by David Lender
Olsen said, “I urge you to reconsider. I’m not happy to reiterate our failures, but remember what happened to McCloskey.”
“That happened because of this data, not McCloskey’s actions as whistleblower on the Myriad painkiller. Once I make this public, what’s done is done. At that point what incentive does anyone have to harm me?”
“Retribution. And you’ll be just as dead whether it’s before or after you disclose the data.”
Dani felt his words like a kick in the gut.
“Dani,” she heard Olsen say as she left the conference room.
She heard footsteps behind her. She turned. Eugene handed her a piece of paper. “An aide on McKean’s staff. The guy we’ve been talking to about getting you onto the agenda for the hearings. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll call him and put in a good word for you. Good luck.” Dani heard other footsteps on the marble floor. Angela Stevens approached her.
“I’ve got this, Eugene,” she said and punched the elevator button. “We need to talk. I’ll ride down with you.”
Dani’s spine went cold. She wasn’t looking forward to going anywhere with this bitch, even to the lobby. When the elevator doors opened, they both got on. Angela hit the button for the 2nd floor. “We don’t have much time. Let me tell you that most of what all of us have said to you is bullshit. Except for Eugene, that is, who’s the best thing that’s come into this office in the ten years I’ve worked here. Olsen’s had an all-hands-on-deck alert in our office since Friday when Maguire was murdered. We’ve been tracking you, following you as well as we could since then. My compliments. You’ve made yourself invisible when you’ve wanted to. By the way, you should continue to keep your BlackBerry turned off and keep switching prepaid cell phones. We have the first two identified. And tell your mom to stay off her phone. Our cell tower triangulations say she’s on the road toward Washington. She keeps calling you, but your phone must be turned off.”
Dani was stunned. This woman who had been such a harridan, now seemingly her ally. What was going on? And Mom on the way to DC?
“You’re right. We never got what we needed from Maguire,” Angela continued, “but we figured he’d handed it off to you, so we’ve been trying to make sure you got it to us. And tell us what it means. We figured you’d find us sooner or later, given your relationship with McCloskey. But we hadn’t planned on how much help the killer would have, or how good you’d be at staying underground to keep us from reaching you.”
Dani looked at Angela with dawning respect. This tough nut was on her side after all.
Angela kept going. “The Office of Special Counsel’s cause isn’t yours. Ken Olsen is after Madsen. And, yes, he’s been using you as bait to draw out the killer he thinks is working for Madsen. So he figures, we get the data for a major, explosive disclosure about damage from vaccines, plus, bring down Madsen. Olsen’s after Madsen because Madsen’s done this before. Snuffed out the opposition in his so-called holy crusade to rid the world of whatever he thinks it needs purifying of. He’s a psycho.”
Dani almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This bitch who’d been so difficult, now standing face-to-face with her on the elevator, telling her more than she needed to know. Angela looked up at the numbers as the elevator descended.
“Take off your clothes,” Angela said.
“What?”
“I said strip to your underwear. We’re switching clothes.” Angela was wearing a pinstriped business suit with a skirt and one of those blouses with ruffles and the fold-over tie around the neck. Lawyer stuff.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Strip, now,” Angela said. “We’ve had people following you since Friday. Or at least trying. You keep losing them. But we’ve got two cars outside with FBI agents in them. I’m leaving here dressed as you. I’ll take a cab to draw them off. You wait twenty minutes, then get lost, do what you need to do.”
“But if they’re FBI, won’t I be better off, protected by them?”
“I don’t know what Olsen’s thinking right now, but he may figure with what we’ve already got on Madsen, the data gives him enough to haul him in and charge him. Conspiracy. Murder.”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
“He has you hauled in, too, to get the data from you. Under those circumstances I have no idea how long it takes to get exposed. Plus I don’t trust him: he’s got his own agenda, and all kinds of special powers associated with his office, and God knows how many people he’s in bed with. Maybe he uses the data as leverage to cut a deal with Madsen where Madsen cops a plea in exchange for Olsen burying the data. Who knows? But priority number one is you getting that information in front of McKean’s committee tomorrow.”
