Conspiracy Page 2

  And the knowledge choked him.

  Best to leave it like this, he thought. Best to leave the image intact, even as the snarling dog of cynicism, of apathy and black despair, growled at his neck. He was in a hole and he was not getting out. The drive he’d taken to cheer himself up had done the opposite. There was no fooling himself, no fooling the cloud that clung to him every moment of every day.

  Forester’s cell phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket.

  “Forester.”

  “Jerry, where are you?”

  “Running a little late.”

  “Wait until you see the nightgown I’m wearing. How long before you get here?”

  “Half hour.”

  “Oh, pooh. I’m going down to the bar.”

  “In the gown?”

  “I might.”

  “Call up room service. I’ll put the pedal to the metal.”

  “You better.”

  As Forester switched off the phone, he noticed a police cruiser growing in his rearview mirror. He glanced down at his speedometer; he was doing just over sixty. The state had a law against driving with a cell phone and required seat belts to be buckled, but it was too late to do anything about either; the bubblegum lights erupted red. He hit his blinker and pulled off the side of the road before reaching for his Service ID.

  3

  AMANDA RAUCI TOOK another sip from the wine and glanced at her watch. It was nearly half past seven.

  Where the hell is Jerry? she thought to herself, putting the glass down. He should have met her at least two hours ago. Even if he’d gotten lost, it shouldn’t have taken him this long to get here.

  And Jerry Forester never got lost.

  Maybe his rotten bitch of a soon-to-be ex-wife had called him with some new bullshit. She was always torturing him with something, even though they were getting a divorce and hadn’t lived together for nearly a year. Amanda couldn’t understand why he even took the bitch’s calls, since inevitably they ended with her screaming at him.

  Actually, Amanda could. Forester wanted custody of his two sons, or at least some connection with them. The bitch was doing her damnedest to keep it to a minimum.

  Amanda caught a glimpse of herself in the hotel room’s full-length mirror. The nightgown, which had seemed so sexy when she’d put it on earlier, looked a little silly, even sad. She decided to change into her street clothes. When she was dressed, she picked up her cell phone and called Forester again. The call, her third in the past hour or so, went to voice mail like the others.

  “Hey, where are you?” she asked. “Meet me in the bar, OK? And hurry up. I’m hungry.”

  IN THE HALF hour she waited at the bar, Amanda turned down two different offers of drinks. With her hunger getting the better of her, she asked the bartender for a menu, then gave Forester another call. Once again she got his voice mail. She didn’t bother leaving a message.

  The baked sole in vermouth was very good, but Amanda left most of it. Too many people were staring at her, calculating whether they might relieve her loneliness.

  This wasn’t like Forester, not at all.

  Amanda went back to her room, half-expecting—hoping—that the light on the phone would be blinking, indicating she had a message. But it wasn’t.

  Amanda started to dial the number for his office, thinking he might have checked in. She stopped before the call went through. Their relationship was a secret, and besides, by now there would be no one to check in with. It was going on eight o’clock.

  Amanda went to the desk in the corner of the room and picked up the phone. Gerald Forester had not checked into the hotel; he didn’t even have a reservation, according to the clerk. This didn’t necessarily bother Amanda—the hotel wasn’t that busy, and maybe Jerry had always intended on staying with her anyway.

  Maybe. Ordinarily, though, he reserved his own room, since the Service paid.

  A phone book sat at the edge of the desktop. She pulled it over and leafed through the yellow pages, caught between her instincts to act and the uncertainty of what to do. Then the investigator in her took over; she flipped to the hospital listings and began making calls.

  The list was quickly exhausted. No Gerald Forester had been checked in or reported to an emergency room.

  The only possible reason for standing her up was that something was happening on his case. Amanda didn’t know exactly what it involved—Jerry never discussed what he was working on. But she did know that he hadn’t planned on doing any real work until tomorrow.

  Amanda called the desk again. Had Mr. Forester checked in yet?

  “No,” said the clerk, annoyed. “Did you call earlier?”

  Amanda put down the phone. And then, on a whim, or maybe to satisfy a growing sense of insecurity, she began dialing other hotels in the area, asking if a Gerald Forester had checked in.

  Did she think he was cheating on her? It wouldn’t be cheating, exactly, if they weren’t married. She was worried, and insecure, and unsure. After the third call—“No guest by that name, sorry”—Amanda got up and began pacing the room.

  Amanda heard a noise in the hall. She stopped, held her breath as she heard the footsteps.

  Decide, she told herself. Are you mad at him for being late and not calling, or are you happy nothing is wrong and he’s finally here?

  Happy.

  But whoever was outside didn’t stop at her door. She opened it, saw another man taking out a key several rooms away.

  Back inside, Amanda called the next hotel.

  “Do you have a Mr. Gerald Forester there?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Should I connect you to the room?”

  Amanda felt as if she’d been punched in the chest. “Please.”

  The phone rang, but there was no answer.

  THE DANBURY RAMADA was only two miles from the InterContinental, and it took less than ten minutes to get there. Amanda’s heart sank when she saw Forester’s car in the parking lot. She sat in her car with the engine running, literally feeling sick to her stomach.

