Conspiracy

by Stephen Coonts

  A pair of ice trays sat over a black garbage bag at the top of the chest.

  Amanda Rauci lay beneath the bag.

  138

  GETTING TO THE Paley house so early allowed Ball to seem like part of the furniture as the day went on; each arriving wave of agents and security personnel found him already ensconced. But he couldn’t escape scrutiny entirely, and he had to leave the house with the others when the Service conducted two separate sweeps for bombs and hidden weapons.

  After the second sweep, the security teams were issued fresh ID tags. Ball knew from experience that the tags would be used to segregate the teams into different zones and assignments, and that in order to stay in the house at night he would have to be with the senator’s personal staff.

  But when Ball got to the table, he saw that his tag was coded for access to the external areas only.

  “Hey, you made a mistake here,” said Ball, pointing at the badge. “I’m with the senator.”

  “You have to take that up with Lucinda.”

  “I’m not moving until I get the right badge. This is my job you’re talking about. My neck.”

  “Look—”

  “Hey, I’m with the senator’s staff, all right? Now come on. I know you guys are in charge, but let’s be realistic.”

  Lucinda Silvestri, in charge of the house team, appeared in one of the doorways.

  “What seems to be your problem, Mr. Stevens?”

  “My problem is, you guys don’t want me to do my job.”

  Silvestri walked over to the table and bent close to the agent who was handling the passes. Ball leaned closer to listen.

  “Excuse us, please,” snapped Silvestri.

  “Maybe I should call the senator.”

  “You can call the President for all I care,” said Silvestri.

  Ball clamped his mouth shut, though he continued to seethe. He could accomplish what he wanted to accomplish outside, but that wasn’t the point—the senator’s security was supposed to be inside the room when the senator arrived. Not protesting would be extremely suspicious.

  But Ball didn’t want to call the campaign if he didn’t have to. He’d already checked in with the coordinator O’Rourke normally reported to, who had been in the middle of a million things and seemed to barely hear him when he asked where O’Rourke was. The person he’d have to talk to to get anything done was Jimmy Fingers—and he feared the weasel would recognize his voice.

  The agent who’d been talking to him about Rockland County earlier was standing near the stove, going over a map of the exterior grounds. Ball walked over to him, reintroduced himself, and asked if he could plead his case.

  “It’s my job, you know?” said Ball. “And you’ve seen for yourself, I’m not getting in the Service’s way. You guys are running the show, but I’m here. I have to do my job.”

  The agent shrugged but then went over to Silvestri.

  “At least he’s an upgrade over O’Rourke,” Ball heard him say.

  “All right. We’ll give you the proper tag,” said Silvestri finally. “Stay awake, though.”

  “With the coffee you guys brew, I’ll be awake for the next ten years,” answered Ball.

  139

  THE MCSWEENEY CAMPAIGN made a bus available for the reporters covering the senator during his appearances. The bus tooled along at the end of a procession of vehicles that included the senator and his aides in a pair of Ford sedans, bodyguards in a Chevy SUV, and various hangers-on in a Chrysler minivan. While strictly speaking there were no assigned seats in the bus, a caste system generally dictated who sat where. The best seats were in the back, where the big dailies and newsmagazine people sat; smaller papers and freelancers got the middle; and newcomers got everything else. Karr found this out by accident, plopping down next to Theresa Seelbach, the Newsweek writer he’d met the day before. She smirked and started to laugh, then explained how it worked.

  “It’s like junior high,” she told him.

  Karr had skipped much of junior high, but he started to get up anyway.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “Sit down. You’re kind of cute, and so big I don’t think anyone will ask you to move.”

  Karr smiled, though he felt himself blushing.

  “Got anything useful for your story yet?”

  “Not much,” said Karr. “We don’t actually see McSweeney too much, do we?”

  “Not really. Ten minutes here, five minutes there.”

  “Maybe I can write about the food. Breakfast was OK.”

  “God, I couldn’t stomach anything,” said Seelbach. “Going to be another boring day today. A million stops. We’ll hear the same speech and step over the same drunks.”

