by Mike Lawson
“Goddammit, how did you know where I was?” DeMarco asked again.
“As I was saying, you can either stay in the coffee shop and wait until we pick you up or you can take your chances with Charles Bradford’s people. You have to believe me, DeMarco. We are your best option. We are your only option. And keep in mind, we’re the ones who kept Levy from killing you last night. If we wanted you dead, you’d already be dead. So what’s it going to be?”
DeMarco didn’t answer.
“And one other thing, DeMarco. Agent Carlucci is not going to be meeting with you.”
Son of a bitch! DeMarco had never believed any of that paranoid Big Brother nonsense the antigovernment crowd was always spouting—but he’d become a true believer in the last few days.
And he’d had enough. He was sick of these people controlling his life.
“I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m going to call the Arlington P.D., a detective named Glazer I know over there. I’m going to tell him the FBI and the NSA are covering up why my cousin was killed, and that you guys are trying to kidnap me. And after I talk to the cop I’m gonna call the closest TV station. Then I’m going to hold a fucking press conference while I’m being protected by a bunch of SWAT guys. Oh, and one other thing. I’ve got a .38 in my pocket—I got it from Perry Wallace last night—and if Alice’s pals come through the door, I’m gonna shoot ’em if they try to take me out of here.”
How do you like them apples, you bitch?
“DeMarco, the landline you’re currently using will be dead the minute you hang up. And if you or anyone else in that shop has a cell phone, you’ll find that the cell phone isn’t getting a signal. I repeat: we are your only option.”
DeMarco didn’t answer but at that moment he saw a Pentagon patrol car cruise slowly past the coffee shop, the two officers inside it swiveling their heads as they looked at pedestrians on the sidewalk. He quickly turned so his back was to the window.
“And one other thing, DeMarco. If you don’t cooperate, somebody is going to whisper into the ear of the Afghanistan government that a certain CIA agent is playing around in their backyard. So I’m not screwing around here. You either do what I tell you or your girlfriend is going to become a gigantic embarrassment to the CIA and an international headline—and that’s the best-case scenario.”
“You goddamn—”
DeMarco stopped swearing and took a breath.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll wait for your people to get here.”
“Alice will be there in five minutes. She’ll park in front of the shop but don’t go to her until she signals you. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand,” DeMarco said. He was so tired of this; he had never felt more impotent in his life.
A couple minutes later he saw a black SUV double-park in front of the coffee shop, but since the vehicle’s windows were tinted he couldn’t see who was in it. Then the passenger-side window powered down. It was Alice. He watched as she looked around and then saw her speak into the phone mike protruding from the headset she always seemed to be wearing. He wondered if she slept with that thing on. She still hadn’t looked over at the coffee shop. She just kept checking the street around her, talking to someone, and then she finally turned and faced him and made an arm motion for him to join her in the car.
DeMarco hustled out of the coffee shop and jumped into Alice’s SUV. Alice immediately said, “Buckle your seat belt.”
Without thinking, DeMarco looked down to find the seat-belt latch and when he did Alice pressed a Taser against his throat.
“Give me the gun, DeMarco.”
“I don’t have a gun. I just said that.”
Holding the Taser against his throat, Alice ran her hands over his torso, behind his back, down his legs. She was close enough to him that he could smell the scent of the shampoo she used. When she finished patting him down, she said, “Okay. But if you give me any shit at all, I’m gonna run fifty thousand volts through you just for the fun of it.”
DeMarco had always liked women—with the possible exception of his ex-wife—but after meeting Alice and talking to Alice’s unnamed boss, his perspective was beginning to change.
35
Dillon had always been rather indifferent toward automobiles, and he didn’t enjoy driving at all. It was just too frantic—the stop-and-go traffic, the maniacs constantly switching lanes, honking, maneuvering for position. He took cabs as often as possible. Today, however, he decided to drive himself.
