The Capitol Game (48 page)

The secretary squirmed in his seat a moment. “Say this is true, what can I do?” he asked in a rather caustic tone.

“There are a few things,” Bellweather mumbled, almost a whisper.

“Spit it out, Dan. And speak up, dammit!” His eyes darted around the room; the last thing he could afford was being seen in a confidential conversation with this crooked jerk. No doubt one of these sneaky media clowns had smuggled in a camera and it would look great splashed across the front page of the morning
Post
, a picture of Bellweather whispering in his ear about God knows what. He adjusted his expression to a deeper frown and tried to look like he wasn’t listening.

“For one, help us find these two,” Bellweather requested.

“How?”

“You’ve got the resources at your fingertips. Your own investigative services, for one thing. The FBI and CIA will do whatever you ask. Use them.”

“What else?”

Bellweather took a deep breath, then said, “Agent Mia Jenson.”

“Who’s she?”

“The DCIS investigator who provided the tip about the phony report.”

“What about her?”

“She’s biased.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She hates us. She’s been to our headquarters several times, throwing around nasty threats, hassling our people. It’s personal for her. She has a deep grudge, a vendetta. Don’t ask me why, she just does.”

“That’s a damned serious charge.”

“I know it is.”

“So what do you want me to do about it?”

“Nothing serious, just reassign her. We’re requesting a fair shake, that’s all. Put somebody fresh on the case. Somebody impartial, somebody harboring no emotional baggage. We want a fair process, that’s all.”

“I’ll think about it. Anything else?”

“No, I’m finished.”

“Then will you please shut up? Let me enjoy what’s left of my evening.”

Nicky was waiting at her desk when Mia rolled into work the next morning. He didn’t invite her into his office this time.

“You pissed somebody off,” he told her with his head shaking.

“Always nice to hear,” she said and actually smiled. “What gave you the clue, Nicky?”

“You’re off the polymer case. That’s straight from the director’s lips. I had the impression she was just relaying the order herself. I think this came from the very top.”

“I wasn’t aware I was ever on the polymer case,” Mia noted.

“Neither was I. Is this a problem for you?”

Mia’s smile seemed to grow. “No, I expected it. I’d be hugely disappointed if it didn’t happen in fact. Do me a favor, put it in writing.”

“If you insist, I will.”

“I do insist.”

She took it so well that Nicky couldn’t hide his expression of relief.

“Of course now I have to appoint somebody to actually look into this thing,” he told her.

“Who you thinking of?”

“Clete Jamison.”

Mia offered a satisfied nod. “Good choice,” she said. “Clete’s thorough and tough.”

“He is, and he’s coming into this with an empty tank. It would help if you gave him some background.”

“My pleasure,” she said and seemed to mean it.

After a brief pause, Nicky added hopefully, “It would help even more if he knew the name of your source.”

Mia placed her things on her desk and sat down. “Forget it, Nicky. My source will only deal with me. That’s the stipulation. It’s a matter of trust.”

Nicky tore off his glasses with an air of impatience. “Look, I know there’s a lot going on here you’re not telling me.” He examined her face for a response—there was no response. “How bad is this going to get?”

“For the Capitol Group, very bad.”

“Your source is telling you other things?”

Mia shrugged and rearranged some papers on her crowded desk. The answer was yes.

“What’s your source’s motive? You can tell me that.”

“Truth, justice, the American way. Do the right thing. I know what a rare and unbelievable motive that is these days, and in this city, but that’s it.”

Nicky played with his tie a moment. He’d never had an agent
pull something like this. It pissed him off, confused him, made him want to stab a finger in her face and demand answers, but frankly he wasn’t sure how to handle it. “Mia, an order from the director taking you off this case is a serious step. If you’re caught dabbling in what is now an official investigation, I can’t protect you.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“It’s a promise.”

“I’m a big girl, Nicky. I know the rules.”

“You better be sure you do. This can get real ugly.”