Dani started taking her clothes off.
“I have an autistic nephew,” Angela said. “He’s six. He was normal until two years old. Then he went behind a cloud, lost his speech, and never came back.” Now she looked up into Dani’s eyes. “I don’t know whether it was the vaccinations or not, but you need to get this stuff into the right hands.”
They exchanged clothes. The elevator door opened and Angela pushed the button for the 7th floor. She pulled a baseball cap from her purse, curled her blonde hair underneath it. When the doors opened on the 7th floor, Angela eased Dani off the elevator. The floor was dark except for the emergency exit lights at each end of the hallway. “Wait here for at least twenty minutes,” Angela whispered. “Good luck.” As the doors started to close, Angela blocked them with her hand and they slid back. She stood in front of Dani, placed her hands on Dani’s cheeks and kissed her on the forehead. “You go, girl. You’re almost there.” The elevator doors closed and she was gone. Dani felt tears fill her eyes. Dani waited twenty minutes. When she left the building she tried not to look from side to side. After she got two blocks away she began to run.
Madsen paced in his hotel room. He was supposed to be having dinner with Fahnstock, the Commissioner of the FDA, who was shitting in his pants over McKean’s hearings, but Madsen had canceled. He was too twisted up over this thing with the girl, juggling the contractor, and now dealing with Stiles. Then he’d seen the evening news. He dialed the prepaid cell phone. “Yeah,” the contractor said.
“Have you seen the news on the shooting this evening?” “Do you think I’m sitting around in my room watching TV?” “They have a description from a couple of witnesses of the shooter: shaved head, blue eyes, acne-scarred face. Similar description from the Maguire murder in New York. Sound like anybody you know?”
The contractor didn’t answer.
Madsen said, “And now McCloskey’s body has been found by the NYPD, and they’ve announced he was murdered. Shot. Soon they’ll be connecting the dots, if they haven’t already.”
The contractor said, “Anything else?”
“I don’t have any more information on the girl’s whereabouts, but I should point out that you have more on the line than just money to get that data and silence the girl.”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job.”
Madsen was ready to fire back that based on results so far, maybe he did. But he held himself in check. “The man you shot. Was he traveling with the girl?”
“Yeah.”
Madsen sat down heavily. Blum. My God. “No chance on the girl?”
“Too many people around to go fishing through her pockets for the data, so I only dropped the guy. Smarter to do what I did, so she’s on the run by herself. It’ll slow her down.”
Madsen had lost any desire to continue the call. “That’s all I’ve got,” he said.
He walked into the bathroom to splash some water on his face. It cleared his head. This was worse than awful. If the police tied Blum’s, McCloskey’s and Maguire’s murders together, and back to the contractor, there was a chance they could trace them back to him. He’d been careful, but he couldn’t forget that Stiles was out there, too, waffling. Catch the contractor and flip him, then flip Stiles and it’s lights ou
t.
Stark got off the phone. After shooting the guy this evening he’d started wearing his wig and sunglasses again. But he’d gotten the message from the client: the cops would do the ballistics work on the guy here in DC and tie it together to Maguire and McCloskey in New York. He shrugged. He could get a new Ruger when this job was finished. He chuckled about the client telling him his stakes were raised. Like he needed the extra incentive to get the girl. He rubbed his eyes; they were still itchy and watery. He started walking.
Dani stopped running. She turned onto Rhode Island Avenue NW, walked another two blocks, then reversed her direction. She wasn’t sure what to look for, but she was reasonably certain no one was following her. She tried to catch up with her emotions. Hope, as she’d entered the Office of Special Counsel, hope destroyed by Olsen when she’d learned they’d been using her as bait. Shock when Angela told her the FBI was stalking Madsen, and might even be tailing her. Fatigue that she was dodging tails like in spy movies. An hour ago she thought this nightmare might end, but now it seemed to have taken a darker turn. And that blue-eyed assassin was still out there someplace.