It had always been a Crane family tradition to own Jaguars, and he owned a maroon XJ-Series sedan that sold for about ninety thousand with all the bells and whistles. Naturally, his had all the bells and whistles. He drove out the gates of Fort Meade and headed toward Washington, D.C. He had decided to go to the National Mall to ponder on Charles Bradford as it seemed the perfect place to make a decision that would indeed affect the nation.
Dillon may have come across as a jaded cynic but he was, in fact, terribly sentimental when it came to the National Mall. It symbolized all that was good and great about America: her past, her glory, her promise. The long, broad expanse between the Capitol and Lincoln’s memorial, Washington’s obelisk, Jefferson’s temple, the memorials to those who had died in war, the magnificent buildings surrounding the mall containing art and history and the machinery of democracy … After all these years, the sight still took his breath away.
He parked near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in front of a fire hydrant. He didn’t care if he got a ticket but he didn’t want the car towed, and to prevent that from happening he placed a placard on the dashboard that read FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION. TOWING OR TAMPERING WITH THIS VEHICLE IS A CLASS B FELONY. The placard had the FBI’s official seal on it.
Dillon had no idea what a class B felony was, or if there even was such a thing, but the sign had worked in the past. Traffic enforcement folks probably figured an FBI agent who drove a Jag was someone special.
He took a slim leather briefcase out of the car and began to walk.
He sincerely believed, as he had told Claire, that exposing Charles Bradford would be disastrous for the country. The United States was not well regarded in large parts of the world, and even our allies believed that to safeguard our fragile economy, much less our security, we wouldn’t hesitate to subvert any regime that posed a threat. Dillon imagined citizens in other countries would not even be surprised that an American general went about assassinating high-ranking foreigners.
Dillon also had to admit he agreed with most of Bradford’s decisions—not the executions themselves but the fact that the men Bradford killed had indeed been national security menaces. It could be argued that Bradford had acted without proper authority and shouldn’t have acted unilaterally, but it was clearly better to eliminate a single foreigner than go to war. How many American lives could have been saved if a single well-placed bullet had been used to fell Saddam?
He didn’t concur, however, with Bradford killing American citizens whom he considered traitors. Morality aside, if it ever became known that Bradford had assassinated fellow Americans, every bleeding-heart liberal in the country—as well as every right-leaning anti-government militia nut—would have all the evidence they needed to justify their paranoia.
By the time he reached the Lincoln Memorial, Dillon found himself in exactly the same position where Martin Breed had been before he died. He saw the logic in the things Charles Bradford had done but knew in his heart that the man had gone too far. He also knew if Bradford remained in power that the assassinations would continue and the possible unintended consequences could be disastrous. As Claire had said, Bradford could actually start the war he was trying to prevent if he killed the wrong foreign politician.
Dillon’s thoughts were interrupted by a peal of laughter from a small girl, the sound of a child absolutely delighted by something. He looked over and saw a man his age holding the hand of a girl of four or five: a grandfather taking his granddaughter for a walk. The litt
le girl was pointing a short, chubby finger at a fat, waddling pigeon.
Dillon had never even come close to getting married. He knew he’d make a terrible husband. And the thought of rearing children … well, that was absolutely terrifying. Yet for some reason after his sixtieth birthday, he occasionally wished that he had a grandchild to spoil, and preferably a granddaughter. It was an irrational desire.
But back to Charles Bradford.
Dillon was too objective not to recognize his own hypocrisy. What Bradford had done was in a way no different than what he and Claire were doing. Bradford had taken it upon himself to decide who America’s enemies were and then he eliminated them. Dillon, although he didn’t kill people—Hopper was the only exception—had taken it upon himself to invade the privacy of American citizens and trample on their constitutional rights. But Dillon knew there was a wavy gray line out there and he believed he was on the right side of that line, whereas Charles Bradford had stepped over it. Way over it. Was he deluding himself? Maybe. Nonetheless, he had made up his mind: Bradford had to go.
