The Buck Stops Here

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “That’s correct.”

  “I have a hard time believing it.”

  “What would you give to know for sure?” I asked. “What’s it worth to you to find out what’s really been going on there with your friend Les Watts?”

  He exhaled slowly.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally. “What do you want?”

  “I want what I’ve always wanted,” I said. “The truth about my husband’s death.”

  He was quiet for so long that I was afraid he had hung up on me.

  “James?” I said finally. “You still there?”

  “You tell me what you know,” he said, “and then we’ll see.”

  It was a gamble, my going first. But since a man’s life currently hung in the balance, I knew he had me. I had to tell him about the ricin either way.

  Plainly and directly, I talked about the asthma inhaler that I took from Les Watts’ carport. I said that it was a simple FedEx package with no note, addressed to Watts and sent from a nonexistent address in New Orleans. Inside the package was a yellow asthma inhaler that looked just like the one Sparks regularly used—except I had had this one chemically analyzed, and inside was a deadly poison known as ricin.

  “Ricin?” he said. “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know a lot about it,” I replied. “But if I hadn’t taken that inhaler, and it had made its way into your hands, you would be dead by now.”

  I wished I could see his face. He was quiet for a long time and when he spoke he sounded utterly defeated.

  “I didn’t think it would come to this,” he said softly.

  “Who is it, James?”

  “It was just about money. I can’t believe—”

  He stopped himself. The line was silent between us, so finally I spoke.

  “At this point,” I said, “I can do whatever you think is best. I can turn this over to the police, I can bring in the FBI, I can do whatever it will take to save your life. Les Watts can be arrested. If you won’t tell where that inhaler came from, maybe he will.”

  “Les Watts doesn’t have a clue who’s at the other end of those communications. He uses a dead drop.”

  I knew that a dead drop offered a way for people to communicate without ever having to meet face-to-face; an item would be left at a predesignated spot by one person and then picked up from there later by the other. Chances are, Sparks was telling the truth and Watts really couldn’t reveal the source.

  “Who sent it, James?”

  “I don’t think that’s relevant to you, Mrs. Webber. But, by the way, thanks for saving my life. I guess if you’re going to turn that inhaler over to the proper authorities, you’d do best to contact the NSA. As soon as possible, actually.”

  “I’ll do it the moment we hang up,” I said, my stomach clenching. I didn’t know what would happen to Sparks from here, but as soon as I reported what I knew, he would become, yet again, the NSA’s problem—for whatever that was worth. “Right now, tell me about my husband’s death, James. I think I have offered a fair trade.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell you what I can.”

  I held my breath and waited.

  “As you know,” he began, “four years ago I was in prison at Keeplerville, serving out my sentence for violating export restrictions. I had just eight months to go and I would be a free man. Then one day I was transported out of there with no explanation and brought to a house in Virginia, way out in the country, where the NSA was waiting for me.”

  “Including Tom Bennett?”

  “Especially Tom Bennett. They explained that there was a…national crisis, shall we say, looming on the horizon. They needed my particular expertise. In exchange they were offering me my freedom and something more: Break the code and get my record completely expunged. I would walk away a free man with no history. I would be able to make a new start.”

  “Why there?”

  “Secluded location, fairly close to D.C., I guess.”

  “What was the crisis?”

  “Can’t tell you that. But the situation required the breaking of the very code I had helped to create. The NSA had already been trying to break it for two months, but they had gotten nowhere. Tom Bennett had gotten nowhere. Do you understand that? The great water walker himself could not break this code.”

  “But he thought you could?”

  Sparks laughed.

  “Not the usual way,” he said. “He remembered my work with the key escrow problem. He thought I might have built in a back door when we originally designed it. After studying the code extensively, he was pretty convinced the back door was still there.”

  “So you agreed to give them the back door in exchange for your freedom.”

  “Well, yeah. But it wasn’t that simple. Like I told you before, I hadn’t been working alone. During my incarceration, the back door had been changed.”

  “Changed?”

  “My…colleague…on the outside had altered it somewhat. I made the deal for my freedom with the NSA, but once I got in front of the computer and started working, I saw that I wouldn’t be able to give the NSA what they had bargained for. All I needed was to make a phone call and I would have it, but of course our location was so secure and isolated, there were no phones.”

  “No phones?”

  “We had an internal network between the computers set up in that house, but no communication with the outside. The only way to get messages in or out was through an NSA pouch. I knew I couldn’t go that route because my person on the outside would be caught.”

  “Why were you protecting them?”

  “Why do you think?”

  My mind raced. Love? Money? Blackmail?

  “I think you were blackmailing them,” I said. “I think you took the fall for selling the encryption program to the terrorists all by yourself because you were the only one that the FBI had absolute proof on. I think you offered this person your silence in exchange for money. I think that money has been accruing somewhere for you since you went to prison the first time.”

