Sedition (A Political Conspiracy Book 1) (22 page)

Laura found her way to the chenille sofa and lay down with her head on the rolled arm. She motioned for Thistlewood to join her.

“Let me just turn my phone off,” he told her as he locked the door behind him. “I wouldn’t want to be interrupted.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that.” Her eyes were closed.

Thistlewood pushed C on his phone before sending a brief text message and turning off the phone. He joined his girlfriend on the sofa. She would be preoccupied long enough for her desire to be satisfied and her trust betrayed.

*

Bill Davidson sat in his room at the Mayflower for what seemed like hours, the day’s events running through his head.

His recollections filled only a few minutes, but time had slowed. He leafed through the pages of his small blue notebook. Dotting the lines were names, dates, and addresses. There were thoughts about the country, about each of his co-conspirators, and about the plot.

How much of it had his now dead lover seen? What had she told the feds? Was he implicated? If he hadn’t been previously, he was now. He’d made the mistake of calling the handler. That handler had been at the art opening earlier in the evening. There was no coincidence there.

The girl had clearly told Matti to be at the opening. Matti so much as admitted it. This was bad and getting worse.

Davidson looked down at his lap and noticed blood on his pants. He stood and untucked his shirt. He looked disheveled, but it hid the stain. The AG looked around the room as if he expected the scene around him to have changed. It had not. Straight ahead of him, toward the door, were the legs and feet of a woman who, only an hour earlier, was sipping wine and making small talk.

He needed to take control of the situation. Somehow, he had to find a way out of the predicament where there seemed to be none.

He picked up one of the cell phones from the bed, pressed C and dialed a familiar number.

“You have my information?” the knight said smugly with no greeting.

“Yes, I have it.”

“I’m listening.” The knight pulled his Meisterstuck Rollerball from his jacket pocket and jotted down the specific times of the various events planned for the procession, the Capitol service, and the graveside funeral at Arlington. He already had the information, but getting the exact times from two different people made him more comfortable.

“And the rest?” He was relentless. “I need the rest.”

“I’ve arranged it,” Davidson acknowledged. “The people at Hanover are prepared.”

“Excellent,” the knight hissed. “That wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be, was it? All you needed was a push.”

“You’re right. A push.” Davidson looked again at the lower half of the dead body extending from his hotel bathroom. “That’s all I needed.” He started to push the button that would end the call when he heard the knight call his name.

“Bill?” Apparently the knight wasn’t finished playing. “Bill, are you there?”

“Yes.” Davidson was acting the part of a masochist, as he sometimes had more joyfully done with the girl now suffering from algor mortis.

“You should have known better, Bill. If you didn’t have the stomach for a revolution, you would have been better off as the laughingstock of a politico you’ve been for most of your adult life.” The knight was riding his high horse again. “You wanted so badly to become something you were never really capable of becoming. It’s sad really. I pity you.”

If Davidson hadn’t convinced himself of the next necessary step before the phone call, he had now. The knight had done it for him. Davidson didn’t respond. He disconnected the call and picked up the other cell phone on the bed. He redialed Matti Harrold to arrange a meeting.

Chapter 30

Matti was about to leave her office when the door swung open. Her boss stood there blocking her exit. His hair was uncombed and the soft skin beneath his eyes was dark and swollen. He hadn’t shaved in nearly twenty-four hours, though to Matti it appeared to have been longer than that. He was dressed in a UCONN sweatshirt and tan Dockers. Most pronounced, she noticed, was a thick vein bulging vertically from his hairline to his brow.

“Harrold, why am I here?” He was talking through his teeth while gripping the doorknob such that his knuckles were white. “Why am I here at this ungodly hour?”

“Well, sir—”

“I am here because you have disappointed me.” He’d let go of the door and folded his arms. His neck and cheeks were flushed; his jaw was clenched as he spoke. “You disobeyed direct orders. You failed in the simplest of tasks.”

He was not wrong. Matti knew that.

