Patriot

by A S Bond

  “One too many,” Scott muttered to himself, and he reached for his phone to check the headlines on the news feeds.

  Except it wasn’t there. Frantic, he searched for his wallet; that was still here, but his work cell was gone. With a feeling of dread, Scott reached for the zipped inside pocket where he had put the Blackberry Brooke had texted earlier. He still had it.

  Scott jumped up and stared out the window, but the platform was empty. The thief was gone and the train was already gathering speed, pulling out of the station.

  Now he knew for sure someone was worried about his interest in Maynard. But was that person internal—and did he know about Brooke?

  Chapter 11

  The next day, at lunchtime, Scott sat in the park, enjoying the sun and the cool breeze. A sandwich lay unopened next to him as his sipped from a can of soda and thought about his conversation with Mike. The CIA clearly had its own fish to fry in Afghanistan, but Mike had come to him because of the domestic angle. Was Maynard being protected within the Administration?

  Scott’s brain was reeling again. He set aside motives for now; what he could do, was his job. Follow the trail of evidence, and see where it took him. Someone, for whatever reason, was interfering in his investigation into Maynard. He deliberately worked his way up the chain of command through the intelligence services, considering who knew about Mike and his original discovery of the chip. Scott frowned into the distance, then he looked up as a plane coming into Dulles roared across his concentration. Was it someone trying to shield the president? Stop a scandal? That was as far as he allowed himself to think, and it left the field wide open for anyone high up enough to benefit from a grateful commander in chief. But it had to be someone who legitimately was involved in the project.

  The plane was on the ground now, the jets’ roar lessening. Dulles. The name of Eisenhower’s secretary of state, famous for using the CIA to overthrow democratic rule in Iran. Scott thoughts back to the Apache Incident. It was odd that both Vernon and Roberts should be in agreement over the strategy for this investigation. Only one person linked the two men directly. Only one person could filter information passed between the two, and one man had the ability - and the desire - to play them off against each other for his own advantage.

  Waring.

  Answerable to Roberts as the chair of the board for NCIX, but dependent on Vernon for his job, Waring needed both of them on his side - but he also had the opportunity to ensure they only saw the things he needed them to see. Information passed by Vernon into Intelligence would be run by Waring, and vice versa; the potential for manipulation was enormous.

  Scott wondered if he suspected Waring because of his dislike of the man. Maybe. But he also distrusted the executive officer, and there was a lot to be said for going with your gut. He could start with a background check, looking for past connections, personal history, anything. Then look at his financial records. Waring wouldn’t be doing this for free; money would be involved somewhere, and Maynard was a billionaire.

  Scott smiled to himself and ripped open the plastic wrap on his sandwich. It felt good to be doing something tangible. He would need to be careful, but there were ways. Scott was on his own turf here.

  That afternoon, he checked his diary. Clear. That was a pretty unusual occurrence since Patel, his boss, had gone on sick leave. Closing the door to his small office, he slanted the window blinds and started work on Waring.

  It was a delicate task; the official records showed nothing of use, of course, except the man’s meteoric rise through the ranks. No reprimands, no black marks on his record. Slightly disappointed, but hardly surprised, Scott widened the search. But Waring was clean. He lived in a modest family home in Bethesda, he drove to work every day in a three-year-old car, his wife worked as a kindergarten teacher, and they had no luxurious vacations, no expensive second homes and no debts.

  Frustrated, Scott decided to look at this from another angle: Maynard. He might not be able to launch an official DOD investigation into the man, but there was no reason why he couldn’t do a little desk research after hours. Last night’s light-fingered drunk proved someone already thought he was doing just that, and that made him intensely curious about what they were hiding.

  The light faded in the evening sky as Scott worked on, accessing all the public and not-so public information available. For a billionaire, Maynard was surprisingly little written-about, or noted in any way. He leaned back in his chair and glanced at his watch, then he stood up and walked to the window. He was hungry, he realized, so he headed for the cafeteria in the basement.