  And if that were true, I realized, then the colleague in question would have to be Phillip Wilson. After all, who else of the original team had any real money, other than Tom?

  “You are one sharp lady, Mrs. Webber,” Sparks said. “You ought to be a detective or something.”

  “Is it Phillip Wilson?” I whispered.

  “Phillip Wilson couldn’t program his way out of a hole in a bag,” Sparks said derisively. He didn’t, however, deny it. “It doesn’t matter who the other person is. I needed to talk to them, and there wasn’t any way to do that. I stalled for a few days, but I knew my time was running short.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to picture it all in my mind. While Bryan and our friends and I had been making our way to the river and setting up camp, not two miles away Tom Bennett and a team from the NSA had been holed up in that isolated vacation rental house, trying to break a secure encryption code and avert a national crisis. Unbelievable!

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “I bided my time, behaved myself. Security got a little lax. No one thought of me as a real flight risk, you see, since they all knew I was about to go free. One afternoon I found my opportunity and took it. I knew there was a boat down in the boathouse, and I slipped away. All I was doing was going to a phone. All I was doing was going to get a little information, and then I was going to slip back into the house and do what they had brought me there to do. No one would ever even know I had been gone.”

  “Except for what happened in that boat.”

  “Yeah. Just as I was going for the phone, some fat old guy tackles me and tells me I murdered someone. I never saw your husband in the water. I swear, I never knew I hit anybody.”

  And all the pieces of the puzzle began to slide into place. When he was arrested, Sparks hadn’t told the police his name or anything about himself. Stuck in an impossible situation, he made his one phone call to the NSA and then simply remained mum while wheels quickly spun all
around him. The NSA removed his information from the police computers and then fabricated a different identity for him, one that explained his presence there on the river as a drunken boat driver with a long history of priors. When Officer Robinson ran Sparks’ prints the second time, the record that came up on the screen was the fictional one. All of the information there had been bogus, as were the “facts” Sparks gave to my lawyer in his depositions.

  “If you weren’t convicted of involuntary manslaughter,” I said, “then exactly what charge are you serving time for now?”

  “Felony murder. I caused an accidental death while in the commission of a felony.”

  “The felony being escape?”

  “Yes. I killed your husband while ‘escaping’ from custody. That left me faced with a long sentence in a maximum security prison.”

  “So how is it that you’re now serving sixteen years in minimum security?”

  “How do you think?” he asked. “When all was said and done, the NSA still needed my back door. Of course, by the time I was able to negotiate a new deal with the NSA, I had gotten a message out to my partner in crime, and I had obtained the proper code. My complete freedom was no longer an option they could offer me, of course, but they did the best they could. A shorter sentence, easy time, all in a prison within driving distance of my sweet mother. And, oh, by the way, the code I gave them in the end actually worked. This scum bag who killed your husband is also the hero who helped to avert a national crisis. Not that anyone else can ever know that, of course.”

  I was scribbling notes furiously as he talked. Some hero. It was his dirty dealings with terrorists that probably created the national crisis in the first place.

  “Why was your partner in crime willing to help you at that point and give you the changed code?”

  “Could be the proof I have of that person’s involvement in the original deal.”

  “What proof?”

  “That’s none of your business. But don’t worry, it’s out there.”

  “Fine,” I said. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. Why does Tom Bennett hold himself responsible for the death of my husband? You’re the one who was driving the boat.”

  He mulled that one over for a few minutes.

  “A couple reasons, I guess. First of all, it was the code he helped create that got into the wrong hands and put this country in danger.”

  “What else?”

  “When he tried to crack the code, he couldn’t do it. He failed there.”

  “What else?”

  “He was the one who insisted that my presence was required for breaking that code. He talked the NSA into having me released from Keeplerville into their custody.”

  “You mean, it’s because of Tom that you were there at all?”

  “Yep. It’s also because of Tom that I was able to escape.”

  My pulse quickened.

  “How?” I whispered. “What happened?”

  “I duped him,” he said. “He was in that house around the clock, but the guards made a shift change every eight hours or so. Like I said, things got lax. One guard in particular would sit out on the front porch and fall asleep. I knew that was their weakest link. I figured if I could get Tom out of the house during that guard’s shift, then I might just get lucky and be able to slip away and make my phone call.”

  “You tricked Tom into leaving? How?”

  “Well, see, he and I shared a history, you know. I was married to his sister. I knew what made both of them tick. I knew his one area of weakness.”

  “And what was that?”

  “His father. I wrote a note to Tom, ostensibly from Daddy, saying he would be changing planes at Dulles the next day at a specific time, and that he hoped his son would come to meet him there, because he had something extremely important to tell him about the past. Brilliant of me, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Tom’s father was dead by then, wasn’t he?”

