Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) (12 page)

Bored with the same story for the fourth time, Vorhees flipped through the pages, scanning stories on the surprising rebound of California’s aerospace industry.
Wait’ll they see next year’s budget.
Then on to the inevitable litany of crime stories. A dead body here. A drive-by shooting there. A—
Wait
.

“Shit,” Vorhees said softly, the artist’s conception of the face of one dead...
Nick King!
...slapping him across the face. He read the accompanying story, including the complete account of a woman who lived near the house where the nerve gas accident happened. It took a minute more to sink in fully. “Goddamn you, Monte!”

Vorhees slapped the paper shut and tossed it over his desk, where it fluttered to the floor in separate pieces. He leaned forward, resting both elbows on his large wooden desk, and tried to think. Think fast.
Wonderful!
He had already hurled the requisite invective at the man, the former—as of now—contributor, who had gotten him into this.
It will be good for the country, Dick.
“Yeah, damn you again, Monte.”

Damage control. That was the priority now. And first? What came first?

Say something
. That ran contrary to the rule about keeping one’s mouth shut, but silence was no longer accepted. No longer could an elected official not
dignify such a ludicrous suggestion
. He had to say something. And fast. But what? He thought on that question for a moment before coming to a startling conclusion.

“The truth.” He might have laughed if the chance for real political damage wasn’t so real, but the truth was his ally in this fight. It would have to be massaged, of course, to give it the proper feel. To portray him as
terribly upset over this horrid, unforeseen twist.
And that, too, was actually true. Vorhees emerged from the anger of the previous moment, now allowing a small laugh. He was really innocent in this. But who would ever believe that? he thought. The voters, he knew, answering his own question. Convincing them took little more than thirty seconds of video and some catchy ad copy. How hard could it be?

“Mark,” Vorhees said after dialing his chief aide, “get me a press conference for this afternoon... No, not tomorrow—today... I don’t care how hard it is, just do it. And make sure there’s press from my district there... Call them yourself, goddammit! Just get them here, all right... This is important.”

Vorhees laid the phone back in its cradle, his manner surprisingly calm. He swung his chair around and looked to the Capitol again. That was where it would happen, in a suitably sedate room. Some books in the background, he thought. Maybe a flag to... No, no flag. This had to be him and his shame.

He lowered his head, shaking it slightly.
No
. That didn’t feel right. This truth thing, and its requisite emotions, was, surprisingly, a tough act to master.

* * *

Vasquez Rocks, a popular county park north of Los Angeles, had seen much activity over the years. Formed by the geological forces of plate tectonics long before the first Mexican bandits used the giant rock formations as hiding places from which to launch raids upon arriving pioneers, the park now enjoyed favor as a place to climb and hike on the weekends. Hollywood, too, had taken notice of the somewhat alien-looking landscape, with its huge, rounded slabs of red rock jutting from the earth at near 45-degree angles, and had used the park many times in films and television shows, from the obvious westerns to the futuristic
Star Trek
series of the 1960s.

But during the week the visitors were fewer, mainly those dedicated rock climbers who simply could not wait until the weekend to travel to the more distant, and more challenging, Joshua Tree National Monument in the desert to the east of Los Angeles. There were also those who were there just to walk, to enjoy the sights. And there were those who enjoyed the solitude. And the privacy.

“Monte,” John Barrish said as he approached the man from behind.

Monte Royce jumped and spun around, the somewhat disguised face of the man he had once expected never to see again just feet away. “Christ, John, you scared the daylights out of me.”

John removed the sunglasses but left the large Aussie bush hat on as protection from the fine, chilly mist that was falling across the beautiful landscape. “You move fast for an old man,” he said, the observation far from innocent in its meaning. “When you want to.”

“What do you want, John?” Royce asked.

“I want more money, and I don’t want any of the
crap
you gave my boys while I was away,” he answered, his voice coming down after punching up the word he knew would carry the most impact.

Royce, his face long and lined after seventy years of life, stared into the younger man’s eyes, his breaths coming quicker. “Listen. I gave you what you said you needed before. I kept your family fed while you were locked up. I supported you.” His head shook. “No more, John. I can’t reconcile what you’re going to do anymore with what I believe.”

