House Divided jd-7

by Mike Lawson

  So what was Dillon doing?

  DeMarco didn’t have a clue.

  As DeMarco continued to drive toward Maryland, random thoughts bounced around inside his brain. He wondered how Mahoney was faring. Had it not been for Dillon, he would have called Mary Pat again to ask, but he didn’t want to do that now. If he called, Dillon would know and then he might figure out DeMarco’s real relationship to Mahoney and find a way to exploit the situation. And what was the point of calling? Hell, Mahoney was going to be all right. Nothing could kill the bastard. In a day or two, he’d be sitting up in his hospital bed eyeing the derriere of every passing nurse.

  He thought for a moment about his kitchen; he’d missed the appointment with the contractor who was supposed to give him a repair estimate. Assuming he lived through this thing with Dillon and Bradford, he still had a fight with his insurance company to look forward to.

  He also wondered how much danger Angela was in. He hadn’t liked the idea of her being sent to Afghanistan in the first place, but he hadn’t been too worried about her because he figured she was probably sitting in the U.S. embassy in Kabul being guarded by a battalion of marines. But now, thanks to Dillon, he knew she wasn’t in Kabul; she was playing spy games on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He wished she’d quit her damn job and take up an occupation that was safe, sane, and normal-and one where she could be with him every night. He also wondered if Bradford knew he was dating Angela and, if he knew, whether Bradford would hold that over his head as Dillon had done.

  Then, thinking about women who put their careers ahead of their personal lives, he wondered about Diane Carlucci. Had she given him up to the NSA to protect her FBI career, or did Dillon force her in some way? Whatever the case, he wondered if he’d be hearing from her in the future. It seemed unlikely.

  He hit a red light-and noticed a liquor store on one corner. That’s what he needed: a drink. There was no booze at the safe house and DeMarco was a man who liked a martini in the evening, and sometimes more than one. He thought of saying out loud: I want a bottle of vodka waiting for me when I get back to the safe house, like he was ordering from room service. He knew if he spoke inside the car a gaggle of NSA spooks would hear him, including Alice, who was following him. And then he thought: Why not? All they could do was tell him no.

  But then the pinball that was his brain bounced off in another direction: Liquor store. Ray-Ray Jackson.

  He stopped for the next red light and looked at the street sign. He was on the corner of New York and Florida-and the liquor store where Ray-Ray worked was about eight blocks away.

  A man named Curtis Jackson supervised the janitors in the Capitol. His office was right down the hall from DeMarco’s, in the subbasement of the building; as the years had passed, DeMarco and Jackson had gotten to know each other fairly well. Jackson had four children. The oldest one played catcher for the Mets Triple A team in Buffalo. His twin daughters were both in college at Howard-and the tuition was breaking Jackson’s back. His other son, Raymond-Ray-Ray-had already graduated from college with a degree in computer sciences; he was the guy DeMarco called whenever his home computer went on the fritz. But now Ray-Ray was going for his MBA and, because his father couldn’t afford to pay his tuition too, he was working at a liquor store in the District.

  What DeMarco was about to do could put Ray-Ray in danger, but probably not too much. And he had to try. He had to do something that would give him some leverage over Dillon.

  He needed paper. Then he thought: What if Dillon had put a camera in the car, too? Well, he’d find out in a minute if there was one. He slowed down so he would hit the next light on the red. Paper. He needed paper. He opened the glove box and saw the owner’s manual. He flipped to the back of it where there were a bunch of blank pages and where, if you were totally anal, you could record your maintenance history. He ripped out three of the blank pages.

  The light changed. While driving he searched for a pen. He needed a pen. No pen in the glove compartment. He checked the console between the front seats. No pen, but there was a Magic Marker. That would work.

  He managed to hit the next three stoplights when they were red-he was probably driving Alice crazy, driving so slowly-and at every red light he wrote on the blank pages from the owner’s manual, now certain there wasn’t a camera in the car or somebody would have scolded him.

  “DeMarco, why are you turning?” Alice asked, her irritation apparent.

