by Stuart Woods
“Well, before you make a decision to run this story, let me explain something to you about this woman. She is the head of the Criminal Division of the United States Justice Department. Do you understand what that means?”
“All right, tell me,” Gaynes said.
“It means that all the United States attorneys report to her on criminal matters.”
“So?”
“Making this recording is a criminal matter—it’s against the law. Do you see where I’m heading here?”
“I think I get the picture,” Gaynes said. “If we run it, we get busted by the feds.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“So we can’t run it.”
“Not as such. We can’t even allude to this conversation, because if we do, Ortega will immediately know that we could only have gotten it by taping her phone conversations. Not only would we be charged with illegal wiretapping, but she would have her house swept for bugs in a flash, and no more telephone tapes.”
“So how are we going to handle this?” Gaynes asked.
“The story that ran yesterday, which was just supposition, set her off and made her get indiscreet on the phone. We need more stuff about Stanton and Wharton, stuff we can back up. If we can get that, then Ortega might get even madder, and who knows where that could lead. We’ve got a couple of weeks before the election, so let me put more people on Stanton and Wharton, and more people on Stanton and Ortega when they were in Sacramento, and we’ll see what we come up with. If we can get something more concrete we can name Ortega and blow the lid off the whole thing.”
“Well, get your ass on it!” Gaynes said. “Spend whatever you have to!”
55
TODD BACON LANDED HIS AIRPLANE AT PEACHTREE DEKALB AIRPORT, AN ATLANTA general aviation field, then rented a car and drove to the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, only ten minutes away. He ordered some dinner from room service, set up his laptop, and got online.
He had no evidence of where Teddy Fay was or what his plans were, but the Reverend Henry King Johnson was easier to find, since he published his travel schedule, like any candidate, on his website. Johnson was traveling, mostly in the Southeast, and Todd tried to put himself in Teddy’s shoes. If I were Teddy, he asked himself, where would I kill Johnson? He’d worry about how later.
Todd looked for locations that were outside large population areas like Atlanta and Charlotte; Teddy would find smaller venues easier to deal with and, most important, easier to run from. His airplane was likely to be his escape vehicle, so Todd went through Johnson’s schedule, looking for smaller cities with airports nearby. There was only one stop on the reverend’s campaign trail that fit the bill.
Amelia Island was an expensive resort community near Fernandina Beach, just east of Jacksonville, Florida. Todd, being a southerner and the son of a flying southerner, had visited there with his father as a teenager. They had landed at Fernandina Airport and spent a weekend playing golf.
Then he noticed something even more attractive on the schedule. The reverend was to perform a marriage ceremony on Cumberland Island, the next up from Fernandina Beach. Todd had visited there once, too, with his parents. They had stayed at Greyfield Inn and had taken a nature tour with a guide in an old truck. The place was mostly national seashore now, so the number of visitors was restricted to the inn and a campground that had a capacity of a couple of dozen. The marriage was to take place in the old slave village, now mostly deserted but maintained. Todd remembered that John F. Kennedy, Jr., and his wife had been married there, in the tiny village church, which Todd had visited with his parents.
He found a map of the island on the Internet and, right in the middle of it, the grass landing strip where his father had landed the family Bonanza. He remembered that they had had to buzz the strip before landing, to clear away the wild horses and feral pigs that foraged there. The inn was south of the airstrip, and the slave village was north of it. Teddy could get in there in his airplane, do what he planned to do, and get out in a hurry, and, flying low, he would be virtually untrackable.
Todd went through Johnson’s schedule once more, which ran right up to election day, and Cumberland Island seemed Teddy’s best choice. Amelia Island would do for a backup, but the place was fully built up, and there would be other people at the Fernandina Airport.
The wedding was three days away, and Todd started looking on the Internet for an airplane to rent at Peachtree DeKalb Airport. He jotted down a couple of numbers and would phone them in the morning.
Todd watched a movie on TV and got to bed early, tired from his long flight. He fell asleep and dreamed of stopping one murder and committing another.
MARTIN STANTON WAS RATTLED, first by the appearance of the National Inquisitor article and then by the phone call from Barbara. And as if that were not enough, he had a phone call from his lawyer.
“This is not good, Marty,” Jake said. “I was supposed to get the signed settlement from Betty’s attorney today, and it hasn’t arrived.”
“Shit,” Stanton said.
“I have no way of knowing whether either of them has seen the Inquisitor piece, but I think we should assume that they have.”
“Jake,” Stanton said, “I give you full authority to deny the Inquisitor thing on my behalf. It’s nothing but scurrilous supposition, based on nothing but hunches. I am not having an affair with anybody. I go to bed, exhausted, every single night after half a dozen campaign appearances and speeches. I have neither the time nor the inclination to be screwing anybody.”
“I’ll do what I can, Marty. If I don’t hear from her attorney, I’ll call first thing tomorrow morning and have at him.”
“If they don’t deliver by noon, sue. Thanks, Jake, and good night.” Stanton hung up and looked at the naked Liz, propped up on an elbow beside him in bed. “You and I have to deny everything,” he said.
