Kate dried her hands and face. “He didn’t die in the North Tower. But he’s dead now.” She added, “I killed him.”
“What?”
I said, “We will not say anything else on that subject at this time. Do you want some cheddar cheese?”
“Huh? No.” Finally, he said to us, “As you know, you’re both in major trouble. I have orders to escort you back to the city as soon as I locate you, which I’ve done. I have the pleasure to inform you that you are both the subject of possible disciplinary action, and hopefully worse.”
And on and on.
I must have eaten a half pound of cheese and cold cuts while he was rambling on, and I looked at my watch a few times as a hint that he should wrap it up.
When he was through, he asked us, “What exactly happened here?”
I replied, “Kate and I found Harry Muller’s killer.”
“Who is it?”
Kate answered, “It was Bain Madox, the owner of this lodge.”
“Where is he now?”
I said, “In the fallout shelter. Dead.” I added, “I killed him.”
No reply.
“And that’s all you need to know, and all we’re saying.”
“All right… then I need you to come with me.”
“Where’re you going, Liam?”
“I told you. Back to the city. There’s a helicopter waiting at the airport.”
I informed him, “We really can’t leave a crime scene. Major Schaeffer-”
“All right. The three of us will spend one hour here with the state police so you can explain what happened. Then, I need to insist that the police release you into my custody.”
I looked at Kate, and she nodded. I said to Griffith, “Kate and I will confine our statements to the subject of Harry Muller’s murder. Everything else that you and the state police see here is a matter of national security, which will not be discussed until we’re back at 26 Fed. Understand?”
“Maybe you can give me a hint about how national security plays into Kate killing a CIA officer.”
Kate responded, “Liam, I don’t think your security clearance is high enough for me to tell you about that.”
He looked a little pissed, but got off a smart remark. “Ted always spoke highly of you, Kate.”
“Not the last time we spoke.”
Liam Griffith is no idiot, and said, “You’re both either in deep trouble or you’re going to get a commendation. So I’ll just shut up until I find out which it’s going to be.”
I commented, “Today must be your annual smart day.”
So we spent an hour with Major Schaeffer, the state detectives, and the crime scene investigators, during which Kate and I danced around the central issue of what the hell was going on in the Führerbunker. Then, after a pissing match between Schaeffer and Griffith, Kate and I got in Liam’s rental car and began our drive from the lodge, which took us past the flagpole where the American flag still flew, illuminated by the spotlight; and below the stars and stripes was Bain Madox’s Seventh Cavalry regiment pennant.
Yeah, I had mixed feelings about the guy, mostly negative, but… well, if he hadn’t killed Harry, and if he hadn’t been prepared to kill a few million other Americans, including Kate, me, and anyone else who got in his way, plus a couple hundred million innocent men, women, and children… well, he was a complex man, and it was going to take me a while to figure him out.
We also passed by the wood chipper, and that sort of brought me back to reality. The big things-like nuclear Armageddon-were a little abstract. It’s the small things, like the wood chipper, that make you understand evil.
Well, we helicoptered back to New York City, and by the time we got to 26 Federal Plaza, there were about a dozen people there from the office, including, of course, Tom Walsh, and another dozen from Washington, all waiting for us with open notebooks and tape recorders.
Tom Walsh greeted us warmly by saying, “What the fuck was I thinking when I sent you two up there?”
I replied, “What were you thinking when you sent Harry up there?”
He had no answer for that, so I asked him, “Whose idea was it to send me up there alone on that assignment?”
No response.
I informed him, “I’ll tell you. It was Ted Nash’s idea.”
“Nash is dead.”
“He is now, and I’m not.”
Kate said to Walsh, “But it could have easily gone the other way.”
Walsh looked at both of us, and I could see he was trying to figure out if he was supposed to be clueless, angry, or blameless. He couldn’t seem to decide, so he went to the men’s room.
I could see that there was still a lot of confusion about what had happened and what our status was-heroes or felons-but I also sensed that one or two guys from Washington knew exactly what this was all about, but kept it to themselves.
We were debriefed in Walsh’s office by two-man relay teams for hours, but Kate and I held up pretty well as we gave the interviewers an hour-by-hour, blow-by-blow account of everything that had happened since we walked into 26 Federal Plaza on Columbus Day morning and spoke to Tom Walsh-including talking to Betty at Continental CommutAir and Max and Larry at the car-rental desks, then checking out Madox’s jets at the general aviation office, then the decision to go to the Custer Hill lodge instead of state police headquarters, and on and on.
I could see that the FBI people were partly impressed by our initiative and good investigative techniques, and somewhat troubled by our total failure to follow orders and becoming fugitives. I hoped they were learning something.
Also, I could sort of tell, as the night wore on, that Kate and I were the only ones there who weren’t worried about something.
Interestingly, most of the FBI interviewers seemed unhappy that Bain Madox-the mastermind and prime witness to this conspiracy-was dead, and that I killed him. I said, of course, it was self-defense, though it was actually self-gratification. I mean, it was a stupid thing to do, and by whacking him, I complicated the investigation into the conspiracy. I wish I had it to do over again; of course, I’d do the same thing, but I’d first remind myself that I wasn’t acting professionally.
Also, unless I was imagining things, at least two of the FBI guys from Washington did not seem that unhappy that Madox was not able to talk.
On the subject of Kate killing CIA officer Ted Nash, none of the FBI guys commented or pressed the questioning, which was odd but understandable. They weren’t going to touch that subject unless or until they heard from someone higher up.
I had a little fun watching Tom Walsh squirm, and more fun sitting in his office with my feet on his conference table as Kate and I were debriefed. At about 3:00 A.M., I expressed a strong craving for Chinese food, and an FBI agent went out and found an open place. Hey, it’s not every day you’re the center of attention, and you have to milk it a little.
There was a lot to unravel here, and I had no idea where this was going to go, or how high up the Project Green conspiracy reached. And, of course, neither Kate nor I would ever know.
At dawn, two FBI agents drove us back to our apartment and told us to get a good night’s sleep, even though it was morning.
Back in our apartment, we stood on the balcony and watched the sun rising over lower Manhattan, both remembering the morning of September 12, 2001, when we’d watched the black smoke blocking out the sun not only for us, and New York, but for the whole country.
I said to Kate, “As we know in this business, every act of violence, and every murder, is revenge for the murder before it, and the excuse for the murder after it.”
She nodded and said, “You know… I wanted to get out of this business… go someplace else… but now, after this, I want to stay here and do what I can…”
I looked at her, then back at lower Manhattan, where we could once see the Twin Towers rising into the sky. I said to her, or myself, “I wonder if we’ll see the alert level go to Green again in our lifetime.”