Liberty (38 page)

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Authors: Stephen Coonts

BOOK: Liberty
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“Where are we going?” Naguib asked.
“You'll see.”
“Has the weapon arrived?”
“Soon,” Mohammed said. “Very soon. We must be ready.”
“Yes,” Naguib agreed sleepily. “Yes.”
Mohammed turned off the paved county road he was on and steered the car down a dirt road alongside a deep drainage ditch. The ditch and the dirt road beside it ran straight ahead into the darkness, seemed to go on forever. In the rearview mirror Mohammed could see the lights of the highway and the houses growing smaller.
Well away from the county road, he brought the car to a stop. “This is the place, I think.” He looked at a tiny sign illuminated by the headlights and scanned the darkness in all directions, as if he were trying to identify something. “This is it,” he said, and turned off the headlights and engine and opened his door.
Everyone got out.
“What is out here?” Naguib asked, looking around himself and seeing nothing at all in the darkness.
He felt something press against his side, then Ali shot him.
There was no pain, just a numbing shock. The report was muffled and he barely heard it.
“No,” Naguib shouted, trying to push at Ali, who pulled the trigger again three more times as fast as he could.
Yousef fired once.
With Naguib on the ground, Mohammed turned on a small pocket flashlight. He was still alive, so Mohammed put his pistol against the side of Naguib's head and shot him once more.
“Take everything from his pockets,” Mohammed told Ali and Yousef. “If they find him, they will not know who he is.”
It was a distasteful task, but they did it.
“Good-bye, Naguib,” Mohammed said, and pushed his body over the edge of the road into the ditch. They had to go down into the ditch to throw the corpse into the water, a task that covered the three of them with dirt and mud.
Satisfied at last, Mohammed led the way up the bank to the car. They climbed in and drove away.
An illegal Mexican farmworker found Naguib's body the following day. He saw the tracks along the dirt road and assumed someone had driven there during the night. When he stopped the tractor to pee and eat his lunch, he wandered to the place with the tracks to see if perhaps the people had left anything, like a few inches of whiskey or beer in the bottom of a bottle. That's when he saw Naguib's body in the ditch.
It was late in the afternoon when FBI Agent Suzanne Ostrowski saw the body. Local police had pulled it from the ditch; it was lying in the dirt.
Another agent lifted the sheet covering the face. The eyes were wide-open and bulged out from the pressure of the bullet in the brain, almost as if he had been horribly surprised.
Yes, it was Naguib.
The big lunk. So gentle and naive, so trusting …
So they killed him. Left him like garbage at the bottom of a drainage ditch.
She was a tough woman, but a sense of profound sadness swept over her. And resolve. If they would kill Naguib, one of their own, they would murder others with as much remorse as if they were squashing bugs.
Tommy Carmellini was in love. He didn't want to get in that condition and certainly wasn't trying, but after two days at the Homestead, he was pretty sure he had arrived. It was the first time for him, and it felt wonderful. Anna Modin was
the
woman.
Unfortunately he wasn't sure she was in love with him. Oh, she looked happy enough, made love like a goddess, liked to play with the hair on his chest, and found moments when no one was apparently watching to kiss him. The experience was heavenly. Yet did she love him?
They soaked in the pool fed by the hot springs, went on short hikes—strolls, really—played several rounds of golf … Anna had never played before and was terrible. She had trouble learning to swing the club properly and sprayed the ball everywhere. And she laughed; oh, how she laughed when the ball went squirting away willy-nilly. She marched over, wiggled her fanny, mugged at him, and whacked it again, laughing all the time.
They also spent a lot of time naked in bed.
The birds sang, puffy clouds with flat gray bottoms floated along in the blue sky, and everything that grew was in bloom this spring.
Did she love him? Tommy Carmellini wondered and worried.
What if she did? She said she was leaving when Janos Ilin sent for her. Would she change her mind?
Could
she change her mind?
Evenings were delicious. A fine meal, wine, watching
dusk settle from rocking chairs on the old porch, reviewing the day and laughing some more. And more kisses.
What if, he wondered, she had been lying about being a Russian agent? What if she really were an agent for the SVR?
Oh, Christ, his superiors at the CIA would lay eggs. Jake Grafton would come unglued. Tommy Carmellini would be an unemployed civilian so quick it would take your breath away. Alas, he only had two civilian skills, law and burglary—both equally disreputable. As he mused on it, he wondered if he could find a way to combine them.