He stopped at a bench in front of the Lincoln Memorial, wiped off the bench with a handkerchief, and sat down, crossing his long legs. “What would you do, Abe?” he said, softly but out loud.
Abe didn’t answer.
As he had told Claire, he wasn’t convinced that releasing the Breed recording would be enough to force Bradford to resign, much less convict him of a crime. Unless John Levy was willing to testify against Bradford, which Dillon couldn’t imagine him doing, there was no concrete evidence to support Martin Breed’s claims. And Dillon could foresee congressional hearings going on for months, if not years, resulting in a national quagmire proportional to Watergate and possibly concluding with Bradford still in uniform and more popular than ever in some political circles.
Then there was the problem that exposing Bradford would most likely result in revealing the NSA’s role in Bradford’s downfall. That would be a calamity for the agency, and not just a public relations nightmare. If what Dillon and Claire were doing was uncovered, it could possibly result in the complete dismantlement of America’s most effective intelligence organization. He couldn’t allow that to happen. He wouldn’t allow that to happen.
So how would he do it? How would he, Dillon Crane, remove General Charles Bradford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, without exposing either Bradford or himself?
The answer, he was convinced, was John Levy.
From his briefcase he took out the file on Levy that Claire had compiled. He’d already read it twice and knew every word in it, but he read it again, hoping something would leap out at him.
The psychic impact of Levy’s tragic family history was obvious. When Levy was two, his father’s helicopter was shot down on some spy mission at the beginning of the Vietnam conflict—before the United States was even officially at war—and the body was never recovered. His brother, who was several years older than Levy, enlisted in the army at age eighteen, and then he also disappeared in Vietnam during the final days of that terrible war. Like his father, Levy’s brother was MIA, presumed dead, and no body was ever recovered. So it was no mystery as to why John Levy joined the army, nor was it a mystery why he became one of the sentinels at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The unnamed bodies in the tombs at Arlington were his father and his brother.
But Dillon believed that, for Levy, being a tomb guard was meaningful on another level. There was a religious aspect to being a sentinel but, instead of praying matins and vespers, the sentinels put on a uniform and walked at a measured pace in front of an unnamed corpse. The young men who guarded the Tomb of the Unknowns, like all those deeply committed to a particular faith, willingly dedicated themselves to ritual and sacrifice and a higher calling—and none was more dedicated than young John Levy. But Levy needed something more: he needed someone to replace his dead father, his dead brother. And when he met Charles Bradford at the time Bradford commanded the Old Guard, he found that person and later devoted himself totally to Bradford and his cause.
And that, Dillon believed, was the key to Bradford’s undoing: Levy’s blind, unswerving, religious devotion to a man who had become his father, his priest, his god.
36
DeMarco was going out of his mind with boredom, and at the same time he couldn’t relax or sleep because he couldn’t find a way to wiggle out of the box he was in.
They’d stuck him in a farmhouse west of Havre de Grace, Maryland. There were fifty barren acres surrounding the house, and he figured the land was never planted with anything that grew taller than lettuce so anyone approaching the place could be seen while they were still half a mile away.
Three men were guarding him, all guys in their thirties built like light heavyweights—and they were armed. And while one slept, the other two were always awake. DeMarco figured the only way he’d get away from them was if he had a hand grenade or if they had simultaneous heart attacks. They were rude bastards, too. They played gin most of the time but didn’t include him in the game, and the only time they talked to him was to call him to dinner.
There was a TV in the farmhouse but it got only two channels. He would have thought that the NSA, being who they were, could have at least pirated a cable feed. And the only thing to read was a stack of old newspapers. He was going to hang himself if he had to stay in the place another day.
He flopped down on the couch and picked up one of the papers again, even though he’d already read every word in it. One article was about Martin Breed and showed photos of the high-ranking folk who had attended his funeral. DeMarco looked at the photos again but this time saw something he hadn’t noticed before. There was an old guy in a wheelchair sitting near Charles Bradford. He studied the caption that identified the people in the picture, and then read the article again. Huh.
