Fatal Conceit (27 page)

He'd been fantasizing about having a go at the Blair woman ever since following her and the general down the beach during the Fourth of July party, watching her undress and then sitting on the other side of the dune listening to their lovemaking. His boss had been pleased later that night when he reported that the little whore had seduced the target. Fauhomme wasn't as happy the next day when she told him she wouldn't spy on Allen, but when Connie told him later that Blair and Allen were seeing each other, he'd changed his mind.

“Let's get some photographs of them together and anything else you can get,” the politico told Baum. “A little blackmail material can go a long ways toward keeping our ‘friend' in line if necessary.”

So Baum had followed the couple to the Casablanca and the bed and breakfast in the Shenandoah Valley, snapping photographs and making notations of dates and times. But Fauhomme had him doing a lot of other things, so he'd apparently missed their assignations at the cabin.

Fauhomme had proved to be prescient in regard to Allen's being unwilling to always toe the party line. When it became clear that the general wasn't going to stick to the “talking points,” he'd played the blackmail card. But Fauhomme hadn't counted on a man like Allen's sense of honor, probably because he had so little himself.

At first the general had pretended to give in. But Fauhomme's decision to have Baum keep an eye on him until the hearings had paid off. He'd followed him from D.C. to New York thinking that the general was just going to see his mistress. When he saw Allen meet the tall blonde at the White Horse he'd wondered if the general had another girl on the side, though it didn't seem to be his style. So after she left, he asked the bartender if he knew who she was.

“Yeah, that's Ariadne Stupenagel,” the bartender said. “Haven't seen her in here for a while. Fine-looking piece of ass even at her age.”

“What's she do?”

“Never heard of her, huh? You must not read the newspapers and maybe you didn't see that press conference with the president the other day when she went after him on the Chechnya thing? She's an investigative reporter and a damn good one.”

The woman's identity had been alarming. The bartender got suspicious when asked if he knew where she lived, so he left.

Then the situation got worse after Allen picked up his girlfriend and then managed to elude him when he left town for the weekend. Fauhomme had been pissed as hell and tore him a new one.
Baum noted the fear in his voice and wasn't surprised when the fat man decided not to take a chance on what the general might tell Congress. “Check with that hotel he likes . . . the Casablanca . . . and find out if he's got a reservation before the hearings on Tuesday. If so, do it there. One way or the other, you're going to have to stop him before he goes before the committee.”

Arriving at the Casablanca, Baum had walked into the hotel on Saturday and up to the front desk. He'd said he'd served under the general in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Best man I ever met,” he said, laying it on thick. “He said to meet him here and we'd have a drink for old times' sake.”

The desk clerk had smiled and looked in the reservations book. “Well, I'm really not supposed to say when General Allen is staying with us—we call him Mr. Stibbards—but since he obviously told you where to find him, I think it's okay. Let's see . . . oh, sorry, he's not due back until tomorrow night. Are you sure he said to meet him here today?”

Baum looked perplexed. “You know, I just flew in from overseas and it's entirely possible that I got the dates mixed up,” he said. “I'll be back tomorrow.”

The next day he'd returned with the bottle of Macallan scotch he'd spiked with Valium, carefully replacing the seal. “Looks like I might get called out of town,” he told the same clerk. “Would you give this to him with my compliments?”

“And who shall I say left it?”

“Peter,” Baum said, knowing that a bottle of scotch from Peter Oatman, the commandant at West Point and Allen's friend, would not be suspect.

On Sunday, Baum had waited at a coffee shop across the street for the general to enter the hotel. After giving Allen enough time to check in, he'd gone back for a third time.

“You're back!” the desk clerk said with a smile.

“Turned out I didn't have to go,” he replied. “Sam just gave me a call and said he was here.”

“He checked in a little while ago. I gave him the scotch and he said he was going to try some straightaway.”

“That's great, thank you,” Baum said with his most winning smile. “I'll join him in a bit. Do you have another room? Don't tell him I'm back; I want to surprise him, but I'd like to clean up a little first.”