When he first arrived at the Homestead and looked around, Carmellini concluded that brown Islamic assassins would stand out like nudes in church, so he had stopped sweating that program. He wore his pistol under his sports coat or windbreaker. When he was on the golf course he put it in his golf bag. At the pool he left it beside his chair inside a small backpack he purchased at the gift shop. Sometimes he just hung the backpack over one shoulder by a strap. Sitting on the porch holding Anna's hand watching the light fade, he put the backpack on the floor beside his chair.
He had checked in with Jake Grafton four times the first day, three the second, found that Scout and Earlene were doing whatever Zelda asked of them, so he was soon down to one telephone call a day. Sometimes he just left a message for Grafton saying he called.
He liked her eyes. The way they crinkled when she laughed, the fact that she laughed easily and often, the fact that she seemed to find him fascinating. Yet was she in Love? Love with a capital L. Or just in lust, enjoying a relaxing vacation complete with the room-service sex package?
Like every lover since the dawn of time, he pondered these things. Fretted them. Found himself hanging on every smile, every touch, every kiss, reading things into every glance or move she made or word she spoke. Or
didn't speak. Even her silences were laden with import.
When he could stand it no longer, the evening of the fourth day, he waited until the after-dinner liqueur had been served, then he took the bull by the horns.
“I'm in love with you,” he said softly as he held her hand and looked straight into her eyes.
“I love you too,” she replied … and Tommy Carmellini felt so light that he had to grasp the arm of his chair to keep from floating.
She took his hand in both of hers and turned it over carefully and inspected it, ran a finger along the lifeline and across his palm. Never had he felt anything so exquisite.
“I never thought I would, you know,” she continued in her wonderfully accented English, which he never tired of hearing. “Oh, I tried to fall in love. I think every woman does. We all want someone to love us and to give love to. Perhaps it is the human condition. But for me, until now …”
She was looking into his eyes again, both her hands squeezing his. “I wish every person on Earth could know this feeling at least once.” She released his hand, rose from her chair, and took two steps around the table toward him. Bent and kissed him on the lips, a long, tender, gentle kiss. Then she took her seat again. Her eyes glistened.
The people at the next table applauded politely, and Tommy Carmellini nodded and smiled at them. Anna Modin kept her eyes on him.
He was going to say more, then decided against it. A little voice told him, Don't take a chance. Savor this moment. Treasure it. Remember every nuance of it so that you can keep it in your heart forever. So he reached for her hand and grasped it and sat looking into her shining eyes.
The second Corrigan unit arrived in Washington on a Wednesday morning—days late—mounted in an unmarked white van similar to the first one. Jake put it on the street. He rode around in the van himself to familiarize himself with the problems and the results that could be expected. The first evening he had the driver go by Hains Point. The area registered hot on this unit, too.
The following day he went home early—seven in the evening—to find Jack Yocke visiting over a drink with Amy and Callie.
At Jake's suggestion, Callie had invited the reporter for dinner. This time he didn't bring his girlfriend, Jake noted, and he asked Callie about it when the two were alone in the kitchen. “Did you suggest Jack come alone?”
“No,” she said. “I invited him to dinner and said he could bring his attorney if he wished. He showed up alone.”
Dinner went well, meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and peas, Jake's favorite. He complimented Callie three times before he finished his second helping. Amy chattered with Yocke—she liked him and he wasn't intimidated by her youth, so that went well. When dinner was finished Amy asked Callie's help with a translation, so Jake and the reporter cleared the dishes.
Alone in the kitchen with the dishwasher humming,
Jack Yocke said, “I'm sorta curious about what you're up to these days. I haven't found a soul who will even drop a hint.”
Jake Grafton smiled. “It's classified.”
“Funny thing, your name did come up in a conversation I had with a White House source. This person is very high up, perhaps said a wee bit more than he should. He did suggest what you are doing.”
“Must be nice, having sources like that. They can make a journalist's career, I suppose, maybe even get him nominated for a Pulitzer.”
“He was talking about abuse of power.”
“Such as?”
“Illegal searches, illegal wiretaps, illegal surveillance, violation of the privacy laws and government regulations on the use of personal information, things like that.”
“Serious accusations,” Jake murmured, and poured himself a cup of coffee. He held out the pot for Yocke, who snagged a cup from the cupboard and held it out. Jake poured. They got milk from the refrigerator and whitened up the brew.
