Ultimate Betrayal

by Joseph Badal

  APRIL 28

  CHAPTER 48

  At a few minutes past 1:00 a.m., Leo Brill met Scott Dundee on the fourth level of a parking garage on Lexington Avenue. Dundee got out of his car and into Brill’s Jeep Cherokee.

  “Hey, Scott,” Brill said, “sorry about being so late.”

  “I understand,” Dundee replied. “It wouldn’t have been a big deal if my damned back didn’t hurt so bad.”

  Brill could tell from the strained look and sweat on Dundee’s face the man was in terrible pain. “Didn’t you take your medicine?” he asked.

  “Shit, yes, I took my medicine. If I take any more of those pills I’ll be a zombie. They just don’t ease the pain much anymore.”

  “You gonna be able to finish this job?”

  “I ain’t ever walked away from an assignment before, and I ain’t about to begin now. Give me that flash drive.”

  Despite the late hour, there was still plenty of activity outside The Plaza. Several couples in evening attire climbed into limousines, and dozens more were queued up. Horse-drawn carriages discharged late-night revelers.

  A dozen solid-black Suburbans with heavily tinted windows were parked along the curb near the hotel entrance.

  “See all those SUV’s?” Dundee said. “They’re Secret Service. With the President and all those foreign guys here, the place is probably infested with Feds. Getting in there is gonna to be trickier than it was earlier, when all the big shots were down at the UN. We gotta tweak the plan a little bit. The offices on the Mezzanine should be closed down. But the lobby will be packed.”

  Brill glanced over at Dundee. “What are you thinking, Scottie? I don’t want this thing screwed up. You know what Cataldo will do to me if we mess up.”

  “I know, Leo, I know. Drive around the block. Let me think about it.”

  Brill found a parking space on 60th Street, about three blocks from The Plaza. He and Dundee walked back to the hotel. The walk took a toll on Dundee. The pain in his back had escalated and now radiated down his left leg. He couldn’t fully extend either of his legs, and his normal stride had devolved into little more than a shuffle. It took them twenty minutes to reach the hotel and by the time they climbed the stairs into the lobby, Dundee sweated as though he’d just run the New York Marathon. He grabbed Brill’s arm and guided him toward the bar off the lobby. Dundee chose a table in the darkest part of the room and waved for the cocktail waitress after he slowly eased into a chair.

  The waitress came over. Before they could place an order, she said, “This is last call, gentlemen. By all rights the bar should have closed an hour ago, but these government guys do like their toddies.” She looked at Dundee more carefully and added, “You look like you could really use a drink.”

  “You got that right, ma’am,” Dundee said. “Bring us a couple double bourbons.”

  While the waitress walked away, Dundee looked around the lounge and out into the lobby. The place was packed with Feds—dark suits, military haircuts, ear buds, and lapel pin transmitters. “There must be two dozen agents in this place, Leo.”

  “What the hell are we doing in here then?” Brill whispered. His eyes darted around like he was a rabbit surrounded by coyotes.

  Dundee laughed and downed half his drink. “I’ll be right back.”

  It took considerable effort for Dundee to get up from his chair. He whispered to Brill, who nervously drummed his fingers on the table, “Try to relax. You look worse than I feel.”

  Dundee shuffled out of the bar and over to the front desk on the opposite side of the lobby. There was one clerk on duty, a fussy, thirty-something guy with light-brown hair highlighted with blond streaks. He ignored Dundee for several seconds while he typed at a keyboard. When he raised his head to acknowledge Dundee, the clerk wore an officious look he had no doubt perfected on the job at The Plaza. Dundee pulled out his old New York Detective’s gold shield and stuck it under the clerk’s nose.

  “I’m with the security detail covering the G-8 conference,” he told the clerk. “I’ve just been instructed to check out a possible security breach. We just received a report someone entered the emergency stairwell on the fourth floor and may have gone down to the Mezzanine level.”