  “Maybe somebody will take a shot at him again,” said the reporter sitting behind them.

  “You think?” said Karr.

  The others nearby laughed, but the reporter who had said it turned serious. “Gallows humor, son.”

  “Who do you think shot at him?”

  “One of his campaign people, I’d bet,” said Seelbach. “Why do you think he started listening to them?”

  The others started making similar jokes. It was clear that the reporters had no serious theories, or at least weren’t sharing them.

  “What about the Vietnamese thing?” asked Karr as the jokes petered out.

  “Oh, that’s a crock,” said Seelbach. “The Secret Service and the FBI say there’s no evidence. McSweeney probably made the whole thing up to draw attention to the fact that he served there. He never does or says anything without an agenda.”

  “Whoever did it, it was great for his campaign,” said the reporter behind Karr. “He was fading before then. Look at him now. He’s on top of the world. If I were him, I’d put that sniper on the payroll.”

  “As long as he continues to miss,” said Karr.

  This time, the others laughed with him, rather than at him.

  140

  DISCOVERING AMANDA RAUCI’S body in Chief Ball’s freezer changed everything. Ball was now formally a murder suspect, and obtaining warrants to gather information about him would be child’s play.

  Which bummed Gallo big-time. He would have much more enjoyed hacking into the different databases and taking what he needed, rather than having to deal with the bureaucracy.

  Still, there was something to be said for the bureaucracy. A search of FAA flight records showed that a C. Ball had purchased tickets in Cleveland for Chicago and Houston, in Chicago for LA and New York, and in LA for Pittsburgh and Miami. The car that Amanda Rauci’s credit card had been used to rent was found at the Cleveland airport after the plane manifests were checked, so it was a pretty good bet that C. Ball was the police chief.

  The question was where was he now?

  “These are only the lists of the people who bought tickets,” Gallo told Johnny Bib. “We’re still working on the final lists, the people who actually showed up. Those come from the airlines themselves. My bet is on Pittsburgh,” he added. “It’s the smallest city—doesn’t really go with the others.”

  “Ha!” said Johnny Bib. His voice was shrill enough to echo off the noise-dampening ceiling of the computer lab.

  “Ha?” asked Gallo.

  “Ha!” repeated Johnny Bib.

  “Each time he lands, he buys two tickets,” said Gallo. “When he reaches his final destination, he doesn’t buy any. Both the Miami and the Pittsburgh plane landed yesterday afternoon. So he’s in one of those cities—Pittsburgh, I think.”

  “Why does he buy two tickets?” Johnny Bib asked. He sounded like a philosophy professor lecturing a freshman class on Plato and the Socratic method.

  “He doesn’t want us to know where he’s going,” said Gallo.

  “Ha!” said Johnny Bib.

  “Maybe Pittsburgh is too close to Cleveland,” Gallo said. “If he was going there, he could have driven. That would be harder to trace.”

  “Ha!” said Johnny Bib.

  “I give up,” said Gallo, co
mpletely baffled by his boss.

  “He … knows … we … are … watching,” said Johnny Bib, pausing between each word.

  “He never left LA!” said Gallo, finally getting it. “He just wants us to think he did.”

  “Ha!”

  RUBENS LISTENED QUIETLY as Gallo laid out what he had found and surmised from the FAA passenger lists. The security tapes at Los Angeles International Airport were being scrutinized; Chief Ball had not been spotted yet.

  “It’s possible that we’re overthinking this,” Telach said. “One of the other candidates is in Florida this weekend. I think it’s Winkler.”

  “No, it’s Dalton,” said Gallo. “And, like, there hasn’t been one attempt on another candidate, despite the threats.”

  “Maybe Ball made the threats to throw us off the trail,” said Jackson over the phone speaker. He was with the FBI liaison in Washington.

  “I very much doubt that it was Ball who made the threats,” said Rubens. “I don’t believe Ball had anything to do with the assassination attempt, either.”

  “It doesn’t fit the pattern,” explained Gallo. “It’s an anomaly.”

