House Justice (43 page)

LaFountaine looked directly at Mahoney and said, “Mr. President, is there some reason we need members of Congress here for this meeting?”

Before Mahoney could respond, the president said, “I like to keep Congress in the loop on things like this.”

“Sir,” LaFountaine said, “I believe it would be best if we limit this to people with a need to know. And to people we can be sure will keep the information to themselves.”

Mahoney, in spite of the pain in his head, rose partially from his chair. “Why you son of a—”

The president raised a hand to silence Mahoney and said, “Jake, get on with it.”

“Yes, sir,” LaFountaine said, satisfied he’d made his point. He cleared his throat and said, “We have information that the Iranian government is sending half a dozen rockets to a Hezbollah splinter group in Lebanon. This group plans to hit several high-value targets in Israel the next time the Israelis give them the slightest pretext for doing so, and the rockets the Iranians are sending are more accurate and more powerful than those Hezbollah has used in the past. These aren’t bottle rockets; they can do real damage.”

“So tell the Israelis,” one of the generals said with an indifferent shrug. “Let them take care of the problem.”

“We’ll tell the Israelis eventually,” LaFountaine said, “but we want these rockets to reach Lebanon before any action is taken.”

“I’m confused,” the lone admiral at the table said. “Do we know where the rockets are right now?”

“Yes,” LaFountaine said, “and we know the route they’re taking to Lebanon.”

“Then why don’t we just destroy these things before they get there?”

“We can’t do it that way,” LaFountaine said. “We want the missiles to reach their destination, and after that someone in Lebanon will tell the Lebanese government and the Israelis about the rockets. That way it will appear that the leak came from a mole inside Hezbollah, and not from somebody in Iran. Then we’ll demand the Lebanese destroy the rockets, and if they don’t… well, then the Israelis can do whatever they want.”

Jesus
, Mahoney thought.
Typical CIA: wheels within wheels
. Just
trying to follow LaFountaine’s serpentine logic was making his head hurt more than it already did.

“I still don’t understand,” the stubborn admiral said. “What difference does it make if the intelligence can be traced back to Iran or not?”

“Trust me, Admiral, it makes a difference,” LaFountaine said.

When LaFountaine said “trust me,” Mahoney snorted and LaFountaine’s face turned red.

Looking at the chairman of the joint chiefs, the president said, “The reason you’re here, General, is I want the military to work with Director LaFountaine’s people and develop a backup plan to take out the rockets if we have to.”

“Yes, sir,” the chairman of the joint chiefs responded.

Charge of the Light Brigade
, Mahoney thought.
Theirs not to reason why
.

Senator Clyde Rackman spoke up at this point. “Mr. President,” he said, “I deeply resent Mr. LaFountaine’s implication that Congress can’t be trusted with national security information, but I’m not sure that I understand why we’re here. You don’t need authorization from Congress to do what you’re proposing.”

The president smiled. “Clyde, if Jake’s plan backfires, a bunch of Israelis are going to get killed. And then they’ll rain down bombs on Lebanon and probably invade the damn country again, and then whatever shaky peace we have over there will completely evaporate. I’m sharing this with you because if you have any objections, now’s the time to say something.”

In other words, Mahoney thought, the president wasn’t going to be standing at the podium in the White House press room saying he’d acted unilaterally if his plan failed. His friends in Congress were going to share the blame. The president was a big believer in blame spreading, and rarely did any of it stick to him.

“Yeah, but you’re asking us to buy a pig in a poke,” Mahoney said. He directed this statement at LaFountaine rather than at the president, that being the more politically correct thing to do. “We don’t
know the source of the intelligence and we don’t know why you want the rockets to reach Lebanon, but you’re asking us to go along with this thing anyway.”

Edna Clouter spoke for the first time during the meeting. “Mr. Speaker, I’ve seen the intelligence package and I agree with Director LaFountaine’s approach.”

