Conspiracy (6 page)

The thing that
most
annoyed Rubens was the tone of her voice, a nasal singsong tottering on the edge of becoming a sneer.

The voice greeted them with a perfunctory, “What is it?”

“Donna, Bill Rubens and his people have developed some information concerning Vietnam that we thought important to bring to the President's attention,” said Collins. “There is an intersection with intelligence we developed about three years ago. Bill is here now.”

Rubens detailed what they had found. To his great surprise, Bing's voice seemed bright, even cheery, when he finished.

“Good work. We must pursue this.”

“That's why Ms. Collins and I are calling,” said Rubens.

“This is a Deep Black project?”

“We hadn't quite gotten that far,” said Rubens. “I don't know that there is a role for Desk Three.”

“What you're talking about here is a covert attack on the American government,” said Bing. “I want the best involved.”

Rubens glanced over at Collins, whose agency had just been indirectly insulted.

“Take the lead,” added Bing. “I'll inform the President.”

And then she clicked off.

“You
really
should have taken the job, Bill,” said Collins. “You made a big mistake. For all of us.”

 

THE LION HAD
used the commotion to jump from the tree, wrestling briefly with one of the hounds before making its escape. The dog had two long, deep cuts in his flank but was actually very lucky. He hadn't lost much blood and could easily have had his neck snapped in the confrontation.

Sleeth worked on the dog's wounds carefully, cleaning and dressing them, all the while nuzzling the animal to comfort him. The hound had belonged to Sleeth's father, who'd retired as a guide just the year before.

“Good lion hound's worth a fortune,” said Sleeth, but Dean sensed that his concern for the animal had nothing to do with money. “I don't think I have to put him down. I'd hate to.”

“We can make a sling and carry him out,” suggested Dean.

“Be heavy carrying the lion, too.”

“We can do it. If we can't, the dog's more important.”

“I appreciate that,” said Sleeth. “I really appreciate that.”

His other dog circled as they rigged a stretcher. They took the animal up the hill to the dead lion. Sleeth had a collection of metal poles that he used to sling the dead animal for carrying. The poles were thin and Dean didn't think they'd hold the weight of the cat, which topped a hundred pounds. But the pole hardly bent at all, even when they tied the dog as well.

“If it's too heavy, let me know,” said Sleeth, starting out.

Dean grunted. It
was
heavy, and the truth was, he didn't really care that much about having a trophy. But leaving the lion felt like admitting defeat—or, worse, like an admission that he was old, as Sleeth had commented earlier.

He was old. But still strong. And stubborn.

More the latter, maybe.

He could still see the lion charging at him. It was almost as if it had happened twice—once he made the shot; once he didn't. And there was a fork in reality: in one version he'd been mauled; in the other he'd emerged victorious, barely scratched.

But it had all happened together. There had been no turning point, no choice, just reaction. Everything scrunched together.

And how the hell had he missed that shot?

The sun was edging below the horizon, leaving the mountains in deep shadow. Sleeth aimed toward a dried streambed about two and a half miles away, where his wife could meet them with her pickup truck. They walked in silence, avoiding the roughest terrain, neither man admitting how heavy the double burden was.

An hour passed. By now it was fairly dark. Sleeth checked in with his wife on the radio and told her they were still about a mile away.

“If it's too heavy for you, we can come back with some help at dawn,” Sleeth said to Dean.

“No, I'm all right.”

They climbed for about fifteen minutes, struggling up a rocky gorge. Dean lost his footing near the top; his knee twisted out beneath him and he fell sideways, the dead cougar's fangs tapping against his face—a reproof, it seemed.

He pushed himself to his feet, shouldered the metal stick, and clambered with Sleeth up the hill. Once they reached the top, the path was easy, wide spaces between trees and a gentle slope to the creek bed where the truck waited.

“More than you bargained for, Mr. Dean?” asked Sleeth's wife as they drove back toward the Sleeth house. Sleeth was with the dog in the back.

“It was interesting.”

