The Sentinel (31 page)

"Police Department emergency," a woman said. "What do you wish to report?"

"A kidnapping. I was looking out the window of my motel room and I saw two men grab a young girl and shove her in the trunk of a black Mercury. They're parked in the alley behind the Viking Ship Residence Inn. The girl was screaming. Please hurry."

There was a sound of three electronic beeps.

"A car is on the way, sir. What is your name?"

"Alexander. Garth Alexander."

"Stay where you are, sir. The officers are on their way."

"Please hurry."

He pressed OFF, and then slid panes of glass one by one from the louvered bathroom window, placing them in the bathtub. Hearing the sound of distant sirens, he looked down the alley. Police cars were screeching to a halt on either side of the Mercury. Officers jumped out and leveled guns at the agents.

"Driver!" a uniformed officer shouted. "Turn off the engine and get out of the car!"

Someone knocked on the motel room door.

Garrison's heart pounded wildly as he stepped onto the edge of the bathtub and manipulated his feet into the window opening. Slithering out, he dropped to the alley, landed feet-first and rolled to the left as he landed, the way he'd been taught in Secret Service school. The police officers and the Secret Service agents were shouting at one another. The diversion had worked. He ran across the alley and the soles of his feet stung from the drop. He vaulted the fence and ran through the supermarket parking lot. Crossing the street at a full sprint, he turned left and ran down the sidewalk to a two-story shopping mall down the block, where he jogged into a driveway. He rode the elevator to the roof and walked to the edge. Below, there was no sign of police or Secret Service activity. Garrison needed a car. On the other side of the lot, a man was getting out of a Chevrolet Malibu. Garrison pulled back his suit jacket to reveal his gun to the driver.

"All I want is your car."

The man's eyes widened and he raised his hands. "I don't have any money."

Garrison took his car keys. "If you value your car, don't call the police for an hour."

The man backed away. Garrison pulled open the driver's door, climbed in, and started the engine. He sped down the ramps to the street. Turning right, he drove at the speed limit.

Spotting a service station, he got an idea and pulled the car into the service bay. A bearded young man with a long ponytail was working under a car on the next hoist. Garrison got out of the car.

"I need an oil change."

The man pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands.

"I can't have it done until five-thirty."

"Take your time."

In the service station office, Garrison wrote a fictitious name and address on a work order sheet, and then used the telephone to call a taxi. He remained in the office, keeping his eyes on the street as he waited.

****

CHAPTER 25

BRECKINRIDGE WALKED OUT the front door of Secret Service headquarters and took a deep breath. Even with the mugginess, being outside felt good. She'd been at her desk for hours, making phone calls and following up leads, none of which had panned out. Still mulling over the confusing Garrison situation, she began walking.

At the end of her shift, Breckinridge left headquarters and walked to her regular parking space on the fourth floor of the District Auto Park. Ambling to her car, she took keys from her purse and unlocked the driver's door. Something poked in the back.

"Don't turn around, Martha."

Her stomach contracted. Garrison moved close, reaching inside her jacket.

"Pete."

He took her gun, shoving it in his waistband. He took her purse. Opening the door, he tossed the purse in the backseat.

"Get in."

"Where are we going?"

"Just get in."

He was holding the gun close to his side in case anyone else in the lot was looking. She climbed behind the wheel. He walked to the passenger side of the car, and for a moment she considered jumping out and running. He got in.

"Stop aiming the gun at me."

"I will if you'll give your word you will listen to me for five minutes."

She studied him.

"Okay."

He holstered the gun.

"Martha, nothing you've ever heard is as important as what I'm about to tell you. I had nothing to do with the helicopter bombing. I'm being framed. Someone picked me to be the fall guy."

"Then why did you escape?"

"I wasn't going to sit in jail on a no-bail hold while Flanagan took his time building a phony case on me."

"Are you telling me that you believe Flanagan is knowingly framing you for an attempted assassination?"

He looked her in the eye.

"I'm not sure. All I know at this point is that someone chose me to be the scapegoat."

"If what you are saying is true, don't you see that running away plays right into their hands""

"What the hell was I supposed to do?"

"Come on, Pete. Did it ever enter your mind to follow standard procedure and go to the Director?"

"You know Wintergreen as well as I do. Do you really believe he would go against his right-hand man?"

Breckinridge studied him. He looked disheveled, but he was making some sense. He hadn't gone crazy. He was the same Garrison she knew and the expression on his face was without duplicity. He looked desperate, but she saw no indication of guilt.