At that point, Mahoney gave up. He didn’t trust LaFountaine, and he and all the military guys in the room considered the president to be a lightweight when it came to military matters, but everyone trusted Edna Clouter. If she said that what LaFountaine was doing made sense, you could take that to the bank.

“Okay, ladies and gentlemen,” the president said. “Thank you for coming.”

As Mahoney was leaving the room, he realized he’d just heard something important, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Whatever it was, he’d have to figure it out later. Right now he had to get back to his office and lie down and die like the hungover dog he was.

With Stephan watching, Marty Taylor packed a bag with a change of clothes and then they joined Andrei in a Subaru station wagon. Stephan motioned for him to sit in the back, and as soon as he was inside Andrei hit the button to lock all the doors even though Marty could tell that they weren’t the least bit worried he’d try to escape. And why should they be worried? There were two of them and they were both armed.

As they drove, Andrei and Stephan chatted in Russian, so Marty had no idea what they were talking about. At one point he thought he heard his name, and both men glanced back at him and laughed. Forty minutes later, they were on a paved two-lane road, gaining in elevation, and Marty saw a sign that said they were twenty miles from the town of Julian. Julian was in the Laguna Mountains and had been a gold-mining town back in the nineteenth century. Now it was best known for its apple pies. There were two deer grazing near the sign and as Marty turned his head to look at them, he noticed for the first time what was in the storage area behind the backseat.

There were two shovels lying there, and a pick.

Oh, fuck.

Problem: What do you do when you’re in a moving vehicle and you have to get away from two armed thugs who make their living killing people?

Marty figured he had two advantages. Neither Andrei nor Stephan was physically imposing; he suspected he could have beaten either man easily in a fair fight—although there wasn’t going to be a fair fight. The other advantage he had was that these guys thought he was a pussy and didn’t expect him to resist in any way. That gave him a little bit of an edge, but not much of one. Maybe the best thing would be to wait until they got to the motel because at some point one of them would go out for booze and food, and that would leave only one guy watching him.

But the shovels made him wonder if they were really going to a motel. Maybe Yuri had just said that so Marty wouldn’t resist getting in the car and they were really taking him out into the boon-docks to kill him. He had thought that Yuri would keep him alive until all the sales were complete but since Yuri had power of attorney, he didn’t really need him alive.

He didn’t know. He didn’t know if he was going to a motel or to a shallow grave in the mountains. All he knew for sure was that he had to get away from these goons and he had to do it
before
Yuri sold all of his possessions. The Justice gal had said that she’d get him into the witness protection program and agreed to let him keep the proceeds from the sale of his assets, but if he waited too long, there wouldn’t be any proceeds and he’d be starting his new life as a virtual pauper. He just couldn’t let that happen. He’d been rich for so long he couldn’t even remember what it was like being poor, and he didn’t intend to find out now.

He casually reached over the back of the seat. He could touch the handle of one of the shovels. But so what? He couldn’t swing the shovel within the confines of the car. He could, however, take the shovel, hold it like a spear, and jab Andrei in the head. But what good would that do? Even if he could get any force behind the jab, which was unlikely inside the car, the most that would do was maybe cause a wreck— which could kill him, too. Then another question occurred to him: What difference did it make if he was killed in a car wreck or killed by Stephan and Andrei later?

They were driving through a forest at this point, a road cut along the side of a hill, and the ground dropped off steeply on the left side of the car. He glanced at the men in the front seat; they were still talking and ignoring him. He noticed for the first time that Stephan wasn’t wearing his seat belt—which made him snug the one he was wearing even tighter across his chest.

He knew that what he was about to do was dangerous but didn’t see that he had a choice. And he had one thing working in his favor: people tended to survive car wrecks these days, with seat belts and airbags and all that crash testing they did. So he figured he had a good chance of surviving a wreck, and since he knew it was coming, maybe he’d be able to get away in the confusion after it happened.

Or maybe he’d get killed.

