENT FORESTER’S COMPUTERS were plain vanilla PCs running Windows XP, home version, and they were filled with the sorts of things one might find on perhaps 85 percent of the home computers in the United States—a word-processing program, a Web surfer, home finances software, and an assortment of soft porn.

  The fact that the porn had been deleted made no difference to NSA computer expert Robert Gallo, whose computer tools allowed him not only to view the images but also to reconstruct “missing” parts of the files. More important, his software allowed him to search the files for encrypted messages.

  He found none.

  “Porn wasn’t even that interesting,” he told Johnny Bib. “Better stuff on MySpace.”

  “Who’s having the affair?” asked Johnny, pointing at one of the text blocks on Gallo’s machine.

  “Huh?”

  “The instant message.”

  Gallo moused over to the screen and brought up the files. The instant messages had been left from a cache several weeks before.

  U awake?

  Goin’ to bed. Jealous?

  Need to use yr computr tomorrw

  OK

  Hw’s yr Frnch?

  Francois?

  “Oh yeah. Account ID got ripped out when the file was deleted, but it’s gotta be the kid, no?”

  Johnny Bib picked up one of the printouts, leafed through, and showed it to Gallo. “Takes Spanish.”

  “Yeah, so that’s why he’s asking about the girl’s French. If it’s a girl.”

  Johnny Bib leaned over Gallo’s screen. “It’s from computer one.”

  “Yeah, but the kid used both. You think it’s important?”

  Johnny Bib answered by staring at Gallo, opening his eyes as wide as they could go, and then crossing them.

  “I guess that’s a ‘duh,’ ” said the analyst. He selected a software tool that constructed a “session profile” and used it to determine when the computer had been used and what else it had been used for during the IM session. There were plenty of gaps, as the tool relied primarily on cookies, saved and deleted files, and other bits of deleterious. Nonetheless, it showed that at roughly the same time the instant message had been saved, the checkbook program was running.

  “All right. Probably Agent Forester,” Gallo said. “But why would anyone need French?”

  “Ha!” said Johnny Bib. “Find out who was on the other end. And see what else you can recover.”

  THIN AS IT was, the fact that Forester had been having an affair with another
Secret Service agent was the first real evidence against the suicide that Rubens had seen. Men who were having affairs, especially with younger women, did not kill themselves.

  In his opinion. A prejudice, surely.

  Rubens dismissed Johnny Bib and placed a call to Jed Frey. The Secret Service director was not in his office, but his voice mail gave the number of his cell phone. Rubens punched the number in. Frey answered immediately.

  “Jed, this is Bill Rubens. I have some additional information about Agent Forester I wanted to share. It’s somewhat sensitive.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Gerald Forester was having an affair with another member of the Service. We’ve recovered several suggestive IMs they sent.”

  “IMs?”

  “Instant messages. Her name is Amanda Rauci. I wonder if that’s come up.”

  “It hasn’t,” said Frey.

  “I’d like to have someone talk to her,” said Rubens.

  “Fine. We’ll tell her to be available.”

  “It occurs to me that she might be a target herself,” said Rubens. “If Agent Forester’s death wasn’t a suicide.”

  Forester didn’t answer.

  “Jed?”

  “You’re right,” said Frey. His voice sounded as if he were coming from quite a distance away. He was thinking about Forester, Rubens guessed. “We’ll protect her.”

  There were two things that interested Rubens. One was his admittedly optimistic thought that someone who was having an affair wouldn’t kill himself, assuming the affair was still continuing. And the second was the fact that French was often used in Vietnam.

  Rubens called down to the Art Room and told Marie Telach that he had changed his mind about the assignment for Vietnam. He wanted Lia to talk to Amanda Rauci.

  “I believe she may have an easier time connecting with her than Ambassador Jackson,” said Rubens. “Though he, too, can go along.”

  “Lia is supposed to be going to Vietnam with Charlie.”

  “Have Tommy Karr meet him there instead.”

  “He is on vacation.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Karr will understand.”