Executive Treason (32 page)

At 0112, after e-mailing Penny a thank you, Roarke logged onto Orbitz. He booked two tickets to Columbus, Ohio. He called the front desk for a 4:30 wake-up call. The last thing he remembered was willing himself to sleep.

“Rise and shine,” Roarke said over the phone. “We’re out at oh seven fifteen on Delta to Columbus. We get into Cincinnati at 12:01.”

“Got it,” a tired Shannon Davis replied. Roarke heard a big yawn. “And then?”

“I’ll fill you in on the way. You ready?”

“Yup. Your guy’s still dead, right?”

“We’ll find out.”

Sunday, 15 July

Roarke spoke from memory just above the din of the jet engines. His notes were in his attaché case. Davis leaned into him and sipped a virgin Bloody Mary. Roarke was in mid-thought.

“High school in Cincinnati. College in Chicago. ROTC. Then a distinguished service record. Army Rangers. He was sent to Iraq. While on a patrol, his squad was lured into an apartment building. They thought they were freeing hostages. It was a trap. Once they were inside, terrorists remotely detonated a bomb. Everyone was lost.”

“Jesus.” Davis remembered reading about the deadly attack. “So he’s dead.”

“On paper,” Roarke observed. “We’re going to talk to his parents about his life.”

West Chester Township, Ohio

They drove up a beautiful, tree-lined street in the Cincinnati suburb of West Chester Township, roughly twenty miles from downtown. West Chester was emerging as one of the fastest-growing and most desirable communities in the U.S. The homes ranged in value from under $200,000 to a half-million and up.

“Just ahead,” Davis said, acting as navigator in their latest rental car, ironically, a blue Kia sedan.

They rolled up to a custom-built, three-story brick and wood colonial on Hidden Oaks Road. “Nice digs,” Roarke observed. He wrapped up a half-eaten club sandwich and took the last swig of to-go coffee.

“You bet.” The house definitely appeared to be on the high-end of the homes in the area.

The lawn was immaculate, with seasonal flowers outlining a walkway through the quarter-acre front lawn. The entrance, faced with warm white shale, welcomed the two unannounced visitors. “This place takes real money to keep up,” Davis concluded.

But another feeling came to Roarke. “I have a strange sense of déjà vu,” Roarke volunteered as they got out of the car.

“Meaning?”

“That I feel his touch here.”

“How so?” asked Davis, coming around the car.

“Hard to describe.” Roarke continued to stare at the striking home. “It’s not the house that’s similar, not at all. It’s the feeling. It reminds me when I visited a woman in Massachusetts last year. Her place was simple. She was the mother of Teddy Lodge’s high school girlfriend. She died in a hit-and-run accident. The killer wasn’t found.” Roarke stopped and completed the thought directly to Davis. “Imagine that.”

“The work of your infamous Mr. Depp?” Davis asked.

“Not impossible.”

“Well, then, let’s meet Bill and Gloria Cooper and see what happens to that feeling.”

The humidity hit them halfway to the house. But both men couldn’t take their jackets off. Visible guns, even holstered, were not a good way to say hello.

Roarke rang the doorbell. “Coming,” they heard from inside. A beautiful inlaid wooden door opened a few moments later.

“Hello,” said a rather formal, almost stiff woman. She looked to be in her early seventies.

“Mrs. Cooper?” Roarke asked.

She sized up the visitors and didn’t like what she saw. “Yes,” she said coldly.

“My name is Scott Roarke.” He turned to Davis to do the rest of the introductions, which deftly spared him from actually saying where he worked.

“And I’m Shannon Davis, from the Federal Bureau of Investigations.” He produced his ID.

This reinforced her instant dislike. She barred the door.

“Mrs. Cooper, we’d like to talk to you.”

“Why?”

Davis looked behind him and down the street, a move which suggested the conversation really should move inside. “It’s about your son.”

“Considering you’re from the government, Mr. Davis, you know full well he died years ago in Iraq. There’s nothing more to talk about.” Her voice cracked. Tears were just behind her bitterness.

“Yes, we know that. We’d just like to learn more about him, what he was like as a boy, what his aspirations were.”

“Why?”

They knew this question would come, and they had rehearsed the answer. Davis continued to take the lead.

“Leadership characteristics, Mrs. Cooper. He had such special talent, from football to theater. And he gave his life for his country.”

“You took his life.”

