Eddy's Current (20 page)

Hernandez reasoned that the library would seldom have cause to keep its video surveillance record for longer than a year. Maybe this video of him would sit on a computer hard drive somewhere in Houston’s library department for the next year and then be destroyed so the space on the hard drive could be used again.

Nothing’s perfect, he thought. He proceeded east on I–10, on his way to his office, at least satisfied that he had planted more than enough evidence to bury the new USFIA golden boy under and avalanche of suspicion.

For the fourth time in fifteen minutes Hernandez did something that was against the basics of his training. He reasoned to himself that because the fundamentals of his plan were so successful — the credit card and cell phone record changes — he did not need to be concerned that the related mistakes of lessor consequence would be discovered, ruining the entire plan. His training taught him well that there was no such thing as a minor mistake, and that seemingly hugely successful plots are often brought crashing down because of minor slips.

Actually he had made five mistakes in fifteen minutes, not four. The first mistake was made before he ever approached the library exit door, before he even got up from the computer terminal. He forgot about it, though, and he still didn’t realize it. Perhaps if he had remembered it, five mistakes would have been enough to cause him to take some kind of corrective action. He proceeded on, without remembering that the login history of the two web sites he visited before the middle school student interrupted him had not been erased.

Hernandez’s office was drab. He didn’t know how to live or work with pizzaz. He simply didn’t care. His office reflected just that reality of his personality. His desk did not match his file cabinets, and his file cabinets did not match his bookshelves. Nothing matched because that stuff didn’t matter. Hernandez did care about one thing, though: He was in perfect physical condition. Five–ten, one–eighty. All muscle. He worked out each day, and he worked out hard. His clothes left much to be desired. They were last year’s style, or the year before—whatever was on sale for clearance prices at the men’s clothing outlet shops.

Hernandez was comfortable now. The day after he returned to his office, he began the task of planting firmly in the minds of the USFIA what he wanted checked about Golden Boy. He could not directly state, nor could he even imply to the USFIA, that Golden Boy was up to no good. Doing so would be his sixth mistake — in his mind the fifth — and one that would bring suspicion on him for having planted the evidence. Someone could do it for him, but he could not do it himself.

He began by setting up a meeting with Downing to protest USFIA’s investigation of him. “I’m here to protest the USFIA’s investigation of me,” Hernandez stated bluntly to Downing, before they even sat down to talk.

“I don’t give a damn what you’re here to protest,” Downing replied with a curtness Hernandez had not anticipated. “We’ve got problems, very serious problems.”

Hernandez didn’t flinch. “I’m here to protest the investigation. I do have that right. You have to give a damn. I have secured the services of an attorney.”

“Brilliant. Doing that just increased suspicion of you by fifty percent. Listen to me, Hernandez, I am trying to save your neck. Do you understand me? Instead of you getting that, you come in here whining that someone’s investigating you. Call off your lawyer, take a deep breath, and count to ten. Just chill.”

“I didn’t do it, plain and simple,” Hernandez said.

“They believe that you did do it, and I’m trying to get you off with as little punishment as possible. I might even be able to save your career, but don’t come in here with a load of bull for me to listen to. I’m not in the mood.”

Undaunted, Hernandez continued, “They’re scapegoating me. It’s clear. They’re up to something. I want them investigated.”

“What are you talking about now? You’ve lost your mind if you think I’m going to call over to USFIA and tell them to investigate themselves. You ramble on about scapegoating, but doing that to them would match the very definition of scapegoating. We’re going to get you a lawyer, one of our lawyers, and we’re going to work this thing through the legal system in so many ways that they’ll be dizzy by the time it’s over. They’ll have so many prominent politicians calling their office from the world over that they’ll back off before they can even begin to take notes.”

“Okay, then, the first thing I’ll say to my lawyer, or rather your lawyer, is that I want Golden Boy investigated. Now, you’re going to listen to me. This whole thing stinks. First of all, I know that I didn’t take bribes. I didn’t. So, where did they get the idea to go after me for bribery. It was on Golden Boy’s mind for some reason. Maybe he has it on his mind because he’s up to something. Maybe he’s the one who’s been taking bribes. Maybe he’s deflecting attention from himself by having the whole world look to me. The best defense is a good offense. He’s going after me so others won’t look too closely at him.”

