Star Chamber Brotherhood (30 page)

“No, it’s the Somerset Club,” Werner answered politely. “Please check the number and dial again.”
 

As soon as he laid the receiver in its cradle, Werner cast a glance at the clock, retrieved his windbreaker from its hook, and crossed the hall to the men’s room. His face took on a solemn expression as he knocked on the polished hardwood door.
 

“Say, Harvey, can you hear me?” he called through the door.

“Yes?” came the reply.

“Sorry, my friend, but I didn’t notice the time. I’ve got to go out. I left a couple of jackets for you on the bar. Take the one you like and leave the other. No charge. And, one more thing, Harvey: don’t ever give up.”

Hearing no reply, Werner turned and left the building.

****

Aware that Harvey Konig may have been followed to the Somerset Club, Werner peered out the window and scanned the street for surveillants before opening the door. Seeing no sign of Bulldog or his linebacker partner or anyone else who looked like they might work for the Department of State Security, he hurried down the stairs and turned east on Beacon Street along the north edge of Boston Common.

He had traveled half a block up the hill before he noticed the first shadow, a women in her mid-twenties wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt who seemed somehow out of place. He turned to cross the street and saw another tail, an athletic-looking man of about the same age in khakis and a denim shirt. Werner guessed that they might have been members of a surveillance team following Konig who split off now that Konig had led them to Werner.
 

Until now, no connection of the sort the government suspected had existed between the two men. But now Werner carried the letter to Konig’s wife. If the government caught him with the letter or discovered him attempting to ditch it, they would investigate him to within an inch of his life. And when they found that he was a former prisoner at a corrective labor camp in the Yukon and lacked a residence permit for Boston, they wouldn’t need to discover the plot against Fred Rocco to arrest him. The DSS had the power to charge him with any real or imagined crime they wanted.
 

No matter how he looked at it, he saw no other choice. He had to lose the tails. But he needed to do it in a way that would not arouse undue suspicion. More than that, he needed to do it soon, so he’d have a chance to meet Sam Tucker at the coffee shop on the other side of the Commons in time.
 

Werner considered his options. Normally he would turn south at Park Street, avoiding the park because of its depressing squalor and the danger of being mugged. But today, he decided to risk it. The surveillants would not be hard to spot among the refugees, and the latter’s hostility to police or security types might distract the tails long enough to give him the lead he needed.

At the corner of Beacon and Park he turned onto a footpath heading due south toward Brewer Fountain, and took a direct line through the eastern side of the tent city. About fifty meters in, he stepped aside to make way for an elderly couple and looked behind him. The youth in khakis and denim shirt had followed him into the park but the female snoop in the hooded sweatshirt was nowhere to be seen. In her place Werner spotted a fortyish bullet of a man wearing a dark blue suit.

At the next intersection of footpaths, Werner turned right toward the Frog Pond and the center of the Commons. Now the tent city encroached more closely onto the footpaths and he could sense the hostility of the idle youths loitering on the few surviving park benches. One of them called out as he passed but Werner could not make out what he said.
 

At the next bench, a pair of hard-bitten youths with mullet hairdos stepped into his path.

“No narcs allowed,” one of them spat as he approached.

Werner smiled kindly at them and inclined his head to point out the men following him.

“If you want narcs, watch the pair following me.”

When the two mullet-heads turned to look, Werner slipped past them.

Ten meters further on, Werner turned south again and used the opportunity to glance behind him. To his delight, he saw a hostile crowd gathering where the Bullet and Khaki Boy would have encountered the two mullet-heads. Werner quickened his pace and turned again, now heading southeast toward the corner of Tremont and Park Streets, where the makeshift shacks of street vendors encroached upon the footpath and blocked any view of him from the north.

As soon as he reached the south edge of the Common, Werner removed his windbreaker, folded it tightly, and tucked it into his waistband so that, at a distance, a surveillant would see the back of his white shirt rather than a dark windbreaker. Then he merged with the stream of foot traffic heading northeast on Tremont and kept pace with the crowd, resisting the urge from the adrenalin coursing through his veins to bolt across the street and disappear into the nearest alley.

At last Werner left the Common behind him and entered the dark canyon of Tremont Street, where the shadows comforted him and the buildings sheltered him from searching eyes. With his last reserve of self-mastery, he waited for the traffic signal before crossing Tremont and cast a sidelong glance in the direction from which he had come. Seeing none of the surveillants who had followed him to the Common, he crossed quickly and slipped into the narrow slot of Winter Street.

****

Ten minutes later, a refreshed and smiling Frank Werner arrived at the Café Normandy, a block south of the Orpheum Theater, where actors and stagehands mingled with professors and law students from the nearby Suffolk State Law School. Despite its proximity to Boston’s former financial district, there were no Moneymen to be seen.
 

Werner found Sam Tucker huddled over an empty cappuccino mug in a booth at the rear of the cafe.

“Another ten minutes and I might have begun to worry,” he greeted Werner with palpable relief.

“If you had seen me ten minutes ago, you might have been more worried,” Werner replied. “I had to shake surveillance to get here. I don’t think they’re connected, but it’s not something either of us can take lightly.”

“Meaning?”

“No more face-to-face meetings for a while.”

“How long is a while?”
 

“A few weeks. Maybe longer,” Werner answered.
 

“That kind of puts a crimp in our mission, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not sure I follow you, Sam. Our mission is accomplished. Unless you know something I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you find it strange that, unlike Plan A, there was absolutely no mention in the media of what happened in Plan B?” Tucker pointed out.

