Conspiracy (35 page)

Ball tried to parcel out the differences as he drove north on the Parkway toward Albany. The more he tried to define it, the more impossible it became.

And the more her death haunted him. He heard her again, felt the way she pushed against his arms, life ebbing from her.

He told himself not to think about it, but there was nothing to replace the thoughts. He glanced down at his speedometer and saw that he was pushing ninety. Ball immediately backed off the gas. He wasn't afraid of getting a ticket; if he was stopped, he'd casually show his badge while reaching for his license, mention that he was on official business, and out of professional courtesy the trooper would let him go. But then someone would know where he was.

When Forester didn't keep his appointment that day, Ball had feared the worst—that the Secret Service agent had seen through his smile and his bs, and realized that he did know Gordon. Then, when he heard the news that Forester had killed himself, Chief Ball thought that God Himself had intervened.

There was a certain logic and even rough justice to the thought. All of the money he had gotten was gone, long gone, most of it stolen by that crook Evans. Ball had paid the price for his moment of weakness in many ways, and had done good work besides.

But now he saw that was simply wishful thinking. Clearly, these people weren't going to stop until they caught him. It occurred to Ball that Forester's suicide was a setup—they were eventually going to blame him for the death, and put him away for life.

They wouldn't give him the chair, because of the way the law read in Connecticut. Which was probably why they chose to do it there, rather than in New York—they wanted to torture him for the rest of his life.

Would he have to kill them all? DeFrancesca next? Then the FBI agent, and the other Secret Service agent—he couldn't even remember their damn names.

Could he kill them all?

He'd have to.

Not if it meant choking them. Amanda Rauci's eyes loomed in front of him.

Why were they after him now? Was it Gordon's fault? Or was McSweeney pulling the strings?

It couldn't be McSweeney. He had too much to lose.

God, the way Rauci shook when she died.

Ball felt her pushing against his arms. He saw her face when he picked her up.

Ball's stomach began to react. He made it to the side of the road just in time.

 

TELACH CAME DOWN
to the briefing room to personally tell Rubens that they had located the computer the Secret Service agent had used the night before.

“It looks like she erased and overwrote what she had been doing,” Telach told him. “We may be able to recover the information if we retrieve the drive.”

“Then let's do that. Have Lia explain what is going on,” said Rubens. “But only as much as is absolutely necessary.”

“They'll probably ask for a subpoena.”

“Of course.”

Rubens nodded to Jackson as Telach left the room. Jackson continued updating the others.

“Tolong is the obvious suspect,” Jackson said. “He and the other Marine on the patrol. He was immediately suspected. But then he goes on patrol and dies. So if I were to suspect someone, it would be Gordon. Anyone could have found the money if Tolong had kept it among his personal things. We have to check the unit where he was, and any other unit that could have come in contact with him.”

Most of the analysts were actually computer scientists or cryptologists, but if someone had walked in off the street he would probably have thought he had stumbled into an artists' convention. There were tie-died sixties-style T-shirts, torn jeans, a leather-fringe jacket, and what appeared to Rubens to be a full baseball uniform. Body piercings made dealing with the security protocols a major daily hassle, so aside from a few earrings—on the men, for the most part—there were
none. Tattoos were also covered, though Rubens suspected there were a good variety under the shirts and other clothing.

Hairstyles were a different matter. Desk Three's best cryptologist, a young woman two years out of Princeton, sported a green Mohawk. The team's resident weapons expert, a thirtysomething Marine sergeant on semi-permanent loan to the agency, had a shoulder-length ponytail.

“What about Gordon?” asked Angela DiGiacomo. “Maybe Tolong told him where the money was before he died.”

“Good point.” Jackson beamed at the young woman.

“There must have been one other person involved in the conspiracy,” said Rubens. “That person feels cheated somehow, and is now out for revenge.”

