Collision (18 page)

“I've certainly heard of him,” Falcone said. “And I just assumed he was Russian.”

“No. He's a Chechen, distantly related to a dead terrorist.”

“I just can't see him mixed up in a hit on a law firm,” Falcone said. “But you know an awful lot about him.” He pointed to the empty glass. “Another?”

“Got to go,” Patterson said, rising. “Thanks for the visit.”

“There's one more thing, J.B.”

“Try me.”

“Why in hell did Ben Taylor get FBI interest? Why was he questioned by an agent?”

“Agent Sarsfield,” J.B. said with a sigh. “He's very enterprising, very gung-ho. He was doing a background check on Dr. Taylor—I guess you know about the science-advisor job. Then the field office suddenly got two new cases. The Capitol cops, who don't do murders, handed us a shooting on the Hill. Sarsfield saw Dr. Taylor's name in the paperwork. Then we took over the shootings at your law firm, as I just told you. And Sarsfield wondered if the cases were related. He connected the dots—God, how I hate that phrase, as if a criminal or terrorist investigation is like moving from one to two to three—and he sent out national security letters. Then he—”

“National security letters!” Falcone exclaimed. “Of all the snooping, searching without a warrant, and—”

“All legal under the Patriot Act, Sean, as you know, and, believe me, I keep an eye on those letters. Well, anyway, Sarsfield got records of the phone calls that Taylor got and made that day, and—”

“Cole Perenchio,” Falcone said.

“Right,” Patterson said. “Look, I've got—”

“Well, what about Hal Davidson? Why is the FBI interested in the shooting at the law firm?”

Patterson sighed, sat down, and held out his glass for a refill. “This is, of course, for you,” he said. “Not for other ears. Usual rules.”

“Right,” Falcone said, pouring. “I just need to know so I can know some other things.”

“Well, the complications start with the weapon used. Remember Fast and Furious?” Patterson asked.

“Hell, yes. The crazy gun-tracking operation that backfired. ATF guys had the bright idea of allowing guns illegally bought in America to cross the border, hoping to trace the guns to the Mexican bad guys.”

“Correct.”

“And,” Falcone continued, “the ATF geniuses thought they'd get points from Mexico's cops for nailing those guys, along with the Americans who bought them and sent them into Mexico. But all they found out was that guns kill people, including a Border Patrol agent. And Congress had a field day. The attorney general barely escaped alive.”

“Very good memory,” Patterson said, putting down his glass. “Well, just when Justice and the ATF thought Operation Fast and Furious was behind them, the issue rises again. The guy you … the guy who went over the railing … was carrying an M16, complete with serial number. The DC cops routinely sent the number into ATF—and, guess what. It was a Fast and Furious gun that had somehow
returned
to the United States.

“Well, that bit of news passed up the line pretty damn fast. I got a call from the director of the ATF. I decided for the good of everybody that we take over. One Department of Justice bureau helping out another Department of Justice bureau. We get points for that. I called the DC chief of police and took a mass killing off his hands. He sounded very, very grateful.”

“You make it seem so simple. But on what grounds did you take over?”

“The District of Columbia is federal property. Every crime committed there is a potential FBI case,” Patterson said, holding up a hand to stop the comment that Falcone was about to start. “I know what you want to say. Abuse of federal power and so forth. But, as a matter of fact, we have reason to believe there is a national-security matter here.”

“Mexico–U.S. relations? Slim reed, J.B.”

“It's a little more than that, Sean. We believe that the gun came back to the United States not from Mexico but from Idaho.”

“Idaho?”

“Check the map. Idaho has a narrow border—about forty-five miles—with Canada. There are small Islamic communities in Idaho—immigrants from Central Asia, places like Chechnya, with ties to Muslim terrorists. We think that the gun came in that way. “

“So the shooters were Chechens and had a Fast and Furious gun that came in from Canada? Jesus!”

“Right.… A complicated case.… Look, I've got to go,” Patterson said, rising again.

