The Sentinel (9 page)

It occurred to her that Charlie Meriweather's murder involved a succession of horrors: informing his wife Delores of his death, the funeral, and now the painful errand of interviewing her. Breckinridge parked the car, and felt a warm breeze coming from the river. She knocked on the door of a modest walk-up condo, and heard footsteps inside. Delores Meriweather opened the door.

"Hello, Martha."

"I know this is unannounced, but I couldn't get through-"

"I took the phone off the hook."

Delores was a few years younger than Charlie. She had piercing, green eyes and wore her hair in a topknot. She was a petite, strident woman, and a veteran American Airlines flight attendant who Charlie had met on a Presidential campaign flight. She often played piano and sang at the annual Secret Service holiday party. At Charlie's funeral, Breckinridge had watched her accept condolences stiffly, her eyes red, her jaw set in the anger of loss.

"May I come in?"

"Of course."

Delores motioned her to the sofa. The living room was decorated with Oriental tapestries and Spanish art that Delores and Charlie had acquired during their ten-year union. Open shelving held the knickknacks that Meriweather had picked up when traveling across the world with the President: a Russian samovar, an African ritual mask, and a Colombian figurine.

"I'm sorry to bother you-"

"I'm so tired of hearing the word sorry and tired of all the shitty, Secret Service bureaucratic, federal schmaltz. All the flowery crap."

"Delores, I know the police department has already asked you questions, but I am investigating Charlie's murder separate from the others, as a security issue-"

"No. I don't know of anyone who would want to kill him if that's what you're asking. The others had the same question."

"Was there anything unusual that happened with Charlie during the last few months?"

"Wait a minute," Delores said with furrowed brow. "Larry Wintergreen told me that Charlie had been picked at random by a terrorist group. Is that true?"

"As far as I know, yes."

"Then why are you asking these questions?"

"I'm trying to figure out if there is some connection to Charlie - some clue as to why they picked him - the method of how they might have picked him."

"How the hell would I know anything about that?"

"Something Charlie said perhaps."

"The only thing that was different with him in the last few months was that he was fed up with the job. He was fed up with standing post and fed up with White House politics. That's what he told me. I've already told everyone this. How many times do I have to go over it? He's dead and I'm moving to Montana. They could have given Charlie a desk job, but they kept him standing post at his age. I know it had nothing to do with him getting killed, but he wasn't in love with the Secret Service any longer. That's why it is so ironic that he got killed in the line of duty. I'd finally talked him into taking his pension. We were planning to move to Montana. All that is over now."

"The White House politics you just mentioned. Did Charlie go into any detail about what was bothering him?"

"He'd been forced to take part in some investigation. He called it an 'in-house caper.' Gil Flanagan was running it. He told Charlie it had had something to do with a defense contractor getting inside information on contract bids. Or at least that's what Flanagan told him. It involved Helen Pierpont. Charlie told Flanagan he didn't want to do it - that he didn't want to get involved. But Flanagan put pressure on him and Charlie felt like he had no choice but to go along."

"That doesn't sound like Charlie."

"That's because you don't know the whole story like I do. Charlie had been arrested for drunk driving in Manassas last year. He ran into a parked car and got arrested. Flanagan saved his job by going to his pal Wintergreen. Wintergreen covered everything up for Charlie, so Charlie couldn't very well refuse to go along with what they wanted. Charlie owed Flanagan big-time. Besides, Flanagan told him the request came from Wintergreen himself. Charlie wasn't in a position to refuse."

Breckinridge rubbed her chin for a moment, and her thoughts bounced off one another like bumper cars.

"Did Charlie speak with Wintergreen in person about the assignment?"

The look that crossed Delores's face was one of bafflement and apprehension.

"I think Flanagan relayed all the information to him. But supposedly the orders were coming from the President himself."

"What did Flanagan ask him to do?"

"Bug a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. It was during a Presidential trip."

"Whose room?"

"I'm sitting here wondering if I should say. But it's a foolish thought, isn't it? Now that Charlie is dead, what the hell is the difference? He planted a bug in Pierpont's room and connected it to a tape recorder. He hated being used, but he had no choice. Charlie drove up to New York on a Friday and came back the next morning. He told me that Flanagan dismissed him as soon as he'd finished the installation. When he got back, Charlie was worried. He told me he thought something funny was going on - that Flanagan might be up to something. He was concerned that he was getting in over his head-that he'd allowed himself to slip into a 'trick bag' as he called it - that there might have been another reason for the investigation that had nothing to do with defense contractors at all.

"So Charlie went to Wintergreen. Wintergreen confirmed that he had asked Flanagan to bug the room. But Charlie said Wintergreen beat around the bush and avoided telling him what it was all about. All along Charlie believed that he was acting on orders from the President. But after he spoke with Wintergreen, he was convinced there was something funny about the whole investigation. He believed that Wintergreen had used him.

