Behold a Pale Horse

by Franklin Allen Leib

  He fired five times in seven seconds. He hit four cans and missed one.

  “Set the cans up again, Isaiah,” he said to the old man. “And the bottles behind them, in the shadow of the opposite bank.”

  The old man departed and Cobra marched another two hundred meters up the slope. As soon as Isaiah was clear, Cobra settled himself in a new spot, arranged the sandbag and the rifle, and took aim, swinging the rifle between the cans and the barely visible bottles. He decided to take the center bottle first, then the cans who would be bodyguards, then the rest of the bottles, the target’s aides or his generals. He emptied his mind, and began to fire, working the bolt action without thought between each shot while moving to the next target, stopping his heart at each squeeze. Isaiah climbed back and confirmed that every target had been hit.

  I wish I had something moving, Cobra thought. He heard the distant skree-ee of a hawk, then saw the bird, gliding down the wash, hunting, riding the thermals that rose from the hot sand. Cobra chambered the last round in the magazine and followed the bird effortlessly in the scope. I’m sorry, he thought, to do this to a fellow hunter, then he squeezed off the shot. The hawk exploded from the impact of the heavy military round.

  “Reckon that hawk be flyin’ ’bout twenty-five kilometers an hour, master,” Isaiah said with a grin.

  “Faster,” Cobra said, not returning the smile. “Let’s go back.”

  19

  J J AND JULIA got started just after seven in the morning and drove the forty miles to the dirt road near Knippe that led to the Little Cheyenne River. There was a faded wooden sign at the junction, and J J turned in and drove up the dusty trail. There was a rise, and they could see the river and its oxbow lake below. The office of Little Cheyenne Development was a trailer, jacked up off its wheels, another faded sign, and telephone and electrical wires that ran off into the distance. J J climbed down, then helped his daughter out of the high-wheeled vehicle.

  The door to the trailer was locked, but yielded to a vigorous tug. J J had his Ranger’s .45 revolver in his hand as he entered, Julia behind. He flipped the light switch and was surprised to see the lights come on; the place looked to have been deserted for a long time.

  There were three desk-and-chair sets, file cabinets, and computer monitors, all covered with a thick layer of dust. Every wall had artists’ renderings of the houses and common facilities on the broad, curved slope of the ridge that stood over the river and the lake. There was also a chart showing the lots and the roads that would service them. Almost all of them were stamped in faded red: “Sold.” “Let’s take a look around outside,” J J said.

  Julia followed him back to the Bronco. There were roads laid out and graded, and connection boxes for phone and electricity. There were no structures other than a large building down by the lakeside, rough-timbered, and a pool, dug out and roughly gunited. The lake glimmered below, still and green with growth. “Shit,” J J said. “You said this all was paid for?”

  “That’s what the bank’s records show.”

  J J turned and spat. “Let’s go back to Uvalde and have a look at the ownership records.”

  Julia followed. It was true, then, the development was a scam, and the money had gone elsewhere, presumably into the campaign. She remembered the cash inflows after the election, and felt a little ill.

  When J J and Julia returned to the trailer, they found a Jeep Cherokee, and a tall man taking pictures. Julia and Charles Taylor recognized each other at once.

  Shit, Charles thought, she’s the source of the report, but who’s the guy with the cannon?

  Shit, Julia thought. Charles got here too quick. He’ll know I sent the report. What to do? “Good morning, Charles,” she said. “What brings you all the way out here?”

  “Running down an old lead,” he said smoothly, taking her hand while watching the big guy with the gun. “Phony land development. Any ideas?”

  “No. My daddy and I used to hunt out here and fish when I was a kid. Don’t know anything about what’s going on.”

  J J said nothing, but placed his big hand on the small of Julia’s back and guided her back to the Bronco.

  WHO WAS THAT man?” J J asked as he negotiated the narrow dirt track back to the state road at a lot higher speed than he had come in.

  “Reporter,” Julia said. “Strings for the Washington Times and others.”

