Fatal conceit, p.14
Fatal Conceit, page 14
Her eyes clouded by tears, Jenna nodded. “Yes. It can wait until Monday.”
That night he’d been particularly melancholy as he sat in the big chair in front of the fireplace with Jenna cuddled up on his lap like a cat, closing her eyes and even purring as he stroked her hair. They’d been quiet for several minutes when he cleared his throat and shifted a little so he could see her face.
“You know, I’d give it all up for you, Jen,” he said. “Maybe I should forget about the job. We could get married and live here. I could open a fly-fishing shop and you could hang your shingle in town and practice law. Or just knock around here with me and the kids.”
“Kids?” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“Only if you want them, of course,” he said, hugging her closer.
They were quiet for a moment, then she said, “It sounds nice, but you wouldn’t be happy.”
“I’d be happy if I was with you. What if I decided to write a book instead of going to Washington?” he said. “Would you be willing to give up the exciting and glamorous life as the spy chief’s wife in D.C.?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Think of all the intrigue and fancy black-and-white parties you’d miss.”
She snuggled in closer to his chest. “I do look great in black. But I have all the intrigue I need right here.” More silence, then, “You’re not ready to open a fly-shop or sit in an old cabin writing a book with a bunch of toddlers running around. Maybe at first you’d be okay, and maybe we’d be okay because we love each other so much. But you’d always wonder if you could have made a difference at the agency. You’ll always be a soldier, Sam.” She sighed. “Besides, the next president will probably kick you out and then we can retire to our little piece of heaven on the lake.”
He laughed and hugged her closer. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t think I’m cut out for the politics surrounding the job. I probably won’t even make it through this president’s next term, if there is a next term.”
They drove back to New York City early Sunday afternoon. He dropped her off at her Chelsea apartment and said he was going to stay at the Casablanca. “I’m probably going to be up all night working on my testimony, then I need to get a copy printed for my visit with Pete. And you are far too distracting to have in a hotel room.”
She pouted for a moment, then kissed him. “I’m tired anyway,” she said. “I don’t have class tomorrow, but I have some things to think about before our talk.” She started to get out of the car and then turned back to him. “No matter what happens tomorrow, no matter what you need to tell me, or what I have to say to you, I will always love you, Sam.”
“I love you, too, Jen. Nothing’s going to happen tomorrow that we can’t deal with. I’ll get on the computer later this evening to say good night.”
He worked all day on his testimony and then went to the hotel’s business office to print a copy. As he was walking past the front desk, the clerk smiled. “A friend of yours dropped something off for you. He said his name was Peter.” She set a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan scotch on the counter.
Allen laughed and picked up the bottle. “Just what the doctor ordered. I think I’ll go to my room and give this baby a trial run.”
Back in the room, he ordered room service and then poured himself a healthy tumbler of the scotch. He took a sip and furrowed his brow; there was just the slightest medicinal aftertaste that he wasn’t used to, but he shrugged. Probably something I ate earlier throwing my palate off a bit. He was working on putting the finishing touches on a letter to his sons when there was a knock on the door.
“Room service,” said a male voice.
“Let yourself in,” Allen called out as he typed in a revision. He hardly glanced at the room service waiter who came in and placed the tray on the coffee table.
“Anything else, sir?”
“No . . . I see by the tat that you were in the Corps.”
“Semper Fi, sir.”
“Booya. Airborne here.”
“Brothers in arms no matter what branch.”
“Damn straight, soldier. Care for a drink?”
“I’d love to, sir, but I’m on duty and they frown on that sort of thing. Some other time.”
“You bet. Do me a favor, put 20 percent on your tip and let yourself out.”
“Yes, sir. Have a good night, sir.”
“You, too,” Allen said, and turned back to his computer. Ten o’clock, time to check in with Jenna, he thought as he took another sip of scotch. He wrinkled his nose; it still seemed a little bitter, but he decided the lasagna he’d ordered would round it out. He turned on his computer’s video cam and dialed her up.