  The single attendant on duty eyed him with a mixture of boredom and irritation as he sat alone at a table in the large, echoing room. The sandwich was as terrible as he had known it would be; there was too much mustard with the ham, which lay anemically in a tasteless white sub. He put it down in disgust. His mind wandered, briefly, and that was enough for his subconscious to make a connection that propelled him to his feet again. He ran for his office.

  He knew something was wrong the moment he unlocked his door. Nothing had been disturbed, exactly, but wasn’t the chair at the wrong angle...? He swirled the computer mouse and the monitor flashed back to life. He realized he hadn’t logged off from the system earlier. Damn. He knew he’d been looking at IRS records just before he left, and now the only thing on his screen was a blank search page. Someone had been there.

  Scott looked out into the corridor, but few people were about at this time of the evening. No witnesses, then. He closed his door, locked it, and began to take the office apart. Filing boxes piled up on the floor, but he scarcely glanced at them. The phone however, he dismantled, then the lights. He felt under the desk, inside the padding on his chair, even in the digital clock. That just left the computer.

  He rummaged around in the back of a desk drawer and found an old letter knife. He used the blunt tip to unscrew the housing on the tower and he removed it. He stared thoughtfully at the revealed workings, then at the housing in his hand. The plastic surface was clean and unmarked. Wait. Clean? He hadn’t dusted in here...ever, and housekeeping certainly didn’t get down on their knees to clean things stored under his desk. Yet it had been wiped down.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he stripped out the electrical boards from inside the tower, working through the wires with his fingers, checking every connection. It didn’t take long to find the drive. It was just like a regular memory stick, but in the wrong place. Scott knew what it was immediately; nothing emailed, viewed on screen, or even typed on the keyboard was safe. He could take it apart and see it if was being used to monitor his computer remotely. His money was on that, because the risks of getting in and out of his office to check the device were greater.

  His fingers closed over the small plastic casing, but something kept him from ripping it out. If he did it, his hand would be revealed and the stakes upped. If he left it there, he could use it against whoever had planted it. Disinformation could soon reveal the guilty.

  He quickly put everything back as it had been, locked his office door and walked down to the Metro. He had some shopping to do.

  An hour later, Scott took his new laptop from the box and set it on the desk in the corner of his living room. The insight from the cafeteria came back to him and he started work, oblivious to the time.

  Maynard had made his fortune quickly, but it was in the past few years that he had turned a regional success story into a global empire: a family of businesses. The thing that had struck Scott as odd, however, was the man’s luck; a re-zoning here, a local tax break there. No industrial strikes ever seemed to affect his businesses.

  Scott frowned. Suddenly he saw the connection in black and white. A name. It was there; discreetly, indirectly, but there. Every time - almost every time - Maynard, or one of his companies caught a lucky break, or made a business decision that paid off when competitors made the wrong call, it was there.

  The name was Campbell.

  Scott chec
ked Maynard’s contributions to Campbell’s presidential campaign. Had he been mistaken? None for the Senate race, none for Congress. But wasn’t that kind of odd, given their supposed friendship? Scott looked back over the press archives. Maynard was often on the edge: the patron of a charity event attended by Campbell, the guest at a Washington dinner, or, literally in the frame, as with that photograph of the two of them fishing. But no money passed from Maynard, or his companies, to Campbell’s campaigns.

  This was no straightforward case of cash for influence, then, and Scott was relieved. At least the President hadn’t bought his way into office. But there was something far more subtle going on. Campbell and Maynard clearly had some sort of relationship, one from which Campbell had benefited. But so had Maynard. If the businessman was behind this attack in some way, what was his motive?

