The People's House

by David Pepper

  Never mind that everything about the man communicated that he wanted to spend as little time in the area as possible. More telling was the moment that I considered the CEO’s most phony of the interview—his response to my initial comment. Whoever masterminded the deep investment into local towns up and down the Ohio River had done it with careful attention, clearly considering it a central element of Marcellus’ overall strategy. But Mason’s statement about being a “good community member” was a throwaway line, uttered with no passion.

  Finally, while Mason had a working knowledge of the Energy 2020 strategy, he displayed nowhere close to the political sophistication one would expect from a CEO working hand-in-hand with the nation’s top lobbying firm. Marcellus had spent years forcing an enormously controversial bill through Congress, yet Mason came across as a political neophyte.

  Yes, someone very impressive ran Marcellus. Just not its CEO.

  * * *

  LONDON

  “Disappointing. That is my fault.”

  Kazarov and Andersson together watched the tape of the reporter’s visit. Kazarov himself had decided Mason should be the one to respond to the reporter’s inquiry. The Stanton tour of the Abacus facility, where Stanton saw through every Liam Andersson lie, showed Kazarov that even his most talented people risked giving something away when pressed by a savvy inquisitor.

  But Mason posed no risk whatsoever. Unlike other top lieutenants at Marcellus, the CEO knew absolutely nothing about the Abacus plan, the election, or what happened to Ariens. Mason couldn’t blow it because he had remained totally in the dark.

  But Kazarov now regretted the decision.

  “Why do you say that?” Andersson asked his boss. “Mason performed as well as he could have, and it was obvious he had no idea what the man was talking about,”

  “On the one hand, I agree. Nobody could conclude Mason had anything to do with the Abacus plot.”

  “But you still look displeased.”

  “It was the reporter’s final questions that worried me. And the look on his face for the second half of the interview. While he seemed satisfied with Mason’s answers about Abacus, he looked to have considerable doubt later.”

  “Doubt about what?”

  “About Mason.”

  Mason had always surpassed the threshold as a credible CEO with the Wall Street and energy press. But then again, those reporters were from New York or D.C., analyzing the finances and reports of the company from afar, accustomed to Wall Street titans who looked and talked like Mason.

  But the Sharpe interview was different than the others. He watched the second half of the tape once again, including Sharpe descending in the elevator.

  “This man lives in the area. He has seen for himself the complexity of what we are doing. And he has concluded, wisely, that Mr. Mason is not the person who could have masterminded all of this. This is a problem. At all costs, we must keep the name Marcellus from appearing in his account. After that, it may unravel.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  GENEVA-ON-THE-LAKE

  It rained most of Saturday, so I huddled inside typing away on my laptop. After starting to draft a memo to convince my bosses to keep me on the story, I turned it into the actual story instead.

  My focus was on the Stanton connection:

  Few politicians worked harder in last November’s election than Congressman Thomas Stanton, and few benefitted more from the surprising results. The new House Majority Leader is now among the three most powerful people in Washington and appears on every pundit’s short list of viable Presidential contenders.

  In his fall campaign whirlwind, Stanton campaigned heavily in almost every one of the districts in which the Abacus company altered the results in last November’s elections. And a Vindicator investigation has found that this wasn’t a mere coincidence—Stanton, as House minority whip, knew more than a year in advance virtually every district where Abacus had located its game-changing machines. And that’s exactly where he campaigned.

  Kept it simple, reciting the facts I could support. This would keep us out of a losing lawsuit and head off a quick veto from my editors.

  In the article, I took a stab at describing Simpson’s death.

  The researcher who composed one memo for Stanton outlining the plan was brutally murdered just as she finalized the memo and list of Abacus districts. Several sources who wished to remain anonymous questioned the rushed conclusion of the murder investigation, especially given the suspicious timing of her death.

  A separate Vindicator inquiry found that the suspect in the murder, Johnny Rutherford—who died in a gunfight with police as they attempted to arrest him—had a direct connection with Stanton’s chief of security. As a police officer, that security chief had arrested Rutherford on at least twenty-one occasions.

  I intentionally offered up tantalizing facts. My editors would require far more before publishing them, but nothing wrong with whetting their appetite.

  In typing up the story, one gap became clear: there was no evidence proving that Stanton was part of the Abacus plan, as opposed to simply being aware of it. A crucial difference. The killing of Simpson, and all his lies, suggested he was covering up something he was part of. But I still needed something concrete to nail his role down.

  I added this shortcoming to my list of unknowns.

  At about 4:30 in the afternoon, after the rain tapered off, I took a short break. Since childhood, I had jogged along the same dirt road by the lake, running three miles east, and then heading straight back, often into the sunset. In my prime, I used to cover the distance in under forty-one minutes. I now averaged forty-eight, still a decent clip, and that was my pace today.

  Reaching the turnaround point at 25:08, I sped up on the way back. But halfway home, at thirty-six minutes, my phone buzzed. Scott calling, so I picked up.