  “How’d he know about this?”

  “I don’t know, Daddy,” Julia said, realizing it was the first time she had ever lied to her father.

  The courthouse in Uvalde was a Depression-era red-brick structure. The Clerk’s Office was on the ground floor. The County Clerk was an attractive, gray-haired woman of about fifty who identified herself as Mavis Mills. She accepted the filled-out request form and brought over the land records for Little Cheyenne Development. Julia went through them quickly, with a practiced eye. All corporations, in Grand Cayman, Turks and Caicos Islands, Belgium and Luxembourg. “Who runs the office out there on the site?” J J asked.

  “Why, Miss Ida Mae did,” Mills said. “Till she had a little stroke about three months ago, then the president’s lady moved her down to Florida someplace.”

  J J and Julia knew Miss Ida Mae was Clarissa Alcott Tolliver’s aunt. “Thank you,” Julia said, and she and her father returned to the Bronco.

  Mavis Mills made an immediate call to Washington, to the office of Ezekiel Archer. His secretary promised he would call back.

  Ten minutes later Charles Taylor came in and asked to look at the same files. Mavis Mills accommodated him, and as soon as he left, made another call to Archer, asking the operator to mark the message “urgent.”

  20

  COBRA WAS MET at the airport in Johannesburg by a very pale man whose face was flushed with heat. He led Cobra into the South African Airways first-class lounge, handed him a sealed packet, then helped himself to the free whisky while Cobra read.

  The packet included an envelope containing fifty thousand rand in cash that Cobra placed in the inside pocket of his traveling jacket. There were two sets of travel documents, one Belgian, one French. Air tickets, one to Lisbon via Luanda, Angola, departing in an hour. The second set, corresponding to the French passport, departing two days later from Lisbon to Washington, D.C. Both tickets had open returns. Cobra doubted he would use either, but one-way tickets attracted scrutiny. A reservation at the Ritz Hotel in Lisbon for tomorrow night, marked for early check-in. Nothing else.

  Cobra sat next to the courier, who had given no name. “Why European documents?” he asked. “I haven’t spoken French in many years, and besides—”

  “Look at the birthplaces. Leopoldville, Belgian Congo, as it was when you were born. Now Kinshasa, Congo. All the Belgian records have been lost so it’s untraceable. On the French document, born Martinique so you’re as French as any citizen of Paris, but can be expected to speak the language atrociously. All their old records were lost to a hurricane twenty years ago. You’ll destroy the Belgian document in Lisbon. As the citizen of a European Union country, you’ll not receive much notice in Washington.” The fat man handed over another envelope. “Once inside the U.S. you’ll become Frank Hayes, an American born in Los Angeles.”

  Cobra took the packet and dumped out a driving license, Social Security card, credit cards, and other wallet litter. “All good forgeries?” Cobra held each document up to the light in return.

  “All genuine. You’re working for top men.”

  “What’s the mission? And what about this?” he pointed to the holdall at his feet that contained his rifle and hand-loaded ammunition.

  “You’ll be met and handed off in Lisbon and in Washington. The mission will be explained when you get there. That”—he pointed to the holdall as though he thought it might strike him—“you leave with me. You won’t see it again until you’re briefed and accept the commission.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  Another envelope, fat. “Fifty thousand American dollars in cash.
Certainly enough to get home on.”

  “But surely not the entire payment.”

  “Not even a tiny fraction.”

  It had to be political, and someone either dangerous or well protected. Not many dictators left in the world. “Can you tell me who it is?”

  The fat man stood, and reached for the holdall. “I have no idea. You know everything I do. Will you take the flight and have a lovely dinner at the Ritz?”

  “Why not?” Cobra said, pushing the holdall with his toe. He got up, tucked the French passport, the Lisbon—Washington tickets, and all the money in a concealed compartment in his carry-on bag. “See you round, mate.”

  “You’ll never see me again,” the man said, picking up the holdall with the weapons. He pointed up at the monitor over the bar. “Your flight’s checking in.”

