by Mike Lawson
When the recording finished, Dillon just sat there, rubbing his chin, looking at the Picasso on the wall as if waiting for Pablo to comment.
“So what do we do with this?” Claire said.
Dillon looked away from the painting. “I don’t know, but I agree with General Breed. It’s not in the nation’s best interest to go public with this information. Even though Bradford may have acted on his own, the fact that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in collusion with another American general, took it upon himself to kill a number of prestigious foreigners is not something we want the world to know.”
“So what do we do?” Claire asked again.
“I’ve been in meetings with Charles Bradford a number of times. He’s arrogant, caustic, impatient, ruthless—and brilliant. After Saddam Hussein was overthrown, he wanted to do what MacArthur did in Japan after World War II and run Iraq as its de facto president until he was able to place the right Iraqi politicians in power and restructure their government. I think if the White House had listened to him, we wouldn’t be mired down in the country the way we are today.”
“Well, MacArthur may have been his role model, but even MacArthur didn’t do the kind of things Bradford’s done,” Claire said.
“I don’t know what General MacArthur did,” Dillon said. “All I know is that Charles Bradford is one of those soldiers—and I’m sure he’s not alone—who believes that civilians, including Congress and the president, should have no say in matters of national defense. He thinks the Pakistanis got it right, when Musharraf was both the president and the chief of the army over there.”
“We need to make a decision, Dillon.”
“And the way he uses the tomb guards. As I’m sure you know, before Bradford got his first star, he briefly commanded the Third Infantry Regiment. He must have realized at the time what an asset those soldiers could be. It was like you said, Claire, they’re the sort of zealots—or patriots—Bradford could use as assassins, and those young men would have no idea that what they were doing was illegal.”
Before Claire could ask him again what they should do, Dillon said, “How many incidents were mentioned on that recording?”
“Thirteen. It sounded like the first one happened in February 2002.”
“So nine/eleven was probably the catalyst, the same as it was for us, but Bradford took a more direct approach than we did. If an individual appeared to be a significant national security threat, and if he could penetrate that person’s security, he eliminated him. He wasn’t going to stand by and let the politicians fail to deal with the next Osama.”
“One of those people he killed was a Chinese politician!” Claire said. “He could have started a damn war. Is he insane?”
“The Chinese politician was a financial terrorist,” Dillon said. “He was bent on destroying our economy. But to answer your question, I believe Charles Bradford is completely sane. He did nothing for personal gain, and he doesn’t appear to have some mad delusion like overthrowing the president and becoming absolute ruler of the country. He obviously doesn’t want credit for what he’s doing, so he’s not doing this for glory or to go down in the history books as the country’s savior. As misguided as he may be, Bradford considers himself a patriot. Throughout his career, he’s seen soldiers’ lives wasted because politicians didn’t have the courage or the foresight to deal directly and quickly with obvious threats to the country, and he finally decided he had to act—just as we did.”
“Yeah, but still—” Claire started to say.
“And, unfortunately, that recording is not enough to remove Charles Bradford from his position, much less send him to jail.”
“You’ve gotta be—”
“There’s no proof that Bradford ever ordered Breed to do anything.” Pointing at the recorder on his desk, Dillon added, “What you have there are the ramblings of a dying man, a man with cancer eating away his brain, his blood full of morphine and God knows what else. Not exactly an iron-clad case.”
“So, for the third damn time, Dillon, what do you want to do?” Claire said.
Dillon walked over to the window and stared down at the street below. There was some sort of security drill in progress, or at least he thought it was a drill. A group of men in SWAT gear had surrounded a delivery van and were aiming their weapons at it. But maybe it wasn’t a drill. These were dangerous times.
“About Charles Bradford, I don’t know,” Dillon said. “I need some time to think about that. What I want to do right now is figure out who directed the hit against Russo. If we can identify that man we may be able to use him against Bradford.”
“That’s what I was planning to do with DeMarco,” Claire said.
“Yes. Mr. DeMarco,” Dillon said. He paused a moment, then added, “Here’s what I want you to do, Claire. Make a copy of that recording but then modify it, just a bit. I want …”
When he finished speaking, Claire said, “I’m not too sure how smart this is, Dillon.”
“Nor am I, my dear, nor am I.”
28
“Mr. DeMarco, this is Anthony McGuire. Uh, Paul’s friend.”
“Yeah?” DeMarco said. “What can I do for you?” The last thing he was in the mood for was dealing with McGuire.
“Well, I remembered something,” McGuire said. “Something that may—uh, tell you where Paul hid whatever he hid.”
Claire patted the impersonator on the shoulder. “Good job,” she said. “You got that perfect. I particularly liked the little catch in your voice when you said Paul.”
“Uh, thanks,” the impersonator said. Claire Whiting scared the hell out of him.
“Now go work on the DeMarco voice some more. I don’t think we’re gonna need it now, but I want you to be ready, which you’re not quite yet.”