“Not a chance. He was assigned this task by his boss. He did not initiate it.”

“True, but his boss was unable to give him any specifics about what it was I supposedly did wrong, so Warwick created the details in order to deflect from a potential investigation of him.”

“There’s only one problem, Fred,” Downing said.

“What’s that?”

“Nobody’s mentioned a bribe… except you.”

“Well, uh, I mean; isn’t it obvious that they’re headed in that direction?”

“It is obvious now that you’ve opened your mouth—the same mouth you need to keep closed from now on. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Fred? Do you?” Downing asked.

“Now, you’re going to listen to me. Okay? I’ll make a deal with you. You give me something solid to go to his boss to start in inquiry of him and I’ll do it. Forty–eight hours. We’ll meet again in forty–eight hours. If you have something solid, I’ll do it. If not, though, you have to agree right now that we’ll drop this idea and go with mine.”

“And what is yours?”

“To save your skin, that’s ‘what is mine.’ Now, do you agree?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now go. You’ve only got forty–seven hours, fifty–nine minutes and forty–one seconds. And remember, keep your mouth closed! You talk too much.”

Hernandez was walking a very thin line. Regardless of his agreement with Downing, he had to move ahead with his plot against River. But initiating it was a huge challenge. A blunt charge directly to the USFIA from Hernandez wouldn’t do it. It had to be a subtle hint almost, indirectly, but to someone who would follow up on it.

Confusion and conflict raced through Hernandez’s mind. Could he make it a completely blind challenge to someone who could do something about it? He couldn’t initiate the investigation himself. Nor could he get someone else to do it. Of course he could, he thought to himself, if he did so indirectly. He scrambled up from his desk and headed to Carole Billings’ office. “Carole, I need your advice. We’ve been colleagues for years, right? And you know that I went out on a limb for you during that investigation of Senator McCall.”

“Yes, we have been colleagues for years. And, yes, I knew that sooner or later you would call in the chips you earned from the McCall case. But you’re under investigation now. Please don’t come in here and ask for my help about that investigation. You know I can’t help you,” Billings said dutifully, but without her heart into it at all.

“Come on, Carole, you owe me. Besides, I’m not asking you to do anything illegal or unethical.”

“Sure, yeah, sort of like what Jesse James would say to his brother, Frank, while he was reviewing plans with him for their next train robbery, right?”

“No, really. I am asking you to do something as a professional. I am passing on to you a tip I received from a confidential source. It needs to be investigated. You can’t deny me under the FBI’s rules.”

“True, but I can call in a supervisor to assist me.”

“You can, but you aren’t required to.”

“Okay. What do you want? I’ll let you ask, but I’m warning you that if your request is illegal or unethical I’ll report you. If I didn’t owe you, you would be answering to Downing’s screaming right now.”

“Fair enough. Here’s the deal. Do you know of an agent over at USFIA named River Warwick?”

“Who hasn’t heard of him? He’s top dog over there, but only because he got in on the ground floor. It’s sort of like the best quarterback of a new football league or something. He’s on the top because the standards have not been raised through years and years of football players setting them higher and higher. One day Warwick will be at the bottom of the pile of truly great agents. One day he’ll be a footnote at the bottom of the list of those who achieved true excellence. Until then he’s their torchbearer for quality investigative work. He’s their man.”

“Yes, that’s why I call him Golden Boy. It’s a title that fits him. He’s been embraced by them over there. He’s a creation of theirs. They need him in order to unofficially represent them as a legitimate and even sterling investigative agency. Neither he nor they are sterling, but they need him to represent them as such.”

“Okay, so much for the two of us slicing Golden Boy’s reputation to shreds with our gossip. Let’s get down to business. Whether we like him or not, he’s there, and he’s the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel,” Billings said with a chuckle.