  And then her anger took over.

  Who the hell was he in there with? Where did he come off calling her—calling her—and then standing her up?

  Amanda got out and walked toward the hotel. She was angry—too angry, she thought—and she reversed course.

  Why would he reserve a room in another hotel without telling her?

  Maybe it was to keep their affair a secret.

  Amanda passed by his car. Looking inside the passenger-side window, she saw a notebook, some pens, and the edge of a room card.

  So he’d checked in earlier, without even telling her!

  Forester was always locking his keys in somewhere—his car, his office, his house. To avoid embarrassment, he planted spares all over the place. When he stayed somewhere, he made sure to get two cards and left one in his car. He must have gotten up here earlier, gone out, come back—maybe to pick up someone.

  Amanda ducked under the rear bumper on the passenger’s side, fishing for the small metal key container Forester kept there. She took it, then slid open the top and took out the car key, only to find that he hadn’t bothered to lock his car.

  There was no room number on the key—but the small envelope it came in had the number in tiny script at the bottom edge.

  She could surprise him if she wanted. Surprise him in bed with whatever whore he’d picked up.

  Unless it was his wife. Amanda scanned the parking lot, sure for a second that his soon-to-be ex had come up here to confront him about something. But Amanda didn’t see the car.

  She was being ridiculous, acting like a petty bitch herself. She put the key card back and started toward her car.

  He did owe her an explanation. Leaving her waiting at the bar for hours was rotten.

  And uncharacteristic.

  Why not go up there right now? If he was cheating on her, at least she would know.

  Amanda realized that she hadn’t replaced the spare key holder. She turned and walked back to the
car. But before she got there, she changed her mind again: she was going up to his room. She opened the car door, grabbed the room key, and then walked quickly into the hotel, determined to confront him before she could change her mind.

  There was no one at the front desk. She walked straight ahead toward the elevators, head down, determined.

  Angry.

  The elevator doors opened in slow motion. Amanda got inside, pressed the button for the fifth floor.

  The doors opened in a few seconds. She found the room at the very end of the hall, took a deep breath, and knocked.

  “Room service,” she said curtly, her anger still sharp.

  No answer.

  Amanda knocked again. “Room service,” she said, a little louder. “Mr. Forester?”

  Nothing.

  “Jerry, open the damn door.”

  Still nothing. Amanda slipped the card into the slot. The two lights at the top of the lock came on, both red, then green.

  I shouldn’t go in, she thought to herself, placing her hand on the handle. She pushed anyway.

  “Jerry?” she said. The light was on. “Why are you—”

  She stopped in mid-sentence. Her lover sat in the chair across from the door, a good portion of his mouth and head blown away by a bullet from the old-school .357 Magnum that sat on the floor below his open hand.

  4

  CHARLIE DEAN PULLED the strap of his bag over his shoulder and stepped out of the plane, ambling down to the concrete runway. A narrow man with thinning hair near the terminal bent toward Dean as he approached.

  “Mr. Dean?”

  “I’m Charlie Dean.”

  “Red Sleeth.” The man stuck his hand out. “How are you?”

  “When your girl said there would be a driver waiting, I didn’t expect it to be the guide himself,” said Dean.

  “We’re a one-man operation,” replied Sleeth. “One man, one woman—the girl was my wife. I don’t think she’d be offended,” added Sleeth, reaching for the bag.

  Dean insisted on carrying it himself. He followed Sleeth as he walked toward a parking lot on the side of the terminal.

  “I’m glad you had an opening,” said Dean. “I know this was kind of last-minute.”

  “Happy to have you. Customer who canceled will be happy, too. We refund his deposit if we find someone else to take the slot.”

  Sleeth’s battered Ford Bronco looked a few years older than the nearby mountains. Dean paused a few feet from the vehicle and looked around. The sun had already set, but he could see the tall shadows in the distance. It was beautiful country; you stood in a parking lot and thought you were at the edge of the world.

  “Never been to Montana, have you, Mr. Dean?”

  “No, sir. Beautiful land.” Charlie swung back to the truck.

  “Yes, it is,” said Sleeth. “Ready to get yourself a mountain lion?”

  “Ready.”

  “Good. It’ll be the greatest experience of your life. There’s nothing as exciting as hunting a mountain lion. Everything else you’ve ever done will pale in comparison.”

  Dean knew that wasn’t true but smiled anyway.

  5

  DURING THE SIXTY seconds immediately after she saw her lover’s dead body, Amanda Rauci acted like the trained Secret Service agent she was. Unholstering her pistol, she checked the rest of the room and made sure there were no intruders. She then went to him, squatting just close enough to make sure he was dead.

  There was no question. Blood, skull, and brain material from the gunshot’s exit wound had splattered on the curtain behind him. The back of the seat and floor were covered with thick red blood.

  As Amanda straightened, the restraint imposed by the Service training began to slip away. She felt many things: Shock and grief and fear. Panic. Her heart raced.

  Why would he do this?

  Why didn’t I realize he was suicidal?

  Is it my fault?

  Is it really suicide? How can that be?

  His eyes gaped at her, as if they were accusing her of something.

