Jefferson Brody didn’t pay much attention. He was thinking about PACs—political action committees. PACs were a glaring loophole that had survived the latest get-naked-and-honest bloodletting over election reform. Members of Congress could have private war chests with which they could pretty much do as they pleased as long as the money wasn’t spent for direct reelection efforts. So the war chests were for voter-registration efforts, political education of constituents, presidential exploratory efforts, that kind of thing.
The niftiest thing about the noncampaign PACs though, and Brody felt his chest expand as he contemplated the genius of the guy who had thought of this, was that the elected person could put wife, son, daughter, and two or three girlfriends on the PAC payroll, thereby supplementing the family income. He could also use the donated loot to pay his own expenses if those expenses were related, in even a vague, hazy way, to the purposes of the PAC.
Consequently congressional PACs were slush funds, pure and simple. In private the politicians scrambled desperately to avoid the hardship of trying to make ends meet on a salary four times larger than the average American’s, while in public they orated endlessly about all they had done to improve the lot of those said average working stiffs. Harsh and heavy, they told their constituents, were the burdens of public service.
Not that T. Jefferson Brody was put off by the hypocrisy of many politicians—Brody would have recoiled in horror at the mere thought of trying to survive on ninety thousand dollars a year. On the contrary, their greed was a real plus. Some needy soul on Capitol Hill always had a hand out. And T. Jefferson Brody was making a fine living counseling clients to fill those empty palms.
As Miss Tina Jordan returned from the powder room, Brody glanced at his watch. He had a dinner engagement this evening with another senator, Hiram Duquesne, who wanted a campaign contribution. Hiram was one of those lucky dogs who had gotten into office before January 8, 1980, so by law when he retired he could pocket all the campaign contributions he had received over the years and hadn’t spent. Needless to say, with the most recent election only six weeks past and Duquesne once again a winner, he was still soliciting. Luckily FM Development had a campaign contribution PAC to help those pre-1980 incumbents, the Hiram Duquesnes of the world, who wanted their golden years to be truly golden.
Bob Cherry was in that blessed group, too, Brody remembered with a start. No doubt he would have Miss Jordan call him next week and remind him of that fact. Brody had that to look forward to. He glanced again at his watch. He was going to have to get back to the office and transfer some funds before he delivered Duquesne’s check.
Still, he didn’t want to rush Bob Cherry and his piece. He suggested dessert and Cherry accepted. Miss Jordan sipped a cup of cappuccino while the senator ate cheesecake and Brody admired the scenery.
When the luncheon bill came, Brody expertly palmed it. Cherry pretended he hadn’t seen it.
After an hour Henry Charon got up, paid his bill at the truck stop’s restaurant—it was a lot less than Brody had just put on his gold plastic—and went to the gift shop-convenience store. He spent twenty minutes there, then another twenty in the men’s room. By a quarter to three he was once again seated in a booth by the windows in the restaurant. So at five minutes before three p.m. he saw the van pull in and Tassone get out. He stood beside the truck and pulled off a pair of driving gloves while he looked around. He stuck the gloves in his pocket and walked toward the building.
Tassone came into the restaurant right on the hour. He looked around casually and came over to Charon’s booth in the corner.
“Hi.”
“Want some coffee?” Charon muttered.
“Yeah.” When the waitress came over Tassone ordered.
“It’s all there.”
“All of it?”
“Everything.”
Henry Charon nodded and again scanned the parking area.
“So how many people know about this?” Charon asked after Tassone’s coffee came and the waitress departed.
“Well, it took some doing to get what you wanted. Obviously, the people that supplied it know I took delivery. But they aren’t going to be shooting their mouths off. Most of this stuff is hot and they were paid well.”
“Who else?”
“The guy fronting the dough. He knows.”
“And all the people working for him?”
“Don’t make me laugh. He and I know, but nobody else. And believe me, I’m not about to tell you who he is. Another thing, after you get the bread, you won’t see me again. If you’re entitled to any more money under our deal, someone else will deliver it.”
