Life of Secrets (4 page)

Gunter would
never have asked and she would never have told him, but Tom Wheeler was the one
who'd hired Alyssa for this job. Communications Director for the Hicks campaign
– Rich West's opposition – he'd wanted research on their opponent. Chambers had
never met the man before this job.

But Wheeler
came with excellent references. He got her name from no less a person than
George Pierce, and that was still a name Alyssa trusted.

"Hard to
believe a set up," she replied.

Hauptmann
shrugged.

"Even so,
he's probably scared out of his mind right now, thinking that the plumber he
hired went and
offed
West, and that he's an
accessory."

Chambers
nodded.

"I need to
talk to him. You suppose he's in his office?"

Gunter nodded.

"He'll
have to be. Every politician in America probably has two phones stuck to their
heads all day today, trying to play this. It'll be driving him nuts to be in
the office, with everyone wondering who did it and him being so afraid they
think it's him, but he has to be there."

"OK, then.
My problem is just getting into his office without being seen. You, on the
other hand, are probably itching to be out of the country."

Gunter nodded.
"Congratulations on the understatement of the year."

He reached
across to take Alyssa's hand.

"It's been
nice to know you. Good luck."

She smiled at
him, and shook his hand.

"Happy
running, Gunter."

He stood up.

A bullet
drilled through his back and out his chest, killing him instantly.

Chambers
couldn't help herself. She screamed when Gunter Hauptmann fell dead across her
lap. Seconds later, the pedestrians around her were screaming, too.

However, after
the initial fight or flight instinct, she found herself strangely detached. She
observed the crowd, calculated where the shot that hit Gunter must have come
from and plotted how to use the other people as cover from a second shot from
that direction.

Most people
nearby were screaming in panic but several passers-by were collected around
her, trying to help her, some checking if she had been wounded, others trying
to console her about the grisly mess she and her clothing had become. Alyssa
tuned them all out. She got out from under Gunter and stood up, causing several
people to jump back at the sudden movement. Then she took off running.

Shouts of
confusion and alarm rang out behind her, but she ignored them all. In another
second, she was across the open courtyard and diving into the river.

The Potomac had
never been the nicest place to swim, but Alyssa didn't feel she had any choice.
For one thing, it was obvious that whoever had fired the shot that killed
Gunter had been aiming at her. The crowd had doubtless given her some cover,
preventing a clean shot, but the killer could fire again as soon as he got the
chance. Getting in the water made it much harder to shoot her.

Moreover, her
clothes were covered with gore from Hauptmann's body. Running, she'd have been
instantly recognizable, and stood no chance of escape, but the river cleaned
her up at least a little bit.

Of course, sopping
wet clothes were not much less conspicuous than bloody clothes, but at least
she'd be far away from the scene.

She did most of
her swimming underwater, with her eyes closed tight against the dirty river.
There was a gunman out there, and if she stayed on the surface for long, she
was a goner. The powerful current dragged her downstream as she swam, but that
was fine with Chambers. She didn't have much of a plan yet, except to clear the
area as fast as possible. And the current was moving much quicker than she
could swim.

She swam for
quite a while before finally working out a plan. Paddling to one of the yachts
moored along the waterfront, Alyssa climbed aboard. As she expected, since it
was still morning, the yacht was deserted, which suited her needs perfectly.
Crossing her fingers, she hoped these people left some clothing aboard.

She got a lucky
break. Not only was there clothing to be taken, but it was women's clothing.
She threw the outfit she'd left home in into the Potomac – saving only the backpack
– and dressed in clothes the mystery woman had left behind. The cut off shorts
and tank top weren't exactly her style, but they would have to do.

She walked off
the yacht as if she owned the thing – her family did own a couple yachts, after
all – and disappeared into the crowd.

It wasn’t much
of a walk to the bank branch on the corner of Wisconsin and M where her safe
deposit box was located. Walking through the elegant glass door, she felt like
every security camera in the room swiveled to catch her entry. Nonsense, of
course, but the feeling was still there, causing her skin to crawl.

