Midas

by Russell Andrews

  “No, sir. Not too bad.”

  “I guess I can forget it now, can’t I?”

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

  Ackland picked up his glass again, took one more drink. “What the hell,” he said. “How about we both show how tough we are. How about you do your job and I’ll do mine.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Justin said.

  He turned and left the assistant attorney general of the United States. Before Justin walked out of the room, he glanced back to see Ted Ackland staring out the hotel window, looking lost and confused and a little bit desperate.

  Justin didn’t blame him one damn bit.

  35

  The mansions on Gin Lane in Southampton reminded Justin of his childhood in Rhode Island. The rich people in Newport, where his parents had a second home, lived like this. On a different, almost unimaginable scale. In a pristine location. Isolated. Unaware that outside their gates and away from their manicured lawns, the real world was lying in wait.

  Justin felt very much a part of the real world right now.

  And he’d never been quite so anxious to bring this reality behind those electric gates.

  It was eleven-thirty at night. He was on foot, walking beside Reggie. They’d driven separately; Justin had her meet him two blocks from the house they were now heading toward. He’d told her to just park on the grass shoulder of the road and wait for him. As he drove the last few miles into Southampton, he’d noticed a car that had been behind him for several turns. He made a point of going past his destination, taking a winding road that led into the local college. That campus was a flat expanse, and as soon as he made the turn he accelerated, heading straight south to the Old Montauk Highway. He crossed over, hit eighty on the speedometer, made a quick left turn, and waited. If anyone had followed him, he’d gotten clear. He forced himself to sit for another three minutes, then wended his way back to his original destination. There were no headlights behind him. It had probably been nothing, but Justin was not in the mood to take chances.

  He and Reggie walked past the golf hole that Justin had been told about. It was a respectable par three that led straight to the ocean.

  “Isn’t there a lot of security for these houses?” Reggie whispered.

  “Sure,” Justin said.

  “So do we have a plan to get into this guy’s place?”

  “We do.”

  “What, we just walk in the front door?”

  “The back door,” he said.

  They were at the house.

  “Follow me,” Justin told her. He didn’t turn at the front gate that was meant to keep out cars, instead kept around the block toward a side entrance of the house. Running along that side of the property was a low brick wall, just three or four feet high. He pulled himself up to the top of the wall, reached down to give her his hand. She waved him away and easily pulled herself up beside him. A quick hop down and they were both in the vast manicured yard that belonged to Mishari al Rahman.

  “Can’t be this easy,” she muttered.

  “Getting into these places isn’t usually all that hard,” he said. “It’s getting out. If you can’t get a car up the driveway it’s difficult to carry out anything too large. So they mostly care about guarding the driveway. Besides, there’s a state-of-the-art alarm system. Anyone goes in the house the police are here in about three minutes.”

  “And you’re brilliant enough to know how to disable the alarm?”

  “Already been disabled. Didn’t take brilliance. Just took a call to the Southampton police and the security company that installed it.”

  “So we can just waltz right in?”

  “Pretty much,” he said. “But I’d pull your gun now. In case our guy’s not in a real dancing mood.”

  Although guns were not standard issue for the East End PD, Reggie had a registered firearm. She had told him she was not a bad marksman, which was the main reason he’d called her instead of one of the kiddie cops populating the East End station. She told him she’d never fired the gun in real-life action but she was good on the range. He figured it was the best he was going to do. They both had their pistols in their hands when they reached the back door. He turned the knob, but the door was locked.

  “Should we try a window?” Reggie asked.

  Justin shook his head, reached into his pocket and took out a key.

  “How the hell did you get that?” she demanded.

  “The Realtor. She had it from when she showed the house.”

  He unlocked the door, stepped inside, his arms up and his gun pointed.

  Nothing.

  They were in a foyer, the lights off. There were lights on upstairs and in the kitchen, which was off to their right, but the house was quiet. No buzz of a television, no sense of any movement.

