Conspiracy

by Stephen Coonts

  Admittedly, the lines could be difficult to discern. Examining the contents of a public-access computer was OK, because it was by definition open to the public and there was no expectation of privacy, the same as walking down the street. But a computer in a home was different; Desk Three needed permission to access it.

  My fault, thought Rubens. Ultimately, my fault. I haven’t properly prepared my people.

  What would Senator McSweeney and his committee say to that?

  “Disable the bug immediately,” Rubens told Telach. “Lia is not to place any more surveillance devices without my explicit approval. If she has a problem with that, have her talk to me.”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  47

  TOMMY KARR HAD cut a good jagged line into the bottom of his calf. It wasn’t deep, but it was definitely artistic, looking like a bolt from a Scandinavian lightning god.

  Which suited Karr just fine. He cleaned it up and redressed it as soon as he woke, pronounced it patched, then went down to the hotel’s breakfast lounge, where he found Charlie Dean drinking coffee at a table tucked between plastic fronds.

  “You’re limping,” said Dean.

  “Scandinavian, actually.” Karr smiled, then went over to the coffee urn at the side of the room. While he was gone, a waiter came over to take his order; Karr found the man standing idly by the table when he returned.

  “You can get the next one,” said Karr, sitting down.

  “You sleep all right?” asked Dean.

  Karr nearly choked on the coffee. “Whoa—high-test.” Coffee in Asia tended to be as weak as tea; this was the exception. He felt a caffeine shock rush through his body. “Really gets ya goin’, huh, Charlie?”

  “I guess.”

  “I slept OK,” said Karr, getting back to Dean’s question. “How about yourself?”

  “Like a lamb.”

  “I always wondered about that,” said Karr. “How do lambs really sleep? They look all cuddly and all, but do we really know that they’re sleeping soundly? Maybe they have nightmares about wolves.”

  “Could be.” Dean sipped his coffee. “What do you think about swapping assignments? Your leg seems pretty bad.”

  “Nah. I’m fine.”

  “You’re limping.”

  “Chafing from the bandages.” Karr held up his cup. “Ready for a refill,” he said to the waiter, who was across the room.

  “Tommy, is your leg really bad?” asked Marie Telach, who’d been listening in over the com system. Unlike Dean and Lia, Karr almost never turned the system off.

  “See, now ya got Mom worried,” Karr told Dean. “I’m fine,” he added, speaking to the Art Room. “What’s the latest on Thao Duong?”

  “Still sleeping in his apartment. He got back about three hours after you left.”

  “What do you figure he was doing?”

  “I believe that’s your job to find out,” said Telach.

  “Must be getting toward the end of the shift,” Karr told Dean.

  “He’s stirring,” interrupted Sandy Chafetz, their runner. “Tommy, your subject is getting up.”

  “Boy, and I was just about ready to see what they had for breakfast.”

  “I’ll go,” offered Dean.

  “Nah. Coffee’s got my heart racing anyway. Got to do something to work it off.” Karr got up. “Check in with you later.”

  48

  AMANDA RAUCI HAD no trouble finding the state police impound lot; she simply located the police barracks and then cruised the junkyards and service stations in the area until she saw a lot with two Ford Crown Victorias parked near the fence. The Fords, unmarked police cars put out to pasture, stood guard before a small array of wrecks, a Mustang confiscated from a drug dealer, and Gerald Forester’s Impala, conveniently located not far from the fence.

  It was only just past five, but Amanda decided the place looked deserted enough that she could hop the chain-link fence from the back and not be noticed. But she hadn’t counted on the two large German shepherds, who bounded up on the other side of the fence as she approached.

  Amanda backed away.

  A supermarket about a mile and a half away was having a sale on hamburger meat; she bought four pounds. But as she checked out, she worried that it wouldn’t be enough of a diversion. She needed something to put them out, not just fill them up.

  Amanda found a diner with a phone booth nearby. Setting the tattered phone book on the narrow metal ledge beneath the phone, she began calling vets until she found one willing to give her a mild tranquilizer to calm her dog’s motion sickness.

  The office was several miles away, and Amanda got lost twice before she found it. By then it was just a few minutes before closing, and when she went in, the night assistant was walking toward the door with his keys in his hand, ready to lock up. She felt a flutter of panic but quickly pushed it away.

  “I called a little while ago about my dog,” she said. “The pills?”

  “Uh, pills?”

  “Acepromazine,” said Amanda. “It’s for motion sickness, right?”

  While generally given for motion sickness, acepromazine was actually a tranquilizer; it mainly calmed dogs down so they could make a long trip. But though the woman Amanda had spoken to on the phone had seemed easygoing and said getting the pills would be no problem, the kid now was suspicious.

  “You were supposed to come earlier,” he said.

  “I came as quickly as I could.”

  “Well, where’s your dog?”

  “I couldn’t take him in the car, right? He throws up.” Amanda tried to smile. “The nurse said there would be no problem.”

  “That was just Sandy. She’s not like a nurse or anything. Not even an assistant.”

