D’Angelo remained silent. This was not going the way he assumed. Suddenly he had more questions than answers.
“Come now, Vincent. Uncoded e-mail over the Internet? We’ve done our homework on Meyerson since her death. Phi Beta Kappa. Wellesley. Four-star recommendations. Congressional material. Why would such a smart woman do something so stupid?”
“Late-blooming religious fanaticism?” the CIA agent responded. “Lack of sophisticated knowledge for the rules of the game. We found her with flash paper and a container near a dead-drop. And, as you acknowledged, it’s all on her computer. I can also tell you about the things you didn’t get to see: Internet downloads on Israel defense spending, wire service stories on Palestinian terrorist activities in the past six months, editorials on the reduction of American grassroots support for Israel. Naive, yes. But she was passionate about Israel’s survival, and she worked in a place where she had access to secret, politically damaging intelligence. So, to answer your question: stupid? Perhaps. But Lynn Meyerson was driven by blind allegiance, Ira. That’s what makes a smart person do stupid things.”
D’Angelo finished his rebuttal. Wurlin did not respond immediately. Instead, he poured another glass for himself.
“Perhaps it is time to win back your faith, Vincent.”
D’Angelo cocked his head with interest. This was another unexpected comment.
“What do you have in mind, Ira?” He poured the wine that he had refused to take from Wurlin.
“Well, I believe it’s something your government will be interested in. Considerably valuable information.”
D’Angelo tipped his glass forward, not so much as a toast, but a rapprochement.
“I see I have your interest.” He spoke softer. “Well then, we have information on a man your government seeks. A one-time Romanian national, though he holds no allegiance to that country. Most recently he resided in Florida, at a place called Fisher Island.”
D’Angelo straightened up and fought off a shiver.
“A man,” Wurlin continued, “who went by the name of Haddad. By our accounts he was rather influential in your last national election.”
“What?” D’Angelo asked. “Where’s this information from?”
Ira Wurlin laughed. “Maybe you don’t give us too much credit after all.” He laughed at his own callback. “It’s from authentic Mossad agents inside your country, Vincent. Not make-believe.”
Chapter 29
Boston, Massachusetts
Katie flew across the Charles with the afternoon breeze. She was in her westbound lap, skipping across the water some 200 feet from Memorial Drive on the Cambridge side. She made a wide sweep in front of the Mass. Ave. Bridge, adjusting her sails into the wind. Now to dart up the Boston side. She glided along the Lagoon, carved out in a 1930s renovation of the riverbank. Rows of three-and-four-story brownstone condominiums stood along Beacon Street to her right. She quickly made her way back to the Hatch Shellon the esplanade where the Boston Pops often played.
That’s where Roarke spotted her.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Katie!” He decided he wanted to say goodbye in person, not through a note.
“Katie!” he screamed again. She didn’t see him, and she certainly couldn’t hear him. Although Katie was no more than 120 feet away, the onshore wind obscured his calls.
Roarke ran along the grass toward the Community Boathouse where Katie had launched. Maybe she’s on her way in now. But Katie sailed beyond the dock, toward the Longfellow Bridge.
Roarke walked to the edge of the dock. Two young boys, no more than twelve, were just coming in. They handled their sloop like pros. Roarke stepped to the side, away from their sail. In that one moment, he lost her.
Come on, where’d you go? He scanned the river for the woman in the red top. He didn’t spot her, but he did see what appeared to be a log. It suddenly popped up above the surface. He panned his field of view to the right. There she is. He relaxed. Then he calculated Katie was on a trajectory that would intercept the piece of wood. He wondered how safe that was for boaters. He was about to ask the boys, when a light flare caught his eye. It came from the same place, just ahead of Katie. He strained to look, squinting to sharpen his view.
It’s not a log. It’s a diver. As quickly as he realized that, the diver was gone. It was no less dangerous than a log, but the swimmer must have seen her coming.
Roarke continued to track Katie’s boat. Once more, he had to step away from the boys who, by now, were tying up at the dock. The diver’s head emerged from underwater again. It seemed as if he swam underwater to get even closer to her. Why? He had to see Katie. Impossible not to. He should have changed direction. But…
All of Roarke’s senses fired at once. A dangerous situation was developing. Possibly for the diver. Definitely for Katie. He screamed out as loudly as possible. “Hey! Move!”
The boys froze in place.
“Katie!”
The man who ran the MDC boathouse peered out from his window.
“Watch out!” Roarke yelled.
Katie continued on her course. She still couldn’t hear him.
Roarke reached for his Sig Sauer. A warning shot? A bullet in the air…too dangerous. He shifted his attention. “Boys! Get me out there!” He pointed where Katie’s boat would intersect with the diver.
“What?” they asked together. They were genuinely scared.
“Get me out there fast!” Roarke ran onto the end of the dock.
“But why?” the youngest asked.
By now the Community Boathouse manager had come out. He was an old sailor who had weathered a lot of storms off the North Shore seas, and handled his share of drunks in Gloucester bars. He carried a beaten-up Louisville Slugger baseball bat.