  DeMarco ignored her.

  “DeMarco! Get back on New York and stay on it until you reach-DeMarco, goddammit, why are you stopping?”

  “You see that liquor store over there, Alice? I’m gonna buy a bottle of vodka. There’s no booze at the safe house, and after what I’ve just been through, I feel like getting drunk.”

  “We’ll get you some booze. Just keep going.”

  “And I gotta use the can.”

  “I said keep going.”

  “Alice, I want some booze and I wanna take a leak, and if you don’t like it, you can kiss my ass.”

  He heard Alice scream something as he got out of the car.

  He walked into the liquor store and saw Ray-Ray was alone behind the counter, sitting on a stool, reading a college textbook. His laptop, which he practically slept with, was sitting on the counter. Ray-Ray smiled when he saw

  DeMarco and started to say something, but DeMarco held up his first piece of paper and waved it frantically in the kid’s face. The paper said, RAY-RAY, SHUT UP! DON’T SAY A THING! NOT A WORD!”

  “Hey,” DeMarco said, still showing the paper to Ray-Ray. “I need a fifth of Stoli and a small bottle of vermouth.”

  Ray-Ray stood there, frowning now, not having a clue what DeMarco was doing-and that’s when DeMarco handed him the second note.

  “You got a bathroom here?” DeMarco said as Ray-Ray read the note.

  DeMarco held up the third note. It said: YOU GOTTA DO THIS FOR ME, RAY-RAY. IT’S IMPORTANT, REALLY IMPORTANT.

  Ray-Ray nodded and said, “The bathroom’s back there, sir. I’ll get your vodka.”

  DeMarco grabbed up the notes and walked to the bathroom. Once there, he flushed the notes down the toilet, then flushed it a bunch more times, and then made as much noise as possible pulling toilet paper off the roll. By then he figured Ray-Ray had accomplished his task-it would have only taken him a minute-so DeMarco left the restroom and walked back to the sales counter.

  “Thanks,” he said to Ray-Ray, as he took a bag from him containing the bottles of vodka and vermouth-and at that moment Alice stepped into the liquor store. She looked at DeMarco, then over at Ray-Ray, and then stood in the doorway, blocking the exit, until DeMarco reached her. Speaking softly, so Ray-Ray couldn’t hear her, she said, “Give me the recorder, DeMarco.”

  “Sure,” DeMarco said, and he switched the brown paper bag containing the booze from his right hand to his left, reached into the pocket of his eavesdropping suit coat with his right hand, and passed her the recorder. Alice looked down at the recorder to make sure it was the one he’d been given by Dillon, and as she was studying it he stepped around her and walked back to his car.

  With Alice on his bumper, he continued on to the safe house, smiling slightly, feeling somewhat smug. He’d pulled it off.

  “Hey, Alice, do I take the next left?”

  “Yes,” Alice said, sounding all tight-jawed.

  “You know, this is kinda cool. You’re like my own personal navigation system.”

  “Shut up, DeMarco,” Alice said.

  39

  Charles Bradford was spit-shining his shoes when Levy entered his office. As a four-star general and the army’s chief of staff, Bradford obviously could have had some soldier shine his shoes but, as he’d told Levy once, he’d started spit-shining his shoes as a cadet at West Point and had always found the task relaxing in a Zen-like way. And he sounded relaxed now as he told Levy about DeMarco’s visit and the recordings DeMarco had in his possession.

  “Why didn’t you deta
in him when he came here?” Levy asked.

  “I considered that,” Bradford said. “And if you’d been here, I might have, but I didn’t want DeMarco talking to anyone other than you. Where have you been, John?”

  “Trying to find DeMarco. I got copies of his phone records and I’ve been checking out people he calls frequently. One’s a woman, and based on how often he calls her, I’m guessing she’s his girlfriend. I found out she works at Langley and is out of the country right now, but I haven’t been able to get a fix on her location.”

  “She’s with the CIA?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Could she be helping DeMarco?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t know exactly what she does, but I do know she was overseas when all this started.”