“What do you do for a living?” she asked. A few years younger than her husband, she had a thick neck and well-defined biceps and forearms, and a face prematurely aged by the sun.

“Own some gas stations,” said Dean. He'd sold the stations when he went to work for Deep Black, but of course he wasn't about to mention what he really did.

“This is a bit more interesting than your normal day's work, I'd guess,” said Mrs. Sleeth.

“You'd be surprised,” said Dean, propping his arm against the window of the truck.

 

A FEW HOURS
later, the dog patched up and the mountain lion prepared for the taxidermist, Sleeth joined Dean in the living room.

“I'm refunding your money,” said Sleeth, sitting down in the leather chair across from Dean.

“Why?” asked Dean.

“I almost got you killed. I was sloppy. I did a terrible job.”

“Nah.”

“I should have known there was another animal there. Male and female lions will hunt together when they're mating. I should have known.”

Dean, no expert on mountain lions, studied the Scotch in his glass, then took a sip, savoring the Glenfiddich as it burned in his mouth.

“You were really cool up there, dealing with the cat,” continued Sleeth. “A lot of guys—”

Instead of finishing his sentence, Sleeth got up and walked to the sideboard nearby, fixing himself a drink.

Dean took another sip of his Scotch.

What if he'd missed on the second shot as well?

He wouldn't be here to think about it, probably. Or maybe he would be, waiting for a medevac helicopter, eyeball dangling from its socket.

Sleeth sat back down.

“It's unusual for a lion to attack humans,” he said. Maybe there was something wrong with it, or maybe it had attacked before, or maybe it saw them as rivals for its mate. Ordinarily, the cats didn't attack unless cornered, not even to protect their young. The words drifted past Dean's head.

Maybe he'd missed that first shot because Sleeth was right: he
was
getting old.

Dean's sat phone began to ring.

“I just want to check this. Excuse me,” he told Sleeth. He got up, pulling the phone out as he walked to the door.

“Dean,” he said outside.

“Charlie, this is Chris Farlekas. I'm afraid you're going to have to cut short your vacation. There's something urgent that we need your help on. We'll have a plane meet you at Le Havre Airport. OK?”

“What time?”

“As soon as you can get there. It'll be on the ground in half an hour.”

 

“OH, HOW PRECIOUS
—a onesie with a matching rattle.”

Lia DeFrancesca tried very hard not to roll her eyes as the guest of honor continued to gush over her baby shower presents. The very pregnant guest happened to be Lia's best friend from high school, Tina Ricco, now Tina Ricco Kelly, well into the eighth month of pregnancy. Besides a healthy glow and a constant need to pee, Tina's condition had apparently short-circuited several parts of her brain, causing her to use the word “precious” at least twenty times an hour and to speak of herself in the plural, as in, “We just think that's adorable,” and, “We'll have that drink super-sized.”

Visiting Tina and her husband in their new home in North Carolina for a few days had seemed liked a good idea when Tina invited Lia. She envisioned long afternoons by the shore, sipping a cool drink from a tall glass. She might even get in a little shopping.

But the weather had turned out to be on the cool side, and Tina was generally too tired to spend more than fifteen minutes on her feet at a time. She was also too busy to go out—Lia's arrival had come in the midst of a relentless stream of relatives and other friends, who dropped by nearly around the clock to “chat” and offer encouragement. Tina had made the mistake of saying that she planned on having the baby without painkillers, and her visitors felt obligated to let her know how foolish she was. They did this with war stories about their own excruciating times in labor, stories so vivid that even Lia got sympathy pains.

Fortunately, the pains of labor were no longer the topic of choice at the shower. Unfortunately, it was replaced by nonstop horror stories of babies with colic, babies who never slept, babies who never kept food in their stomachs. The odd thing was that the stories were told in the most cheerful way imaginable, and generally capped off with words to the effect of “You'll love being a parent.” Lia resorted to vodka-spiked lemonade to remain calm.

If I ever have a baby, she thought, I'm going to keep it a secret until he's eighteen.