  Before I could say a word, his voice burst through the receiver.

  “Dad, someone is following us.”

  The worry in his voice was palpable. So I slowed my pace from a jog to a fast walk.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Jana and I woke up this morning and drove across the Golden Gate to have brunch in that spot we love in Sausalito.” They had taken me there once, via the ferry. A stunning view from the little bayside town.

  “Well, when we took a little walk after brunch, we noticed that a car that had been sitting a few houses back when we left home was parked right near the restaurant where we ate. Some big dude was sitting in the car, trying to look occupied, as we walked by.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “Was a Toyota SUV of some kind, California plates. Had a little Hertz sticker on the back, so must be a rental.”

  “Did they follow you back?”

  “We couldn’t tell if they did. I’m sure the guy was a little rattled as we walked by. Didn’t see the car as we drove back home, and we drove around a few extra blocks just to check. But they clearly know where we live.”

  “Keep checking and see if you can see them. Also, call a trusted friend and have them drive by and see if they see the car there. They’re probably parking a little further back now. And keep me posted.”

  “Good idea. Will do.”

  * * *

  I sprinted back toward the cabin. Livid.

  At a certain point, I had become fatalistic about this story. I knew what was at stake, intentionally crossed the threshold into true danger, so I was prepared for whatever they tried to do to me or say about me. I could take it. I had asked for it.

  But Scott? And his young wife? Tailing them was low. Spineless.

  I entered the cabin’s side screen door, letting it slam behind me. After five minutes pacing on the creaky wooden floor, I marched back outside. This time bursting through the front door.

  The Suburban had trai
led me up to the cabin. And earlier that morning, I had spotted it laying low at the end of the block, so I walked briskly in that direction. Yep, there it was.

  I marched up to the side of the driver door and started pounding on the window. Although the glass was tinted, I could see that the driver was startled.

  “Get the fuck out of this car!”

  The driver looked through the window, and put his arms up shoulder high, palms out as if saying “whoa.” He then lowered his left hand, opened the door slowly, and stepped out of the car.

  The man stood an inch shorter than me but was thicker at every level of his frame. Must have weighed forty pounds more. Black turtleneck, dark pants, short cropped hair. An imposing character.

  Despite the physical mismatch, my temper overwhelmed my judgment.

  “Who the fuck are you? And why the hell are you guys following my son? He has nothing to do with any of this.”

  The passenger door opened, and a shorter, thinner man got out from that side of the car. He spoke, not his driver.

  “Mr. Sharpe, if you know what’s good for you, you will go back to your cabin.”

  I did a double take.

  Not from the words. But from the thick Slavic accent of the speaker.

  “Who the hell are you guys? Why have you been following me, and why are you following my son?”

  The driver looked at me with a hollow stare.

  “Mr. Sharpe, for your own good, you will want to return to your dacha now. I will not warn you again,” the passenger said.

  “I want you to take me to the man who has hired you to follow me. I want to speak with him directly. I have put up with this long enough.”

  At this point, I stood about two feet to the left of the driver but looked directly at the passenger doing the talking. And the passenger, while still looking directly at me, responded with a foreign word.

  “Poschli.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Painfully, and instantly, I realized he wasn’t talking to me.

  The goon to my right whirled his arm toward me and struck the back of my head with a hard object.

  Everything went dark.

  * * *

  Scott Sharpe knew his dad.

  And within minutes of getting off the phone, he knew something bad was about to happen. Dad had a temper, especially when it came to family. He’d never idly sit by and let anyone tail his son. He would do something about it. Which is exactly what Scott feared.

  He sent a text or two. Then started calling. He called his cellphone. He called the cabin number.

  And for hours, no answer.

  * * *

  “We should have killed him,” Kondrakov said to his boss. “No one has ever confronted my men like that and survived.”

  “Killing him would not end this, which is why I ordered you to keep him alive in the first place. Sharpe is not a one-man newspaper. They know about Ariens, and they know about his tie to Marcellus. He said so himself. A death now would only make them more suspicious.”

  “Understood.”

  “Allowing his son to see he was being followed was another mistake, Boris. Your men are getting sloppy, and their repeated mistakes make our task much more challenging.”

  “But you said you wanted him to see he was being followed?”

  “Sharpe, yes, while in Ohio. But being spotted in Washington, D.C. just as he was visiting Stanton was a terrible error. And now the same thing has happened with his son. Sloppy. Yuri talking to him directly was inexcusable.”

  As always, Kazarov’s tone remained calm. He did not need to show his anger for his subordinates to appreciate his displeasure.

  “Outside of an extreme circumstance, we cannot simply eliminate Sharpe. Did you at least put a bug on him?”

  “Yes, his cell phone is now both tapped and bugged. We will hear every conversation he has, in person or by phone.”

  “Anything else?”

  “They could not get into his computer, but there were many notebooks next to it. They took photos of all the pages, and emailed us those photos.”

  “I’d like to see the notes myself,” Kazarov said.