“One more question,” Falcone said, walking Patterson down the hallway to the foyer. Before pressing the elevator button, he asked, “Was Harold Davidson a deliberate hit, not random?”

“I can't say anything about that, Sean.”

“National security?”

“Can't say,” Patterson replied, pressing the elevator button. “But I will tell you this. We're retrieving the getaway car from the New Jersey police and we expect it will give us some answers. Stay tuned.”

 

33

By Monday, when Falcone
was to meet Taylor, the shootings had passed from media view. The memory remained only in the circle of people directly touched. At Sullivan & Ford, the FBI crime-scene technicians had been replaced by the crime-scene-repair technicians—the carpenters, the glaziers, the plasterers, the people who specialize in removing bloodstains and signs of death. Blood gone, bullet holes erased, windows restored, pierced and splattered books gone.

Falcone was the first to enter the Great Hall of the Folger Library, the block-long Capitol Hill home of the world's largest collection of Shakespeare documents and artifacts. He watched Taylor enter from the farther entrance, his steps echoing as he walked past the gift store and the first of a dozen glass display cases containing an exhibit on the writing and history of the King James Bible, beginning with Anglo-Saxon biblical poems of the tenth century.

Taylor stopped at the Folger's first edition of the Bible, and opened to Genesis 8:22: “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

Falcone was seated on one of the high-backed chairs drawn up in front of an audio display. As Taylor approached, Falcone stood and pressed a button. They listened for a few moments to the voices of the Apollo 8 astronauts reading verses from Genesis on Christmas Eve, 1968, as they orbited the moon.

“Sometimes, Sean, you amaze me,” Taylor said softly, sitting down next to Falcone. “I was ten years old when I heard that and decided to be an astronaut.”

“Coincidence, Ben. Absolute coincidence. I had no idea this was here.”

“One of my fellow grad students was a Jesuit,” Taylor said. “And he told me once that every coincidence traces back to an inevitability. I've seen enough coincidences to believe that Jesuit was right. Did you see the verse the Bible is open to? Genesis. The life of the Earth.”

“I haven't looked at the exhibit,” Falcone said. “It just seemed like a quiet place to talk.”

“Well, I'd like to start with a hypothetical question—as a client,” Taylor said. Falcone, looking surprised, nodded. “If someone happens to have a copy of an accidentally recorded phone conversation, can he listen to it?”

“Well, I guess if someone handed him a tape and as he listened he realized it was a phone conversation that he took part in, he—the listener—would not be breaking any phone-privacy laws. But I'm sure you know that nothing from that recording can be used in court. I assume you're talking about your telephone conversation with that FBI agent, Sarsfield.”

“Right.”

“I assume that your loyal office mate—Molly is it?—thought she was doing the right thing. Delete the recording and tell her to forget about the accident. The good thing is we know the names he asked you about. And I have some information about those names.”

After Falcone recounted what he had learned from Patterson, Taylor asked, “How the hell do you know all that?”

“I'm a good lawyer. I have open ears and a closed mouth, especially the names of confidential sources.”

“Okay. I'll leave it at that. But what does it mean to me?”

“I'm not sure what it means to you. But I can guess. Once a national security letter gets into the picture, you have to accept the reality that the FBI knows just about all there is to know about you—and probably some of your friends.”

“Like what?”

“I had a State Department employee as a pro bono client. She blew a whistle about corruption in Afghanistan and was demoted. She fought it. The FBI got her credit record, her bank records, her Internet provider, the address of every Web server she communicated with, the identities of people she e-mailed and got e-mails from—and, it turned out, some of those people got calls from the FBI. I finally got her reinstated, but my attempt to stop national security letters went nowhere.”

“Whatever they know is okay with me,” Taylor said. “It's what they
think
about me that bothers me right now. ‘Person of interest.' What can I do about that?”

“Don't worry. Sarsfield was just poking, just looking for some way to connect the shootings at my law firm with the shooting of Cole Perenchio.”