“Not really. The government doesn’t usually call attention to this sort of thing. If they announced anything, it might look as if they were losing control, especially coming so soon after the first event.”

“Except that yesterday, two days later, they did announce something. An obscure little blurb saying that our man is recovering from medical treatment and that his deputy will be taking his place for a while,” Tucker said in a low voice, leaning across the table for emphasis. “I don’t think they’d be saying that if our guy was dead, do you?”

“Where did you find that?” Werner snapped.

“On the FEMA Web site.”

“Oh, shit,” Werner responded.

“My reaction, too,” Tucker agreed.

“It’s always possible that they could be playing games with us, but I think we’d better take this at face value. Maybe he was wearing a bulletproof vest.”
 

“Wait, there’s more,” Tucker added. “This morning I found our man’s name on a hospital admissions roster. Condition stable and expected to recover. Now how’s that for dumb luck?”

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Werner replied with a look of discouragement. “Honestly, Sam, in a world that made sense, why would a guy like that have any luck at all?”

Before Tucker could speak, the waitress arrived with another cappuccino and took Werner’s order for a double espresso.

“So where is he now?” Werner continued when the woman was gone. “And what else do we know about his condition?”

“They released him yesterday,” Tucker answered. “He’s at home with his wife, a nurse and a pair of bodyguards. From what I can make out, the government seems to think our man was simply a target of opportunity, somebody the opposition chose because he was a high-ranking security official and relatively vulnerable. If they thought someone was targeting him personally, I don’t think they would have sent him back to his apartment.”

“You may be right,” Werner agreed. “But it may also be a ruse to lure us back for another attempt. How about the security situation in general? Have they raised the alert level for other senior federal officials or for high-profile locations like the Courthouse or the Federal Building?”
 

“All of the above. Just what you’d expect if they thought this was a run-of-the-mill terrorist attack.”

“And what about his diagnosis?” Werner pressed.

“Skull fracture, concussion, spinal injury with partial paralysis,” Tucker continued. “And a massive amount of pain. From what I’m picking up over the phones, it seems the nurse has had trouble scoring enough painkillers for him. The wife has been calling everywhere, pulling every string she can to find a pain specialist who’ll issue the narcotics he needs.”

“Interesting,” Werner picked up. “What do we know about the schedule for his nurses and security guards? Anything there we can use?”

“I have a pretty good idea of their schedules. He’s got around-the-clock coverage with three shifts of nurses and bodyguards. Our best opening would appear to be at the afternoon shift change, between four and five. But you’d need tight planning and heavy firepower to carry off any sort of Plan C because they’ve got police backup on call within three to five minutes.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point there, Sam. It’s going to take time to figure this one out,” Werner admitted. “But we might as well start thinking about it.”

Sam Tucker began to speak but held back when he saw the waitress arrive with their coffee. As soon as she served it, Werner grabbed the check and settled it in cash.
 

Tucker looked uncomfortable waiting for her to leave and Werner sensed it had nothing to do with the money.

“I wish I could be with you for Plan C, Frank, but I’ve run into some problems of my own,” Tucker declared. “ Remember our talk at the museum a month ago, when I told you how I learned to hack the Institute’s computer system?”

“Of course,” Werner replied sympathetically. “And I appreciate all the things you’ve done with it since then.”

“Well, I have to stop it. Like, right now,” Tucker announced in a near whisper. “It seems that MIT finally discovered all the hacking going on and hired some computer security consultants. They’ve already suspended a couple of my undergrads for unauthorized Internet use and I expect they’ll investigate the entire department before long. I’ve done what I can to cover my tracks, but if they look hard enough, I’m sure they’ll see what I’ve been doing, too. Obviously, we wouldn’t want them to do that.”

“Can you stop them?”

“I’m not sure, but I think there may be a way to get them off my trail,” Tucker offered. “You see, right now the Institute is very keen on reducing the head count among faculty and research fellows. Tightening up computer security gives them a chance to fire some people, shut the barn door, and move on without further ado. So, if I announce that I’m leaving next week to take the plasma physics job in West Virginia, I think they’ll be so relieved that they won’t bother to spend more time and money to study what I’ve been up to.”

“Wow. Next week,” Werner said, startled by the news. “I’m sure you know what’s best, Sam. It’s just that…”

“Yeah, it’s a bitch to withdraw when you’ve got the enemy on the run,” Tucker replied. “But I’m not giving up the fight, just stepping off to the sidelines to fight another day.”

“Then tell them today, Sam. Getting burned won’t do either of us any good. And whether our man lives or dies, his past has finally caught up with him. The rest is in God’s hands.”

Sam Tucker lowered his head and nodded. He pushed back his chair and for a moment Werner expected him to stand up and leave. Instead, he leaned forward and spoke to Werner with heartfelt emotion.

“I’m sorry, Frank, but I can’t leave without asking you one last question that’s eaten away at me for a long time. It’s about how my father died. I don’t think Uncle Jonah has told me the whole story. You were there. I want you to tell me the truth about his last days.”

Frank Werner met Sam Tucker’s gaze and decided that he could not refuse his request.

“Sam, your father was a fine man,” Werner began. “And he lived a life that would make anyone proud. That’s why he should not be judged by the decisions he made in the final months of his life.”

Sam’s eyes took on a puzzled look.

“Uriah Tucker was one of the best men I knew at Kamas,” Werner continued. “And the best men were precisely the ones that the warden and his goons most wanted to break. To break a man like Uriah, to compromise him in the eyes of the other prisoners, to reduce him to a stoolie and force him to betray his principles and his fellow prisoners: that is the ultimate expression of power that the Unionist system sought to have over us.”