Frame 232 (22 page)

FREDERICK RYDELL
stood by the French doors in his den and watched the sprinklers twirl over his surgically perfect lawn. Some of the spray dotted the flagstone pavers on the patio
 
—a patio where he had stood with the most influential intelligence figures in the nation. Conversation had ranged from state secrets to dirty jokes and was stage-propped with the usual brandishments of male ritual
 
—a pipe or cigar, a ceaselessly ringing cell phone, and a rocks glass of straight whiskey or vodka or whatever.

He had one of those drinks in hand now and was mindlessly rotating it in such a way that the ice jingled along the sides. When he had poured it ten minutes earlier, he tried but could not recall the last time he had indulged in alcohol during daylight hours, much less working hours. The latter was irrelevant, however, as he would not be a part of America’s workforce today. He had already left a message on Theresa’s machine saying he was feeling a little under the weather and wanted to get some rest. He could not recall the last time he had done that, either.

Deep concern continued to press upon his mind. It had started the day before, following the realization that Hammond had not only dodged his attempt to put pressure
on him but had managed to turn the situation around in his own favor simply by using the media to provide a measure of protection for himself.
He turned half the people in the nation into his personal security force by leveraging the public’s fondness for him. Now how did I not foresee that possibility?
This was the question that had plagued him until finally, reluctantly, he’d swallowed the harsh truth that he had badly underestimated the man. Hammond was nothing like the bored rich kid some in the media made him out to be. Not even close.

Once Rydell accepted this, he dug deeper to study his adversary. A former Harvard student with a sterling academic record. Not someone whose parents had bought his way in but rather someone who had earned it. And his other record, his “professional” record
 
—success with nearly everything he touched, including many instances where others had failed before. Hammond wasn’t just another spoiled legacy brat. He was legitimate, and he was formidable.

But there was even more to it than that. Rydell couldn’t assemble a sharp-edged image of Hammond because the man was also a study in contrasts. He had a natural, easy brilliance in many subjects, yet he seemed genuinely humble. He had been handed an empire he’d played no role in building, yet he appeared to be managing it with remarkable efficiency. He had tremendous resources at his command, yet he exercised phenomenal self-control. No record of drug use or excessive drinking, no tabloid photos of Hammond with prostitutes or controversial celebrities. And he was apparently a religious man as well. Sincere, compassionate, and moral.
That’s a problem,
Rydell thought.

Now Hammond had the public on his side as well. They loved his reaction to the frame attempt Rydell had orchestrated. Another David-versus-Goliath scenario, and the
American people never tired of those. Hammond had known exactly what to do, had manipulated the media perfectly.

Now
we’re
the ones who need to be careful,
Rydell thought bitterly.
Particularly that idiot Birk.
Taking out Burdick had been good
 
—something that should’ve been done ages ago. But to let Hammond and the girl get away again . . . Rydell felt the urge to choke Birk to death with his bare hands.
How much did Burdick tell them? How much do they know?

He brought the drink up and took another sip. This time the ice jingled because his hand shook, which only served to make him angrier. There were few things he hated more than losing control of a situation. The enemy was out there, methodically chipping away at the wall that had protected him for half a century, and he wasn’t able to do a thing about it.
“Just find them and take them out,”
he had told Birk. Birk had countered with an argument about logistics, about how it would be nearly impossible to get to them with the public’s attention fixed in their direction. Rydell knew this was true, but he wasn’t interested in excuses.
“Find a way,”
he had said.
“That’s why you’re being paid so much.”
He had let his emotions get away from him during the call
 
—another source of irritation. Ultimately, however, he didn’t care what Birk thought. He owned the man.

One sprinkler zone quit, and another squirted to life. Rydell put his free hand gingerly on his chest and took several measured breaths. There was a tightness inside, the kind that always accompanied the feeling that danger was closing in. If Hammond and the girl did learn too much, what then? He wondered again about disappearing sooner than planned. Was that possible? Realistic?
Maybe. . . .
Most of the pieces were in place now. Even his sick-day call had inadvertently created an advantage. He could do another tomorrow, tell Theresa he wanted to go to the doctor, just as a precaution.
Ever faithful, she would cover for him. That would buy forty-eight hours, maybe seventy-two.

But it wouldn’t be enough, not in the long run.

