Free Fall (57 page)

Was Taylor contacting the others? Would they put aside partisanship and combine forces against him?

Hallorin hadn't spoken since he entered the van, knowing how his silence affected Peck, using it to punish him. But now, he had to talk, to know what had happened, to create a contingency plan. He would be the fourty-fourth president of the United States. And he would do whatever had to be done to ensure that.

"How, Roland?"

Peck didn't answer immediately, apparently startled by Hallorin's sudden break from silence.

"How?" Hallorin repeated.

"Sherman. Tom Sherman," Peck said, finally.

"What?"

"Tom Sherman. He was one of Hoover's most trusted aides during the time the data for Prodigy was being collected. It's hard to tell how much power he had because he was too young at the time for Hoover to give him any kind of meaningful title. Far too young. But it is my understanding that even when he was only in his early thirties, his power at the FBI couldn't have been overestimated."

Hallorin remembered meeting Tom Sherman years ago when Sherman was the associate director of the FBI. He'd come away with the impression that the quiet, unassuming bureaucrat was probably one of the most dangerous men he'd ever shaken hands with a seemingly impossible combination of Boy Scout and calculating son of a bitch. And to make him even more of a threat, Sherman had a personal fortune that rivaled his own. The man was untouchable. Hallorin had been ecstatic when Sherman retired.

"You think he had a duplicate file?" Hallorin shook his head.

"Why Sherman? It could have been anyone from that era of the Bureau."

Peck held out a piece of paper. Hallorin wiped away the sweat oozing from his palms and reached for it.

"You're looking at a police report from Manassas, Virginia, where Tom Sherman owns a home. Three days ago he was shot in what looked like a burglary attempt."

Hallorin dropped the paper to the floor.

"What does that have to do with the file? Who "

"Mark Beamon was there," Peck cut in, speaking in his customarily clipped sentences.

"He killed the man that attacked them. That man still hasn't been identified. It's too much to be a coincidence. Too much.

Besides, anyone else who was close to Hoover is either dead or too old to orchestrate something like this. It makes sense--if any one party had gotten ahold of the file, he could have used the duplicate original to cancel out the effect."

Hallorin slammed a fist into the van's side window, creating a visible crack that ran all the way across.

"How could you have missed all this, Roland? How?"

"I-"

"Shut up! Where is he now? Can we get to him?"

Peck shook his head, his lower lip quivering perceptibly.

"There's no need to, David. Everything is going to be fine. I swear. I swear. My sources say he's in a coma. That he won't survive."

Hallorin fell silent, trying to sort out what had happened and where it was leading them. Over a fucking cliff.

"I've met Sherman," he said, when he was calm enough to speak again.

"Based on what I know about him, I believe that he would have made the duplicate file. But why would he dump it to the press? He's too smart for that--he wouldn't give up his leverage that easily. What's he playing at?"

Peck's face curled into what, for him, passed as a smile.

"According to the Post article, the press received the file from an anonymous informant the day after Sherman was shot."

Hallorin thought about that for a moment.

"Mark Beamon."

"Friends for twenty years. I think that we have to assume Tom Sherman is the man we've been looking for--the man who hired Beamon." The smile on Peck's face widened, revealing his stunted teeth.

"Sherman had just been shot--by whom and on whose orders I still don't know. Under those circumstances, what would a man like Mark Beamon do?

Perhaps he would think that this is a fitting epitaph for his friend?"

"But he's left himself with nothing," Hallorin said.

"Exactly. He's all alone now. If we destroy our copy of the file, it's like it never existed. Anyone trying to trace the Posts anonymous informant will end up at Mark Beamon's door. But don't worry, David.

We'll get to him before that."

"Fuck Beamon!" Hallorin shouted suddenly, turning all his anger and frustration on Peck.

"We have to get to Taylor or he'll bring all this down!

I won't allow that, Roland. I won't allow this to fall apart now."

"You don't have anything to worry about from Taylor, Senator.

Nothing. Your position is still strong. Taylor won't do anything overt.

Succumbing to blackmail would make him look weak and unpatriotic.

Revenge is too expensive for a man like him. You're holding the cards, Senator. You are. You have the power and influence to support Taylor now. There's still time to prove to him that you had nothing to do with this. Once Mark Beamon is taken care of, there will be nothing in your way.

You will be the next president. No one can stop you. No one." "This is kind of surreal," Darby said, slowing her truck to a crawl in the struggling traffic.

Beamon looked through the dirty windows at the people who inhabited this upscale section of D. C. They seemed directionless, dazed. Small knots formed and dispersed with no apparent pattern or rhythm, and the usually respected boundary between the sidewalk and the road had become muddled.

Washington, D. C." looked like it had become a parade route for the walking dead.

"Take your next left," Beamon said, closing his eyes to block out the scene around him and the intense sunlight that seemed to be reaching through his eyes and driving an ice pick into his head.

"The hospital's only a couple more miles."

"I'm really sorry about your friend," Darby said for what must have been the tenth time.

"He's such a nice man."

"Yeah. He is." Beamon intentionally Grafted his tone to cut off the possibility of any further conversation. On the afternoon commemorating the biggest fuckup of his--or anybody else's--life, he was having a hard time conjuring up the energy for chitchat.

