The Capitol Game

by Brian Haig

  Jack was spotted in too many places to count. He was seen seated on the rear deck of a big yacht in Miami, knocking back mai tais, surrounded by big-breasted girls in string bikinis. Thirty seconds later, he was huddled in an igloo in Alaska munching on whale meat. At the same instant he was spotted in a movie theater in Akron, partying on the slopes at Aspen, sleeping in a gutter in Seattle, and robbing a bank in Atlanta.

  Perry, also, was everywhere and nowhere.

  Each call station had a large stack of tip sheets to fill out. It seemed so easy, so organized, so infallible. In theory, it was. Every time a call arrived the information was jotted on a tip sheet, then deposited inside the in-box of one of three former Fibbies who would scrutinize the material and decide upon the action to be taken. By ten that morning, all three had found the time to curse at O’Neal and tell him what an ill-conceived crock this whole plan was. Their in-boxes had overflowed hours before. Every time Fox News or CNN or MSNBC flashed up pictures of Jack and Perry, a fresh deluge arrived and the chaos grew.

  Martie made the rounds, pacing, barking, exhorting, trying to keep morale up and his system functioning. It was hopeless and he knew it. The only prayer of finding Jack or Perry was the Department of Defense. It had the full and remorseless resources of the federal government to pursue Jack wherever he led them.

  No matter how smart Jack was, it was just a matter of time. He would be found.

  Jack, at that moment, was running hard and fast. Sweat was dripping off his head. His shirt was soaked, his breath coming out in heavy gusts. Ten minutes before he had kicked up the treadmill to seven miles per hour, a final sprint before he finished his habitual morning exercise.

  He had entered the apartment in the early hours of the morning, before CG’s manhunt gained traction. The day he’d ditched TFAC’s watchers, he took the train to New York, then jumped in the rental car and headed south, right back to D.C. Using a false name and paying with a fistful of cash, he had checked into a Best Western on the city outskirts, watched the news, slept off and on, and waited.

  At three that morning, he ditched the rental at a local vendor and dropped the keys in a night box. Nobody saw him. He walked two blocks to a dark street corner where he was met by a friend who drove him here. The tall apartment complex was directly across the street from CG’s headquarters, and the apartment was located on the twelfth floor with a commanding view of everything that happened street side. It had been rented under a false name almost a year before. The day before Jack made his dash for freedom, a friend had restocked it with enough fresh food and supplies to last a month, if need be.

  The apartment was large, with three bedrooms, two of which now were filled with stacked boxes, all carefully labeled and organized.

  Jack switched off the treadmill and, grabbing a towel to wipe off his sweat, walked to the big console by the window. The curtains and shades were drawn tight. All lights in the living room had been disconnected months before to minimize any chance of a silhouette in the window. He sat at the big console and played with the dials for a few minutes before he found something interesting to listen to.

  A team of four men under Jack’s employ had manned this console around the clock for over seven months now. They sat, eating, smoking countless cigarettes, sipping coffee by the gallon, listening, recording, filtering, and discarding the rubbish. They preserved only what was worth listening to. Not only the bedrooms, but a storage container three blocks away were loaded with tapes, the plentiful fruits of this long and exhausting effort.

  Jack turned up the volume and listened attentively to the distinctive voice of Mitch Walters conversing with Phil Jackson. They were chatting in Mitch’s office, according to the console light. Walters had a hard, deep voice, but it sounded hoarse and raspy, the result of little sleep and too much yelling and hollering at his beleaguered employees. Jackson’s voice was unchanged, flat, insinuating, condescending. The feed was crystal clear; Jack could have been seated in the office. He closed his eyes and could almost picture them—Walters behind his big desk with his feet up, perhaps hefting a paperweight in his beefy hand, Jackson lounging in a chair, studying the CEO with his mean, slitty eyes.

  “Sufficient evidence is still the problem,” Jackson was saying, not nicely.