"Martha, someone has gone to a lot of trouble to put me in the kill-zone. They've planted more evidence against me than there was against Lee Harvey Oswald for killing President Kennedy. They are protecting themselves by throwing up a smoke screen. This is a sophisticated frame-job using inside knowledge. Whoever is behind this knows full well that no conspiracy would be able to stand up to a full-scale post-assassination investigation. That's why they needed a scapegoat. You don't believe me, do you?"

She stared at him as she tried to assemble the facts that were bobbling about at the back of her mind in some logical, reasonable order. If he was guilty, why would he be risking contact with her rather than, say, trying to flee the country? What did he have to gain by trying to convince her of his innocence? Garrison wasn't dumb.

"Pete, how did you end up at that Aryan Disciples accommodation address in the Sperling Finance Building?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Then I don't believe anything you are telling me."

"If I told you it would violate a confidence."

"Bullshit."

"You're just going to have to trust-"

"You just pulled a gun on me. That violated a confidence. What the hell is going on, Pete? This isn't a game. Level with me, for God's sake."

"There are certain things I can't go into."

"Pete, you just told me you believe that there is a plot against the President and your life is in danger. If that is true, there should be nothing you would hold back to convince me of what you are saying. The time for secrets is over. This is it. It's all or nothing for you. And as of right now, I don't believe you."

"I'm asking you to trust me."

"Put yourself in my place. What if I came to you with this same story and then refused to tell you everything - if I told you I didn't want to violate a confidence. Would you believe me?" Garrison rubbed his temples. He looked pale. "If you didn't think you could trust me, why the hell are you here?"

Garrison let out his breath.

"I went to the Sperling Finance Building to investigate a blackmail attempt on the First Lady." He told her about finding evidence in Garth Alexander's motel room, then receiving the blackmail letter and the photograph.

"Who was in the photograph?"

Garrison licked his lips.

"The First Lady and me."

"You mean-?"

He looked embarrassed and lost. "Yes."

She told herself that he either was, in fact, fully insane, or telling the uncomfortable truth.

"You dumb shit."

"It was just something that happened. It wasn't planned-"

"Go ahead. Let's hear the rest of it."

He told her the following: that he'd shown the blackmail letter to the First Lady; that he'd subsequently gone to the Mayflower Hotel; that he'd been directed to the Sperling Finance Building but the blackmailer had never arrived; that a man he'd suspected of being the blackmailer had gotten the drop on him and knocked him out, and later had turned out to be an FBI agent; that the informant Frank Hightower, responsible for reporting the assassination conspiracy, had been murdered.

"What?"

"I found a driver's license in the name of Eddie Richardson on Hightower's body."

"Hightower..." she said.

"Someone was using him. Hightower was nothing but a rat. He was in it for money. But he's no extremist and he wasn't heavy enough to have engineered this whole thing on his own."

"Exactly what was he up to?"

"For one thing, making it appear that the Aryan Disciples were involved in the assassination of the President."

"Which means they probably aren't."

"Yes."

Breckinridge ran a hand though her hair as she contemplated the facts.

"And the same unnamed conspirators sent Alexander to kill you...."

"Because it was obvious that an agent had to have been the one who planted the C-4 on Marine One," Garrison said. "They had to have an agent scapegoat to cover the tracks of the agent who actually did it. They wanted to make it look like the Aryan Disciples had used me and then gotten rid of me. Look at it like this: If Alexander had succeeded in killing me, all that would have been left was a trail of evidence leading straight to me and I wouldn't have been there to counter it - the way the evidence trail died with Lee Harvey Oswald. I was set up to be the Secret Service agent who sold out to the Aryan Disciples."

Breckinridge ran a finger along her upper lip. What Garrison was saying was both bizarre and terrifying. But, admittedly, there was an undeniable logic to it all.

"You don't believe the Aryan Disciples are behind this, do you?" Breckinridge asked.

"Why would they hire a hit man whose connections led back to them? Have they done that in other cases?"

"Then who is trying to kill the Man, for God's sake? Who are we talking about?"

"I found a receipt for the Pizza Hut in Beltsville in Hightower's room. It had some writing on it that I believe were contact instructions. Flanagan and OFCO operate out of Beltsville-"

"Surely you're not going to hang your hat on that."

"Flanagan showed up at Hightower's motel. He must have had the place staked out before I got there. How did he know where Hightower was staying? Hightower had refused to tell me."

"Pete, Hightower must have realized that getting involved in something like this was risky - that it would fly back in his face."