  “Well, don’t waste any more time on her,” Bradford said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Fine? “Sir,” Levy said, “you don’t seem very upset by all this.”

  “Oh, I was very upset at first, John. And I imagine that’s what these people were counting on, me panicking and giving in to their demands, resigning because I was afraid they’d go public with what they know. But then I calmed down and thought things through.”

  “So you’re not worried about DeMarco going to the media?”

  Bradford ignored Levy as he placed his gleaming shoes on the floor, slipped back into them, and tied them with a double knot. “Of course I’m worried,” he said, “and if he did, it would be a three ring circus. But that’s not going to happen. I think DeMarco was telling the truth, and whoever he’s working with has the intelligence-or maybe the patriotism-to know that going public with those recordings would be bad for the country.”

  “But what if they did release the recordings?” Levy said.

  “John, they have no proof of anything. I suppose the president could order me to resign, but frankly I doubt he has the balls to do that. I’m more popular than he is. And I’d deny everything, of course, but a lot of people will still admire these things I’ve allegedly done.”

  Levy didn’t like the way Bradford was acting. The calmness he was displaying was unnatural-and disconcerting. Bradford should have been angry, worried, demanding action. He should have been developing a plan to neutralize DeMarco and whoever was controlling him. It was as if DeMarco’s visit had shocked him so badly he was in a state of denial. Or was it possible, Levy wondered, that Bradford didn’t believe anyone could bring him down? Had he stepped over that thin line separating confidence from egomania?

  John Levy thought all these things, but he said none of them. All he said was, “Sir, what do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing. Don’t you understand, son? These people made a huge tactical blunder in sending DeMarco to me with those recordings. Now I know everything they know, and I know they have no evidence linking me to anything Martin did. And I’m about ninety percent certain that whoever’s helping DeMarco works for the NSA and this person realizes that to expose me he would have to expose himself, and he’s too much of a coward to do that.” Bradford inhaled deeply, centering himself. “They took their best shot, John-and they missed.”

  Levy just stood there, not knowing what to say.

  Bradford rose and came out from behind his desk. Putting an arm around Levy’s shoulders, he walked him toward the door.

  “Go home, son,” Bradford said. “Get some rest. It looks like it’s been awhile since you’ve slept.”

  Bradford wasn’t as confident as he had pretended to be with Levy. He was in an extremely vulnerable position, and the only way to negate that vulnerability was to do something he hated to do. He stood up and walked away from his desk, looked briefly out the window, then turned and looked at the photos and plaques on the wall behind his desk-the wall that told the story of his life.

  There were photos of him at various stages of his career, from cadet at West Point to chief of the army. He was shown receiving medals, posed with other army generals, and shaking hands with four U.S. presidents. But it was the battlefield photos that meant the most to him: photos with combat troops-his troops-in every arena where the army had waged war in the last thirty-five years. In the center of the wall was the photo he loved the most, the photo that had appeared on the cover of Time magazine-the photo that launched his career and defined his life.

  It had been taken when he was a second lieutenant in Vietnam, just after the battle for which he’d been awarded the Silver Star. The photographer had captured him in a shot that made it appear as if he was just stepping out of the jungle, pushing his way through an almost impenetrable wall of green foliage. His head was bandaged, the left sleeve of his shirt was missing and his left arm was bandaged from shoulder to elbow. In his right hand he carried an M-16. He was tall and lean and muscular, and his face was smudged with camo paint. And while he looked gaunt and haggard-when the photo had been taken he hadn’t slept in three days-his strength and his determination were evident in the grim set of his mouth and in his eyes. He was, in that photo, the nightmare warrior that no enemy would want to face.

