Blown (21 page)

Chapter 40

WASHINGTON, D.C., 9:53 A.M.

“You can’t be serious,” Brett Foster said flatly. He raised his pen from the yellow legal pad he used for notes. “
Resign?
You won the last election with sixty-three percent of the vote, George. That’s a
mandate
. You’re Speaker of the House.”

“I’ve lost Dana,” George Enfield shot back bitterly, “and I’ve got absolutely no interest in politics right now. I want to spend more time with Mallory. She’s all I’ve got left.”

The two men were sitting alone in the Speaker’s inner office, a beautiful and spacious old room with deep crown moldings and twelve-foot-high windows. The drapes were a strong Federal blue velvet and the desk was Biedermeier; Dana had helped to choose both. Around the walls were photographs from nearly two decades in public office: George shaking hands with two previous presidents; George fly-fishing the Rappahannock; George standing tall on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Dana, gorgeous as a catwalk model, at the last inaugural ball.

“Look,” Foster urged, “we’re in recess. Through the Christmas holidays. You don’t have to hang around here and you don’t have to make any snap decisions. Go home to Memphis. Take some time to think and to heal. But for God’s sake, don’t make any announcements you’ll regret. It’s way too soon, George.”

He liked Brett Foster—the forty-year-old had been his Chief of Staff for nearly three years now, and he had not reached the pinnacle of a Capitol Hill career by dumb fucking luck, so George usually trusted his instincts and followed his advice. Except when everything in his being counseled otherwise. Like today.

“I’m flying with Dana’s ashes to Massachusetts after the funeral Friday,” he replied. “She wanted them scattered in Nantucket Sound.”
The part of her life that came before me, before Mallory, before the public scrutiny she frankly hated. Oh, God—why didn’t I let her live her life while we still had time?
“That means we’ve got a lot to do in the next three days. I want youto call a staff meeting for nine-thirty and a press conference for ten
A.M
.”

“Dana wouldn’t have wanted you to give up,” Foster insisted urgently.

“And I didn’t want her to die,” Enfield retorted. “So we’re even, aren’t we?”

Candace O’Brien watched the press conference from the foot of her bed a few minutes before she checked out of the hotel. She was mesmerized by George Enfield’s face. She saw in it the traces of her own guilt and grief at Sophie Payne’s murder.
He understands,
she thought.
He’s just like me.

She had never returned to Dupont Circle the previous night. Instead, she had walked swiftly past her own home and cut down the alley to the detached garage where she kept her car. She’d driven into the darkness without a notion of where she was heading, knowing only that she had to leave this place—this place where she was hunted. She’d briefly considered the small Eastern Shore town of St. Michael’s, which had felt like a haven the only other time she’d been there; but she could not quite remember the way and was too rattled to find a map in her sterile glove compartment. She’d thought of Adrienne, with the sick feeling of inadequacy that always attended the memory of her daughter; and in the end she’d driven in circles for two hours, roaming the Beltway. A few minutes after eleven
P.M.
she pulled up to a traveler’s hotel outside Silver Spring and accepted it by default.

She’d hoped the morning would bring calm and decision. Enough strength to return to her home or leave the country forever. But the newspaper was lying outside her room and she could not ignore the photographs of dead runners, the paeans to Dana Enfield. The long investigative profile of Caroline Carmichael’s treacherous role in the terrorist drama. Candace read it avidly, turning the pages with impatient flicks of the hand.

It was strange to feel that she knew more about these events than those writing the story. That she had the full fabric, while they randomly wove threads. She turned on CNN in the hope an update would be available and caught her first glimpse of George Enfield’s face.

“. . . calling back the members of the House Intelligence Committee to conduct a full-scale investigation into the failure of our intelligence agencies to anticipate 30 April’s threat against American interests . . . expect full cooperation from the Administration, which the President himself has assured me will be the case . . . appalling tragedy that should never again be allowed to strike the American people . . . parties responsible held accountable . . . after which process, I will resign to take care of my daughter . . .”

His daughter. Candace sat staring bleakly at the screen long after the Speaker had disappeared and the story had shifted to the Gaza Strip.
His daughter.
Disaster had struck and a young life was changed forever; but he would be there for his child, he would shepherd her through the crisis, as Candace had never done. Too weak. Too fearful of failure. And hesitating even now, when the brutal cost mounted daily.

George Enfield had shown her what she had to do. She had been longing for days to tell someone the truth.

Chapter 41

ROCHESTER, PENNSYLVANIA, 10:04 A.M.

“So is it worth all this?” Caroline asked Steve Price as they left the gas station’s convenience store with coffee cups and a map in their hands. “All this effort for a single story?”