  The courier hurried out of the lounge. Cobra gave him a full two minutes to disappear, then sauntered over to the Air Portugal counter.

  IV

  REVELATION

  1

  “WHAT’RE YOU GOING to do now, Julia May?” J J Early said as he drove toward home.

  “Go back to work. They only gave me the long weekend.”

  “I mean about Little Cheyenne.”

  “I have no idea. If I told anyone, they would think I was mad.”

  “Who knows about this in your bank?”

  “Several people have to,” she said cautiously. “Transactions of these sizes are reported to senior management.” Unless somebody decided that they shouldn’t, she thought, remembering the reaction of the seventeenth floor before she had been buried in the basement, her files, as far as Hollis and presumably Alfred Thayer himself knew, erased from the computer. “But if this stuff is as illegal as I think it is, they may do nothing.”

  “Maybe that’s best,” J J said.

  “Why? This is evidence of massive corruption that is ongoing.”

  “Probably true, but we don’t know whether Rupert Justice even knows about it. His wife’s the business sense, and if I have to say so, the ruthless sense as well.”

  “But Daddy—”

  “Baby, I think he’s a good man, and the job will settle him down, just like it did in Austin. He’s kicked up a lot of dust in the last few weeks, but like I said earlier, people outside of Washington might just think he was right to do it. As to the fund-raising, it’s dirty, but it always was. Remember all the chest-beating the Congress did about the last president? Renting out the Lincoln Bedroom? Taking money from Buddhist nuns who are sworn to poverty? In the end Congress didn’t do shit, because they’re all in on the deal.”

  “But, Daddy, you said yourself he’s already paid off the South Koreans, the Saudis—”

  “We don’t know why he did what he did, but he went to the Congress and the people, and his approval rating is up, albeit from a dismal level right after the fighting stopped. I think he’ll be more cautious now, and think, Baby, just maybe, he’s right.”

  “It’s still corruption,” she said softly.

  “Do you want a President Donahue? Think about it; let me ask some friends.”

  “All right.” Julia felt guilty. She should have asked her father first; he knew all the Texas insiders on the president’s staff. Maybe there was an explanation for all that money that had surely not been spent in the Hill Country of Texas. But how could there possibly be?

  But she couldn’t stop it now. She had tipped Charles Taylor, and the cat would soon be out of the bag.

  CHARLES TAYLOR CALLED Brad Bentley, senior political editor at the Washington Post. He supposed he owed the Times, but he might never have an opportunity like this again to get into the big leagues. He called from a booth in the Dallas—Fort Worth Airport while waiting for his connection back to Washington, having driven to San Antonio International directly from the County Courthouse in Uvalde.

  The Post had broken Watergate, for investigative journalism, the story of the last century. Post people considered their paper the best in the business at finding out the secrets of Washington’s powerful, and every lead was pursued.

  Taylor called Bentley because, since he had been promoted to senior editor four years before after the retirement of a legend, nothing really big had come across his desk. The Blythe administration had had a host of scandals, but nothing earthshaking, and most had broken out of town. The Post’s hated rival, the New York Times, had got the FBI files in White House closets story out first, and led the way on uncovering corruption in the raising of campaign funds. Neither story had got very far, but Bentley didn’t have a big one at all. Charles Taylor had the story, and if he could prove it up, it could mean a permanent job at the Post, and perhaps a Pulitzer.

  Bentley accepted the collect call without hesitation. He thought Charles had talent as an investigator, although he needed more time in Washington before he would develop the confidence of the most informed and influential leakers of the leads that made the great reporters. Bentley listened to Charles’s story, briefly summarized.

  “What’s the source?”

  “Not sure yet. I think I know; I’ll get it confirmed.”

  “What makes you think you have this exclusively?”

  “Because you didn’t already know about it.”

  Bentley chuckled. “All right, go get your plane. Have your film processed downstairs and leave me a copy of the story. I’ll protect you, and call you the minute I’ve read it.”