  Scrolling through the search engine hits, it was almost as if there was a deliberate campaign to present Maynard as being close to the President, yet some of the decisions that benefited Maynard or his companies were at odds with Campbell’s policy goals, or even personal political philosophy. The pattern continued right up until his Presidency, when the impact of decisions became too diffuse to track effectively. Campbell and Maynard were not a natural fit. They sat on opposite sides of the political divide, which was why perhaps the impression had stuck that they were friends. There could be no other explanation for being seen at so many of the same functions, events or meetings. Until now.

  Scott flicked back to the first instance he could find of Maynard benefitting indirectly from Campbell, this time via a vote on a tax issue. The news article had an archive link to another old story. Scott clicked. It was a comment piece on the Congressional election result for a New York district years ago. Campbell won in a district that had never previously been held by his party. It was a historic result. Odd. That word again. Scott sat forward in his chair, biting his lip in concentration. A list of new links opened up. He scanned the headlines until one caught his eye.

  The Scarlet Woman Scandal: Congressional Candidate Withdraws from Race

  He clicked.

  Early Tuesday morning, leading candidate Duncan Blake was released on bail from the New York police precinct where he has been held since yesterday. Blake was arrested following a Vice Squad operation in Queens, where he was found in a hotel room with convicted prostitute Mia Gonzalez and an unverified amount of cocaine.

  Mr. Blake refused to comment, but a spokesman for his campaign confirmed this morning that he will withdraw from the race. The election is two days from now.

  Mr Blake, who was running on a ‘Family First’ platform, is a well-known businessman in the city, and looked certain to win the seat, with a ten-point lead in the polls. The district has traditionally swung between Mr. Blake’s party and independent candidates, but indications are that his main political rival, George Campbell, is likely now to secure the seat for his party for the first time in history. With only a slim lead in the polls, however, pundits are suggesting that the field is now wide open.....

  Scott’s eyes drifted from the pollster’s numbers to another link. He clicked on it, even though he knew the story already.

  Surprise Win for Candidate Campbell Following Incumbent’s Disgrace.

  Scott searched and searched, but he could find no connection between Campbell’s surprise win, which launched his stellar political career and took him from nobody to congressman to senator and finally to the presidency, to Maynard. He scrolled back through the story, until his eyes rested on a name. Mia Gonzalez.

  Scott checked his watch: 4:45 am. With a bit of luck he would make the 5:30 red eye to New York.

  Chapter 12

  It wasn’t quite dawn when the rental car, a nondescript Chevy, pulled off the road. The lanes in this part of Connecticut were narrow and quiet, so no one saw him roll the vehicle to a gentle stop behind some trees and get out. The mornings were getting chilly, but he’d known far worse. A canvas jacket over a black T-shirt was all he needed.

  The farm sat on a broad sweep of pasture, set out below him with the neatness of a New England quilt. With his binoculars, he easily picked out the white-painted farmhouse and picket fence separating the garden from the yard, where three fine-looking thoroughbreds watched and snuffled, waiting for their early morning feed. There was plenty of time.

  After a final glance, he slid the photo of Senator McLean into a breast pocket, slung a heavy rope over one shoulder, and pulled on a pair of specially adapted leather gloves. The index finger of the right glove had been cut off, and the stump sewn up at the knuckle, just like the finger that should have filled it. That was a captured sniper’s reward, back in Bosnia. He had been lucky; many of his fellow Serbian sharpshooters lost more than a digit. A just reward, some would say, for those brutal men who held the city of Sarajevo under such a blanket of fear during the four-year siege.

  But he was more than just a sharpshooter. The Serbian was already a wanted man before the start of the Bosnian war. Soviet trained, but long since a freelancer, his string of credits included Chechnya and even Central America. He smiled at the memory. Those had been good years. He liked the warm sun on his face, the endless glasses of tequila, and the brown-skinned girls with dark, unfathomable eyes.

  By the time he was captured in Sarajevo ten years later, his value had risen to meet the cost of his services and a deal was done. He escaped; they kept his trigger finger. No matter. His talent always was to find the creative approach, and today would be one of his more notable triumphs.