“Or wants all the money to himself,” said Jackson. “But if that's our working theory, then we have to assume that Senator McSweeney was involved in the original theft. He's the one who made the assignments. He controlled the initial investigation, at least from the Marines' side. He's got to be involved up to his neck.”

“Appearances
deceive
!” said Johnny Bib.

Everyone, including Rubens, turned to Johnny Bib, awaiting an explanation for his outburst. But none was forthcoming.

“Are you reminding us to keep an open mind?” Rubens asked. “Or have you thought of something specific?”

“Open mind.” Johnny Bib grinned, then leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs. “What if Forester and Gordon really did commit suicide? What if the assassin has nothing to do with the theft of money? Two equations—common algebra.”

“Mr. Bibleria is quite right,” said Rubens, glancing at Jackson. “It is possible that these things are not related, and that in fact we do not have all the information here.”

“We are missing critical information,” added Johnny Bib. “The addition of a variable may change our answer set entirely.”

Rubens listened as Johnny Bib divvied up new assignments, most of which involved searching records thirty and forty years old for possible clues and connections. The session
over, the analysts filed out. They were a noisy bunch, talking and joking and in one or two cases even singing.

“Thank you for translating,” Jackson told Rubens.

“Yes. Mr. Bibleria occasionally gets carried away with his metaphors.”

Marie Telach was just coming down the hall as Rubens stepped out.

“Come with me to the Art Room,” she said. “You won't believe what's on Fox.”

 

THE ASSAULT BEGAN
with a rocket attack, quickly followed by an infiltration on an unguarded flank. Before the enemy realized it, their perimeter had been compromised and the guerillas were already streaking toward their objective.

It was a classic VC raid, except that the attackers were not Vietcong. And the rocket attack actually consisted of two flash-bang grenades detonated by remote control. They had the desired effect, however; the security officers rallied toward the explosion, guns drawn.

Charlie Dean followed Karr as he leapt over the four-foot wall around the compound and ran toward the small building identified as a power shed by the Art Room, which was watching them via an infrared camera in the small “Crow” unmanned aerial vehicle they had launched twenty minutes before. The shotgun Dean had in his hands seemed to gain weight with each step until it felt like a howitzer. Dean threw himself against the side of the building, breathing harder than he thought he should be.

Karr was already kneeling next to him, attaching a block of plastic explosive to the conduit where the power line came out of the building. Dean checked the gear in his tactical vest, patting himself down to make sure he hadn't lost anything important in the dash. Two canisters of shotgun shells packed with disabling pellets and gas were tucked into each of the large front pockets; exchanging them with a blank magazine in the gun took about three seconds. The gun was based on a Pancor Jackhammer and looked like a
cross between a cut-down Franchi SPAS-12 and an old-fashioned tommy gun. Its ammunition was designed to be nonfatal and meant for close-quarters combat; Dean had a Colt automatic in his belt as a backup weapon.

Karr had an MP5 machine gun. Like Dean's pistol, they'd only use it if things got hairy.

Dean readjusted his night glasses, pushing them back up the bridge of his nose and tightening the clasp on the strap at the back of his head. Though they looked like oversized sunglasses, they were more powerful than the Gen 3 night monocles used by the American Army. Then he pulled on the respirator, so any stray tear gas wouldn't disable him.

“Ready?” Karr asked, standing. The microphone in Karr's mask gave his voice a hollow sound.

“Ready,” said Dean.

“We see two guards standing at the front of the building,” said Rockman. “That leaves three unaccounted for, somewhere inside.”

“Pot luck,” said Karr. “You got point, Charlie.”

Dean pushed off from the shack and ran toward the back corner of the police building, about thirty yards away. Once again he threw himself against the wall, pushing the nose of his gun level as he triple-checked his position. He was between the corner of the building and one of the large windows on the first floor.

Karr slid in on the other side of the window. He already had two flash-bang grenades in his hands.

“Ten seconds,” said Karr. He wasn't even breathing hard. “Rockman?”

“Same as before.”

