Frame 232 (35 page)

GALENO CLEMENTE
sat alone in
Wind Dancer
’s cabin, in the cushioned booth that looked like something out of a fifties diner, holding Hammond’s iPad in both hands. He used his index finger to brush aside one web page and move to another. Every major news site had a story about Hammond’s ongoing activities. Certain details were common to each
 
—the status of Sheila Baker was still unknown, as were Hammond’s whereabouts; one man had already been murdered, and there was a possible government connection to all of it. The facts were followed by a plethora of speculative editorializing. No one had yet made any mention of Margaret Baker’s film or the Babushka Lady pseudonym. Clemente had a feeling that would change very soon.

Hammond came down, leaning awkwardly to fit through the passageway. “We’ll be there shortly.”

Clemente nodded without taking his eyes off the screen.

“Incredible what makes the news these days, isn’t it?” Hammond added.

“What is more incredible is this device that brings it to you.”

“Yes, the iPad. A great little toy.”

“I can work with a computer, but I am still somewhat inexperienced with related devices.”

“It’s been around a while.”

“I know, but I have not held one before. It is wonderful. Your Steve Jobs was truly a man who saw into the future.”

“You’ve heard of him?”

“Is there anyone who has not?”

Hammond laughed. “I guess not. The Thomas Edison of our time, they called him. Very apt.”

“I would agree.”

“Okay, well, just to let you know, the plan is to get ashore, then drive to my home up north. Hopefully no one will recognize us along the way. If we can find a drugstore in Florida, I can put together some disguises for us.”

“I can help with that too.”

“Good. Once we’re in New Hampshire, I can introduce you to a few attorneys I know. They can help you do whatever you wish.”

“That would be fine. Thank you.”

Hammond got a bottle of water from the mini fridge. He turned to ask if Clemente wanted one, then stopped. Appearing relaxed a moment earlier, his guest now looked sickly pale.

“What’s wrong?”

When Clemente didn’t respond, Hammond moved behind him to see what was on the iPad’s screen. It was an article about the CIA’s response to the media’s charges that someone in their ranks was responsible for Sheila Baker’s abduction. In the accompanying lead photo, an angry
Director Peter Vallick stood at a podium with several sober-looking men behind him. There was one in particular, far left and almost in the shadows, who seemed to be distinctly uneasy.

“Do you know this man?” Clemente asked, pointing to him.

Hammond squinted. “Umm, I don’t believe so. Why? What’s the
 
—?”

“Is there any way to make this picture bigger?”

“Sure.” Hammond pressed his thumb and forefinger to the screen, then spread them apart. This time, Clemente did not pause to marvel at the technology.

“That’s him.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s the man who was in my hotel room in Dallas, the one with the maps of Dealey Plaza.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes.”

“That was fifty years ago. How can you
 
—?”

“I am sure of it. The eyes, the nose. He even keeps his hair the same way. He is much older, of course, but it is him. I would bet my life on it.”

“Okay, hang on. Let me take a look at something.” He slid in beside Clemente and took the iPad, keeping it angled in such a way that they could both view it comfortably.

He scrolled down to the caption, which inventoried everyone in the photo.

“Rydell, Frederick Rydell. Sound familiar?”

“No.”

“All right, let’s try this. . . .”

He navigated to Google Images and launched a new search. There were only two photos, both from articles about
the agency’s attempts to promote Rydell to the director’s post at the CIA. The most recent was from 1999, the other 1988.

When Hammond enlarged the latter to fill the entire screen, Clemente nodded. “That is him; I swear it.”

Hammond now did a regular Google web search and found just one site with biographical information. This in itself, Hammond felt, was notable given the fact that the Internet had all but eviscerated the concept of privacy. Rydell was born in Indiana in 1941, attended military schools, then served briefly in the Navy before his career as a hot new CIA recruit began in 1961.

“He would’ve been
 
—”

“Twenty-one or -two when we met,” Clemente said. “That is exactly right.”

Hammond shook his head. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered.

“It is him. Trust me. I have never forgotten that face.”

The final line in the bio grabbed Hammond like a hand around the throat
 
—
He continues his duties today as the agency’s assistant deputy director.

Hammond got to his feet and took out his phone, then went to the deck to assure the best reception. Clemente followed.

“I was just about to call you,” Noah said upon answering.

“Noah, we’ve found the man.”

“Jason
 
—”

“The operational leader from 1963. The one who was in Galeno’s Dallas hotel room.”

“Jason, lis
 
—”

“Galeno is sure of it. Absolutely certain. And I’m sure he’s sure.”