“Are you saying I’m too much?” she asked.
“No, not at all. I’m flattered and grateful that you find me attractive, and happily satiated every time we see each other. Forgive me, honey, I didn’t mean that.”
“That’s better. I’m in love, Sam. I can’t get enough of you.” She pouted. “I can’t believe we’re in the same city and we’re not going to sleep together.”
“Is what you do called ‘sleep’?” he said with a chuckle, then yawned himself. “Excuse me, don’t know where that came from, I guess I am tired.”
“You’re not getting old on me, are you?”
“Never. I just ordered room service—lasagna—and my old buddy, Pete, sent a bottle of Macallan to keep me company. Should be just the thing to put me to sleep,” he said and took another sip.
He frowned. “I don’t know why you’d want to record this.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Because I’m going to blackmail you with it someday.”
Allen yawned again. “You want to talk now about what you said at the cabin?”
Jenna shook her head. “No. I’m going to go hop in the shower. I think you need time to think about this, so I’ll wait until Monday for your answer.”
Allen watched as she stood and then dropped her robe, displaying the body he enjoyed so much. He shook his head and poured himself another tumbler’s worth of scotch and took another sip. He sloshed a little as he attempted to put the glass back on the desk. He shook his head. Man, time to hit the sack.
He tried to stand but suddenly his legs felt weak and he sat back down. No way two drinks puts me away like that, he thought. He looked at the bottle and recalled the bitter aftertaste. Suddenly, he knew what was happening.
“I’d love to, sir, but I’m on duty and they frown on that sort of thing. Some other time.”
Barely able to keep his eyes open, his mind growing fuzzy, Allen willed his hands back to the keyboard and typed a short email. He sent it and then reached forward so that only a blank page showed. His hands fell to his sides and he slumped back into the chair just as he heard the door open.
“Room service . . .”
9
BY THE TIME KARP GOT back to his office after leaving the Casablanca and the body of Lt. Gen. Sam Allen, he knew he had his hands full with a high-profile homicide case. In spite of the killer’s efforts to make it look like a suicide, it didn’t take Fulton’s “intuition flu,” or Assistant Medical Examiner Gail Manning’s remark about how a scotch aficionado would have avoided the bitter taste by not emptying the pills into the drink, to recognize the deception.
Suicide simply didn’t make sense. For one thing, it just didn’t mesh with what he knew of Allen’s character—a decorated soldier who’d retired at the pinnacle of his career and was embarking on another that at least publicly he seemed to covet. While anything was possible, nothing about the man indicated he was the sort to kill himself even if he was “sorry for everything”—whatever that meant. A man like him would “face the music,” Karp thought. And even if for some inexplicable reason Allen had decided to take his life, he wouldn’t have chosen to do it in such a public manner, in a hotel room in New York City, putting his family and friends through the media storm that would follow.
The question then became who killed the general and why. Over the course of his military career and in his position as the acting director of the CIA, Allen would have made enemies, as well as been a prime target for assassination. However, it was reasonable to rule out a terrorist action, as they would have wanted the publicity of killing such an important individual.
Poison, if that was indeed the cause of Allen’s death, had been a tool of the spy trade for eons. Somehow Karp doubted that the general had been induced to swallow enough Valium to kill him—after all, there’d been no sign of a struggle—and thought it likely to have been used to cover up the real cause of death. Gail will find it in the toxicology, he thought, especially now that I’ve asked her to look beyond the obvious.
So who then? Why? He was supposed to testify before the congressional committee tomorrow. Could it be related to that? And who would have the arrogance to think that they could murder the acting director of the CIA and get away with it? The questions raced through his mind as Officer J. P. Murphy drove him south toward the Criminal Courts Building. He tried to call Marlene to tell her about Allen; she’d been out for a run when Fulton gave him the news that morning. But she didn’t answer her cell phone.