“Sure, I can put you on the floor right below him,” the clerk said. “It'll be nice for you two to catch up.”

“Yeah, it will be great.”

It was Baum who had come up with the idea of lacing the general's scotch, one of his few known vices, to make it appear that Allen committed suicide.

Fauhomme liked it. “We let it slip to somebody we like in the press that he was having an affair with Blair and that she was blackmailing him,” he said. “He was about to be disgraced, lose his family, his legacy in the toilet . . . and no way he would get confirmed as director of the CIA . . . so he offs himself.” But then the fat man frowned. “What if he doesn't drink enough? Maybe he only gets drowsy or calls 911 in time to get him to the hospital? We'd be fucked.”

“I'll get into the room when I think he's out,” Baum said, “and give him a hotshot under the tongue to finish him off. This stuff I got is practically undetectable unless you look hard for it, and with the ‘obvious' cause of death in plain view, no one will look.”

“What about that reporter?” Fauhomme said. “I remember the bitch from the press conference. She's not one of ours.”

Baum had grinned. “New York is a dangerous city to live in. A lot of violent crime. I'll take care of her, too.”

Everything had gone as planned. Wanting to make sure that Allen was drinking the scotch to incapacitate him, he intercepted the general's room service waiter, gave him a hundred-dollar bill, and said, “I'm an old army buddy and staying on the floor below. They'll tell you at the front desk. I want to surprise him.” He'd let himself in with a high-tech skeleton key and even carried on a conversation with his intended victim.

“Care for a drink?”

“Would love to, sir, but I'm on duty, and they frown on it.”

The general was slumped in his chair and all but out when he tilted his chin back and injected the poison beneath his tongue. He then dragged Allen into the other room and lifted him onto the bed, neatly arranging his robe and placing his hands together on his belly as though he'd taken his lethal dose and gone to sleep . . . permanently. He quickly arranged the scene and switched the bottles of Macallan. “Couldn't have the Valium in the bottle,” he later explained to Fauhomme, “just his glass.” Then he typed the “I'm sorry” note and called Fauhomme saying, “It's done,” before leaving the room.

The only thing he wasn't happy about occurred when he was standing outside Allen's door listening for sounds coming from within when a nosy old lady down the hall peeked out. He looked her way but she immediately closed her door without saying anything.
She'll think I was room service,
he thought at the time, but still, she was a loose end.

At least he thought the old lady was all he had to be concerned about. Then Fauhomme called him the following morning. “You moron!” the boss screamed. “Jenna Blair was somehow recording what happened from her apartment. Get your dumb ass over there and take care of it.”

Ray Baum wasn't afraid of much, but the idea that he'd been recorded committing murder sent a chill down his spine that nearly caused him to panic. He'd still been in his room at the Casablanca, laughing about all the police activity, when he got the call and rushed out, picking up Craig on the way. He had to admit the girl had been pretty clever, making him think she was in the bathroom drying her hair, buying herself enough time to get away. He'd been living in fear ever since that morning that she'd get her computer to someone in the press, like Stupenagel, or worse yet, New York District Attorney Roger Karp.

Then she made a fatal mistake by emailing her mother. Tucker
Lindsey's people managed to trace the IP address, so he drove north to Orvin a short time later. Once there he turned on the charm with a homely librarian whom he followed to her door.

“Sorry to bother you, miss . . .” he said when she came to the door.

“Gertie . . . Gertie Malcom,” she replied, trying to pat her hair into place and smile at the handsome stranger at the same time.

“I'm agent Mike Ralston and that's my partner, Bob Kravitz, in the car. We're trying to find this girl.” He showed her a photograph of Blair.

“Why, that's General Allen's girlfriend,” Malcom replied. “It's such a shame what he . . . well, how he . . . well, you know.”

“Yes, it was,” Baum replied. “Have you seen her lately?”

“Yes, indeed, just today at the library,” Malcom said. “She was using the computer to get online. Did she do something wrong?”

