by Clancy, Tom
Kat looked at her watch, then excused herself. She said she was going outside to call the senator. This was something he should know before he taped the show. “I owe you,” she said to Lucy as she left.
“I’ll want a comment from the senator,” Lucy said.
Kat nodded as she walked away. The reporter smiled and took the seat across from General Rodgers. The thirty-something woman had short blond hair, pale skin, thin red lips, and a hungry look.
There were all kinds of vampires in Washington.
“Lucky you were there,” Rodgers said.
“My middle name is Kay,” the reporter said. “My folks gave it to me so I could add it to Lucy whenever I wanted.”
“Cute,” Rodgers said.
“So, General,” Lucy said. “What about these rumors that Op-Center is being phased out?”
“Intelligence fund reapportionments are cyclical,” Rodgers said. “Op-Center got a boost five years ago, now they’re being cut back. They’re still beefier than they were when they started.”
That was longer than “nope.” Mike Rodgers was proud of himself—but only for a moment.
“They?” Lucy said.
That was a slip. Rodgers should have been more careful.
“General, are you going to work for Senator Orr and the USF?” Lucy asked. “Is that why you were at the party last night?”
“Nope,” he said.
“Nope?” Lucy said, her mouth twisting.
“Nope.” Words were a reporter’s oxygen supply. Cut it off, and they died.
“Sir, I am on your side, their side. I can help. The more leads I get, the more credibility I have, the more favorable press the senator gets. Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?”
“Yep,” he said.
She frowned. She reached into the PalmPilot carrying case and handed him a business card. “When you feel like talking, call me first.”
He tucked the card in his shirt pocket. He said nothing, though he did smile politely.
Kat returned then and said that the news had reached the senator right after he left.
“How did he hear about it?” Rodgers asked.
“From Nightline,” she replied. “They wanted him to know that they were going to go easy on the questions about Wilson because of this.”
Lucy got up to give Kat the seat. “Well, I’m going to get online and coin a name for our serial killer before someone else does. It will make an incredible book title one day.”
The reporter left while Rodgers and Kat finished their coffee.
“Well, that was a strange end to a very unusual day.”
“Strange in what way?”
“It started with me denying that Op-Center would ever fake evidence to get publicity and ended with me sitting here wondering if a reporter would kill people to get a book deal.”
The woman laughed. “Lucy is aggressive. But I don’t think she’s a killer.”
“Was she at the party last night?”
“Yes,” Kat said. “That was why she came over to me at the bar. To guarantee continued terrific coverage of the USF for continued A-list status.”
“Will you give it to her?”
“I said I’d talk to the senator,” Kat said. “But I’ll probably give it to her. Otherwise, she might become homicidal.”
Kat insisted on picking up the tab, after which Rodgers walked her to her car. There was no sexual tension, which was fine with him. It had been a long day. He was looking forward to catching Nightline and going to bed.
And for the first time in his life, General Mike Rodgers realized how utterly, sadly accurate the maxim about old soldiers truly was.
NINETEEN
Washington, D. C. Monday, 10: 55 P.M.
Darrell McCaskey was sitting in bed, reading and waiting for Maria to finish taking a shower. His wife had spent most of the day with Ed March, helping him investigate the Malaysian connection. March had taken her to dinner to thank her. McCaskey had been checking on Orr party guests and had been unable to join them.
Maria had just entered the bedroom when the phone beeped. It was Dr. Minnie Hennepin.
“The police are bringing in another apparent hotel homicide,” she told him. “They found the same kind of puncture wound as Mr. Wilson.”
“Who was it?” McCaskey asked as he put his book on the night table. He reached for the TV remote control and put on the local news.
“A Southern businessman. That’s all I heard.”
“Do the police have any information about the killer?”
“Apparently they have no more information than they had on the first one,” she said.
“Doctor, I appreciate the call,” McCaskey said.
Maria lay down beside her husband. He kissed his wife, then cradled her while he checked his cell phone for messages. There were no missed calls. He rang his office phone and found no messages there, either. That was going to make his next step an extremely difficult one.
The death of the businessman, Robert Lawless, was the lead story on the news. They listened to an interview with Lawless’s aide and watched a video shot from the security camera of the woman emerging on the mezzanine. She was careful to hide her face from the camera.
“What does your gut tell you about all this?” McCaskey asked his wife.
“She’s a professional.”
“Yeah. This is not some angry escort turning against men.”
“But what individual would have access to hypodermic needles and drugs?” she asked.
“Potassium chloride is readily available from chemical supply firms, and syringes are easy to come by.”
“Did you learn anything from the party guests?” she asked.
“Unless we’re dealing with a cover-up, all of the women had alibis,” McCaskey said.
The phone rang as they were talking. McCaskey muted the TV and checked the Caller ID. It was Paul Hood.
“I assume you’ve heard,” Hood said.
“Yes,” McCaskey replied.
Maria took the remote and punched up the sound. McCaskey put a finger in his ear so he could hear.
“Not to be cold about it, but how does this impact us?” Hood asked.
