At Any Cost (14 page)

“I'm not sure. Just keep your eyes open, I guess. If you hear anything …”

Leah grinned. “I'll start in the morning,” she said. “I'll tell my editor that I got a tip and …”

“No,” Tom exhorted, “No, Leah. There's more news out there for you to chase, like the situation with Russia. But if you hear anything …”

She made a face.

“I'm serious. Please.”

“Okay,” she sighed dramatically. She shrewdly scrutinized him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I'm thinking what a great girl you are.”

She rolled her eyes.

He smiled gently at her and lifted a chip from her paper plate. Eager to get his mind off both Antoine Campbell and Fallon, he asked, “Are you excited about the inauguration?”

Leah could not suppress a giggle of glee as she launched into a discussion of how amazing this experience would be. Her excitement was palpable. Life really was improving for her, and Tom was glad to see it.

When they finished the meal, Tom walked with her back to her apartment building. “You don't have to see me up,” she said.

Tom didn't show it, but he was thankful. After tonight with Fallon, he felt something that needed contemplation and reverence and solitude. He said goodnight to Leah, kissed her cheek, and walked home.

As soon as she was back inside her apartment, Leah got back to work. Visions of Bob Woodward-level fame danced before Leah's eyes as she pulled together copious public information on the crisis with Russia. Her handwritten notes took up several pages but no names were on the record. Nobody worked harder than Leah Lennox at developing sources for news and leaks. One of her weekly tasks was to call the VP's office or senators' offices, getting to know the press secretaries and chiefs of staff, anyone who might give her an inside story, or at least an exclusive. Her perseverance paid off, giving her access to several good sources for top-flight information. One person who trusted her, and who had given her some good information in the past, particularly during the presidential campaign, was Claudia Wells, the former senator of Virginia, who would be vice president in a week.

Leah thought of her now, as she looked up from her notes to the news conference replaying on the nightly news. Leah had been at that news conference this afternoon, sitting way in the back, and even then she could feel the tension between Hughes and his predecessor. Russia's potential threat to United States was mounting, and the competing viewpoints of the current and imminent administrations were causing as much anxiety as the issue itself. Ballard wanted dialogue. Hughes, determined to make an impact from his first moment in the Oval Office, was making demands.

Leah had managed to fire off one question. “Mr. Hughes, during the campaign you said—I quote—the United Nations is an organization as impotent as the Nevada Gaming Commission. You've said that you want sanctions against both Russia and Iran. My question is, would you use UN forces to enforce those sanctions, or do you have a plan for the United States to handle this crisis on our own?”

A few titters of laughter moved through the press pool. Putting feet to fire of a new president was a right of passage, but nobody had expected the pointed question to come from the upstart. Leah did not dislike Hughes and the question wasn't intended to embarrass him. It was intended to prove to the other journalists that she knew her stuff.

Hughes answered, “Everything is on the table.” A nonanswer. Next time she would push harder for a definitive answer. She would have to if she ever wanted to reach her goal of being the doyenne of political correspondents.

Leah had learned about the Cold War in middle school. She could remember the roll-down maps in her social studies class and the giant white space that took up the USSR, spanning the Arctic like a cape. The teacher discussed peace talks at Reykjavik and the threat of nuclear war. The lessons imparted a dull feeling of dread in her belly, which had returned with the renewed crisis. The standoff between the two countries seemed an awful lot like history repeating itself. The United States wanted Russia to immediately cease selling nuclear materials to Iran. Russia scoffed; they were sovereign people and could engage in diplomatic and economic ties with whomever they wanted.

Iran had begun to openly proclaim its intentions to destroy the USA. By assisting Iran in its nuclear capabilities, Russia appeared to be less an ally every day. Their diplomats assured the USA that they remained committed to a friendly relationship with the USA. In fact, they were dependent on the USA economically and did not want to sour that relationship even as they assisted in Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Leah glanced at the time on her cell phone and decided it was not too late to call Claudia Wells to ask if she had any inside information.

She sounded preoccupied from the first moment. Leah offered to call back tomorrow, but Claudia declined. “Actually it's only going to get more crazy as the week progresses, I fear.”