  Charles hung up, grabbed his bulky camera bag and his travel bag and ran for the gate. He was the last passenger to board, and the American Airlines 777 began taxiing before he had his seat belt on.

  Now, he wondered, accepting a double scotch from the flight attendant, how do I get the rest of this out of Julia Early? Or how do I get this verified independently?

  In this business you had at best days, sometimes only hours. How?

  EZEKIEL ARCHER RETURNED to his cluttered office after hours of meetings with congressmen, senators, and very worried Wall Street types. He saw the two messages from the clerk of Uvalde County and immediately dialed the number. Mavis Mills answered her own phone. “Mavis, Zeke Archer. It’s been too long.”

  “Why thank you, Mr. Archer. I’m surprised you remember my first name, but thank you.”

  Normally in Texas even the most important conversations were begun with elaborate small talk about family, friends, and the weather, but Zeke had hours of work to do and he felt sure that Ms. Mills wouldn’t have called for no reason. “How can I help you, Mavis?”

  “You remember that land deal, on the Little Cheyenne River? Mrs. Tolliver—hell, the First Lady now—set up a few years back? Well, after a flurry of deed recordings right around the election, nobody has been in here to look at anything, record any mortgages, nothing like you’d expect for such a big development. But today I had two inquiries within minutes of each other.”

  Zeke thought his heart had stopped. He didn’t know much about Little Cheyenne; it had been Clarissa’s project from the start. Zeke knew Clarissa had pressured a lot of local fat cats to buy options on the lots, and he suspected some of that money had found its way into Tolliver’s last campaign for governor, and maybe the owe for president as well. Zeke, took a ragged breath. “Who did these people say they were?”

  “The first two were J J Early, who used to guard the governor? And a young woman I kinda thought was his little girl. The second was a man who didn’t say who he was. They don’t have to, you know, the records are public, though I did think it rude he wouldn’t introduce himself.”

  “Well, thank you for calling, Mavis. Please call me if anything like this happens again. Did anyone take any copies?”

  “The man with no name did, copies of about sixty pages of recorded deeds. Paid cash and took his receipt.”

  Jesus, Zeke thought. “Mavis, thank you again. I have to take another call.”

  “I’m sure you’re busy. You take care, now.”

  “You too, Mavis. Good-bye.” Zeke immediately dialed the Wh
ite House telephone exchange in the basement. “Find a retired Texas Ranger named Jubal John Early. He headed up the president’s security detail when he was governor. It’s quite urgent.”

  “Should be no trouble, Mr. Archer. A man giving that name just tried to reach you.”

  Zeke’s phone rang again, the secure line. “Mr. Early, sir,” the operator said, and immediately made the connection. “J J?”

  “Howdy, Zeke. Sorry to bother you, but someone’s digging up bones out at Little Cheyenne and hereabouts in the courthouse.”

  “I heard, from the county clerk.”

  J J chuckled. “Shoulda figured. Anyway, there was a reporter, name of Charles Taylor. I didn’t talk to him.”

  Zeke wrote the name down. He didn’t recognize it. “What’s your involvement, J J?”

  “Well, Zeke, I heard a rumor that maybe the development was a funnel for campaign contributions to the president. Took a ride out there, and there ain’t nothing but a few unpaved roads and some utility connections.”

  “What was the source of the rumor? You been retired seven months, as I recall. What made you take a look?”

  “Hell, Zeke, we known each other a long time. You know how it works; no source.” J J paused. “Is there going to be a problem?”

  “J J,” Zeke said, “Let me call you back. I’ll need to know everything you can tell me.”

  “Fine, but no source.” J J hung up, thinking these good old boys get up to Washington and lose all their manners.

  Zeke thanked J J and rang off, then called Callendar, who told him of Colonel Thayer’s demand for an immediate meeting. There was no question in Zeke’s mind that something had come unstuck with the Uvalde County—Little Cheyenne matter. Zeke told Callendar to set the meeting for tomorrow, as early as the chairman would see them.