Beyond the space between the racks was the corridor to the next terminal. I squirmed and bumped through the people who milled by the racks, not seeing faces. I got clear of them into the corridor and looked back, still running. The crowd was oozing, parting, making way for the mustached man. I turned ahead, running past shops, dodging bodies. I brushed one against a wall going past as the corridor opened into the second terminal.
This one had two front doors, to the left and right of a long ticket desk. The bald man stood in front of that, watching both doors. He saw me as I burst out of the corridor and veered left for the nearest door.
He was quick, but I was too close. I was three feet from the door when he was four yards from me. He would have had to shoot me. I rushed through the doors into darkness and turned right on the sidewalk.
Mary’s car was in front of United, dimly lit by overhead lamps. There were no cars blocking hers. I cut into the circle of slow traffic and drop-offs and weaved through them to her car. Horns blasted. I reached the car and jumped in as she stepped on it. I turned and looked back through the window. Lasko’s men were standing amidst the traffic and the wail of angry horns. We sped away.
Mary asked what had happened. I waited until I caught my breath, then told her. Her hands on the wheel were white. “They’ll probably check my place first,” I finished, “then maybe yours if they got a license number. After that I’m sure they’ll think of my office.”
We were on the Parkway then, moving toward the Rochambeau Bridge. The Washington Monument punctured the dark, and beyond that, the Jefferson glowed quietly.
“Can we go faster?” I asked.
She glanced over. “I can’t believe you hid that memo.” Her voice held splinters of anger, mixed with fear.
We were crossing the bridge. The Potomac was black, like a huge ink spill. “Be kind. Remember that you’re abusing someone who was nearly the centerpiece at a closed casket funeral.”
“It’s not funny.”
“What isn’t?”
She paused. “None of it, I guess. I’m just glad you’re still alive.”
I turned from the rear window. “Mary, when this is over we’ll go hike up Green Mountain. There’s no politics there and no commission.”
She tried to smile. We drove silently in the darkness, through the L’Enfant Promenade, past the Capitol, and up to the doors of the ECC. No one behind us.
It was nine o’clock. Only the lobbies were lit and a few random offices. We parked in front. “They’ll be looking for us,” I said. “You’d better come. It’s not safe out here.”
“All right.”
We got out and went to the door. I opened it for her. We walked into the yellow light. Officer Davis sat at the desk. We showed him our cards. He didn’t smile. He never did.
We moved in dim light to the elevators. I pushed the button. One opened. We stepped in and I pressed “Three.” The elevator sighed, rose slowly, then rumbled open. The third floor was pitch dark.
We stepped out carefully, Mary holding my arm. “Where are the switches, Chris?”
“I don’t know. Nice, isn’t it?”
I waved a hand in front of me, as if clearing cobwebs. That didn’t work. So I felt our way to the far wall. I groped along it toward my office, scraping my fingertips on cratered blocks.
We turned the corner to the corridor which ran past my office area. A small path of light shone through the area doorway and into the hall. We walked toward it.
My eyes tracked the light. It came from a crack beneath an office door. I froze. They were there, after all.
“Your office?” Mary whispered.
“Uh-huh.”
I pushed Mary behind me and edged silently toward the door. I knew who was there.
But then you’re never quite as smart as you think you are. I threw open the door.
It was Woods.
Thirty-Five
He stood behind my desk, holding the manila envelope. For an instant, his face froze in surprise. Then it settled into the closed-off pride of a model in a shirt ad. His broken nose lent a hint of violence. The one thing he didn’t look was sorry.
“What the hell are you doing?” I blurted stupidly.
He remained silent, giving the room a searching glance. Only the desk was between us. The overhead light cast a sickly yellow tint on the bare walls. The desk touched the wall to my right. But between the desk and left wall was a four-foot space. His eyes gauged it, then turned back toward me.
I felt a sudden wave of anger. “Give me the memo.”
He shook his head. My anger was turning into numb disbelief. I had almost outrun them. But all this time I had been a rat in Lasko’s maze, with Woods blocking the end. “It was you all along,” I said. “Everywhere I went Lasko was ahead of me. And you were the one who kept him there.”
He stared at me with contempt. “Nothing justifies the fuck-up you’ve made, hunting Lasko like a prep school Captain Ahab. You’re a fool, with no sense of proportion.”
“And you’re a low-rent John Dean, Woods, with the ethics of a war criminal.”
He answered in a smooth indifferent voice. “Lehman’s dead. I didn’t want that but there it is. There’s only you to say this memo ever existed. And there’s no one over me for you to say it to.”
The words had a sickening accuracy, and he could make them come true. The indifference was the underside of the wholly adaptable man. At bottom, he didn’t give a damn about anything except himself. And he was slick enough to bury the evidence without a trace.
We were both to the side of the desk now. Three feet between us. Woods was framed by the dark window. We watched each other.
“Try to stop me, Paget, and I’ll leave you here for Lasko’s friends.” He pointed behind me to Mary. “Her too, if you care about that.”
“No more middlemen, Woods,” I answered. “If you want to walk out of here you’ll have to kill me yourself. I know it all now. Most important, I know where the money was going.”
“I’ll bite,” he said negligently. “Where?”
“The President.”
Woods’ eyes froze, but his voice was unnaturally calm. “Just how did you reach that amazing conclusion?”
“It explains everything. You just have to put the facts in order. You start with the antitrust case, which would almost surely ruin Lasko. There’s only one man in the government who could kill that case. Lasko’s friend, the President.
“The price was one and a half million, with Catlow the perfect middleman. But getting the money was harder. Lasko’s first problem was that his company’s cash poor. So he used Green to hype the stock offering an extra one-point-eight million, laundered a million-five through Martinson, Carib, and the First Seminole Bank, then assigned Lehman to get the money to Catlow. They probably called it a ‘campaign contribution.’”
Woods seemed numbed by my recital-or perhaps he was deciding what role to play next. But the anger seized me now; he had to hear it all. “I could never see why a smart man like Lasko would use men like Green, Lehman, or Martinson. The only answer was that someone big was shaking him down and that the trial was coming soon, too soon for Lasko to plan properly. He had to use what help he could and hope he could slide by, or fix any problems later.
“Lehman was the first problem, and Lasko’s men fixed that. I was the next and you became chief fixer, not out of loyalty to Lasko, but to the President. You thought you had me wired. But none of you knew I had Lehman’s memo.”
Woods’ eyes weighed it all, then seemed to snap to a decision. I tensed, awaiting his move. “You’ve lost,” he said coolly. “The entire government’s against you-and without the memo, no one will believe any of this.” The words covered his careful slide toward the door. Part of me couldn’t believe we were going to fight. But the part that remembered Alec Lehman knew we were. He kept inching. I slid back my right foot, to brace myself.