  The young man frowned. Amanda tried smiling again.

  “I know it’s late.”

  “Let me see if they left you anything,” said the kid finally.

  He turned around and went back toward the front desk. As two or three dogs being boarded started barking in the back, the vet’s assistant stooped under the front counter and retrieved a yellow Post-it.

  “Um, what was your name again?” he asked, squinting at the note.

  “Rauci.”

  “They couldn’t find the file.”

  He showed her the note. It explained that they couldn’t find the file and that the young man—Dave—was not to give her the pills without it.

  Amanda noticed that the boy was staring at her chest. She wondered if she could somehow seduce him into giving her the tranquilizers.

  “We haven’t been in in ages,” she said, taking a step toward him.

  “See, usually, if they know you pretty well, it’s not a problem,” said the boy. “But I think Sandy got you confused with someone else.”

  “I think I’ve gotten pills from the doctor before.”

  “Could you spell your name.”

  “R-a-u-c-i. Maybe they looked under R-o-s-s-i. A lot of people think that’s the only way to spell it.”

  “Oh, that’s a funny way to spell it,” said the young man, turning toward the filing cabinets.

  “It’s not funny if it’s your name.”

  The young man blushed. “I just meant, uh, she might have gotten it wrong.”

  “No offense,” said Amanda, thinking she was making progress.

  She stepped around the counter and joined the vet’s assistant at the lateral files. She’d never been very good at flirting, let alone seduction. She wished she’d been wearing a skirt.

  Amanda touched the kid’s hand. His face reddened. But before she could go any further, his cell phone began playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

  “Go ahead; you can answer the call,” she told him, stepping back. “I’m not really in a rush.”

  “Just my girlfriend.”

  “It’s OK.”

  The young man grabbed the phone from his belt and stepped a few feet away. Amanda followed, eying the large set of keys on the counter. But he was too close
for her to grab them.

  “Do you mind if I use the restroom?” As she spoke, she touched his neck; he nearly jumped.

  “Yeah, go ahead. Down the hall that way.”

  Amanda decided she would just leave the window to the restroom open, then come back later and sneak in. She stepped inside quickly. It took only a second for her to undo the lock at the window.

  She looked but couldn’t find wiring for an alarm.

  The dogs being boarded began barking in their pens down the hallway as soon as she stepped from the restroom. Glancing toward the front, she walked quickly into the kennel area. There was a glass-faced cabinet near the door, stocked with medicines and things like bandages and sutures. The cabinet was locked, but she guessed that there would be a spare key somewhere in one of the offices.

  The young man was still on the phone when she came back, talking plaintively to whoever was on the other line. Amanda walked quickly around the counter, hoping that the drugs had been left somewhere nearby. But she didn’t see them. So she bent over the files, looking for another name she could appropriate.

  “Look, I still have somebody here. I’ll call you back, all right?” said the young man. “No. I have to call you back.”

  “Problems?” Amanda asked when the young man came around the counter.

  “Really, like, you shouldn’t be back here.”

  “I’m sorry, I was just going to help. I was thinking that the name might actually be under my ex-husband’s. We, uh, had a falling-out. Divorce, you know.”

  The kid smirked. “Yeah, I know how that goes.”

  “You’re married?”

  “No way.”

  “Try Anthony Stevens.”

  The young man retrieved the folder.

  “The black Lab?”

  “Fifer.”

  Still kneeling in front of the cabinet, the young man examined the folder. Amanda put her hand on his shoulder.

  Was it too much? she wondered.

  Apparently not. The young man got up.

  “All right,” said the young man. “Hold on.”

  He retreated to an office directly off the reception area, then returned with a bag and a small receipt tape.

  “Here you go. How do you want to pay?” he asked.

  “You could just send us a bill,” she said.

  The young man frowned.

  “Or I could pay in cash,” she volunteered, anxious now that she was so close to finally getting the pills.

  “Great.”

  But as she opened up her wallet, she realized she had only five dollars left.

  If she used the credit card, anyone looking for her would be able to trace her to the area.

  If she couldn’t talk him into billing her, could she just come back and break in? Glancing over at the keys on the counter, she saw there was a small alarm key on the chain. Breaking in would be too risky.

  “I guess I don’t have that cash. If you could bill—”

  The young man pointed at a sign on the side of the counter: “All bills must be paid at visit.”

  “A check or a credit card will do,” said the kid.

  “All right,” said Amanda, taking out her credit card.

  AFTER ALL THE effort it took to get the tranquilizers, drugging the dogs was anticlimactic. The animals went straight for the hamburger, whimpering and begging, tails wagging, as she bent near the fence. They might have looked ferocious from a distance, but they were friendly enough if you gave them food. Within an hour, both animals lay down near the fence and drifted off to sleep.

  Amanda used the spare key she’d taken the night of Forester’s death to open the door. She doused the interior light, then poked around with her hand under the passenger-side seat. A single stenographer’s notebook was folded up in the cushion between the springs.

