Shadows and Lies (17 page)

"What are you getting at?"

"There's been stories about it, so I'm not saying anything that isn't already known. Just confirming it I guess. People down there died some time. They'd disappear or they'd be found dead. It happened.”

“You mean people involved with the governor?"

"Uh-huh. Some of them. There was a reporter who covered the legislature and he drowned on a fishing trip. Almost everybody believed he was killed because he was researching a story on that bond arbitrage deal. The President's first campaign manager, Clyde Grissom, was shot dead downtown late one night. It was near a prostitute pickup area, gays, so the official story was one of those men he'd picked up had killed him. But he wasn't that way. I knew. You asked about Marty and the President? I think they had some of those people killed."

"What are you telling me, Alta?"

"Only when there is no other way out, when things are just too much, I think they arranged for accidents.'"

Powers didn't know how to respond. She was saying it so off handily. "You know this for a fact?"

"I've heard, and I believe it. Sometimes I think people didn't give them much choice. You asked about Chesty before? I wasn't entirely honest. He's the one who set them up, I think. He probably even did some of those people himself."

"Shanken's an assassin?"

Alta nodded her head against him lightly. "Sometimes. He's really pretty decent I think, but he does do things like that if it’s necessary. Chesty was in the Army for years, did field work all over the world for the NSA, and it caused him to see things differently than most people. I know I was really shocked when I first realized what he was up to. I don't know it for a fact but I think that's what Lily's about. Remember before, when I told you Chesty hired him? Well, the truth is I really don't know who wanted him on board. I don't think Chesty likes Lily very much. I know he doesn't trust him."

Shocked was hardly the word for it. "Am I in danger, Alta? From the White House, I mean," he asked quietly.

She didn't reply for a very long time. "That's why I said something, Danny," she whispered finally. "I think they're going to kill you before this is all done.”

TWELVE

The West Wing, 10:31 p.m
.

The President was in high spirits as Karp entered his working office. "Pull up a chair, my friend," Tufts said with a broad grin. "Have yourself a cee-gar." He handed over one of his Cohiba Esplenditos with a flourish.

Though Karp knew the answer he asked anyway. "What's the occasion?" He lit the cigar and drew his first puff, taking a moment to savor the pleasure as he was coming to savor so much more of his life lately.

"
She's
gone. What other reason do I need? It’s like being in prison when she’s around. I tell you, I have such a good time when that woman’s outta my life sometimes..." The grin sprang back in place. “Tonight I'm gonna howl!" And to make his point the President turned the word into a long wolf's call. "Yeah! Hell, Marty I'm starting to get happy with that damn acceptance speech, even if I did have to do most of the work on it myself."

“Mind if I have a drink?”

“Help yourself to the good stuff, Marty.”

After filling a tumbler Karp asked with is warmest smile, "Want to talk a little business or go straight to your private party?"

"She-it, I'll talk business all night knowing what's waiting for me in bed, warming themselves up right now. I don't care if they start without me, you understand, just so they don't finish, if you get my point."

"The dailies are in on the dead airman."

Tufts grimaced. "Lemme guess. The people are appalled and insist I do something. Am I right?"

Karp laughed. "That's about it."

"You know, that son of a bitch Saddam is a treacherous bastard. I guess we always knew that though, didn't we? He sure played Bush for a fool. But killing that poor guy and putting all those pictures of him on television was not part of my deal nor was this threatening Israel business. I made it clear to him I wanted no escalation and the son of a bitch agreed. I sure wish Julie was around right now. I'd ask that bastard just what the hell he thinks he's doing inflaming public opinion against me like this."

"I'm sure he’s doing it for home consumption."

"Yeah, but at my expense! Hell, he's getting all the oil he could ever use out of this deal as it is. If he keeps this kinda shit up I might actually have to do something and then where will we be? What's the C. fuckin' I.A. saying now? Has he really got two nukes?"

Karp removed the cigar from his lips. "It sure seems like it."

"Fuck, I knew it! Does the military think we've got a decent chance of knocking 'em off without something going bang?"

Karp shook his head. "They still haven't located them. Even then there will be no guarantees."

"Assholes! God, I loathe those military types. If I didn't need 'em so bad, we wouldn't have an army in this country."

"It's still a dangerous world out there."

Tufts eyed Karp. "You think I need a lesson on that right now? What else you got?"

"It looks as if Miss Marei is alive after all. My best estimate is that Powers is just likely to find your missing mistress. And soon. He's been every bit as discreet and effective as Becky anticipated. In fact, I'm worried he's a bit too clever."

"She's alive?" Tufts sat down, the look on his face abruptly inscrutable.

"She's probably been hurt pretty badly but Powers talked to an old friend of her family. It turns out he was a medical doctor in Lebanon and it appears he treated the woman for knife wounds."