  Dundee noticed the desk clerk now at least paid attention. “We know the guy didn’t go up,” he continued, “because there’s a guard stationed in the stairwell on the fifth floor. Whoever he is, the guy is either still between four and the mezzanine, or he walked all the way down the stairs and out of the hotel. Probably nothing to worry about, but we can’t be too careful.”

  “So what do you need from me, officer?” the clerk asked.

  “I need someone with a pass key to go up to the Mezzanine with me. I want to look into each of the offices up there. Or you can just loan me the key. I’ll bring it right back.”

  Dundee hoped the clerk wouldn’t call an in-house security guy to accompany him. The security staff at The Plaza was more than likely loaded with retired New York City cops, including some who might recognize him.

  The clerk looked at Dundee as though he were an insect. “I hope you didn’t just suggest I accompany you. I cannot leave the desk uncovered.”

  “Listen, mister,” Dundee told the man, “you got the President of the United States upstairs. For all we know, there’s a kook with a bomb in his pocket running around this building. Do you think the best use of my time is to stand here having a conversation with you?”

  The desk clerk shot Dundee a worried look and exhaled loudly. “Okay, okay. Here, take my passkey. But make sure you bring it back.”

  “You got it, little buddy.” Dundee turned toward the elevators.

  Several members of the Secret Service Detachment were assigned to cover the hotel lobby. Each wore communication devices that allowed him or her to stay in touch with all the others at all times. One of the agents, Elise Finch, had watched Dundee shuffle across the lobby from the bar to the front desk. She had watched a couple of hundred other people do the same thing that evening and, in every case, had determined the people were basically harmless and posed no threat to the President. Finch came to the same conclusion about the man with the limp. When she saw the desk clerk hand something to the man, she assumed it was just his room key or a message. Out of habit, Finch made a mental note of the limping man’s clothing, his height, weight, and hair color. While the man approached the elevators, Finch was about to erase all she’d noticed about him from her memory bank. Another agent would take over the observation of this man when he got off the elevator, on whatever floor. But something made her look back at the guy as he limped into an empty. After the door closed, she looked up at the floor indicator above the elevator door and was surprised when it stopped on the Mezzanine level. This was not what she’d anticipated. The offices on the Mezzanine had been vacated hours earlier.

  The Secret Service trains its agents to notice—and act on—anything out of the ordinary, no matter how inconsequential. Finch spoke into her lapel mic as she moved quickly toward the front desk. “I have a possible situation. Everyone hold position while I check this out.”

  The desk clerk had gone through a door behind the counter area. Finch pounded the bell on the counter. This brought the clerk back out.

  “You don’t need to break the bell, ma’am. I was only a few feet away.”

  Finch flashed her identification. “That man who just left here. You handed him something. What was it? Who was he?”

  “First of all,” the clerk said disdainfully, “I gave him a passkey. And second, I should not have to tell you who the man is since he’s a member of your own security team.”

  Finch felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. She reached over the counter, grabbed the clerk by the front of his jacket, and jerked him close. “Listen to me; I’ve got no time for your bullshit. Tell me what that man told you. Now!”

  The clerk talk
ed so fast Finch had to slow him down.

  Pass key. Security. Intruder in the stairwell. Offices. Finch had heard enough. She raced across the lobby toward the Mezzanine stairs. At the same time, she spoke into her mic: “Possible intruder on the Mezzanine level.” She heard other agents running after her as she took the stairs two at a time.

  Finch reached the Mezzanine and turned right into the hallway. The man she’d seen had just come out of one of the offices.

  “Hold it right there, mister,” Finch ordered.

  The man stopped, slowly turned around, and faced Finch, who approached with her pistol down by her right thigh.

  Finch sized up the intruder and instinctively knew he was no ordinary second-story man. While she walked to within five feet of the guy, she heard her backup crew reach the top of the stairs behind him. She focused all of her attention on the intruder. “U.S. Secret Service,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Look, I can try to blow smoke at you, but that would only waste your time and piss you off. So I’ll give it to you straight. I’m a private detective.” He slowly took his ID out of his shirt pocket and handed it to the agent.