  He set off at a steady jog down through the woods, heading for the trail that cut across from the farm towards the coast. A wide track through private land, it was usually grassy, but the recent rains and falling leaves had turned it into muddy sludge in places.. He’d scouted it out over a week before, while the senator was still in Washington, and he had chosen well. This weekend, McLean would be home, and eager to spend some time exercising his newest stallion.

  Dawn arrived with a sullen and reluctant light, accompanied by a mist that washed silently through the trees, muting their fall colors. The rain had stopped, but the air was damp and chilled. He worked quickly, tying one end of the rope at chest height to a silver birch, then dropping it and laying it across the track. He kicked some leaves across and checked his handiwork from several angles. Satisfied, he took hold of the other end of the rope and sat a few feet from the edge of the track, obscured by some bushes. He could wait.

  But he didn’t have to wait long. When they came, the hoof beats were muffled, but unmistakably those of a horse cantering. Another man may have felt a quickening pulse, or a shiver of anticipation, but the Serbian’s mutilated hand remained steady as he sat, poised. The hoofbeats were close before the horse’s shape emerged from the mist. It was the dappled grey stallion he’d seen in the stable yard. And the senator was in the saddle, sitting with easy confidence on the big creature.

  Timing was critical, and the Serbian chose his moment perfectly. He stepped out of the shadows just as McLean was almost on top of him. The horse’s eyes widened and his hooves slithered in the mud as he tried to shy away from the sudden threat. But the creature’s momentum was too great.

  “What is this?” McLean shouted, wrestling with the frantic horse. But before McLean could regain control, the man in the shadows stepped backwards, putting his body weight into raising the rope. It swung upwards in a shower of leaves and the stallion let out a piercing whinny of fear.

  The horse was too close, too uncontrolled, too panicked, and it slammed into the rope, which became a whip, burning across its chest. Terrified, the horse reared up, unseating McLean, who slid sideways off his mount as it tried to twist away from the threat. But the ground was slippery, and before McLean could stand up, his horse lost its footing entirely, and crashed down on top of him, his single shout of agony lost in his mount’s whinnying.

  Almost immediately, the horse scrambled to its feet and galloped away in the direction of the farm, empty
stirrups and reins flying loose. It wouldn’t be long before it was found, and the alarm raised. The senator lay in the mud, unmoving. He was conscious but dazed, one leg awkwardly twisted and clearly broken, maybe even crushed.

  Glancing up the track, the Serbian emerged out of the shadows behind McLean. With a couple of swift steps, his leather gloves were around the Senators head, and he gave it a single sharp twist. The surrounding trees swallowed the sound of the dull snap, and nothing moved.

  With another glance around to reassure himself he wasn’t observed, the assassin laid McLean’s body back on the ground and slipped into the trees. He ran uphill through the woods in a wide arc and, ten minutes later, he climbed into to his Chevy on the highway.

  He would be eating breakfast in the next town before the body was even found. At the thought of hot pancakes, he allowed himself a small smile of pleasure.

  Chapter 13

  Brooke woke to the whine of a dozen mosquitoes as they danced along the ridgepole of her tent, and the smell of coffee, which was a lot more welcome. The air just after dawn was chilly, but the clear sky promised another calm, sunny day. Dex held out a mug for her as she emerged from her tent, still sleepy.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but once the sun rose, I couldn’t sleep and I was so hungry, I helped myself.”

  “No problem.” Brooke sipped her coffee. After a minute or two, she re-focused on Dex.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Not bad, considering.”

  He seemed to sense her desire to ease into the day and busied himself with packing up the camp. His energy dismayed Brooke a little, and she forced herself to pack and get ready to load the canoe in half the normal time.

  “Okay.” She looked at her gear, now swelled by a large pack, plus one adult man. “I think we have space in the canoe, but she’ll need some careful packing. Fortunately, I have a spare paddle. You done much paddling?”