“Sir,” she began again, fully expecting to be cut off at the knees.

“What?”

“The asset is dead.”

The supervisor’s glare softened almost imperceptibly as his eyes darted around the room, trying to visualize the words that flew from Matti’s mouth. How did he not know this already?

“She was shot and killed in the hotel room of a conspirator. The conspirator claims he did not do it. He inadvertently called the gray line, using the asset’s cell phone after her death.”

“How do you know this?” The bulging vein in his forehead had shrunk, but the frown lines stretching diagonally outward from the edges of his nostrils were profound.

“The conspirator told me.” Matti suddenly felt flush for being so green; she’d trusted the word of a man plotting terrorism. She fought through the doubt if only to convince herself. “I believe him. He was panicked.”

“First of all”—he was heating up again, the shock of the confession wearing off—“if she were dead, I would know it. I just spoke to her earlier today. And secondly, Bill Davidson is as capable of deceit under duress as anyone in Washington.”

“I didn’t say it was Bill Davidson who called me, sir.”

“Gimme a break, Harrold. Who else would be with the whore? His relationship with her was the reason we went after her in the first place.”

“
You
went after
her
?” That wasn’t what her supervisor had led her to believe.

“Grow up!” He laughed at her question as though it was unworthy of asking. “We knew that Davidson was involved in some rogue group, but we couldn’t get a hold on it. Little splinter groups pop up and go away all of the time. When a former cabinet member gets involved, we have to pay attention.”

“Why her?”

“She was the entrée into the group. We appealed to her sense of self-preservation. She either helped us or we made life very difficult for her.” His anger softened as he talked about the ingenuity of the Daturan infiltration. “She didn’t really want to help. We pushed. She’d give us tidbits here or there. We got names and meeting times. It helped with surveillance.”

“How long has she been an asset?”

“Two years.”

“So why bring me in now? Why get me involved?”

“She was clamming up, and we believed that something was about to go down. We thought a new voice, a woman, might help.”

“Oh.”

“But that’s over. And you’re done.” His tone was firm. “You blew the cover of three agents at the art exhibit and jeopardized the mission by consorting with the targets. You’ve compromised everything. Go home. Take the rest of the week off. I don’t want you here right now.”

He didn’t know whether or not to believe the asset was dead. He believed that Harrold thought she was. He could find out quickly enough. They had surveillance on the Mayflower.

“Sir, I do think I have some important information to share with you before I am dismissed.”

“What is that, Harrold?” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

“One of the Daturans is dating a woman whose father owns a funeral home.”

“And?”

“She claims the president’s remains will be at that home.”

“And?”

“I don’t believe in coincidences, sir.”

“What are you saying, Harrold?”

“Could they be planning something large in scope, timed to coincide with the cortege or the funeral?”

“That’s exactly what they’re planning,” he said impassively. “We don’t believe Thistlewood’s girlfriend has anything to do with it. That’s a coincidence, regardless of what you choose to believe. We have no intel that leads us to think that either she or her father is involved. Our intel does suggest the Daturans want to blow up Arlington to make a statement about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and about our continued involvement in the Middle East. We know they think our economy will recover only after we’ve left those two theatres. Those elements are well documented. You read that in the dossier, right?” The question was rhetorical.

“We know that a violent statement like that would swing foreign opinion and hurt our coalition,” he went on. “We’re already weakened throughout the region. The Arab Spring did nothing to help us. What you’re telling me is something I already know.” He was dismissive, bordering on mean.

Matti had things to say and wanted to counter his theory. As much as she’d grown in outward confidence in the past three days, she knew better than to challenge her boss. She nodded silently as if admitting defeat. It did not soften her supervisor.

“Now shut up and go home.”

“Sir?” Matti had one more question. “You said you spoke with the asset today. Why was that?”

Her boss winced. He seemed caught off guard. He replayed the conversation in his head until he recalled having slipped. He nodded with recognition but said nothing.