  Amanda stopped at a McDonald’s restaurant two miles down the road, bought herself a vanilla shake, and slid into one of the back booths to read the notebook. Her heart was pounding so loudly it nearly drowned out the giggles of the teenage girls huddled over a cell phone two booths away.

  The first page was blank. The second page had part of a case number and two telephone numbers.

  The notes started on the third page. The handwriting was hurried, abbreviated.

  As she read, Amanda heard her dead lover’s voice in her head.

  Phne—nthing.

  Call list—??

  The threat had been made by e-mail, but as a matter of routine, Forester had suggested that the office monitor or record all calls. He’d also asked the phone company for a “call list”—in this case, a record of phone calls that had been received by the number, probably over the past two months. Amanda couldn’t tell exactly what the note meant—was he reminding himself to check the call list, indicating that he should look into it further, or simply recording someone else’s confusion?

  The next pages had office hours and contact numbers for the senator’s campaign and Senate offices; Amanda guessed that Forester wrote them down so he’d have them while he was on the road.

  Then came a note that read: “Mar 24 call.”

  March 24? That was at least a month before the threat had been received.

  Ten or twelve blank pages separated that section from a fresh set of notes, written with a different pen.

  Amanda skipped through ten or eleven blank pages, then found another.

  Reginald Gordon

  Athens, GA

  There was a phone number and an address. At the side of the page were tick marks—Amanda knew that was Forester’s way of counting how many times he’d tried calling a phone number without connecting.

  There were dates and times on the next page—this must be from the conversation with Gordon, Amanda thought.

  Nvr called.

  No.

  No threat.

  Called in Jan for help only—one Marine to another. News story was bull. Blowing off steam.

  Senator staff said couldn’t help. Never talked to him. Rfused.

  Not fair, no.

  —seems still mad.

  A different pen:

  No records USMC.

  ID body???

  Resurfaced. Quiet.

  The next page was headed by a carefully penciled notation: “FROM MEMORY”:

  Check records strategic hamlets

  Da Nang 1971–72

  Three people would have known

  Best source—Vietnamese Phuc Dinn (sp??)—tried to have assassinated. Knw he’s still alive because spke to him. Will he tell??

  Then, on the last page of the notebook with any writing, the contact information for the police chief of Pine Plains.

  49

  THE TRUTH WAS, Dean didn’t much feel like play-acting at the convention. But that was his job, and so after he finished breakfast he went down to the lobby and took a taxi to Saigon’s new convention center about ten minutes away. The restlessness that had kept him awake half the night had settled into a background buzz; he told himself that he had a job to do, and that if he concentrated on that, everything else would fall into place.

  Dean made sure the government officials who were working near the front of the hall saw him, and even took a few business cards from some of the display booths. By 9:45 he’d walked around the convention hall twice. He headed toward one of the business centers, figuring he would find an inconspicuous place where he could check in with Karr and the Art Room, when he was intercepted by Kelly Tang, the CIA officer helping on the case.

  “Mr. Dean, how are sales going?” said Tang, a cheerful den mother checking on one of her charges.

  “Not bad.”

  “Why don’t you have a cup of coffee with me? Come on. Vietnamese coffee is very good, if you know where to go.”

  Dean followed her outside of the meeting hall proper to a large area of tables and chairs. While she went for the coffee, he took out some brochures and papers from his briefcase, as if he were checking to make sure he had enough material for a sales ca
ll. He wanted anyone who noticed him to think he was what he claimed to be, a salesman.

  “Think you’ll sell me a rice harvester?” she asked, returning with two cups.

  “I can get you a special deal,” he said, pushing the papers back into his briefcase.

  “You want to talk to Cam Tre Luc?” she said casually, stirring sugar into her cup.

  “Yes.”

  “A man will meet you at the Plum American Restaurant near the IDC Office Tower at noon. He uses the name Lo.”

  “How will I know him?”

  “He’ll find you. He’ll have a card just like this,” she said, producing a business card.

  Dean nodded.

  “He’s going to want money,” added the CIA agent. “A thousand, just for setting up the contact.”

  “A thousand U.S.?”

  She shrugged apologetically. “A couple of other people turned me down.”

  “Problem?”

  “Not really. Cam Tre Luc is a tough and important person in a ministry that few Vietnamese want to anger.”

  “Why do you think I’m going to make him mad?”

  Tang smiled and changed the subject. “Did you and Thao Duong get along?”

  “We’re working on our relationship.”

  “Very good. Have you sold anything at the convention?”

  “Not yet. This is really just a scouting mission,” he said loudly. “We plan to make a push next year. But if anyone does want to buy, then of course I’m prepared. The Japanese are difficult competitors, but we’ll hang in there.”

  “Please let me know if I can help your company in any way,” said Tang, rising and sticking out her hand.

  “I will.”

  “Best of luck with the sales.”

  50

  THE WINDOW AT the agricultural ministry that Karr had broken the night before had already been patched by a piece of cardboard. If there had been an inquiry, neither Desk Three’s phone taps nor the bugs in Thao Duong’s office had picked it up.