“Jason.”

“Noah, please, are you hearing what I’m saying?”

An exasperated sigh. Then, “Okay, who is it?”

“His name is Frederick Rydell, and he’s the assistant deputy director of the CIA. That’s who the FBI needs to look for.”

“Okay, good. That’s great. I’ll get on it right away.”

“Tell Henry Moore, too, please.”

“I will.”

There was an awkward pause. “I don’t understand,” Hammond said. “You don’t find this amazing?”

“I do, Jason. But there have been some other developments that are also quite amazing.”

“More amazing than this?”

“Well, I didn’t know we were having a contest. But yes, I’d say so. Maybe more so. However . . . they’re not good developments. Not good at all.”

“Okay, tell me.”

“First, I received a call from Chip Frazier. He said he was contacted by the Justice Department. It seems CIA director Peter Vallick is thinking of having you sued for implying that the agency was somehow involved not only in President Kennedy’s assassination but also Sheila’s disappearance.”

“They were and are. The connection to Rydell proves that.”

“Yeah, well, he obviously doesn’t know that yet. And if you don’t come up with proof to back up those claims, he’s planning to throw the full weight of the government at you. If that happens, Jason, it could really hurt you. Bad.”

Hammond closed his eyes and shook his head. “Great. And what else?”

“I received another phone call just a few moments ago, and you won’t believe who it was from.”

“Who?”

Noah told him. Hammond stood motionless, his mouth hanging open.

“You’re
kidding
.”

“No.”

“Noah . . .”

“I swear it.”

The conversation continued for a few more moments, but Hammond barely heard a word of it. When the call ended, he turned to Clemente and said, “You won’t believe this.”

Before he had the chance to say more, a brilliant white light spilled over them. They turned like two convicts caught trying to scale the prison wall. Next came a voice through a loudspeaker, ordering them to stop.

“The Coast Guard,” Hammond said sharply. “Wonderful.”

He made his decision about what to do next
 
—a calculated risk to be sure
 
—in a millisecond.

RETIRED GENERAL
Arnold Shevalek sat on a military field stool, his breath visible in the frosty morning air, and broke kindling over his knee before tossing it into the growing fire. After several minutes of gentle prodding, it was finally reaching a reliable burn. The satisfying crackle provided an organic tune to the steady, white-noise harmony of the narrow river that flowed around the northwestern curve of the campsite.

Across the water stood a small palisade of jagged shale, the foundation for the forested ridge that ran along the top. Shevalek peered beyond the neat row of A-frame tents and scanned the ridge judiciously. He was clad in a camouflage jumpsuit and bright-orange vest, his hunter’s permit pinned to the back of his fur-lined cap. He was an unusually severe-looking man, unsmiling and intense, the kind who stirred discomfort in others simply by standing in their proximity. His facial features were sharply drawn, the pinkish skin making it appear as though he were perpetually on the verge of an eruption. In spite of being in his late seventies, he still telegraphed the impression that he could kill with his bare hands.

Detecting no movement along the ridgeline, he broke up the rest of the sticks and tossed them into the flames. He pulled his sleeve back to check his watch
 
—5:27 a.m. Three more minutes to work on the fire; then it was time to wake the others and get breakfast going. Shevalek referenced his watch several dozen times a day, for he was a man who believed in schedules. It was part and parcel of living an organized and efficient life, which had always been his passion.

He had spent fifty-two years in the military, starting as a second lieutenant fresh out of ROTC in 1959, and loved every moment. He had pulled every string, tried every trick, and bent every regulation in an unsuccessful attempt to dodge retirement two years ago. He was given a second star as a parting gift from the Pentagon but gladly would have given it back to return to active duty. He sorely missed the discipline, the orderliness, and
 
—of course
 
—the fighting in the name of the red, white, and blue. He believed the United States was the greatest civilization in human history, well beyond the Mesopotamians, the Romans, the Aztecs, and all the other reputed big leaguers.

He had eagerly signed up for stints in Vietnam, Lebanon, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Afghanistan, and finally, Iraq. And while he held no love for his foreign adversaries, he at least felt a token empathy for them, for patriotism was admirable in any form. What he loathed with a white-hot intensity was anti-Americanism among America’s own citizens
 
—people who did not hesitate to embrace the nation’s many privileges and luxuries while participating in activities designed to stifle them. John Kennedy had been one of these people, with his liberal foreign policies and dangerous talk of disassembling America’s military-industrial complex. It had been one of Shevalek’s greatest honors as a young officer to take part in
the operation to remove that closet Commie from power. He would go to his grave believing he had done his country a great service.