“I was just thinking about that, and it looks like a loselose-lose situation,” McCaskey said. “The Metro Police have not called to ask for our input. If we force it on them, we’re going to come off as aggressive. If we don’t, we’ll appear weak. If we investigate independently, we’ll seem isolated and high-handed.”
“What if we officially bow out?” Hood asked.
“Bailing is our best option,” McCaskey said. “Scotland Yard will squawk, but it’s unlikely anyone will hear. The trick is what spin do we put on it?”
Maria poked his side. “You can’t leave.”
McCaskey frowned.
“You stand a better chance of finding her than the police,” Maria went on.
“Hold on, Paul,” McCaskey said. He turned to his wife. “Why do you think we can find her?”
“She is not a killer. She is an assassin.”
“Why would an assassin go after a successful but relatively unimportant businessman like Lawless?”
“Exactly,” she said.
“I don’t follow.”
“Unlike the death of William Wilson, this murder was an afterthought,” Maria said. “Someone wanted Wilson out of the way, so they hired a very skilled individual who made it look as if he had died of natural causes. They did not want a murder. Otherwise, they could have hired a sniper to shoot him from Lafayette Park. When you destroyed that scenario, they were forced to target someone else, to make the Wilson death seem like the first high-profile strike of a hypodermic serial killer who was chasing down wealthy businessmen. Lawless happened to be the man she picked.”
“What makes you think that Lawless was an arbitrary choice?” McCaskey asked his wife.
“Look at the dissimilarities in the approach to the death,” the former Interpol agent told him. �
�William Wilson had bodyguards. The assassin had to approach him as a lover to get past them and make sure they stayed away. And because she was the lover of a high-profile individual, the hotel staff would have made a point of paying her very little attention. She came to the hotel, they did their business, she left—all of it relatively invisible. Tonight was different. Listen to these interviews,” she said, pointing at the TV. “The woman spoke with another man in the courtyard but never looked up at him. The dead man’s assistant noticed her, but she did not let him see her face. She was being very cautious.”
“Right. She did not want to be identified, because she was waiting to kill him,” her husband said.
“No. After the killing, she got off on the mezzanine,” Maria said. “She had already cased out the hotel, knew how to leave with minimum visibility. Why do that and then go back outside and expose herself to all of this scrutiny? If Lawless had been the intended target all along, she could have posed as his wife or daughter and gotten into the room. She could have ambushed a housekeeper and taken a master key. She could have knocked on his door after he had gone in. Who would not admit a young woman? She could have used a syringe to inject hydrochloric acid into the lock to dissolve it. She took none of those safer routes because our assassin did not know Lawless was going to be her victim. Not until she spoke with him, found out he was successful enough to fit the serial killer motif she—or whoever hired her—had invented, and learned that he was staying in the hotel alone.”
McCaskey was silent while he processed everything his wife had said. “You’re saying that making this appear to be a pattern actually underscores the uniqueness of the first hit,” McCaskey said.
“That is how I see it,” Maria replied.
“It’s possible,” he muttered after a long, long moment. “Dammit, it really is. Brava, my love.”
She smiled at him.
“Paul, did you hear any of that?”
“I did, Darrell, and I’m still processing it,” Hood told him. “But tell Maria ‘well done.’ ”
“Thank you!” she said from under her husband’s arm.
“It sounds like we’re going to have to stay involved with this, then,” Hood said.
“Maybe even deeper than we were before,” McCaskey said.
If Maria had nailed this, they were not looking at a vengeful escort or industrial espionage. They were looking at something strongly reminiscent of what the FBI called an IOS, an improvised operational scenario. One in which the carefully devised plans for a strike team, undercover personnel, or sometimes both had to be quickly and effectively reconfigured because something had gone wrong.
An operation that was traditionally handled by seasoned intelligence personnel.
TWENTY
Washington, D. C. Tuesday, 7:13 A.M.
Paul Hood had gone home for a long sleep, shower, then returned to Op-Center. He was wiped out from a day that was spent mostly with Ron Plummer, reviewing the restructuring of Op-Center. The investigation was also draining. It was not just a chess game but a chess game on multiple levels. Overinvolvement to help Scotland Yard might damage relations with the Metro Police. A concession to the police might weaken Hood’s credibility not just with the Yard but with other intelligence agencies. Spending money on a non–core operation might hurt Hood’s standing with the CIOC and with Op-Center employees who were going to be hard-pressed to do their existing jobs. In one sense, it was a hell of a challenge. In another, it was daunting and exhausting.
The previous afternoon had been so full that Hood did not have an opportunity to call his former wife. When he finally did have the time, it was nearly eleven P.M. Sharon would probably be asleep or with Jim Hunt. In any case, Hood preferred to talk with her when he was fresh. It helped him deal with whatever feelings of entitlement or bitterness she might spray his way.
Ironically, just before he phoned her, Matt Stoll called. He said that he understood the staff cuts and could do a lot of the maintenance work, paperwork, “the gruntwork” himself. But he said he needed at least another set of hands to help him. Cheap hands. “Monkey hands,” he said.
There was something about that image which amused Hood. He knew a chimp they could hire.