  “Scott Dundee,” Finch read aloud.

  “Yeah, that’s right. I got this client who suspects his wife has been messing around. He gave me a couple of names of guys who might be playing hide-the-salami with the wife. One of the names is this guy Hal Norris.” Dundee jabbed a thumb in the direction of the office door. “I figured if I could get into his office and check his appointment book, his desk drawers, maybe I could find something incriminating.”

  “Assume the position,” Finch ordered.

  When Dundee put his hands against the wall, Finch kicked his feet apart.

  Dundee blurted a noise somewhere between a grunt and a scream. When Finch found a flash drive in Dundee’s pocket she stuck it under Dundee’s nose. “What the hell is this?”

  “It’s blank. It’s nothing.”

  Finch turned the drive over and looked at each of the edges. There was no label on it.

  After she scrutinized the man’s ID again, Finch slipped it and the flash drive into her jacket pocket and asked, “Why’d you tell the desk clerk you’re with the security detail here at the hotel? Impersonating a federal officer is a crime.”

  “I know that was kind of lame,” Dundee responded, “but I got this bad back and I got to use every shortcut I can find to get the job done. I’m sorry if I upset you. I sure didn’t mean to.”

  Finch waved at two backup agents, then faced Dundee again. “Okay, Mr. Dundee, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll have two of our agents drive you home. They’ll search your place and then you’ll go with them to your office. I assume you’ll agree to a search of both locations without the need for a search warrant?”

  Dundee nodded.

  “If they find anything that makes them the least bit suspicious, they’ll haul your ass downtown and will, I assure you, make your life a nightmare. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Finch beckoned one of the agents over and handed him Dundee’s ID and the flash drive. “Check out Jim Rockford here. Go to his home and office. You find anything that bothers you, lock him up and interrogate him hard. If everything looks all right, give him back his stuff and turn him loose.”

  Dundee and the two Secret Service agents reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed the lobby toward the hotel doors just as Leo Brill walked out of the lounge. Brill gave no sign of recognition. He let them reach the doors and descend the steps to the sidewalk and then followed. Through the doors, he saw Dundee loaded into the back seat of one of the black Suburbans.

  What in hell do I do now? Brill thought.

  A wave of nausea hit Brill while he watched the big black vehicle pull away from the curb. If Dundee had switched the flash drives, Brill would be in good shape. He knew Dundee wouldn’t tell the Feds a thing, so Cataldo’s plan would go off without a hitch. But if the flash drives had not been switched, the plan would be dead in the water. Like Brill.

  CHAPTER 49

  With the heads-of-state tied up in conference meetings all day, Bishop had squired several of his intelligence agency counterparts on a tour of the Statue of Liberty.

  The tour terminated at 3:45 p.m., after which Bishop returned to his room at The Plaza. Although he didn’t believe there was a God, he hedged his bets and prayed that David Hood was already dead. With Paladin on his trail, the man doesn’t have a prayer, he thought. He spent an hour-and-a-half on the telephone on CIA business and then thought about contingency plans for taking care of Hood. Afterward, he watched television news. At 6:30, he showered, shaved, and dressed for the State dinner. He admired himself in the room’s full-length mirror. Even at his age, he believed, he could still turn an eye or two.

  “Rolf Bishop,” he said to his image, “you’ve come a long way.”

  But then a bubble of bile hit the back of his throat. Fucking David Hood, he thought.

  David once again reminded himself he had to control his emotions to be effective. Pent-up sorrow and anxiety, excitement, and anger had combined to make him a nervous wreck. It was the waiting that was so difficult. He now knew without a doubt Rolf Bishop was responsible for Carmela’s, Heather’s, and Kyle’s murders, and he was confident he understood the motive: Bishop’s drug sales to the New York Mafia had earned the man tens of millions of dollars. That money had allowed him to buy political influence. But he couldn’t take the chance one of the men in the Special Logistical Support Detachment had been aware of his smuggling operation. So the bastard had killed all of the survivors except David.