What would happen if Hammond learned about Clemente and got the word out? And what if Clemente was still alive? Rydell wanted to tell himself there was no chance of this, but he didn’t fully believe it. Galeno Clemente was another one he had tragically underestimated. Even if he really was dead, if the public found out about him, the investigation would begin anew, and this time the media would be relentless.
It was bad enough in years past, but now, with the power of the Internet and all regard for privacy relegated to history . . .

And even if he did manage to escape, the fact that a high-ranking intelligence officer had suddenly disappeared would send the government into pandemonium. They would have no choice but to launch a massive investigation.
And if they discovered my connection to the assassination . . .

His phone twittered, jolting him out of his thoughts. He yanked it resentfully from his pocket, expecting to see Birk’s number on the caller ID. More whining, more excuses. This time Rydell wouldn’t worry so much about decorum. He would give Birk a tongue-lashing he’d never forget.

All emotions came to a standstill when he found a different number on the tiny screen. It produced only a faint memory at first. Then he noted the location
 
—New Jersey
 
—and the pieces of the puzzle came together. The color drained from his face until he really did look ill. He closed his eyes and shook his head.
Please tell me this is a wrong number.

But it wasn’t, of course. Rydell mumbled a short run of profanities and considered letting the call go to voice mail. But that would only prolong the inevitable. This particular individual would keep trying until he got through.

Rydell took a deep breath and unfolded the phone. “Yes.”

There was no greeting from the other end, no “Hello” or “How are you?” The caller launched immediately into his own profanity-laced tirade, and he did so with such rage that Rydell was forced to hold the phone a few inches from his ear.

“I have the situation under control,” Rydell replied. “Don’t be con
 
—”

“I
am
concerned. I am very concerned. The situation does not appear to be under control at all.”

“I have someone on it right now. The problem will be taken ca
 
—”

“Your confidence is not being felt on this end. Not by any of us.”

“It’ll be fine, believe m
 
—”

“It had better be, or you’ll have more trouble than you’ll know what to do with. Am I clear?”

Rydell’s body stiffened. There was no instrument in existence that could measure how much he hated this man.

“You’re clear,” he replied.

The line went dead.

He stood there, phone in hand, for a long time. He thought more about his hatred for the man and for the way they were inextricably fused together. This bond would haunt him into eternity. He would pay for it forever, for something the four of them had done as very young men so many years ago
 
—him, the man he had just spoken with, and two others. Four men who had craved power all their lives and yet were utterly powerless when it came to dissolving their baleful union. Through them, he was as trapped as it was possible to be.

Or am I?

For the first time, he began to wonder if this was irreversibly true.

HAMMOND SAT
on the edge of the hotel bed with his eyes locked on the television, where a female MSNBC newsreader was reporting the latest with a photo of him in the corner of the screen. Noah was talking at the same time through the speaker of Hammond’s phone. Sheila, in a chair by the table, was reading a text message on her own phone and looking particularly distressed.

“. . . Weldon of Reuters, the only journalist Jason Hammond will speak with, confirmed yesterday that the billionaire was, in fact, investigating the assassination of President John Kennedy based on new evidence he claims to have in his possession. Hammond admitted to Weldon that he was at the home of Professor Benjamin Burdick at the time of Burdick’s murder but said he had nothing to do with the shooting. In spite of this, he is still wanted by the authorities for questioning. Hammond stated that the killer was an unidentified assassin who also tried to kill him as well as a female friend whose involvement is still unclear. Based on an anonymous tip received by major news services earlier today, the woman is believed to be Michigan resident
Sheila Marie Baker
 
—” a second photo, a head shot of Sheila taken from her Facebook page, slid into the frame alongside Hammond’s
 
—“who owns two gyms in her current hometown of Dearborn but spent her childhood in the Dallas suburb of Addison. . . .”

Sheila glanced briefly at the photo of herself, shook her head, then went back to the text messages. Hammond switched to CNN, where another newsreader was replaying the phoned-in report by David Weldon from the previous day.

“. . . said that he was following a lead stemming from a new piece of evidence, one that has never been seen before. And from it, he has learned of a new person who was likely involved in the assassination. During his investigation on these leads, he twice encountered an individual who not only tried to kill him and his female companion but also shot and killed Dr. Benjamin Burdick. Hammond said that this alone lends tremendous credence not only to the possibility that he may be getting closer to the heart of what really happened on that dark day in American history but that some of the people involved might still be alive and well
 
—and quite worried.”