  His eyes moved from the Time cover to one of him standing next to Colin Powell when Powell occupied the chairman’s office. He had always liked Powell and had publicly supported him, but he’d always known that Powell wasn’t a Patton or a MacArthur-or a Bradford. The difference between those generals and Powell was that Powell didn’t have the stomach to willingly sacrifice a battalion if it meant winning a major battle, whereas men like Patton and himself had that sort of bloody resolve. It was this same quality that caused Lincoln to ultimately chose Grant over his other generals because Grant accepted that thousands of his own men would have to die to reunite the country. And it was not that men like Grant or Patton had been callous or unfeeling. They cared deeply for their soldiers-just as Charles Bradford cared deeply for every man and woman who wore an American uniform-but they understood that preserving a nation was more important than preserving the life of any one person, no matter how much you might love that person.

  Bradford returned to his desk and picked up the phone.

  Dillon smiled as he listened to Bradford’s phone call.

  He was a lucky man. The button bug DeMarco had dropped on the carpet in Bradford’s office was battery-powered and would stop operating in the next half hour. Fortunately, Bradford had met with Levy before the battery died, and he made the phone call as soon as Levy left his office.

  Someone had once said that it was better to be lucky than good-and Dillon was both lucky and good.

  The most interesting thing about the discussion he’d just listened to between Levy and Bradford was that Bradford never told Levy that DeMarco knew who Levy was and knew what Levy had done.

  Yes, it was good to be lucky. But was he lucky enough?

  “Do you understand, Alice?” Dillon said.

  “Yes,” Alice said.

  Alice was so wooden. Claire could be just as ruthless as Alice, maybe more so, but at least Claire showed some emotion. Not this young lady, though. She was a machine. She was his Terminator.

  “You can’t lose sight of either man, not for an instant. Use as many people as you think you need.”

  “I won’t lose them,” Alice said.

  “And the timing has to be perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

  “I understand,” Alice said.

  “I wouldn’t normally ask you to do something like this but-well, with what’s at stake…”

  “I said I understand, sir.”

  Dillon had been reluctant to tell Alice everything that he and Claire knew but finally decided he had to.

  “I mean, what Charles Bradford is doing-”

  “Dillon, for God’s sake,” Claire said. “She gets it.”

  40

  It was after midnight when Levy pulled into the parking lot of a small four-story apartment building in Alexandria. He had a two-bedroom unit on the second floor and had lived there for three years. He could have afforded something better but had never seen the need. Th
e apartment was just a place where he slept and occasionally ate. The only reason he had a second bedroom was that he needed space to store his books, all history books, and most of them about the Vietnam War-the war in which he’d lost his father and his brother. He had promised himself that one day he would travel to Vietnam and see the places where they had fought-the places where they’d vanished from the earth.

  Alpha, do you have Sentry?

  Roger that.

  Bravo, do you have Viper?

  Roger that. He’s still sitting in his car.

  Very well. Stand by.

  Levy was exhausted. He didn’t go home after meeting with Bradford, as he’d been ordered, but had continued to hunt for DeMarco. The general had said that finding DeMarco was no longer a priority, yet Levy thought it would be prudent to locate the man. But he failed. Again. He had barely slept in the last two days and if he didn’t get out of his car in the next minute, he’d fall asleep right where he was sitting.

  This is Alpha. Sentry is exiting his vehicle.

  This is Bravo. Viper is now exiting his vehicle. Viper is approaching Sentry.

  Bravo. Alpha. Execute as briefed.

  Roger that.

  Levy inserted his key into the lock-and at that instant a bullet smashed into the door, next to his head, shattering the glass. He dropped to the ground and rolled away from the door while simultaneously reaching for his Colt. His reflexes were dulled by fatigue and he fumbled clumsily for the automatic as he tried to pull it from its holster. And he was totally exposed. There was absolutely nothing near the doorway to use for cover. Nothing.

  Still rolling on the ground and still struggling to clear his weapon, he saw a man standing in the parking lot holding a silenced semiautomatic pistol in his hand. He couldn’t see the man’s face clearly because of the lighting, but he could see that the man, at least momentarily, wasn’t looking at him. For some reason the man who had just missed his head with a bullet was looking over his shoulder, as if he’d heard someone behind him. Levy thought for an instant that he might be able to return fire, but then the man once again aimed his weapon at him.