  “You mean there’s another killer?” said Jackson.

  “A would-be killer, Mr. Ambassador,” said Rubens. “The question is whether he will attempt to improve on that status.”

  “Ball may know who it is,” said Gallo.

  “Yes,” said Rubens. “Unfortunately, we’re going to have to find Chief Ball before we can find out.”

  141

  “WHAT DO YOU think, Jimmy Fingers? Can we blow off Paley?”

  “Sure, if you’d like to kiss off about $350,000 worth of donations. That’s what he’ll be worth in general.”

  “All right,” said McSweeney wearily. “All right. And who’s after the Paleys?”

  “That would be Mr. and Mrs. Davis. They gave a lot of money to the last campaign. They’re going to try talking you out of going to the Getty tomorrow.”

  “Why would they care? No, wait, that’s fine. I don’t really need to know. Tell me again what movies Paley has produced.”

  142

  LIA HAD JUST turned into the parking lot at LaGuardia Airport in New York City when her sat phone rang. It was Sandy Chafetz, confirming that they had reserved her flight to Baltimore / Washington International Airport. A car would meet her there and take her back to Crypto City to be debriefed. Rubens hadn’t decided whether she should join the search for Ball—or, if she did, what she would do.

  “Great,” said Lia. “I’ll talk to you after I clear security.”

  “There’s one other thing I think you’d like to know,” said Chafetz. “Gerald Forester’s divorce attorney got a letter from him a few days after he died. The attorney had it authenticated before contacting the Service and sending a copy to his ex-wife. It’s an apology—a suicide note. He explained that he just couldn’t go on.”

  Lia fought back an urge to argue. Instead, she pushed the button on her phone to kill the transmission, and felt a tear run down the side of her cheek. Wondering why she felt so bad about Forester’s death, she locked the rental car and walked into the terminal to find her flight.

  143

  SHADOWING THE PRESIDENT was a revelation for Dean. He’d never imagined that so many people would want—need—to talk to Marcke in the course of an hour, let alone twenty-four. Aides constantly vied for attention. There were phone calls and e-mail messages, forwarded BlackBerry alerts. Briefing papers piled up; summaries and reports were passed from assistant to assistant. Ted Cohen, the chief of staff, had two telephones constantly pressed to his ear, and more often than not was speaking to someone nearby as well.

  Marcke seemed unfazed by it all. He seemed to give whomever he was speaking to at the moment his undivided attention, and it was only after they had moved on that Dean realized the President must have been thinking about a dozen other things. If anything, Marcke seemed to want more to do: in his few moments of peace he fidgeted, habitually bending paper clips with his fingers and spinning them into knots and odd shapes. He ordered the car stopped several times, and, to the visible discomfort of the Secret Service detail, insisted on shaking the hands of some of whatever bystanders happened to be there.

  Every so often, President Marcke glanced over and found Dean. Marcke smirked at him, as if they were co-conspirators on a private joke.

  “So, Mr. Dean, enjoying yourself?” asked the President as they rode to his next stop, a new biology lab four miles south of the city.

  “It’s interesting.”

  “Boring as hell, huh?” Marcke smiled at him. “George Hadash used to call these sorts of swings ‘orchestrated time chewers.’ He hated traveling with me, but he did have a way with words.”

  “Yup.”

  “You never took one of his classes, did you?”

  “No, sir.” Dean had met Hadash in Vietnam when he’d been detailed to give the then-congressional aide a “ground–level” view of Vietnam. Hadash had impressed him not so much because he insisted on going into the field—plenty of civilian suits from the States did that—but because he actually listened to what Dean said.

  “He was a good teacher. And a friend. I miss him.” The President paused. “He was working on a new theory of the Vietnam War when he died, you know. He was writing a book. He thought the war was due a reevaluation. He was going to call the book A Necessary War.”

  “Really?” Dean had never heard anyone say that Vietnam was anything but a waste.

