Capitol Reflections (39 page)
The Fed Ex packages from Nicholls arrived at the bed-and-breakfast the following morning. Mark opened the slim packet and looked at the photographs that Charlie had gotten from Anh Nguyen. They were Polaroid snapshots of Anh’s two daughters, Tuyen and Mai. Nicholls had apparently managed to communicate with Nguyen personally since he had scrawled the names and ages of the daughters on the back of each snapshot. Mark sifted through the two dozen pictures until he found the most recent. There were four that he plucked from the pile and arranged in a row on the edge of his worktable. Two of the photos had the ID of “Tuyen, age 29” and “Tuyen, age 34.” The other two read “Mai, age 30” and “Mai, age 34.”
What Mark had remembered was Randall’s penchant for lovely Asian beauties, and Tuyen and Mai had indeed grown into lovely young women with long black hair, high cheekbones, and devilish, sexy smiles. They appeared to have had cosmetic surgery since they were a bit fuller of figure than most Asian women were.
The other package Charlie had sent contained copies of pictures and notes, archived at the
Journal
, that Mark had used when doing his profile on Gregory Randall shortly after the CEO’s father died. There had been an abundance of material on “Junior,” as Mark had called him while working up the piece, and most of it amounted to what reporters called deep background. Randall’s attraction to Asian women had naturally not made it into the profile—it wasn’t really germane to anything Mark had to say—but there, before him, were the pictures he was looking for: Randall squiring women to various galas and parties for the ultrarich—Randall on a yacht, Randall at a Long Island home, Randall at the ballroom of a luxurious hotel. Several showed either Tuyen or Mai on his arm during the past three years.
Journal
, that Mark had used when doing his profile on Gregory Randall shortly after the CEO’s father died. There had been an abundance of material on “Junior,” as Mark had called him while working up the piece, and most of it amounted to what reporters called deep background. Randall’s attraction to Asian women had naturally not made it into the profile—it wasn’t really germane to anything Mark had to say—but there, before him, were the pictures he was looking for: Randall squiring women to various galas and parties for the ultrarich—Randall on a yacht, Randall at a Long Island home, Randall at the ballroom of a luxurious hotel. Several showed either Tuyen or Mai on his arm during the past three years.
It wasn’t exactly a math problem—if A=B, and B=C, then A=C—Gregory Randall adored Asian women, Tassin worked for Randall, and Tassin had been in the business of procuring female sex slaves for men.
It seemed quite feasible that at some point during his acquaintance with Randall, Tassin had returned to New York and procured the grown daughters of his former Vietnamese wife. Indeed, it would have been far too coincidental for Tuyen and Mai to have gravitated to Randall on their own. There was obviously more to the story—for example, when exactly had Randall first met Tassin, and how had Tassin later coerced the daughters away from Anh? Mark Stern knew what the bottom line was: Tassin, chief roastmaster at Pequod’s, served his master well. If this were the case, to what extent would Tassin go to satisfy his boss in matters relating to Pequod’s coffee?
Mark reflected for a moment, recalling Tassin’s remark near the roasting chambers about Hansel and Gretel. Assuming Tassin was an unusually spry man in his late seventies or early eighties, he could have been a German soldier in his late teens toward the end of World War II, a soldier who may not have orchestrated the horrors of the Holocaust, but one who would certainly have seen them firsthand, and may well indeed have been stationed at one of the death camps. It would be all but impossible to trace Tassin back to the war, but he would ask Charlie Nicholls to see what he could find. Either way, Mark knew that Tassin was a thoroughly evil man simply by what he’d seen in Marci’s file and by the correlation of Anh’s snapshots with the pictures in the
Journal’s
archive.
Journal’s
archive.
And by the fiendish look Tassin had given him in Seattle.
Mark felt certain that Tassin’s diabolic plans were somehow being implemented across the country, though the exact mechanism for killing people was as yet still an unknown.
And what of kindhearted, smiling Billy Hamlin, Mark wondered. How did he fit into any of this?
There was still so much to learn.
51
The last person from whom Mark expected to hear was Dr. Edward Karn. Karn e-mailed Stern’s column, which Mark could access remotely and discretely. Over the years at various papers, this connection proved to be an effective—and surprisingly secure—way to make private contacts.
The message read:
Dear Mr. Stern:I have information that might be of interest to you. Given that the proper authorities might not be so proper, I’d feel more comfortable sharing the information with you instead.Sincerely,
Edward Karn
Mark had his hands full with the glut of conspiracy information that seemed to be multiplying on an hourly basis. Karn, however, was exactly the kind of story for which he’d been trolling when he’d first contacted Rick Mecklenberg to see what was “out there.” Though he felt a bit guilty taking any time away from Gwen’s story at this point, he sent a reply using the
Post
’s e-mail template directing Karn to meet him the following morning at a nearby IHOP.
Post
’s e-mail template directing Karn to meet him the following morning at a nearby IHOP.
Gwen opened the door of her room at the bed-and-breakfast and her jaw dropped.
“Jan?” She could barely believe the missing BioNet Director was standing in front of her, along with the man she presumed was the security specialist mentioned in the iPrive correspondence. “How did … where have—”
Jan laughed. “I’ll explain all of it if you let us in.”
Gwen shook her head briskly, as though doing so would make the world sensible again. “Of course. Come on in.”