“A story like that would have to be verified very carefully before I could run it. I'd need to get verifiable facts from at least two impeccable sources, maybe three or four if my editors insist.”
“A scandal like that would really embarrass the administration, I suppose.”
“That it would. If the people at the top knew about it. If they didn't, there are rogues somewhere that need to be weeded out. Regardless, if there is activity like that going on, the scandal would wreck careers, perhaps lead to prosecutions. The public takes these things seriously.”
“I suppose when people tell you dirt on other people, you wonder about their motivation.”
“Of course. People tattle for a million reasons, most of them not very nice. On the other hand, if the press waited for saints to bare their souls, newspapers wouldn't have
much news in them. Police must listen to snitches, and so do we.”
“I suppose.”
“News is where you find it.”
“Lanham ever talked out of school before?”
Yocke took another sip of coffee while the dishwasher sang and he decided how to handle that remark.
“What if I say yes?”
“Bring your coffee and let's take a ride. Your car is downstairs on the street, isn't it?”
“Yes. Where are we going?”
“To look at the republic.”
Jake told Callie that he and Yocke were going for a ride, and Yocke thanked her for the meal. Callie, wise as ever, didn't ask where they were going or when Jake would return.
When Yocke had the car in motion Jake produced a cassette from his shirt pocket and examined the controls on Yocke's dashboard.
“You want to play that?” Yocke asked.
“Please. You do it.” He passed the cassette to the reporter and latched his seat belt. Yocke popped the thing in the receptacle on the dashboard and pushed the buttons.
They were waiting at a stoplight when Lanham's voice came over the speaker, then Yocke's. The light changed, and Yocke fed gas. He listened to the recorded telephone conversation in silence. When the conversation was over the tape continued to run. Jake pushed the eject button and snagged the cassette. He returned it to his pocket.
“Where'd you get that?” the reporter asked.
Jake merely looked thoughtful. He finished his coffee, put the cup on the floor between his feet so it wouldn't roll around.
“Is my telephone tapped?”
“Not.”
“Lanham's?”
“It's a little more complicated than that. The way they explained it to me, each human voice is distinct—not as
distinct as fingerprints, but close—and a computer can be programmed to pick out that voice in any conversation from any telephone calls going through the switching equipment being monitored. Then it records that conversation.”
“I see.”
“Tens of thousands of calls, hundreds of thousands, go through the switching equipment, and computers sample them for voices they are looking for, or words, phrases, whatever. When a computer gets a hit, bingo. Be impossible for a human to do, but computers can do hundreds of calls at the same time—they're that fast. Unfortunately, the computer doesn't start recording until it identifies the voice. Presumably you answered the telephone and the computer didn't recognize your voice. It recognized Lanham's, though, and started recording as soon as the positive match was complete.”
“Why Lanham?”
Jake just shook his head.
“So what are you going to do with the cassette?”
Grafton shrugged. “I just did it.”
“You going to send it over to the White House?”
“I know what you're thinking. I hear the president gets real pissy about leaks. Regards the leaker as disloyal and all that. This wouldn't be good for Lanham, but no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to put it in my desk drawer and lock the drawer.”
“That sounds like a threat, Admiral.”
“Maybe I should be more explicit. In the unlikely event anything classified that Lanham might have discussed with you gets in the newspaper, then I'll reevaluate.”
“Surely you aren't the administration's plumber.”
“Plumber?”
“The guy who looks for leaks.”
“I'm looking for a traitor.”
“Are leakers traitors?”
“They could be, I guess, but not in this case. Lay off, Jack. Don't go near Lanham. I don't know what is going
on over at the White House, and I don't want to get into the middle of it. I'm a sailor with a classified job. If the president and Sal Molina can't handle Lanham, they're out of their league and unfit for their jobs.”
Yocke snorted. “The guy who is out of his league is Lanham. That poor schnook thinks he's got a handle on this shit.”
Jake Grafton shrugged.
“So you know Lanham is leaking. Is he telling the truth? Abuse of power is a serious charge.”
“Let's go to the Lincoln Memorial,” Jake suggested. “That's my favorite place in Washington. I feel like a visit.”
Yocke glanced at his watch, then made the next left turn, which took them in the proper direction. At ten in the evening they had no trouble finding a parking place. With the car locked, they set off afoot for the Memorial.
