That got everyone staring at me. Although, with Dobson, it was more like glaring. If looks could kill. “No one outside this room is supposed to know you’re here, Mr. Mann,” he said.
Immediately, Crespin cleared his throat. Maybe he could just sense it, that something was up and I desperately needed a lifeline. Or maybe it was more than a sense. Perhaps he, too, had read 1984.
“Sorry, Clay, my bad,” said Crespin. “Mr. Mann’s sister is being operated on this morning, and that’s his nephew calling to let him know how it went. For obvious reasons, Mr. Mann ditched his cell phone once this whole ordeal started.”
I watched and listened to Crespin with nothing short of amazement. He was so calm, so convincing. The guy could probably fool a polygraph, if he had to. He had to be the best liar I’d ever met.
Actually, make that the second best.
Dobson nodded to his secretary. “Put it through.”
As she disappeared back to her desk, he handed me his phone. The longest two seconds of my life followed as I waited for the call to be transferred.
Click.
“Winston, is that you?” I asked.
“Yes, it’s me,” said Owen. “And what Dobson just told you is bullshit.”
Chapter 108
The questions were bouncing around in my head so fast and deliriously I could feel my brain smushed up against my skull just trying to contain them all.
Where has Owen been? How did he know I was in Dobson’s office, let alone what was being said? And who’s the “new friend” he went on to mention, the one he wants me to meet?
The only thing close to an answer — or, better yet, what would get me closer to all the answers — was the address Owen gave me before hanging up. But not before first telling me I had to come alone. “For real, Trevor. I mean it. Just you.”
Of course, that went over like a fart in an elevator with Valerie and Crespin. Especially Crespin. He and his Spidey sense had bailed me out in Dobson’s office, and this was how I repaid him? I’m off to go meet the kid, but you can’t come?
“I’ll be back, I promise,” I said. “And I’ll do everything I can to have Owen with me.”
It was either detain me or let me go. They let me go.
Almost one hour to the dot after saying good-bye on the phone in Dobson’s office to my nephew, Winston Smith, I arrived at Fifteenth Street NW and Madison Drive.
If the Jeopardy! category is Well-Known Washington Addresses, I’ll admit that I tap out with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Besides, who really needs to know the address of the Washington Monument? All you have to do is look up, right?
“Father, I cannot tell a lie,” came a voice over my shoulder.
I turned to see Owen, smiling at his own cleverness about the line and our location, although I knew he hadn’t chosen it for the irony. Just because I thought I’d come alone didn’t mean I actually had. The flat, sprawling grounds of the Washington Monument, with nothing but a circle of skinny flagpoles for cover, were his way of making sure that even if I had been followed, no one was within earshot.
Speaking of hearing things on the sly...
Owen pivoted to his right. “Trevor, I’d like you to meet Lawrence Bass,” he said.
I pushed aside what was now the latest question in the long queue — How the hell did these two ever meet up? — and shook the man’s hand.
I knew exactly who Bass was. Namely because of what he wasn’t — the next director of the CIA. Owen and I had watched him withdraw his name on television, standing in the East Room, flanked lovingly by his wife and two young daughters. We’d listened to him explain that he wanted to spend more time with his family. And we’d both known he was lying.
“Wait a minute,” I said, turning back to Owen. Gone fishing? Lawrence Bass? “This is where you went?”
“No one just walks away from being named CIA director,” Owen said. “There had to be more to it, not that I was really expecting Lawrence to divulge anything. But as it turns out, he was doing some fishing of his own.”
True to his military background, Bass took the cue and didn’t dillydally. Nor was there much emotion. The guy seemed to have everything wrapped in a blanket of calm and measured.
“Last week, I paid a visit to Clay Dobson in his office,” he said. “And I never really left.”
With that, Bass reached into his pocket and held out an iPhone. I recognized the app he tapped; it was the same one Claire always used to edit and organize her interviews. Voice Recorder HD.
Let the answers begin.
Chapter 109
Owen didn’t bother saying the actual words. That would’ve been redundant. One glance at him, the look on his face, was all it took.
What did I tell you, dude?
All I could see in my mind was the picture of Dr. Wittmer and his good ol’ college chum, Clay Dobson. And all I could hear now was Dobson’s voice telling someone in his office that Wittmer should’ve been killed sooner.
Of course, that someone was Frank Karcher — or Karch, as Dobson kept calling him in between rounds of cursing him out. For two guys in cahoots with each other, they sure weren’t seeing eye to eye on much. Cover-ups are a bitch.
“Jesus,” I said. “How...?”
“Well, I was the director of intelligence programs with the NSC,” said Bass, who somehow managed to convey that without a hint of bravado. It was merely fact. Same for the way he claimed he’d been able to hide the bug in Dobson’s office. “I just dropped it in his pencil holder when he wasn’t looking.”
Bass fell silent again so I could keep listening, but all I had were more and more questions.
“What about Landry?” I asked. Was the press secretary involved as well?
“Best we can tell, no,” said Owen. “There’s at least a half dozen times when the two are alone in Dobson’s office together and nothing ever comes up.”
“Anybody else?”
“Just Prajeet Sengupta,” said Owen.
The Indian doctor? “I thought you told me that was all bullshit.”
“Not all of it. Like with any good lie, there’s always a bit of truth. Sengupta exists, he’s a real person,” said Owen. “Come to think of it, the Iranian guy from Stanford is real, too.”
I clearly didn’t follow. Bass paused the recording, his thumb shifting to another file. He pressed Play.
For the next minute, with the flags around the monument whipping in the wind above us, I listened to Dobson on the phone with Sengupta asking about his friends in college, specifically if there was anyone from the Middle East.
“Sengupta was Dobson’s man for the serum, botched as it was,” said Owen. “Turns out, Sengupta has a brother back in India doing twenty years for drug trafficking. Or at least, he was until Dobson intervened with Indian intelligence officials. The serum in exchange for time served. The brother’s now a free man.”
“So Dobson discovers an Iranian roommate and invents the story about him,” I said.
“Yeah, and of all things, the guy — Ghasemi — actually did go back to Iran. According to Stanford alumni records, he owns a software company in Tehran — but of course, that wouldn’t prevent him from moonlighting for the nuclear program, right? Dobson had all the angles covered,” said Owen. He then turned to Bass. “Except one.”
Bass raised his palms as if to deflect the credit. “I knew nothing about this serum, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was up. Especially when I heard Karcher’s name to replace me.”