Rogue Threat (40 page)

“Mr. Madison,” Hellerman said, smiling as he spoke to the portrait, “the violence of factions, as you accurately predicted, have begun to undo us. You founded our government very wisely upon the very principle that factions at both ends of the spectrum would undermine the majority mainstream. These factions, you predicted, would try to morph the government into something that best looked after their respective interests.”

He stepped away to take the picture in, almost waiting for Madison to nod, as if to say,
Go on.

Hellerman continued. “As you so eloquently commented, it was the creation of government institutions that provided for the channeling of the very violence that those factions propagated. That’s what made the American form of government work, the diffusing of anger, the outrage, and discontent through representatives at the local, state, and federal level. Any American has multiple people with whom he can express his disgust on any given topic.”

He was enjoying himself now. He visualized Madison there, taking him in, pondering his genius and his ability to connect it all.

“But all of that was predicated on a firm center. That firm center, in my view, has eroded and given way to a polarized nation, like the heavy weights at either end of a barbell. And what has done that, Mr. Madison, is the media. In your time, it would take days for the word to get around. Legends were built upon myths that, as they circulated, became even more adrift from reality. Today, the television is reporting news as it happens and manipulates the public opinion instantly. People are bombarded with spinners that constantly lie in order to push across their agendas. They are the very factions you envisioned. It is a tangent that wants to become the primary.”

He swirled his drink in his hand, then placed it atop a felt coaster on the antique sofa table that ran behind the leather davenport. Maker’s Mark bourbon and Coke. He’d been drinking it since he had sneaked flasks into college football games to watch his jock buddies play.

“Your institutions have done their job well. This is the greatest nation on earth. We are the beacon of democracy and hope for so many, yet few understand our genius. Your genius, my genius. They don’t understand the essence of what makes this country great, and now we are under assault by a decaying moral spirit. We are retreating from our foundation. And what is filling the void in the wake of our retreat is cynicism and opportunism.”

He shook his fist at the portrait, his emotions overtaking him.

“What is it that we must do as a nation to return to our foundation?” Hellerman asked Madison, his voice filled with rage. “What is it that people cannot see? There is no shared sacrifice! There is no attachment to the idea of democracy, only an assault on its principles in its own name! There are those in this country who have put under siege the very courts that you, sir, created. They are using those courts to manipulate and pervert the very Constitution that you framed. All in the name of contemporary expediency!”

His arms were outstretched, fingers spread in tense anger.

“How do we reunite the country and create that common center? What would you do?”

And he knew precisely what Madison and the others had done. They had revolted and, in the process, changed the world. They had seen the wrong, and they righted it. He was doing nothing less.

Hellerman heard a noise behind him, snapping him from his soliloquy.

He saw her standing in the foyer, and it was clear she had been there for some time. Something seemed odd about her appearance. It was spring time and not overly cool, yet she was wearing a long, black overcoat that hung just above her bare ankles. Studying her, he saw she had on black heels, two inches high. Her hair was combed back and out, framing her face the way a cobra’s neck flares when it is ready to strike. In one hand, she was holding a bottle of Dom Perignon. In the other she was holding a small bag.

“Hi, Trip, how are you?”

“Fine, fine,” he said, a slight sheen of sweat covering his face, a product of his passionate discussion with Mr. Madison.

He walked to the sofa table, snatched his drink, and walked over to give Meredith a quick peck on the lips. Then, after stepping back, he waded into her, giving her a long kiss. She responded by dropping her long overcoat, revealing her completely naked body.

She walked past him carrying the Dom and stretched out on the sofa. She peeled away the foil covering the cork and slowly, but seductively, worked the cork out of the bottle. It popped about the same time Hellerman thought he might. The foam was running down the bottle and oozing over her warm skin.

“Want some?” she asked. She poured a steady stream onto her flat belly, a pool of the tan liquid gathering in her navel.

He was upon her, drinking the champagne from her body. They worked hard at it, sliding all over the sofa. He was normally much more careful than this, but what an entrance. And he wasn’t even expecting her this afternoon, which made it seem that much more reckless, dangerous, and . . . appropriate.

At some point
, Meredith had retrieved two champagne glasses from the china hutch and poured the remaining champagne into them. Hellerman excused himself for a few minutes. She presumed he was either in the restroom or popping another Viagra. She had achieved the effect she was seeking. As he dragged himself up the stairs, she watched him disappear. She quickly reached into her overnight bag, and pulled out a small vial of powdered diphenhydramine hydrochloride, the active ingredient in sleeping pills. It was enough to knock out a small pony, but she had been assured that it wouldn’t kill him.

She hesitated, weighing the significance of drugging the vice president of the United States and then dumped a little over half the powder into the drink. The man had told her she could use the entire bottle and not worry about it, but better safe than sorry, she figured. Half should do the trick, erring on the side of caution. She sloshed it around as she quickly returned the vial back to her overnight bag.

She held up the glasses, checked the clarity on each, and assured herself that he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Placing the glasses back on the coffee table, she felt a wave of sadness wash over her. She had promised herself she wouldn’t get weak. Part of the reasoning behind the entrance attire and sex up front was so that she would feel detached from herself, the actions being so completely out of character.

She ran her hands along her naked body, feeling the stickiness of the champagne. She felt cheap and whorish and was glad. She deserved it. She needed one last dirty episode before she cleansed herself of this demon.

“You look great there on the sofa, like a mountain cat, sleek, stalking,” he said, obviously energized. Maybe he
was
taking Viagra, or probably some amphetamine.

“Thanks, you look like a stud bull just earning a day’s pay,” she said with a chuckle.

He laughed as he sat next to her and rubbed her leg with one hand while reaching for the champagne with the other.

