Murder in the White House (Capital Crimes Book 1) (22 page)

“He said he’d lost the President’s friendship, that he really did have to resign. He said he didn’t know what he would do, he couldn’t go back to a university campus after he’d been Secretary of State—”

“Did he describe the scene with the President? Did he tell you
what
he’d said that had cost him the President’s friendship?”

“Not then, he didn’t… later.”

“Go on.”

She looked hard at Ron, appraising him. “I encouraged him to tell me,” she said. “Do you understand why?”

“Someone would pay you for the story.”

“Well, put it this way… I thought I might find out something that could be… valuable.” Her expression didn’t change. “He told me everything later, after we were in bed—”

“
What?
”

“A lot of it you already know. The multilateral trade agreements, he was supposed to change the President’s mind. He apparently had told people he could do it, and he believed he could—”

“But he couldn’t,” said Ron.

“I said he
believed
he could… after all, he said, he’d taught the President everything he knew about foreign policy and international economics. It was well understood in informed circles, he said, that President Webster’s foreign policy was really
his
foreign policy. He’d established an outstanding record in his three years as Secretary of State… he was very high on that, he talked about it a lot.”

Blaine was, Ron reminded himself, indeed a highly successful Secretary of State. He no doubt would have had his Nobel Prize…

“He thought he could turn the President around,” she was saying. “After all,
he
was the expert on international affairs, and if he told the President he had changed his mind, had decided the trade agreements weren’t a good idea after all, he thought Webster would go along… He’d been really shocked to find the President so stubborn on the subject, shocked that he had such strong convictions in this area…”

“Was he being threatened by the people who paid him?”

“He never said he was.”

“Go ahead… what happened?”

“That evening, early that evening just before he called me, he’d had a real bitter fight with Webster. It had broken down to name-calling, he told the President the multilateral trade agreements were going to produce economic catastrophe. The President asked him why he hadn’t said that at the beginning, three years earlier when the policy was being developed and the first steps taken toward negotiating the agreements. Lan said—”

“What did Blaine
really
think about the agreements? Was he for them or against them, personally?”

“You know, I don’t think he really cared all that much… trade and economics, he said, had never really grabbed him the way diplomatic wheeling and dealing did. Anyway, when the President asked him why he had changed his mind and suddenly become such an opponent of the agreements, Lan didn’t have a good answer. He said something like he’d studied the thing more thoroughly than he had at first. The President laughed, said that wasn’t the reason. That’s when things began to heat up.”

“Were they alone?”

“Oh, no, I should have told you. Mrs. Webster was there. Catherine… this exchange was upstairs, not in the office.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing until later. I’m coming to that. When the President said he didn’t buy Lan’s reason for changing his mind, Lan got sore, asked what the President was suggesting, and the President told him flat out he had
reason to believe Lan was accepting money and favors and such from people against the agreements. He challenged him to deny it, Lan said he wouldn’t dignify an accusation like that by denying it… This was when Mrs. Webster spoke up. She told Lan she couldn’t believe he would betray them like this. He said she had tears in her eyes when she said it, and I can tell you, cynic or not, he had some in his when he told me all this…”

“They’d been friends for a long time,” Ron said quietly.

“Yes… well, the President used the same kind of words his wife had used. He said Lan had betrayed them, betrayed their friendship. He called him a cheat and a liar. If you knew Lansard Blaine, you’d know something was about to blow at that point… He had a very strong sense of his personal dignity, and being faced with the truth made the humiliation even worse. So he struck back—”

“What did he say to them?”

“He told the Websters
they
were fine people to call him a liar when they’d been living with a lie for more than twenty years. He said they’d been glad enough for him to lie when
he
had lied for
them
. If they wanted to call him a liar, then he would return the favor… if they wanted to disgrace him and drive him out of office, fine—he could do the same to them and they damn well knew it… if they wanted to destroy him and bankrupt him by telling the whole world that he had no influence on the foreign policy of the United States, fine—but he had some weapons to protect himself with and he would use them… You understand I’m trying to give
you the best idea I can about what happened from what he said. That’s all I know—”

“Except you’ve left out the most important thing—”

She nodded. “What it was that Lan knew about the Websters,
their
lie,
their
secret. Well… sorry, Mr. Fairbanks, Lan didn’t tell me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Once again she got up from the couch and walked between the stacks of boxes to stand at the window and stare out at nothing. “Whatever he said to me, he said it while he and I were in bed. If I say he didn’t tell me, he didn’t tell me. And you can’t prove he did.”

Ron sighed. “God, do we have to go through this again? I don’t like to threaten you—”

“Then don’t.” She turned around and faced him. “Don’t tell me you’re going to put me in jail as a witness. Anyway, it just occurred to me that you’re not going to.”

“Really? Why not?”

She took a step toward him. “Lan was on the ragged edge when he came home that night,” she said. “I sympathized, rubbed his back, held him… And he talked. And talked. And talked. He told me the Websters’ secret. It’s a personal thing. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your investigation. It’s really sad, I feel sorry for the Websters. And so did Lan. In fact, that was what bothered him most: that he’d threatened to tell their secret, something so personal that would hurt them so much if it got out. But he did tell me—the scarlet woman in the case. Can you beat it? Just like in the movies. Anyway, now I figure he wouldn’t mind if I used it to protect myself. If I go to jail… in fact if I
don’t go to Paris day after tomorrow, I’m going to let out the secret of President and Mrs. Webster. I
promise
you.”