As usual, the marble temple was well lit, with uniformed park rangers and several dozen tourists, who were busy snapping photos of the statue of Lincoln, each other, and the view of the Washington Monument from the main entrance. The flashes of light and warm voices echoing in the building made it seem more like a high school gymnasium than a memorial.
After wandering through the place with Yocke tagging along, Jake Grafton found a vacant spot on the front steps away from the tourists and seated himself. In front of him the white, spotlighted obelisk of the Washington Monument reached upward into the black sky.
“When Lincoln was president the nation tried to rip itself apart,” Jake said. “Various people argued in good faith that under the constitution the president lacked the power to violate the laws. No one is above the law. In effect, the argument went, the president and the government had to obey the laws even if the republic fell. Lincoln looked at the issue a little differently. He argued that the duly elected, lawful government had the inherent power to do whatever was necessary to save itself. He
jailed people without charges or trials, suspended the writ of habeus corpus so judges couldn't let them out, shut down newspapers, declared blockades of American ports, admitted states into the union without going through the constitutional or statutory hoops, issued bonds to finance the war without statutory authority … You know all this, of course.”
“I remember my history,” Yocke said dryly.
“Some people called him a dictator. King Lincoln.”
“And he saved the union.”
“He saved the constitutional government, this system of checks and balances. He forced the American people to solve their problems in the Capitol building, not on the battlefield. Oh, I know, a lot of the people we elect to Congress are shits of the first water. Saints don't get into politics. The politicians wrestle with the issues. They argue, rant, and compromise—which is what they are supposed to do. Some issues they duck, none is resolved for all time. Then they go home to face the voters. That's our system, and it's a damned good one. That is the system that Lincoln said he had the inherent power to defend. I guarantee you, every American is better off today than he or she would have been if the republic had been torn in half because Lincoln obeyed the statutes.”
“We're not in a civil war.”
“We're in a war against people who wish to destroy America. The best way to do it is to attack the government's ability to protect its citizens. That is the most basic function of government. Any government that can't accomplish that feat forfeits its legitimacy. Our enemies won't attack with a conventional armed force because they don't have one. But it's war nonetheless, war to the very last man, war to the knife, the knife to the hilt.”
“If the government becomes a dictatorship to save itself,” Yocke argued, “then it is no longer the government most Americans want to live under.”
“Precisely. That was Lincoln's dilemma and it's ours.”
“If you are arguing that the government has a right to
do whatever it wants in secret, you lose. Lincoln acted publicly. That's the difference. Nobody gave the president or you or anyone else a mandate to break the law.”
Jake Grafton considered his answer before he spoke. “When I was a very young man I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to obey the orders of the officers appointed over me. That is precisely what I am doing. Just that and nothing more.” He pointed down the Mall at the unseen Capitol. “If we lose this war, that building down there will become a ruin like the forum in Rome or the Parthenon in Athens.”
“Perhaps a better system will come along.”
“Bullshit. Every decision that government makes—all of them—involves a balancing of competing interests. City and county councils do it, state legislatures do it, Congress does it. Taxes, budgets, schools, roads, welfare, social legislation, criminal codes, the environment—everything is a compromise balancing the push-pull of competing interests. Humans have tried every other conceivable arrangement to get these decisions made—tribal chiefs, warlords, kings, dictators, oligarchies … our system is democracy, and nothing better has been discovered. It's inefficient and messy as hell, but if democracy goes, the world is headed for a new dark age.
“I don't know about you, but those fallible humans in the Capitol building are the only people on the planet that I trust with my liberty, within the boundaries of the U.S. Constitution. I want them there playing politics, which is twisting arms, trading votes, lying to the voters and themselves and each other and weighing the various shades of gray. I want the president in the White House trying to herd the cats. I want the Supreme Court watching them. I want the press watching everybody. I want that for me, my daughter, her kids, and all the Americans yet to come.”
Yocke looked skeptical. “People trying to save the world have a damn poor record. The danger is you'll destroy what you're trying to protect.”
Jake sighed. “I don't know why I'm sitting here arguing with a man of words. You're right, absolutely right. What I promise you is this—everything the government does now will someday come out. Every secret will ultimately be revealed. When that day comes the citizens of the republic will decide if the threat warranted the reaction, if power was abused or the law perverted. What we must do is have faith in our elected officials and the patience to wait.”

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