Her heart raced when she saw him snatch her glass off the table. He looked at her with a knowing grin and said, “Here you go, my dear.” He handed her the glass and then retrieved his from the table.

“Cheers.”

They clinked the glasses, chasing away the bad spirits, she hoped. Meredith watched him finish his champagne. He was an impatient drinker and typically downed glasses of $200-a-bottle champagne like it was a beer mug full of Stroh’s Light.

It took about five minutes and was more natural than she thought it would be. Hellerman yawned and said, “Well, wildcat, I think you wore me down to a nub. I’m suddenly very tired. I think I’ll take a short afternoon nap.”

He settled next to her on the sofa, but she quickly stood and retrieved the quilt from the rack in the hallway. It was a typical country patchwork quilt with a sunrise design, the dawning of a new era.

He snuggled into the leather pillow and was breathing heavily by the time she placed the quilt over his naked body. She stood back and watched him for a second. His face was drooping and sagging. He made a few spasmodic twitches here and there as his body reacted both to the drugs and the stress. She surveyed the room and shook her head. The scattered clothes, empty champagne bottle, empty glasses, naked bodies, and the smell of sex reminded her of college. Except champagne bottles had replaced box wine.

She quietly retrieved her bag and slipped into the blue jeans, tennis shoes and sweat shirt she had brought along. Carrying her bag over her shoulder, she eased toward the basement door and slid down the steps. She found the door, which was unfortunately locked. Expecting this, though, she pulled out an electronic lock-picker she had purchased online.

It was a simple device that looked like a key. Once she inserted it into the keyhole, a small laser scanned the ribbing inside the lock to determine the shape. A micro blast of air then replicated the key shape, the force depressing the tumblers. The entire process took about thirty seconds. She pulled down on the lock, slid it off the hasp, and was inside Hellerman’s lair.

She had not figured out what had been bothering her about last night’s visit until she saw a report on the latest tallies of deaths and injuries across the country.

A Florida Bureau of Investigation team had picked up a cell phone transmission that indicated a possible terrorist attack on the State Capitol building during a full session of the legislature. The details were sketchy, but a combination of extra security, pushing the perimeter out, and having blocking forces to prevent escape had worked. Once the terrorist vehicle entered the perimeter, SWAT teams captured two U-Haul trucks filled with explosives. They were being operated by four Latinos that, authorities later learned, had connections to Cartegena’s Colombia drug cartel. This was the first real clue that the attacks were bigger than Ballantine.

Meredith had gone jogging that day during lunch and, as she rounded the Lincoln Memorial, it suddenly occurred to her. On Hellerman’s list were the bombings of the Mall of America, the other malls, the Charlotte Coliseum, the apartment buildings, and even the averted one they all knew about in Atlanta.

Meredith remembered seeing Tallahassee, Florida, on the calendar as well. Nothing had happened there, and the intelligence report had just come in this morning. She checked the date and time on the message and called the Florida Bureau, who told her the arrests had gone down the previous afternoon at about five p.m. The Florida authorities had kept it top secret at the state level, fearing who might be intercepting the information at the federal level. Once the operation was complete, they were more than happy to share the information.

So unless Hellerman had some unknown connection in Florida’s Bureau of Investigation, he had known about the attack before it had happened. She had been beating herself up all day trying to figure out how he could have known about it, trying to find a loophole. She kept coming back to the same place . . . that he somehow knew ahead of time.

She pulled out a small disposable camera and took two pictures of the same poster. This time she noticed a small question mark next to
Tallahassee
. While not completely incriminating, the question mark indicated that at some point today he had wondered what had gone wrong. Of course, there was still the remote possibility that it was a note to himself to follow up on an intel feed he had received.

Her gut told her she was right. He was involved. She had no clue how, but she came here to find out.

She took a quick snapshot of the radios, all displaying a different frequency. There were two Qualcomm Globalstar satellite phones in a recharge pack and two other, more normal-looking, cell phones plugged in as well. She snapped a picture of those. She opened the drawers of his desk and began opening files and snapping pictures no matter what they said. She wasn’t reading any of the files. She was a one-woman assembly line. Open file, snap picture. Open file, snap picture. She was beginning to get nervous now. She had been in the basement over twenty-five minutes, and something felt wrong. Aside, of course, from the fact that she had drugged the vice president and was secretly in his basement gathering evidence that could possibly indicate a conspiracy.

When she felt that she had thoroughly canvassed the room, she turned to leave and then stopped. There was a laptop computer plugged into a modem. What the hell, she figured, so she steeled herself up and reached down, popping out the hard drive of the laptop and tossing it in her bag.

She turned off the light and closed and locked the door. Then she stopped and waited, standing perfectly still and listened.

Nothing.

She waited some more.

Still nothing.

She slowly climbed the stairs and then waited at the top of the last step before opening the door that led to the kitchen.

Still nothing.

She pushed slowly, the door making a slight creak that stopped when she had pushed it past a forty-five-degree angle. She stepped into the kitchen and slowly closed the door behind her, the squeak playing its octaves in reverse.
That’s interesting
, she thought.

She stopped. Still nothing.

She stepped into the connecting hallway between the kitchen and the living room, where she could see the high back of the sofa, which was a comforting feeling. While she could not see him, she felt in her planning that if she got to this point, she could just sweet talk her way out the door. She watched the sofa as she walked toward the foyer. Despite her progress, something did not seem quite right.

She hit an angle where she could see lengthwise along the sofa.

Hellerman was not there.

She froze. The room started spinning around her like a top, large sections of the house panning toward her quickly and then away like in the horror flicks. She could hear the screeching strike of Norman Bates’ knife with each image racing at her. She was hyperventilating and began to sweat.

Then a thought occurred to her.

Maybe he left. Maybe he woke up and left. After all, it was still daylight outside.