Executive Actions (37 page)

R
oarke was back with his dog and pony act. His audience would grow larger today. As he looked around the Oval Office, he figured that John Bernstein, notorious for playing devil’s advocate with the president, would be hard to sway. He couldn’t count on any help from Bob Mulligan. And he had no idea what CIA Chief Evans would think.

Then there were the others. How would the usually reserved Vice President Stanley Poole react?
Skeptically, of course.
The president only recently told him that he needed to be brought up to speed on an important national security matter.

Next to him, Nathan R. Langone, a man who
had
to be concerned. He was the president’s Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Roarke already knew that the silver-haired fifty-six-year-old ex-Marine, ex-Wall Street broker, ex-FBI Assistant Director started each day with the notion that every rumor could be true.

Arthur Campanis, Taylor’s national security advisor, would surely be surprised. Here was his biggest challenge. Campanis was a short, stocky man; with closely cropped salt and pepper hair. His role model was President Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, and he lived up to the tough image. As a former under secretary of state, Campanis earned the reputation of a hard-ass negotiator. He cultivated it in Taylor’s administration. The president warned Roarke that Campanis wasn’t going to be an easy sell in the meeting.
No shit.

“I think we’re ready to begin, Scott,” the president said.

“Okay.” The meeting was “by invitation only.” The participants had been briefed in general terms. Nothing specific. Roarke gauged by their expressions that it wasn’t exactly a friendly crowd. “Hope you don’t mind if I stand and walk around a little,” he said. There were no objections. He had the floor. “In a bit, I’ll show you a flow chart and some footage. But let’s start with the players. Then we’ll go to the video.” It was an old sports joke that didn’t work.

“Recapping first. June. Hudson, New York. We have a trigger man killing Jennifer Lodge. His name is Sidney McAlister. Beside the hotel register and a cancelled credit card account, there’s no record of him. He’s merely a name. Other than that he doesn’t exist. But what he did is seen around the world. In turn, we know how the fortunes of Congressman Lodge change with the death of his wife. There’s a better than even chance that before the killing he would have lost the New York primary. Because of it, more people come out for him. He pulls in the sympathy vote and he secures the nomination. Are we somewhat agreed on that point?”

Roarke received the nods he desired.

“Moving on. McAlister got away. Amazingly quickly. We still don’t know how. He leaves his sniper rifle, not even caring. It’s clean as a whistle. Like his entire room. No residual evidence that Bob’s team could submit for DNA testing. Can we agree that this was a professional hit?”

“Don’t you mean attempted hit,” the vice president asked? “Intended for Congressman Lodge.”

Roarke looked to the president for guidance. “It’s your show, Scott.”

Thanks for nothing,
he thought. “I’d like to skip that just for now, if I could.”

“Fair enough,” Poole answered.

“However, the FBI was able to lift a latent footprint from the wall of the hotel room and another impresison from the hotel parking lot. We suspect they are the killer’s. That same footprint shows up later in the summer thousands of miles away. This is most interesting. It’s in the woods, near where a man is found dead.”

This earned the Vice President’s interest. He loosened his yellow print tie; always a sure signal that he was getting engaged in the content. “Who? I didn’t know that.”

“A retired lawyer by the name of Alfred Nunes, on a fishing trip out near Sun Valley, Idaho, Mr. Vice President. A heart attack, according to the coroner. However, a further toxicology report strongly leads us to suspect he was poisoned. And this particular lawyer happens to have been a founding partner in the original law firm that represented the estate of a prominent Massachusetts family. A family named Lodge.”

“Well imagine that,” the vice president managed. Poole, balding and always looking grim, was a former senator from Maryland and renown as sharp debater on the Hill. Little facts meant big things to him. This was one of them.

“Now what about the law firm that eventually took over the estate?” Roarke asked. “Low and behold, one of its senior partners shows up dead this summer, too. Haywood Marcus. The press reports it as a robbery-homicide by a gang member. There are no witnesses.”

An audible “hmmm” from the vice president. Langone and Campanis remained silent.