  “Now what?” Reggie whispered.

  “We’ll take this floor first,” he answered, also in a hushed tone. He pointed toward the kitchen. “I got a rough layout from the Realtor. There’s a dining room, then the kitchen. Off the dining room is a doorway that leads to a den. The kitchen’s actually three rooms.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll go first,” he said. “You follow. Don’t be trigger-happy, there have to be servants somewhere around. Maybe bodyguards. But don’t be afraid to shoot, either.”

  She nodded again, nervously. Then he stepped into the dining room.

  Moonlight filtered through the windows, casting shadows on the huge room. His arm jerked up, gun pointed toward a corner of the room, then he realized he was looking at a sculpture. Each corner of the room had a marble sculpture in it. They were all of naked women. There was enough light in the room that he could make out the fact that the women’s pubic hair had been painted in.

  He heard Reggie exhale with relief. Then he saw her roll her eyes in disbelief.

  He motioned to her that he was moving into the kitchen. She nodded her okay and followed him.

  Justin went through the doorway. The first room of the kitchen had a small stainless steel table and cabinets on all four walls that were stockpiled with liquor. The al Rahman family clearly did not follow the nondrinking dictates of the Muslim religion.

  He glided into the next room, where the light was on. The first thing he noticed was the enormous stainless steel eight-burner stove that dominated the room. The second thing he saw made him turn away and made his stomach lurch. He turned toward Reggie, who had seen it, too. She had gone ghostly white. Justin reached out to touch her arm but she pulled away. The skin on her face was drawn tight and her eyes seemed to sink into their sockets, her breath was coming in short, thick gasps, but she nodded at him that she was okay. He turned back to the center of the room.

  Four Arab men and two women were lying on the floor in a pile. All of their throats had been cut.

  He told her to wait, not to move, and he made a quick search of the rest of the downstairs of the house. There was no one, either living or dead.

  He made his way back to the kitchen, took her arm and guided her back to the foyer and the bottom of the stairway.

  “The Realtor says there are fourteen rooms on the second floor and twelve on the third,” he told her. “We’ll go up together. At the top, you go left, go to the end of the hallway and work your way back, room by room. I’ll take the top floor.”

  “Got it.”

  “Reggie, be careful. It seems like we’ve missed him, but we don’t know that for sure.”

  “Okay.” That seemed to be as articulate as she could manage.

  They tiptoed up one flight. At the landing, he nudged her to the left and he kept climbing. Justin followed the same plan he’d just given Reggie. He went left, to the room at the end of the hallway, nudged the door open with his foot, stepped inside. Nothing. The same with the next room he came to. And he did the same at the third door. Stepped inside to a lavish bedroom suite. The front room was empty. The master bedroom wasn’t.

  Sprawled on the bed, lying on and tangled in blood-dr
enched sheets and blankets, was a man he was certain was Mudhi al Rahman.

  Justin stepped forward to the body. There was no point in checking vital signs. The man had been shot several times in the chest and face. Whoever had killed him had been brutal and thorough.

  Justin was overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness and defeat. He’d lost his witness. Lost his proof.

  He’d lost.

  Justin sagged. Took a step back . . .

  And felt a prodding at the back of his neck. He didn’t need to be told what it was that was pressed against his spine. A gun barrel. Justin closed his eyes.

  “Drop the gun,” Special Agent Hubbell Schrader said quietly. “Drop it now.”

  Justin followed instructions. There was no other play.

  The FBI agent poked Justin again. “Move away from the bed,” he said.

  Justin moved until Schrader told him to stop. There was one goal and one goal only now: stay alive as long as possible and hope that something happened to interfere with the inevitable.

  The gun in Schrader’s right hand didn’t waver, it stayed pointed straight at Justin’s head, while Schrader used his left hand to toss a second pistol on the floor by Justin’s feet.

  “Bend down and take it,” Schrader said. “It’s empty, so don’t get any wild ideas.”

