A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror (16 page)

“Hey, Louis, let’s be civil here. You see the big picture. You see the implications. So, I presume you can visualize yourself taking on a whole new role in the service of your country. You’ve always operated best as a lone wolf anyway. It’s in the record. You get it done, whatever it is. This brokerage stint was just an interlude with you. Now, if this operation goes over as planned, you’re a natural to gravitate over to a covert mode in various national security initiatives.

“Okay, it’s hypothetical, but anyone with half a brain can see that it’s made for you. You’re in direct contact with the man. You operate outside of the normal chain of command. Four-star generals—one of your old friends maybe—have no control over you. Brigadiers work for you. I see you talking on a secure telephone to the man himself, while others wait to share their ideas with the president of the United States. You laugh, Lou. You chuckle. You’re incredulous. I know it’s very heady stuff. Enjoy it.”

“I’m out,” Lou said.

“You need something tangible, pal?” Copeland snickered. “Let me ask you something. Did your checks bounce, pal? Did you not receive real money?”

“You know I did.”

“It’s a huge pile of coins, pal. Not gumballs. Not breath mints.”

“I’m out of this place,” Lou said, walking on.

“Louis,” Stanfield said, stepping in front of him. “You want to play hardball? Okay. We know that game, too. And it goes like this: you get a pension. Twenty-five years of active duty and a bull colonel’s pay. Hell, you don’t need any Westover calls, do you, Louis? But I remember hearing something about an accident during a winter training exercise in Germany. What was it? FX Taro Leaf? Something about a full-bird brigade commander coming under investigation for gross dereliction of duty that damned near cost the lives of eight of our young fighting men? I don’t think that investigation ever went anywhere, did it, Louis? I think it got swept under the rug somewhere along the line, somewhere in General Hank Readfield’s command? Hey, Louis, I just bet all kinds of sand would be flying if that thing ever got opened up again. Don’t you?”

He hadn’t expected this last gambit, but he wasn’t surprised they knew about Taro Leaf. They seemed to know about everything. He had no response. It felt as if a massive bird had dropped from the sky to his shoulder, and not an eagle—a vulture.

“Get yourself another boy,” he muttered, turning to go.

“Hey pal,” Copeland rasped, “there’s a kid I know named Jory.”

Lou stopped. The knuckle on some invisible finger punched him just below the sternum, snatching his breath away. He turned to face them.

“He’s a beautiful kid,” Copeland continued. “Are those your brown eyes on him?”

“If you touch him...” Lou croaked.

“Come over here, pal,” Copeland said, moving to the shadows of the trees in the courtyard.

“I’m going to explain something to you in a way you’ll understand. You’re something like, I don’t know, one of those Mac boys back in the good old days of Vietnam: McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, McJohnson. You know the names—the best and the brightest, right? Well, turned out they weren’t so bright, right? And you know what it was? It was, pal, that they were lightweights. They failed to understand bedrock about their enemy. They thought it was just a war. What they couldn’t see was that Ho Chi Minh and his boys were willing to go way beyond just giving up their own lives to win. They’d put the whole enchilada on the line—every woman, every child, every fucking one of them—if that’s what it took.

“Now, we’re talking about a president who has to win—not wants to—has to. It’s a question of the destiny of this country, in his mind and the minds of the people that surround him. It’s as important to him as his life, or anyone’s life. You’ve got a lot of lives in your orbit, pal. And I know each one of them in a level of detail that you wouldn’t believe. For example, I know that little Jory likes puppies. You didn’t know that. If you did, you would’ve gotten him one by now. Little Jory likes puppies so much that he forgets all the things his mommy told him about never talking to strange men, and never, ever getting into a strange van. But he’s just human, right? Next time you see him, ask him if he didn’t get a whole pack of bubble gum from a nice man in a van the other day. Am I getting through to you, pal?”

Lou walked between them back to Room 23, silent.

Sydney was still flipping the pages of
Vanity Fair
, nursing another small glass of Johnny Walker. Red sucked on his glass of Old Crow. Copeland took up his place in the corner. Stanfield wound up the meeting.

“All right, the operation is on for Sunday night. We have the equipment and we have the people. You’ll assemble at the truck park at the junction of Route 17 and the New York Thruway, at 3:00 p.m. sharp. Cook will give the final briefing to include all the finer details. If there are no more questions, good luck and goodbye.”

As they all stood to leave, Sydney slid over to Lou and spoke in a quiet voice. “Any chance of hitching a ride to the truck park on Sunday? You could pick me up at the Ramsey overpass, around a quarter to three.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Lou said, walking away.

“I’ll be there,” she said.

The ride back to Paramus in the Audi was as quiet as the ride up. Stanfield pulled the car beside Lou’s Lexus in the parking lot. It was close to nine o’clock. Maggie could believe that he was making calls until then. Just as he was about to pull away, Copeland rolled down his window. Lou did the same.

He spoke in a low voice, leaning out the window to hand Lou a note: “It’s all gone nice and civilized, Christopher. You’ve been fucking silent since we broke up the meeting. I know you’re thinking. I know you’re plotting. But don’t shoot yourself in the foot, soldier.

“Stay on the bright side of this. I offer just one more piece of advice, pal: once the covert mode goes into effect, which is now, you can never go back. It’s too dangerous for everybody. So, if I were you, I’d just keep functioning on an even keel, without even thinking about not showing or running. That wouldn’t be good for you, for your darling wife, or the cute kid in pre-school. Kirky is it? Or was it Jory?”

