The Enemy Inside (21 page)

“Let’s go.”

“Gotta get my bag,” I say.

“Why did you check it?”

“Wouldn’t fit in the overhead. They downsized the flight, the plane was full. Two people got bumped, so you’re lucky I’m here,” I tell him.

“Apart from that, how did it go?”

“OK, I suppose. I’m not sure what I accomplished. The good news is Graves has what we need. The bad news is he won’t share it with us, at least not willingly. Instead he wanted to speak in parables.”

“Maybe he was having premonitions,” says Harry. “Tory Graves is dead.”

My head snaps around to look at him.

“He was killed this morning in the underground at one of the Washington Metro stations.”

“How?”

“An accident,” says Harry. He pushes his nose off to one side with his thumb as if to say, “for anyone stupid enough to believe it.”

Harry had set the browser on his computer to capture any news from or about the
Washington Gravesite
and feed it to his e-mail. This morning, about an hour after I took off from Dulles he tells me that the little bleeping telegraph message tone on his iPad started going crazy.

“According to the reports, Graves fell off the platform directly into the path of an oncoming train. Very convenient,” says Harry. “Perfect timing.”

“At least whoever did it didn’t blow up the station,” I tell him.

“We wouldn’t even know it was him,” he says, “except somebody who saw it happen recognized Graves and called it in to the
Gravesite
. All the other news blogs are reporting that authorities declined to identify the victim pending notification of next of kin. Did he tell you anything?”

Before I can answer, Harry says: “Hold that thought. I gotta cover the car. Grab your bag and I’ll meet you outside.”

Back at the office we settle into the conference room as I continue to update Harry.

“You think he was telling the truth about the deal with Arthur Haze?” he asks.

“I don’t know. But I have to say he made it sound plausible.”

“Haze is no fool,” says Harry. “If he forked over as much cash as Graves claimed, they must be sitting on one hell of a story. Which raises one other question.”

“What’s that?”

“Do you think whoever killed Graves knows about the deal, the fact that Haze has a copy of the story, at least as it stands?”

I hadn’t considered this until Harry mentions it. “Good point.” I think about it for a few seconds before I tell him: “There’s no way to be sure, but I’m guessing they don’t.”

“Why is that?”

“Graves told me that Alex didn’t know about the Haze deal, nor did any of his other employees. He was afraid if they knew the business was on the skids they’d be out looking for other work. So unless I’m wrong he held that information very close.”

“Why did he tell you?”

“The only purpose I can think of is to scare me off. Graves wanted to let me know that if we issued a subpoena for records and notes we’d be up against deep pockets, swimming in a pool filled with sharks . . .”

“Meaning Haze’s lawyers,” says Harry.

I nod. Alex’s parents are comfortable. But in a drawn-out battle in court, Arthur Haze could buy and sell them a few million times over and not even feel the pinch. His attorneys could probably tie us up for years if we tried to go after the copyrighted draft of the story.

“What about this stuff on Abscam and Hoover?” says Harry. “What was the point? What do you think he was trying to tell you?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” I tried to go over it all with Harry in the car on our way in from the airport. Without any notes, I struggled to recall the exact words used by Graves. Now that he is dead and no longer available I’m forced to think more seriously about what he said.

I reach out and grab a legal pad from the table and try to make some notes while at least part of it is fresh in my mind.

“Politicians being people with big egos and appetites,” I say it out loud as I write so that Harry can follow along.

I make each one a bulleted point on the page with my pen. “Always testing the water to game the system.”

“Learning the lesson of going offshore.”

Little nuggets that probably lead nowhere.

“And finally, last but not least, the Hoover Effect. J. Edgar’s torrid card catalogue and how he used it.”

I look up at Harry. “Put it all together and what do you have?”