“It’s much more than a story,” he replied as he slid his lanky frame into the bucket seat. “It’s the power of the pen, baby. The power to shake governments and end careers. The power to ruin lives. Or make them. I love what I do because there’s such purity to it.” He grinned, his sharp features relaxing into boyishness. “It’s just my way of playing God.”

If playing God meant drawing the entire nation’s attention to himself, Caroline thought wryly, Price did it better than anybody alive. He’d tossed a copy of the morning paper in her lap, and as the Porsche shot forward she studied the front page. Her face stared back: a portrait of official mourning, stolen from Arlington Cemetery. It was no accident Jozsef was pictured beside her: They were both breaking news.

“Steve.” She glanced at him sidelong.

“Yeah?”

“This isn’t . . . well, it isn’t exactly
friendly
.”

“Meaning . . . I didn’t take your side? Look, Caroline, I’m happy to help you if I can—but I’m not going to feed the
Post
’s readers a simple tale of the CIA run amuck,” he said shrewdly. “I need complexity. I need shades of gray. I’ve got to keep people reading tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. I’ve got to raise doubts and controversy and get us both on
Larry King Live,
you know what I’m saying? I’ve got to spin this sucker out until the furor’s so high that nothing short of a presidential impeachment will answer. That’s how journalism works.”

“By ‘sucker,’ I guess you mean me. What about the truth, Steve?”

“What about it?” he shot back. His weathered face—so attractive, so genuine, Caroline thought—gave nothing away, but there was a light of humor and recklessness in his brown eyes. The Porsche was flying along the damp highway and the singing note of the tires was like a banshee in her brain. His hands were sure on the wheel—as sure as his theories, his comfort with Beltway spin.

“I’ve got to tell both sides of the story so objectively that nobody knows what really happened,” he explained as though she were a child. “Even during Watergate the
Post
stood by that policy: We quoted Nixon as much as we quoted Deep Throat. Hell, probably more.”

“Are you saying you don’t believe a word I’ve told you?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “Yours is one version. There are probably as many lines on this thing as there are people involved.”

“Then what the fuck are you doing driving this car?”

“I’m chasing the story,” he sighed. “Look—maybe you’re a crook and a liar and a link to terrorism worldwide. Or maybe you’re a lone soldier fighting a losing battle against a bureaucracy that would rather see you die than do your job. I don’t know. But I’m sure as shit not gonna let you out of my sight, girl. Understand?”

“Yes. I understand you’re using me.”

He snorted in derision. “And what was that last night? When you spilled your guts to the reporter? You expect me to believe you weren’t using
me
?”

She said nothing. The coffee he’d bought her was hot in her hand and the window beside her was rain-streaked. Price had taken her in, tracked her leads, and driven her west with an enthusiasm that was real. The front-page slam was simply his fee for services rendered.

“Okay,” she temporized, “so truth is what you make it. I can see your point—as an analyst, I look at a bunch of facts and make my own sense of them. It’s my
interpretation
the policymaker reads, not just the facts themselves. But I don’t string out a story to make myself indispensable, and I know evil when I see it. You don’t spin 30 April for a shot at
Larry King Live.
”

He reached out and squeezed her knee. “You do your job, Caroline—I’ll do mine.”

“Even though you’re at risk, chasing this particular story?”

“I like risk. Drink your coffee before it gets cold.”

She did as she was told, staring out the window at the Alleghenies.

They were simply one part of the undulating chain of serrated hills that stretched from the Carolinas to Maine and that went by many names—Adirondacks, Smokies, Appalachians. To Caroline, however, the place and its syllables evoked a more primitive time. With the flatlander’s distrust of tree-clad fastnesses, she thought of
Deliverance
. Of the kind of man who would murder Dare Atwood in cold blood in the safety of her own living room, who would hand poison to thirsty runners simply because he thought they were different from himself, who revered a murderous fascist like Mlan Krucevic.
Americans just like me.
She shivered involuntarily.

Price thrust his sleek German car confidently around hairpin bends, his attention claimed by the road, and seemed to need neither her conversation nor the directions she’d offered to give him.

“What do you think of this place?” she asked suddenly. “It’s starting to give me the creeps.”

He shrugged. “I grew up in Mississippi. Totally different kind of country.”

“You don’t sound like a southerner.”

A faint smile creased his engaging face. “Child, din’ yer mamma ever tell you that southerners is
stupid
? Cain’t set up to be a
journalist
if’n ya sound
stupid
.”

“Come on,” she said, laughing, “seriously. How long ago did you leave Mississippi?”

“Thirty-nine years, seven months, and fourteen days ago,” he returned with swift exactitude. “The morning after my father’s newspaper office was burned to the ground and he was lynched by a white mob from the tallest tree in Greenville.”