This was her
biggest risk. Chambers wasn't sure how fast the FBI would learn that she'd been
in the West headquarters last night but if they already knew, then trying to
access her deposit box would be the end of things. They'd have the place staked
out, and she'd be arrested any moment now.

On the other
hand, if she wasn't a suspect yet, and she got out of here with the contents of
the box, then Alyssa was confident she could elude the FBI indefinitely.
However, that was only part of the problem. There was also the small matter of
someone shooting at her at the harbor.

No way was that
the FBI.

An easy first
guess would be that the person who fired the shot that killed Gunter was the
real killer. It could easily have been aimed at her and just hit Gunter by
accident; Perhaps he'd learned that Chambers had been in the building too, and
was afraid she'd seen the whole thing. But if he knew she was there at the
time, why didn't he kill her then? And if he only learned it after she'd gone,
how did he learn?

And how could
she prove it was him who shot West and not her?

In a lobby
chair, waiting for a banker to help him with a loan, a man in a dark suit
adjusted the newspaper he was reading. Across the room, someone standing in
line brushed her fingers through her hair. Any or all of those motions could
have been signals between watching federal agents.

Apparently,
none of them were. As a clerk led her back to the safe deposit boxes, Alyssa
began to believe she was safe for the time being. Walking out of the bank with
all her cash and several fake passports and credit cards, she finally felt as
if she could begin planning a few steps ahead, instead of on the spur of the
moment.

One evening
shortly before Alyssa went off to college, her father sent the butler to knock
on her bedroom door and let her know he was in the library. She had just
finished thrashing Matt at tennis and knew better than to come down in her
sweats. When H. Franklin Chambers sent the butler for her, he was feeling
formal.

When she
entered the library, it was in a pair of white summer slacks and a salmon
blouse, the sweat of her tennis match thoroughly washed off. She found her
father standing at the window, staring out at the late evening landscape of
summer. From behind him, she could see that he held a cut-glass tumbler held in
the hand hanging down at his side. Between the clinking of ice, the warm brown
color of the liquid, and the open bottle of
Talisker
on the bar, it wasn’t hard to deduce that he had decided to indulge himself.

Alyssa looked
at the open bottle of scotch, looked at her father staring out the window – not
turning to acknowledge her, simply waiting – and looked back at the scotch. It
had been a long time since Matt’s father had caught the two of them in the back
yard with a stolen bottle of
Glenmorangie
. She
decided that if her father wasn’t aware that a girl about to start college knew
how to drink, then it was time he learned.

She took a
tumbler
from the service, clinked exactly two ice cubes
into it, and covered them with scotch.

Her father
never moved. He just stood at the window waiting.

"Good
evening, Father," she said after her first sip. He moved his head ever so
slightly up and down. It passed for a nod.

"Of course
everyone thinks of politics when you say you're going to Georgetown," he
began, after a suitable wait. "But that's not all the school offers. They
have a very good linguistics program, for example. And a quite respectable
pre-med program as well."

Alyssa laughed.
"We both know I'd be heading for Hopkins if I wanted to be a doctor,
Father."

He gave another
of his barely-noticeable nods. "Of course. But I want you to know that,
until you have the degree in your hand, you can always change your mind about
what to study. And even after. You can still back out of politics. You'll be
able to for years yet."

Alyssa arched
her eyebrows even though he wasn’t looking at her and treated herself to a sip
of the scotch.

"You don't
want me to go into politics? Come on Father. Be real."

"Call this
the last gasp of my conscience, if you want an explanation."

She simply
waited. Prompting him for more would only demonstrate impatience.

“It's not a
pretty profession, Alyssa. Oh, everyone's heard about money and politics, and
the time that candidates spend grubbing for donations. But that's really not
even the point. I'm not so foolish as to think the Chambers family attained its
present wealth without a goodly number of ancestors who liked money. Chasing
cash is not what makes politics corrupt.”

"No, what
makes politics hard on the soul is the need to abandon your ideals if you want
to win. There are two kinds of politicians: the ones with clean consciences,
and the ones in office. If you get into politics, come prepared to do
anything
to win. Anything. Lie? Cheat? Steal? Betray friends? Sell out supporters? The
question isn't whether you'll have to. The question is how many of them you'll
have to do in a single day."

