Dark Ambition

by Allan Topol

  She shook her head, as anxious as he was.

  Ben gingerly walked across the lobby to the elevator with Jennifer right behind.

  Inside the suite, he punched out the telephone number before he even took off his coat. His heart was pounding.

  A woman answered the phone. "George Washington Hospital."

  Ben stammered, his throat dry, "I-I want to speak with Ann Winthrop."

  There were several minutes of silence. "It's G.W. Hospital," he said to Jennifer in a panicked whisper. Finally he heard Ann come on the line. "Ben?"

  "What's wrong?" Ben asked.

  "Everything's all right. Amy has a broken leg, but everything's all right."

  "What happened?"

  She described what had occurred as she had pieced it together from Amy and from Campbell.

  "How bad's the break in Amy's leg?" he asked.

  "Not bad. I got one of the top orthopedists in town to set it. He said to tell you that kids' bones heal fast. There won't be any permanent damage. And there are two armed cops outside of her hospital room in case anybody else makes a move against her."

  "What about Art?" He held his breath.

  "He's in surgery now. I'll know something in about an hour."

  "What's the prognosis?"

  "Nobody's talking yet. They don't know what may have been hit."

  "Oh, Christ. What about Elana?"

  "She'll be okay. They're keeping her here overnight for observation."

  "And the blonde?"

  "Still unconscious. I haven't heard anything beyond that."

  "Call me as soon as Art's out of surgery," he said.

  "It's the middle of the night for you."

  "I don't care how late it is," Ben said emphatically, and hung up.

  He was racked with guilt for the harm he had inflicted on Amy and Campbell. What if Amy was hurt worse, and Ann was trying to soften the blow? He should never have left her. He should never have gotten both of them into this mess. His priorities were all screwed up. He was...

  Jennifer read his mind and tried to reassure him. "They'll both be okay. Ann wouldn't give you anything but a straight story. That's the way she is."

  * * *

  As a result of the painkillers the doctor had given him, Ben was sleeping fitfully when the phone rang an hour later. He grabbed it from its cradle.

  "Ben, it's Ann."

  "How's Art?"

  "They got the bullet. No severe damage. The doctor says he'll be up and around in a week."

  "Which for Art means three days. And you're sure it's only a broken leg for Amy?"

  "I'm absolutely sure. In fact," Ann said in a lighter voice, "somebody wants to talk to you. She'll sound a little drugged. They gave her medication when they set the leg."

  "Put her on."

  He was overjoyed to hear Amy's groggy voice.

  "Daddy, I'm okay. I was really scared, but Art told me they got the bad lady. Aunt Ann's real nice. She got me a hot-fudge sundae with three cherries. It was yummy."

  "I'm so glad, honey."

  "When are you coming home, Daddy?"

  "I'll be back tomorrow afternoon."

  "I love you, Daddy."

  "I love you, too, Amy."

  When Amy handed the phone back to Ann, Ben asked her, "Any other developments in the case in Washington since we left?"

  "Not a thing."

  "See you tomorrow, then."

  As Ben put the phone down, his forehead was damp with perspiration. He couldn't wait to get back to Washington. Too wired to sleep, he went into the other bedroom of the suite. Jennifer was sleeping on her stomach with her arm thrown across the other side of the king-size bed and hair strewn over her face. He watched her sleeping for several minutes. He had been terrified of what those men in the van would do to her, and relieved that they had decided to deliver their message to him rather than her.

  Was there a future for them? he wondered. He certainly hoped so. He knew very well that there was no point even thinking about it until the Winthrop affair was over.

  Chapter 26

  "Well, we got our shooter," Art Campbell said as Ben walked into his hospital room with Amy in his arms, a cast on her leg.

  Art was propped up in bed with a large bandage on his left shoulder.

  Ben winked at Paula, Campbell's wife, who was sitting in a wooden chair next to the bed. "The man's hopeless," he said. "He should be resting, and he's doing police work. He'll probably be playing basketball tomorrow."