And on Fox News there was an unsteady helicopter view of the New Hampshire estate with the camera trained on the main house. As soon as Hammond saw it, he began to feel nauseous.

“. . . and neither Hammond nor his family’s longtime assistant, Noah Gwynn, has responded to repeated phone calls from Fox. We do know that Gwynn is here at the family compound, and it is believed Hammond and his sidekick, gym owner Sheila Baker, are still somewhere in the Dallas area. . . .”

Hammond switched back to CNN
 
—more to remove the
image of his home than anything else
 
—and thumbed down the volume.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to hold them off,” Noah said through the tiny speaker. “The phone is ringing around the clock, and there are about ten news vans parked at the gate. Can you believe Fox has a
helicopter
out here?”

“I’m getting all kinds of text messages and voice mails,” Sheila said and began massaging her temples. “Everyone wants to know what’s going on. I’m hearing from people who haven’t contacted me in years. And I’ve got urgent business questions from Vicki to answer, but I’m afraid to send any replies because they might pick up the signal and find us.”

“Jason, you can’t stay there,” Noah said.

Hammond, his attention still possessed by CNN, nodded. “I know.”

“There are reporters swarming the Dallas area too,” Noah said.

“I figured as much,” Hammond replied.

“Then what’s your plan?”

Hammond switched to one of the local stations and found a reporter on the sidewalk randomly interviewing people. “How do you feel about the possibility of the assassination of President Kennedy finally being solved?” One was a black girl who appeared to be about college age. Another was a thirtysomething woman carrying an infant. The third was a well-groomed older man in a gray business suit. All three shared the sentiment that it was long past time to close the case and bring those responsible to justice.

“We’ll go early tomorrow morning,” he said finally, “while it’s still dark.”

“Oh?” Noah said. “And where will you go?”

“Back east.”

“You mean here? Home?”

“No, to the CIA library in Washington.”

A few seconds passed without a word from his audience. “You’re kidding me,” Noah said finally.

“No.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m very serious.” He glanced at Sheila, who was staring with both eyebrows raised. “It has to be done, Noah. Sheila and I have explored just about every conceivable sector of the Internet and come up with nothing on Clemente. You said you went through every book and paper we’ve got in the home library and couldn’t find anything either. This guy’s been invisible since the day of the assassination, and I’m sure that’s because a lot of people want it that way. But there’s one place where we know there’s information, and that’s this one building in D.C. And since we can’t exactly make a formal request for it, we’ve got to go there in person.”

“Okay, it sounds good in principle. But what do you do at the library once you get there?”

“I’ve got some ideas.”

“I’m sure.”

“What if we’re seen, Jason?” Sheila asked, resignedly powering down her phone and putting it in her pocket. “There’s a pretty good chance of it.”

“We’ll just have to reduce that chance.”

“You have ideas about that, too?”

“I do,” he said.

They waited until after midnight for the trip to the drugstore. Hammond stayed in the car while Sheila went inside with the list he’d made in his careful print. She kept her head
down and avoided security cameras. When they returned to the hotel, she used her key card to open a door facing the back lot. The hallway was deathly silent.

Hammond dumped the contents of the two bags onto the bed
 
—lipstick, rouge, skin toner, eye shadow, grease pencils, a variety of powders and hair dyes, a do-it-yourself haircutting kit, two pairs of low-magnification reading glasses, and two baseball caps.

“You really think this is all it’s going to take?” Sheila asked. “Some makeup, glasses, and hats?”

“Oh no,” Hammond said, ripping things out of their packaging. “It’s just the starting point. I’ll show you the rest.”

“You know about this stuff?”

“I did some acting at Harvard. Freshman theater program, American Repertory, like that. Stage presentation was required learning. The art of changing one’s appearance has been around for centuries. Did you know that actors in ancient Greece and Rome covered their faces with flour and wine? They also used animal fur to make beards.”

“I recommend we not try that.”

“No, I think we’ll stick with what we’ve got here.” He lined up the hair dyes in a neat row. “Pick one you can live with, at least for a while.”

