by Fritz Galt
Pedestrians slid about on the streets, making their way to restaurants and bars. As they laughed, plumes of steam rose from their lips.
Marked by several such ice lanterns, the Gloria Inn extended a welcoming portico to greet them.
“Uh-oh. Cab fare,” Harry said.
“Try dollars,” Sean suggested. “Harbin is a fairly international place.”
Harry pulled a twenty from his pocket. The cabbie was squeezed in a plastic compartment that surrounded his seat. He had to reach a hand up to the ceiling to grab it. He examined the bill for a moment, held it up to the light, then nodded. He pushed a lever down and printed out a receipt, which Sean nabbed on their way out the cab.
“Who are you going to charge this one to?” Harry asked.
Outside, he picked up some Italian and French being spoken. Then a chic Russian couple walked by, and someone spoke with a Boston accent. Filling in the gaps were the Asian languages, similar in their clipped style, all unintelligible to his ear. The place was definitely on the map.
A doorman with a Fu Manchu mustache let them in. Facial hair on Chinese was a rare sight. Perhaps there was a Mongolian influence to the place.
They wandered the wide hallways for a minute before finding Room 1214.
Badger was inside waiting for them with a tray of steaming spring rolls.
“Care for an appetizer?” he asked.
Harry whisked Sean into the room and quickly shut the door.
Then he grabbed for a spring roll. He cupped both hands around it and tried to warm up his fingers.
“Hey!” Badger said. “Those are for eating.”
“I’m not sure what’s worse right now, my hunger or the cold,” Harry tried to explain.
Then he remembered Sean standing by the door.
“This is Badger McGlade who works for my company,” Harry said. “Badger, meet Sean Cooper.”
“Gitmo Cooper.” Badger held out the tray. “I’m a big fan of yours.”
Sean looked confused. “How do you know anything about me?”
“Ha! I know everything about you,” Badger said. He set down the tray and flipped his laptop open. Several news headlines appeared on the screen. He flipped from article to article.
Mystery Man Eludes Marines
Brief Sighting by Butcher
Polk Seeks Cooper to Clinch Case
Cooper ‘Private Man’ Says Neighbor
Sean seemed fascinated. “All this because of me?”
“You bet,” Badger said. “You’re the man of the hour.”
“Jeez, all I want is my family back.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to the fact that everyone in the world wants you for one reason or another,” Harry informed him.
“And what’s your angle?” Sean asked, looking Harry directly in the eye.
“I don’t like what they did to you,” Harry said slowly. “It’s a case of the cover-up being worse than the crime. I don’t care what bribe you accepted for the president. I don’t care what terrorist organizations you belong to. The Feds should never have taken your family away from you.”
Sean sank to the edge of a double bed. His feet shoved into Harry’s old jogging sneakers, he toed the threadbare Persian carpet. He sank his face into his hands. “If you can help me get my family back,” he said, “I’d willingly go to prison.”
“Don’t you worry,” Harry told him. “We won’t let that happen either.” And he finally shoved the spring roll in his mouth.
It was the best damned food he had ever eaten. Suddenly he realized that he hadn’t touched a crumb all day.
“Oh, and before I forget,” he said. “Badger, can you email this video to Caleb Perkins at the Department of Justice?” He pulled Sean’s CD-ROM from his pocket.
“Sure thing,” Badger said, turning to his notebook and sliding out the CD tray. “What is it?”
“Sean’s testimony for the Chinagate investigation.”
“Way cool!” Badger exclaimed, and nearly dropped it on the floor.
“Be careful, will ya?”
Twenty minutes later, Badger’s file transfer was complete.
Toweling off from a hot shower, Harry placed a call from the hotel phone to Caleb Perkins’ office at the Department of Justice.
The office hadn’t yet opened and the department’s internal telephone system asked him to leave a voice message.
“Check your email,” Harry told the recording. “I just uploaded a video clip for you.” He wanted to keep the message vague and brief in case anyone in Washington was scanning incoming calls for his voiceprint.
“Tell them it’s okay to open the attachment,” Badger whispered. “It’s not a virus.”
“Too late,” Harry said. “I already hung up.”
“You know how the Justice Department is coming down hard on spyware and worms and spam and other security issues,” Badger explained.
“I know all about the Justice Department and security,” he said, remembering the threat level display, the body scanner chamber and the attack dogs guarding the attorney general. “Caleb Perkins will want to hear Sean’s testimony.”
He flipped a dry towel to Sean.
“Your turn in the shower.”
Caleb Perkins reached his office at the Justice Department at seven-thirty a.m.
His secretary, an astute paralegal with twenty years in the civil service, met him at the door. “You just received a phone message from Harry Black,” she said discreetly. “He called to tell you to check your email. He sent you a video clip.”
“Fire up my machine,” Caleb said. He didn’t have the vaguest idea how the computer worked, much less how to download a video clip via email. “And get that video clip on the screen, will you?”
A few minutes later, his technology savvy secretary had him all set up in his office to view the clip.
“That will be all. I can take it from here,” he said, dismissing her from the room.