He took his long poker stick in hand and pushed the embers around to encourage oxygenation. Frederick Rydell entered his thoughts at this moment, and his jaw tightened. Since Shevalek was the one in the trio who had been tacitly assigned to contact Rydell when necessary, he had also been granted the honorary role of de facto decision maker. The other two, Bernesco Magliocci and Bernard Kanter, could not be bothered with the whole affair any longer. Shevalek held no ill will toward either of his partners, for he frankly wasn’t interested in dealing with it any more than they were and therefore understood their point of view. But he had never cared much for Rydell personally, either, which was why he didn’t exercise decorum during their phone calls. Now he had to figure out what to do about the man. The little runt had made a royal mess of the situation, missing the chance to grab the film this woman’s mother took, allowing Jason Hammond to enter the equation, and sitting by stupidly while the media whipped up a fresh round of public interest in the assassination. It gave Shevalek the kind of headaches that felt like razor blades were cutting into his brain tissue.

He set all thoughts of Rydell aside for now and focused on the priorities of the day. There were three dead bucks in the back of his truck, and he wanted to score at least another two before the end of the trip. He turned his mind, inevitably, to The Daily Schedule
 
—at 5:30 he would wake the others and have breakfast, and at 6:00 they would take the western trail to stand number seven. They had built eleven blinds in this area since the start of the previous season
 
—little more than large boxes on stilts with horizontal slots in the walls through
which prey could be targeted. They were also using a scented lure that was illegal in the state of Pennsylvania. But the land they were on was privately owned by a friend, and Shevalek was secretly delighted by this display of defiance. He placed the “sea-turtle police,” as he called them, in the same league as the Kennedys.

At precisely 5:29, he rose to get a coffee kettle from his kit bag. As he did, he glanced at the ridge again. This time his eyes caught some movement in a run of scraggly underbrush. He froze in midstride, looking like the generic figure in street-crossing signs around the world. Then there was more movement over there, just enough to make him believe it wasn’t a lousy squirrel or a groundhog. He reached for his rifle, which lay fully loaded on the picnic table next to the kit bag, and began creeping toward the river.

There was a crashing sound in the brush, followed by a flame-shaped flash of white
 
—a deer tail! The animal was moving away from him now, to the southeast. He went in that direction as swiftly as possible without making too much of a racket, following a worn trail that paralleled the river’s stony shoreline. He estimated his target to be no more than fifty feet ahead. That was fine, he thought.
All I need is a clear shot.
He was an excellent marksman and had no doubt he could take the creature down with one squeeze of the trigger.

Unfortunately the shrub movement had ceased. This could have meant that the deer had sensed the danger and turned inland. If that was the case, it could be two hundred yards away by now. But it could also mean the animal had simply been spooked and was now waiting for more information. Shevalek knew patience often paid off in these situations. If Bambi was still there, she’d stick her head up sooner or later.

He found a grassy niche in front of a cluster of boulders and nestled down to wait. He also used this intermission to remove a pair of Zeiss binoculars from one of the large pockets of his vest. He studied the ridge inch by inch but found nothing. Not a good sign, but not definitively bad, either. He set the strap over his head and let the binoculars hang in front of his chest. Then he checked his watch again and decided to wait it out for precisely five minutes.

Halfway through the first, he heard a brief, singular sound, like that of a nut or a twig falling from a tree and landing in a pile of dried leaves. His hands went automatically to the binoculars, but they never got there. A second sound came, like someone punching a bag of laundry. Then he felt a sharp pain in the center of his chest, and all the breath left him in a single, hitched gasp. When he looked down, he found the binoculars cleaved neatly in two and bright-red fluid pumping out of what appeared to be a gunshot wound. He could not take his eyes off the sight of it, the same thought looping through his flabbergasted mind
 
—
How can
I
be hit? How can
I
be hit?

Every operation in his traumatized body went haywire. The desire to reach up to the wound, maybe plug it with one of his fingers, was there, but his hands wouldn’t move. He could not have known that the black-ops bullet had not only sliced away the bottom third of his heart but also neatly severed his spine. His thinking became disjointed and syrupy. He wondered if perhaps the deer he was tracking had shot him.
Are the sea-turtle police arming them now?
Then his strength began to go like water spinning around a drain. The edges of his world grew fuzzy, fading to a brownish gray, until they closed in and consumed him. Then there was silence, until even that devolved into nothingness.