"Where'd you get that?"

"We have Powers under close surveillance and know he interviewed a Dr. Kandari. We researched his background in more detail and learned he'd once been a medical doctor. We searched his house and found signs that he had treated someone recently. There were discarded bloody towels in his trash, packages used for sutures and other such items that makes this certain."

"What did the doctor say?"

"He's vanished. We're checking on him so we can learn what the woman might have said but nothing so far. There was no one at the house. I'm told it looked as if everyone cleared out fast."

"You think Powers alerted the guy?"

"Probably. But depending on how much the man already knew he comes from a part of the world where this kind of caution in these circumstances is second nature."

"I want him found and
debriefed
! You understand?"

"Yes. I'm using Justice to locate him. They don't know why or that the request came from me. Once we have him you can turn the matter over to Lily."

"Good. That's perfect. What about my papers? And those tapes?"

"We can't be certain until Powers locates Marei but my estimate is she will have them. If she doesn't, we'll know soon enough."

"Shit, Marty! Time is ticking here! We can't fuck around with this. Those papers and copies of the tapes could be anywhere by now."

"They weren't in Kandari's house and we'll find out shortly if he’s holding them. Someone like him won't know what to do with them at first, if ever. He'll be more frightened at having such material than anything else. We'll find him and my estimate is if he has anything, he'll still have it. No one’s contacted us, so I think we’ve got a handle on the situation."

"You better be right."

"I can live with that." Karp sipped his drink then contemplated the ash on the tip of his cigar. "I’m certain you already know that Marei's parents are no longer with us?"

"So I understand,” Tufts answered neutrally. “He was a nice guy. I really liked him. It’s just too bad."

"I agree that it was necessary. He set up the initial contacts for his daughter and we have to assume she told him everything. I understand the search came up clean. Finding everything would have been a pleasantly abrupt ending to this mess."

"You can’t always win. The hard part is this means Julie won't be with us much longer."

"What other choice is left?"

"None. What a waste though. So is Powers gonna find her today, or what?"

"I say we give him today. After that the gloves come off."

Tufts was suddenly jumpy. "Let's take it slow here, Marty boy. I don't want anyone else involved in this other than our guys, you understand?"

"I've had to alert key people that something may be coming up so they would be on standby."

"Damn it, Marty! I told you to do nothing unless I authorized it! What the hell are you doing going behind my back like that?"

"It was routine, Dick. Routine."

"Hey! Don't take that tone with me!"

Karp finished his drink then took a slow drag on the cigar before speaking in his most resonant voice, the one he'd saved as a trial lawyer for the closing argument. "I think when you return from New York that we need to have a heart-to-heart, Dick."

Tufts eyed Karp suspiciously. "What's that supposta mean?"

"I think it's time I had a bit more say around here. I have my eye on a number of appointments in certain regulatory agencies that will suit me very well. I'll explain it all after your re-nomination and I think you'll see it my way. In fact, I'm certain of it. Now why don't you go to your bedroom and get yourself laid. Isn't that what you've really got on your mind right now?"

Georgetown, 11:58 p.m.

They're going to kill you before this is all done.
Those were Alta's words but when Powers pressed her to say precisely just who “they
”
were she told him she'd said too much already. Nothing he did budged her and finally he let her drift off to a fitful sleep. It only confirmed what he had come to suspect. The only surprise was that she had been so candid.

He was being used. The question was who was doing the using? Karp, the President – or Becky? Given Alta’s zealous devotion to the First Lady, it struck him as highly improbable the woman would have warned him against any plan on Becky’s part. That left the other two, or someone connected to the White House whose presence he had yet to detect.

Powers carried his clothes into the darkened living room and dressed quietly. He had to stop these foolish interruptions and find Julie Marei, if he was going to learn what was going on. Assuming she was in condition to help and willing, only then could he figure out a way to survive.

It was drizzling steadily and once outside he wished he'd thought to take one of the umbrellas from beside the front door of the brownstone. Instead he pulled the collar of his coat tight about his neck and ducked his head as he hurried to the taxi stand.

The Burnside Apartments appeared shut down for the night as he'd hoped. No one saw him enter but on the stairs the woman who told him about Dorat's murder that morning passed coming down. She smiled warmly. "Miserable weather, isn't it?"

"Yes." He continued to Yvette Dorat's door. As expected there was no police presence, just an official yellow evidence tape stretched across the doorway and a police lockout. He lifted the tape from one side, picked the lock, then used the key there to enter, placing the tape where it had been as he shut the door. He didn’t risk the apartment lights and limited himself to his penlight.

Powers had seen the dead before, more than he cared to recall, yet when he was first assigned to homicide there had been a distinct feeling about apartments and houses where someone had been murdered. Go into enough of them, learn the sordid details surrounding those deaths, and after a few years that feeling disappears. This was just an apartment. One where he had talked with a lovely, frightened young woman, but just an apartment.