  "That's not the half of it," Paula said. "While they were wheeling him into surgery, he's shouting to one of the policemen, 'Get the blond hair in my center desk drawer and check it against the woman who shot me.' "

  "And guess what?" Campbell said.

  "Wait a minute," Ben interrupted. "Before we talk about all of that, I want to say thank you." He walked over and squeezed Campbell's hand.

  "He's really brave," Amy chimed in, "and I was brave, too."

  Ann appeared in the door to the hospital room. She had just driven Elana to Ben's house with Jennifer and left the two of them there. Two guards were posted outside. "And Aunt Ann's really nice."

  He handed Amy over to Ann and moved in closer to Campbell. "What happened with the blond hair?" he whispered.

  "The hair I found on the carpet at Winthrop's house is a match for the lovely blond tresses on the head of the woman upstairs in intensive care, who tried to kidnap Amy. Also, we brought in Hines and MacDonald, the two guards who were on duty at Winthrop's house that Saturday, to look at her. Hines made a positive ID, despite the disguise. MacDonald says he didn't get a good enough look at Nesbitt to say either way. With all of that, I'd say we have a powerful circumstantial case that she was George Nesbitt and pulled the trigger on Winthrop."

  Ben felt a surge of hatred for the woman who had attacked his daughter. "Have you spoken to her?"

  "She's in a coma, although the doctors hate that term. They say she's 'nonresponsive.' Suffered a concussion, severely bruised ribs, and lots of cuts and bruises." He smiled. "Oh, and Amy did her bit. Broken nose and face laceration caused by one old metal Barbie lunch box. Couldn't you afford to buy the kid a new one?"

  They exchanged smiles. "I will now. I'll tell her the police took it for evidence. So what happens with the blonde?"

  "We've got police guards posted outside her room around the clock. If she wakes up"—he paused to take a breath—"and nobody knows when that will be, she just might talk. Then we'd get all of our answers. There have to be people in this town who wouldn't want that to happen."

  Ben couldn't wait indefinitely to see if that scenario unfolded. Right now they had nothing. "So we're still left with the question of who hired her."

  "And an even more basic question. Who is she?"

  "She didn't have ID?"

  "Nancy Burroughs from Detroit. Phony, just like George Nesbitt."

  "What about prints?"

  "Bill Traynor took some fingerprints from her this morning. He sent them over to the FBI lab. We ought to have the results anytime."

  * * *

  When Ben drove up to his house, he was reminded of the movie Fort Apache, the Bronx. Three police cruisers were parked in front. Two patrolmen were posted on the front porch with rifles at their side.

  Amy was tired. He put her into bed for a nap, nearly tripping over the scooter. He wished she'd keep it in the closet, but now wasn't the time to tell her. He read her a story and stayed until he thought she was asleep. Then he kissed her on the forehead and said, "Sleep tight, honey."

  "Don't forget one more hug, Daddy."

  He smiled. She was going to be all right. When he returned to her room a minute later for one more hug, she squeezed him tight. "I'm glad you're home, Daddy."

  "Me, too, honey."

  "And that bad lady won't come again?"

  "No more, honey."

  On the way downstairs, he looked into Elana's room. She was sleeping as well, with a nasty bruise on one side of her face. Then,
as he started down the stairs, he heard an unfamiliar man's voice. Nervously, he came all the way down and looked into the living room. Startled, he saw that he had two visitors—Al Hennessey and Ches Hawthorne.

  Hennessey was pacing nervously back and forth across the beige carpet. The AG sat calmly in a high-backed leather chair, rolling an unlit cigar around in his mouth. Ann was explaining what had happened yesterday when Elana picked up Amy from school.

  Ben had met the AG only once—a year ago, when he was one of five government lawyers to receive the attorney general's Distinguished Service Award. He doubted Hawthorne would remember him. The AG was one of several Wall Street corporate lawyers whom Brewster had put into key positions. He looked every bit the part—expensively tailored blue pinstripe suit and wing-tip shoes that looked as if they'd been shined ten minutes ago.

  Hennessey eyed Ben coming down the stairs with an expression of annoyance, and Ben knew why. Al had been forced to admit to the AG that one of his lawyers had deliberately kept him in the dark. "I thought you were going to Chicago," Hennessey said indignantly to Ben.