“What do you think of this Russia situation? Is there any serious threat of the USA going to war with Russia? It's starting to be talked about openly by unnamed sources in the current administration.”

Claudia paused, obviously judging whether or not to reveal what she knew. “This is off the record?”

Leah frowned. Damn it, she was hoping for an on the record comment. Still, she wouldn't turn down free information. “Absolutely. I'll call you a ‘government source.'”

“Don't screw me on this, Leah,” she warned.

“I won't,” Leah replied emphatically. A keen sense of discovery was at hand. She knew better than to betray her sources.

“I don't have all the facts yet but it appears we might have a mole in our government,” Claudia said. “Someone working for the Russians.”

“A spy?” Leah was nearly breathless. She had heard nothing about a spy.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because two of our extremely highly placed assets in Moscow were murdered today.”

Leah was stunned to silence.

“The current secretary of state is debating whether to kick all the Russian diplomats out of D.C. If he does that, the Russians will kick ours out of Moscow. That will only ratchet up the tensions.”

After asking questions for fifteen more minutes, Leah hung up and began to type up her report, carefully avoiding any hint of where the information originated. Two dead Americans in Moscow … Her knowledge of history reminded her wars had begun over much less than that. She shivered with a sudden, horrible thought: those were the first dead of World War Three.

She abandoned her original piece and began writing the story about the two dead Russians. She would not wait to turn it in tomorrow; she would call the office and get it filed to the
Washington Post
website tonight.

No answer. Richard Mullinax folded his phone, tucked it into his pocket, and paced the plush white carpet of his luxury apartment in Chevy Chase. Anxiety had been building and gnawing at him all day because he could not get hold of Omar Koss. Emails, phone calls, it all vanished into a sucking black hole with no response at all.

Since he learned that two Russian assets were murdered in Moscow, he had begun to feel honest fear. Resonating down deep in his bones, a suspicion that his fate was sliding out of his own hands. The map of the keys had been delivered to Moscow as they had planned, but he did not expect the Russians to respond so quickly. He had hoped for time to distance himself from his involvement in the scheme. And now Omar was AWOL.

In frustration, he again dialed the number Omar had given him. An automated phone voice said, “The person you are trying to reach is unavailable.” Then it hung up without even giving him an opportunity to leave a message. Omar must be screwing him, but why? The money had been wired to Omar's offshore account; there was no reason to leave him in the cold.

Multiple scenarios of revenge floated through his mind. Perhaps he should warn Fallon Hughes that her life was in peril. Of course he wouldn't actually do that. It would expose his relationship with Omar and that must be prevented at any cost.

Where are you?

His body felt sick and weak, like he was missing some essential vitamin. Perhaps he should call Claudia for a quick romp. No, he was too distracted even for Claudia. This wasn't supposed to happen. He was the Deputy Director of the National Security Agency; he should be able to track Omar on his cell phone. The secret truth, admitted only in the privacy of his own mind, was that he was a bureaucrat, not one of the hotshot code breakers. He had run Omar's phone through a simple GPS tracking system, but nothing showed up. He could not risk asking an underling to try some more advanced probes, such as trolling for email messages, texts, and the like. To do so would bring attention. All it would take was one stupid insignificant code jockey to remember that Mullinax knew Omar's name and it would be Game Over.

Omar Koss was so discreet his name had never appeared on any of the internal watch lists or terror org. charts, sometimes called Terror Trees, that crossed Mullinax's desk every day. That alone spoke to his skill. The thousands of threads that connected one terror group to another were full of auxiliary names, but he appeared nowhere. He was a ghost. He would not be contacted until he wanted to be contacted.

It had only been one day, Mullinax told himself. His panic was eating at him, warping his senses. There was still time for Omar to explain himself.

He tried to remain calm. The investigation into the deaths of the two operatives would logically start in the CIA. They would be looking for someone who had access to identities of US sources in the KGB and Russian military and probably someone who directed the analysis of Russian intelligence operations. It would take time for the CIA to clear those people. They may never come to the conclusion at all the NSA was involved at all.

Stupid thinking. He knew from his earliest training at the NSA that arrogance was the Achilles heel of most spies. They believed they were smarter than everyone else. Richard certainly did not feel that way now. Having actually committed espionage, his confidence in the abilities of the US government to track his illicit activities had grown exponentially.