“I’m terrified. Send me back to a half-million-a-year job in any of a dozen firms that would take me in a heartbeat. Throw some more threats at me, Nicky.”

By noon, the day after the Capitol Group’s spokesman offered five million bucks to anyone who helped find Jack Wiley or Perry Arvan, CG’s corporate website had received thirty million hits. The announcement was like the shot that started the land rush, a reasonable analogy in this case. Three hours after the promise was issued, so many users logged on, the site crashed. It took a team of programmers two hours, working furiously in the middle of the night, to get it back up, before the flood of hits resumed.

Several big newspapers glommed onto the story and, free of charge, printed pictures of Jack and Perry along with a speculative, fascinating synopsis of CG’s claims and the ensuing manhunt. By nine that morning, cable news rushed into the act and began flashing the pictures and discussing the big bounty. The faces of Jack and Perry were studied and memorized by countless more millions of citizens interested in snatching a cool five million.

O’Neal, by then, had a large call center set up, employing twenty of TFAC’s people and a large, shifting clutch of executives bused over from CG. The calls went to CG’s switch and were smoothly rerouted to TFAC’s call center.

By noon it was a disaster center. O’Neal had never tried this before, and it showed. He was thoroughly ill-prepared to handle the unceasing bombardment of information pouring in. Neither
his own people nor CG’s hapless execs were trained for this sport. They lacked the expertise to filter the good from the bad, the plainly false tips from the seemingly accurate, the fruitcakes and loonies from the moderately sane.

Jack was spotted in too many places to count. He was seen seated on the rear deck of a big yacht in Miami, knocking back mai tais, surrounded by big-breasted girls in string bikinis. Thirty seconds later, he was huddled in an igloo in Alaska munching on whale meat. At the same instant he was spotted in a movie theater in Akron, partying on the slopes at Aspen, sleeping in a gutter in Seattle, and robbing a bank in Atlanta.

Perry, also, was everywhere and nowhere.

Each call station had a large stack of tip sheets to fill out. It seemed so easy, so organized, so infallible. In theory, it was. Every time a call arrived the information was jotted on a tip sheet, then deposited inside the in-box of one of three former Fibbies who would scrutinize the material and decide upon the action to be taken. By ten that morning, all three had found the time to curse at O’Neal and tell him what an ill-conceived crock this whole plan was. Their in-boxes had overflowed hours before. Every time Fox News or CNN or MSNBC flashed up pictures of Jack and Perry, a fresh deluge arrived and the chaos grew.

Martie made the rounds, pacing, barking, exhorting, trying to keep morale up and his system functioning. It was hopeless and he knew it. The only prayer of finding Jack or Perry was the Department of Defense. It had the full and remorseless resources of the federal government to pursue Jack wherever he led them.

No matter how smart Jack was, it was just a matter of time. He would be found.

Jack, at that moment, was running hard and fast. Sweat was dripping off his head. His shirt was soaked, his breath coming out in heavy gusts. Ten minutes before he had kicked up the treadmill to seven miles per hour, a final sprint before he finished his habitual morning exercise.

He had entered the apartment in the early hours of the morning,
before CG’s manhunt gained traction. The day he’d ditched TFAC’s watchers, he took the train to New York, then jumped in the rental car and headed south, right back to D.C. Using a false name and paying with a fistful of cash, he had checked into a Best Western on the city outskirts, watched the news, slept off and on, and waited.

At three that morning, he ditched the rental at a local vendor and dropped the keys in a night box. Nobody saw him. He walked two blocks to a dark street corner where he was met by a friend who drove him here. The tall apartment complex was directly across the street from CG’s headquarters, and the apartment was located on the twelfth floor with a commanding view of everything that happened street side. It had been rented under a false name almost a year before. The day before Jack made his dash for freedom, a friend had restocked it with enough fresh food and supplies to last a month, if need be.

The apartment was large, with three bedrooms, two of which now were filled with stacked boxes, all carefully labeled and organized.

