“So that explains the blood that the DHS guys found.”
“Yeah, I watched them from the panic room while they searched the house. I’ve been holed up down there watching movies ever since the thing with the cop. I missed my appointment with Ekman and Jarvis. They finally agreed to talk to me. I was going to take a lie detector test, the whole nine. I was desperate to get them to talk some sense into you, but I thought I’d better not take any chances after that cop showed up and tried to zap my ass.”
“Good move. But they thought you skipped town or something.”
“I didn’t want to talk to them about what happened, because I thought they might be part of the whole thing.”
“That was smart. I’m still not sure myself,” Sam said. “Brock, I’m so sorry I doubted you. It just looked so obviously like you lied to me about Dibiaso, and you know I have that thing with honesty. . .”
“I know, Sam. I’ve never met him, and I probably wouldn’t recognize him if you showed him to me.”
“That’s the thing. Nobody knows who this guy is. But he visited the Pentagon twice that we know about, because he took his cell phone with him. I think he signed in as Martinson, and Charlie Landers escorted him in both times.”
“Landers is in on this? That prick. He still wants to give me paperwork because we’re dating before my divorce is final.”
“I see why no one likes him. He is a prick.”
She pulled away. “Listen, Brock, we should probably stay holed up for a while while we figure out what to do next. I didn’t see any Metro guys on my way in, but that could easily have changed by now.” She rose and closed the door to the basement vault.
“I can’t believe you’re back,” he said. “I thought I’d lost you. I drove Gable crazy. I probably called him fifty times over the past few days.”
“He’s good people. He understands. I’m going to call him.” She smiled at Brock. “Just as soon as we have a chance to get properly reacquainted,” she said.
“I think it’s a new record for us,” Sam said, still breathless.
“Fourgasm,” Brock said. “Impressive!”
“I’ve missed you.”
Brock smiled. “I’ve missed you right back. Where have you been, by the way?”
Sam filled him in on the past few days’ events, starting with her hasty departure from Ekman’s office on Monday morning after seeing the printouts of Brock’s cell phone locations next to Dibiaso’s, then her grisly discovery later that afternoon at Phil Quartermain’s apartment, and her subsequent days spent on the run.
She told him about the music box connection that linked John Abrams, Everett Cooper, and Fatso’s company, Executive Strategies, and she talked to him in detail about her late evening conversation in Fatso Minton’s study in Dayton.
Brock was shocked about the unlikely connection, but got a kick out of her breaking into Fatso’s house through the doggy door.
Jeff Jensen, the CSI who died of an overdose in the restroom stall of a DC restaurant on his lunch hour, struck Brock as a likely casualty of the same group of highly antisocial people.
“We’re in this thing up to our eyeballs,” he observed.
“It would be nice to have some idea of what it’s all about,” she said.
She wondered aloud about whether Ekman and Jarvis had an agenda, other than bureaucratic self-preservation and a concomitant drive to distance themselves from any situation that might smell mildly of trouble.
But she could certainly see why the cell phone information that seemed to link Dibiaso with Brock might have thrown them off track. Sam had herself interpreted the same information as unequivocal evidence of Brock’s guilt, and the unlikelihood of not one but two slug line trips taken together was a strong indicator of intrigue from almost any angle one chose to view it.
Even though she had a very compelling reason to see the data from a different point of view, she had been unable to do so.
Thankfully, it wasn’t really intrigue, and Sam felt more gratitude than she had words to express. Her time on the run and in hiding over the past few days had barely provided enough mental activity to keep her anguish over Brock’s apparent betrayal down to a subterranean simmer.
Even so, it had boiled over at regular intervals, and she was certain that if she’d had more time to experience the loss, it would have proven emotionally devastating. She’d waited for Brock for a lifetime, and losing him would have been tantamount to losing part of herself.
A chilling thought followed: What if she, Ekman, and Jarvis weren’t the only ones to mistakenly associate Brock with Dibiaso? What if Dibiaso was a real bastard, with really angry enemies? Wouldn’t those same enemies view Brock as guilty by association?
Holy hell. Maybe I’ve been thinking about this the wrong way.
“Brock, what if this whole thing is about you, and not about me?”
“That thought occurred to me, about the time the Metro guy drew the Taser on me in the kitchen. I had no idea why at the time, but thinking about it now, it strikes me that those carpool rides with Dibiaso might have been enough to put some stink on me.”
“So all roads lead to Dibiaso,” Sam said. “Did you notice anything strange during your rides home on the 11th and 18th of last month?”
Brock laughed. “I could’ve sat next to SecDEF himself and not noticed. It’s a freaky vibe in the slug line. Nobody says a word to anyone else, nobody makes eye contact, and I can count on one hand the number of smiles I’ve seen.”
“That’s really weird,” Sam said. “But it’s in keeping with the feeling I got walking around the inside of the Pentagon. I’ve never seen so many unhappy people in the same place at one time.”
“It’s really grim,” Brock agreed.
His expression changed. “You said Landers had something to do with this?”
Sam described her interview with Brock’s boss, the diminutive, unfriendly two-star general.