Seconds later, he was staring at a scene that had his Inaugural Address written all over it. The image showed Harry interviewing Cooper behind a prison door. Each word that spilled from Cooper’ lips was a further indictment of the sitting president. “This is political dynamite,” he said to himself. “Bernard White is toast.”
Before the testimony had finished playing, he reached for his desk phone and dialed Sandi DiMartino’s cell phone.
“Hi, baby,” he said. “Sorry if I woke you up.”
“No, I’m in the office, Caleb,” she said in a disappointingly formal way. “What’s up?”
She’d be putty in his hands after he told her the news. But, maybe he could approach this with some subtlety and indirection.
“Do you have an email address?” he asked.
“Sure, why? Want to email me a belated Valentine?” she teased.
He frowned. It wasn’t the reaction he was hoping for. He felt like blurting out the news of the clip.
Sandi gave him her email address over the phone, and he jotted it down. He had her repeat it several times, to make sure he had the capitalization and punctuation correct.
Each time she recited it, he savored the low, patient tones of her voice, the aspirated vowels, the sibilant consonants. “S-S-S-Sandi…”
“Okay, I think I’ve got it,” he said at last. “Check your email in a few minutes.”
He tried to restore the composure on his face and called his secretary back into the office. “I’d like you to send this video clip to the following email address…”
He handed the slip of paper on which he had written Sandi’s email address.
“When you’re finished,” he said, “Delete the clip and shred that piece of paper.”
She nodded and left the office, shutting the door behind her.
He turned off his computer and stared at the briefings on his desk. He had a day of meetings lined up on his calendar, but what he really wanted to do was to leave the drudgery of running a government department behind h
im and deal with more pressing public issues, like preparing to walk down the red carpet to the tune of “Hail to the Chief.”
And what would complete the picture was Sandi walking down the carpet clutching his arm.
Surrounded by her staff, Sandi leaned over her computer screen to watch the long file download. She was conscious that her short business skirt revealed a bit of thigh, but she couldn’t worry about that now. Soon the file transfer was 100% complete. It was on her machine.
“I’ve got it!” she said announced.
The staff erupted with a victorious cheer.
Stanley Polk emerged from his office as the roomful of lawyers rejoiced and congratulated their lead investigator. Sandi was accepting kudos from all quarters.
“Do you mind if I watch that thing?” Stanley said in his low, penetrating voice.
“Not at all,” Sandi said, stepping away from her desk. “Have a seat.”
Stanley eased his large frame into her swivel chair and Sandi clicked the “Play” button for him.
It was standing room only to watch and hear the voice of the elusive key witness to their case. Sandi had to pinch her arm to remind herself that the moment was real. Sean’s face was clearly visible behind the prison door as he talked at length about the president accepting kickbacks from China and the oil company. She only saw the thick brown hair on the back of his head, but the stranger interrogating him seemed calm, his voice gentle, his manner receptive.
When the clip finally ended, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind as to the president’s guilt.
But Sandi was not sure about one thing. “Will this be admissible as evidence?” she asked, directing her question at Stanley Polk.
As he swiveled around in the chair to face her, she could clearly see that all his despondency during the preparation phase of the case had melted away. “Hell, yes, it’s admissible. And it’s incriminating as anything we could have hoped for.”
The room let out a cheer, with Sandi the focus. She was afraid that they were going to try and lift her on their shoulders and parade her around, which wouldn’t be decent given the shortness of her skirt.
But Stanley Polk rose to his feet, asserting his authority. “Good work, Sandi. I want this statement prepared as a deposition in court. Jack, I want you to personally transcribe the tape. We will ask the court to admit the tape and transcript as evidence during the trial. Fred, call The Washington Post and make a statement attributable to an anonymous source within the investigation. Do it now.”
“Sir?” Sandi said, looking at the frozen image on the computer screen. “This evidence was supplied to us by the Attorney General of the United States. I wish to request that you drop any charges against Caleb and not move to subpoena him.”
“Understood,” Stanley said, in a rare moment of magnanimity.
“I’ve got one more piece of evidence to investigate,” Sandi said, hoping the one last piece would seal the special prosecutor’s case. “Did Sean’s family really die as the State Department claimed, or are they covering something up?”
Stanley stared at her. “I don’t want you to bring up the question unless you can prove that they were lying,” he cautioned.
“We’ll ask for a warrant to dig up his family’s remains in Maryland. If it turns out that’s not their remains, we’ll have further proof of a cover-up on the part of the Administration.”
“Okay, find out who is buried in the family plot,” Stanley said. “But keep it low key in case that line of inquiry leads us nowhere.”
The roomful of lawyers and legal aids stood around expectantly, waiting for further orders.
“Okay everyone, into your groups and get to work,” Stanley said. “We have no time to lose. I’m filing this in court tomorrow.”
He walked back to his office, a bounce having returned to his stride.
Sandi turned to a colleague in the investigations unit. “Prepare a warrant request for the judge in Maryland asking to dig up the family’s remains.”
“Right away. We might have a warrant by this afternoon.”
