She elbowed him. “This is Georgia. She’s Sam’s mom.”
He extended a hand. “I remember. From career day.” He had an open, genial face with intelligent eyes. “Hello, Sam’s Mom.”
I shook his hand. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
He glanced at his watch. “If we make it fast. If I don’t hear Emma sing, well, what’s the point of going through the trouble of finding a parking spot?” We ducked out of the gym into the hallway. “My wife said you had a story for me?”
“I’m hoping I do.” I pulled my notes from my purse. “If you wouldn’t mind, can you read this? And then we can talk?”
He pulled a pair of reading glasses from the inside pocket of his coat. It didn’t take him long. When he was finished, he refolded the papers and sent me a look over the top of his glasses. “If this is true . . .”
I let his question hang in the air for a moment before I answered. “It is. All of it. And I would like to give it to you. I know there’s no smoking gun or solid proof—”
“No, and—”
“—but I’ve lived in this town long enough to know that lots of people know things. And journalists hear things. Things like that”—I eyed the papers he was holding—“are never really secret. Someone knows. And sometimes all it requires to put a big story together is taking what you’ve heard and adding what someone like me knows and pretty soon, people are willing to talk and—”
He held up a hand. “Listen. I’m sure you’re hoping for a big readership for this—before the hearing, right?”
I nodded.
“I have to tell you that’s impossible. Not with the timeframe involved. The fact-checking alone could take—”
“But it’s true. All of it is true.”
“How do you know?”
“Because—” Because I’d lived it. And because my dead husband had told me so. And so had other people who had died because of it. “I checked as much of it as I could. And my father is General Slater.”
“Your father!” He handed me back the papers as if he couldn’t get rid of them fast enough. “I don’t do family feuds. You might want to try one of the television newsmagazine formats instead. It would get great ratings.”
“This isn’t a feud. And I don’t care about ratings. This is a matter of national security. It’s a failure at multiple levels of the federal government. If this story doesn’t get told, then—”
“Thing is, I can’t just take your word for it. And your father is . . . Right now? After all the government, all the DoD scandals we’ve had? He’s indestructible. And even if he wasn’t, I get the sense that people have had enough. They’re tired of watching a circus. They want someone to believe in. They’ve picked him. He’s it.”
“But—”
“And setting aside all of that, I would have to interview these people you’ve referenced. I would have to trace your story all the way back to the first Gulf War. Because with allegations like these, I’d be called up to the Hill. There would be congressional inquiries, and special committees would be formed. This would shake the administration. This one and the last four.” He pointed to the papers in my hand. “That would be the next five years of my life. And if I don’t do it right, then I put my paper, and myself, in legal jeopardy. So while I would love to take this story, and while I really hope you do find someone to publish it, I can’t do it justice in time for the hearing. And my editor wouldn’t let me.”
“It’s a story of national importance.”
“It has Pulitzer all over it. If you’d given me a couple months’ lead time?” He shrugged. “Stories of national importance are—” He broke off to bark a bitter laugh. “They’re important enough that they have to be done the right way. I hope you understand.”
68
My parents said they’d drive us home, but I wasn’t about to let my father drive us anywhere. I begged off, telling them a walk would do us good. I figured there would be enough people walking back through the neighborhood that we would be safe.
My mother hugged me close before she let us go. My father bent down and gave Sam a high five. Sam asked for one “up high.” He jumped several times to reach it, then kept on jumping even after he’d made it.
I let him keep at it so he could get out some of his pent-up energy.
My father leaned close to me. “Hey, I ordered a new train thing for Sam.”
“Dad, you didn’t—”
“For Halloween. Think you might have time to pick it up tomorrow at work?”
I hadn’t told them I’d been fired, so I didn’t have any excuse not to. “No problem.” One thing he’d done right through the years: cultivate a relationship with his grandson. I wasn’t looking forward to having to explain to Sam one day what his grandfather had done.
“Thanks, Peach.”
Sam pestered me all the way home about when we could start trick-or-treating this weekend and what I would wear as a costume. He saved his biggest salvo for when we got back to Jim and June’s.
“Mr. Jim! I was really good tonight. And Daddy said I can go to Gilman Street this year for trick-or-treating.”
“Wow. Gilman Street! Put it here, kid.” He held out his closed fist for Jim to bump. “If you get any Milk Duds, save them for me, huh?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Jim.”
Gilman Street? Really? “I don’t know, Sam. I think maybe—”
“That’s what Dad said. I’m six.”
“I know, but—”
“Dad said. He promised. He said when I was six.”
“Hey. You know that church down the street? I think they’re having a party that night. We could go there instead. I bet they’ll have lots of candy.”
Tears instantly welled up in his eyes. “But Daddy said—he said!”
We were coming perilously close to a mutiny. “I just don’t know if it’s safe.” Strolling around outside in the dark? With Russians on the loose?