He had hoped the drive from Manassas to the D. C. trauma unit that now kept what was left of Tom Sherman alive would give him a chance to think. And it had--by the time they were halfway there, he'd already come to more conclusions than he'd wanted to. After more than a year of constant effort, he hadn't changed. He'd allowed himself to be blinded by rage; to consider only himself and his own passion for revenge. For a man who had based his career on futile gestures, this would undoubtedly be remembered as his crowning achievement.

When Beamon opened his eyes again, Darby was pulling into an out of the way space in the lot behind the Georgetown University Medical Center.

She jumped out almost immediately probably anxious to get away from her passenger. He hadn't exactly been a barrel of laughs over the last three hours.

"You coming, Mark?"

He didn't move. He'd spent the last four days avoiding this hospital, and wasn't sure what he was he doing there now. David Hallorin had probably surmised by now that Beamon wasn't seriously interested in the job as his security chief and would undoubtedly have people looking for them there.

"This isn't such a good idea, Darby. Maybe we should "

"No way, Mark."

Darby walked around the car and pulled his door open.

"You've got to do this. I know it's hard, but he's your best friend. If anyone spots us here, you'll just have to figure something out."

She was right and he knew it. It wasn't the possibility of being picked up by his growing list of enemies that was bothering him. It was seeing the vegetable that used to be his mentor and friend. As much as he wanted to forget the image of the depressed and weakened Tom Sherman of the past few months, he didn't want to replace it with the image of a breathing corpse full of tubes and needles.

"He isn't going to know if I came or not," Beamon said.

"But you will. Five years from now what will you think of yourself if you didn't even bother to go see him before he ..." She let her voice trail off.

"I'd think that I didn't want to remember that my stupidity killed my best friend."

Darby leaned in, unbuckled his seat belt, and pulled him from the truck.

He didn't bother to resist.

"Remember what you told me about Tristan, Mark? When I was wallowing in guilt for leaving him up there on that butte? You told me he was a big kid and knew what he was getting himself into. That it wasn't my fault.

Maybe it's time you give yourself the same break."

Beamon leaned against the truck and looked down at her. She was wearing a blue baseball cap with Access Fund written across it and a pair of dark sunglasses. On the surface, it wasn't much of a disguise, but combined with the deeper changes that had taken place in her over the past month it was surprisingly effective. He couldn't pinpoint exactly what was different about her--maybe a subtle shift in the way she stood, or the way she held her head, or the curve of her mouth. Whatever it was, she had hardened. The slightly naive and philosophical girl that he'd read about and who had still been hanging on in Thailand seemed to slip away more and more every day.

"Okay. You win, Darby. Lead on."

Tom Sherman's private room was at the end of a wide, depressing corridor.

As they approached, it became apparent that their progress was being closely monitored by two men standing on either side of the door leading into Sherman's room.

"Hang back a little, Darby, and keep your eyes open," Beamon said, continuing cautiously up the hall.

"Can I help you?" one of the men said, stepping forward and blocking Beamon's path. His partner kept a calm but well-focused eye on Darby.

"I'm here to see Tom Sherman," Beamon said, sizing up the two men.

Not cops and certainly not attached to the hospital. These guys had the look and feel of pros. He calculated about a sixty-five percent chance that both had spent some time in the Secret Service.

"Who the hell are you?"

The man in front of him ignored his question and, despite the fact that Beamon was fairly certain he'd already been recognized, asked for ID.

Beamon shrugged and pulled out his wallet, handing the man his driver's license.

"Who hired you guys?" Once again, his question was ignored.

"Okay, Mr. Beamon," he said finally, handing back the ID.

"Go ahead."

Beamon thumbed over his shoulder at Darby.

"She's with me."

"Fine, sir."

Beamon walked the final few feet to the closed door and put his hand on the knob. He stopped there for a moment, taking slow, deep breaths and trying to visualize his friend lying motionless on a stark white bed wired to various monitors and bags of fluid, waiting for death. His hope was that the preview would lessen the impact of the real thing.

He must have looked like he wasn't going to continue on, because Darby reached around him, closed her hand on his, and turned the knob.

"Don't just stand there," Tom Sherman said.

"Close the goddamn door."

He was sitting up in bed surrounded by open newspapers and looking much healthier than a man in an irreversible coma had a right to.

Beamon opened his mouth to speak, but found it impossible to make a sound through the tangle of emotions surging through him. Confusion became relief, then shock, followed closely by something that may have been joy.

He was still trying to process what was going on when Darby kicked the door shut and ran to the bed. Sherman dropped the paper he had been reading and accepted a gentle hug from her.

"Tom! They said you were dying!"

He adjusted his half-glasses on his nose as she pulled away and looked over them at her with a warm smile.

"I'm sorry about that, Darby. It was a little exaggeration.

Unfortunately necessary."

The change in the timbre of Sherman's voice was obvious the moment he had opened his mouth. There was no trace of the uncertainty and depression he'd sunk into. The controlled, authoritative tone and confident expression that had intimidated FBI agents and criminals for decades was back.

Sherman adjusted his gaze, still looking over the tops of his eyeglasses.

"Mark Beamon," he said coldly.

"I was wondering if you were ever going to come for a visit." He held up the newspaper he was holding for a moment and then set it aside.

"An impressive piece of work. The Dow is off twenty-two. That's not points, that's percent, you moron."

Beamon looked at the floor and repositioned his feet uncomfortably.

The silence spread out before him for almost a minute. Finally he couldn't take it anymore.

"Tom, I didn't " "You didn't what, Mark?" Sherman said, cutting him off.