The Audi glided away in the dark. Lou sat motionless, looking at the taillights glimmering in the distance. There was a small piece of paper in his hand that read:

LINKUP POINT

CALL ME

SUNDAY 2:00 P.M.

555-6744

Chapter Fourteen

Lou and Mag sat across from each other in the built-in bench seats of the breakfast nook. The early morning sun pushed through the white curtains at the window beside them. The table was littered with plates, silverware, and the coffee pot.

“Lou, I’ve been sitting here in front of you for the last half hour. I might as well be on Mars,” Maggie said, weariness in her eyes.

“Okay, I’m preoccupied,” Lou muttered.

“I want you to listen to me,” she said, grasping his hands across the table.

“I’m listening,” he said, allowing a long sigh. He discarded his half-eaten toast, sipped coffee. His thoughts drifted.

Somehow they knew everything about him; had disinterred the rotten corpse buried in the garden, the putrefied FX Taro Leaf affair. They’d made threats against Jory and Kirk. When they pulled that out of the hat, his resistance all but collapsed. He didn’t even want to think about that. So, he thought about everything else.

The plan was ill conceived, absurd. To think that anyone could mastermind and coordinate an operation like this in a day and a half and without prior notice or knowledge of the people involved. Ridiculous.

“Lou!” Mag’s voice again, sharper. “You’re not listening. You’re looking at me, but you don’t see me. You’re off somewhere else entirely. Your mind is racing a hundred miles an hour, I can see it. I want to know what’s going on.”

He rubbed the fog from his eyes with the tips of his fingers. Refocused. Softer.

“Nothing’s going on, Mag.”

“You’ll be gone all day. No explanations. And you want me to believe nothing is going on?”

“Yes.” But again his thoughts drifted.

Who the hell was this Red character? One of those idiots getting kicks training for combat on weekends? Would he keep his cool under stress, execute orders with some semblance of efficiency? And the matériel? Where were the napalm, guns, and ammunition coming from? Army surplus equipment was one thing, but these were M-2 Carbines, World War II jobs they were talking about, and napalm, for chrissakes. And what about the semi-trailer trucks? That was a couple hundred grand up in smoke, just in trucks. Who was shelling out all the money for this? And the girl. What about her?

“Lou, I know when you’re lying to me. You’ve been lying ever since we started getting the money. We’re going to crash and burn. I can feel it. You’ve got to tell me. I’m entitled to know.”

“We’re not going to crash.”

Ridiculous. The whole proposition. But they were right about one thing: if anyone could pull it off, he could. Who else had the experience, the smarts, the guts? Risk? He knew all about it. He’d never backed down from tough odds. And he’d known odds tougher than this. Of course, it had been in combat, with
his
men—trained, reliable; he’d seen to that. His actions had always been within the limits of the
Code of Conduct
. No matter what happened, he’d always been able to walk among his people afterwards.

This operation was a different animal. It had all the risks, all the danger. It would take everything he had to bring it off. He could still operate within the Code, even if he was the only one. And if the payoff was what Copeland said it would be, if the big guys really had hand-picked him for this, then maybe. Just maybe...

“Lou? Lou, look at me. You’re not looking at me.”

“I am, Mag. I’m looking at you. All right?”

“I know you, Lou. Maybe better than you know yourself. You get into things you shouldn’t. You don’t do it out of malice. You never have. But it happens, again and again. And I come into the picture only after it’s all over with, and the landscape is strewn with wreckage.”

Well, and what choice did he have, really? It was simple, stupid, really. They knew more about him than he knew about himself. Peddling stocks and bonds? Hell, it wasn’t for him. Anybody could see that. Just a temporary anomaly in the fabric of a life of sacrifice and altruism. As a stockbroker, he was in a rut, wasted. Grounded. But in the military, in this kind of operation, he could fly again.

“Lou?” Maggie was still at it.

“I don’t want to get into a long discussion,” he said, pulling his hands out of hers.

Maggie grabbed them back. “I have to know what’s going on.
Before
it happens, this time.”

“Maggie...”

“I’m in this with you. Together, Lou. The two of us. Whatever it is, we face it together. Whatever you do, it affects me; can’t you see that?”

“There’s nothing going on.”

So, the brokerage game simply becomes the medium through which they’ll compensate him for his skills as a soldier. Add a dash of the ultimate revenge—a semi-resurrected military career rebuilt on a shiny new chassis. Throw in some recognition in high places that acknowledges that he possesses capabilities far beyond those of most of his peers—capabilities that dictate his selection for this mission. He could almost see the dirt falling back over that maggot-ridden corpse in the garden.

“We are affected by each other, Lou.”

“Maggie, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Let go.”

He jerked his hands away, kept his face composed and cool. He didn’t need this questioning. But she wouldn’t give up.

“Tell me what has happened. Please.”

Initially, it seemed the only rational thing to do was go to the police, tell them the whole thing, before he got more involved. But that wouldn’t work. This went far beyond the local police. They would never believe it and might even think he was a crackpot. The whole thing would leak back somehow, to Copeland, Buck, whoever else was involved. How could he take the chance that the threats to Maggie and Jory and Kirk were all a bluff? How about all the other lives in his orbit, as Copeland put it?