He shakes his head. “To me? It’s a lotta crap,” says Harry. “I don’t want to take anything away from the dead but the fact that most politicians have big egos ain’t gonna make it as a hot news flash anytime soon. Now if he found one that didn’t, that might be a story. Nor is the fact that they game the system. The offshore part maybe,” says Harry, “but only if we can get the specifics. Who’s got what and where.”

“Do me a favor. Check something over there on the computer for me.”

Harry goes to the desktop in the corner.

“Google up one of their language translators.”

He does it.

“German to English,” I tell him. Then I spell out the word, the one with fourteen letters that I can’t pronounce under the man’s name from the business card given to me by Graves. When I’m done I tell him: “That’s it.”

Harry punches the return key and waits.

“What does it mean?” I ask.

“Foreign accounts,” says Harry.

It was late in the afternoon on the fourth day when Ana finally saw the man she thought might be Madriani. Her car was parked at the curb as Ana sat at one of the tables at an outdoor café watching the entrance to the parking lot behind the law office.

She wasn’t interested in the lawyers. What she wanted was more information about the people going through their trash. Who they were and whether they were connected with the man she had killed near the airport, the one who had her tripod and the satellite antenna.

She had been following the lawyer named Hinds for three days. She knew where he lived, an apartment on the other side of the bridge in San Diego, his name on the mailbox downstairs. She knew where he hung out, a small restaurant nearby where he had dinner each night and breakfast on two successive mornings. He always picked up a newspaper from a small cigar store on his way to work each morning. He had a dull routine and a life to match. No women. Lived alone. You could set your clock by him.

On the road she always stayed far enough behind him to allow anyone else who was tracking him to pull in front of her, but no one ever did. This made her nervous. The fact that the Dumpster divers disappeared into a military base meant that these people might well be looking down on both of them from an eye in the sky.

This morning she chose not to follow Hinds from his apartment into work and instead went directly to the office. He didn’t show up. She didn’t know why. Maybe he was sick.

She backtracked to his apartment, but his car was gone. Perhaps he was in court. If so there was nothing she could do but wait for him at the office. She sat at the table under the umbrella and watched the entrance to the alley behind the plaza that led to the parking lot. Hours went by and he never showed.

Ana kept an open paperback in front of her. Occasionally she stood to stretch her legs looking both ways up and down the street to see if anyone else was sitting in their car studying the alley entrance. Nothing.

She was about to pitch it in when, just before four, she saw Hinds’s car pull around the corner, pass by, its left blinker already flashing as it turned into the alley and disappeared. There was a man sitting in the passenger seat next to Hinds.

Ana grabbed her book, paid for her coffee, and made a dash down the street the other way. She circled around the front of the building, entered the small plaza, and down the path past the door to their law office.

She could hear them talking back by the parked car. Ana stopped. One of them was coming this way, a gravelly sound like something being dragged on the pavement.

“Paul, why don’t we lock your suitcase in the trunk? No need to take it into the office.”

“You’re right.”

The other man had to be Madriani, first name Paul. She heard him turn and go back, then the pop of the trunk as it opened.

“Did Graves have any idea that Serna was murdered?”

“No, but when I told him, he was all ears, pen at the ready. He wanted all the details.”

Ana made a note on the inside cover of the paperback in her hand, the name “Graves.”

“He wasn’t worried?”

“He didn’t seem to be.”

She heard the clatter of the suitcase as it was dropped into the trunk.

“But it got his journalist juices flowing.”

“Did you tell him about the girl? The explosion at the gas station?”

“Yeah.”

“And that didn’t bother him either?”

The trunk slammed closed. Ana didn’t hear the response, then: “Knowing what he knew you think he’d be worried.”

“Knowing what
we
know maybe
we
should be worried.”

What she heard was shoe leather on gravel coming this way. She turned and walked briskly in the other direction out toward the plaza. When she got there she turned just in time to get a look at Madriani.

He was tall, dark haired, a little gray around the ears, worry lines in the forehead and the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow. His suit coat slung over his shoulder and rumpled shirt made her think that he’d just gotten off a long flight. As soon as she got back to her hotel room she would run a news search for the name “Graves.”