But then, I could make a reasonable argument that Halloween on Gilman Street might be safer than walking around outside any other night of the year. And what would be the alternative? Passing out treats with Jim and June? That raised all sorts of nightmares about costumed Bad Guys forcing their way into the house and doing terrible things to all of us.
“We come home when I say so, okay?”
He nodded.
“I mean it.”
“I promise, Mommy.”
“And you’re holding my hand the entire time.”
* * *
I texted Sean after Sam fell asleep.
We need to talk
See you soon?
He answered about half an hour later.
I’ll be on ice tomorrow
Sounds like offense needs defense
See you there
Offense. Defense.
It sounded like a sports reference. Thing is, I wasn’t a sports fan. I’d always kept Sean company, though, on the couch at night when he’d watch his games. He only followed two sports: football and hockey. But hockey was his favorite. He used to take Sam to the rink sometimes when the Capitals, the town’s NHL franchise, were practicing. They used one of the rinks at the Iceplex, where Sam skated.
Ice rink.
I’d figured it out.
I logged on to June’s computer and googled the rink’s website to access their events schedule. The Caps were practicing at the rink the next morning at ten thirty.
Bingo.
* * *
The next morning I went to the Iceplex, driving up seven stories to the roof of the parking garage. In a display of innovative community development of the kind prized by Arlington, it had been built right there on top. I walked in through the glass entrance, then slipped through the lobby and into the bleachers where I worked my way up and over a few rows. There were Caps fans and then there were Caps fans. Only the truly devoted would be at a rink midmorning on a Thursday to watch the team practice.
The players were doing some sort of shooting drill.
/>
When they missed the net, pucks thwacked against the sideboards.
I flinched every time it happened.
Once, when one of the pucks hit the glass in front of the bleachers, I even threw up an arm. I couldn’t help myself.
It was cold. As the players performed drills, I sat there on the metal bench watching. My feet went numb by degrees. So did my butt. I wished I’d brought a hat.
A man sat down next to me.
It wasn’t Sean.
I slid down the bench a bit and watched for a while longer. When I started shivering, I decided to move inside to the heated mezzanine and watch from there. I took a seat on one of the benches that looked down on the rink.
One of the custodians was cleaning the windows. I moved my feet aside so he could pass. When he didn’t I looked up, past the uniform, to see Sean.
“You have to stop showing up like this. It scares me.”
“How else am I going to meet up with you?”
He had a point.
“No one ever looks at people who do the jobs they don’t want to do. As long as I wear the right color, have the right props, I blend in and no one really sees me.” He squirted some cleaner on the window and wiped it off with a cloth. “Tell me about Jenn.”
“I was with her when she was killed.”
He paused. Turned toward me. “What?”
“I’d put together my notes and given them to her so she could give them to Senator Rydel. I was hoping he could stop the confirmation hearing.”
“And?”
“It’s like I said. Worse than we realized.” As he went back to work on the window, I told him what Jenn had told me, about both her father and her senator being compromised by the Russians.
“Then your father’s part of a trifecta.”
“But I don’t think he knows about Jenn’s father. Or her senator.”
“This is big.”
“We were leaving when they killed Jenn.” I had to force myself to concentrate on the words I was saying. That way I couldn’t dwell on the image in my mind. “She was shot.”
“But they didn’t get you.”
“They didn’t want to. They could have. The killer gave me a good, long look at his face. But then he left. They’ve been targeting those names on your list. They’ve been killing the people I talked to.”
He sent me a glance beneath his brow and gave up on the window, setting the cleaner down on the ledge.
“They killed Paul Conway before I even had the chance to talk to him.”
“They’re trying to protect your father. And Jenn? That was a warning to me.” He stuffed the cleaning cloth into his pocket. “I want you to take Sam and leave. Get out of town.”
“I can’t. We’re so close. We’ve figured it out. It’s just that I can’t get anyone to take the story. If I could just find actual proof.”
“The hearing is on Monday.”
It’s not as if I needed a reminder. “I know. If we just had proof, then I think it would be an easier sell. But I haven’t found anyone who actually saw my father and a Russian together in an incriminating way. There was never anyone who caught them passing information or doing anything illegal. And yet people are getting killed to hide the connection. It’s all there.”
He was facing the window. Anyone watching us would have thought that his attention had been caught by the hockey practice. “Those Russians your father came across in Iraq couldn’t have been the only ones. They had to have someone with the government in Baghdad, even if they weren’t representing the official Russian position. They wouldn’t have sent soldiers to fight without the Iraqis’ knowledge. So maybe we need to come at it from a different angle, a different side. If we get proof that the Russians were there in the desert, then maybe someone rethinks what they thought they saw. Or maybe your father comes clean. Let me see what I can dig up.”
“In three days?”
“It’s not like the confirmation hearing is a firm deadline. Once the hearing’s over, they’ll still have to vote to confirm him. That won’t be scheduled until afterward.”