“Going soft, Monte?”

“No, just getting smart,” Royce said. He was much larger than the odd-looking man challenging him, but there was a power to John Barrish, one that had once drawn him into his inner circle. But now, with time away from the man to be with his own thoughts, Royce was beginning to understand the place he had been, a place as alien as television had made the landscape around him appear, but infinitely more real, and frightening.

“The choice isn’t yours, Monte,” John said coolly.

“You don’t have any—”

“Not me, Monte,” John said, reminding the elderly man of an undeniable fact. “I don’t think you make the decisions about the money.” He chuckled a bit. “You’re a middleman. A big, powerful middleman, who wouldn’t want to anger his mama.”

“Shut up, John, she has nothing to—”

“She has everything to do with this,” John corrected his reluctant benefactor. “Now do I need to go straight to her and put a strain on that ninety-six-year-old heart of hers?”

“I can turn you in,” Royce threatened. “I can tell the police everything.”

John shook his head with disappointment. “You wouldn’t like jail, Monte. Because, remember, if you hang me, you hang yourself...and your mama.”

Royce didn’t let his gaze break from that of the man he had once respected, but who had used him. Had used him so completely that death would be the only way out. But he was not ready for death. In fact he feared it, feared meeting a maker that would assuredly cast him into the fires of hell. No, Monte Royce was not ready for that. He never would be.

“How much?”

John Barrish looked up at the man, whose head was dripping from the hour he’d waited in the rain...as instructed. Humiliation. It was so easy to inflict, as it was merely a by-product of control.

“Now you’re getting smart.”

*  *  *

Director of Central Intelligence Greg Drummond leaned across his desk and handed the plain manila folder to Bud DiContino. “Take your pick. Forty-three groups, nations, or sufficiently wealthy individuals that Intelligence and S and T say could have provided the supplies
and
the technical expertise to pull this off.”

Bud scanned the multiple pages before closing and handing the folder back to the DCI. “This is quick work.”

“Intelligence put the press on,” Drummond explained, referring to the agency directorate he had headed until just ten months earlier. Now he was at the helm of the most powerful intelligence-gathering agency on the planet A company man heading the Company. It made many on the Hill nervous, but they would have been more apprehensive had there been another fiasco of leadership like the one that had preceded him. That was reasonably cleaned up now, just a few ripples disturbing the otherwise calm waters his ship was sailing upon. But the present situation was showing much more wave action, threatening a swell that would make navigation difficult and holding course tricky. But the youthful DCI, still older than the president he served, had seen troubled waters before, and knew the best way to sail around the offending storm, and how to sail headlong into it.

“How’s Fred doing?” Bud asked. Fred Stennis had replaced Drummond as deputy director, intelligence.

“Good,” Drummond answered. “Pete and Mike are bringing him along fast.” Pete Miner, deputy director, central intelligence, was the number-two man at the Agency. Mike Healy was Drummond’s former counterpart in the Operations Directorate and ran the spooks in the field. The combination of the two career intelligence officers had helped get the new DDI up to speed after an appointment that had created much controversy at the CIA’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. Stennis was young, too young some thought, but the thirty-four-year-old had caught Drummond’s eye while working for him as chief analyst, Mideast desk, in Intelligence, making calls that some considered reckless, but that the then-DDI had recognized as bold and based on superior reasoning. One needed to do no less than that to impress Greg Drummond, and Stennis had done much more.

“Pete’s off where right now?”

“Is this on or off the record?” Drummond joked.

“I’ve never worn a body mic,” Bud countered with a smile. “Unlike some people I know.”

“It worked,” the DCI pointed out, a glint of satisfaction sparking in his eyes.

“That it did,” Bud said. Where was the former DCI now? Some university in the Rockies somewhere, chairing the history department.
And you could have been head of some major-league think tank, Anthony
. But he had played the game like an amateur, the NSA knew, and now the once esteemed Anthony Merriweather, caught and secretly hung out to dry by his own words, was suffering a fate worse than prison. His sentence was political and professional oblivion.