The news outlets had reported that there were no female bodies identified and several males were unaccounted for in Chechnya after the attack. The absence of “bad news” had lifted Marlene’s spirits at least for the moment. She was convinced that Lucy and Ned were alive. “They were probably together doing something outside the compound,” she explained. “Maybe they’ve been captured or are on the run, but I can feel they’re alive . . . I don’t know how I know, maybe it’s the mom in me, but I know.”
Karp didn’t want to dash her faith; he hoped she was right. But he knew that in what the administration kept referring to as the “fog of war,” the information that Jaxon was getting was agonizingly incomplete. And since the initial report, the fact that there’d been nothing new was demoralizing. Believing that their daughter needed her, but unable to do anything, Marlene reverted to a darkened mood. He didn’t know what she’d make of the news about Allen and what, if anything, it had to do with the compound being overrun in Chechnya—and Lucy’s disappearance. He didn’t know what to make of it himself.
When he got to his office and was settled in behind his desk, he reached for a yellow legal pad. Whether it was for a trial or just to help him think through a problem, he always found that jotting down notes on a pad helped his thought process. He listed the chronology of events since the attack in Chechnya, such as he knew them from either the media—meaning the administration—or Jaxon, leading up to Allen’s death the day before he was scheduled to testify. Up to this point, as far as he knew, the general had refrained from making any comments other than to say that the CIA was continuing to assess what happened as information became available. He refused to be baited by the growing criticism, particularly from the president’s opponents, that “once again” American intelligence gathering had failed to identify and deal with a threat.
Most of the administration’s statements had come through Rosemary Hilb, the irascible press secretary, and Helene Vonu, the assistant secretary of state specializing in the Northern Caucasus and Russia. Vonu, in particular, had been the public face of the administration on television and in newspaper reports. But she mostly stuck with the administration’s talking points: the attack occurred without warning, was over swiftly, and was carried out by Chechen separatists in a “brutal act of terror.” She and others like Fauhomme had lauded the president’s “close cooperation” with Russian authorities as proof of his fitness to lead “in the international arena.”
On the Sunday-morning political talk shows, Vonu expanded a little, saying, “These terrorists—masquerading as patriots—are trying to disrupt U.S. attempts to mediate a political solution” between “disgruntled” Chechen factions and Russia. When the sole member on one of the panels who occasionally was critical of the administration renewed the question of whether Al Qaeda was involved, Vonu openly scoffed. “Al Qaeda Al Qaeda Al Qaeda,” she said, smiling and shaking her head as though scolding a not very bright student. “Let’s trot out the big bad bogeyman of Al Qaeda to sell newspapers and television ads, shall we? Our Russian friends will back me up on this one; Al Qaeda was not behind this attack. It just seems to me that some people have a hard time accepting that other forms of terrorism exist that aren’t Islamic extremism–motivated or somehow connected to Al Qaeda. The terrorists behind this attack are little more than warlords and organized crime syndicates who don’t want to see a legitimate, democratically elected government in power in Chechnya.”
Rod Fauhomme made the rounds, too. He complained that the congressional hearings were “clearly a partisan attempt to discredit the administration in the run-up to the election. The president’s opponent took a big hit in the last debate, which happened to be on foreign policy. The opponent knows he has no foreign policy experience, and unlike the president would be lost in the current situation. So all he—through his proxies on the congressional committee—can do is invent straw men and attack while cooler heads are handling the situation in cooperation with the Russian government. It’s the difference between statesmanship and gamesmanship.”
Karp picked up the television remote and clicked on the twenty-four-hour news channel just as a photograph of Allen appeared above the text: BREAKING NEWS! CIA DIRECTOR ALLEN DEAD IN NEW YORK HOTEL. So it’s out, he thought, but in the next instant his attention was diverted by what sounded like a brawl in the reception area outside his office, followed by a sort of wild scrabbling at the door before it cracked open.
