“Oh, God, I’m sorry, Katie,” Roarke said.”
The danger was beginning to settle in. “Scott, he tried to have me killed. You could have been…”
He held her in his arms, warming and consoling her.
She whispered through her shivers, “You know he bugged half the law firm? Installed cameras everywhere. He called it security.”
“A chip off the old block?” Katie didn’t get the reference. “Like his mentor — the recently departed Haywood Marcus.” Roarke referred to the late partner of Freelander, Connors, Wrather & Marcus. Marcus had represented the Lodge family estate. He was killed in the North End by the man Roarke presumed to be Depp. “You are making a lot of accusations, counselor. Are you sure you want to go there?”
“Do I ever!” She unraveled the blanket and used it to dry her hair.
By now, the car was moving west on Storrow Drive, away from her apartment. “Hey, where are we going?” she asked.
“Someplace safer,” the FBI agent said from the front.
Katie looked at Roarke, expecting more of an answer.
“For a while,” he explained. “Until we sort things out.”
“You mean until you get Witherspoon!” She surprised herself with what she said. “I mean, until you arrest him.”
Roarke looked directly ahead, not answering. He let out a tension-filled breath. It hardly cleansed him. Katie turned to her own thoughts. She retraced all of the steps in her mind: steps that tied Witherspoon and Marcus together.
“I can’t believe I never realized it before. I’m such an idiot,” she said.
Roarke took her hand. He worried what would happen when the experience fully caught up with Katie. Her anger would mask the shock for only so long. She can’t be alone. He decided to stay with her. He’d think about what to do. Some way to flush Witherspoon out. But for now, his mind went back to his first encounter with Witherspoon. He remembered how much he instantly disliked the man. He didn’t seem dangerous when they met a year earlier. He simply represented the worst in lawyers. Katie showed him the best.
Roarke took Katie back in his arms for the rest of the ride to the safe house, a 200-year-old farm in Lexington. They talked about Witherspoon for the rest of the afternoon and into dinner. They took the discussion to bed a few hours later. Katie propped her head up with her arm — still too angry to realize she’d been so close to death.
“Why?” she finally asked her boyfriend. “Why, Scott?” Tears finally filled her eyes.
Roarke sat up and leaned over her. “There’s always been someone at the top of all this,” he said softly. “We have an assassin doing his work and functionaries below him. On one level, Marcus. Then, if you’re right, Donald Witherspoon. But who knows how far it goes after him?”
“They can’t all be sleeper spies.”
“No,” he answered. “I don’t even think Witherspoon was. But people trying to get rich? That’s another story. They don’t know why, they just get sucked in. Marcus either brought Witherspoon in, or worse, he was recruited by our number one. My guess is that Donald Witherspoon operated independently, maybe even unknown to old Haywood Marcus himself.”
“A mole?” she asked.
“Yes, exactly.” Roarke’s eyes lit up at the thought. He suddenly felt he might have a shortcut to Depp. “A mole we can trap. We can…”
He stopped. Katie was crying now.
“If you didn’t come to the Esplanade to say goodbye….”
“I know, sweetheart. I know.”
Roarke rocked her in his arms. For the hours that followed, they shared each other’s tears, and declared through the deepest kisses and the most passionate love their commitment to one another.
As they fell asleep, Roarke tried to push an image out of his mind. Not tonight, he said to himself. Not now. He didn’t want to see Depp’s face. But it kept forming and it wasn’t the man being dragged by a grappling hook from the bottom of the Charles.
At 5 A.M., Roarke called a special number. He bet the man at the other end would be up already, too. He was right.
“Boss.”
“Hello, Scott. I heard I’m not the only one who had an unexpected day.” Morgan Taylor was in the Oval Office reading the updates he requested from each of the Cabinet members. “Is Ms. Kessler okay?”
“Yes, shaken, but she’s remarkable.”
“You’re very lucky,” the president said.
Roarke corrected him. “She’s lucky.”
“You are, to have her.”
Roarke had to smile. “Yes, very lucky.”
“So what’s your theory? I read the FBI report and saw the pictures of the dead man. He’s not your guy, is he?”
“Nope. But Katie is certain that one of her colleagues is responsible for the attack. Donald Witherspoon, a Marcus lackey.”
“And you agree?”
“Well, it’s plausible. I’d like to let him stew for a day or two. Make him feel uncomfortable.”
“Why?”
“A nervous man makes foolish mistakes.”
“Turn it over to the FBI, Scott. No stove piping. You don’t need to—”
Roarke interrupted him, something he never did. “Yes, I do.”
“I understand,” the president acknowledged.
“Thank you, sir.”
The president raised his eyebrow, unseen to Roarke on the phone. Roarke rarely said sir. “Go on.”
“Well, now I have one for you.”
“Yes.”
“President Lamden?” Roarke declared. “Was it a heart attack?” He could ask the question over the scrambled phone line.
“The doctors are quite certain. Yes.”
“A natural heart attack?”
President Taylor was caught short by the question. Roarke reacted to the silence.
“Yushchenko.” The name was enough of an explanation. When Viktor Yushchenko ran for president of the Ukraine, he was poisoned with the dioxin TCDD, a key ingredient of Agent Orange. The plot failed to kill him, and he lost. The nation’s Supreme Court determined that the election was fraudulent. A new election put Yushchenko back on the ballot. The electorate made him president.
“Are you thinking that terrorists…?”
“Not terrorists. Terrorist, singular. Or assassin,” Roarke offered.
Taylor hadn’t considered the possibility. He didn’t know whether Lamden’s doctors had, either.
Elliott Strong did more for talk radio than the legends who came before him. Out of respect, he often referred to them on the air. On the other hand, he didn’t thank the people who quietly fed him information and talking points on an almost daily basis. He never mentioned that he knew which congressmen and senators were vulnerable to a barrage of constituent complaints. He failed to disclose how he had a seemingly sixth sense for what argument would provide the next flashpoint for Capitol Hill debate.
Strong wasn’t the first to have inside briefings. For years, critics of conservative talk argued that Limbaugh and the other like-minded hosts must have had a cozier-than-cousin relationship with the Bush administration. But unlike many of his predecessors who once wore the crown of AM talk, Elliott Strong did not support the president. Any president. Not the Republican Taylor. Not the Democrat Lamden.
He served another master. He attacked anyone who purported to have an international view rather than a national view. He went after those who advocated free trade with China and full restoration of relations with Vietnam. He dismissed the very existence of the EU, the European Union. He questioned America’s constant effort toward unseating contemptible dictators and installing “pro-American stooges,” as he called them. And he questioned the unquestionable: Israel’s politics.