Conspiracy Read online

  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.”

  15

  “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.”

  16

  “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 befor
e 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.

  “The lead investigator, an agent by the name of Mandarin, has also been assigned to this case,” said Jackson. “That’s not necessarily a coincidence, though Mandarin is regarded as one of their top investigators.”

  Jackson added that Mandarin had told him that he thought Forester had killed himself because “that’s where the evidence is,” but that the agency wasn’t going to close out the case any time soon.

  “Prior to his death, Agent Forester made some inquiries by e-mail to a person in Vietnam. He wanted to talk to someone there, though it’s not clear why. We don’t know what he intended to ask or hoped to find out. We don’t even know for sure who it was he was trying to talk to. We have narrowed down the number of possibilities to three, all of whom both have a connection to the present government and were involved somehow in the war. That’s significant because Vietnam was believed to have been working on a program to assassinate American leaders three years ago.”

  “And that,” said Ruben dryly, “is why you are here and we are involved.”

  Jackson continued to fill in details, noting that McSweeney had served in Vietnam, which would make him an excellent candidate for a revenge plot. He also admitted that there was considerable room for skepticism. The NSA had a “robust” system in place for intercepting and monitoring Vietnamese communications, official and otherwise, and while these were being reviewed, no information had been gathered that revealed an assassination plot.

  “Also, if Agent Forester thought that the threat originated from Vietnam, he would have communicated that to his superiors,” added Jackson. “And he did not.”

  “Maybe he didn’t get the chance,” said Lia.

  “Possibly.”

  “What did McSweeney do in Vietnam?” Dean asked.

  “He was a Marine officer,” said Jackson. “Toward the end of the war, he served as a commanding officer with the strategic hamlet program in Quang Nam Province, outside of Da Nang.”

  “I know where it is,” said Dean.

  It was the same area where he had served. He didn’t know McSweeney, though he had heard of the strategic hamlet program—a risky, typically Marine-type program that had troops live with the Vietnamese. It was a good idea or a loony idea depending on who was talking about it. They all agreed it hadn’t worked.

  “How do you feel about Vietnam, Charlie?” asked Rubens.

  Dean shrugged. “I don’t feel anything particularly.”

  “Very well. Then I want you and Lia to go there and find Agent Forester’s contact and see if you can get him to shed light on his message.” He looked at his watch. “Spend the rest of the day familiarizing yourself with Agent Forester and his investigation. Be back and ready to leave this evening.”

  17

  THE SHOOTER HAD had a clear, easy shot from the fourth-floor window. He’d have been able to see the senator’s car arrive and had a good angle as he walked up toward the door. The shooter would have been able to see the decoy as well, assuming he had walked in the middle of the sidewalk.

  Charlie Dean knelt at the window, studying the view. Eighty-five yards, with traffic, people, distractions—it wasn’t surprising that the shooter had missed. Forget the fact that the rifle and ammunition were off-the-shelf: adrenaline would have been the shooter’s real enemy. How many people could even learn to control their breath under stress? It wasn’t easy. The instructors told Charlie he had a knack for it, but he didn’t think it was easy.

  And yet the setup seemed perfect. The shot was clear; there was no trace of a bullet, no trace of anyone in the room.

  That argued that the shooter was, if not a professional, someone who took extreme care, who’d thought about the setup a great deal.

  “What did he use to steady the gun?” Dean said, stepping back. “If he didn’t shoot from the window ledge, what did he use? Did he have a tripod? No way he took an offhand shot.”

  “He puts something on the radiator there,” said Lia, pointing. “Takes it with him when he’s gone.”

  “Nobody sees him.”

  Dean went back to the window and stared down. Maybe the guy was a pro, but one out of practice, a man who hadn’t killed in a long time. Someone like himself, who knew the theory but had lost the steps, who got too excited when the moment came. Who’d missed—just as Dean had when the lion charged.

  “Charlie Dean, Charlie Dean—what are you thinking?” Lia asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Dean as he rose.

  He scanned the block, looking for anything that might have distracted the shooter. Then Dean did the same thing in the room. It was a high-ceilinged, empty office; the linoleum on the floor was stained but swept clean, the walls bare except for shadows where photos had once hung.

  “So?” asked Lia.

  “Let’s go see what the Secret Service people have to say.”

  18

  “LET ME PUT it this way,” Brian Wilson told Senator McSweeney as he began the slide show on his laptop. “If it weren’t for the possibility of collateral damage, I’d say you should get shot at every week. You’ve gained four to five points in the polls in every state. The metrics are definitely trending in your direction.”

  Jimmy Fingers rolled his eyes. Though in his early thirties, Wilson looked as if he were still a college kid, and dressed the part. He constantly sprinkled terms like “metrics” and “coefficients” into his talk. Jimmy Fingers wasn’t so old-fashioned that he would ever allow a candidate to seek office without a pollster, even if he was only running for dog-catcher. Still, Jimmy resented the tendency to reduce everything to numbers, and
thought they were way overvalued.

  What did people think of McSweeney? That was what was important, after all. Did they think he was lucky to be alive? Or did they think he was special enough that the assassin’s bullet had missed because of fate or God’s hand?

  The answer meant a world of difference. But of course Wilson didn’t even ask the question.

  “There are a few days left to make an impression for Super Tuesday. With all the publicity about the assassination attempt, I’d like to shoot a spot emphasizing your war record,” suggested Brian Carouth, the campaign’s media consultant, after the pollster wrapped up. “I think it will play very well.”

  “No. We don’t need to do that,” said McSweeney. “The spots we’re using have done just fine.”

  “A little more biography—” suggested Carouth.

  “Issues are what’s important,” said McSweeney. “My health plan, immigration, taxes. That’s what we pound.”

  “Now, Senator, as we all know, people vote for the man, not the white paper,” said Wilson. He glanced at Jimmy Fingers, probably expecting him to help, but Jimmy said nothing. “And a war record is a big plus. It says a lot about a man’s character.”

  “The Vietnam War is not the negative it once was,” added Carouth. “That’s ancient history.”

  “There’s no need to bring up my military record,” said McSweeney. “We’ll leave it alone.”

  Jimmy Fingers recognized from McSweeney’s tone that he would not change his mind on the matter, even as Wilson continued pushing the ads. It was refreshing to see the consultant strike out so decisively, thought Jimmy Fingers.

  Truth be told, Jimmy Fingers actually agreed with Wilson. But since when was truth an important ingredient in a political campaign?

  19

  LIA FLICKED THROUGH the notebook. Most preschoolers had handwriting neater than Forester’s. Nor were his notes particularly informative or complete. An entire page would be devoted to a time—10:30, say—that appeared to be for an appointment, though neither a date nor a place was recorded. The words “Pine Plains” were written at the top of the last page. At the bottom of the page, were numbers and one word: “84, Parkway, 44, 82.”