Perhaps he could leave. He would go to Costa Rica or Panama. No, no, now he really was thinking crazy. If he left there would be no doubt of his guilt. The CIA or his own organization would send teams after him, they would steal him in the night, wrap his mouth in tape, and drag him back to the USA with indictments and handcuffs, lawyers and trials, and ultimately the needle, sliding under his skin, thin deadly streams of venom shooting into his veins; he envisioned a pale light tracing from the needle insertion up his arm to his heart. They said you don't feel it; they give you a drug to make you unconscious, then your heart stops beating and then you're dead.

He shivered despite his profuse sweating. He had to talk to Omar. He had to get Omar to help him cover his tracks. Omar would help him erase his involvement in the deaths of those diplomats. If Omar could do that—and he had to do that—then Richard would resume his ordinary life and forget the billions of dollars that he had planned. He would one day be the director of the National Security Agency. He would be the best director in the history of the agency: squeaky-clean.

He felt for the phone in his pocket and dialed again.

Fallon told herself that she was not dressing for Tom, but never could Fallon recall wearing a sexy jersey wrap dress and knee-high boots to the office. She'd woken up feeling amazing, with well-being glowing like sunshine in her veins. She never felt sexy and happy anymore. She wanted to wear something that reflected her newfound attitude.

When she stepped into the corridor where Tom was waiting, she saw that the dress had been the right decision. He took a slow, sensual visual tour of her outfit—and her body—and her heart fluttered. She had the feeling it wouldn't have mattered what she was wearing. He seemed to like to look at her, no matter what.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning, ma'am.”

“We're back to
ma'am
?”

“You will always be
ma'am
during work hours.” He radioed the drivers that Avalon was en route.

They stepped into the elevator, and the doors glided closed. Tom leaned in to kiss her: smooth, all male, and totally hot. The delicious contact ended too soon as the elevator arrived in the lobby.

Beyond the wide glass windows, a few reporters were gathered on the sidewalk, even as a picturesque sugary snow fell. Across the street, satellite trucks were queued up. Suddenly the dreamy pleasure of Tom gave way to the cold reality that her life was in shambles, and she was still accused of murder. That knowledge had a way of making everything seem small and insignificant by comparison.

Tom asked, “Do you want to go through the garage?”

The motorcade was idling at the curb. It would be quicker to run the gauntlet. “Let's just go.”

Two agents positioned by the doors kept the media from getting too close, but she could hear them barking questions, the word “murder” spiking the cold, still air.

She climbed into the backseat and the doors slammed closed behind her. Fallon shut her eyes, listening to her heartbeat and trying to find some semblance of calm.

Fallon lightly thumbed the keypad of her iPhone, trying to decide whether to call her father and ask what was going on. Obviously, he didn't especially want to hear from her. He had not called back with any information about the FBI warrant or the impending charges against her. He certainly had not called to ask if she was okay after being scared witless by a search warrant. Perhaps this silence was his way of disowning her. As disownments went, this one was pretty low-key. Disavowal by ignoring.

Spontaneously she dialed her mother's cell.

“Hello, dear,” Elizabeth answered crisply.

“Hi. I just wanted to find out how Evan is doing today.”

“He's having breakfast,” she said.

“Mom, you need to hire a better minder. Kendra is completely irresponsible.”

“Oh good Lord, Fallon. I am so tired of you criticizing me—”

“This isn't about you. It's about Evan.”

Elizabeth wasn't listening. She had gone off on a tangent about how mean everyone was to her.

Same old routine. Frustrating as hell.

“I'm at work now, Mom. I'll call later.” She hung up and jumped out of the car.

At her desk, Fallon got to work on the Chandler case. She'd only just begun to review the updates when her cell rang. It was her mother again.

“I wanted you to know I thought about what happened yesterday and I've decided that I need to confront your father about the movie.”

Oh God, no more. No more of this craziness. Fallon made a noncommittal “hmmm.”

“You really helped clarify that for me yesterday. I forgot to ask while you were here. Have you bought your inaugural gowns? I wanted to make sure we're coordinated.”

