Sabotage (20 page)

She did cocaine and ecstasy like she was the long-lost child of Hunter S. Thompson. She stayed up for days. The rational Caitlin asked herself why this one man did this to her. There was only one answer she could give: she had trusted him with every inch of her life.

She had allowed herself to be put into the spotlight, and he had destroyed her, pulled the chair out from under her. She was a national laughingstock along with him. She was the dumb girl to be pitied. She had trusted him, and he had thrown her to the curb.

She threw herself headlong into one self-destructive relationship after another, but she trusted none of them. She had none of that to give. She quickly figured out that there were plenty of men in Vegas who would pay to have you around.

That’s what she became: the arm candy that you most likely weren’t taking home. Oh, she was a good sport and would let all of your friends think you were sleeping with her, but she still was too conflicted to be a slut. She was just a bad, bad drunk who liked to stick anything up her nose. She put herself into compromising positions, like the one with the cowboy. But somehow, she had managed to make it to this point physically intact. That might just have been a miracle.

Then she got pinched. One of her benefactors was a coke dealer named Randy, and he sent her to make a delivery. It was a sting, and she wound up on her knees in a foyer with a DEA gun next to her temple and a possession with intent to distribute rap next to her name. She was looking at a long stint in federal prison.

This, too, she felt was Grant’s fault. He was the cause and the source of her fall, from the first sip to the final nadir. She didn’t even think like this before him. Now, she was afraid to tell her family and sure she was going to wind up gone for a long time. How she would return was anybody’s guess.

Then she learned the power of the payoff. Randy came in, displayed actual human emotion, and got her out of the charge. She was sure there were payoffs; she was guilty as sin after all and caught in the act. But her lawyer handed her the dismissal, and she certainly didn’t ask any questions.

After that, her behavior became more reckless instead of less. She was still a fun drunk’s favorite fun drunk, but the nights dragged on too long. She became belligerent and violent. She could match you two shots for one. She got you thrown out of places. She threw the occasional glass and caused memorable scenes. She hoped to never have to hear from her conscience or her heart again. She raged against him and used his name like the vilest curse word. But she never threw away his number. She always knew he was her final safety net.

And now, she had to use it. Once she started questioning Britt’s motivations, she thought back to all the questions he asked her about Grant. Everyone was interested once they found out about her involvement in what was the scandal of the summer of 2008. But Britt asked weird, specific questions. Lots of them.

Was this all tied to that horrific mess? Had her man been set up as he had tried telling her, crying to her on a thousand voicemails? After years of utterly discarding that thought, it suddenly didn’t seem so far-fetched.

O
n what seemed like the longest day of his life, President Morgan suspended all air flight until Friday morning, leaving him about six hours to deal with the stock exchange deadline of 3 a.m. Friday morning, Washington time.

The stock was trending up. The timing by Sabotage didn’t give anyone much time to think, and it appeared that many citizens felt they were doing some sort of civic duty by placing orders. The SEC looked into how many orders were placed by computers infected by the virus. President Morgan had conferred with the prime minister of Japan, and the Japanese had agreed with the decision not to suspend trading. They felt that if the repercussions were too dire, both countries and both leaders stood to face serious backlash and future pressure if a terrorist could simultaneously control national security and the markets. Morgan went over this decision, and he still wasn’t fully convinced he was making the right choice, but he could always play the card that it wasn’t his index to stop. That was chickenshit, but you did what you could to make it out alive of this type of situation.

He didn’t like to conduct business in the Oval Office, because it felt like such a church. He told anyone who wanted to hear he felt like he was fingering Dolly Madison if he did anything too serious there. But he was tired and cranky and felt silly moving them all back downstairs to have another briefing that was not going to move anything along. So he beckoned them all to sit and hoped they had more answers than the last time. He saw Vanessa raise her eyebrows as she knew his preference for the briefing room.

“Any leads at all?” Morgan said this as if all federal agencies were having a tea party all day. He directed it at any of the five staffers who were breathing the air in his office.

Only Vanessa was brave enough to answer. “Nothing solid. We are running all people who have active roles as if they are involved. That includes our agents.”

“Including Miller?”

“Especially Miller.”

“Anything yet?”

Vanessa shook her head. “No, his personal accounts checked out fine. But it looks like he may do most of his business through some corporation he started when he was booking a lot of appearances and receiving speaking fees. His personal account has just a few hundred dollars in it. His paycheck isn’t deposited there. We’re trying to work with his bank to get the rest of his records, but there are other names on the accounts, so we may have to get a search warrant.”