“I take a personal interest in this one,” Roarke offered. “I tried to meet Marcus. I wasn’t allowed. As a result I couldn’t question him on archival files that might have been pertinent to our investigation.” Roarke neglected to say that he had actually seen some of the confidential paperwork. “If you want my personal opinion, I don’t think any subpoena could produce them now.”

“Mr. Roarke, for the sake of argument, there are other explanations to everything,” Vice President Poole argued. “You’re even providing them. A heart attack. A robbery. Even the whereabouts of old files. Things do get misplaced. I presume you
are
leading up to something?”

“Yes, I am. The good part. But to summarize, can we agree, based on what I’ve covered so far, that people connected with the Lodge family were killed in a short period of time?”

“’Killed?’ Mr. Roarke. I don’t believe you’ve established that,” the national security advisor said joining the discussion. “You’d have us believe that on faith.”

“Point well taken. If I substitute ‘died’?” Roarke asked.

“Assuming this can be substantiated? ‘Died’ it is,” conceded Campanis.

This technicality disrupted Roarke’s logical progression. He had to try another approach to make the connection.

“Does it seem coincidental to you that Mrs. Lodge and two senior partners of
two different
law firms that represented the old Lodge estate died within three months of one another?”

“I’ll grant you
coincidental
,” the vice president allowed. “An interesting coincidence.”

“Then
for the sake of argument
, is it possible their deaths, if not all natural—could be related?”

Campanis and Poole didn’t give any ground. Langone poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the coffee table in front of him, an indication that he was now involved, simultaneously the president put his hands together, a signal to Roarke to tie things up.

“Gentlemen, I maintain that we have a professional assassin and he isn’t working alone.”

“Just one moment,” Nathan Langone said. He scribbled some notes on a pad; his first since Roarke began.

When the secretary of homeland security indicated he was ready, Roarke continued. “Now back to the hotel in Hudson. A short while into the investigation, the FBI establishes that Mrs. Lodge’s killer may have had an accomplice who helped him secure the specific room he needed to take the shot. As I’ve understood from Bob’s briefings, that same man, identified as Frank Dolan, then shows up days later and kills a commuter on a New York bound train. Another hit.”

“Who’s that?” asked the National Security Advisor.

“Jack, maybe you can take Arthur’s questions,” Roarke said deferring to CIA Director Jack Evans, knowing that he’d have the answer.

Evans leaned forward in his seat and whispered, though he didn’t have to. The doors and walls to the Situation Room located in the basement of the White House were soundproof. “The victim was a former Russian spy we had taken in by the name of Steven Hoag. You can look up his obit in
The New York Times.
He came out of special school in Russia; one we know a good deal about. Red Banner, under the Andropov Institute. This particular agent was taught to be an American, to come here, to blend in, then wait to be activated. He was still a sleeper who was still sleeping when the Soviet Union fell.”

Campanis sat up straight. He was quite familiar with the legendary Red Banner.

“I believe he was killed because someone feared he either
could
or
was going to
provide us with an important bit of information.”

“Oh?” the national security advisor commented, now vastly more interested.

“The identity of another sleeper?” Secretary Langone concluded.

“Maybe more than one,” was the DCI’s reply.

“Who?” the vice president and the national security advisor asked in unison.

Roarke took over again. “I said I was coming to the good part. But before I get to it, I have to admit that we still do not have the proof in our hands to make any of this stick. Not Bob at the FBI. Not Jack at the CIA. And we’re not at the point where the attorney general can follow up. But we think we know where we can find it.”

“Anyone need a break?” the president asked.

No one did.
Good,
Roarke thought. He didn’t want to waste a second. “Now for the audio visual part of my briefing,” he said as he placed his chart on one of two easels in front of a statue of Dwight Eisenhower. “Just take in the connections we’ve established for a moment.” He gave them time to absorb the information in black and white.

“And I want to play a DVD with footage that you’ve all seen. The moments leading up to and including the death of Mrs. Lodge.