“Just hold up a minute there, mister. Leave those kids alone.”
“Guys! I can’t sail,” Roarke said, ignoring the man. “I need you to get me out there!” There was real urgency in his voice.
“I don’t know,” the older, more responsible boy said sheepishly.
“My girlfriend’s in trouble,” Roarke added. He turned his attention back to the water. “Katie!”
“I don’t know,” the boy said again.
The situation looked worse. The swimmer kept adjusting to Katie’s run.
“Look, I need your help!” Roarke bent down and grabbed their boat.
“You hold it there, mister.” It was the old skipper. He was on the dock, about ten feet from Roarke. His bat was up high, ready to take a swing at Roarke. “You’re not going anywhere with those boys.”
Roarke rose up quickly, his hands simultaneously slipping into opposite sides of his tweed jacket. He thought about removing his automatic with his right hand. Instead, he reached for his Secret Service ID with his left.
“Secret Service. Stop!”
The man froze in place, but mostly out of disbelief. “What?”
“I need this boat. These men will take me out right now.”
“Oh, boy,” Roarke heard the youngest say.
The manager didn’t really know what to do, so he did nothing.
“You’re really a Secret Service agent?” the boy questioned.
Roarke turned around. “Yes, now please!”
“Climb aboard.”
Roarke gingerly stepped into the 17-foot craft. The sailor now made a gesture toward them, but Roarke waved him off. At fifteen feet from the dock, Roarke tried to get his bearings.
“You should sit down, sir,” the older boy said.
Roarke didn’t need the encouragement.
“And you better take your shoes off.”
Chapter 30
Boston University
Metropolitan School
This guy’s crazy, Bernie Bernstein said to himself. He put down a paper one of his students had written about the host of the radio show Strong Nation.
This was Bernstein’s first teaching assignment at
BU. His office on Bay State Road overlooked the Charles River just west of the Mass. Ave. Bridge. He joined the faculty as a part-time professor after leaving the White House. After four years as Morgan Taylor’s chief of staff, he accepted a teaching job. He encouraged his Government and Ethics students to reach beyond law books to find foundation for their legal arguments. One of his students decided to tackle a challenging topic: Was the Fairness Doctrine Fair? He drew a thorough line between the debate over The Red Lion Case to the state of talk radio today. In doing so, he analyzed the phenomenal rise of Elliott Strong, or as the host considered himself, America’s leading “Voice of Reason.”
Bernstein was aware of Strong, but he hadn’t listened to his show in a long time. His student’s paper made the man Morgan Taylor affectionately called Bernsie more interested than ever.
According to the report, Strong’s radio show was having a domino effect: other broadcasters were listening to him and following his lead. Strong’s political bias made for good radio. And good radio, largely unregulated, made for great ratings. Since every radio host in the country lived for ratings, the Strong rhetoric appeared to be a formula worthy of imitation.
The student provided the statistics. Four hundred fifteen percent growth in audience in the six months dating back to January of the current year, according to the Arbitron rating’s service. Strong reached an estimated 21,450,000 listeners in late night, far more than King, Bell, or Nouri ever pulled. His daytime ratings trounced the competition. His audience remained with Strong for an average of forty-seven minutes, longer than any other talk host in the history of the business. The number of stations that carried Strong Nation continued to grow by the week.
Crazy like a fox. The ex-president’s chief of staff was learning from a graduate student the first rule of talk radio: Stay on the good side of the hosts. Somewhere along the line, the administration wasn’t. Now he wondered whether Strong could be stopped.
The student raised the same rhetorical question in his paper. The immediate answer was no. “Contemporary talk radio is the Frankenstein born out of deregulation,” the student maintained in his paper. “It took its first, unsure exploratory steps with the relaxation of laws that had previously guaranteed a multiple of opinions on the airwaves. It came of age with the demise of true local community ownership, and it matured with the encouragement and support of the political right.”
Even Bernstein had to admit he’d used people like Strong to help Morgan Taylor. Did he control them? No, he had to admit. It had worked for Bernstein as long as the president wasn’t the target. He believed, perhaps naively, that they’d never turn on the man who most closely represented their politics. But he was wrong. There was no loyalty among the thieves of the airwaves. They’d stolen the meaning of true political debate. It was all in the student’s report. It had happened years ago. Now it seemed that Morgan Taylor would be the catalyst for Strong’s highest ratings ever.
After reading the paper, Bernstein went on the Internet. It was all there. His student had done his research well. Bernstein considered calling Elliott Strong himself. Maybe he could get the talk host to ease up. But who was he now? A teacher with no political clout. Another former White House staffer.
Instead, he decided to phone an old Georgetown classmate: the CEO of the company which syndicated Strong Nation.
“You have to understand, the entire world of radio is different today. And it’s probably all due to one man,” Charlie Huddle explained.
“Limbaugh?”
“On the nose. And it’s not because he’s a blowhard. He was the first one to listen to an audience that felt unrepresented by the mainstream media.”
“Come on, Charlie, he doesn’t listen to anybody. Nor do—”
“You asked my opinion, Bernie, let me give it to you,” Huddle said, cutting him off. “Generally speaking, conservatives were always labeled. Liberals were not.”