“Well, of course we do, sugar,” she said, dallying with his crotch.
The phone rang.
“I’d better answer this,” Stanton said, picking it up. “Hello?”
“This is the White House operator,” a woman’s voice said. “I have the president for you.”
“Yes, of course.” He covered the receiver with his hand. “It’s the president,” he whispered to Liz.
She lay back and pulled the covers over her head.
“Marty?”
“Yes, Will. How are you?”
“I’ve been better. I suppose you’ve heard about this Inquisitor thing.”
“Somebody showed it to me late this afternoon. I’d never even heard of that publication until that moment.”
“I’ve heard of it, and it can be troublesome. It’s not so much that anybody really believes what they write, it’s the fact that the mainstream press, once they’ve seen something there, have a basis to start asking questions.”
“Well, if they start asking, I’m prepared to answer them.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Worse comes to worst, we have on our side that you and Betty are practically divorced, so both you and Liz are single. You are practically divorced, aren’t you?”
“We are. In fact, we were supposed to get the signed settlement today, which is the last step before getting a decree from a court.”
“That’s good. I’m prepared to back you with the press, Marty, but I think it’s in your interest to tell them the truth. We don’t want this to come back and bite us on the ass later.”
“I understand, Will, and I appreciate your confidence.”
Liz was making her way across the bed and was now exploring Stanton’s crotch with her tongue.
Stanton gave a little gasp.
“Sorry, Marty,” the president said. “What was that?”
“Mosquito, Will.”
“I didn’t know they had mosquitoes in Denver in late October.”
“It’s probably been trapped in this hotel since August,” Stanton said, running his fingers through Liz’s hair.
“We’ll talk again
,” the president said. “Good-bye for now.”
“Bye, Will.” Stanton hung up and gave his undivided attention to what Liz was doing to him.
56
TODD BACON BEGAN MAKING PHONE CALLS FIRST THING IN THE MORNING, AND HE soon found a late-model Bonanza for rent. He called Greyfield Inn on Cumberland Island, where he knew the owners. He managed to book a room for two nights and got permission to land on the grass-and-sand strip near Stafford Beach, in the middle of the island. He also got their help in renting an old pickup truck that a local owned and arranged for them to leave it for him at the strip.
He checked out of the hotel, drove out to the airport, and presented his pilot’s license and medical certificate to the renters of the Bonanza. Then he took half an hour’s checkride, to show them he could handle the airplane.
“You’ll do,” the other pilot said, and Todd performed a respectable landing. He gave the people his credit card number and was given the keys to the airplane.
He turned in his rental car, tossed his bag into the rear of the Bonanza, started the engine, and took off in perfect weather. He didn’t file a flight plan; instead, he flew toward Stone Mountain, the second-largest piece of granite in the world, at two thousand feet above ground level, in order to stay under the Class B airspace of Atlanta, then, when he was clear, climbed to twelve thousand and leaned out the engine. The airplane would do better than 180 knots, and he had a decent tailwind, too.
As he flew south and east the landscape flattened and became more agricultural, and two hours later he was descending, with Cumberland Island in sight. The island was the typical leg-of-lamb shape, with the pointed end at the south, and he was at two thousand feet when he spotted the airstrip. As he anticipated, half a dozen of the island’s wild horses were grazing on the strip, and he flew over at fifty feet to scatter them before he turned and lined up for landing. He had to dodge a couple of potholes left by the rooting feral pigs that were common on the island.
He saw the rented pickup at the end of the field, taxied up to it, and cut the engine. He locked the aircraft and looked around for others. There were none in sight. He got the pickup started and drove slowly around the perimeter of the field, checking to be sure that no airplane was tucked away in the trees.
Satisfied, he drove south on the island’s only road toward the inn. Cumberland Island had been bought after the Civil War by Thomas Carnegie, brother of the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, as a family retreat. Carnegie buit a large mansion for his family, manned by a village of three hundred workers who tended to the house and the island. He had no sons, but as his daughters grew into womanhood, he built a house for each of them, one of which, Greyfield, was now the inn.
He parked in front of the colonial house, with its huge live oak trees out front, dripping with Spanish moss. He checked into his room, found a book in the inn’s library, and sat in a rocker on the front porch reading and listening. Any airplane landing on the island could be heard from here.
A young woman brought him a glass of iced tea, which he accepted gratefully. “Tell me,” he said, “have any other airplanes landed on the island today or yesterday?”
“None at all,” she replied, “though we’re expecting a couple tomorrow, carrying a wedding party. The wedding is day after tomorrow, and some of them are staying here.”
“Thanks,” he said, and went back to his book.
As midafternoon passed, Todd got into the pickup again and drove north. Using a local map he found the slave village, where he stopped and got out. There were a few tiny cottages, all unoccupied, and the church. Todd walked around it, looking underneath, where there was only a crawl space behind latticework. He walked into the church and found an elderly black woman sweeping it out with a homemade broom.
“Good afternoon,” she said to him.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. You getting ready for the wedding tomorrow?”