“Even then, it might not be long enough.”
“It’s all the time we have.”
69
I drove down to the Crystal City Mall to pick up Sam’s train after I left the rink.
We had to figure it out. If we didn’t, the Russians would have the United States by the throat, and my husband would be one step closer to actual death.
While Sean dug through the past, I concentrated on the present.
My father still had to be communicating with the Russians. How could he not be in the run-up to the hearings? He was just days away from being installed at one of the highest ranks of federal government.
But how were they doing it?
The conversations of Russian nationals were routinely tapped. After the government controversies of previous years, everyone knew that. And we weren’t in some cheesy spy movie where the characters wore black trench coats and talked over the phone in code.
They couldn’t be using technology to pass information, could they? An anonymous Facebook account? Odd messages on Twitter? I thought about it as I waited at a light.
I had to assume they weren’t. Russian digital movements could always be subject to hacking or tracking. But they still had to be coordinating. It couldn’t be a face-to-face exchange. If anyone had any suspicions, they’d put a tail on a Russian, wouldn’t they? And they’d notice whenever my father met with him. What they could use was a dead drop, leaving information for each other in a place to which both had access.
But then how would they signal each other to check it?
There had to be some bridge between my father and the Russians that I wasn’t seeing.
I tried to flip the options, rotate the angles.
Something connected them to each other. Something had to connect them.
Something or someone.
My mother?
I discarded the thought as soon as it formed. My mother was too close to my father. Too obvious. If there was a person, it would have to be someone who knew them both. Someone who could receive a message and pass it on without suspicion.
One of my father’s old aides-de-camp? One of his deputies?
No. They’d changed every couple of years and that would have been too risky. Each person drawn into the network would have meant more chances for the story to leak. For sure the FBI, the CIA, the DoD would have noticed if my father talked to a foreigner on a regular basis. And my father would have had to report that person on his security-clearance applications.
If it was a person, it had to be someone else. Someone different. Someone outside that world. Someone they could both contact, separately, without suspicion. It would have to be someone doing a job like Sean was doing. Someone unremarkable.
Dry cleaner. Plumber. Restaurant or hotel staff.
That seemed too cumbersome. And too geographically dependent.
I drove down the ramp into the parking garage, took a ticket, circled as I looked for a spot close to the elevator. Eventually I gave up and just pulled into a spot back where I’d first come down. As I sat there, thinking through the options, I raked back my hair, grabbing a fistful. Why couldn’t I see it? The link had to exist. It had to.
* * *
Mr. Hoffman was busy with another customer, so I looked around while I waited. It was kind of funny that my dad had never pushed any army toys on Sam. He’d never bought him green men or guns of any kind. Which I appreciated. I had honestly never known how much my father loved trains. Not until Sam had come along. Maybe it was because I was a girl.
The customer left.
Mr. Hoffman greeted me. “You are here for the train. It’s in the back. I’ll get it.”
I hadn’t told him about the house. I didn’t want him to worry more about us than he already did. I figured I had a few more weeks, until Thanksgiving, to figure out how to tell him.
He soon returned with it. “Your father h
as very good taste in trains.” He put it into a bag for me to carry.
“I think Sam would agree. I’ll let him know.”
* * *
I’d meant to put the bag aside so that my father could give it to Sam, but I forgot.
Before I could stop him, Sam tore into it when he came home from school. It didn’t take long before he was on his knees on the floor, fitting it into the track he’d built in the corner of Jim and June’s living room.
I sat down beside him and asked him about his day. As he played, he told me about lunch and recess, which seemed to be his two favorite subjects. He was trying to put together a new crane, but he didn’t seem very happy. He took one of the parts and hit the carpet with it once. Twice. Then he offered it to me.
“It’s broken.”
“What do you mean, it’s broken?”
He shook it.
Something rattled.
“Grandpa always fixes them for me.”
Always? “Do they usually break?” Those trains and playsets didn’t come cheap. And European toys were supposed to be better made than most.
He’d set down the part and was absorbed in pushing a train around the track.
“Sam? Do they break a lot?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“What?”
Never mind. “Here.” I held out my hand. “Let me see if I can find Mr. Jim’s tools.”
* * *
Jim offered to do it for me, but they’d done so much for us. Too much for us. He finally showed me where his toolbox was and left me to it.
I shook the part. Whatever had come loose was inside. How to get to it was a bit of a mystery. It looked to be solid wood. I tapped at it with the handle of a screwdriver until I identified a hollow area. But it still took some looking to find a way to access it. There was an opening at the bottom about half an inch wide. It had been covered with a wooden plug. I pried it up with the screwdriver and then I tipped it upside down and shook it.
A thumb drive fell out into my palm.
70
Grandpa always fixes them for me. Sam’s words echoed in my head.
State of Lies Page 26