Courier (16 page)

Steve looked smug. "Yeah, we had a nice computer conference call going during Kent State, with antiwar messages and information on the shootings flying from coast to coast."

Scotty walked in lugging the heavy briefcase. "Just because the Defense Department puts up the money to invent it doesn't mean they get to play with it all by themselves. Pull the phone over, Eps."

The three got busy with keyboards, monitors, and phone couplers and, in an amazingly short amount of time, were ready to go.

Eps picked up the phone and listened for a dial tone. He got a funny look on his face as he listened. "Wow, there is some strange noise on the line tonight."

Rick asked, "Will it screw up the connection?"

"Nah, the system is using checksums. That's when–"

"Please, leave me in blissful ignorance," Rick said. "Just get this show on the road. How long will it take?"

Steve sat down to the keyboard and cracked his knuckles. "Probably most of the night. We have to hack our way out of one system and into another. We'll get there. They don't have much security because… well, because there isn't anyone to secure it against. But it's going to be slow."

Scotty grabbed a cola from the refrigerator. "Yeah, why don't you get your usual three hours, and by the time you finish the nightmares, we'll probably have an answer."

"You know about the dreams?" Rick asked.

"We've lived through most of the battle a couple of times. I looked it up in the archives and diagrammed it out a few months ago, and now we can follow along." Scotty smiled. "It's not a problem. We might have to hear it, but you had to live it."

"And relive it and relive it again," Eps added. "We agreed a while ago to help you out if we could and stuff pillows in our ears if we couldn't. I mean, other than the screaming, you're a pretty good housemate."

Rick found his throat had tightened, and he couldn't say anything, so after a second, he headed upstairs, leaving his friends alternately typing on the keyboard and staring at the tiny green-glowing screen.

CHAPTER 18

 

Saturday, December 23, 1972

 

Rick woke and checked the clock.

Three hours.

He got up, stripped the sheets, and remade the bed.

It was all very simple. His friends had died. He had lived. That was what had happened. There wasn't any reason for it. He couldn't deny it, and he couldn't accept it.

After he dressed, he picked up the pink rubber ball and walked down the stairs. Slow squeeze, hold, and slow release. Slow squeeze, hold, and slow release.

Downstairs, it looked like his housemates had indeed been up all night. Scotty was still pecking on the tiny keyboard, eyes fixed on the blurry green screen. Eps was asleep on the floor with his head on a pile of black curtains left over from the developing.

Steve was sitting at the table with the stack of photographs in front of him, making tiny, precise notes with an engineer's black calligraphic pen. He looked up as Rick entered. "Well, good morning, sunshine. I'd ask if you slept well, but I'm afraid we already know how that went."

Rick found the coffee, poured a cup, and sat down across the table. "I never was much of a morning person. What did you guys find?"

"Well, when you add up all the information, it's a pretty disturbing picture." Steve tugged at his beard as he put a period at the end of a sequence of notes, and then sat back. "I guess if I were even slightly political, I'd say I was shocked."

"Shocked?"

Scotty spoke without looking up from the tiny monitor. "‘Saddened' might be a better word. ‘Sobered', possibly, but certainly ‘shocked' would be appropriate."

Eps spoke without opening his eyes. "Appalled. Thunderstruck. Concerned. Gobsmacked."

Steve threw a pencil in Eps's direction. "OK. He gets the picture. We've looked at all the possibilities and tried to apply all the possible explanatory scenarios, but…" His voice trailed off. Rick could see something besides exhaustion in his eyes.

Steve stacked up the photos, put his pages of notes on top, clipped them neatly with a binder clip, and slid it all across the table to Rick. "Dates, amounts, places… we've noted it all. We don't have a printer here, but we've written down all the systems we… uh… ‘accessed', and the appropriate databases, so any halfway competent technician can find everything again. We even made it straightforward enough for a government auditor. It's essentially a road map for a real investigation complete with people's names and addresses to simplify the process of sending out subpoenas."

Rick ignored the photos, looking at Steve's eyes. "So, what's the story?"

"The short version is that our President took campaign money from the South Vietnamese government." Steve rubbed his eyes. "The records show that it goes back a long way – at least back to the 1968 election. But the largest amounts came in" – he sighed heavily – "right after Kissinger announced that peace was at hand this October."

"And then the talks went to hell and the B-52s started pounding Hanoi," Rick said in a flat voice.

"Yes."

"Let's back up. OK, Thieu gave the White House a fucking bribe–"

"‘Campaign contributions', technically," Steve said. "Although I think you could still say ‘fucking campaign contributions'. No matter what we call it, I think it's undeniable that a good deal of the money sent to South Vietnam as US aid simply made a round trip back to the campaign."

At Rick's questioning look, he continued. "Yeah, we're certain. Scotty tracked a sufficiently large sample of the cash all the way there and back to prove our theories."

Rick felt like he was still asleep, except that his usual dreams were a lot more believable. He rubbed his eyes. "What did they get in return?"

"I don't know. At least not with a similar degree of certainty. It's not like there are specific actions listed next to the contributions." Steve thought a moment. "But no one pays that much money without an expectation of return. What has the South Vietnamese government wanted?"

"They've wanted the war to continue, and American troops to stay in the fight." Rick's voice tightened. "If the North Vietnamese win, each of those guys is dead if he stays, and just another refugee if he bugs out."

