Hard Return (27 page)

“Come on, you must read the papers.”

“Read the papers? WTF? Get out of the Stone Age, bud. Okay, I’ll play. Republican? Or Democrat?”

“Both. We just had a two-term president.”

Eric stared beyond Landry, thinking. “There’s Raul Alacrán. Republican, right? And the vice president, Jack Klebold—whiny little bitch, you ask me. What’re you thinking?”

“What about the senator with the funny name? Cam Mills. You know, like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz? Kind of memorable, two short names.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen him on TV.”

“What do you think?”

Eric shrugged. “I’m not into politics, but if you pressed me, I’d say he’s just another Democrat asshole.”

“Why?” Landry asked.

“Why what? He just is.”

“No other reason?”

“He’s a lightweight? He looks like a weasel? I dunno.”

“I ran into him. Three times.”

“You did?”

“Twice in Iraq, and once stateside.”

“And?”

The waitress came and set down their plates. “Anything else I can do for you?” she asked.

“You got a phone number?” Eric quipped.

She poured more coffee for him, a lot of it ending up on the table, and whisked away.

“Guess she showed
me
,” Eric said after she’d left.

Landry said, “She works hard for a living.”

“Forgot for a minute you’re Prince Galahad.”

“Sir Galahad.”

“What?”

“
Sir
Galahad. Or maybe you were thinking of Prince Charming.”

“Jesus, you’re fucking Wikipedia! It’s not cool to be correcting people all the time.”

Landry took a sip of his coffee. “How much money do you need for a presidential campaign?”

Eric said, “A whole helluva lot?”

Landry nodded. Aware of the snap of plastic plates and the buzz of conversation, even though where he really was, was back in the Green Zone, guarding pallets of shrink-wrapped hundred-dollar bills under the blazing Iraq sun. “Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh? You want to tell me what’s going on in that fucking crazy head of yours?”

Landry grinned. “A whole helluva lot.”

CHAPTER
34

It was easy to determine the whereabouts of presidential candidate Cameron Mills. Just Google him. He was in California, as a matter of fact, staying at the home of his friend and chief fund-raiser, Stefan Graybill. Stefan Graybill was the head of a group called the Rancho Santa Fe Democrats Association.

Landry had known a few horseracing people who lived in Rancho Santa Fe—it was very close to Del Mar and the racetrack there. All the people he knew were Republicans. Rancho Santa Fe was a conservative enclave, home to some of the wealthiest people in the country, many of whom were prominent racehorse owners. In fact, most of the residents of Rancho Santa Fe were horse people of one stripe or another.

But there were Democrats—retired movie and TV executives, Internet moguls, and the odd actor or two.

Landry had been to Rancho Santa Fe once, fifteen years ago, to assess a potential racing prospect for a friend. He had been impressed by the beauty of the area. The farm he’d gone to was built in the twenties. He remembered shady dirt lanes lined by white board fences, eucalyptus, and pepper trees. He remembered lush pastures and white-painted barns with red tile roofs. The barns echoed the main house—California mission style. Of course the house was much grander.

So he was surprised to discover that the rancho where the senator was staying was the same place he’d visited—a remarkable coincidence. He already knew the layout. He’d already seen inside the barns; he’d already been inside the main room of the house, as well as the kitchen. Of course, that was fifteen years ago, and the owner might have renovated the house since then. But as he glassed the house from a nearby hill, he didn’t see any disturbance to the flora and fauna. The date-palm trees were still in the same place; it would have been impossible to build around them. The oblong pool looked the same, and the worn-brick terrace lapped right up to the glass doors leading to the solarium.

He’d looked at Stefan Graybill’s rancho on Google Earth. He had even found a recent blueprint of the Rancho Santa Fe area in a small corner of the Internet. Although it was difficult to read, he could see the general layout of the house.

Rancho Santa Fe had been established as the Covenant of Rancho Santa Fe in 1932, built by a developer and his rich friends to preserve the beauty of the area and to keep the riffraff out. It must have worked. By 2006, Rancho Santa Fe was the second-most prosperous area in the country, with an average home costing over $2 million—$2,585,000, to be exact.

