Conspiracy (29 page)

“Why would he have the courier ambushed before he got the money?” asked Rubens.

“It would make sense if the South Vietnamese officer didn't really die, but escaped during the attack,” said Jackson. “In any event, the CIA apparently tried to get a little revenge by assassinating him. According to one of the Marine Corps reports, they succeeded.”

“So I surmised from the transcript of Mr. Dean's interview with Mr. Dinh.”

“Did the interview note that the assassin was a Marine scout sniper named Charles Dean?”

 

RUBENS WAS STILL
considering exactly how to summarize the situation for Bing when she returned his call.

“This is Dr. Bing. You have an update on the Vietnam project?”

“Thao Duong is part of a people-smuggling network,” said Rubens. “There is no Vietnamese assassination plot.”

“There's no assassination plot or he's not part of it?”

The bite in Bing's voice annoyed Rubens. He reached for his cup of cinnamon herbal tea—part of his never-ending campaign to cut back on caffeine—and took a long sip before replying.

“The only evidence that we had of a possible plot involves dated CIA data, and circumstantial evidence we developed related to Thao Duong. Upon further analysis, that evidence now fits better with the hypothesis that he was part of a people-smuggling operation originating in China. We were wrong, initially,” added Rubens—even though he had cautioned about jumping to conclusions all along. “We have now given the material a very thorough review, and there is nothing substantial there.”

“There was an attempt on a senator's life, Billy. If that isn't evidence enough for you, what is?”

Rubens winced. He hated being called Billy.

“I realize that you want to take a harder stand toward Vietnam,” said Rubens as evenly as he could. “But I have to
tell you that we have no intelligence linking them to the attempt on the senator's life.”

“Then you're not working hard enough,” said Bing, abruptly hanging up.

 

FINISHED BRIEFING RUBENS
, Ambassador Jackson returned to his desk in the research and analysis section, planning on taking care of some odds and ends before checking back in with the FBI and Secret Service. While he'd been up with Rubens, the Pentagon had answered Jackson's request for contact information regarding the members of Tolong's unit. Among the information was an address and phone number for Reginald Gordon, the last man who had seen Tolong alive.

Jackson called the phone number, only to find it had been disconnected. That wasn't particularly surprising—the Defense Department data was many years old. Next, Jackson entered the name and last known address into a commercial database used by private investigators and others trying to track down people. Within a few minutes, he had an address and phone number in Atlanta.

This phone, too, had been disconnected.

Jackson then did what a layman might do when looking for information about someone—he Googled Gordon.

The screen came back quickly. All of the top hits were from newspapers.

Reginald Gordon had jumped from a hotel window in Washington a week before.

 

MOST TIMES, DEALING
with small-town police departments was very easy. The Secret Service had a long-standing aura because of its role protecting the President; unlike the FBI or DEA, its image had not been tarnished by scandal. The locals also tended to be less suspicious that the Service might be crowding in on their territory, and as a general rule the police chiefs and lieutenants Amanda Rauci met with on various cases went out of their way to be cooperative and helpful.

The Pine Plains chief was a notable exception. She'd tried making an appointment to see him first thing in the morning, but he'd been “unavailable” until three in the afternoon. Then he'd kept her waiting nearly forty-five minutes while he was “tied up on patrol”—she suspected this meant shooting the breeze at the local coffee shop. When he finally came into the backroom suite of the village hall, which served as the local police station, he put on a sour puss as soon as he saw her. He answered her questions in a barely audible monotone.

“Never showed.”

“Did you speak to Agent Forester on the phone?” Amanda asked.

“Nope.”

“Did anyone in your department talk to him?”

“Maybe Dispatch.” Chief Ball bellowed for his dispatcher, “Steph! Get in here!”

The white-haired woman who'd been manning the phone
and radio in the front room appeared at the door. She glanced at Amanda and gave her a reassuring look, as if to say,
His bark is worse than his bite.

Amanda didn't believe it.

“That federal guy—Secret Service,” said Chief Ball. “He ever show up that day?”

“You mean the one checking on the man who passed away?”

“
No.
The one that killed himself.”

“He died before he came, didn't he?”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Just to make the appointment.”

Ball looked back at Amanda, a satisfied expression on his face.

“Did he say what it was about?” Amanda asked.

“Wanted to talk to the chief.”

“Agent Forester sometimes had a habit of looking over a place before he interviewed someone,” said Amanda. “He might have done that the night before he died.”

“Couldn't prove it by me,” snapped the chief. He looked over at his dispatcher.

“I never met him.”

“Other questions?” Chief Ball's voice strongly implied the answer was, No.

“I have a lot of questions,” answered Amanda. She turned to the dispatcher. “But not for you, ma'am.”

The dispatcher gave Amanda the same bark-is-worse smile, then left.

“You have no idea what he might have been working on?” asked Amanda.

“Well, sure, I know now. It had to do with threats against Gideon McSweeney. I didn't know then. And I doubt anybody in my town made those threats.”

Amanda opened her purse and took out Forester's notebook. “He had spoken to a man named Gordon who lives in Georgia,” she told the chief. “There was another man, I believe named Dinn, whom he was interested in.”

“Dim?”

“Dinn. I don't know how it's spelled.”

“Never heard of it.”

“There don't seem to be any in the phone book.”

“See?”

Amanda glanced down at the page in Forester's notebook, where he had circled the name and question marks in the middle of the page:

 

Gordon?