“I don’t want to see you again.”
“You might as well know this too: Tassone ain’t my real name.”
A flicker of a grin crossed Charon’s lips. He watched the other man sip his coffee.
Charon passed a yellow slip of paper across the table. “You’ll need this to get the truck back. Wednesday of next week. At a garage in Philadelphia.” He gave Tassone the address.
“The money? When and where.”
“My place in New Mexico. A week from today. Just you.”
“I understand.” Tassone sighed. “You really think you can do this?”
“Yeah.”
“When? My guy wants to know.”
“When I’m ready. Not before.” Tassone started to speak but Charon continued: “He won’t have to wait too long.”
The truck wore Pennsylvania commercial plates. Charon drove out of the parking area and followed the signs toward I-70 east. The truck was new—only 326 miles on the odometer—and almost full of gas. Charon wore his own driving gloves. Twenty-five miles after leaving Breezewood he crossed into Maryland.
He kept the truck at fifty-five miles per hour where he could. Laboring up the low mountain east of Hagerstown the best he could do was thirty-five in the right-hand lane. Crossing the crest he kept the transmission in third gear to keep the brakes from overheating.
At Frederick he took I-270 toward Washington. Traffic was light and he rolled right along in the right lane.
The storage place he had rented was in northeast Washington. Charon’s worst moment came as he backed the truck between the narrow buildings and nicked the corner of one. He inspected the damage—negligible, thank God—and tried it again. This time he got the truck right up to the open garage door of the storage bin he had rented last week.
The extra key on the ring fit the lock on the back of the truck. Charon unloaded the vehicle carefully but quickly. It wasn’t until he had the garage door down that he stood and took inventory.
Four handguns, rifles, ammo, medical supplies, food, canned water, clothes, and those green boxes with U.S. Army stenciled all over them. Charon opened each box and inspected the contents. He went through all the other items, examining everything.
Thirty minutes later he got into the truck and maneuvered it carefully out of the alley between the storage buildings.
It was going well, he decided. Everything was there, just as it should be. Getting everything done in time and in sequence, that was the difficulty. Still, it was do-able. Now to get this truck to Philly and pick up the car.
Henry Charon grinned as he came off the entrance ramp onto I-95 north. This was going to be his best hunt ever.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JACK Yocke was pecking randomly and morosely on his computer keyboard when Ott Mergenthaler walked by, then sat on the edge of the desk as he played with a piece of paper. “I read your story,” Ott said, “on the Jane Wilkens murder over in the Jefferson projects.”
“Umph.”
“It’s good, real good.”
“They aren’t going to run it now. Going to save it for some Sunday when they need some filler. If they run it at all.”
“It’s still a good story.”
“Too many murder stories are bad for a paper, y’know? The matrons in Bethesda don’t want to read that crap. The White House and political reporters take a
ll the space anyhow. What could possibly be more important than Senator Horsebutt’s carefully staffed and massaged opinion about what the Soviets ought to do to qualify for American foreign aid?”
“So what are you working on today?”
“Oh, just trying to get someone in the police or the DEA or the FBI or the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to say that there is a connection between the Harrington murder—he was the cashier at Second Potomac S and L—and the Judson Lincoln murder. Lincoln ran a chain of check-cashing outlets here in the metro area. Apparently they’ve just been sold to some outfit nobody ever heard of.”
“What makes you think the killings are connected?”
“The men were shot about four hours apart, apparently by professionals. Both were in finance. Harrington, at least, was laundering money for someone. Coincidence, maybe, but I got this feeling.”
“What do the pros say?”
“They aren’t saying anything. Absolutely nothing. They just listen and grunt ‘no comment.’ ”
“So what else is new?”
“The world just keeps on turning.”
“That’s page one news.”