  Justin crouched and picked up the gun. At the very least, he thought, he’d have something he could throw. Not much of a chance but better than nothing.

  Schrader indicated the second gun. “If you don’t cooperate I can set it all up after you’re dead just as easily. So please don’t try anything. I’m already exhausted.”

  “You want it to look like I shot him?”

  “Very good,” Schrader said.

  “Why?”

  “Paranoid cop goes psycho,” the agent said. “Driven over the edge by treatment at Gitmo. I can see the headline now. Maybe ‘terrorist cop’ instead of psycho. It could go either way.”

  “It’s over,” Justin said. “It’s too late for you. They know what’s going on.”

  “Do they?” Schrader said with a smirk.

  “You know how it works. You got in over your head, you trusted the wrong people. If you cooperate, it’ll go a lot easier on you.”

  “I am cooperating,” Special Agent Schrader said, the smirk still on his face. “And you know what drives me crazy?”

  “What?” Justin asked.

  “Talking. Happens in movies and television all the time. Too much talking. I never had that urge.”

  “What urge?”

  “The need to explain. I just like to get things over with.”

  There was no warning from Schrader, it was Justin’s instinct that made him move. He didn’t get far, just managed to twist his body because he sensed what was coming. The movement saved his life, at least momentarily, because Schrader fired without another word. Justin felt the fire in his left side. It spun him around and took his breath away. His hand reached for the wound at the same time he stumbled against the corner of the room, as if somehow his fingers could stop the flow of blood. They couldn’t.

  Justin didn’t look up at Schrader. He didn’t want the smirk to be the last thing he saw.

  So Justin didn’t see the smirk on Schrader’s face fade when he heard the word “Freeze!”

  Reggie Bokkenheuser stepped into the bedroom, her gun aimed at Special Agent Hubbell Schrader. “Put it down,” she said.

  His gun didn’t waver. It stayed pointing directly at Justin. Schrader took two quick, dancer-like steps to the side, swiveled his head to the right to glance back at Reggie.

  “Shoot him,” Justin said.

  She was frozen.

  The smirk came back on Schrader’s face. To Justin he said, “Don’t get your hopes up. She’s not going to shoot.”

  “Kill him,” Justin said. “Kill him now.”

  “You won’t shoot,” Schrader said to Reggie. “Will you?”

  There was no movement. The expression on the agent’s face turned into a full-fledged smile. He nodded toward Justin, a brief gesture of respect, an acknowledgment of a game well played. Justin tried to gather his legs for a lunge, if he could move maybe Schrader would miss, there was a chance the next bullet wouldn’t be fatal, and Reggie would have a chance to take him out. He prepared to fling himself sideways but he knew the burning in his side would slow him down. And the smile on Schrader’s face said it didn’t matter anyway, he wasn’t going to miss.

  And then from downstairs there was a crash. A door being busted open. Footsteps running, many sets.

  Justin heard someone, a woman’s voice, scream, “FBI! Jay, can you hear me?! Can you hear me, Jay?!”

  Schrader looked disbelieving but still the smile didn’t fade completely. He had shifted his gaze toward the noise downstairs, it was impossible not to, but his inattention didn’t last long. Justin shifted his weight, screamed when the pain came, and threw himself directly at the agent, hurled his body as best he could, but he knew he’d blown it because Schrader had plenty of time to recover and fire. The agent was going to get him in midair, he wasn’t even going to get close, then Justin heard a gun go off, waited to feel the agony again, but it didn’t come. He looked up, saw Schrader staggering backward, heard another shot, watched Schrader go down. Justin looked at Reggie, whose arm was still extended, her gun still pointed at the agent, and she fired a third time, and then Wanda Chinkle burst into the room, followed by three FBI agents, guns in hand.

  “Drop it!” Wanda screamed. “Drop it now!”

  Justin saw Reggie release her gun and let it fall to the floor, and then watched her being forced to her knees. Two of the agents had their weapons pointed at her, Wanda and the fourth agent had theirs pointed straight at Justin’s heart.