“The footage was shot by a local cameraman up in the Hudson Valley named Chuck Wheaton. I met him, and in my mind he’s not a crackpoint.” He spoke about Wheaton’s credibility; his full time teaching job, his interest in law enforcement and his sincerity. “Wheaton’s studied this like it was the Zapruder film,” Roarke added. “He’s lived with it for months. Frame by frame. And while there’s some debate even in this room over Wheaton’s theory, I want you to see what the cameraman believes he discovered.”

Roarke reached for the remote. The TV set was built into a massive bookshelf containing other monitors usually tuned to the all news channels. “I’m going to roll this and talk you through. Look closely. Eventually, I think you’ll see why were all here today.”

Roarke ran the raw footage at normal speed, then slowed it, pointing to same clues that Chuck Wheaton had shown him. “His deliberate speech…watch his fingers…as if he’s counting. His head. Moving forward. Now! Just as the bullet is fired…. It’s as if he knew.”

After sixteen straight minutes without comment and numerous passes at the footage, Roarke turned to his audience.

“Anybody?” Roarke asked. “Nobody?” He held up his hands inviting reaction.

The FBI director didn’t hesitate. “You know I have a problem with this, Roarke. We can’t take this out. We’ll sound like conspiracy nuts.”

“I agree,” Bernstein added.

Roarke focused on Evans. The CIA director gave him a very visible endorsement with a tip of his glasses, but nothing else. Secretary Langone made another notation on his pad. The national security advisor said nothing, but Vice President Poole surprised Roarke when he quietly asked, “Would you mind playing that again?”

While the footage ran, Mulligan joined Morgan Taylor across the room. “I’m extremely uncomfortable with this, Mr. President,” he said softly.

“Say what you mean, Bob.”

“For the record, it’s bullshit. I thought that when Bessolo and Roarke went up to Hudson. And I think the same thing now. You have a lot of faith in your boy here, and he’s done a great job of drawing lines on a board. But he doesn’t have diddlyshit to back it up. Not a damned thing. And quite honestly, if you pursue this course of action
without
proof, I have to tell you that I can’t be your man. You’ll need to find someone else. Even at this point.”

The president put his arm on Mulligan’s shoulder and bore down. The FBI chief felt the pressure of Taylor’s fingers.

“Bob why don’t you put a pin in that until Roarke is finished…before you say something you’ll really regret.”

“Mister…”

Morgan Taylor cut him off. “No, Bob,” he said raising his voice. “I don’t want to hear you’re not
my
man.”

“But Mr. President.”

“We’re not finished, Bob. Don’t you want to know what one of your
own
men has come up with? Thanks, in fact, to you.”

“What are you talking about?” the FBI chief asked in amazement.

“Scott,” the president said raising his voice, “I think we’ve seen enough. Why don’t you turn off the TV and bring out those photos of yours.”

Roarke nodded and went to his locked attaché case. He thumbed through the tumblers until the right digits came up. Roarke took a few moments to make sure he had the proper sequence for the photographs and computer renderings. Then he placed them on another easel, beside the first.

“The human face is remarkable,” he said seguing to his lecture on age progression photography. “It shows where we’re going and where we’ve been. We can change our expression, but we can’t hide who we are. I’m going to tell you a story about somebody who tried.”

Roarke finished quoting Touch Parsons. “According to the FBI’s own age progression expert, Duane Parsons, this Boy Scout,” he pointed to the picture of eleven-year-old Teddy Lodge, “and this man,” the recent campaign photo, “are not the same person.”

“One more time?” National Security Advisor Campanis requested.

“Right to the point, then. Gentlemen, the man running for president under the name Teddy Lodge is a fake.” Roarke’s stinging declaration seemed to suck the air out of the room. Poole, and Campanis gasped. Even Jack Evans caught his breath at the power of the accusation.

“What’s more, I believe the real Teddy Lodge died three decades ago. The same for the real Geoff Newman.”

Roarke recapped the history of Lodge’s traffic accident, the disappearance of Newman at Heathrow, the lack of family pictures, even the death of his high school sweetheart.