Mirrors (33 page)

“So you blew off his face?”

“A bomb did; somehow found its way into the dashboard of his car and exploded.” Bird turned off the projector. “You’ll avoid such mishaps with silence.”

I shook my head. “Which President was it who said,
America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere
?”

Williams beamed. “That was Ronald Reagan, but, don’t kid yourself, boy. Nine-eleven changed everything. Freedom’s second to security now.” He stood. “A pleasure, son.” His delegation prepared to depart.

“Wait, what about Grainger?” I asked him.

“He’s dead.” He rubbed a lapel. “We shot his bird down over Pennsylvania after he refused to ground it. You’ll see stories about mechanical failure felling a copter over the Poconos.”

“
Grainger
flew the helicopter?”

“Yup, I’ll give him this: he was an excellent pilot—fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. He commandeered McCloskey’s helicopter at gunpoint outside the tent and sent the pilot fleeing in that decrepit van.”

I waited for
Williams to leave, but he planted himself before the door with his sentinels sandwiching him. Odd, I thought, that a man as busy as he should remain, especially given the hour. I tested his resolve.

“When did McCloskey and Grainger meet?”

“About a decade ago,” he replied.

I probed further.

“Where?”

“Here in town.”

“How?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Fine, another time.” I pushed my chair back.

“Sit!” Williams ordered, pointing to my chair.

He waited until I’d taken my place. “They met after Grainger committed crimes against humanity in Africa.”

I drew back.

“Yup, with Interpol on his back, he snuck into the U.S. over the Canadian border.”

“What did he do in Africa?”

“He went there initially to work as a mercenary pilot after earning his wings in the Serbian military. Ferried arms merchants about and then sold his soul by dropping a barrel bomb on Nigerian villagers battling the rebel group, Boko Haram.”

Flagstaff stirred. “Not entirely proven, sir, that Grainger piloted the aircraft.”

Williams lanced the Arizonian with his glare. “There’s video showing Grainger entering the cockpit on the day the bomb was dropped and testimony from a worker in a hangar who saw Grainger load the bomb and pilot the aircraft solo.”

“He may have been framed,” Flagstaff said. “Someone may have spliced the video and purchased the witness.”

Williams dismissed the rebuttal. “One thing’s indisputable: With authorities on his back, he slipped into the U.S. His first stop was Fargo, North Dakota where he purchased a new identity.”

“ As ‘Frank Grainger,’ I presume.”

“Affirmative. He also had plastic surgery there.”

“As he seems to do,” I huffed. “The guy’s a chameleon.”

“A calculating chameleon: He kept the tattoo of the pistol in his sternal notch to see whether you’d recognize it.”

“Yes, he wanted us to meet eye-to-eye,” I acknowledged.

“In any case, from Fargo, he went to Louisiana because he liked the idea of Mardi Gras. He matriculated in a small college in New Orleans where, during his senior year, he won a private sitting with McCloskey after raising a thousand dollars from campus donations. He was a master at separating people from their money.”

“McCloskey offered him a job after college,” Bird interjected.

Williams waved him off. “Right, which Grainger accepted.”

“Doing what?”

“Raising money, what else? But not in the usual way: He sold weapons on the international market. And he was phenomenally successful at it.”

“Why did he leave Washington?”

“Because, while working for McCloskey, an uncle of his in Serbia died from a snake bite. The death prompted Grainger to apply to medical school, but he couldn’t get in because his grades and test scores were too low.”

“And McCloskey couldn’t throw his weight around to get him in?” I asked.

“Apparently not, so Grainger pursued a PhD in biochemistry. He focused his research on venomous invertebrates.”

I stood again. “Look, I really want to see my wife. I’ve heard enough about—”

Williams snapped his fingers at me. “You’ve heard
nothing
yet, Krispix!”

Reluctantly, I sat.