She pulled out one of her cell phones and the piece of paper Eugene had given her, then dialed Roland Waters, the McKean aide.
“I’ve been expecting your call,” Waters said. “If you have what the folks at OSC are telling us, you’ll make a real splash in our hearings.”
“Tell me where to go and I’ll show you.”
He directed her to the Russell Senate Office Building, adjacent to the Capitol, where most Senate offices were located. A guard at the First Street entrance had her name and directed her upstairs. The marble stairs had rounded edges and depressions, the brass banisters were worn smooth. The place felt like a government building: old, well-used and serious. When she arrived at the 2nd floor, she detected a faint odor of cigar smoke emanating from one of the offices. People are still here! Half the senators’ doors were open, even on a Sunday night, and a few men wearing suits, their ties loosened, hurried past her in the wide hall. When she reached office number 241, the door was open. It wasn’t large, perhaps 12 x 15 feet, but it had an air of distinction. Photographs of Senator McKean, some from his military years, adorned the walls. The furniture was all oiled antiques, the rug a worn oriental. She felt a flicker of apprehension. A man was seated in front of an imposing pedestal desk covered with photographs and piles of papers and files. His back was to her. She knocked on the door frame.
“Roland?”
The man turned, stood and grinned. He was about 35, with thinning hair and owlish, bloodshot eyes. He was dressed casually, in khakis and a polo shirt. “Dani. Come in,” he said, extending his hand. His smile broadened. Dani felt relief. He seemed approachable and friendly, not at all what she’d been expecting.
They worked for a half hour with chairs pulled up to his laptop at a coffee table off to the side of the Senator’s desk. After Dani took Waters through the files on the disk, he created two PowerPoint slides from Salisbury’s summary: the first of the Project Epsilon study parameters, the second of the results.
“Two slides should do it,” he said as much to himself as to Dani. He looked up at her. “I spoke to the Senator before you arrived. He said if your data checked out we could put you up for testimony in the first group, at 9:00 a.m. He’ll call you a material witness. He can arrange Secret Service protection for you and hold the police at arm’s length until after you testify, as long as you’ll turn yourself in afterward. No more running. You up to it?”
Dani felt a tremor in her chest. Now not nerves; anticipation. One more step and she could get her life back, go home. Home to Gabe. She imagined hugging him, pressing his head to her chest, stroking his hair. Her throat welled up. “I can’t wait.”
FIFTEEN
THE WARDMAN PARK WASN’T LIKE any other Marriott Cindy had ever seen. It made her think of Ray, and the way they used to travel, Cindy handling all the arrangements and Ray just showing up to drive, making the kids laugh and, because every so often a fan recognized a lineman, signing an autograph. But never a lobby like this, she thought. She wondered about Dani, where she was, where she was staying. She checked her cell phone again; no return call, from either Dani’s cell phone or that other number she’d called Cindy from. Over eighteen hours.
Cindy tried Grover’s office again. Still voicemail. She thought a man of Grover’s stature would have someone covering his office phone even this early on a Monday morning. She didn’t leave a message this time, either. She wanted to speak to someone live.
An hour later, at 8:00 a.m., she got through.
“Mr. Madsen’s office,” the assistant said.
“Good morning. I understand Grover is out of the office, but I need to speak with him urgently. My name is Cindy Jackson. He knew me before I was married as Cindy Bouchard. May I please have his cell phone number?”
“I’m sorry Ms. Jackson, but we don’t give out Mr. Madsen’s number.”
“Grover will understand. I need to speak with him. This is a matter of—” and she paused for emphasis, “—life and death.” Cindy wondered if the life or death phrase ever worked. Unfortunately, in this case, no.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t give out his number.”
“Then get him a message immediately, please. This is urgent.” Cindy’s heart was beginning to swell in her chest and she had to force back her emotions. She’d come to this conversation steeled to the resistance she knew she would encounter, but hadn’t bargained for the impact her own words would have on her.