“No, not at all,” Baum said. “We just want to make sure she's okay. Do you know where she might be staying?”

“Well, I'd guess out at Sam's old family cabin on Loon Lake. It's pretty hard to find. Why don't you come inside and I'll show you on a map.”

“You're too kind,” Baum replied.

Five minutes later, he was out the door and heading for his black SUV with Gertie Malcom trotting along behind.

“So you going to be in town long?” Gertie called after him.

“Afraid not, Gertie,” Baum replied. “But maybe next time I'm through we can have a coffee or a glass of wine.”

Gertie's eyes about bugged out of her head. “I'd like that.”

“Okay, well, remember what I told you inside about my presence here needing to be a secret.”

“Oh, mum's the word, my lips are zipped. You can count on me.”

Baum smiled. “I knew I could. Until the next time.”

“Au revoir,” Gertie called out and waved as he got in the car. She could hardly wait to head down to the Lucky Duck bar and
grill and tell the other locals about her meeting with a secret agent.
No details
, she promised herself.
But it won't hurt to say I got a visit.

Baum and his partner made a couple of wrong turns on the way, but eventually spotted the place through the trees and matched the number on the Rural Route mailbox. At first the cabin looked dark and abandoned. He cursed, but then Craig pointed out how a small slip of light was escaping from behind one of the heavy drapes over a window in what turned out to be the office.

Creeping up to the cabin, he and Craig kicked in the front and back doors simultaneously and caught the two women by surprise. The big one, Stupenagel, had come at him with a letter opener and gashed him pretty good in the forearm before he disarmed her and knocked her woozy with a blow to the side of her head. He then stuck his gun in her mouth and demanded that Blair tell him if there was anything incriminating other than what he could see.

The frightened young woman said everything was on the desk, and he could tell from the fear in her voice that she was right now incapable of lying. He left Craig to gather the material and do a search of the house while he marched his captives toward the lake, grabbing a shovel that had been leaning against the front porch.

The moon was full and the walking was easy. They had reached a point halfway down the lake trail when he ordered them to take a detour into the woods. After scrambling through the underbrush, they entered a small clearing only about ten yards off the trail, but far enough, he thought. “Dig,” he demanded, throwing the shovel at Stupenagel.

“Why should I?” the reporter retorted. “You're just going to kill us anyway.”

“You got that right, bitch,” Baum said. “But unless you want me to gut-shoot you first, then dig the hole myself and bury you alive, you'll dig your own grave and make it quick.”

So the two women took turns digging one hole. “You can be together for eternity,” he said with a smirk.

Baum doubted anyone would come looking for the women at the cabin and they were far enough off the trail to make it unlikely someone would stumble on the grave by accident. He'd toss some debris over the top and the fast-growing forest underbrush would do the rest in short order.

They got down about three feet. Stupenagel was digging while Blair sat on the ground in despair. Suddenly the reporter doubled over in pain. “Shit,” she gasped. “It's my ulcer . . . oh, fuck, that hurts!”

Stepping forward, Baum pointed his gun at Blair and growled, “Take over; another foot ought to do it.” He realized his mistake in taking his eyes off Stupenagel only a moment before the flat of the shovel blade struck him on the side of the head. The blow dropped him to his knees.

“Run!” Stupenagel screamed as she started out of the hole, intending to finish him off.

Blair took off like a frightened rabbit. But it took too long to climb out of a three-foot-deep grave, and just as Stupenagel emerged, shovel raised for the coup de grâce, Baum recovered enough to point and shoot. He wasn't sure where he hit her, but it was enough to send her sprawling backward and down into the hole.

Baum staggered to his feet just as Craig came running up with his gun drawn. “The girl's running,” he shouted. He pointed back down the trail. “Go around the other side in case she doubles back. I'll run her down this way.”

A moan escaped from the grave. “I'll be back for you, bitch,” he snarled. Adrenaline and rage fueling his legs, Baum took off in pursuit of Blair.