“Well shit. Don’t spend too much time on that. I can’t imagine it’s him. I don’t think he’s that bright. I’ve met him a couple of times.”

In fact, Morgan met him more than that. Just like his predecessor, he loved Miller. He had also put in a good word with the director after all of the mess he put them all through. Miller sat at a dozen ceremonies with him, and he had seen enough of him to think of him as a big, football-loving lug. He really couldn’t imagine him befouling any princesses, and he certainly couldn’t see him being meticulous or ruthless enough for this. He frankly still considered Miller a hero. He hoped he wasn’t wrong.

“Miller’s not the primary target, but the wrinkle of his girlfriend popping up does make it a little more interesting.”

Morgan nodded. He would need a lot more convincing.

“Did the bomber have any information?” the president asked, more resigned than curious.

“He ties the man he calls Yankee to Las Vegas and Los Angeles. People-wise, his was a small operation if he’s telling us the truth, and what he has said has checked out so far. He placed several of the explosives himself and sent the packages that brought down our airliner. We’re running scenarios, but we believe there’s little additional air traffic danger, so we can probably resume that in the morning just after we’ve swept for more packages from the companies which now appear to have been bought by this group for shipping packages for today.”

Morgan was known for being bold. He loved his reputation as a cowboy, but he didn’t have enough info to take any bold steps at all. He was tied up and only a few hours from a deadline that made him very nervous.

A
fter they sat in the air for an hour or so and after she was done with her numerous conversations with FBI personnel in DC, Mandy asked Naseem if he would give Grant and herself some privacy. He nodded, none too pleased, and looked like he was passing kidney stones as he went up to sit in the back.

Mandy sat down and placed her hand on Grant’s arm. He was taken aback. He was still thinking about the money. He did not want to have anything to do with this conversation. It was going to either wind up being some soul-baring awkwardness, or yet another ass-chewing, or worse, his Miranda rights. He needed none of these right now.

“Grant, I have something to confess.”

He had no idea where this was going, but it looked like it was heading toward awkward. He just prepared his best poker face and went along with it.

“I never thought you did it.”

“Did what?”

“I never thought you did anything wrong with the princess.”

This made his blood boil. He considered Mandy a friend, semi-close at the time, and when the entire world took a piss on him, her friendship seemed to vanish. He saw her change from an ally who loved to hear about his latest adventure to someone who couldn’t meet his eyes and couldn’t believe her luck that things had so changed in her favor.

“Why are you telling me now?” he managed.

“Because I feel bad about it every time I walk by you. I had to create a distance between us. If I would have been seen as supporting you, I never would have gotten the job.”

She was right about that. This job paid tens of thousands more a year. She didn’t have a book contract and speaking fees. He couldn’t begrudge her that.

“But I wanted it to seem real, so I just … created it. Just eliminated you.”

“Well, you did a good job,” he managed. He turned one corner of his mouth up. He knew she wasn’t telling the whole story. She might have come to realize he hadn’t done it, but she hadn’t been blameless in this. She fell into the judgment just like everybody else. He wanted to see where this was going. He shrugged. “A lot of people did that. You had good company.”

She rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t make it right. I’m offering you an apology.”

He had trouble looking at her. “Look, I know I was radioactive. It’s all over now.”

Mandy traced the edge of her wristwatch with her right hand and looked up.

“That’s the thing. I don’t think it is over. Before tonight ends, I think somebody’s going to try to pin this on you.”

Grant swallowed. That was not what he was expecting her to say, although, after seeing his new bank balance, he believed this, too. He tried to keep the poker face but had no idea how badly he was failing.

“Why do you think that?”

“I don’t know. It’s all just too tidy. You get the lead; you get the call from your girlfriend … it’s certainly managed to bring you back to the spotlight.”

He threw his hands up—unbelievable. “You don’t believe …”

She stopped him. “No, I don’t believe. And maybe I’m wrong, but I know that you’re not a traitor. You were a damned fine asshole agent who got caught up in reading his press and became an insufferable prick, but you were still a good agent. I have a sense this is coming down … on you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re landing in half an hour. I’m going to think about how bad what I’m thinking about is going to screw me. If I can convince myself it’s not half as bad as I’m thinking, then I’ll tell you my plan.”

Grant nodded. He had no idea if this meant she knew about the money. He was almost as far out on a limb as Naseem, and it wasn’t going to be any better any time soon.