Her father
sighed, but she could tell he wasn't done. He took a sip of his scotch before
continuing.

"The
practice of politics is all levers," he said. "You have to find out
how to make people do what you want. With some men it's money, with some it's
power. Everyone has one. If you want to be involved in politics, you learn to
find people’s levers and use them."

"It’s the
art of shaping destiny. To practice it well gives you a feeling of god-like
power. There are few thrills to equal reading the newspapers and knowing that
you made all that happen.

"But it
has a price. The price is your conscience. Before long in politics, you'll have
to decide whether there are things that are beneath you. If there are, you'll
get out. If there aren't, you'll make history. I made my choice long ago. Some
days I'm ashamed of it, other days I'm actually proud, if you can believe that.
It's a talk for another day. When I had to choose, I chose victory and destiny
over purity. The only rule is, 'Give anything for victory.' For years, I’ve
done that. Winning will take anything you value. You have to learn not to value
anything more than winning."

She thought
back to her girlhood – running up onto the patio to tell her father something
and being ignored while he talked to someone in politics. Or the patient tone
in her mother’s voice as she said, "Your father’s working, Dear. Maybe
he’ll be here next time."

She wanted to
say something. She wanted to ask why it was more important to shape destiny
than to spend time with his wife and daughter. She wanted to ask if maybe Mom’s
drinking would’ve been more under control if he hadn't made the decision to
value politics above his family. But in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to
ask any of that.

"You can
still turn back, Alyssa," he said, then turned away from the window and
walked out without ever meeting her eyes.

♦

By her second
year of college, Chambers had taken every political science class she could and
spent her spare time with a reading list that would have shocked her father:
The most presentable items on that list were true crime books. The worst was a
manual she'd found on bomb making. The middle ground covered everything from
espionage and surveillance techniques to guides about what constituted
admissible evidence in criminal trials.

Occasional
unexplained explosions in campus parking lots in the dark of night were written
off as student pranks, and she simply threw away the video footage she'd gotten
from the dean's bathroom; there was no good use for that.

Over the years,
George Pierce had hooked her up with various opportunities to do what she
loved. Each time, she grew more comfortable in her clandestine career. Learning
people’s secrets and giving them to political opponents became first
comfortable for her and then an art form.

She tailed a
candidate home from the bar and called in a DUI to derail his campaign. She
could walk right behind two people and have them never know someone was
listening. Breaking into an office to plant spy software on computers was often
her preferred way to get the job done, but it was only one of many.

George put her
in touch with others who needed skills like hers, who then put her in touch
with still others. Her name was never known. Yet, for those who knew the right
people, contact with Alyssa was something that could make or break a political
career.

Her friendship
with Matt became a professional asset. Even though they were both still only
halfway through school, he was trying to get an early start on his career. He
took freelance writing work whenever he could and was building a good
relationship with a number of different editors. It helped Alyssa to be able to
slip documents under his dorm door now and then when a client wanted some facts
to make their way into the media.

Of course, as
always, friendship with Matt was a double-edged sword. He was useful sometimes,
but he still wanted more from her than she wanted to give. It was becoming
something of an annoyance.

One night,
Alyssa found herself in the middle of an argument with him – the same argument
they had been having since high school.

"Look,
Matt, I don’t want a husband. I don’t want a boyfriend. I don’t even want
friends. How many times are you going to keep coming back to this? It’s not
going to change."

"But
Alyssa, we’re such a good fit. We both…"

"Stop, OK?
I’ve heard it. I’ve heard it and heard it. We grew up together, we both like
politics, we both have trouble with our fathers… you keep pointing all that out
without listening to me! I like to be alone. I
need
to be alone. You
don’t even have the first foggy clue of why I can’t have someone in my life who
gets too clear a picture of me. The first requirement of a good fit is that
both parties feel like they need someone or something. I don’t."