The detectives had done their usual sloppy work. There was black graphic fingerprint dust everywhere. A section of the carpet in the bedroom had been cut and removed. Except for incidental fingerprint dust, the floor was clean, having been carefully vacuumed since they wanted to lift any fibers or hairs for examination. In three places, the police had gouged out a portion of the wall, leaving bare holes. In the kitchen, Powers checked under the sink and located rubber gloves which he slipped on. Dorat's hands had been smaller than his own but he managed.

He started at the telephone but the detectives had taken the message pad and any miscellaneous scraps of paper. There was a small desk in the living room corner near the window and he worked his way through it carefully. Her address book was missing as he expected. The detectives had taken many of the papers, though not everything, but he found nothing helpful on what remained.

His cell phone chirped and he considered not answering but realized that was pointless. "Yes?"

"I woke up and you weren't here," Alta said. "Where are you?"

"I couldn't sleep and recalled an errand."

"At one in the morning? That's some errand."

"Go back to sleep. I'm almost finished."

Alta complained and wanted to know where he was but, when he evaded her, she finally told him just to hurry up. Powers worked his way through the apartment, taking his time because he did not plan to risk this again. There was nothing. Finally, he sat at the dining table beside the wall-mounted telephone. The place was absent any help – and perfect. It was everything he would expect a flight attendant’s apartment to be and the holes in the walls told him why. That was something he’d considered but dismissed earlier as unlikely.

He had no real excuse as to why it had taken so long to put this together. He could blame the fact that, for eight months, he had been wrapped in grief, or that the suddenness of this assignment had caught him unprepared. Either way, he had been slow in recognizing clues when he learned of them.

Now it was looking as if he had been foolish to be so optimistic earlier. The police likely had what he was after and it was not going to be easy gaining access. Maybe Alta could pull it off for him, but if she did, where would that leave him?

He had been slow to replay in his mind the conversation with Dorat, and only then did her words register. Dorat had said something about "the fountains," that her friend Julie might have gone there, but she didn't think so, not without telling her.

Since recalling the words, Powers had been wracking his brains trying to figure out what she had meant by “fountains.” He had hoped to find the answer here. He glanced at the telephone then lifted the receiver which lit up. Dorat had nine "easy dial" numbers programmed. There was one for Julie, one for work, two to France – then other names, probably of friends or family.

He tried the button for a woman named "Margaret" then hung up after twenty rings. Next he pressed the button for a "Bob." On the tenth ring a very sleepy voice answered, "Who the hell is this? Don't you know it's the middle of the night?"

"I'm sorry to bother you, sir," Powers said in his best cop voice, "but we're working round the clock on this case and I didn't realize it was so late. I’m sure you understand."

"What do you want now? You guys were just here two hours ago. I told you everything I know, all right? Hell, I've told it to you ten times."

"Just one question we overlooked, sir. We found a reference to 'fountains' in Miss Dorat's address book and wondered if that meant anything to you."

The man was suspicious. "Which one are you?"

"I'm sorry? Which one 'what?'"

"Give me your name, buddy. Let's see if it's the same as the cops I just talked to."

"I'm not one of them. I've been working the physical evidence here at the scene."

"You say you're in Yvette's apartment?"

"That's right. I've been working through the papers we didn't take earlier."

"Wait there." The man hung up.

Powers decided to give it two minutes then run like hell in the event the man called the Metropolitan Police. He was checking his watch when the telephone rang.

"Hello?" Powers answered.

"Are you the guy I just talked to?"

"Yes, sir. Detective Young. Sorry if I didn't make that clear earlier."

The man was obviously relieved. "You want to know about the fountains, you say?"

"That's right. I see a reference here but I can't make out what it means."              

"It's the cabin of some friends of hers in the Massanutten Mountains, outside of Seven Fountains. There's no telephone or anything. Are you planning on going there?"

"I'm not certain yet. Let me get directions just in case."

"Okay. You take sixty-six out of Arlington, then turn on this little state road at Front Royal. No, that's no good, not in this weather. You best go all the way to eighty-one then turn south. You'd get off at Woodstock, then turn back east before taking state six-seven-eight north. Drive through Seven Fountains, it's not much, but if you reach Dilbeck you've gone too far. The place is about three miles out of Seven Fountains. You'll see a gravel driveway, really more like a road, marked with a mail box. The name on it is Ostergren. It's up there. You can't miss it."

"Thank you. You've been most helpful. And again our condolences on your loss."

"You just catch the bastards. That's all the condolence I'm after." Then with venom. "You get those sons a bitches."

The West Wing, 2:51 a.m.

Karp replaced the telephone receiver, paused, pursed his lips, then pressed a telephone number which was answered on the first ring. “I need to know about someone.”