“This rag needs some real reporters. Not blood-and-guts guys like me, but some dirt sniffers who will get the real news, like who Senator Horsebutt is fucking on Tuesday nights and an opinion from his doctor on how he manages. Perhaps a think-piece listing the names and vital statistics and track records of all of America’s top bimbos. Why are we scribbling stories about problems at the sewage farm when we could be picking on rich and famous assholes and selling a lot more papers?”
“Lighten up. And quit feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I’m maudlin, I know.” Yocke stretched and grinned. “But self-pity soothes a tortured soul, Ott. You ought to try it sometime.”
“I gave it up when I quit smoking.”
“What windmill are you tilting at today?”
“I don’t see my columns quite that way, Sancho. My literary efforts, short and sweet as they are, are really the beating heart of this newspaper that you so irreverently called a rag, the newspaper that pays your generous and unearned salary, by the way.”
Ott hoisted his cheeks off the desk. He tossed the paper he was holding in Yocke’s lap and walked away. Yocke unfolded it. On the sheet was Ott Mergenthaler’s column for tomorrow’s paper, printed in three columns.
Unnamed sources in the Justice Department were quoted as saying that the evidence against Chano Aldana was weak. An acquittal was a definite possibility. Ott chided, gently and eruditely, as was his style, the prosecutors and Justice Department officials who had induced a grand jury to indict on weak, hearsay evidence. He also carved off a polite piece of the administration officials who had moved heaven and earth to extradite a man from Colombia that they probably couldn’t convict.
Yocke refolded the paper and tossed it on top of one of his piles.
Mergenthaler’s column in the Post the following morning should have caused a two-kiloton explosion in William C. Dorfman’s office, but amazingly, no one on the White House staff saw it that morning. No staffer had time to read anything in the newspaper until early afternoon, because at seven a.m. a thunderbolt arrived from Havana: another Cuban revolution was in full swing.
The evening before in Havana army troops had fired upon a mass rally of over forty thousand people protesting the government’s food rationing policies. Some reports said over a hundred people had been killed and several hundred wounded: the casualty figures varied wildly from source to source. This morning half the army was locked in combat with troops loyal to Castro. A group of students had seized Radio Havana and were proclaiming a democracy.
The Washington Post staff, with better sources than the White House or the State Department, knew about the revolution at six-thirty a.m., only an hour after the students went on Radio Havana chanting, “Comunismo está muerto.” Communism is dead.
Jack Yocke heard the news at eight-oh-five at police headquarters. He charged out of the building and headed for the Post.
Breaking into a conference of editors in the newsroom, he blurted, “I speak Spanish.” None of the editors discussing how to cover the Cuba story seemed to hear him. He danced from foot to foot. This was his break, the one he had been waiting for. He knew!
He scurried off to find Ottmar Mergenthaler. The columnist was not at his desk. There he was, coming out of Bradlee’s office. Yocke intercepted him.
“Ott, I got to talk to you. You gotta help me. I gotta go to Cuba.”
“Sure, Jack. Sure.”
“I speak Spanish. I’ve been taking a class. You’re not listening, Ott! I write good blood-and-guts. Great blood-and-guts. I’ve paid my dues covering cops. I deserve a shot. Ott, you ancient idiot, I speak Spanish!”
“I’m listening, Jack. But I just write columns around here.”
“Be a pal. Go in and see Bradlee. Hell, call Donnie Graham if you have to. But get me to fucking Cuba!”
Mergenthaler stopped, took a deep breath, and rolled his eyes. Then he turned around and walked back toward Bradlee’s office. “Wait here, goddammit!” he growled when Yocke tagged along immediately behind him, threatening to step on his heels.
Ooooh boy, what a break this would be, Jack Yocke told himself as he waited. His big assets were that he was young, single, low salaried, and spoke Spanish … sort of. Callie Grafton would probably give him a C for his first semester. No reason to burden Ott or Bradlee with those trivial details, of course. As far as they were concerned he had no nervous family to bug the editors if he went and might even speak a little Spanish, like he claimed.