Williams: “As you know, during grad school, Grainger was arrested for breaking into an apartment to reclaim a laptop someone allegedly stole from him. The university withdrew his financial aid, forcing Grainger to turn to McCloskey for help. The Congressman complied by paying for Grainger’s room, board, and tuition. He also funded a second trip to Madagascar so Grainger could collect an heirloom he’d left there that belonged to his colleague who bled to death there.”

“And to get more bark,” I added.

“Right, because you stole his first piece.”

I scowled at him.

“McCloskey even paid for Grainger’s prosthetic leg.”

“So, what turned the two against each other?” I asked.

“WAFTA, principally.”

He waited to see whether I might connect the dots.

I couldn’t.

“McCloskey was a master at reading tea leaves, son, and when he saw the leaves pointing to passage of WAFTA, he devised a strategy to defeat it.”

“By poisoning shrimp with Grainger’s help.”

“Thatta boy!” he beamed.

“Did Grainger demur?”

“Big word, son …
demur
.”

“Did he?”

“Very much so, which led McCloskey to play his trump card: He threatened to turn Grainger in to Interpol if he didn’t carry out the poisonings.”

“Why did Grainger reveal his past to McCloskey in the first place?”

“The Congressman was his insurance policy in case anyone exposed him by some means; doesn’t hurt to have a powerful man on your side.”

“So, McCloskey had a noose around Grainger’s neck.”

“One that became even tighter when he brought the Swedish psychiatrist, Sigrid Bjornstad, onto the Task Force: He wanted Grainger to know that he had a direct link to the International Criminal Court if he needed one.”

“But Grainger complied; he poisoned the shrimp. So, what set the two apart?”

He pointed at me. “
You
did!”

I frowned.

“You published your paper on XK59!” His face reddened. “Which we told you not to do!”

“What does my paper have to do with anything?”

“It cost McCloskey a fortune, or so he thought.”

“How?”

“As Grainger neared the end of his studies, McCloskey loaned him several hundred thousand to set up a lab to turn XK59 into a pharmaceutical drug. He made the loan on the condition that Grainger repay it in-full along with a share of royalties from XK59 sales. But you pulled the rug out from under them by publishing your paper, leaving Grainger hopelessly in debt. That’s why he made Grainger take a job at
BioVironics
—to begin repaying him.”

“Why
BioVironics
?”

“Because McCloskey was a principal investor there and held sway over the place.”

“
He
got Grainger the job?”

“Yup, because he wanted to keep Grainger on a tight leash to carry out orders like poisoning your friend, Danny Rogers.”

“Son of a bitch!” I hissed.

“I feel for your loss.”

“No, the only thing you feel is the amount of political turf under your feet. The more the turf, the better you feel.”

“Look, I’m sharing facts, one of which was McCloskey’s connections to
BioVironics
. It was a connection so close he convinced Kosta to earmark a bill that funneled ten million dollars from
Starboard
to
BioVironics
to clean up the waterway.”

“Yeah,” I harped, “a million of which Giva Bhanjee embezzled into an account she opened in Antigua under Kosta’s name. Grainger told me about that.”

Williams’ face turned red. “She embezzled more than that! She cleaned out everything left in the waterway account! And that was McCloskey’s plan all along.”

“Huh?”

“McCloskey adopted Bhanjee when she was a little girl. He did that shortly after his wife died in a boating accident in the Gulf of Mexico. He raised his little girl alone. They worked hand-in-glove since.”

I turned to Bird. “Did you know Bhanjee was McCloskey’s daughter?”

“You think we’re stupid?” he scoffed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was confidential.”

“But I risked my life by meeting her alone a few nights back!”

“You published your paper,” Bird replied. “You’re a loose cannon. We couldn’t tell you everything.”

“Had you heeded our advice not to publish it,” Williams added, “McCloskey may not have gone off the deep end. Instead, you stroked your ego and McCloskey poisoned shrimp.”

“Wait!” I said. “Are you telling me you knew about McCloskey’s dealings with Grainger and XK59 way back when I submitted my manuscript to the journal?”