DeMarco was seated in a pew near the stained-glass window depicting St. John of God. McGuire had called him while a guy from Home Depot was installing his new back door, but after the guy finished he decided to go to the church, because the contractor he’d called to give him an estimate on the cost to repair his kitchen couldn’t come until tomorrow. The reason he’d asked the contractor to give him an estimate was because the insurance company claims adjuster was offering to settle for about one half of what DeMarco figured it would take to make things right.
McGuire had said that Paul always made a big deal out of the St. John of God window because St. John was the patron saint of nurses and Paul, being a nurse, always mentioned it whenever he and McGuire attended mass together. McGuire wasn’t sure Paul had hidden anything near the window, but he said that might be a good place for DeMarco to look.
DeMarco had yet to approach the window, however, because there was an old woman at the front of the church, in a pew by herself, fingering rosary beads. She seemed absorbed in her prayers and probably wouldn’t notice if he searched near the window, but he thought he’d wait awhile, hoping she’d leave pretty soon.
While he waited, he closed his eyes, clasped his hands together, and prayed to God to bring down a plague upon his insurance company, like the plagues He’d brought down upon the pharaoh when the pharaoh refused to let Moses and his people go. DeMarco wanted locusts to eat his insurance agent. He wanted the agent’s office to be set upon by lice, frogs, and flies. Slaying the firstborn son of every executive in the company might be going too far, but maybe their dogs and cats could all get fleas.
In his opinion, insurance companies were like guys who welch on bets. In fact, that’s exactly what insurance was: a bet between a homeowner and the company. The homeowner was betting that one day his house might burn down, and the insurance company was betting it wouldn’t. The homeowner then put his money into the kitty by paying premiums for twenty years, and the insurance company used the money to invest in things that made them rich. Or richer. Then, if the house does burn down, the insurance company, in spite of all the money it’s made, refuses to honor the bet. And that’s what his insurance company was now doing by trying to get him to
settle for half the money it was going to take to repair his kitchen. And when they finally did pay, they’d raise his rates.
Thank, God. Finally, the old woman was finished praying. He watched as she genuflected and crossed herself about a dozen times, then walked up the main aisle of the church. She gave DeMarco a little smile as she walked by him, which he returned, then he looked down at his lap, trying to look like a pious man saying his prayers, which, in a way, he had been doing.
As soon as he heard the church door close, he hustled over to the window. He could see a ledge below the window but was too short to reach it. Shit. He opened the door to one of the confessionals and got the chair the priest used. He took the chair over to the window, climbed up on it, and there it was: an envelope.
The only thing in the envelope was a dinky digital recorder.
Sitting in the operations room, Claire watched on a large plasma screen as DeMarco pulled his car off the Memorial Parkway and into a parking lot where people could look across the Potomac at the District. From this particular vista, DeMarco had a good view of the Lincoln Memorial, the Kennedy Center, and the dome of the Capitol shimmering in the distance—although Claire doubted DeMarco was thinking about the view.
Through three different bugs—one in DeMarco’s car, one in his cell phone, and one in his belt—Claire listened as DeMarco played Martin Breed’s recording. The sound quality was excellent and when DeMarco muttered, “You gotta be shittin’ me,” Claire felt like she was sitting right next to him.
Claire had sent her technicians out of the room while DeMarco played the recording. Dillon had told her that he didn’t want anyone but him and her—and DeMarco—to know about the things Martin Breed had done for Charles Bradford. Claire still didn’t think it was smart giving the recording to DeMarco, even one that had been doctored, but Dillon had overruled her objections. Once DeMarco listened to the recording, he would know almost as much as they did—and that was dangerous.
But the oddest thing about Dillon’s plan—if you could call it a plan—was that he didn’t appear to have an endgame. He said he hadn’t decided what to do with the information on the recording, whether to use it to destroy Bradford or simply force him to resign, as Breed had planned. It was very unlike Dillon not to have thought things completely through.
Then another thought occurred to her: maybe Dillon did have an endgame and he just wasn’t telling her what it was.
What in the hell was he supposed to do with this thing? DeMarco wondered, looking down at the small recorder resting in the palm of his hand. He knew it was his imagination, but the damn recorder actually felt hot, like it was going to burn right through his flesh.
He was only sure of two things—neither of which he could prove. First, he was sure Paul had been killed because of what he’d just heard, and second, Paul had wanted to get the recording to that reporter, Hansen. But other than those two things, he was completely confused.
He assumed the man who had made the recording was General Breed. That made sense, considering the things he claimed to have done for this guy Charles, but Breed never identified himself on the recording nor did he ever state Charles’s last name or the last name of this guy Thomas, who he’d obviously made the recording for. He found it odd that their last names weren’t mentioned, but even worse, it made the recording almost useless in terms of evidence. The other thing he didn’t understand was why Paul decided to give the recording to a reporter instead of Thomas, whoever the hell Thomas was. He didn’t know. He didn’t know shit.
Well, he did know one thing: the damn recording was a political A-bomb and way, way too big for him to handle. He needed to give it to somebody who had the clout to deal with it. But who? Normally, he would have given it to the FBI, but he was afraid to do that because he didn’t trust Hopper. He did know someone personally at the Bureau, a woman he’d once dated, and he knew he could trust her but he didn’t feel comfortable taking this to her. He hadn’t seen her in three years.