“Why were you talking to the asset?” Matti was growing impatient. Her involvement in the operation seemed unlikely from the beginning. The fact that her superior was communicating with her asset without her knowledge seemed to bolster her theory that something was amiss.

“I had the asset leak to you the information about the opening,” he admitted begrudgingly. “We wanted you there.”

“Why?” Matti was confused.

“We needed the Daturans to be distracted. And I knew that with your…”

“With my what?” Matti’s body language changed. She went from cornered puppy to pit bull in an instant.

“With your
charms
, we hoped to get additional intel from the other analysts attending the event. It was working. You had Edwards and Thistlewood and Spencer Thomas wrapped around your finger, didn’t you?”

Matti said nothing. She wasn’t looking at her boss. Her eyes were directed at her desk, her sight aimed inward. She thought back to the way the men reacted to her at the art opening. She was a decoy. Her entire involvement, from the beginning, was a setup to help “real” agents get the intelligence they were lacking. Her boss never expected her to contribute anything to the effort other than a tight body and disarming smile. For all she had done at the agency, she was nothing more than a piece of ass. She looked up at her boss the way a daughter looks at a father when she first realizes her daddy isn’t perfect.

She looked at him the way she looked at her father when he finally admitted that he’d known about his wife’s cocaine problem and that he’d been unable to stop it. She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t believe it. Just as she refused to believe her boss was using her.

“Then you screwed up, Harrold. Now we’ve got what we’ve got—a plot to blow up a cemetery. Think about it. There’s a Lockerbie memorial at Arlington right next to the spot where Foreman is to be buried. Lockerbie. Semtex. It adds up.”

Matti fought hard to keep tears from welling in her eyes. She was a tough woman, but the revelation that she was nothing more than a wooden duck in a blind was almost debilitating.

“As for your future here”—the boss was relentless now—“that’s yet to be determined. Now do as I instructed. Go home.”

Chapter 31

George Edwards and Jimmy Ings were pleased to find the back door to Harrowby’s unlocked. As soon as Edwards received the coded “NOW” text from Thistlewood, he and Ings mobilized into position.

Ings backed through the door first. He was rolling a small rubber-wheeled hand truck loaded with three large cardboard boxes stacked atop one another. He cleared the threshold and turned around to wheel the cart from behind. He stepped quietly into the hall and waited for Edwards.

Edwards entered the office and quietly spun the knob as he shut the door. He knew Thistlewood was somewhere in the building with his girlfriend, and he wasn’t sure how close they might be to the office. He didn’t want to alert Laura Harrowby to their intrusion. Edwards carried a large backpack across his left shoulder.

He met Ings in the hallway and squeezed past him to lead the way. Edwards winced when he moved by the drunk, his nostrils catching the rough mixture of Camels and blended scotch.

Edwards saw an open door to their left, revealing a set of descending steps. He adjusted the backpack on his shoulder, pulled a small flashlight from his front pants pocket, and switched on a thin yellow beam. He aimed the light down the steps and motioned Ings into the doorway.

“Be careful, Jimmy,” he said, placing his hand in the square of Ings’s back as the drunk slowly backed the hand truck downward one step at a time. “And be quiet.”

“I’m trying,” Ings whispered forcefully, dribbling spit onto his chin. He grimaced and narrowed his eyes to slits each time the wheels dropped from a step, past the return, and landed, bouncing slightly, on the step beneath. The weight of the task, both literal and figurative, was on the edge of being too heavy. Each man could sense it in the other. Neither said anything about it. Step by step they inched downward until they reached the floor.

Once they’d leveled the dolly onto the floor, Edwards swung the flashlight to where he thought he might find a light switch. He found one to his right and flipped it. The light illuminated a room much larger than either of them had anticipated.

“Big,” opined Ings. He was sober enough not to have lost depth perception.

“Yeah,” Edwards agreed. “Look at that casket. That’s gotta be expensive.” He approached the centerpiece of the room and rubbed his right hand along the mahogany. It was sealed in a thick lacquer and almost glowed in the fluorescent light hanging from above.