  “No, he was still alive. He didn’t pass away until about a year later.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I slipped the note into the NSA pouch and Tom never knew it hadn’t come in from the outside. Like clockwork, when the time came, Tom simply up and left me alone there with the guard. Tom was gone for hours on a wild goose chase to the airport, all to no avail. By the time he got back to the house in Virginia, of course, everything had changed.”

  “Changed?”

  “I was in the local jail. The NSA was going nuts. And, I’m sorry to say, your husband was dead.”

  Forty-Five

  I needed to think.

  Once my phone call with James Sparks had been concluded, I knew that more than anything I needed to get away and clear my mind. I told Gordo to call me back as soon as he was out of there, and while I waited for that to happen, I did what I had said I would do: I called Tom, so that he could alert the NSA to the full reality of the situation.

  He sounded rushed and distracted when he answered, and I was glad. I wasn’t yet ready to talk about all that I had learned.

  “This’ll just take a second,” I told him.

  “Good, ’cause I’m about to board a plane for D.C. I got your message last night about the substance, so I’m on my way to an emergency conference at…um…headquarters.”

  “NSA headquarters?”

  “Yes. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, about Sparks’ claims that there was some…collusion…between him and someone else. If that’s really the case—and it’s looking fairly obvious that it is—then it’s time to turn this whole thing over to the authorities. I know that sort of messes up your agenda, but I don’t see that we have any choice.”

  “Actually, that’s why I’m calling. I thought you’d like to know that the substance inside the inhaler is ricin. I don’t know anything about it, but it’s supposed to be lethal. I agree that it’s time to bring in the NSA.”

  “Where is the inhaler now?”

  “Locked up in a climate-controlled storage facility out in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t comfortable having it around.”

  “You did the right thing. The NSA will take it from here. I’ve already had some conversations. While they need to keep the man safe, they’re also interested in letting the situation play itself out a little bit—though in a controlled fashion, if you know what I mean.”

  “You’re going to track the prison guard and see who he’s working for?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, he uses a dead drop. It might not be that simple.”

  “Duly noted. We’ll also need to get that inhaler from you to have it analyzed for fingerprints. Someone will be in touch. I’m sorry, but they’ll also need to question you about your involvement. Just be honest with them.”

  “I understand.”

  In the background over the phone, I could hear an announcement from the loudspeaker.

  “Final call,” Tom said. “I have to go.”

  “Tom, I—”

  “Look, I don’t know any other way to say this, Callie. I’m sorry, but I think once the NSA is finished meeting with you, you’ll need to pack up and go home.”

  “Go home?”

  “Just drop your investigations and go home. Considering all that’s happened, I don’t think you’re safe there. We’ll handle it from here. I’ll be in touch.”

  “But—”

  “I have to go. I’ll call you later. I love you.”

  Then he hung up the phone. Before I could even process all that he had said, the phone rang again.

  “Tom?”

  “No, it’s Gordo. I’m outta there and already on the highway. That was one doozy of a phone call, huh? I hope it gave you the information you needed.”

  “And then some,” I replied. I thanked Gordo profusely for all of his help this week. “You understand that every single thing you heard in there today was probably classified information you can never divulge to anyone.”

&
nbsp; “Are you kidding me?” Gordo said. “If you knew some of the things I’ve learned in my years in this business, your head would spin. I won’t breathe a word to a soul. I never do.”

  “Good. I knew I could trust you.”

  I told him that his work there was finished and that he was free to go home.

  “You’ll get my bill,” he said. “And it won’t be cheap.”

  “You’re worth every penny, Gordo. You always are.”

  After I hung up, I grabbed my tote bag and my room key, and then I went to the front desk and asked if there was anywhere in all of this city that a girl might rent a canoe. I thought if I didn’t get some space and a way to think things through, I might explode!

  A half hour later I was on the water of Bayou St. John, a sort of canal that wound its way through an area known as Mid-City. There were few crafts on the water, but the banks were bustling with activity, mostly walkers and bikers taking advantage of the wide sidewalks that lined the waterway, which was shaded by huge oaks and flanked with stately old homes. I would have preferred a more isolated place for canoeing, something more like my river back home, but this was probably for the best anyway. I didn’t know if I was in any personal danger, but isolating myself out in some quiet, hidden river somewhere really wouldn’t have been wise or prudent. This very visible spot was a much better choice.

  And, oh, did the paddle feel right in my hands and the sun feel good on my face! I gave it my all, stroking vigorously in the muggy noontime hour, racing down the canal through what had to be one of the most architecturally and culturally interesting cities I had ever visited. Tom had hoped I would love it here, and I did. I could think of nothing more perfect than a future that included this place.

  But what of that future?

  The truths that had been hidden from me, the truths that I had so desperately sought, were all laid out on the table now. While I still didn’t know the full story of James Sparks nor who his accomplice was, that really had nothing to do with me or with Bryan’s death. The facts I needed in order to make some decision of forgiveness about Tom had all been provided.