Fallon wanted to mention that she was presently under suspicion of murder and thus pretty inauguration frocks had slipped her mind, but she knew better than to antagonize her mother.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to figure out how to handle this. Finally she diverted herself from the issue like she did every other time it confronted her. “Have to go,” she said and hung up.

In that moment, she felt pity for the people of the United States who had elected her father. Her parents were clueless, selfish people whose naked lust for power was embarrassing to witness. Her father was a politician, so he, at least, had the polish. He spoke the political language, even if he was badly prepared for life in Washington, D.C.—a fact he would never concede simply because he was ignorant about how national politics worked. Her mother, on the other hand, was a Hollywood actor who had absolutely no concept of what normal people expected and deserved from their politicians. Beautiful gowns? Nobody cared about her gowns. There was a potential war with Russia looming on the horizon, a shaky economy, the fact that Iran was getting nuclear weapons, and terrorism, and a thousand other things that normal people cared about before they cared about what color her mother's gowns were.

Fallon understood her mother's strangeness to some degree. Her mother had not worked in five years. She was an artist. She needed to create, which had to be why she was so excited about
Kill Shot
; it was an opportunity not only to act but to do something dangerous. There was a fission of excitement about it. Her father would—rightly, in Fallon's opinion—put the kibosh on that idea. While Fallon loved Tarantino films, she could not imagine her father would countenance the First Lady actually acting in one.

The role Elizabeth presently occupied was not one she took to easily. Her wings were clipped; she was suffocating.

The drinking, though, had begun when they moved full-time to Helena. What was she supposed to do all day in Helena? She tried to work in Los Angeles as much as possible, but by then Preston was making noises about it being improper for her to work. “The First Lady of Montana does not make movies,” he had bellowed at her when Fallon was home from Pepperdine one Christmas. Soon after, Fallon noticed the subtle change in her mother. Then the changes grew dramatic. Her mother seemed to float through long, heavy days not constructed out of anything solid as a meal, a telephone call, an appointment with a friend.

Drinking helped the days go by faster.

Fallon had once mentioned it, subtly, to her father. His only comment was that he would take care of it. Fallon could just imagine the magnitude of the fight that ensued if indeed he reproached her drinking habits. Her parents could not change each other or take care of each other. Theirs was a model for every relationship Fallon did
not
want to have.

Her parents apparently enjoyed squabbling and even screaming fights: that was the only way they related to each other. Fallon did not want that for herself. Though she had never argued with Tom about anything, she did secretly still harbor some rather dark emotions after his rejection of her in Paxos. They'd not discussed it, and it was starting to bother her.

Would she one day blow up at him? Would she one day say terrible, hateful things to him? The thought made her sick. But she also knew she couldn't keep quiet about his abandonment forever. She hungered for him with a great yearning need, but she also wanted to protect herself.

She stood up to close the door but Tom appeared in the doorway. “Kevin White will be up in a moment. I'm heading to WFO to do some paperwork, which is grievously overdue. Whoa. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” she said warily. “My mother …”

“Is she okay?”

“Drunk but otherwise fine,” Fallon spat out. She shook her head and covered her face with her hands. “I'm sorry.”

His big hands gently tugged her wrists down and he looked into her face. “Is this a crisis?”

She laughed despite herself. “No, I'm okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Nothing I haven't handled before.”

Tom glanced down the hall. “Okay. If you need anything, text me and let me know.”

“Thanks,” she said as Kevin White appeared in the hallway. She stepped back into her office and shut the door. Solitude. Silence. She needed it. It was time to work. She opened an email that had just arrived. It was a note from Robert Chandler sent to both her and Sam Cahill. “Please don't let me go to prison,” it said. “I wouldn't do well in prison.”

“You and me both,” Fallon whispered and opened his file.

Tom did go to the Washington Field Office to complete overdue paperwork, but his real purposed was attended after that. The address listed on the police report for the incident resulting in Antoine's suicide was an attractive redbrick townhouse in the lively Adams Morgan neighborhood. Antoine Campbell was listed on the top floor of a four-floor building that looked much newer than its neighbors, which was curious. It was not exactly the residence he expected for a twenty-two-year-old kid with an arrest record and no official occupation. How, for starters, did he afford it?