  “How many times are you gonna tell me that? I’m working on it.”

  “Then work faster. Wiley could be found at any minute. You better have something good and legally compelling when he turns up.”

  “You said yourself Wiley won’t be a problem. His old pal Wallerman will bury his credibility. He ripped off an old lady, then murdered her. Anything he says will be neutralized by his ugly past.” A brief pause, then, “He was a crook then, he’s still a rotten crook. Nobody believes a murderer.”

  “You’re not listening, idiot.”

  Jack could picture Walters’s face flushing with anger. His fists would be clenched, his shoulders bunched, his broad, pugnacious face puckered and red.

  Jackson said very slowly, very deliberately, “You need to give me something I can work with. You, Bellweather, and Haggar get together and concoct your story. Wiley conned us, and here’s how. Got it? Details, Walters, plenty of details, all believable. The three of you rehearse until you sound like a barbershop quartet. And it would certainly be nice if you produced a little paper or even a tape that backs you up. Fabricate it, if necessary. Understand?”

  “All right. I got it.”

  Jack could hear the sound of a chair being pushed back.

  “You better,” Jackson said, a parting shot. “You’ll only get one chance.”

  28

  Mia slipped out of the office late that afternoon for what she told Nicky was a long-overdue dental appointment. A molar had been aching for a month; she couldn’t sleep and she’d put it off too long already.

  Harvey Crintz was lurking nearby, about ten doors down the hallway, where he had an excellent view of the locked entrance to DCIS’s Pentagon office. He’d been there for hours, gulping coffee, chatting on his cell, watching and waiting.

  Mia had stepped out a few times, but only to pick up food or hit the ladies’ room, because she returned within minutes.

  Crintz had been called two days before by somebody in an outfit called TFAC, who claimed that Harvey had been referred by some mutual friends over at the Capitol Group. At first Harvey had turned white and gagged. Fearful that CG had ratted him out about his cash-for-inside-tips game, he claimed he had never heard of the Capitol Group, never heard of these friends. Deny, deny, deny. They must’ve confused his name for somebody else, he insisted and nearly hung up.

  When the words “one hundred thousand dollars” somehow found their way into the conversation, Harvey’s memory improved and his listening turned razor-sharp. It was only a small favor, after all, the voice told him; nothing more serious or dangerous than what he’d done dozens of times in the past. As a member in good standing of the Inspector General’s office, it wouldn’t be at all unusual for Crintz to visit the DCIS office. And should he happen to, say, browse for a moment around Mia Jenson’s desk, and maybe, perhaps, by chance, find something interesting and relevant to her vendetta against CG, maybe he could find a way to smuggle it out.

  Crintz lost a lot of sleep the previous two days as he considered and debated the offer. The pros and cons rattled around his brain. This was more than he’d ever been asked to do, but technically only slightly more. No, on second thought, a little inside information was one thing; this was burglary and the punishment was much more severe. It was also one hundred grand, though. A hundred thousand dollars! His to do whatever he wanted with, his to spend, his to waste however he wished. The Mercury Sable in his driveway was old and tired, the paint was peeling, and he could hear the transmission grinding to death; he’d love to replace it with something fancier, say a racing green Jaguar, and the decision was made. Mia was about to buy him a car.

  Crintz waited five full minutes until it was clear that Mia’s absence was som
ething more than a bathroom stop. He walked quickly to the door and pushed the buzzer. A voice came over the intercom and he knew it was an assistant. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Crintz with the IG’s office, here to see Andy Kasprisan,” he said into the speaker, identifying an agent he knew who worked in the office.

  There was an irritating buzzing noise as the thick door unlocked and he quickly pushed it open. The assistant’s desk was directly in front of the door, and he made sure to give her a good long glance at the Pentagon badge attached to his shirtfront as he passed. “Thanks,” he told her.

  “He’s way in the back,” she mumbled, then pushed her nose into some papers on her blotter.