“That’s right, suh,” she said in the low-country accent of the locals.
“It’s a pretty church,” he said, looking around.
“We likes to think it is,” she replied.
“Good day, then,” he said, and left.
“And de same to you, suh,” she replied, and went back to her sweeping.
She was the only person Todd had seen on the island outside the inn, and he didn’t think Teddy Fay was good enough at disguises to pass for an old black lady.
Todd drove on north, stopping once to watch a couple of good-sized alligators in a stream. He passed Plum Orchard, a Palladian mansion built by Carnegie for one of his daughters, now unoccupied. He saw deer, armadillos and other small wildlife, and hundreds of birds. He reached the beach and drove farther north, passing what must have been a flock of five hundred brown pelicans grouped on the beach.
He turned around and drove south on the beach at thirty miles an hour and saw not a soul until he reached the turnoff for the inn, where he saw a man filling potholes on the narrow road. He was back at the inn in time for a nap, and he left his window open to catch the sound of an airplane, which didn’t arrive.
He had an excellent dinner at a long table in the dining room with other guests and chatted with a few people. He had an after-dinner brandy, then retired to his room and his book.
Todd dozed off, then woke and switched his bedside light off and slept.
He was wakened in the night by the sound he had been waiting for. A small airplane was flying over the island to the north. He checked the bedside clock: three-ten a.m. Todd got out of bed, dressed, strung his holster on his belt, and crept out of the inn. He got the pickup started and drove north. There was a moon out, and he didn’t need headlamps, so he switched them off.
He stopped the truck in the trees a hundred yards from the airstrip and got out, taking care not to slam the door. He walked to the edge of the moonlit field and looked around. No sign of an airplane. He stood still and listened. No sound of anyone walking or coughing or talking. Taking his time, he walked the perimeter of the field, staying in the trees. Once he awakened a rattlesnake a few yards away, which gave its warning noise, then slipped away into the woods. He was glad he hadn’t stepped on it.
It took him an hour to walk around the whole field, but finally he was satisfied that no airplane had landed there. He walked back to the truck and drove back to the inn, then returned gratefully to bed.
TEDDY, ON THE OTHER HAND, was still at work. Judging the airstrip to be too far from the slave village to carry his equipment, he had landed on the beach in the moonlight and had pushed the aircraft between two dunes and partially covered it with brush.
Then he had picked up his case and the other gear and begun walking up a rutted road that led to the slave village. He did his work there, then returned, less burdened, to the airplane, where he got out a sleeping bag and made his bed under a wing, having first slathered himself with mosquito repellent and donned a sleeping mask.
It was mid-morning before he woke, ready to do what he had come to do.
57
WILL LEE SAT UP IN BED, A BREAKFAST TRAY IN HIS LAP, AND WATCHED CNN. THE news network had somehow gotten hold of a videotape of a closed talk given to a group of his faithful by the Reverend Henry King Johnson, who was nakedly gouging them for money for his new monument to himself. This went on and on, for some twenty minutes, before they cut back to the anchor.
“Also on the campaign front,” the anchor was saying, “our investigative reporter Jim Barnes has unearthed a document from public records showing that the Reverend Johnson had legally changed his name when he was in his early twenties, adding the middle name King. Many people had apparently thought that he was somehow related to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which is not the case. Members of the community in Reverend Johnson’s neighborhood are expressing shock that he had never denied the relationship.”
Will switched channels to find the same stories playing elsewhere.
Kate came into the room, still dressing. “That’s good timing,” she said, fa
stening her belt. “I hope it will have the desired effect.”
“The name-change thing won’t make much difference,” Will replied, “but after that tape has been played a few hundred times on TV and the Internet, Moss Mallet thinks it’s going to have a very big effect. I think that now we can concentrate on Bill Spanner’s lack of a record, without worrying so much about Henry Johnson.”
“You think there’s anything to those death threats from white supremacy groups Johnson says he’s been getting?”
“They may be real enough, but I think it’s just hot air.”
“It would be awful if he were assassinated this close to the election.”
“You think people would think I had something to do with it?” Will asked.
“People are crazy.”
“Not crazy enough to try and kill Henry Johnson, I hope. I think after this he’ll be back to his preaching and out of politics.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Kate said. She was about to walk out the door when her bedside phone rang, and she picked it up. “Yes?” She listened for three or four minutes. “Right, I’ll be there in half an hour.” She hung up and turned to Will. “There was a weather delay in launching our reconnaissance missions in Afghanistan, but they’re in the air now.”
“The sooner the better,” Will said.
WILL SAT in the Oval Office an hour later, listening to his campaign staff.
Moss Mallet was up. “It’s too early to see any effect from this videotape of Johnson,” he said, “but my polling shows that, if he gets out of the race or suddenly becomes less of a factor, it will put you within two points of Bill Spanner. That’s within the margin of error.”
Tom Black spoke up. “I’m hearing that a liberal group has got hold of some tapes of some of Johnson’s sermons where he’s being blatantly anti-white,” he said. “Word is, they’re going to run TV commercials using the tapes.”