“Call the Bureau,” the voice said.

“This is more your line.”

“If you say so. Black hat or white?”

“I’m not expecting to make him a friend.”

“All right. Give me what you have.”

Cleveland Park, 3:16 a.m.

Powers walked toward the Cleveland Park brownstone without spotting a taxi. He entered hills that rose from the Potomac River and, by the time he reached Montrose Park, decided to hoof it the rest of the way and took winding Lovers Lane, then Rock Creek Drive. It was no longer raining and there was a trace of wind, blowing from the southeast. Clouds rode low over the Capitol, made luminescent from the city’s night lights. The air was sweet and the asphalt shiny and slick.

For the first time in years, Powers wished he had a cigarette. He had always smoked most heavily at times like this, when he was on the verge of breaking the case, when he would discover the truth, or as much of it as there ever was to learn, rather than what he believed he knew. With the truth came understanding. Events that made little sense or were seemingly inexplicable, suddenly became coherent, once placed in context. It was a tantalizing sensation which would not last long, one he had always enjoyed in the past, but this time the occasion left a flat, bitter taste in his mouth and his stomach cinched into a tight ball.

Alta was fast asleep as he undressed and slipped into bed beside her. After the cool of the night air her body was feverishly hot to his hands. Her skin was tight, smooth as a newborn’s, and her two small breasts precisely fit in the palm of his hand as he pressed himself against her.

"You're cold," she murmured sleepily then rolled towards him. "What did you find out?" Her fingers lazily stroked his penis.

"Nothing."

Slowly his hands and lips roused her but he was in no hurry. He wanted to prolong this time, stretching it out as long as possible, using the sex to block his restless mind, to suspend apprehension, and to reassure him that there was, after all, solace in the world.

Again, she moaned from somewhere deep inside when she came. He had never before known a woman so consumed by her orgasm. And as before, it left her listless, as if she had been heavily drugged.

When Alta was asleep Powers slipped from the bed and redressed. He took his bag quietly from the closet, left the apartment, then eased the rear door to the brownstone shut behind him. He paused a moment on the landing. A thick fog floated in the air now that the wind had also stopped. In the shadows, he detected the faintest motion. Powers gripped the Walther automatic in his coat pocket.

A voice spoke from the darkness. "Mr. Carpenter. There is no cause for alarm. I only wish to speak with you. I regret that you were attacked. I had absolutely nothing to do with that. Please don't draw your weapon. For your sake rather than mine." The voice spoke with an immaculate English accent, bearing only the slightest vestige of Middle Eastern intonation. A lighter flickered momentarily. "I prefer we speak here rather than risk being seen together." Powers advanced cautiously into the night shadows. "I am here in peace, I assure you,” the figure said. “You know you are being watched?"

"Yes, but I've never been able to make anyone out."

"No. They are very good, almost too casual about it. Please remove your hand from the gun in your pocket and I will do the same. That is better for us both. My name is Salah Nasr, no relation to the late President Nassar's infamous murderer. I am Dr. Kandari's son-in-law. I suspected you might come back to the Burnside Apartments, so I waited and picked you up there. So did others, but they haven't seen me.
Vous as quelque chose a me dire?
” Powers did not respond. “You don’t know French, I see.”

“Should I?” Nasr was a shadow in the mist.

“In this circumstance, it is in your interest that you do not.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re no fool. You must suspect.”

“That Dorat was a French agent? Certainly.”

“Very good. And quite accurate.”

“What was the point of your question?”

“Don’t be naive, not after demonstrating how clever you are. My reason should be obvious. The French, with good reason, don’t trust your President. They believe he will act against their interests in the Gulf and I think they are right. They were hoping to learn in advance what he intends. Perhaps they succeeded and are closing their links.”

“They’d kill their own agent?”

“Mr. Carpenter,
they
kill one another all the time.”

With the help of the glowing cigarette and improving night vision Powers could make Nasr out now. He was slender and as tall as he was, mid-30's with a trim mustache. He wore a dark raincoat and fedora. Most significant was a sense of the predator about him.

"In view of circumstances I thought we should meet and talk, assuming you passed my little test, as I thought you would," Nasr continued.

“You’d have killed me if I’d understood your question in French?”

“Our conversation would have taken a different direction and in circumstances of my control until I was completely satisfied you are not also a French agent.”             

"What is it you want?"

"For one thing to apologize on behalf of my family for the attack upon you and the young woman. I was told of events too late to stop them. I am relieved you were not seriously injured."

"Who were they?"

"Cousins. Hotheads is the word in America for them. They were here to avenge the murder of the Mareis, since they correctly concluded that whoever attacked Julie was also responsible for their deaths. They falsely assumed the man searching for her was also the killer. I knew better and would have told them so, if given the chance. You are all right then?"