She studied her choices and settled on a light blonde. “This should be sufficiently different, yes?”

Hammond inspected her natural color, which was a deep brown. “Yeah, that’ll be okay. Much lighter, but not so much that it’ll attract attention. Or worse, look fake.”

She raked her fingers through it. Each little piece flopped right back into place. “Too short to cut, right?”

“Yeah, no cutting. You’ll look like Mr. Clean. Or Mr. Clean’s wife.”

She sniffed out a little laugh, her first in a while, noting that Hammond seemed pleased by this. “What about you? What’ll be your new color of choice?”

“I don’t know.” He stroked his chin and appraised the boxes. “I’ve got this wicked midnight black now.”

“With some light touches of gray, I see.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Umm . . . okay, how about this one?” He picked up a medium chestnut, which bore the more marketable name of “ash brown.”

“That should work. Are you going to cut it too?”

“A little bit. Maybe lose the sweepback that makes me look like a college boy and go for something more modern. Frankly I like the Julius Caesar thing you’ve got going on.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“I’ll be a regular George Clooney.”

“Right, that’s what you’ll be.”

“I’ll meet you back here after the metamorphosis is complete.”

It took about an hour, and Hammond looked anything but pleased with the results.

Sheila said, “You don’t like it?”

“Not particularly. My head looks like it got caught in a blender.”

“Well, you didn’t cut it very straight.”

“I don’t do this every day.”

“Here, give me those.”

She took the scissors, led him into the bathroom, and patiently fixed it. Hammond, wearing fresh clothes and covered with a bath towel around his neck and torso, frowned like a disgruntled schoolboy being primped for a class picture.

After they cleaned up both bathrooms, they returned to his suite.

“Okay,” he said, “now for step two
 
—the basics of acting.”

He began by explaining that every person already had a method of his or her own
 
—that is, normal, everyday mannerisms. The key to true acting was to learn how to alter those mannerisms in order to adopt the manifestations of someone else. “We communicate more information with our body language and our appearance than we do with our words,” he said. “People get about 90 percent of their impression of you long before you open your mouth. The way you walk, the way you sit, the way you dress, whether you make eye contact or not, what you do with your hands, your general posture . . . everything. People who move with good posture, keep their head up, and look straight ahead as they’re walking, for example, project confidence. Those who shuffle along hunched forward with their head down, on the other hand, display
 
—and thus inspire
 
—very little confidence. What you therefore need to do is decide on a subtle persona that won’t be too difficult for you to emulate, then learn the little traits that project it.”

Hammond demonstrated a few examples
 
—an old man, a street punk, a wino, a narcissistic game-show host.

After an hour of practice plus the application of some basic makeup, Sheila saw a stranger in the mirror over the dresser.

“I look like I’m sixty!” she said with mild horror. The rectangular-framed glasses gave her a measure of affluent dignity, but the delicately applied age lines added a decade or two.

“I certainly hope so,” Hammond said, sitting with his arms crossed on the bed. “We don’t want anyone going, ‘Hey, isn’t that the girl we’ve been seeing on CNN?’”

“No, definitely not.” She moved closer to the glass and
touched her face lightly. “I wonder if this is how I’ll really look someday.”

“As long as you get to that age in the first place,” Hammond said. “That’s my main concern at the moment.”

The comment didn’t register with her at first, but when it did, it opened a floodgate of affection that, she realized, had been culturing for a while. She turned her mirrored gaze in his direction
 
—he was cleaning up the room now
 
—and smiled.

Her initial caution toward the man had melted completely away. She had tried at several moments to fit him with her stereotype of the rich
 
—arrogant, aloof, etc. But it just never worked. Hammond exhibited the natural tendencies of one who had lived in splendor all his life, one who simply did not know any other way. And the detachment was not aloofness but shyness. He only made eye contact when speaking to her; the rest of the time his eyes were kept respectfully away. Further, he never made even the faintest implication that she owed him anything. She had wrestled
 
—sometimes literally
 
—with men who expected quite a bit for something as simple as dinner and a movie. Hammond had not demonstrated so much as a hint of this mentality. Furthermore, he had been concerned with her welfare from the moment they met. He had done so at great expense to himself and with no regard for his own safety.
The fact is, he’s one of the most genuinely decent people I’ve ever met
 
—and I was right to trust him.