Landry had read up on both Senator Cameron Mills and Stefan Graybill. Graybill, a Silicon Valley billionaire who had made the Forbes 500 list for seventeen years in a row, was determined to turn the San Diego area blue—an impossibly uphill battle, in Landry’s opinion. He was the primary mover and shaker behind Senator Mills’s presidential campaign.

The official presidential campaign, he knew, wouldn’t start for another year and a half. But anyone who wanted the job was running now, and that meant they were fund-raising.

In a way, none of it made sense, because if Landry was correct, Cam had plenty of money for his campaign. More than enough.

Landry needed to find out who had called the hit on him. It could have been Cam Mills, or it could have been someone who worked for Mills. Or, it could have been someone else entirely—someone and something completely out of left field. Landry couldn’t think of anyone else who wanted him dead, but then again, it all depended on who knew he was alive. After his photo showed up on television, there would be a virtual army of people. But who had the most to lose?

Cameron Mills: the guy who made off with the $6.6 billion that had famously gone missing from Iraq.

Now he was running for president. If it ever came out that he had stolen the money, his presidential campaign would go up in flames.

A lot was left unsaid between a politician and his staff. The polite term for that unspoken transaction was “plausible deniability.”

If Cam had mentioned Landry as a threat—even in passing—his body man would know. His security people would know. A few mentions, a few dropped hints, and his people would intuit what was expected of them without actual words ever crossing the politician’s lips.

Landry could not rule out Cam’s body man, Duncan Welty—the pale, ferret-faced man always by his side. Welty was former military himself. He could not rule out the head of Cam’s security, either.

Landry had worked security for politicians in the past. He knew that a body man was a politician’s closest ally and friend—his Man Friday. The body man even supplanted the politician’s wife as chief cheerleader and confidant.

He needed to start with Welty.

Before he could eliminate a threat, he had to define it. The fund-raiser event at Graybill’s farm was two days away. Landry had found a nice little spot on an oak-covered hill above the barns where he could watch the house. The parabolic mic he’d brought with him hadn’t picked up anything more interesting than casual conversation and birdcalls—yet. There were comings and goings, mostly a train of black Chevrolet Suburbans with tinted glass. Landry noticed that Cam’s body man drove the same Suburban on his trips away, which were surprisingly frequent. He went on all sorts of errands, bringing back dry cleaning and food. Apparently the Mills family loved the burger place in the village. Landry memorized the license plate.

It was time for a shopping trip. Landry had several items on his list. Everything he needed could be found in San Diego.

He bought a portable computer printer for his laptop, a laminate badge-holder with a clip, and a pack of manila envelopes. He drove up the street to a Walgreens (there was one on every corner, it seemed), and paid cash for a disposable phone with sixty prepaid minutes.

From the drugstore he drove to a sign shop he’d checked out earlier in the week, in a run-down section of San Diego proper. The street was crammed with auto-body shops, strip malls, and other small businesses catering to small industry.

Landry had a good ear and spoke two languages—German and French—fluently. (He also knew some Pashto.) He was good at accents. He stopped at a graphics shop that was actually pretty busy, and picked out the guy who seemed least motivated—a kid with slumped shoulders who smelled like he’d been smoking a joint out back. The kid was droopy eyed and barely paid attention. Landry addressed him in broken English—an Italian accent—and painstakingly described what he needed. He asked for two sets of wide striping, one blue, one red, and two sets of black letters, starting with
B
and ending with
T
. If you spread them out on the ground they would spell “Bellen Pohleet,” a word he stressed a few times. It sounded vaguely Italian and the kid was no linguist. He did his job and provided the letters.

Fifteen minutes later Landry drove into a parking garage and found a dark corner with one vehicle on either side. There, he clamped the letters on to both sides of the van. Only this time they spelled “Bell Telephone.”