  “Konyeshno.” Of course.

  * * *

  The full moon, high in the sky, cast a beam straight to the water’s edge. It was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.

  I found myself seated back in Dad’s rocking chair, facing north, out the window. My stopwatch was still running from the jog, at 7:36 and counting. I’d been out for almost seven hours.

  Even turning to look at my watch hurt. My entire head throbbed, only made worse by waves of sharp pain behind my right ear. I reached back and yelped as I felt a tender bump about the size of a ping-pong ball. Flakes of dried blood fell away at my touch.

  An awful odor tore at my nose. I reached up to feel a gel-like substance clinging to the edge of my nostrils. I quickly wiped it away with my left sleeve, and the smell and sting faded.

  Didn’t appear that I had any other injuries. They had clearly knocked me out with a blow to the head, kept me out for hours with some type of substance, then left. Thank God.

  I leaned back in the chair, reconstructing it all.

  First, the skinny guy, the passenger, was the same man that followed me from the White House. Slavic accent, probably Russian. Why in the world was a Russian following me around Ohio as I covered an American political scandal?

  And the driver. As he emerged from the car and stared me down, his bewildered expression made it clear he spoke little if any English. The passenger commanding him in a foreign language only made this clearer.

  But even more telling was the man’s appearance: the build, the outfit, the hair. The perfectly executed blow to the head. And then the substance that knocked me unconscious. All the trappings of a goon, but a professional goon.

  All of this reminded me of my conversation with Chief Santini. He had indeed asked the right question. Who in the world had I pissed off that professional henchmen from Russia were tailing me, and now Scott?

  * * *

  Still a little woozy, I gingerly walked back out the front door and 100 feet up the driveway. My head pulsated with each step, but I felt slightly better seeing that the Suburban had left.

  I lumbered back into the cabin and flipped the lights on to see if there was anything gone or out of place. Nothing looked to be missing. My computer was in sleep mode, exactly where it was when I had gone running. My phone lay right next to it, also in sleep mode. And my notebooks, scattered messily across the wooden desk before the jog, remained scattered now. No doubt two professionals would’ve taken the opportunity to look around once they dragged me back inside, but there was no clear sign of what they looked through or found.

  My phone flashed a red light, indicating new messages. I typed the four-digit password to get out of sleep mode. There were nine missed calls and three messages. Scott had called for three straight hours.

  I called him right away without checking the messages.

  “Dad? Where the hell have you been?”

  “I’m fine. Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I worried that you were going to do something crazy, so when you never answered, it scared the hell out of us.”

  “Well, let’s just say I had a tough conversation with the people following me about the fact that they are now following you. And they ended it forcefully.”

  “That’s what I was worried about. What happened?”

  I briefly walked through it.

  “Scott, be careful. From what I can tell, these people are both serious and dangerous. The good news is, they didn’t kill me, and it wasn’t because they’re squeamish about murder. They made that decision for a reason. Whatever it is, we need to keep it that way.”

  “Dad, are you sure you’re not in over your head? I can handle m
yself, and I know you can handle yourself, but this is scaring the hell out of Jana. She’s three months pregnant, Dad. I’m all about your story too, but maybe it’s not worth it.”

  “I hate this as much as you do, Scott. But I’m in it deep at this point. And I hate to say it, but you are too. If they were going to do more, they had every chance to. The most dangerous thing would be sitting on this story. That’s when getting rid of me would make it go away for good.”

  Once again, my job was making life miserable for my family. But there was no turning back.

  We hung up, promising to talk the next morning.

  Before putting the phone down, I checked for any new text messages that had come in. Five appeared—four from Scott and one from Renee Jones.

  I didn’t think much of these until I looked closely at Scott’s first text. He sent it only eight minutes after we had hung up in the late afternoon, right around the time of the confrontation.

  The eight-word text was visible from the main menu, without being fully opened. “Dad, don’t do anything stupid. We’ll be fine.” Exactly what I would expect him to say.

  But unlike the four texts that followed, all sent after 7:30, the first text was not marked “unopened.” It had already been read.

  Since I had been talking to Scott right before the confrontation, the two goons must have accessed the phone after knocking me out. And they clearly reviewed my text messages, including Scott’s, as I lay unconscious.

  Thank God I hardly texted.

  Then it dawned on me.

  “Oh shit.”

  Every call I’d made over the past week was also on my phone. Nothing mattered more to a journalist than protecting his sources, and my little tantrum had just endangered mine.

  Chapter 47

  LONDON: 159 days after the election

  “He knows Stanton is heavily involved, and deeply distrusts him,” Andersson said. “But he suspects he must have been working with someone else, someone who could fund the enterprise.”

  Kazarov and Andersson had been staring up at a large overhead monitor for forty minutes. Andersson gripped a mouse in his right hand. He scrolled through large photographs capturing the reporter’s individual notebook pages. With each click of the mouse, a new photograph appeared on the monitor. Then he zoomed in closely on each.