“Here’s the deal. He’s not clean. I believe he has a gambling problem. Gambling addiction can cause a person to do things he wouldn’t ordinarily do. He needs to be checked out. He’s created this bribery nonsense about me from his own mind, because it’s on his mind. By diverting attention to me, people won’t look to closely at him.”

“Here’s what I’ll do for you, Fred. I’ll do some snooping. I’ll go in and check his phone records, and maybe his large cash transactions. I might take a look at all of that and compare what I find with the data base that we have with all the phone numbers for the world’s gambling houses, bookies and Internet gambling sites. That will only take a moment or two. That’s it, though. If nothing turns up, I’m out, and we’re even. Regardless of what I find, I no longer owe you. Neither of us breathes a word of this. Not a word.

“If I find anything, I’ll tell the right person, and I’ll tell him that I initiated the investigation because I received a lead from an anonymous source. If I’m pressed for details, I will not lie. So my willingness to withhold details will be strictly limited by the degree of Downing’s probing. You need to understand that.

“I’ll let you know what I find by tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks, Carole.”

Hernandez prayed that Carole would notice the calls to and from Europe and that she would be curious and cross check the foreign agent’s number. He had no doubt that if she checked the number, she would suspect River. The foreign agent’s number was well known throughout the FBI.

Still, the foreign agent’s number had nothing to do with gambling. “If only I had thought to include in the modifications of Warwick’s phone records and credit card account records the phone numbers and payment account numbers of several gambling houses,” Hernandez thought. The fact that he didn’t could be good too, though. This way the number of the foreign agent would stick out on its own. The connection would speak for itself. Billings would be less suspicious of Hernandez because the direction he sent her would prove to be wrong, and yet she will have uncovered Warwick’s connection with the foreign agent.

On the following morning, before doing anything else, Billings called Hernandez’s office. “You need to come over to my office,” she said to him. “I need to go over this Golden Boy stuff with you right now.”

Hernandez hurried to Billings’ office, blazed through the open door as if on a mission for God, sat securely in the guest chair, lurched forward, and waited to hear the good news. “You’re not going to believe this, but there is ample evidence to launch an investigation of Golden Boy. He’s been calling a known foreign agent for three years now. The agent has also called him frequently during the same period.”

Hernandez had learned to use the art of false surprise to polish the craft of manipulative behavior. “Wow. How did you come up with that? What about gambling?”

“Nothing about gambling. Nothing at all. But gambling evidence is not needed. We can launch a full–scale investigation of G.B. Undoubtedly this will get worse for him. These things seldom get better.”

“Well, I have to leave it in your capable hands. Keep me posted, but I have to back out now. We have to keep this clean of my interference,” Hernandez said. “It’s your baby now.

“Oh, one more thing, Carole. You might want to take what you found directly to Congressman Perez’s committee. Congressman Perez has been asked to head up the investigation. Just a thought. You know, procedural stuff.”

LEGACY

16 JANUARY 2023

Tyler Peterson was in his Houston office enjoying the first few days of his third year as president of the ACC. His secretary notified him of an important call. “Mr. Peterson, you may want to take this call; it’s Pastor Griffen.”

Andrew Griffen was, without question, the most powerful conservative Christian pastor in the country. He had attended the annual convention of the American Conservative Consortium each of the past ten years. Griffen was present to hear Peterson’s acceptance speech two years earlier. He and Peterson enjoyed a close friendship since the speech.

“Of course I’ll take the call from Bud. Put him on.”

“Tyler, Tyler, how are you,” Griffen said with excitement in his voice. “This is providential. I’ve been thinking about your acceptance speech all day today. God put it in my mind to remind me of the outstanding vision He has given you to change this entire world. You gave a speech that will not soon be forgotten, even ten or twenty years from now. God bless you. As a result of your positions and prominence, all of the nation, and perhaps the world, will be challenged to change the course of history by embracing our more conservative philosophies. I look for millions to turn to our God as a result of a massive conservative movement, a movement that I believe God has been waiting many years for. Have you watched the news channels lately? They’re still running portions of your speech over and over—after two years! It’s great. Sam Brighton is doing a special again tonight about you and the ACC. It just doesn’t end. That man’s a good boy, you know.”