"Charlie and I talked about it, but I could tell he was holding back something. I suggested that Charlie go to Pierpont. He said it was too dangerous. He thought that if he told her what he'd done and the others denied ordering him, then he would end up holding the bag. That's when Charlie decided to retire. He said he was tired of being a government drone - that he was being put in the middle. There, that's all I know. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to be alone now."

Breckinridge cleared her throat. "Did Charlie mention what he'd learned from the operation itself - what was on the tapes?"

"If he learned anything, he never told me. If you want to know about this, wouldn't it be better for you to talk to Flanagan or Wintergreen?"

Breckinridge stood. "I apologize for bothering you."

Delores led her to the door and opened it.

"Is there something you aren't telling me about what happened to Charlie?" Delores asked.

"I'm just investigating. Really."

"Martha, have you ever been married?" Breckinridge shook her head. "If you do, don't marry a Secret Service agent."

"Good-bye, Delores."

Walking down the steps, Breckinridge heard the door close. Stopping at the sidewalk, she took a deep breath, let it out, and looked up to the sky. The clouds drifting from the east had turned metallic gray, as if drawing moisture from the Potomac. For some reason, Breckinridge found herself thinking of a similar day when she was a young girl, riding her bicycle through a public park in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and pretending she was an explorer. Her mother had called her a tomboy. That's why people longed for childhood, Breckinridge thought. They wanted to relive the freedom and lack of responsibility.

But she couldn't get on a bike and just ride away from the Charlie Meriweather case. She couldn't get it out of her mind. It had enveloped her.

Returning to Secret Service headquarters, Breckinridge took the elevator to the seventh floor. Passing by a guard at a desk, she moved along a darkened hallway to a door that was stenciled in crude black letters JC ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DIVISION. She took out her badge and held it up to a surveillance camera mounted above the door. The lock buzzed. She went inside the Secret Service wiretap room known as "Junction City." Agent Lino Palmieri was adjusting the controls on a tape recorder. He was the technician in charge of electronic eavesdropping. He was a slender man, younger than she was, with weather-yellowed hair, a close-cropped beard, and wire-frame eyeglasses.

"Lino, have you had any unusual activity on the Aryan Disciples taps?"

"Nothing but small talk. Nasty people talking about what they watched on TV; the price of motorcycles. Junkola."

All telephone lines tapped by the Secret Service, no matter their location, were routed to the room via dedicated circuit. On tall shelves lining the walls were dozens of voice-activated tape recorders and pen register machines that automatically recorded telephone-dialing impulses and conversations. Each piece of equipment was neatly marked with a case number and the name of the special agent handling the investigation. Breckinridge's name was on six recorders.

"That's all?"

"And I've been checking the tapes frequently. None of your Aryan Disciples suspects have been doing much of anything. They've been on the phone to one another, all right, but I haven't heard anyone telling people to call back from a pay phone. And none of the ring codes. Nothing out of the ordinary. There has been some general talk about the government being after them-rehashing, small talk-but nothing we haven't heard before.

"Nothing so far indicates any action being planned against the President. None of these people are even talking around anything that sounds like a planned action. You know what I mean; no verbal code. I've heard none of that. And that is always what these Aryan Disciples types do. When there is an action in the wind, they start the word games, the pig Latin. Before the Federal Building bombing, they were talking about silly putty, their code word for C-4 explosives."

"What do you make of it'?"

"Overall, I'd say they aren't up to anything at the moment."

"Hard to figure."

It didn't make sense to her. The Aryan Disciples wiretaps had proved helpful in the past. Even offhand comments by the suspects being monitored could help identify Disciples bombers and their helpers and pinpoint places and times of planned bombings. And Lino had a good ear for detecting terrorist plots.

"Does this have anything to do with a case that Pete Garrison is working on?" he asked.

"Garrison?"

"He just sent me a coded E-mail and asked if I had any Aryan Disciples taps going that had mentioned the name Frank Hightower. I told him that he could come over and look through the database, but that I wasn't going to run through all that shit without a written order. My job isn't to run out investigative leads for the hell of it. It's to see that this equipment is working. Sounds to me like he might be trying to horn in on your case."

"That's what it sounds like."

The U.S. Secret Service was a competitive, cutthroat environment in which case stealing - encroaching on another agent's investigation - was common. She'd never worked with Garrison and knew little about him, other than that he'd been kicked off the White House Detail for knocking out a pie-thrower. But what was Garrison up to? And who was Frank Hightower?

The footplate alarm buzzed. Palmieri cocked his head toward the television monitor depicting the hallway. It was Garrison.

"Speaking of the devil."

Palmieri pushed the buzzer. Garrison walked in.

"What were you doing asking about Aryan Disciples wiretaps?" Breckinridge asked.

"I'm not trying to work anything behind your back, if that's what you think."

"Give me a break."

"I just left a message for you to call me."