Another thing bothering him was that somebody had assigned Hopper to take the case away from the Arlington PD. Maybe it was this guy Charles—and Charles, based on the recording, was a guy big enough to boss around a two-star army general, which made Charles pretty damn scary.
So if he couldn’t go to the Bureau, who could he go to? He supposed he could go directly to the Justice Department. The only problem with that bright idea was that the FBI, at least theoretically, worked for Justice and, for all he knew, Charles worked for Justice.
The guy he needed was Mahoney. Mahoney was Speaker of the House. Mahoney had major clout and could definitely force Justice to investigate and make sure they didn’t try to cover anything up. But Mahoney was still flat on his back in a coma from which he might never wake up.
The only other person he could think of was his friend Emma. Emma had retired from the DIA—the Defense Intelligence Agency—but she’d been a power player when she worked there. She had helped him on cases in the past and she knew powerful people all over Washington, people who could be trusted. But, right now, like everyone else in his life, she wasn’t available. She was cruising the Mediterranean with her lover, and DeMarco didn’t even know what cruise line she was on.
The more he thought about it, he concluded that Paul had the right idea: turn this whole mess over to the press. They’d print a front-page headline in eighty-five-point font and all hell would break loose. Congress would call a bunch of hearings, special prosecutors would get assigned, and, if the FBI was told to investigate, every politician on the Hill would be watching them. Yeah, that sounded like the best idea. Just do what his cousin had been trying to do: set up a meeting with some reporter—which one, he didn’t have a clue—and hand over the recording.
Or he could just mail the recorder to the press. No, that wouldn’t work. Without an explanation as to where it came from and its connection to Paul and General Breed, people might just ignore it or take it for a hoax. No, he had to talk to a reporter and convince the reporter that the recording was the real thing.
And he had to do one other thing: he had to make sure he didn’t get killed like Paul.
Dillon walked into the operations room Claire was using. Three of her technicians were now back in the room, sitting in front of computer monitors, earphones on their heads. DeMarco was still visible on the plasma screen, still sitting in his car on the banks of the Potomac, pondering what he’d just heard. Alice, Claire’s favorite field agent, was the one filming DeMarco and transmitting the picture.
“How many people do you have on him?” Dillon asked Claire.
“Four,” she said. “More than enough to follow a guy like him. And I’ve got a tracking device on his car and we can use his cell phone to track him, too. If I need to, I can cover him with a satellite.”
“I certainly hope it doesn’t come to that, Claire.”
“Me too.”
“So what do you think he’s going to do next?” Dillon said.
“How would I know?” Claire said. “We can record his voice, not his thoughts.”
“Well, not yet,” Dillon said, smiling slightly.
DeMarco had no idea whom to call at The Washington Post. At one time, he’d known a Post reporter, an old alcoholic named Reggie Harmon. But Reggie got married for the fourth time last year—to another reporter, also an alcoholic—and moved to Houston where his new bride worked. The only other reporters at the Post whose names he knew wrote for the sports page. Yeah, he knew all the sports guys, especially that one pessimistic son of a bitch who started off every football season by saying how bad the Redskins were gonna be that year. Unfortunately, most of the time, he was right.
Then he thought: Woodward and Bernstein—although he wasn’t sure Bernstein even worked there anymore. But this thing he was holding, this recording, it was right up Woodward’s alley: an army general admitting he’d killed a bunch of people because some guy named Charles told him to. Oh, yeah. Woodward would drool like a rabid dog when he heard the recor
ding.
The problem with Woodward, DeMarco figured, was he probably had a thousand conspiracy nuts calling him every day of the week. There was no way he’d take a call from DeMarco even if he worked for Congress. No, wait a minute. The Post had lost a reporter. Woodward might take a call from somebody who said he had information related to the disappearance of a brother scribbler. Yeah, that would work.
Dillon and Claire watched as DeMarco opened his cell phone.
“Are you ready, Claire?” Dillon asked.
“Gilbert?” Claire said.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” Gilbert said.
Claire listened as DeMarco punched a number into his cell phone.
“Who’s he calling?” Claire asked.
Gilbert and Dillon both said at the same time, “The Washington Post.”
Gilbert could tell DeMarco was calling the Post because as soon as DeMarco dialed the Post’s number, the number showed up on his screen and the software he used automatically gave him the identity of the party being called. That’s how Gilbert knew who DeMarco was calling. But how had Dillon known? Answer: because he was Dillon.
Dillon put on a headset, one which had earpieces covering his ears and a microphone on a wand in front of his lips. Then Dillon, Claire, and Gilbert all listened as DeMarco navigated the Post’s voice mail system until he finally reached an operator.
DeMarco said, “I need to speak to Bob Woodward. I have information relating to the disappearance of—”
At that moment, Dillon made a slashing motion across his throat and Gilbert cut off the call to the Post.