“What?”
she demanded. “I had no idea.
Steve—
”

He kept his gaze fixed on the road. “That’s what they tell me. I was only three. My father was a firm believer in the rights of the Negro. The rights of the coon to stand tall beside his white masters. Oh, yeah, Daddy was a great liberal. He used the family paper to say so and his neighbors didn’t like it. Word in Greenville is that Abel Price peed all over himself while they tied the knots in the rope. Jabbering how he’d reform. Nobody bothered to listen by that time; they were too drunk with power and corn whiskey.”

“Jesus,” Caroline whispered.

His face remained expressionless. “My mom took me to her people. I was raised in Richmond.”

“Have you ever gone back?”

“Sure I’ve gone back. Somebody had to eat crow. Daddy left me that job. Along with a legend and a handful of ashes.”

The words were cruel and sardonic; she supposed they allowed him to live with a deeper horror. “And you became a reporter.”

“Without the family paper. The
Greenville Standard
had been run by Prices for almost a hundred and fifty years, but Daddy pissed that down the wind along with the contents of his bladder the night he was martyred for his cause. Have you thought of what you’re going to say to this woman when we get to her place?”

An abrupt change of subject. His whole manner, Caroline thought, had altered subtly in the past half hour, the easy camaraderie fled into the hills.

She tried to recover. “I’m going to ask her to help.”

Price laughed harshly and downshifted into a curve. The car had been steadily climbing, nosing its way west and north, into the heart of the Alleghenies.

“Think about it, Steve. Jozsef’s been snatched by a 30 April supporter. The child Adrienne conceived in Leipzig was Mlan’s; he’s Jozsef’s half-brother. If Ricin Boy knows that—and it’s conceivable he does—she’d be the logical person to ask for help.”

He did not reply.

“You think I’m ridiculous?” she pressed. “NaÏve?”

“I think you’re surprisingly ignorant for somebody who works intelligence.”

“But if Adrienne
knew
that her mother is involved . . . under suspicion of aiding a terrorist . . . she might be able to see reason . . .”

“She despises her mother,” Price retorted. “She’s been entrusted with a legacy: to rear the last great Leader’s Son. Children are all that’s left when the father dies. The only bit of immortality he has. She’d know how important that was to Mlan.”

“I’m not so sure. He was willing to kill Jozsef.”

“Or give him the tools to survive.” Price’s eyes when they met hers were flat and alien. “Isn’t that why we’re out here in the middle of nowhere? To find a kid who’s just snowed the entire U.S. government?”

Tom Shephard held the door of the Greyhound station open as Mackie Sterne followed him inside. Three people and a small girl of perhaps four were loitering there. The Columbus bus was due in about half an hour. The ticket window did not open until ten, and repeated phone calls to the number listed on the Plexiglas screen had produced only a recorded answering system. From the posted hours of operation, it looked as though the window might have been closed around the time Daniel Becker visited the place last night.

“What do passengers do when there’s no ticket seller?” Tom demanded. “Pay their fare on the bus?”

“Can do,” Sterne said. “Or there’s the automated machine against the wall.”

“That requires a credit card,” Tom observed. “Becker’s not that stupid. He won’t leave a trail.”

“Already did.” Sterne nodded toward the truck parked three blocks away. “You’ll be wanting a warrant to search the automated records.”

Tom did not waste time arguing. He was studying the schedules posted on the station wall. He had never used a bus for transport—his taste having run to trains and airplanes even as a college student—and this world was foreign to him. The bus routes branched like aging veins all over the map of the United States.

“Mackie, if you were going to take this thing outta here, which way would you go?”

“Really only got but two choices,” the police captain returned immediately. “East to Wheeling, west to Columbus. Those’d be the most direct routes. Doubt he’d go back to Wheeling.”

Not when all of West Virginia was crawling with the Feds, Tom thought, and his wife was lying in pieces out at the old homestead.

He scrutinized the wagon wheel that was Columbus. The options there were numerous: north to Toledo, southwest to Cincinnati and the Kentucky border; or hell, he could’ve gone for broke and headed straight on till daylight and the Republic of California.
Not likely,
Tom thought.
Too much of a commitment. He needs to disappear.

“What about heading north?”

“Toward the Lakes?” Mackie shrugged. “I suppose as how he might. Akron. Cleveland. Erie, Pennsylvania. All nice places to visit.”

We haven’t got a clue which way he’s chosen,
Tom thought with the weariness of despair.
He could be anywhere right now.

“Let’s call the national Greyhound office,” he said with decision, “and inform them they’ve got a probable terrorist on board one of their buses. We’ll alert all the stations in a hundred-mile radius. All the buses on probable routes. Send out a description of Becker and the boy and see what turns up.”

“Do that,” Mackie warned, “and you’ll have a bloodbath on your hands.”

“I already do,” Tom replied.