“We know what happened, Mrs. Cooper. We’d like to talk about it,” Roarke tendered.

After a long thought, where Davis was certain she would close the door on them, she finally stepped aside. “Come in, I’ll get my husband.”

The New York Times
New York, New York

Michael O’Connell walked into his editor’s office, dumped his backpack on the floor, and parked a rolling Travelpro suitcase against Andrea Weaver’s wall.

The city desk editor looked up and smiled. “I don’t suppose you have a story yet?”

He’d called two hours earlier from customs. He didn’t get into anything at that time. “No.”

“Any chance you’ll be coming up with one soon?” Weaver asked quite seriously.

“Not unless you’d be interested in a one-word story.”

“What do you mean?”

O’Connell launched into an explanation, including the Chechen cover story.

“That’s all you got? That’s all he said?”

“That’s it. I still don’t know who the hell he was.”

“Are you sure you heard him right?”

“I think so. He had a thick accent, but it’s not as if he gave me a lot to memorize.”

“I don’t get it. It must have been something else,” Weaver proposed. “Have you checked with any translators? It probably isn’t even English.”

“I swear to God. That was all he said. It was in English. But I will check.”

“It doesn’t make any sense. Do you think it’s some kind of threat?”

“Don’t know. But I think he would have added missiles or bombs to it.”

“And he’s dead?”

“I didn’t stick around to find out. But I think so.”

“You sure he didn’t whisper anything else?” Weaver asked.

“Look, we didn’t have a chance to go out for a drink. He got fucking shot!” The reporter exhaled deeply. “Apparently, the FSB was onto the man. I’m lucky I got away.”

“Tell you what,” she recommended. “Go to the Internet. Type in the word, add any other fields you can think of, and see if something registers.”

He’d already planned on doing that.

“I think you better consider all the possibilities,” she added. “You have an expensive trip to account for.”

O’Connell picked up his bags and left, not worrying about the cost of the trip, but the cost of not finding out what the man meant. He headed straight for his desk in the City Room. He ignored the e-mails and started with Google.

“Okay, Ivan,” O’Connell said to himself, “what the hell were you trying to tell me?” He typed in the letters and waited to see what his first search produced.

West Chester Township, Ohio

Roarke and Davis were led into an airy living room with a vaulted ceiling. Gloria Cooper then excused herself to talk to her husband.

Roarke’s eyes wandered from the cherry cabinets and leather furniture that defined the room, to the French doors leading to the backyard. He looked through the glass. A garden pathway led past a small stream. The property stretched on into the woods, which bordered the Cooper’s home. It all appeared beautiful and, to Roarke, pristine.

Roarke turned back to the room. It was dark and cold, and although it was completely decorated, it also had an unused quality about it. The focal point was a shale fireplace. Above the mantle was a large photograph of a young man in a uniform, set off by an ornate frame. Richard Cooper.

Roarke stepped closer, utterly transfixed. He turned away only when he heard the footsteps of the Coopers coming into the room. Roarke and Davis had been alone for five minutes. Gloria Cooper obviously had used the time to convince her husband to come downstairs and listen to the visitors.

“Mr. Davis, Mr. Roarke, this is my husband, Bill.”

“Hello,” he said. Roarke gave him a quick study. Five-eleven, once taller, 210 to 220 pounds. High cheekbones. Thin lips. Short hair. Not unlike the man in the photograph.

“Mr. Cooper, thank you for inviting us into your house without any notice.” Davis continued to do the talking for the team. “We appreciate it.”

Davis restated the lie that brought them there. Mrs. Cooper invited them to sit down on the couch. The conversation started awkwardly. The Coopers were visibly guarded.

Roarke remained quiet through the first five minutes, encouraging them with smiles and nods. He continued to look around the room, often coming back to the picture above the fireplace.

“Richard got the acting bug in high school?” Roarke finally asked.

“Yes,” said Bill Cooper. “He was a great football player, but in the off-season he discovered acting through Moeller’s improvisation group.”

“Moeller?”

“Moeller—it’s a Catholic school that had a powerhouse football program for years. Probably will again. But while he was there, it lost ground to other schools and Richard tried acting. He loved it. Pretty soon, he told us he needed more than what Moeller offered.”

“Yes, but remember what he said?” Mrs. Cooper asked her husband. “He wanted to do important plays and grand roles.”