Brock wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t learned much, other than that Charlie Landers was an asshole. “I can’t put my finger on it,” he said, “but I think that guy is crooked. He rolls with a bunch of shifty-eyed CFR types, and they stop by the office all the time. He sends me to go fetch them from the Metro entrance and sign them in. They’re usually industry people, think tank shills, or lobbyists. It’s actually weird that Landers signed this guy in himself – he’s big on enjoying the perks of rank.”
“Yeah, it had me wondering, too. It would have been a great job for his secretary,” Sam said.
“She’s a peach, isn’t she?”
Sam laughed. “Ice queen.”
“I would be pissed off too, if I had to play fluffer for a petty tyrant like Landers.”
Sam didn’t know much about the Council on Foreign Relations, so Brock filled her in. He knew a bit about it from having to play escort on Landers’ behalf. It was a large political organization with members from all walks of life, connected by their membership in what Brock termed an invitation-only ideology club.
It wasn’t a completely homogeneous group, of course, but they all seemed to share a particularly powerful position in society. Sam and Brock knew that it was possible to make serious, reliable, low-risk money in the markets only by throwing enough weight around to actually move the markets. And collectively, even individually in some cases, the CFR crowd had the necessary financial and political capital to do just that.
“Oligarchs, then,” Sam said.
“Yeah, I guess that’s about right,” Brock said. “With their own training program. I think Landers was a mid-level guy, but I got the sense he was very hungry to climb that ladder. He fell all over himself with those people. Almost embarrassing, really.”
Sam wondered aloud whether Dibiaso – or Martinson, the name he had apparently used to sign in on the Pentagon visitor list – was a CFR player.
“They have their own military, you know,” Brock said.
“The CFR? You sound like a conspiracy nut.”
&nb
sp; “I mean, a paramilitary more than anything else. They have high-ranking Pentagon folks on their membership roster, but I’ve heard whispers that they fund shill corporations for paramilitary contractors and what people call OGAs, or Other Governmental Agencies.”
“CIA,” Sam said.
“That’s a good guess. I think NSA is tied in a sweaty love knot with them, too, and probably even the Defense Intelligence Agency.”
“Sounds like a great crowd not to mess with.”
“People don’t mess with them for long, I don’t think.”
“And they probably have a very long list of pissed-off people who are waiting for an opportunity to take a swing at them.”
“Like anyone with an address outside the Continental US, for example,” Brock said with a chortle.
It reminded Sam of their many conversations on the US strategy vis-a-vis terrorism. Brock felt that terrorism was largely a problem of sentiment, not tactics, and that great counter-tactics often caused really shitty sentiment.
It wasn’t a difficult argument to understand, he’d often said. It would only take a few bombs raining down on a few neighborhoods before the locals turned decidedly sour on whoever was dropping them.
They’d experienced that phenomenon recently; they had survived the attack, barely, but the episode was frightening, infuriating, and grossly inconvenient.
We make enemies faster than we can kill them, she recalled him saying on many occasions. It was a dumb approach if peace was the goal.
On the other hand, if expansion, unrest, and an ever-increasing military and intelligence budget were the goals, it was a brilliant strategy.
And the American defense industry wasn’t complaining much, either.
“So, let’s assume the worst,” Sam said. “You and I are on the shit list of someone powerful and capable. It doesn’t really matter if they’re CFR, or Agency, or someone aligned against the Agency, as far as we’re concerned. What matters is that they think we’re somehow involved in their world.”
“I think we’re also on your bosses’ shit list, Sam. Ekman and Jarvis were not helpful or cooperative. I don’t know why they resisted talking to me until yesterday, but they wanted nothing to do with me.”
“Maybe they were tightening up their case against you. They probably wanted to hit you with the maximum horsepower when they did finally bring you in for questioning.”
“There’s nothing to hit me with.”
“Maybe they figured that out.”
Sam thought for a second longer. “Or maybe they found something else that seemed like it might fit with the Dibiaso scenario.”
“Great.”
Silence stretched on as their minds churned, Sam running her fingers idly through his hair. Then Brock spoke up. “What’s the DC Metro thing all about, then?”
Sam thought about it for a bit. “They seem like bit players to me. There’s that Venezuelan thing, Bolero, Jarvis called it. And if the Agency linkage turns out to be real, Metro is definitely not a prime mover. It might just be that a few of the beat cops are hired footmen.”
“Persistent bastards, whatever they are.”
Sam agreed. She told him about her most recent run-in, which was several days ago on the highway en route to Quartermain’s house.
“Strange they haven’t turned up chasing after you since then,” Brock said.
“Not really. I’m not your average government employee, after all. I can be slippery when I want to be.”
Brock apologized for doubting her skills. “I was projecting my cluelessness onto you.”
“That makes you male,” she teased, following up with a solid bite where his neck met his shoulder. “Which I love dearly, by the way,” she added.
He tightened his embrace around her midsection, and thoughts of further biological shenanigans entered their minds, causing southerly blood flow to areas already a bit sore from their recent exertions.
Then her burner phone buzzed on the nightstand near the bed in the panic room.
They groaned together. “Things being what they are,” he said, “maybe you should get that.”