  “He thought if it hadn’t been for Vietnam, the rapprochement with China would have been delayed at least ten years. And he believed there would have been another armed clash between the Soviets and ourselves, perhaps in the Middle East. We might never have become involved in helping the Afghan rebels, which at least indirectly led to the end of the Soviet Union. I doubt I’m doing his ideas justice,” added the President. “They were quite extensive.”

  Dean nodded.

  “What do you think, Mr. Dean?”

  “A lot of good people died,” said Dean.

  “True. It’s a difficult thing, sending people to die. But that’s not really the question.”

  “Vietnam shaped my life,” said Dean. It was a statement he wouldn’t have made before going back, as true as it was, because he hadn’t realized it.

  “It shaped mine as well,” said Marcke. “But again, that wasn’t the question.”

  The car stopped. The Secret Service agents began to swarm outside.

  “I think it was an important event,” said Dean. “But I don’t know if it was necessary. Most things that happen, we don’t have the luxury of knowing if they’re necessary or not. Even for ourselves.”

  “Well put, Mr. Dean,” said the President, pulling himself out of the car.

  144

  THERE WERE MANY more Secret Service agents at the Paley house than Chief Ball thought there would be. They were a humorless bunch, for the most part not given to chitchat, but that was just as well—Ball worried that saying too much to the wrong person might inadvertently give him away. He spent most of his time sitting in the den with one of the liaisons to the federal marshal detail—brought in for extra coverage and mostly assigned to the grounds—watching a soccer match on television. Ball had no interest in soccer, but the marshal was far and away the most amiable of the feds inside the house.

  An agent stuck his head through the door.

  “Hey, emergency Services briefings. Let’s go.”

  Chief Ball got up, then fell in behind the marshal as they walked to the kitchen. Two ambulances from a local company had been retained to provide coverage if any guests or staff members got sick. The Service itself would handle getting the senator to the hospital if necessary, using a special SUV and following a pre-scouted route.

  “Who’s Stevens?” asked a pug-nosed, light-skinned black Secret Service agent, entering the room at full gallop.

  “That would be me,” said Ball.

  The agent looked at
him as if he’d just ruined his day. “Call your office. Now.”

  “All right.” Ball started toward the nearby wall phone.

  “Not on that line,” hissed the man.

  A titter of barely suppressed laughter ran through the room.

  Ball went outside and found a sympathetic sheriff’s deputy to lend him a phone.

  “I’m supposed to call in,” he told the woman who answered at campaign headquarters.

  “Bruce Chazin wants to talk to you.”

  Chazin was O’Rourke’s nominal supervisor.

  “This is Stevens,” said Ball when he came on the line. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “Where the hell is O’Rourke?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. I kind of assumed he was there.”

  “When did you last talk to him?”

  “Well, he called around noon to check on me,” said Ball. “Sounded like he was having lunch.”

  He answered the rest of Chazin’s questions as vaguely as possible. The deputy campaign manager needed someone to review the arrangements at the next day’s events.

  “I’d be glad to do that for you, but they have us in a lockdown situation here,” said Ball. “Can’t go in or out.”

  “I don’t want you. I want O’Rourke. I need someone at the meeting.”

  Chazin fumed some more, and seemed on the verge of ordering Ball to check on O’Rourke’s hotel—and the bar in the lobby. But finally Chazin just hung up.

  Ball realized as he went back into the kitchen that being yelled at had transformed his status. Before, everyone had stared at him, trying to figure out who he was. Now, they smirked.

  That was a lot better. Having a role to play—even as the butt of everyone’s jokes—meant he belonged. He took a bottle of water from the cooler on the floor, opened it, and leaned against the sink.

  The nearby clock said it was ten minutes past five. Guests wouldn’t be arriving until seven; the senator was expected around nine.

  Just a few hours to go, Ball told himself, taking a long slug from the bottle.

  145

  THERE WAS A perceptible uptick in the energy level of the President’s aides as Marcke entered the back of the banquet hall where he was to give the keynote address to a group of entertainment executives. The number of BlackBerries being consulted at any one moment doubled; men and women tilted their heads forward ever so slightly as they walked. The chief of staff veered to the side of the bubble to take a phone call.