  “Call 911,” Wanda barked at one agent. Then, to Justin, quieter, but not gentle: “Put it down, Jay. Put it down and we’ll get you help.”

  It didn’t even register that he was still holding Schrader’s pistol. All he focused on was that another man had come into the room, a man who stood behind Wanda and said, very quietly, “Put the gun down, Mr. Westwood.”

  Justin stared disbelievingly at Jeffrey Stuller, the attorney general of the United States.

  “Remember what I told you,” Wanda said. “Please.”

  Justin remembered. Trust me, she’d said. And anyone who’s with me.

  Trust me.

  He remembered something else, too, as he tried to figure out what could have happened, how Schrader could have been lying in wait for him, how Wanda was telling him to trust the man he knew was behind Midas and the entire terrorist scheme.

  He remembered a little nine-year-old girl saying, He was an assistant general.

  You mean like a colonel? Justin had asked.

  No, she’d insisted. An assistant general.

  Ted Ackland.

  An assistant general.

  Assistant attorney general.

  Ted Ackland had been in Hutch and Terry Cooke’s house with Mudhi al Rahman. Mudhi had played a game of jacks. Ted Ackland had been the one who frightened little Hannah Cooke.

  “Put it down and get on the floor, Jay. Now,” Wanda said.

  Ackland. The A in Midas.

  Justin said, “It’s empty. Don’t shoot. It’s empty,” and he let the gun fall out of his hand.

  The next thing he knew, he was falling to his knees and Wanda was saying to him, “You had to get cute. You had to lose me in the fucking college. I had your back, you asshole.”

  And then Reggie was holding him and he was thanking her for saving his life and telling her to be careful, not to get his blood all over her.

  “The ambulance’ll be here soon,” he heard Wanda say. “Just hold on.”

  “What time is it?” Justin thought to ask.

  Jeffrey Stuller, confused, looked at his watch. “Twelve-thirty,” the attorney general said.

  Justin looked at Reggie, who had her arms wrapped around him now and was holding him as close
to her as she possibly could.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  36

  At Southampton Hospital they kept telling him how lucky he was. Justin wondered what it would take for someone to be considered unlucky, but none of the nurses or doctors answered him.

  The wound was a clean one; the bullet had gone straight through, doing relatively little damage. They told him he wouldn’t have to spend more than twenty-four hours there. After eating his first hospital meal—possibly chicken, he thought, and some kind of white tasteless custard—he thought maybe he actually was lucky after all.

  Justin could tell how impressed the staff was when the attorney general of the United States showed up, posting two FBI agents at the door of the room to keep any potential visitors out. Justin hoped their newfound respect would translate into giving him a better meal when it came time for his next feeding.

  Justin listened as the attorney general stood by the side of his bed and talked. It didn’t take long for the tale to unfold. Stuller had been investigating the conspiracy within the administration for months. He’d recently included Ackland in the investigation as he’d become aware of his deputy’s involvement. When Justin had called Wanda to set up a meeting with the assistant attorney general, she had checked with Stuller. They’d decided to use Justin to flush Ackland out. They’d decided to use him as bait.

  “I’m sorry, Jay,” Wanda said. She was sitting in the straight-backed chair at the foot of the bed. “You wouldn’t tell me what you were up to, although I had a reasonable idea. I couldn’t tell you anything unless you’d confided in me.”

  “I would have done the same thing,” Justin said. “No apology needed. But how long have you been part of this?”

  She glanced at Jeffrey Stuller, who nodded his okay. “Not long,” she said. “But long enough. At some point during the attorney general’s investigation, he realized the level of corruption within the Bureau. He decided I could be trusted and he called me into his inner circle.”

  “Good call,” Justin said.

  “It’s one of the reasons I was able to help you out periodically,” she said. “I was under orders to. We thought you could prove things that even we couldn’t.”