He drove back to Rancho Santa Fe and parked beside a telephone pole, approximately three-quarters of a mile from the Graybill house. Using climbing spikes, he scaled the pole. From there he could observe the caterers and other vehicles—security, etc.—coming and going, and once again studied the layout beyond the gates. He reached into the satchel hanging from one shoulder and pulled out a camera with a telescopic zoom to check out the private security. They looked pretty good. He snapped pictures of the catering vehicles, security structure, and one very accommodating federal agent who faced out toward him. Landry got a good shot of the security ID on his jacket. He also photographed the catering van.

Landry now had an enlarged photo of the federal security badge. He would use the computer printer he’d bought at Staples to print up a reasonable facsimile of the federal ID, substituting his own passport photo for the agent’s face. Then he’d slip it into the clip-on laminate sleeve, and voil
à
! He was official security.

One thing Landry kept in a bag in his shaving kit at all times: lapel pins from various agencies. They could be bought cheaply, and were essential to further the fiction that he was with a federal agency.

Surveillance done, Landry ditched the telephone-company lettering in the back of the van and drove back to another graphics shop down the street from the first one, this time with a roughly drawn sketch of the catering van’s sign. He already had the address for his next stop—a men’s clothing store. He decided on a handsome black suit. He bought two white button-down long-sleeved dress shirts and a dark tie—all in keeping with federal-agent apparel. Sitting in his van, Landry searched online for the nearest uniform shop. It was a drive, but worth it: he bought a white kitchen smock and apron.

With his purchases loaded into the back of the van, Landry returned to his place under the oaks. He had to walk from the road, but fortunately the area was hilly and there was plenty of cover. He stuck with the parabolic mic and watched the activity below.

The shadows were slanting across the hill, and the sun had turned the grass a lurid Day-Glo green, when a black Suburban drove out through the estate gates. Landry glassed the license plate. Sure enough, it was the Suburban Welty drove.

He waited until Welty made it to the main road, then discreetly followed. The Suburban stopped in the village. Welty got out and walked to the general store on the corner. The alarm beeped twice.

Welty had to turn the corner to reach the entrance. Landry figured he’d have plenty of time, but he would keep it to three minutes, tops.

Landry had programmed the phone and dropped it in a manila envelope. He scrawled “Duncan Welty” on the envelope, dropped a quick note inside, sealed it, and slipped the package under one of the windshield wipers.

Welty came outside about ten minutes later. Landry watched from a distance as he returned to the Suburban, and did a double take at the envelope. Landry snapped several shots from his phone: Welty pulling the envelope out from under the windshield wipers, peeking inside; Welty shaking the phone out into his hand. Welty turning this way and that, looking around. His face impassive—probably because he wore dark wraparound sunglasses.

He shoved the envelope under his arm, beeped the door lock, and climbed into the Suburban.

Sat there for a few minutes, staring down. Reading the note, no doubt. The note said: “Call this number if you value your job.”

Looking around. His paranoia showing. Then he started the car.

The Suburban roared to life. Duncan Welty pulled out so fast the tires bounced off the curb. The tires chirped. Then he was out on the street.

Landry watched him drive a quarter mile, then come to an abrupt stop. He was parked under a cottonwood tree, the engine still running.

Landry’s own throwaway phone buzzed. He thumbed it on but said nothing.

“Who are you?” Welty demanded.

Landry stayed silent.

“What are you trying to pull?”

Landry said nothing.

“This is bullshit! I’m hanging up right now.”

Landry waited. He knew Welty wouldn’t hang up.

“Who
are
you?”

“You know who this is.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I’m calling to tell you your target is on to you.”

“What? What are you
talking
about? Who
are
you?”

“I’m not telling you who this is. You need to be aware that your target is on to you. I suggest you look into it. Do it quickly.”

“What are you
talking
about?”

Landry watched Welty gun the engine and drive away.

He thought:
Und now
,
ve vait
.

Landry watched the estate through the night-vision scope on his rifle. No one stirred. He’d half-expected Duncan to drive somewhere, but he didn’t. It was a beautiful and warm California night, creaking with crickets. The lights were on in the house, throwing lozenges of light onto the terrace. The pool was lit from within, glowing turquoise, and Landry wished he could swim in it.