He was disappointed with the crankiness in his soul, but the hurt was there and it wasn’t going away. As long as he didn’t communicate that to Sharon, no harm was done.
Sharon was rushed, as usual, when he called. She was going to work out, and her trainer—another addition to her new life—did not like it when she was late. She was also polite but formal, as Hood had come to expect. He got the words out quickly. Otherwise, he would have changed his mind about telling her that he had found an internship for Frankie Hunt.
“It’s with Matt Stoll,” Hood told her. “He’ll be working on put-the-square-peg-in-the-square-hole stuff. Inventory and routing software and hardware upgrade notifications.”
“Great,” Sharon said. “Thanks.”
She really did sound grateful. That made him uncomfortable. Sharon was happy because he was helping his goddamn replacement. There was a point at which a good soldier became an idiot. He felt he had crossed that.
“E-mail me his contact information,” Hood told her, continuing because he had no choice. “I’ll order an expedited background check, and we can go from there.”
“Will do,” she said. “Frankie is a good kid.”
“I’m sure he is,” Hood said pleasantly. It was filler, but he could not think of anything else to say. Anything civil, that is.
Since the children had already left for school, the call ended with a pair of unsentimental good-byes. Hood sat there for a moment, looking at the phone. He wanted to slam his fist on it but did not. The phone was not his enemy. He was. Mr. Cooperative, the mediator, the nice guy.
The idiot.
As with Senator Debenport the day before, an early-morning phone conversation ended with Hood feeling as if he had been someone’s stooge. He hoped this did not become a pattern. It might make him insecure, and crises did not yield to men of caution. At the same time, Hood could not afford to become overly bold and push Op-Center deeper into areas where it had no legitimate business.
Both extremes were tested when Darrell McCaskey arrived. McCaskey came to see Hood with something that had been on his mind all morning: the name of the only individual who fit Maria’s quick-sketch profile.
“Admiral Kenneth Link,” McCaskey said. “He’s a former head of covert ops with the CIA, he’s got an anti-European agenda, and he knew where William Wilson was staying.”
“Okay, so Link did not like the man’s policies,” Hood said. “What does he gain by removing Wilson?”
“I’m not sure,” McCaskey admitted. “But I can’t dismiss the possibility.”
“Fair enough. Talk it out.”
“A prominent Brit dies abroad after a sexual encounter,” McCaskey said. “The Fleet Street tabloids are all over that. Wilson’s death not only cripples and probably terminates the new banking venture, it affects the stock price of his company. The tawdriness of what happened hurts the value even more. In short, Wilson’s death shuts down a potential threat to the American economy.”
“Right,” Hood replied. “But doesn’t that help the current administration and not Senator Orr?”
“Just the opposite, I would think,” McCaskey said. “If the rumors about Orr are true, he is going to come out and effectively promote a strong policy of isolationism. Wilson’s death gives the senator a salacious, Eurocentric target, someone the president’s endorsed successor can’t hit.”
“Because, like us, the president has overseas alliances to protect.”
McCaskey nodded. “Orr wouldn’t care about that. His only concern is the American electorate.”
“That might also be a rival’s concern,” Hood said. “Someone could be looking to frame Link and stop a credible threat to the two-party system.”
“It’s possible,” McCaskey admitted.
Hood s
hook his head. “One problem I have with your theory, Darrell, is that Wilson was as viable a target for Orr alive as he was dead. In fact, if Wilson were alive, his European banking operation might have won Don Orr even more support.”
“But we’re not talking about the senator,” McCaskey reminded him. “We’re talking about Admiral Link.”
“I understand that. But I’m still not clear what he could possibly gain. Why would he want to hurt Orr’s rhetoric by eliminating William Wilson?”
“That is the big question,” McCaskey said.
“It’s also one I’m not sure Op-Center needs to answer,” Hood said. “We agreed to stick a finger in this for Scotland Yard. The more I look at it, the more it does not seem like a crisis.”
“That depends on your definition of crisis,” McCaskey said. “I see a person or persons who were able to move quickly when their killing was exposed. That suggests a conspiracy, one that may involve the office of a United States senator. Give me a little more time to research this, Paul. Let me take a closer look at Kenneth Link and Orr’s staff.”
“What about Mike?” Hood asked. “Would you involve him?”
“I’m not sure,” McCaskey said.
Neither man said what was obviously on both of their minds. Would Mike give his loyalty to the old team or the new? Was it even fair to put him in that position?
A chess game with multiple levels, Hood thought.
Hood called Liz Gordon’s office. She was not in yet, and he left a message for her to see him when she arrived. He wanted her to whip up a quick-sketch profile of Link. Then he turned to his computer and brought up the Senate’s secure home page. The staff directory was accessible only to government officials. Hood looked up Orr’s office staff. Admiral Link was not there, of course, since he was only involved in the United States First Party.
“Do we know anything about Katherine Lockley and Kendra Peterson?” Hood asked.
“A little,” McCaskey said. He leaned over Hood, typed his password on the keyboard, and opened the file he had collected on Senator Orr’s staff.