“What do you mean?” Bernstein asked over the phone.
“Well, news anchors would read lines like, ‘Conservative firebrand Newt Gingrich clashed with Senator Kennedy.’ Gingrich had a negative branded to his name, while there was nothing for Kennedy. Why not?”
“Charlie, it’s just an adjective.”
“It’s more than just an adjective. It was a way of thinking. And guess what? This isn’t from me. Google ‘Brian Williams,’ you know, the anchorman. In a C-SPAN interview a few years back, Williams acknowledged that for decades many people felt like they were unrepresented. No one talked to them or about them: no one until Rush. Suddenly, the right had a savior for three hours a day: a voice that said what they were thinking. Limbaugh found that listeners, sick and tired of getting their news filtered through a liberal bias, were thrilled to have a spokesman who was one of them.”
“Come on, Charlie, it’s not that simple,” Bernstein argued.
“No? Then why did he catch on so successfully? Again, Williams said it. I’m surprised you missed it. There probably wouldn’t be a Fox News if Limbaugh didn’t give conservatives a voice.”
“That doesn’t give Strong the right to lie.”
“Lie?” The syndicator challenged him brazenly. “Is it a lie because you don’t agree with what he says?”
“It’s a lie because what he’s saying isn’t true.”
“Strong complains that nobody elected Taylor president. Is that a lie?”
“No, but—”
“He says that the way the Constitution looks at succession is outdated. You have to agree with that, Bernie.”
“Out of date, but not something to step on and grind into the ground. That’s what Strong is propagating.”
“No, he’s just coming at it from a different political perspective than you.”
“Don’t give me that!” Bernstein complained. “He’s dangerously close to calling for the overthrow of the American government.”
“Bernie, do you actually listen to Elliott?” He sounded patronizing now. “He’s not trying to overthrow Taylor, he’s asking people to exercise their right. He’s giving listeners a platform to talk about change. It was okay when Kerry got airtime during the Vietnam War when he wanted Nixon out, but it’s not okay for everyday listeners to get a few minutes on the air? Bernie, it’s talk radio. It’s just a show.”
Bernstein was completely annoyed. He returned to the essence of his call without any hint of friendship. “So you won’t do anything?”
“Do anything?” Huddle laughed. “We are doing something, Bernie. We’re practicing the First Amendment, and making millions of dollars doing it.”
Chapter 31
Boston, Massachusetts
The scuba diver surfaced again with a quick kick of his flippers. There she is. The woman’s boat was coming around. This time, he solemnly said to himself. This time. It’ll be over in under a minute. The instant he stopped kicking, his body slipped under. In another few moments he’d bob back up, grab her at the point she was most off-balance. Then—
Katie could have sworn she heard her name called. Scott? Her head was into the wind. She smiled and wrote it off. This is what it’s like when you’re really in love. Now there were only the natural sounds—her Laser skipping across the Charles and the sail billowing in the breeze like a puffy cloud. Katie angled out of the arc on what she decided would be her last turn. She ducked under the boom, swapped hands for control of the rudder, and leaned sharply over the edge of the starboard side to balance her craft. Her legs were stretched out across the width of the hull. The boat was stable, even if she was not.
Now! He kicked and shot straight up. He actually admired her skills as a sailor. She picked her spot to turn and hit it every time. It made his job easier.
Three feet. Two feet. One more hard kick. He needed more than his head above water this time. There she is. He saw the woman gliding across the river right in front of him. He reached out. The top half of her body was extended well out over her craft. So easy. With th
at thought, he grabbed the back of her shell with one hand and yanked her hair with the other.
It happened too quickly for Katie to process. First she felt herself falling backward. There was no time for corrective action, only an automatic cry. Luckily, as she went over, Katie had the good sense to suck in a breath of air. When she hit the water, she realized that she hadn’t just fallen overboard. She was being weighted down. Katie kicked and grabbed at the water, trying to resurface. But she was unable to right herself. She continued to sink.
Katie squirmed and tried to twist her head around. She felt a sharp yank on her hair. It was so powerful that it did what she couldn’t do herself. It turned her around. Below her, pulling her, was a man in a wetsuit, goggles, and scuba tank. She flailed her hands, but she was no match for the man.
Still, she fought against his power. But each time she struggled she used up more air. The man pulled again. Katie looked up. The light from above dimmed as he dragged her farther down. Her body ached. She desperately held onto her last breath and suddenly was overcome by a final realization: She was going to die. Here and now…without sharing her life with Scott.
Scott. She imagined Roarke swimming toward her, reaching out, taking her into his arms. The thought brought a sense of calmness to Katie. She reached out to the image of the man she loved, wishing he were really there.
Less than twenty seconds after Katie went under, the boys steered to where she’d been pulled over. Roarke had clearly seen it. He knew what he had to do.
He dove in and kicked hard. Bubbles from the diver’s tank showed him the way. Air! It’s what the diver had, and exactly what he and Katie needed. His mind raced. How? He couldn’t fire his Sig.
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