Dean leaned toward the end of the building, then peeked around the corner. A basement entrance sat six feet away.

“Five seconds,” said Karr. “Four, three, two—”

Dean stood back upright. As Karr said, “One,” Dean swung the metal butt of the shotgun up toward the glass.

The sound of the glass shattering was drowned out by the explosion of the power shack.

“Clear,” said Karr, glancing in the window. “Go!”

Dean grabbed the ledge of the window and jumped into the room. He stumbled as he landed, falling to his left. He rolled through the shards of broken glass, crushing it into tiny pieces with his shoulder, before jumping back to his feet. Huffing again, he raced to the open door of the room, reaching it a few seconds after Karr.

“Clear,” said Karr, and they ran into the hallway.

Using infrared images from the Crow, the Art Room had pinpointed a room on the first floor where they thought Qui was being held. Karr sent his foot crashing against the door. The thin jamb gave way instantly. Karr tossed one of his grenades inside. As the room erupted with a flash, Dean followed inside.

The room was empty.

“Shit,” cursed Dean.

“Coming in the front!” warned Rockman.

Karr threw a grenade down the hallway as one of the guards began to shout. Dean leapt into the hallway behind the explosion and pumped two shells into the three figures at the far end. The men went down immediately, their bodies pelted by oversized plastic BBs and soaked in synthetic cayenne.

“Has to be downstairs,” said Karr, racing toward the back stairwell.

“Rockman?” said Dean, pausing to smash the emergency lights on the battery backup at the end of the hallway.

“She's definitely not on the second floor. It's unoccupied.”

“This way, Charlie,” said Karr, pulling open the door to the stairs. “And relax.”

“I am relaxed.”

“That why you're still cursing?”

 

WHEN SHE HEARD
the first series of explosions, Qui Lai Chu began shaking uncontrollably. There was no furniture in the room where she was being held; she had nothing to hide behind or under except for the wooden chair where she'd been
sitting. Trembling, she slipped off the chair, falling to her knees as she pulled the chair toward her.

The ground shook and the lights went out. Qui Lai Chu's mind fled from the present to her childhood, to the early days when French was the only language she spoke. She was back in Hanoi, in the large house her father had built, cowering in the basement with her mother as Communist fanatics hurled grenades at the decadent bourgeois imperialists. Qui didn't understand what the slogans meant, but she did know that the grenades were aimed at her family and friends.

There were fresh explosions above her. Now she was back in Saigon, during the eerie days just before the capital fell, just before history's overwhelming momentum crushed the last bits of the life her mother had built for the family here.

Before Qui's mother, seeing that she would lose everything a second time, threw herself in front of a Communist truck, so she might meet her husband and ancestors.

“Stay away from the door!” shouted a voice.

Qui didn't recognize it at first. It was amplified in an odd way, and she thought it was a hallucination from the past.

The front of the room exploded with light. Blinded, she pushed her face close to the ground.

“Got her, Charlie!” yelled someone nearby. “Go; let's go!”

 

A BEAM OF
light appeared in the stairwell as Dean reached the door. Dean waved at Karr to stay back, then waited a few seconds until the circle of light came closer. When it hit the wall opposite him, he lifted his shotgun and leapt past the stairs, firing two rounds upward at the light's source. It was a flashlight, and as the bulb exploded, the man who was holding it toppled down the staircase.

Dean got back up and ran to a door at the side of the basement that led to the outside. The stench of cayenne pepper filled the small space; even though he had a respirator on, Dean began coughing as he pushed down on the crash bar.

The door didn't give.

Karr, carrying Qui over his shoulder, ducked next to Dean.

There were shouts above. Three or four bullets crashed against the sides of the stairwell. Karr lobbed a tear gas canister toward the first floor, then ran to Dean.

Dean pulled the pistol out of his belt and fired twice point-blank into the lock. He pounded against the door. The mangled metal gave slightly but didn't break.

“Together,” said Karr, putting down Qui.