“No, not that far back; a lot of what we’ve learned came to our attention more recently. The point is, we knew no good would come from your paper.”

I moped.

“You’re not alone, son,” Williams said. “McCloskey screwed others with his XK59 folly. Take Dudley Zot, for example, the shrimp farm owner. He had Grainger infest Zot’s bed with those deadly spiders because Zot began asking tough questions about the glowing pond. And another poor soul: the former CEO of
Natow Pharmaceuticals
. McCloskey hired the guy solely to acquire XK59 from you so he could poison shrimp.”

“And then there’s Kosta,” Bird interjected. “McCloskey screwed him for supporting WAFTA by picking a Greek theme for the missives and then framing Kosta as the missives’ sender.”

“But the logbook on Kosta’s boat,” I protested. “It showed Kosta motored along the waterway on the dates the missives were mailed.”

“That was McCloskey’s doing,” Williams said. “He used Kosta’s boat to dispatch the missives to make it look as if Kosta had done it.”

“McCloskey mailed the missives?”

“Every one of them. He accessed the victims’ addresses from UNIT records.”

“Unfortunately, that’s true,” Flagstaff added. “We received the names and addresses of the victims as part of our surveillance system.”

“So much for microchips in shrimp being the mechanism of identification of the locations of victims,” I said.

“Yup, but McCloskey was clever,” Williams noted. “He suspected the presence of the microchips would deflect attention from the possibility of an insider being involved.”

“How did he get Kosta’s boat?”

“He told Kosta they could mend their differences on WAFTA if Kosta lent him the vessel. The two shared a passion for the sea.”

“So Kosta wasn’t the algebra whiz who derived the missives?”

“Nope, that was Grainger.”

“But wasn’t McCloskey worried about being gone from Congress during the lead-up to the WAFTA vote?”

“Grainger flew him back and forth from the Waterway as needed. The guy was an amazing pilot. He flew to Ecuador twice, first to taint the shrimp and to plant microchips in them through a special feed, and then to meet you and Muñoz there.”

“What about Kosta? Why did he go to Ecuador two months ago?”

Williams frowned. “Poor guy was desperate; he was seeking alternative treatments for his cancer after his doctors here told him they’d run out of options.”

“How did you learn all of this?” I asked.

He pointed to the bead on the table I removed earlier from my collar. “Mr. Flagstaff, care to comment?”

Flagstaff leaned forward to collect the bead. “Looks like an engorged tick, doesn’t it?” He paused to examine it. “We planted a bunch of these on Bhanjee’s clothes after our security team saw her leave Charles E. Oxford’s business card on your doormat a few days ago. We thought it strange that she should do that.”

“We also bugged the hell out of her condo,” Bird added. “Phones, computers, even the walls. And believe me, the babe was a talker. We learned more about her than we cared to, including who she slept with.”

“Minal Chandrapur?”

“Among others, although he was only a convenience-sleep. All she wanted was his money.”

“Did she have a true lover?”

Williams smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

I glanced about the room. “I’m sure you know; you have all the other answers.”

Williams’ smile morphed to a grimace. “Not all of them; we’re missing one.”

“Which one?”

“Where Bhanjee is right now; she got away, dammit!”

“Can’t her lover help you with that?”

“Possibly,” Williams replied. “Every man has his Achilles, including Charles E. Oxford.”

“Oxford was her lover—the CEO of
BioVironics?
”

“Correctomundo, although it’s been an on-again off-again tryst. She’s tempestuous. Like Flagstaff said, she left Oxford’s business card on your doormat.”

“That makes her ‘tempestuous’?”

“In this case, yes; she did it because the two had a spat. She didn’t think Oxford was spending enough time with her.”

“How would leaving a business card on my doormat punish him?”

“It raised the profile of his company at an awkward time,” Flagstaff said, “just when
BioVironics
had popped onto the radar in the form of
Electric Jolt
.”