  I have to get away, she thought, and for the next sixty seconds the trained Secret Service agent shared the body of a panicking, guilt-stricken woman. She backed from the room, carefully making sure not to touch anything. She took a handkerchief from her pocket, opened the door, closed the door, walked swiftly down the hall toward the elevator, then came back and ducked into the stairway instead. Amanda descended all the way to the bottom floor, where the stairwell opened to the outside. She turned and pushed the crash bar with the side of her hip, then walked around to her car.

  Amanda didn’t begin to cry until she was almost to her hotel. The tears slipped down her cheeks in ones and twos. Then, as she waited to turn into the parking lot, they burst from her eyes in a steady downpour.

  The driver behind her laid on the horn. Startled, Amanda went straight instead of turning, accelerating and then hitting her brake to pull into the lot of a Friendly’s restaurant. She left the car running but leaned her head on the wheel to weep.

  Why did he kill himself? Why? Why?

  Why did he have her wait for him?

  Why? Why?

  And why had she snuck away, as if she were guilty of something? As if she were the killer?

  She couldn’t leave him like that. She should call the police.

  But they’d want to know why she was there. And then everyone would know why she was there. It would be one more thing that would hurt his sons.

  And the police would want to know why she didn’t report it in the first place. They’d want to know why she let herself in and then left. It would look like she was a murderer.

  She could go back, she thought. Do it all over. No one had seen her.

  She should do that for him. Not let him lie there for hours until he was found.

  Amanda did her best to dry her tears. She decided she would go back, get into the room, and make the call. Everything would be more or less as it had really happened—except she wouldn’t mention that she had left.

  And she’d put the keys back, the room key and the car key. She’d completely forgotten about them.

  Her resolve melted when she saw two police cars in front of the hotel, their red lights tearing up the night.

  Now what should she do?

  She looked back at the road just in time to see a policeman flagging her down. She slammed on the brake and jerked to a stop right in front of him.

  Were they looking for her? Did they suspect her?

  God, no one would believe her if she told the truth.

  Why did you run if you had nothing to hide? You panicked? What professional law enforcement officer, what Secret Service agent, ever panics?

  She hadn’t panicked.

  Yes. Yes, she had.

  Amanda reached to roll down her window, waiting for the inevitable question, waiting for everything that would follow. Then she realized that the policeman was simply stopping traffic. There was an ambulance coming from the other direction, siren on and lights flashing.

  It’s too late. Much, much too late.

  I should follow it in, she thought. But when the officer pointed at her and waved her on, she complied.

  6

  “SO, MR. RUBENS, you don’t believe that the National Security Agency should spy on Americans?”

  William Rubens took a slow breath before answering, very conscious that he was being set up.

  “Our job is to provide intelligence, Senator,” the NSA’s deputy director said. “We have strict guidelines for gathering and disseminating information, and we follow them.”

  “But you believe that Americans should be spied on.”

  “Senator, my role is to follow the law regardless of what I believe,” said Rubens. “And no, as a personal matter, I do not believe that.”

  Senator Gideon McSweeney smiled broadly, looking around the committee room as if he had just scored some massive point.

  “And was the law followed in the so-called American
Taliban case?” McSweeney asked.

  “Speaking for my agency’s actions, absolutely.”

  “Without qualification?”

  “The law was absolutely followed. No qualifications.”

  The senator paused, looking down at the papers in front of him.

  “Did you obtain subpoenas before gathering your intelligence?” McSweeney asked finally.

  Rubens leaned back in the chair. Ordinarily his boss, NSA Director Admiral Devlin Brown, would be sitting in this chair, doing his best not to tell the senators what he really thought of them. But Brown had suffered a heart attack three weeks before, leaving Rubens to take the hot seat while he recovered.

  “We followed the law, as always,” said Rubens.

  “Did you obtain subpoenas?” McSweeney asked again.

  “Where necessary.”

  “And where were they necessary?”

  Rubens had been instructed by the President not to be specific about the intelligence gathering in the case, which had involved a misguided young man from Detroit who had unfortunately gotten himself involved in a plot to destroy a crude oil receiving station in the Mexican Gulf.

  Much of the information had come via a high-ranking al Qaeda operative who had come to the United States to make contact with sympathizers. Deep Black had implanted a bugging device in his skull; the device was still there, continuing to transmit valuable information to the NSA. Describing the subpoenas could, conceivably, lead to information about the operation itself, and Rubens had no intention of revealing anything that had not already been made public.

  “I can only say, Senator, that the law was followed,” Rubens said.

  “A law in which there are no checks and balances, since the subpoenas are handed down in secret and need never be revealed.”

  “There is a system in place,” said Rubens. “I can elaborate if you wish.”

  McSweeney had no intention of letting Rubens take up the rest of his allotted time with an explanation of how the independent but secret judicial panel did its job, an explanation that would include the fact that more than 30 percent of the requests for subpoenas were turned down and that roughly 85 percent of the subpoenas resulted in an arrest or a documented disruption of a terrorist plot. Instead, McSweeney gave a short speech that invoked everyone from Thomas Jefferson to John Sirica as he discoursed on the need to uphold basic American values in the continuing war against terrorism.