“He’s out of town.”
“I know that. He’s in Washington, DC, and so am I, and I need to see him.”
“I can’t just interrupt Mr. Madsen because someone from his past calls and wants to speak with him. I’m sorry—”
“Miss, I’m not just someone from Grover’s past. He was my boyfriend when he was in medical school. Trust me. He’ll remember me.”
“He can’t be disturbed.”
“Yes, he can. If you don’t get a message to him, there will be blood on your hands.”
It stopped her for a moment. “What do you mean?”
“I already told you this is a matter of life and death. Only he can intervene to resolve it.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Tell him it’s about his daughter.” Cindy left her cell phone number and hung up. Afterward she wondered if she’d said enough to make him call her back. She wrung her hands, wondering.
Madsen sat at Rep. Tillman’s desk in his office in the Rayburn House Office Building. Newest and shittiest of the Congressional buildings. It didn’t matter that much, but he thought it was ridiculous that Lautenberg hadn’t come through for him, the prick, and that Chuck Schumer had pretended he’d be using his office when Madsen knew he’d be out on a fishing boat in Long Island sound with Sandy Ellison, the CEO of KellerDorne. Tillman’s office was a mixture of nouveau riche crap and keeping-up-with-the-Joneses photos of Tillman with every luminary and faux luminary the freshman congressman could conjure up.
Madsen looked up from his notes for his upcoming testimony, saw a photo of Tillman and his wife. Yikes. Tillman couldn’t have been more than 40, but his wife looked 15 years older. Either the guy had an Oedipus complex, or the old girl had been around the track a few times before she met Tillman. Tillman walked in. Madsen stood up. “Daniel,” he said, “I didn’t think you’d need your office until the afternoon. Let me get out of your hair.”
“No, no. I don’t want to interrupt you. Please, sit.” Tillman had a look on his face like he’d just puked. Or was about to.
“What’s wrong?” Madsen was at least six inches taller than Tillman. It was one of those “what’s wrong with this picture” moments. Madsen behind Tillman’s own desk, Tillman looking back at him like a scared nine-year-old ready to get a shellacking for throwing a baseball through the garage window.
“I just got off the phone with one of McKean’s aides.” Tillman sat down
in one of the chairs in front of his desk. He seemed to be waiting, so Madsen sat down, too.
“And?”
“Seems that Dani North is scheduled to testify at 9:00 a.m., the same time slot you are. I don’t know what’s up, but McKean’s aid was kind of breathless. Like he was excited about it.”
Madsen felt his stomach drop. “You gotta be kidding me.” He regretted the words immediately and tried appear casual. “What on earth could she contribute to the hearings?”
Tillman frowned. “I’m not sure. But these guys are shrewd. Sounds like a sucker punch to me.”
Madsen couldn’t have said it better himself. The pricks. Putting the little bitch on at the same time he was scheduled to testify. Would they jump her in front of him? Or put her on as a rebuttal to him. He couldn’t decide which was worse.
“Well, we’ll just have to see what she says,” Madsen said.
“He also told me she’s been scheduled to speak to the press on the Capitol East Front steps immediately after her testimony.” Tillman looked away, then back at Madsen. “Usually that means they expect what she has to say will be pretty…,”—his voice trailed off as he seemed to be searching for the right word—“electrifying.”
Madsen’s hands clamped together like he had the bitch by the throat. “Well, we’ll just have to see what she has to say. Thanks for the heads-up, Daniel.” Madsen looked back at his notes. If there was any justice in the world the bitch would choke on a bagel.
Tillman stood up and started out. “You want me to leave the door open or closed?”
“Closed would be great, Daniel. And thanks again for the use of your office. I’ll be out of here shortly.”
Alone, Madsen barked, “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” The only explanation was that the girl still had the data, had figured out what it meant, and was prepared to expose it. Otherwise, why would McKean’s people let her speak first? And it meant the information had gone all the way up to McKean, because it was his hearing, and he wouldn’t let the bitch testify without personally approving it.