Her cell phone
picked that moment to ring. Matt looked like he wanted and expected her to
ignore it. Both to vent some of her anger and to communicate something to him,
she picked up the phone, stomped down the hall, and slammed the door to her
bedroom before answering it.

It was George
Pierce.

"I’ve got
someone I want you to meet," he said. "I’m moving up in the world.
I’m a consultant for a few different campaigns now. Lance is running for
Senate, and he’s got a new campaign manager. I figured you’d want to meet him
since he’s got some work that needs doing that’s kind of up your alley."

"Of
course. It’s hard to make money without clients. Just make sure he understands
my rules."

Pierce gave her
a chuckle. "You get more paranoid every time we talk."

"Wouldn’t
you, if you did what I do?"

"Probably,
but I doubt I’d be as skilled at it."

"Can we
meet tonight?" she asked. She named a parking garage that she knew to be
poorly lit.

Walking back
out of her bedroom, she found Matt still waiting for her.

"Are you
still here? We’ve had our argument – again. For like the tenth time. Go home. I
answered you. Please stop asking every time the season changes."

The agreed-upon
meeting-time was closer to dawn than to dusk. Chambers went to the darkened
parking garage and broke a couple of lights to make sure the visibility was
next to nothing.

She hid outside
the garage, waiting for the two of them to walk in. Pierce, as usual, was
looking at his feet as he walked, with his hands in his pockets. The man next
to him had a portly build and appeared to be going bald. In the moonlight, it
was possible to make out what looked like a birthmark on his forehead.

Chambers
emerged from behind a parked car and followed them into the garage. She padded
silently, listening to them mutter back and forth about paranoia, until they
were in the darkest area of the garage.

"Don’t
turn around please. It’s probably too dark to make out my face even if you did,
but I still don’t like people being able to identify me."

Both of them
jumped a little bit like they were about to whirl and look behind them but
controlled the instinct in time. The newcomer spoke softly, facing away from
her.

"Pretty melodramatic.
A dark parking garage in the middle of the night? It’s just like
Watergate."

"Most of
my jobs could end in a courtroom if I’m not careful about my identity."

"Not this
one," the newcomer replied. "I just want to hire someone to work in
an office I already own. Perfectly legal."

Chambers said,
"Safer that way. So what’s the problem?"

The new man
said, "The press has a mole in our campaign. I don’t know who it is, but I
know they’re getting
intel
. They know our ads before
we run them. They’re rebutting our spin before it’s even out. “I want to pay
someone to find the leaker and make them stop. Nothing illegal about that,
right? It’s just that we don’t want the candidate to know about this, so we’re
keeping it off the books. Our candidate… well, he has a problem with addictive
behaviors. If he knew we knew, he’d probably fire all of us rather than admit
there’s a problem. He’s already fired two guys for trying to talk to him about
it. That’s how I have a job. So he can’t know. If he finds out we hired you to
deal with the problem, he’ll fire me and then you don’t get paid."

She made a
noncommittal noise, and the new guy continued.

"But if we
don’t do something to stop this leaker, then the whole world’s going to know
about Lance Reeder and women. So we need you."

"I already
know about Lance Reeder and his… love life," she shrugged. "None of
that is really my problem, right? You don’t want me to get him into a 12-step
program; you just want me to stop the leaker, right?"

"Right."

Chambers
nodded.

"Tell me
who you are, so I know who to call when I find out."

"My name’s
Tilman. You’re not going to tell me yours?"

There was no
answer. When the two men looked around, no one was there.

Alyssa waited a
day before starting on the job.

Dressed in the
gray coveralls of a janitorial worker, Alyssa pushed a cart laden with cleaning
supplies and an oversized trash can. The elevator dinged, she pushed her cart
in, and rode to the twentieth floor. Once there, she went down the darkened
hallway until she reached the office of the Lance Reeder for Congress
Committee. The real cleaning company wasn’t scheduled to come until tomorrow.

Inside, she
quickly located the offices of the communications director and finance
director. Together with the campaign manager – this Tilman person, who hired
her – those two were usually the top staffers on a campaign. If one of Gibson’s
people was leaking crucial intelligence to the press, it was likely to be one
of them.