Chief?

 

“Is it possible he wanted to talk to you about Gordon?”

“Last name or first name?”

“Last name.”

“Don't know any Gordons. None in the phone book, right?”

“I thought maybe it might be unlisted.”

“Nah. Now we got two Gordons as first name, that I can think of. There's Gordon Hirt, the high school principal?”

“I don't know. Was he a Marine?”

“Might have been. I'm not sure. Don't know much about him. Respected. Beard. Lives down in Stanford. Here three and a half years.” The chief leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. “And then there's a Gordon Clegg. I doubt it was him. He's like ninety-three and lives in Annabel Shepherd's old-age home. She takes old people in. Has a license from the state. Gordon used to be sharp as a tack, but he had a stroke a few months ago. Not so good now.”

“What if Gordon was a last name?” Amanda asked. “Or if it were something near that?”

“Well. That's a little different. Like Gordon. Hmmm. This isn't that big a town. I think I know just about everybody, but sometimes you can be surprised.” Chief Ball stared at the ceiling, clicking through a mental Rolodex. “Goddard—we have a Pete Goddard. Retired newspaper guy, tried to make a killing off his uncle's horse farm. Bit of a jerk. Caught him speeding once and he managed to talk himself into a ticket. Usually, if you're a local, I'll let ya go. Unless you're a jerk.”

“Do you have an address?”

“Stephanie?”

 

POLICE CHIEF CHRIS
Ball fixed his hat on his head as he strode toward his car.

Thank God for dumb blondes—or brunettes as the case might be. She had the whole damn thing in her hands and she still couldn't figure it out.

One of the other 10 million
federales
working on the case would, though. Eventually. They had enough stinking people poking their noses in the woodpile.

“Hello, Chief. Nice day, isn't it?”

The chief glanced over and saw the town librarian, Joyce Dalton, walking her dog. Good-looking woman, that.

Too young for him, and married, and reading constantly, being a librarian, he would bet, but good-looking anyway.

“Mrs. Dalton. Beautiful day. Taking time off?”

“My day off. I thought I would work in my garden.”

“Nice day for it. You take care now.”

“I will, Chief.”

Ball got into his car, trying to decide whether the dumb brunette would go to the high school first or out toward Pete Goddard's run-down horse farm.

 

THE LEAD OFFICER
on Gordon's suicide case had a photographic memory, and described the scene to Hernes Jackson in vivid detail.

Too vivid, thought Jackson; he started getting queasy about halfway through.

Gordon had jumped from the twenty-third floor.

“As far as the room goes, it was locked, with no signs of forced entry, no disturbance. Gordon's suitcase was still packed and in the corner,” said the detective, a middle-aged African-American named Drew Popkin.

Jackson listened as the detective described the rest of his investigation. They were standing on the pavement of a driveway a few feet from where the body had been found. According to Popkin, there were no eyewitnesses to the jump. In fact, Gordon had probably been on the ground at least fifteen minutes before somebody found him.

“Guy making a delivery for a florist. Heck of a shock.”

“I'll bet,” said Jackson.

The building dated from the late nineteenth century and retained much of its architectural charm. Unlike many modern hotels, its windows could be opened, though only after removing a lock and a grate that made it next to impossible to accidentally fall. Popkin had found a screwdriver and several small box wrenches in the room, along with the hardware that had been removed.

“If he came with tools, then he must have been planning on killing himself,” said Jackson.

“Looks like it.”

“But why here?”

“Damned if I know. Doesn't make sense that he'd want to commit suicide at all,” added Popkin. “Owns a lot of land outside Atlanta. I talked with some people there; they were very shocked.”

“Maybe he was sick.”

“Checked into that. Doctor said he was in good health, no signs of depression.”

“Why was he in Washington?”

“Don't know. He'd had some dealings with the Army Corps of Engineers, trying to get them to sign off on a project of his. But that all ended earlier this year. If he was setting up another appointment, he didn't get around to it. Didn't talk with his congressman, either. I checked.”

 

GORDON OWNED SEVERAL
hundred acres in suburban Georgia, outside of Atlanta, which had once belonged to the federal government. He wanted to develop part of it into a shopping center, but the parcel had been declared federally protected wetlands. He'd asked the Army Corps of Engineers, which had made the designation in the first place, to change it.

“We tried to explain to him that it wasn't really a discretionary designation,” the man who had met with Gordon told Jackson. “He was very adamant, and persistent. He even tried to get members of Congress to convince us. But of course, we don't make that designation. We did the report on the property when it was designated because it was owned by the government. That was it. We had no other connection.”

“He had his congressman call?”

“And three senators. I guess he's well connected.”

“Three?”

“That we heard from. Stenis and Archer from Georgia, and McSweeney.”

“McSweeney's from New York, isn't he?”

“Knew him somehow.”

SINCE HE WAS
in town anyway, Jackson decided that he would stop at Amanda Rauci's condo and ask her if Forester had mentioned anything about Gordon. Jackson got to her home just before five; no one answered when he rang the bell.

Back in his car, he realized she would probably be back at work by now, so he called her work number. The call was immediately forwarded to her superior.

“She's on suspension,” said the man after Jackson explained who he was. “She missed a meeting with our personnel people the other day. We're looking for her, actually. One of the hairs found on Forester's clothes looks like it was hers, and we'd like to ask her about it.”