It was Dan Gable. “Good, I’m glad you haven’t changed phones again yet,” he said when she picked up.
She brought Dan up to date.
“Never a dull moment with you, is there? Anyway, I have bad news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
She didn’t encourage him with a response. Dan took the hint. “Ekman and Jarvis are getting serious about seeing you, Sam. It’s Friday, and you haven’t been by the office since Monday.”
“I told Ekman an obvious lie on Monday, and I took his ignoring it as tacit approval to do what I had to do.”
“I think that’s probably worn off by now, so it’s probably time for a more lasting peace,” Dan said.
He had a point. Sam’s mistrust of Ekman and Jarvis had caused her to cast them in the role of adversary, a role they may not otherwise have taken up. Now that the facts about Brock and Dibiaso had come out, Sam thought there might be room for a truce.
If she could convince them of Brock’s innocence, that is.
Making peace with her bosses wasn’t practical earlier, before she discovered Brock’s innocence, because she didn’t know what the Dibiaso problem might have portended. DHS may very well have connected her to something very unsavory, by virtue of Brock’s apparent relationship with Dibiaso. She couldn’t really blame them for keeping her at arms length and withholding information from her while they figured out if she was culpable in some way.
Except that they’ve jeopardized our lives in the process.
Angry as that made her, she simply had to remove some of the variables. It might be worth a try to get Jarvis and Ekman back on her team.
If it worked, there would still be security concerns, because neither of them were much more than office-bound information sieves. Even if they stopped mistrusting her and Brock, she would still have to closely manage their access to any information she turned up.
And she would have to take care of her own physical security, no matter how fervently they protested. A DHS safe house would be a great place to get butchered.
“You speak wisdom, Dan,” Sam finally said. “As usual. I’ll put you in for a raise.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I mean it this time.”
“You keep saying that, too.”
Sam hesitated before asking her next question of Dan, but ultimately decided that he deserved a place in the Trust Tree. “I’m going to show you a little leg here, Dan, so be forewarned.”
“This doesn’t sound good, but go ahead.”
“In your professional opinion, are Ekman and Jarvis in league with the Metro thugs?”
Dan chuckled at the thought of their two bosses orchestrating intrigue and double-deals. “In a parallel universe, where they might be smart enough to carry on a double-cross like that without giving themselves away, I’d still vote no.”
“Are you sure you aren’t underestimating them?”
“Maybe I am,” Dan admitted. “But what would be the upside for them?”
“A fat wad of cash from whoever is throwing it around upstream of this op,” Sam ventured.
“I don’t think so. I think Ekman and Jarvis are true believers. I think they guzzled all the Kool-Aid and came back for more. I think you’re under their thumb at the moment because they’re scared to death about the Dibiaso connection. They’d rather you get killed than stir up trouble on their watch.”
Sam mulled that over. She tended to agree with the last part, but maybe not the first. “I agree that they’re not standup guys. But I’m not sure they’re that dumb, especially Jarvis. Stupidity is a great hiding place for brilliance.”
Dan laughed. “If there’s any brilliance in Jarvis, it’s hidden better than Anne Frank.”
“Yeah, on second thought, I’m afraid I agree with you there. But it doesn’t hurt to consider the possibilities.”
“If y
ou’re thinking of coming in from the cold, I fully support the idea,” Dan said. “You strike me as someone in need of fewer enemies right now.”
Exactly.
Ekman and Jarvis might not swing around to her side, especially since it would require them to view the same data in a different light, but it was probably worth a try. Worst case, things would be just as they are, with Sam and her superiors in an uneasy and transient detente, both sides waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Thanks, Dan. Strong points, and I’ll have to chew on them.”
“That’s what you say when you’re about to blow me off,” Dan said with a laugh.
“Bullshit. I never blow you off, except when I’m ignoring you.” She changed the subject: “Any news on the FAA homework that’s now overdue?”
“You’re such a taskmaster,” Dan said. “But yes, that’s the other bad news I was calling about. You asked me to find out about those three aircraft that were flying over your house last Saturday night at roughly the time of the explosion.”
“Yes, and my curiosity hasn’t diminished any, given yesterday’s police visit,” Sam said.
“Well, one of the planes was a redeye on its way into Reagan. Another one was way up at forty grand, blitzing west on its way to Denver. So I’ve tentatively ruled those two out, in favor of the third one.”
“Do tell.”
“A C-123, a two-engine turboprop with a retractable cargo door for inflight air drops. Registered to Executive Strategies.”
“Oh my God, Dan, are you sure?”
“It gets better. The plane was flown by Fatso Minton.”
48
Peter Kittredge watched the sun trace its high mid-afternoon arc from his bedroom window. The trip from the posh eastern suburb of Caracas back to his apartment had taken surprisingly little time. Alejandro had taken none of the prior precautions against being followed – they hadn’t doubled back via blind alleyways, made sudden freeway exits, stopped at drive-throughs, or swapped cars in a crowded parking garage.
Instead, they had driven straight from the pickup point, which was a two-mile hike from the putrid, sweltering garden shed in which Kittredge had spent most of the day, directly to El Banco de Caracas, where Kittredge had retrieved his phone from the safety deposit box.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 28