Lia's cell phone rang just as Tina unwrapped her third Diaper Genie. She jumped up to take the call, so thankful for the diversion that she would have bought storm windows from the most obnoxious telemarketer.

“Lia, this is Chris Farlekas. Can you talk?”

“Almost,” she said, walking out into the hallway.

“We need you here by eight
A.M.
tomorrow for a briefing. I know it's Sunday, I know you're off, but—”

“Not a problem.”

“We'll book a commercial flight from Raleigh-Durham. When do you want to leave?”

A burst of high-pitched giggling cascaded down the hall.

“I'm calling a cab for the airport right now.”

 

“THE ATTACK ON
Senator McSweeney involved at least two people: the man with a pistol, who appears to have been a decoy, and the actual shooter, who was located in this building across the way.”

The screen flashed as a picture of the office building across from the hotel appeared. Dean rolled his arms together in front of his chest, leaning back in the seat. He hadn't been able to sleep on the plane coming back from Montana, nor had there been time for anything more than a quick nap before reporting to the Desk Three operations center in the basement of OPS/2B.

A face flashed on the screen. It belonged to a man about thirty years old. He had buzz-cut chestnut hair and a moon-shaped bruise below each eye. He seemed to be in pain.

“This was the decoy,” said Hernes Jackson, standing at the side of the room as he gave the briefing. “He had a pellet gun that looked like a Beretta. His name is Arthur Findley.”

Jackson clicked the remote control in his hand, bringing two more pictures of Findley on the screen. In both, Findley looked heavily medicated, with a vacant gaze.

“Mr. Findley has been in and out of mental institutions for several years. His last known address was at an outpatient facility in Washington, D.C., two years ago,” continued Jackson. “Since then, he's had no known address. He's apparently somewhat well-known to the homeless community. He seems to have been approached by a man who called himself John a few days ago. The man befriended him by
giving him money, and eventually asked him to show up with the gun in front of the hotel.”

“And he didn't have a problem with that?” asked Lia, sitting to Dean's right. She'd already been here when Dean arrived, and seemed quiet, almost contemplative. They'd barely had a chance to say hello before the briefing began.

“Mr. Findley appears to have the mental age of a five-year-old,” said Jackson. “He clearly didn't understand the implications. We have a sketch of the man, based on Mr. Findley's descriptions.”

A nondescript computer-generated face appeared on the screen. He was white, of average height, maybe middle-aged.

“Needless to say, the FBI has come up with no real information about this person, John. There's nothing in the Secret Service files, either.”

“What about the real shooter?” asked Lia.

Jackson shook his head. “Nothing. He appears to have used a stock Remington rifle with store-bought ammunition. They have that from the bullet. The thinking is the shooter wasn't a professional. The shot was taken at eighty-five yards.”

Dean grunted. On a range, eighty-five yards was nothing, not for a sniper or even a well-trained Marine. But in real life, with adrenaline flowing like beer in a biker bar, it could feel like miles.

Jackson said that the FBI was working to attempt to identify where the bullet had been purchased. But tracking ammunition wasn't easy, especially when the ammo was relatively common, and so far the efforts had proved fruitless.

“The FBI identified the office from the trajectory of the shot,” continued Jackson. “There was nothing there—no spent shell, no trace of anything. All of the windows in that floor were open. The building has been vacant for about five months. No eyewitness has come forward. Two people in the area believed they saw an Asian man in the building a few days before.”

“Not much of a description,” said Lia.

“It may be significant,” said Jackson. “Which brings me to the second half of our briefing.”

“Let me preface the ambassador's brief by saying that the relationship of this incident to Special Agent Forester's death has yet to be determined,” interrupted Rubens. “There may in fact be no relationship at all. The only point of connection is that Forester was tracking down threats against the senator when he died. It is that investigation that concerns us.”

Jackson flashed a picture of a Secret Service agent named Gerald Forester on the screen, explaining who he was and the fact that he had died about a week before the attempt on McSweeney. While the state police and the FBI had initially concluded that McSweeney had committed suicide, the head of the Secret Service had pressed his own agency to check into other possibilities.