“That’s right,” he agreed. “Grand roles, so he told us he wanted to transfer.”

“I remember sitting in our house, not here, our old house, and talking to Richard about his choices,” Mrs. Cooper explained. “We didn’t really understand theater. We sure knew football. Everybody in Cincinnati does. After all, Bill was a running back in high school. That’s where I met him. And Richard had all his talent—”

“And more,” Bill added.

“But we didn’t want to tell Richard what to do. Not that he would have listened,” continued Gloria Cooper. “He was always so headstrong. So one day he announced that he wanted to apply to a high school across town. The School for Creative and Performing Arts.”

Bill Cooper picked up the story. “He felt he would get more out of a theater program than sports. That’s where he went. He did every play he could and never looked back at football again. He said he wanted to go into acting. He checked out colleges and chose Northwestern. He got a partial scholarship, but he still needed more help. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without that.”

Roarke held onto that thought for a moment. The Coopers were certainly living well. Very well for a retired auto mechanic and dental hygienist, he judged. He made a mental note to have their financial records pulled.

“Army ROTC?” Davis asked.

“Yes, they helped pay for school,” Bill said, suddenly losing his enthusiasm. “I wish…” He stopped short of completing the thought. He reached for his wife’s hand, but she pulled away.

Roarke immediately sensed the change of heart. He steered the conversation back in a lighter direction. “Tell us about the plays he did.” He wanted to learn about specific roles.

It was a better place to go. Gloria Cooper found happier thoughts again. “Oh, everything. More improvisation, musicals, dramas.” She went on to list his credits-Shakespeare, Ibsen, Miller.

Roarke memorized them all. Important plays and grand roles. After the Coopers shared more recollections, Roarke was ready to return to Richard Cooper’s early Army training, but in a less direct way than Davis had chosen. “Now, ROTC isn’t quite the ticket to Broadway.”

Mrs. Cooper looked at her husband. He waved her off. He wasn’t prepared to tell the story.

“As we said before, we needed the money,” she stated. “Richard told us that it would help him.”

Bill Cooper interrupted. “They trained him to kill. And then they took him to Iraq. He never did another play.”

Tears formed in Mrs. Cooper’s eyes, but only for an instant. The coldness she exhibited at the door returned. She willed the tears away. Her resolve drove the next thought. “I’ll tell you what your government did to our boy,” she said directly. “It’s in all his letters. You took his dreams away from him. You killed his spark, his joy. Oh, not at first. He couldn’t wait to get back, to find his way to New York or Los Angeles. But, as so many of his friends died, I felt like he was driven by something awful. His letters got more depressing. He wanted to leave and he couldn’t. So I think he acted his way through what he had to do. God only knows what that was. He never told us. And then one day, the boy we raised was gone.”

The New York Times

“Damnit!” O’Connell cursed. The word produced too many random hits.

Weapon. Bomb. Army. Navy. Air Force. Submarine.

Spy.

He ate at his desk, trying other word combinations. O’Connell didn’t know whether he’d even recognize a clue if he stumbled onto it.

West Chester Township, Ohio

The Coopers recounted the horrific story that Roarke had read about the night before. It was tenfold more difficult to hear in person.

“It was an afternoon in September 2004.” She gave the exact date, something Roarke already had in his file. “Richard was part of an Army Special Forces squad that was sent to clear out Iraqi terrorists from an apartment building in Baghdad. I still don’t know who they were. Sunnis or Shiites? They’re all the same to me,” Gloria said, dissolving into tears.

Bill cleared his throat and continued for her. “Richard and his buddies were lured into the building. It was pretty crazy just before the election. Everyone seemed to have a gun and Americans were being picked off right and left. It was insidious. They never should have been sent in. A CNN reporter said so. I have the tape. Apparently they heard that from a colonel who admitted it after the fact. After the fact! Why didn’t he make that decision before he sent those boys in? They pleaded with their commander. The whole thing was up in the air for an hour. The news interviewed someone who said that they were being pushed in to show the Iraqi Interior Ministry that the U.S. was fully committed. Well, the order stood. Richard and the others did what they were told.”

Gloria squeezed her husband’s wrist. “Richard was one of six. All brave boys. All with dreams, too. All with parents like us, still wondering who in their right minds could have ordered them into that death trap. No more than a minute after they went in, the apartment building exploded. Five floors. The whole thing collapsed in seconds.”