He waited until they were approaching a curve where Andrei would have to turn the steering wheel hard to the right to negotiate the road. He looked to the left again and saw that the ground on that side of the car dropped off like a ski slope and was covered with trees. It was going to be a hell of a ride. He reached back, grasped the shovel, and when the car was halfway into the curve he thrust the handle through the spokes of the steering wheel. Andrei screamed out a curse but he couldn’t turn the wheel, and the Subaru crossed the yellow line and went airborne as it left the roadway.

For a moment the car seemed to be suspended in the air—and then it crashed and rolled. He heard windows in the car exploding when the car rolled the first time, but the roof didn’t flatten and crush him. He heard airbags inflating. He heard Andrei and Stephan screaming. His left cheek bounced hard off the door frame as the car rolled two more times, and then it slammed into a tree. The seat belt across his chest felt like it was going to cut him in half.

When the car finally stopped moving it took him a moment to get over the shock of the accident and assess the situation. The good news was that the car had ended up on its wheels. Then he saw more
good news: the driver’s-side door was resting against the last tree the Subaru had hit and Andrei couldn’t get out of the car. And Stephan looked like he was either unconscious or dead. That’ll teach you not to wear your seat belt, you fuckin’ dummy.

Andrei was cursing in Russian, trying to get the airbag out of his way, and at the same time he was trying to open his door. It took him a few seconds to realize that because the door was blocked by the tree, the only way out of the car was for him to push Stephan out the passenger-side door.

Marty couldn’t open the back doors of the station wagon because they were locked, but that wasn’t a problem because the windows were gone. He unhooked his seat belt and scrambled toward the rear passenger-side window, and when he did he saw Andrei reach for the gun in his shoulder holster. Andrei was going to shoot him to keep him from getting away. Marty stopped long enough to punch Andrei in the head and then, because it felt so good, he punched him again before crawling out the window. He was ten yards from the car when Andrei fired at him five or six times. Fortunately, trapped in the car and having to shoot over the seat, Andrei couldn’t aim very well—or maybe he was just a shitty shot. Whatever the case, the bullets whipped through the foliage as Marty ran, scaring the hell out of him, making him run even faster.

As he ran, he developed a plan. He was going to head for the road they’d been on before the crash and just keep running until he found a phone. The first thing he’d do was call all the agents to stop the sales, then he’d call that gal from Justice and tell her to come and get him.

But right now what he had to do was outrun Andrei—and he was damn sure he could do that.

The florist called Congressman Rudman’s Anaheim office and was informed that Rudman wouldn’t be available to see constituents until the following day.

His next stop was an Internet cafe to do a little research on Rudman. He didn’t know where the man lived, or for that matter what he looked like. The congressman’s Web site provided his biography and a photo. His address was available in the White Pages directory.

Just as the florist pulled into a parking space near Rudman’s house, a car pulled into Rudman’s driveway and a woman in her early thirties got out with two young boys. The woman rang the bell and the congressman came to the door. He tried to hug the boys but they squirted past him and ran into the house. The congressman then hugged the woman and she entered the house. Fifteen minutes later, the woman left by herself.

He wondered if the boys were Rudman’s grandsons—the congressman seemed too old to have sons that age—and if the woman was Rudman’s daughter or daughter-in-law and had dropped the kids off for a visit. Whatever the case, he wasn’t going to take Rudman with two young children in the house. He just wouldn’t do that.

He decided he needed to find a place from which to watch Rudman’s house for an extended period. He couldn’t remain where he was, parked so close to the place, because someone was liable to notice
him if he was there for very long and might call the police. He looked around for a different vantage point and noticed the house directly across from Rudman’s was for sale. It appeared that the house was empty: there were no curtains or blinds on the windows or any furniture that he could see in the living room. Nor was there an Open House sign on the lawn.

He exited his car, walked to the alley behind the house that was for sale, and stepped through an unlocked back gate. After making sure no one was watching, he broke a window in the backdoor and reached in and opened it. No alarm sounded. He would be able to sit on the floor in the living room of the vacant home and watch Rudman’s house across the street; if a real estate agent or the home owners should happen to drop by, he would simply leave by the backdoor.