"To give it the most positive spin possible," Scotty sat up from the screen. "They're patriots, and they were trying to guarantee the most American support at the highest level for the longest amount of time."

"But in the end, no matter how you look at it, the money bought a longer war." Steve's voice dropped. "And the inevitable conclusion is that a longer war meant that more Americans were killed or wounded than would have happened otherwise."

Rick stood up, took the reloaded can of film and put it in the inside pocket of his leather jacket. Then he stuck the photos inside his belt in the front so that they lay against his chest, put the jacket on, and zipped it up. "So, guys just like me, grunts who might have fought beside me or were flying air cover overhead or…" He stalled and then continued. "These guys have ended up dead or had their ass blown off or whatever – not because we had to win the war or stop Communism or whatever bullshit we were told. Not because of that, but because someone…" Rick stopped again and then began to bite off each word. "Because. Someone. Took. A. Fucking. Bribe."

Rick took his helmet and walked out, leaving only silence behind him.

CHAPTER 19

 

The BMW howled through the empty city streets.

Rick was flying through the turns, ignoring stop signs and traffic lights, not even registering the horns of the few cars he passed. Only pedestrians were still on his radar, and he slowed and stopped on M Street to let an old woman hobble across with her shopping cart. Then he took off again.

On upper 16th Street, a police car lit up behind him, but he slashed across a park lawn and into Carter Barron, popped over a couple of curbs, and down into Rock Creek Park. Soon, he could no longer hear the siren.

Finally, he slowed down – not because the dance had worked its usual magic but because it wasn't working at all. His chest was tight and tears were building up behind the windburn in his eyes. Mechanically, he pulled into a roadside picnic area far up Beach Drive and parked. He got a yellow rain jacket and pants out from the canvas bag on the side and pulled them on.

It was only a slight disguise but there was no point in being arrested when he wasn't dancing.

Driving smoothly, reasonably, he made his way back down Rock Creek Parkway, under the Kennedy Center, and up onto the Southeast Freeway. Pulling off on to 4th Street, he cruised back to the house.

As he stopped at the stop sign on the corner of 3rd and E, a half block down from the house, Eve stepped right in front of him and slapped him on the helmet. He realized that she'd been calling his name, but it just hadn't registered.

"Stop." She grabbed his right hand and stopped him from turning the throttle. "Someone is in your house. Something is wrong. I know it."

He looked at her as he struggled to understand. Then, methodically, he backed the bike into the curb, set the kickstand, and put his helmet on the handlebars.

She stood quietly until he was finished. "I came over to see if you wanted to walk. Oh hell, I just came to see you." She was wearing gray sweats, and her hair was loose rather than in the thick braid she'd worn before. "As soon as I came around the corner, I saw two guys on your porch, and then one of them broke the glass in your front door and they went in. I think they had guns."

She took a deep breath and continued. "A minute or so after they went in, there were sounds inside. I've done a lot of hunting, and I think they were gunshots."

Rick felt a cold wave run down his spine. "Did they see you?"

"Maybe. I kept on going on the other side of the street and then came around the block. If they saw me at all, I made it look like I hadn't noticed anything wrong."

Rick looked down 3rd Street to his house and spotted the 240Z parked illegally out front. He crossed the street and headed for the back, letting the other houses block any view from the windows.

"Wait!" Eve was right behind him. "After that. There was a much bigger bang, like an explosive."

"Damn it. The guys – I shouldn't have left them." Rick spun around. "You stay right here where it's safe."

She looked at him calmly, and when he turned and started up the alley, she was right behind him. He looked back, and she just shook her head. Short of breaking her leg, he didn't see any way to stop her.

They cut between the garages, and as soon as he could see the back door, he stopped. He stood watching for a long moment and then started walking slowly and carefully toward the house. He wasn't trying to crouch or hide, just move at a slow, steady pace that he hoped would not stand out from the background.

The house was originally built with the first floor about three feet above ground level to give more light to the basement. That put the bottom of the dining room windows about six feet off the ground. They came up next to the first one and stood with their backs to the brick wall of the house for a second. Rick slowly pivoted to look in with his eyes just over the bottom sill.

The first thing he noticed was the blood.

It was smeared along the white-painted wall of the hallway and glistened in a large pool on the floor in the dining room.

Simultaneously, the window shattered in front of him and he heard the
zip-whine
of a bullet. He felt his hair move from the wind of its passage.

He was dropping even before he realized it, ducking below the sill, grabbing Eve's hand, and sprinting around the house – staying close to the brick walls.

Eve gasped, "But your bike – it's back there."

"No time. I think the guys are dead. There's blood everywhere. We have to get out of sight or we're going to be dead as well."

He heard the front door slam open, and another shot went high as they dropped down the three steps to the sidewalk. Rick didn't look back, just raced up 3rd Street and into the shelter of the next row of houses.

At the corner, he pulled Eve to the left and onto the walkway over the subway dig. "We can't go to my place," she panted. "Joyce is there with her kids."

"Not going to your place," he said without stopping. "We're going down. Too many straight lines up here. We need to make turns. Lots of turns."

He heard racing footsteps behind him as their pursuer came off the concrete sidewalk and onto the hollow, booming plywood of the walkway.

On his right, there was an opening in the railing – a platform cantilevered off the side with a chain-link gate about three feet in that was locked now that all the workers were gone for the weekend. He pulled Eve sideways onto the platform just as the footsteps behind him stopped and he heard another shot go wide.