Standing up, Karp could see Darla Milquetost valiantly fighting to keep the intruder out. “I don’t care who you think you are; you can’t just barge in on Mr. Karp!”
The tall blond woman on the other side of his receptionist ignored the shorter woman and yelled over the top of her head. “Karp, we need to talk!”
“You need to make an appointment like anyone else!” Milquetost complained. “You are such a rude person!”
“Beat it, Darla, this is important,” Ariadne Stupenagel said, using her greater size to leverage her way past and into his office.
Darla clutched Stupenagel’s elbow as she looked at Karp. “Shall I call security?” she asked hopefully.
Karp shook his head. “No, thank you, Darla. Sorry, Ariadne, but I’m not in the mood to deal with the media just now . . .”
Stupenagel pointed past him to the television screen. “It’s about Sam.”
“Sam?” Karp replied with a frown.
“Sam Allen. We were old friends,” Stupenagel explained. “I talked to him Friday, and I think you might want to hear what I’ve got to say before it appears in my newspaper tomorrow.”
Still frowning, Karp nodded at his receptionist. “It’s okay, Darla, let her in.”
Milquetost glared up at Stupenagel. “Okay, but I’ll be right outside if you change your mind.” She let go of the journalist and left the room.
Karp shook his head. “You really do need to quit antagonizing Mrs. Milquetost. She’s just doing her job.” His voice faded as Stupenagel crossed the room and sat down in the leather chair across from Karp’s big mahogany desk and crossed her long legs. “First, I want your assurances that this goes no further, particularly in regard to the slimeballs in the press,” she said. “This is my story.”
“So this is about getting a scoop,” Karp replied with a frown. Just then Ariadne’s normally tough-as-nails reporter’s eyes welled up with tears; she covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
“Hey, Ariadne, I’m sorry. You said he was a friend, I wasn’t thinking.” He grabbed a box of tissues as he walked around his desk and handed her one.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “Sorry. I got a call a half hour ago from a friend who works at the hotel. I just . . .” She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. “I couldn’t believe it. I just saw him Friday.”
“Yes, you were saying that I should hear,” Karp said as the intercom suddenly buzzed, followed by Milquetost’s annoyed voice.
“Mr. Karp, your wife is here to see you.”
Karp looked at Stupenagel, who said, “I called her. I know about Lucy.”
The door opened and Marlene walked in. Stupenagel stood and the two women embraced. They’d been friends since they were college roommates at Smith. Stupenagel had been the wild child while Marlene was more conservative due to her strict Italian Catholic upbringing in Queens, but still the unlikely pair had formed a lasting bond.
Marlene was aware of the love-hate relationship between “Stupe” and her media-averse husband, but she knew even he had a grudging respect for her talents as an investigative journalist. And several times in the past, she had “done the right thing” and held stories or passed on information—sometimes against her aggressive journalistic principles.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Karp said when Marlene broke away from her friend. “I take it you’re here due to whatever Ariadne has to say about General Allen’s alleged suicide.”
“It wasn’t a suicide,” Stupenagel spat. Suddenly, the tears were gone, replaced by a fierce glare. “I’ve known Sam a long time. He wasn’t the type . . .”
“People change. I’d guess he was under a lot of—”
“Sam was the sort of man who thrived on pressure,” Stupenagel retorted. “But even if not, I talked to him two days ago. He wasn’t suicidal, though he certainly had a lot going on in his personal life, and he was damn mad about the Chechnya situation and prepared to do something about it at the congressional hearings.”
Karp and Marlene listened quietly for the next twenty minutes while Stupenagel told them about her conversation with Allen. The more she spoke, the grimmer their faces became.
When she was done, Marlene let out a low whistle. “Well, if what he said about Al Qaeda being involved is true, and someone high up is lying about this ‘trade mission’ and the failure to respond to protect American lives, I can understand why the administration wouldn’t want this to come out in the hearings right before the election. You think he was killed to prevent any deviation from the administration’s version?”