DeMarco heard a car coming up the driveway. He looked out the window and saw Dillon unfolding his long, lean form from the backseat of a black SUV. Dillon just stood there for a moment, looking out at the barren fields as if he were wondering why the NSA’s crop was so poor. Finally, he turned and walked toward the house, and DeMarco heard his guards yes-siring the guy as he entered.
“Good morning, Joe,” Dillon said. Then, after inquiring about DeMarco’s health and pretending to apologize for keeping him prisoner, he got down to business. “I want you to meet with Charles Bradford,” he said.
“You betcha,” DeMarco said, sounding as if it would be the most natural thing in the world for him to drop in on the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “You mind if I go home and change into my good suit for the meeting?”
DeMarco was no longer wearing the sweat clothes he’d borrowed from Perry Wallace. When Alice found his car abandoned in Falls Church, she’d been kind enough to retrieve his clothes as well as his wallet, watch, and cell phone. But the clothes were a mess since he’d been wearing them when he was shot by Levy and crawled around under the bleachers.
Dillon ignored DeMarco’s sarcastic comment about changing into a suit. “I obviously can’t meet with Bradford,” Dillon said. “The agency’s involvement in all this must be kept completely secret. I’m sure you understand.”
“Oh, yeah, I understand,” DeMarco said.
But he was thinking that maybe what he should do is grab Dillon and put a choke hold on him and threaten to break his neck if they didn’t let him go. But then what? He’d finally figured out how they had tracked him last time: a satellite. He’d seen in movies how a satellite orbiting a zillion miles above the earth was able to take close-up pictures of a pimple on a terrorist’s nose, and that’s what they’d used to follow him. They knew he’d made a phone call from the Hyatt in Crystal City and then they’d parked some big-ass satellite right over his head and watched his every move. Now that he knew how they followed him, he might be able to evade them next time. Yeah, he could live in the sewers for the rest of his life.
Maybe it would be a good idea to quit being a smart-ass and listen to what Dillon had to say.
“And assuming the general will meet with me, exactly what am I supposed to say to him?” DeMarco asked.
“You won’t have to say much. I simply want you to play General Breed’s recording for him. Then you can tell him that you know he had your cousin and the reporter killed, and you suspect he had Martin Breed killed as well. And then tell him he needs to resign.”
“And that’s it? I just waltz in, play the recording, and he says: I give up, Joe. You got me. I’ll pack up my desk today.”
“No, the tape alone won’t be enough to convince him. There are problems with the tape.”
“Like the fact that Bradford’s last name is never mentioned.”
“Yes, like that,” Dillon said. Dillon didn’t tell DeMarco the recording he had found in the church had been modified.
“So what’s going to make Bradford fold?” DeMarco asked.
“You’re going to tell him that you know John Levy….”
“The guy who tried to kill me at the ball field?”
“Yes. Levy is Bradford’s creature. My people followed him when he left Tuckahoe Park and identified him. At any rate, you’re going to tell General Bradford that we have Levy cold. We have voice recordings of him. We have witnesses who saw him shoot you. You’ll tell Bradford if he doesn’t resign, you’ll inform the press and people in Congress, turn over everything you have to the FBI, and Levy will be arrested for murder and forced to admit that he was—and has been for years—operating under Bradford’s control.”
DeMarco shook his head. “If I know all those things, Bradford’s going to wonder why I haven’t already gone to the press and why I’m bothering to talk to him at all.”
“No, he won’t wonder that,” Dillon said, “because by now he knows you’re working with other people in the government. And he’ll realize that those people don’t want his activities exposed. So you need to convince him, Joe. You need to make him believe that we’ll expose him if we’re forced to but that we don’t want to. It’s not good for the country.”