  “Oh,” he said, an afterthought. “Is Agent Jenson in?”

  “Nope.” The assistant never even looked up. “Dental appointment. Just missed her.” She pointed a casual finger at the sign-in board on the wall. Crintz glanced at it and sighed with relief. Under ETR—estimated time of return—Mia had penciled in a time three hours away.

  Crintz wandered around the maze of carrels for a few minutes until he located the one with Agent Jenson on the placard. The office was noisy, busy, and messy. Phones ringing, agents talking, all hotly engaged in the pursuit of waste, fraud, and abuse. Nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to him.

  An agent with his nose buried in a memo was seated two carrels away from Jenson’s, and Crintz smiled at him, and said, “I’m with the IG’s office. Mia left something for me on her desk.”

  “Suit yourself,” the guy said without looking up. He picked up his telephone and began making a call.

  Crintz edged inside Mia’s carrel and settled quietly into her seat. The gray fabric walls blocked anyone from observing what he was doing. Unlike all the other carrels he’d seen in this congested dump, everything was neat and tidy, the papers arranged in orderly stacks. Even her phone slips were lined up like battleships awaiting inspection.

  He pulled out a pen and his little green notebook, then began jotting notes. The phone slips first. The voice on the phone hadn’t been all that specific about what to look for, so Crintz figured he’d just snatch as much information as looked useful to justify his $100k. As fast as he could, he jotted the names and numbers in his pad. Then he moved to the stacks of files and papers on her desk, but nothing there looked all that interesting. She had a big caseload, and he was quickly lost in the stacks of testimonies, financial reports, depositions, etc.

  He glanced at his watch. Seven minutes already, and he began to worry. At the rear of Mia’s carrel sat a large gray metal stand-up safe with four drawers—the same model found in nearly every carrel in a building that manufactured secrets. Regulations required the safe to be locked anytime the owner stepped away, but like nearly everybody except the most fanatic security loons, Mia was planning on returning and had left hers unlocked with the drawers slightly ajar.

  Crintz got up and quietly slid open the top drawer. The files were neat and superbly organized, apparently like everything in Jenson’s life. They were alphabetized, too, though he found no Capitol Group files under C. He thought he knew why, smiled to himself, and pushed the drawer back the way he’d found it. He bent down to the bottom drawer where the W’s would be found, quietly eased it open, took one long peek, and struck gold.

  There were about thirty thin files with titles beginning with W, then ten or fifteen thick green files labeled “Capitol Group,” but he didn’t know where to begin. It looked like at least a thousand pages. Far too much to read, much less memorize, and copying a pile of this size was out of the question.

  And stealing all of it was definitely not an option, Crintz thought.

  He got down on his creaky knees and began riffling through files as fast as he could, hoping he’d get lucky. Maybe he’d find some golden nugget that would warrant the hundred-thousand-dollar payoff. Jenson, he quickly realized, after scanning enough files, had been watching and tracking CG for months, if not far longer. She had the firm’s financial reports going back three years. As a private firm, CG wasn’t legally obligated to file with the SEC, but it did have to submit the material to the Pentagon procurement office every time it bid on a contract.

  But Mia had so much more than that: the names and biographical data of all the key players; transcripts of all congressional hearings dealing with the polymer; a lot of background material on some company called Arvan Chemicals; and so on and so forth. From long experience in the Inspector General’s office he recognized what he was looking at; she was laboriously and studiously plotting a giant case.

  Then a small, thin file tucked in the rear of the drawer caught his attention. It was in the back, hidden from view for good reason, he suspected. He had to strain to reach it but eventually got a firm grip with his thick fingers. It was labeled “Source One,” a mysterious title that quickly became clear.

  Mia had an insider; source one was a squealing rat. Someone deep inside, he realized, as he glanced through the material. Whoever it was, had detailed the trail of events that led CG to take over Arvan Chemicals, then how CG bought, pressured, and finagled the Pentagon and Congress into arranging the sweet deal for a no-bid, single-source $20 billion contract.