Later that morning, as she sat at her desk and waited for the judge to issue a search warrant to open up the Cooper family plot, Sandi’s eyes were glued to the television screen, savoring every moment of the victory.
Stanley Polk was an impressive speaker and looked the part of an impartial prosecutor as he issued a statement to reporters in a hastily staged press conference at the National Press Club.
“We have just obtained incontrovertible evidence of misdeeds by various elements within the Executive Branch. Our prosecution team will file for an indictment in Federal Court tomorrow morning. This could lead promptly to a criminal trial. I’ll take questions now.”
A reporter asked what was foremost on everyone’s mind.
“Will you seek to indict the president?”
Stanley turned to the seasoned reporter who had asked the question and glared down at him over his reading glasses. “Yes, we will.”
The press buzzed with the news that hit like a bombshell. The president would be indicted. Some rushed out of the room to file the story with their bureaus. The rest pressed him with more questions.
Finally Stanley picked out a young woman standing in the front row.
“Does the evidence you just mentioned point to the president?”
Stanley took his time answering, thus building anticipation.
“Yes, it does.”
The reporters scribbled down the prosecutor’s exact words. It was even difficult for Sandi to contemplate—they had solid evidence that linked the president directly to the scandal. More questions followed. Stanley picked out a reporter, who hoarsely called from the back row, “Is it Sean Cooper’ testimony?”
The room grew so quiet, reporters appeared to have stopped breathing.
Stanley Polk leaned into the bank of microphones.
“Yes, it is.”
A telephone rang in the office, and the young lawyer that Sandi had assigned to exhuming the remains answered it. He spoke briefly, then thanked the other party, hung up and raced over to her.
“We just got the warrant,” he said, breathlessly. “We can dig up the remains.”
The case was definitely gaining traction.
Sandi stood and turned off the television. “Call up the local sheriff in Maryland and the cemetery groundskeepers. I want to see this for myself.”
Chapter 34
The next morning, Harry Black fought off hunger pangs as he led Sean Cooper, Badger and the rest of his team down to the breakfast buffet. In a large, high-ceilinged room offset from the hotel lobby, they began to stuff their faces. The warm dou jiang soymilk, heated red bean paste buns, and bacon and eggs went down well. They would bolster Harry for a search through the high-rises and endless apartment compounds of snowy Harbin.
Beyond the elegantly arched windows that spoke of a European influence, families and couples streamed in a single direction.
“Where are they going?” Harry asked.
Sean pointed to a giant inflated statue of Mickey Mouse at the end of the street. “That looks like the entrance to the Ice Festival.”
Suddenly, Badger stopped eating and the blood seemed to drain from his face. He pointed a croissant at someone beyond the frosty window. “There goes Merle.”
A tall, well-built man in a fur coat limped against the crowd, searching the faces.
“Hey,” Badger called to the rest of the team seated at another table. “I thought you took care of him.”
“We did take care of him,” Boris responded.
“I meant take care of him.”
“We did take care of him.”
“Well then, what do you call that?”
“Okay, stop this,” Harry said, rising. “We’re not the mafia.”
Merle Stevens was just turning to enter the hotel.
“Carmen!” Harry ordered under his breath.
The young woman, who could play the role of Filipina ingénue flawl
essly, excused herself from the table, skirted around the outer tables of the restaurant and approached Merle with a clipped stride from a different direction. Merle’s eyes were drawn to her and he removed his Russian fur hat.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team slipped out of the restaurant and took the elevator up to their adjoining rooms.
“How are we going to work this?” Badger asked Harry once they were safely back in their room. The rest of the team stood around the walls and listened. “He’ll recognize Sean, the men and me.”
Harry considered their predicament. This could be an opportunity, as Merle could lead them to the prison. They needed Merle alive and intact.
“We’ve got trouble,” one of the men said, looking down through the arc of the window. “Chinese police are crawling all over the street, and they look serious. They have sidearms.”
There was a knock at the door.
“It’s Carmen,” the voice said on the other side. “Let me in.”
Badger eased the door open, and she came flying into the room.
“I came back for my coat,” she explained. “I told him that I’d help him find his friend.”
“Well, tell him to take his police buddies with him,” Harry said. “They’ve surrounded the hotel.”
“I told him that I never saw the man he was looking for. I think he’s looking for you,” she said, pointing at Badger.
“Whatever you do,” Harry said, “lead him and the police away from this hotel. We need some freedom to find the prison.”
“Okay,” she said, her cheeks already flushed from the thrill of the challenge. She turned to leave.
Harry stood beside the searing hot radiator watching the police carefully. They were big, lean types, in long, dark blue overcoats. They wore gun belts in plain sight. Their rigid stance and alert eyes made them appear to be more like some Federal force than local cops.
“Okay, the police are heading back to the festival,” he called out. “And Carmen’s taking Merle back there, too.” Carmen had emerged with Merle Stevens from the front door, both holding foot-long kebabs of candied fruit. “He’s a real romantic. He seems to be taking her on a date to the Ice Festival.”