Jack switched off the treadmill and, grabbing a towel to wipe off his sweat, walked to the big console by the window. The curtains and shades were drawn tight. All lights in the living room had been disconnected months before to minimize any chance of a silhouette in the window. He sat at the big console and played with the dials for a few minutes before he found something interesting to listen to.

A team of four men under Jack’s employ had manned this console around the clock for over seven months now. They sat, eating, smoking countless cigarettes, sipping coffee by the gallon, listening, recording, filtering, and discarding the rubbish. They preserved only what was worth listening to. Not only the bedrooms, but a storage container three blocks away were loaded with tapes, the plentiful fruits of this long and exhausting effort.

Jack turned up the volume and listened attentively to the distinctive voice of Mitch Walters conversing with Phil Jackson. They were chatting in Mitch’s office, according to the console
light. Walters had a hard, deep voice, but it sounded hoarse and raspy, the result of little sleep and too much yelling and hollering at his beleaguered employees. Jackson’s voice was unchanged, flat, insinuating, condescending. The feed was crystal clear; Jack could have been seated in the office. He closed his eyes and could almost picture them—Walters behind his big desk with his feet up, perhaps hefting a paperweight in his beefy hand, Jackson lounging in a chair, studying the CEO with his mean, slitty eyes.

“Sufficient evidence is still the problem,” Jackson was saying, not nicely.

“How many times are you gonna tell me that? I’m working on it.”

“Then work faster. Wiley could be found at any minute. You better have something good and legally compelling when he turns up.”

“You said yourself Wiley won’t be a problem. His old pal Wallerman will bury his credibility. He ripped off an old lady, then murdered her. Anything he says will be neutralized by his ugly past.” A brief pause, then, “He was a crook then, he’s still a rotten crook. Nobody believes a murderer.”

“You’re not listening, idiot.”

Jack could picture Walters’s face flushing with anger. His fists would be clenched, his shoulders bunched, his broad, pugnacious face puckered and red.

Jackson said very slowly, very deliberately, “You need to give me something I can work with. You, Bellweather, and Haggar get together and concoct your story. Wiley conned us, and here’s how. Got it? Details, Walters, plenty of details, all believable. The three of you rehearse until you sound like a barbershop quartet. And it would certainly be nice if you produced a little paper or even a tape that backs you up. Fabricate it, if necessary. Understand?”

“All right. I got it.”

Jack could hear the sound of a chair being pushed back.

“You better,” Jackson said, a parting shot. “You’ll only get one chance.”

M
ia slipped out of the office late that afternoon for what she told Nicky was a long-overdue dental appointment. A molar had been aching for a month; she couldn’t sleep and she’d put it off too long already.

Harvey Crintz was lurking nearby, about ten doors down the hallway, where he had an excellent view of the locked entrance to DCIS’s Pentagon office. He’d been there for hours, gulping coffee, chatting on his cell, watching and waiting.

Mia had stepped out a few times, but only to pick up food or hit the ladies’ room, because she returned within minutes.

Crintz had been called two days before by somebody in an outfit called TFAC, who claimed that Harvey had been referred by some mutual friends over at the Capitol Group. At first Harvey had turned white and gagged. Fearful that CG had ratted him out about his cash-for-inside-tips game, he claimed he had never heard of the Capitol Group, never heard of these friends. Deny, deny, deny. They must’ve confused his name for somebody else, he insisted and nearly hung up.

When the words “one hundred thousand dollars” somehow found their way into the conversation, Harvey’s memory improved and his listening turned razor-sharp. It was only a small favor, after all, the voice told him; nothing more serious or dangerous
than what he’d done dozens of times in the past. As a member in good standing of the Inspector General’s office, it wouldn’t be at all unusual for Crintz to visit the DCIS office. And should he happen to, say, browse for a moment around Mia Jenson’s desk, and maybe, perhaps, by chance, find something interesting and relevant to her vendetta against CG, maybe he could find a way to smuggle it out.