Every writer needs a war, at least one good one, to get famous in a hurry. You mix the blood and shit and booze together and anoint yourself and then, by God, you’re Ernest Hemingway.
There are just so damn few good wars anymore! A revolution in Cuba wouldn’t be a zinger like Korea or Vietnam, but Castro wouldn’t go quietly, without a fight. Whatever happened, it would be better than covering cops. Jack Yocke assured himself of that. He had the talent to make it something big if he got the chance.
Two minutes later Ott returned.
“Okay, Ben is going to talk to foreign. Better get your passport in case they decide to request a visa for you. But you’d be helping out the regulars. Remember that, Junior.”
Yocke grabbed the older man by his ears, pulled his head down and kissed him soundly on his tan, bald pate.
“Thanks, Ott,” Yocke called as he trotted away. “I owe you.”
That day Jack Yocke took the problems as they came. He encountered the first one when he got back to his apartment to throw some clothes in a bag.
What do you take to a revolution? Some underwear, sure. A suit and tie? Well, maybe. Why not? Tennis shoes would be good, some slacks and pullover shirts. Cuba’s in the tropics, right? But it might get chilly at night this time of year. Maybe a sweater or sweatshirt. Socks. He wadded all this stuff into a soft, fake-leather vinyl bag and tossed in a razor and toothbrush and toothpaste.
Cuba. In Latin America. Cuba’s bacteria have undoubtedly been recycled through fifty generations of immune natives and have probably grown virulent enough to disembowel a gringo, like the bacteria the Mexicans are so proud of. Yocke added all the antidiarrhea medicine in his bathroom to the bag.
His passport was in the top left drawer of his dresser, under the hankies. He didn’t bother packing any hankies.
With the encased laptop computer that he had signed for from the Post dangling from a strap over his shoulder and the fake-leather bag banging against his leg, he hailed a cab—hey, he was on the expense account—and rode with nervous anticipation back to the Post. He kept the cab waiting while he trotted into the building and rode up to the travel office.
Trying very hard to conceal his nervousness, he stood in line until he had his tickets and money. They were really going to let him go!
He didn’t feel safe until he was on his way to the airport. Then he sat b
ack and grinned broadly. This was his chance! All the writing he had ever done had been mere preparation for this story. And he felt confident. He was ready.
After he had checked his bag at the ticket counter and gotten his seat assignment, Jack Yocke wandered into a newsstand and bought a carton of Marlboros. He took the cigarette packs out of the carton and stuffed them around the computer inside its case. Fortunately there was room. Then he went to the bar and watched the latest news on the Cable News Network.
While Yocke was sipping coffee from a paper cup, one of the CNN White House correspondents assured the audience that President Bush was closely monitoring the situation in Cuba.
That statement had been given out by the White House press flacks upon the order of William C. Dorfman.
Actually the President was at that very moment discussing with Dorfman and the chairman of the national Republican party a matter more weighty than a revolution in Cuba. The American people had recently elected a larger Democratic House and Senate majority, and two of the loyal Republican congressmen who would be unemployed in January wanted government jobs.
Dorfman suggested ambassadorships: he named several possible small nations in sub-Sahara Africa. The national chairman thought the two Republican legislators might prefer to be assistant secretaries of something or other. “Who the hell wants to go to equatorial Africa?”
The men in the Oval Office had their feet up and were in no hurry. Dorfman had canceled most of the President’s regular schedule today so he would have plenty of time to closely monitor the Cuban thing.
At noon the President went down to the White House situation room for a briefing. He was back at twelve-fifteen and when lunch was brought in turned on the television to see what the media were saying. Various loyal army units in the provinces had capitulated to mobs that had besieged their barracks shouting for food. Fidel Castro had appeared on Havana television—the show ran thirty seconds of poor-quality tape—and blamed the “riots” by “counterrevolutionaries” on Yankee imperialists. He announced that the traitors who had seized Radio Havana that morning had been captured and shot.
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