  The disclosures were verbal. Mia had treated their discussions like depositions and meticulously transcribed the results. By his estimate, there were at least forty pages of conversation in the form of questions and answers that he plowed through as fast as his eyes could move.

  On December 29 the year before, there was this one:

  QUESTION: “Describe how the Capitol Group persuaded Representative Earl Belzer to help with the polymer.”

  REPLY: “Well, it wasn’t hard. Belzer has his hand out to anyone willing to kick in some dough. CG has a, well, what would you call it? A slush fund—I guess that’s the appropriate term. And, um, this money is secret, a hidden pot of gold for buying favors. And, well, I guess you can say Earl wasn’t reluctant. He dug his fist in deep.” (She laughed.)

  QUESTION: “Did CG pay him money for a promise of support?”

  REPLY: “Yeah, but you’d never find it. See, we have this guy, an accountant. He specializes in this stuff. He comes into the office once or twice a week. A little runt with big glasses, very unfriendly, never says a word to anybody. The magician, that’s what we call him.”

  QUESTION: “And what does this magician do?”

  REPLY: “Runs the slush fund. Makes money magically appear in people’s pockets. If it’s a politician, he finds ways to get it into PACs, you know, political action committees, or reelection accounts. He’s got thousands of tricks. False-front corporations, phony names, straw donors, he’s very creative. We’re a global company, and most of the fund is hidden overseas. He’s good, incredibly good. You’ll never catch him.”

  Crintz paused a second. He realized she was talking about his paymaster, the little gnome who made sure he got his monthly bribes. He went back to reading.

  QUESTION: “And how much went to Belzer?”

  REPLY: “I don’t know the exact amount. Only the magician and the senior execs upstairs who cut the deals know that. A lot, though. We’re all in accounting, and, well, you know how we are. We thrive on rumors. I heard seven million.”

  Suddenly Crintz heard a collection of loud voices nearby. His heart nearly jumped out of his chest. He removed the papers he was reading, stuffed the rest of the file back in the rear, closed the safe drawer, and got back to his feet.

  He took a good look around. Nobody was paying him any attention, but he was through taking risks.

  He walked out quickly the same way he came in. His knees were weak with fear and excitement. On his way back down to his office, he made a firm decision. A hundred thousand was too little. It was time for a serious renegotiation. That little slush fund was loaded with cash. Some third-rate political peckerwood got seven million. Seven million!

  Hell, the information in his fist was worth at least a million, possibly two. Crintz tightened his grip.
The clutch of papers in his fist was his early retirement to a beautiful Florida resort, a glorious golf course, a boat, young girls in bikinis flaunting bronzed bodies, his life’s dream.

  He relished the moment, and by the time he got back to his desk he was ready to hop on the Internet and begin the search for a nice little Florida condo, somewhere near the bars and the ocean.

  The meeting opened with Walters and Bellweather thrashing and badgering Martie O’Neal, holding back no punches. Jack and Old Man Arvan were still missing, they yelled. Why in the hell was CG paying a fortune to TFAC, an incompetent firm filled with losers, bunglers, and hacks? TFAC was sloppy and stupid; its mistakes were costing the Capitol Group billions. O’Neal relaxed against a far wall and let Walters and Bellweather vent and spew and fume till they were tired of hearing themselves talk.

  A few hours before, Walters had authorized one million dollars to buy Harvey Crintz’s goods; the permission was grudging and attended by another of Walters’s crude tantrums.

  O’Neal now held the product of that million dollars in his hand. He weathered their curses and threats with good humor, and endured their abuse with the gratifying knowledge that the moment they finished, he would make them eat their words. Go ahead, boys, he wanted to yell. Call me an asshole again. Burst a few blood vessels, scream till you’re hoarse.

  But they didn’t seem to grow tired of abusing him, so he pushed off the wall and approached Walters’s desk. “Guess what I got?” he sneered.