  David’s greatest source of anxiety was the pending plan Joey Cataldo had shared with him. But there was nothing he could do about it until later this evening, after the State Dinner. So he sat for a couple of minutes, paced for a couple of minutes, sat again, paced again.

  As David had told Cataldo, if Manny Segal could track them down at Casa Sogna, then they had no idea who else might know their location. Cataldo had spirited them out of his estate in the wee hours of the morning in the back of a van. Now David, Peter, Jennifer, and Dennis, were cooped up in an apartment above one of Cataldo’s restaurants near 3rd Avenue and 42nd Street.

  Out of sheer desperation for something to do, David suggested they review the plan for that evening, and the others readily agreed.

  “Anything to get you to sit down and stay down,” Ramsey said.

  They once again went over the plan, step-by-step. He knew they would need luck for it to succeed, but he was convinced, if all went well, Rolf Bishop’s reputation would be finished forever.

  At 7:30 p.m. sharp, a liveried waiter on The Plaza Hotel’s staff walked through the corridor outside the ballrooms and lightly struck a small three-plate xylophone, the signal for the start of the cocktail hour.

  Bishop felt ecstatic. His presentation yesterday had been extremely well-received. He’d interacted well with the chiefs of some of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agencies. He noted there was a general feeling of accomplishment over the work completed at the conference and everyone seemed to be in a jovial mood. He basked in the glow of his own importance. People he met wanted to talk about him, about his career, his new position, his priorities. He couldn’t help but feel bloated with self-importance, surrounded as he was by the world’s elite who complimented him at every turn.

  The guests entered the Grand Ballroom at 8:15. Bishop guessed the decorations and table settings impressed even the most jaded attendee. The centerpieces on the tables were three-foot-tall fluted vases that spilled cascades of dendrobium orchids. Massive, multi-tiered crystal chandeliers sparkled like starships. The room’s lights were adjusted to display the guests to best advantage—not so bright as to accentuate physical flaws but bright enough to allow the women to display their hairdos, jewels, and gowns.

 
He turned his attention to the dais when the New York City mayor welcomed the audience and then introduced the President of the United States. The President toasted his foreign counterparts. Each of the heads of state on the dais then toasted the President and one another. While the dinner was served, with a different wine for each course, the cordiality grew almost frantic and the noise of conversation in the ballroom escalated.

  The President rose after dinner. The audience immediately quieted. The President announced, “We accomplished much this week. We dealt with the key elements of international security, including intelligence, economic, and strategic issues. And we are all committed to do our best to build a safer, healthier, and more prosperous world for every child on the planet. There is no future without our children and there is no future unless the children are prepared to provide leadership in their turn. It is for this reason I have declared this year to be the Year of the Child in the United States of America.”

  Bishop nodded. His head bounced like a bobble-headed dog in a car rear window. He caught himself and stopped. Don’t be an idiot, he told himself.

  “All of us in this room are privileged,” the President continued. “We have the best life can offer. But if you are like me, you may sometimes forget you too were once a small child, weak and vulnerable. So I thought we all might enjoy a trip back in time to when we were, each and every one of us, a long way from our present positions of power.”

  The President offered his most charismatic smile and waited while the lights slowly dimmed until the room was almost completely dark. The soundtrack on the video started while four large screens dropped from ceiling booms. Soft music wafted over the room like a light breeze, then built in volume, and finally subsided when an image of the President in the Oval Office was projected on the screens and the President’s recorded voice filled the ballroom. It was apparent the audience appreciated the effect, as “oohs” and “ahs” were heard from every corner of the room. The President spoke of power and privilege. Then the picture suddenly changed to a photograph of the President as a small child dressed in tattered, dirty overalls, in front of a ramshackle house. It was an image the White House spinmeisters loved. It conjured up an echo of Lincoln. The President spoke of how many children around the planet lived in poverty and lacked any opportunity to escape from it. Other photos showed the President as he grew from a young boy to a teenager to a young adult. “It is opportunity that makes the difference in a young person’s life, and it is the realization of that opportunity which makes our world a better place,” the President’s voice said.