  "Well, I..."

  The AG pulled the cigar out of his mouth. "Listen, Ben," he said, taking charge, "I know who you are. I gave you that award last year."

  Ben was pleasantly surprised that Hawthorne had remembered.

  "I just got back from a Pacific Rim conference in Tokyo, and Al here told me some of what's been happening. I figured we'd better talk." Hawthorne stood up. "Let's go off somewhere quiet. The three of us. You, me, and Al. I've got to know what you've learned about Robert's murder."

  Ben shifted his feet nervously, and his head jerked back toward the stairs. "I hear Amy crying," he said suddenly. "Ann, will you come upstairs with me? You seem to be able to calm her down." He looked for all the world like a concerned father. "I'll just be a minute."

  He was still in a lot of pain from the beating in London, and slowly he limped back to the staircase. Ann followed him.

  When they got to the top of the stairs, he led Ann into his own empty bedroom and closed the door.

  "Okay, what gives?" she asked.

  "What do I do now?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You know the people in the administration better than Jennifer and I do. Do I trust Hawthorne and work with him or not? And take your time answering. All of our lives are at risk: yours and Jennifer's, as well as mine and Amy's." Ann didn't reply at first, and Ben added, "If we're right and what's happening is an administration cover-up of the Chinese government's murder of your husband, then how do we know Hawthorne's not a part of it? These people are desperate. Violence means nothing to them."

  "Ches has been in Tokyo the whole time," Ann pointed out.

  "That gives him the perfect cover. Anyone here in town could have coordinated with him by phone. They have secure lines."

  Ann walked over to the window and looked out. Softly she said, "I've always liked Ches. I've thought that of the President's top people, Ches was the most decent of the lot. Better than Cunningham or Slater. Certainly better than Robert. He strikes me as one of those lawyers who will bend the law as far as he can, but he won't downright violate it."

  "That's a nice thing to say about the attorney general of the United States."

  "You ever heard of John Mitchell or Ed Meese?"

  "Touché."

  "The lesson is that lots of people in this town in high places will do illegal things when their political survival is at stake."

  "So where's that leave us with Ches?"

  Ann took a deep breath. "In the last analysis, you have to work with Ches because you have no other way to save yourself and Amy. At least with Ches you have a chance."

  He nodded. "That's fair enough." He thought about it some more. "But I'm taking out an insurance policy. You and Jenny stay involved in everything. Each night I want you to write up what's happened, deliver the pages to someone in the media you trust, and tell him to publish them if the two of us are killed. With that in place, we can bargain with the AG if he turns on us."

  She eyed him skeptically. "With the blonde in the hospital in a coma, you still think there's as much personal risk to us?"

  "Ask Jenny sometime what happened to us in London last night." The grim expression on Ben's face terrified Ann. "I don't want to talk about it," he said.

  In silence they went back downstairs.

  "I'm ready to talk," Ben said. "But I want Jenny and Ann to sit in. They've been part of it up until now. I'm not cutting them out."

  "They're not government employees," Hennessey protested.

  "It doesn't matter, Al," the AG replied sharply. "We're doing it Ben's way."

  For the next hour Ben, with Jennifer and Ann's help, described everything that had happened since Winthrop's death. They played the audio-and videotapes and showed the AG the pictures Mark Bonner had taken in connection with the video and the Chinese embassy involvement. They explained about Ann's being forced to surrender the second video. The AG listened carefully, without interruption, but frowning from time to time. He continually rolled the unlit cigar around in his mouth and chewed on it until it was a pulpy mess, at which point he got up, walked into the kitchen, and tossed it in the garbage can. A couple of times in the narrative Hennessey made a move to intervene, but the AG signaled him to zip it.

  When Ben finished, the AG angrily paced back and forth across the room with a furious expression on his face. "This is fucking awful," he said. "It's even worse than Watergate. I've got to talk to Brewster about it ASAP."

  Ben raised his hand. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea, Mr. Hawthorne."

  "It's Ches."