Tom knocked and waited. When the door cracked open, a face pale from lack of sunlight looked at him with an unfocused stare. “Got a warrant?”

Funny how they could just smell authority on you.

“Is this the residence of Antoine Campbell?”

“Used to be.”

“Can I talk to you? Secret Service.” He showed the kid his badge.

“Secret Service? I don't give a shit about the president,” he said.

“I'm investigating the suicide of Antoine Campbell. I don't think he had anything to do with the president, either.”

The door opened and Tom entered what looked like an office after a massive bankruptcy. The living room was full of tables of monitors, speakers, keyboards, miles of cabling. But no computers. Interesting.

“They took them all,” the guy said as Tom scanned the room. “They took my servers and laptops, Antoine's, everything.”

“Who took them?”

“FBI. They were investigating him for hacking and they took all our boxes.”

Hacking? Again? Tom's blood raced for more info, but he would stick to the plan.

“Did they leave a copy of the warrant?”

“No. They just came in here and took all the hardware.”

“When did this happen?”

“Two days ago.” The day Antoine supposedly jumped off the building.

“Is there some place we can sit down?” Tom asked.

The guy pulled out two metal folding seats. Dust imprints were still on the table where the computers had been.

“What's your name?” Tom asked.

“Jake Wilson. I already told the FBI everything I know.”

“What was Antoine involved in?”

“Nothing.”

Something was off. Tom could detect it. The nervousness, the quick, breathy answers.

“Look, Jake, I'm not here to get you into any kind of trouble. I need to know what Antoine was involved in.”

“I told the FBI—”

“Fuck the FBI!” Tom shouted, surprising him. It was a move calculated to get him to talk. If this guy was involved in hacking at the same level Antoine appeared to be, he'd probably resent law enforcement. He would see himself as an outsider. Tom attempted to bond with him on that basis.

“Fuck them,” Tom repeated in a normal tone of voice. “I'm not the FBI. Let's talk about Antoine. Was he a hacker?”

Jake shrugged.

“He was arrested three years ago for breaking the Army's servers. Was he still involved in that?”

“He was a computer security consultant. He penetrated systems to show companies where their weaknesses were.”

“Okay. Did the Army ask him to do that?”

“No.”

“Okay, so was he still involved in hacking?”

“No.”

“Why did the FBI think he was hacking? What did they think he took?”

Jake looked at him with wide, blank eyes. “He was a consultant …”

It occurred to him that Jake wasn't protecting Antoine, who was now dead. He was protecting himself. He was scared. Of the FBI.

“What were the agents' names?” Tom asked.

“There was only one and I don't know.”

“Did the agent give you a business card?”

“No.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don't know.”

“White guy? Black guy? Hispanic? Asian?”

“White guy.”

“What color hair?”

“Dark blond.”

“Eyes?”

“I don't know. I don't go around staring into guys' eyes.”

“Was he tall or short? Fat or thin? Give me something here.”

“I don't know. Average. Everything about him was average.”

“Was he dressed well?”

“As I said, he looked like you. Polished shoes, hair trimmed every nine days, the whole G-man stereotype.”

“Did Antoine ever talk about the map of the keys?”

Jake winced. It was subtle, and he recovered quickly, but Tom caught it. He shook his head. “No, man, I don't know what you're talking about. The FBI wanted to know that too. I told them just like I'm telling you: I never heard of that before.”

Tom kept his expression neutral, but he was going to get nowhere with Jake Wilson. Either he really didn't know or the FBI had worked him over to keep him silent.

Tom stood up and handed him a card. “Please call me if you feel like talking about Antoine.”

He looked down at the card and slipped it into his pocket.

Tom returned to the blustery, cold afternoon. Funny, the agents who served a warrant on Fallon didn't leave a card either. The agents who spoke to the receptionist at the law firm where Antoine died likewise didn't offer a business card. It could be just a coincidence, but it seemed very odd. As public servants, securing the trust of the public they served was critical with every interaction. Part of that was being accountable—allowing citizens to know your name and how to reach you was very basic.

It was possible they did things differently at the FBI, but Tom doubted it. If the person who took Fallon's computer wasn't an FBI agent, who was he? Probably the person who chased Antoine Campbell to the rooftop and threw him off. And the same person who broke into Tom's house.