Jan walked into the room and hugged Gwen tightly. It was the kind of hug people gave when they thought they’d never see you again.
She stepped back and turned toward the man next to her. “Gwen, this is Peter Tippett. He helped me break into BioNet before we were abducted.”
“Abducted?” Gwen said, alarm streaking her voice. “What are you talking about?”
Mark, who had been working on the laptop, drifted over to the front door. Gwen introduced him and then implored Jan to tell her what happened. What came next was a story Gwen would have considered inconceivable just a week ago—an odyssey of capture and escape that included a lecture by Alan Jordan on alleged food contamination by Islamic terrorists.
“This is incredible,” Gwen said when Jan finished.
Jan chuckled humorlessly. “I only wish I were making it up.”
“As you might have guessed from where you found us, Mark and I have been on a surreal ride of our own.”
Gwen told Jan about everything from Jack’s seizure to their encounters—or near-encounters—with an unknown foe. Then Mark relayed what they had uncovered, although Gwen was quick to point out that she wasn’t buying into coffee as the cause of seizures.
“As a physician with the CDC,” said Jan, “I have to side with Gwen on this one, Mark. Things aren’t always what they seem.”
Peter sat down and slumped in an oversized chair in the corner of the room. “I’m basically a security specialist,” he said, “although my work mandates I keep close ties with the intelligence community, with whom I often consult. I suggest that Gwen and Jan continue to work the medical angles of this rather perplexing problem. But,” he said, turning to Jan, “I think Mark and I need to check out any other leads, no matter how speculative. While coffee may turn out to be a benign footnote to this enigma, the correlations Mark obtained from the
Wall Street Journal
’s database can’t be ignored.”
Wall Street Journal
’s database can’t be ignored.”
“Looks like we have our work cut out for us,” said Gwen.
“It certainly does,” said Mark. “Before we go any further, though, I need to know something. How did you find us?”
“Those close ties with the intelligence community come in handy. A couple of former employees who knew Jack and Gwen now work at Quantico. When you showed up there, one of them followed you back here.”
“We were that easy to track,” Mark said, casting a worried expression in Gwen’s direction.
52
The next morning, Mark sat in a booth at an IHOP trying to read the breakfast menu while his eyes scanned the room at the same time. Since Jan and Peter showed up, Mark felt even less secure.
Out in public, he saw enemies—real or imagined—around every corner.
A few minutes after he sat down, Eddie Karn slipped onto the leather bench seat on the other side of the table. “Good morning, Mr. Stern.”
“Pleased to meet you, Dr. Karn,” said Mark, extending his hand across the table. “I’m a big admirer of yours.”
“And I like the way you think and write,” said Karn. “That’s why I contacted you. Like me, you’re wary of established points of view. You’re an independent thinker.”
Mark graciously nodded his head ever so slightly. “Thank you.”
“I have some information that I’d like to show you. It concerns Senator Henry Broome—or some of it does, at least. After breakfast, I suggest we go someplace more private.”
Mark’s ears pricked up. “I have a room nearby. We can go there when we’re finished.”
Karn sat in an antique chair. Mark, Gwen, Peter, and Jan gathered around as he opened the manila envelope given to him by Roberta Chang via Bruce Merewether.
“Bills of lading, customs receipts, cargo manifests … ” said Mark. “You said they concerned Henry Broome and were sent to you by someone before she died. That would be Roberta Chang, I take it, since she was the senator’s chief aide.”
“Correct,” said Karn.
“Where did she photograph these?” asked Gwen.
“I honestly don’t know. They came with no explanation. I assume she gave them to me since I was Senator Broome’s latest political victim. I recently learned that Ms. Chang was well aware of Henry Broome’s background.”
Mark had been studying the shipping receipts while Karn spoke. The bills of lading showed that large shipments of coffee regularly arrived at Pedregal, Panama from three Hawaiian cities: Kaumalapau, Kawela, and Numila.
“We need some maps,” said Mark.
“I’ll go online,” said Peter, unfolding his laptop. “Have them in a sec.”
“As you see,” said Karn, “the coffee is shipped under the company name of Transpacific Coffee, Inc.”
Jan and Peter exchanged quick glances. “Transpac,” they both said at the same time.
“I saw that name on Gene McMurphy’s PC in his office,” Gwen said, perplexed. “How the hell is he tied into coffee shipments?”
“We already know that Jordan and McMurphy are communicating,” said Peter. “The seizure stats were sent from the CDC to the FDA via Iceland and Panama.”
“The other bills show coffee being shipped from Pedregal to Seattle,” stated Karn.
“What’s the connection between Seattle and Transpac?” asked Jan.
“If Pequod’s buys Hawaiian coffee, why not just have it shipped straight from the islands to Washington State?”
Gwen examined the bills more closely. “We still have no evidence that the Hawaiian coffee is used by Pequod’s.”
“And yet these shipping receipts were grouped together by Roberta Chang,” said Mark.
“As Dr. Karn said,” remarked Gwen, “we don’t even know where these photos were taken.”
“My guess is that they’re from the files of Henry Broome,” said Karn. “It’s the plainest explanation.”
Gwen shook her head. “Maybe, maybe not. Making that assumption at this stage might be dangerous.”
Peter turned his laptop toward the group. “Take a look at this. Numila is on the island of Kauai. Kawela is on Molokai. Kaumalapau is on Lanai.”
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