  "Okay, Ches. We have to keep a tight lid on this for now. If word leaks to the Chinese ambassador, he'll slip out of the country. They'll never agree to send him back. Then we won't have any proof that he hired our blond shooter."

  Hawthorne nodded, agreeing with that much. "So what do you propose to do?"

  "For now, my recommendation would be that you don't say a word to the President or anyone else at the top of the administration. Let Jennifer and me keep taking it one step at a time, peeling back the onion until we get to the rotten core."

  "What's your next step?"

  "We go to see Alexandra Hart in New York tomorrow morning."

  "Okay, then come to my office in the afternoon when you get back. Mary Beth's piled up a million things that came in while I was in Japan, but nothing's more important than this. Meantime, I'll think about what I do with Brewster."

  Jennifer waved her hand in the air. "Hey, what about my client, Clyde Gillis? Anybody remember him?"

  The AG replied, "I think we should leave him in jail in a sort of protective custody, but make him comfortable. Hustle him off quietly to Lewisburg. Give him the white-collar-criminal country-club treatment. Single cell. Large cell. Special food. Complete protection until it's over, which should just be a few more days. Meantime, we'll put twenty-four-hour protection on his wife and kids. Can you live with that, Jennifer?"

  She was satisfied. "I'll talk to Clyde and his wife. I think that should work."

  "Good. I'm still on Tokyo time and tired as hell. Anything else we need to decide now?"

  Ben glanced awkwardly at Hennessey, who was going to hate him for what he was about to do, but he couldn't pass up this opportunity. "One more thing. Since day one in this damn mess, I've been saddled with Ed Fulton as a sidekick. I want him totally off the case. He's a pain in the ass, and he's always in the way."

  The AG looked puzzled. "Who's Ed Fulton?"

  Ben replied quickly, "A young kid. An assistant White House counsel. He works for Jim Slater."

  At the sound of Slater's name, Jennifer's head recoiled in surprise. She didn't speak. An angry scowl covered her face.

  "Why the hell was he ever on this case?" Hawthorne said.

  "You'd better ask Al."

  The AG was clearly pissed. He turned to Hennessey. "Well?"

  Hennessey sent Ben a dirty l
ook. He'd been ass-kissing Slater so much for that appointment to the open seat of the court of appeals that he'd forgotten that although his nomination came from the White House, it would still need Hawthorne's approval before it went to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

  "Slater leaned on me hard while you were in Japan," Hennessey said weakly. "He said because Winthrop was so close to the President, it was important for him to be in the loop on the investigation."

  "Oh, for chrissake, you should have called me in Tokyo," Hawthorne said, disgusted at this excuse. "You know what I think about those White House clowns mixing into Department business. First, it's improper. Second, with the Chinese government involved, I don't want White House people within a mile of this case. And third, it's nothing more than Slater trying to expand his turf in domestic affairs." He turned to Ben. "Don't worry. I'll get it straightened out as soon as I leave here. You've seen the last of Ed Fulton on this case."

  As Hawthorne walked toward the front door, Ben moved with him. Hennessey was a few paces behind.

  "We're going to do the right thing," the AG told Ben, "regardless of whose ox gets gored. Regardless of the political consequences."

  Hawthorne had said precisely the words Ben wanted to hear. Still, they didn't make him feel any better. He wasn't sure that he could believe the attorney general. Hawthorne was a very good lawyer. Ben knew only too well that a good lawyer could take any position and make it sound like Moses had brought it down from Mount Sinai.

  Once Ben was alone with Jennifer and Ann in the living room, he said, "It's time to move on Alexandra Hart."

  "Actually," Jennifer replied, "when you were at the hospital this afternoon, I already moved on her."

  He pulled back in surprise.

  "Yeah, without you, I learned how to do some things on my own."

  "Very funny. What'd you do?"

  "Well, for starters, I talked to Louise Jenson, my associate. She's been going through the personal papers of our distinguished and recently deceased secretary of state. Louise found lots of canceled checks written to Alexandra Hart by Winthrop."

  "What are we talking about in dollars?"

  "More than a hundred thousand this year, easily."