“What? How the hell can he do that? Except that they're both black. Who knows, maybe I'll be the third dead black guy.”

“Keep your paranoia to yourself, Ben,” Falcone said, smiling. “I've got enough for both of us. Right now, all the FBI has is a theory. Nothing more. But I do feel a little like Sarsfield. I'd also like to know what you think Cole wanted to tell you.”

Taylor did not immediately respond. He shook his head and said, “He did not tell me anything. But I have a hunch that he wanted to tell me something about Janus.”

“About
what
?”

“Janus. It's a big asteroid. And an attractive site for Hamilton because it appears to be a heavyweight full of ore.”

“And it has a name?”

“When an asteroid is discovered, it's given a temporary label based on the order of its discovery. So asteroid 2014 AB would be the second—B—asteroid discovered during the first half month—A—of 2014. Later, when astronomers feel it has had enough observations, it gets a permanent number. And then the discoverer can add a name that is approved by the International Astronomical Union. The asteroid's name is Janus. In Roman mythology, Janus is the double-faced god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings. It's the ending that worries me.”

“Any other candidate?”

“Dozens. Every day the asteroid-watchers find a new one and record it, putting it in the catalogue, giving it its anonymity. But, as I said, sometimes astronomers can't resist giving one a name. There's even one named after Thomas Pynchon.”

“
Gravity's Rainbow
,” Falcone said. “It gave me one of my favorite quotations: ‘If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.…' Janus … How did Janus get that name?”

“Because it has an odd shape. Well, odd even for an asteroid,” Taylor said. “Some radar images of it look like two profiles joined together—one looking to the past and the other to the future. It may have had a little moon once and they merged.”

“What makes you concerned about Janus?”

“A lot,” Taylor said, nodding toward an image of Earth taken from a spaceship. Below were the words of Archibald MacLeish:
To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together.…

“Some scientists—and I'm one of them—believe that Janus's orbit makes it a possible threat to Earth. I say possible, because I think it's a threat in the remote future. But I think it was one of those inevitability coincidences that Cole called me so soon after that SpaceMine announcement about their rocket reaching an asteroid that Hamilton named USA. I went to the star charts, to that spot where Hamilton pointed the laser beam toward Cassiopeia, and I got this hunch. I think Cole was going to tell me that SpaceMine had selected Janus as its mining site.”

“So you think someone killed the messenger?”

“Maybe. But, anyway, I'm going public with Janus.”

“How?”

“Ever watch
Street Speak
?”

“Occasionally,” Falcone replied. He had appeared several times on Bloomberg's premarket morning news and talk show, giving his opinions, especially about Wall Street and government regulations.

After a moment Falcone added, “Are you sure going on
Street Speak
is a good idea?”

“I got invited, and I see no reason not to go on. Television is what I do a lot of. As for Janus, I figure I'll throw out the name and see what happens.”

“Be careful, Ben. Take my advice. Don't mention Janus. You'd only be speculating, and, if you're wrong, you'll lose credibility.”

“Don't worry, Sean. I'm always careful. And I have a mind that keeps things compartmentalized. You won't see me for a while. I have to put the finishing touches on my show. When I'm working on a show, Darlene calls it going into space. Well, that's where I'm going.”

 

34

Jerry Quentin, the
Street
Speak
anchor, made his show popular by linking the financial world to everyday life. Through his wisecracks and irreverent observations, viewers got a perspective that went far beyond the daily litany of Wall Street numbers. To him, SpaceMine was not about rocketing into the cosmos but was simply an earthly venture that like so many ventures involved not just dollars but also risk.

Quentin began his interview by noting that Taylor was the first astrophysicist to appear on the show. “Usually,” he said, “we talk to people who handle really difficult subjects, like greed and staying out of jail. Space exploration ought to be easy. But let's start with greed anyway. What are the chances of making a lot of money by mining an asteroid?”