TWENTY-FOUR

T
he Creeping Dragon nearly glowed with pride. His people had launched three small objects into orbit around the earth, antisatellite devices intended to blind and deafen America and its allies if and when the time came for war. The weapons had been hurled into space atop a Chinese launcher and were already conducting maneuvers as they circled the planet.

One of the weapons was equipped with a long extension arm capable of attacking American military and intelligence satellites and literally tearing them apart. It was part of the growing Chinese Star Wars program, a program that the current American administration pretended did not exist.

US satellites that had allowed America to dazzle the world with its military prowess through two Gulf wars were vulnerable to any adversary possessing the technology to destroy their eyes in the sky.

China not only had the ASAT (antisatellite) technology, but believed itself to be further advanced in this field than any other nation. More to the point, at a time when China was increasing its military and scientific research budgets, the United States was going in the opposite direction. America was reducing the size of their military to a level not seen since before the Great War, what the Americans called World War Two.

Cheng would meet up with Ying, his American asset, in little more than a week in Hong Kong, where the man came occasionally for quick trips to visit his money.

The bureau’s assessment had already been delivered to the Chinese premier and to the standing committee of the Politburo. It was without question far more candid and certainly more realistic than the American president’s last State of the Union message.

China had identified the problems of a budding cancer in the US body politic forty years earlier, even as the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guard were turning their own country toward chaos. Leaders in China and within the Chinese Army had reacted with an uprising of their own, deposing the “Gang of Four,” Mao’s wife and her cadre, who had given rise to ideological chaos.

A new generation of leaders pulled China back from the brink and set it on a rational course toward modernization. It was a program that required hard work, discipline, and a firm controlling hand by those in power.

Theirs, the new China, was not to be an open and unbridled democracy with its fits and starts and messy course alterations dictated by elections. Modern China would be a nation with vision and a program capable of taking the country and its people into the future.

Most of all, it would possess what America lacked—a well-designed, long-term strategic plan for the direction of the nation, but equally important, the sustained political will to carry it through.

The irony was that many in America thought of China as a socialist state. Yet it was America and its current crop of leaders who promised not only an open and free society but also a national government that was the planet’s ultimate nirvana. A place where if power was transferred to them, these politicians would guarantee a flawless social safety net for all.

The problem was they could not pay for it. They financed it by plundering the surplus trust funds of other programs that they had been bleeding for decades, and in more recent years by selling US Treasuries to Cheng’s own government.

The United States had been digging a deep hole for itself for at least three decades. American leaders sat by watching as vast sectors of their heavy industry hemorrhaged and ultimately fled offshore. Factories that didn’t leave closed down. Some politicians actually assisted these industries in their departure. Many Americans didn’t understand why. The politicians created cover for themselves claiming that this was all part of the “new world order.”

The next round of leaders seemed stunned when they woke up to realize that many of these corporations, multinational American giants, were no longer paying taxes on their overseas income. Wonder of wonders! To cap it off, these selfsame leaders couldn’t agree on a feasible method to encourage or force these companies to bring the money home. To the contrary they passed tax laws that actually discouraged this.

Cheng smiled. The bomb that was killing the United States was not hydrogen, atomic, or neutron. It was either stupidity or corrupt leadership, or both. And in Cheng’s view it was sucking the air out of America. China had become America’s banker for a simple reason. The United States needed ever-increasing infusions of cash.

Americans were told they could have it all. They were, after all, a rich nation!

Some US leaders invited the destitute of the world to cross their leaking borders with assurances that they would be entitled to the same. All that was required was political acquiescence to the politicians making the promises. They extolled America as the “great melting pot” and in the next breath engaged in dangerous games, pitting one group against another, then summed it all up by saying that “Americans needed to come together!” The nonsense made Cheng’s eyes water with laughter.