“This isn’t for broadcast to anyone,” Drummond said. “He’s in India. Should be there for a week, maybe two.”

“An open-ended visit?” Bud questioned. That was almost unheard of in a town where itineraries and schedules were planned out months in advance. But then Langley wasn’t actually in D.C., in many respects.

“It could pay off,” Drummond explained. “A new relationship with Indian Intelligence would go a long way in keeping tabs on the Chinese.”

“Agreed,” Bud said.

Drummond poured himself a cup of tea from the warming pot on the credenza. “You want one?”

“Half a cup.”

The DCI poured a second and slid it easily across his desk. “So, that’s what we can do for you regarding this chemical thing.”

“I know it’s Bureau territory, but you never know where things start.”

“Gordy and I have a liaison group already set up,” Drummond said, testing the steaming liquid with a quick taste. “We’ll feed them whatever they need.”

“Good.” Bud took a generous sip of the warm brew and checked the time. “Where is Gordy? He was supposed to be here by now.”

As if on cue the door to the DCI’s seventh-floor office was opened by a security officer for the just-arrived FBI director.

“Sorry,” Jones apologized. “I hate doing the committee spiel for a bunch of voteheads I never deal with.”

“Which voteheads are those, Gordy?” Bud asked, amused by Jones’s term for anyone on the Hill who had to submit to voter approval every two years. Senators, with six years between their electoral challenges, were exempt from his disdain.

“House Armed Services,” Jones explained.

“Vorhees’s bunch,” Bud said knowingly. “Limp Dick can be a bastard when he wants to.” The Honorable Richard Vorhees, a former Army captain who had lost a leg in the Grenada invasion, chaired the House Armed Services Committee, one of the most powerful groups of legislators on the Hill. And Limp Dick, a term of no endearment bestowed upon him because of the stilted gait an artificial limb caused, ran it like his own personal military command staff. That Cuban-made mine had cut more than the congressman’s leg short, Bud knew all too well. It also ended what promised to be at least a trip to bird status, and maybe even a star or two in the distant future, leaving Limp Dick without the challenge, or the prestige, of command. His life was simply politics now.

“He’s one of your blood brothers, Bud,” the conservative Republican DCI commented with a devilishly superior wink.

“Not from the same cloth,” Bud protested mildly. “I’m a Kennedy man. Vorhees is one of those Johnson Democrats. You never can keep those folks in line.” An understatement, the NSA knew. Vorhees, despite his party allegiance, rarely stuck with the party line. He was as much a White House foe as a friend.

“Actually Vorhees was off at some breakfast thing,” Jones said, sliding a chair over next to the NSA. “Real concerned, eh? It was the rest of the bunch playing CYA. ‘Is there any evidence that the military...’ ” The director shook his head. “A waste of time, my friends.”

“It’s the same game we all play, Gordy,” Bud reminded him.

The FBI director grunted and opened the folder he had brought with him. “Well, I know I’m supposed to share any new info I have, but I really don’t have any. Zero.”

“Nothing on who actually made the agent?” Drummond asked.

Jones shook his head. “Still the mystery man...Nick King. L.A. believes it’s an alias of some sort. He’s possibly a foreigner or an immigrant.”

“Wait,” Bud said. “I haven’t heard that yet.”

“Me either,” Drummond added.

“Well, I guess I do have something for you. L.A. has good information that King spoke with a pretty heavy accent.”

“From?” Bud asked.

“European,” Jones answered. “That’s as close as they can narrow it down for now.”

Drummond looked down at the list Intelligence and S&T had put together. Half of those groups and individuals listed were based or affiliated with those located on the European continent. “Some of these people share similar philosophies with Allen. Neo-Nazis. Some ultra-nationalists.”

“All possibilities are being looked at, Greg,” Jones assured the DCI. “But King made himself an island. Finding out who and what he was before he was that is a tough job.”

“It’s a damn important one, too,” Bud observed.

“Everyone knows that,” Jones said. He was on a mild hot seat, responsible for one of the more important investigations during his tenure as head of the Bureau.