“All right,” Ron said. He was furious, but managed to control himself. “Let’s drop it for now. One more question… and I’m going to have an answer to this one. So save your threats… Who’s your White House phone pal? Who did you call after I left here Saturday morning? I know it has to be one of three people.”

She was smiling. “I do have a friend at the White House,” she said, “and he’s a perfect gentleman.”

“
Who?
”

“I guess I can tell you. What’s the difference?” She nodded. “He’s a damn sight bigger man than you—”

“
Who
, damn you…?”

“Fritz Gimbel.”

Martha Kingsley—Deep Throat. Gimbel… her contact was Gimbel. She had called Gimbel to report what Paul-Victor Chamillart had told her about the French foreign minister and Martine Nanterre. God knew what else she had learned and reported over the years from all the men she’d gotten to confide in her or who had done it on their own. Gimbel, the cold, deadly, and so loyally efficient administrator, had a private intelligence operation in a call girl’s bed. She had called Gimbel as soon as she’d left Blaine’s Watergate apartment. She had called Gimbel the previous Saturday to report that Ron had questioned her. She would likely call him now. She was on the telephone at this very moment, almost certainly, while he was cabbing back to the White House, and by the time he got there Gimbel would know every detail of their conversation.

Gimbel. It had been his instinct from the beginning to suspect Gimbel. Gimbel could go where he wanted in the White House. No one would question him any more than they would question the President. He knew how to kill with a loop of wire… he had learned it in the marines. He was the President’s man. Everyone took orders from him. He could have called off the Secret
Service detail the previous Saturday night, making it possible for the van to run Ron’s Datsun off the road. He could have planted the story that Ron was drunk. He could have planted all the stories about Blaine’s women too… he knew about them…

But his motive, why would he kill Blaine… Was
he
the executioner for the disgruntled consortium? Not likely. But the alternative was nearly unthinkable… that he had killed a blackmailer to keep him quiet… and if he’d done that, then who was he protecting…? The President? Catherine Webster? Did the President
know
? Not necessarily… But Blaine was murdered in the White House. Wouldn’t it have been smarter to get him outside? Maybe not, if Gimbel—working, say,
with
the President’s knowledge—had to do it alone, without involving anyone else… and it was decided that doing it on the President’s very doorstep, literally, was the surest way of diverting suspicion from him, from anyone in his official family…

***

It would be a long summer evening. A red sun was still high above the Potomac when the cab stopped at the Executive Office Gate and Ron checked into the Executive Office Wing. As he walked toward his office he wondered if the gate guard was on the telephone advising Fritz Gimbel that Ron Fairbanks was back…

Both Jill and Gabe Haddad were in his office waiting for him. They had called the Supreme Court, knew he had left there and had become anxious about him, not knowing where he was. He called the switchboard—immediately, after no more than a quick word of greeting to Jill and Gabe—and learned that Honey Taylor was still in the White House. He spoke to her and told her
he had to speak to the President. She said she would be calling upstairs in a few minutes to give the President several messages and she would give him this one.

He turned to Jill and Gabe, told them what he had learned and what conclusions he drew from it. Jill did not agree that the murderer was, inevitably, Gimbel… “Anyway,” she said, “I’ve warned you already—it would be a bad error to accuse that man unless you have overpowering evidence. He’s tough, he has the President’s confidence, in a showdown between you and him you’d come off second, face it… You can’t bring down the President’s hatchet man on the word of a Martha Kingsley…”

Gabe spoke cautiously. “Ron, I can see how Martha Kingsley is a link between Blaine and Gimbel… she slept with Blaine, reported everything he said to Gimbel. But where’s the connection between Gimbel and what we’ve been calling the consortium to defeat the multilateral trade agreements? Or have we given up the idea that the consortium is somehow behind the murder?”

“Martha Kingsley links Gimbel to the consortium too,” Ron said. “The connection is Osanaga. He fronts as a Japanese journalist. You and I didn’t know he was really something else. The FBI didn’t know either. It was the CIA that had the file on Osanaga and told us he’s actually a lobbyist, an influence buyer.
But Martha Kingsley knew
. When I mentioned Osanaga to her, she called him the bag man for certain Japanese companies. And remember, when I had the FBI bring Osanaga to the Justice Department office for questioning, Senator Finlay was on the phone to me almost before we got Osanaga in there—telling me to take it easy on his good buddy Osanaga. The FBI file on Martha Kingsley lists
Finlay among her intimate friends. She knew Blaine took money from the consortium and promised them he could kill the trade agreements. If she knew, Gimbel knew. If Gimbel knew Blaine took a bribe from the consortium and Gimbel still didn’t blow the whistle on Blaine, then—”

“Not necessarily,” Jill interrupted. “The fact that he didn’t blow the whistle doesn’t prove he too was bribing Blaine.”

“We don’t even know that he didn’t blow the whistle,” Ron said. “A private whistle—”

“Yes, strictly private to the President…”

Ron nodded. “So when the President accused Blaine of dishonesty and provoked the blowup between them, maybe he wasn’t guessing, maybe he
knew
.”

“And then,” Gabe said, “Blaine threatened to reveal the Websters’ big secret… It comes back to that… was Blaine killed to protect that secret? Maybe the consortium’s scheme to defeat the trade agreements was only the spark that led to the very personal motive for killing Blaine.”

Ron was spinning the dial of the combination lock on his file cabinet. “Suddenly some really damned unpleasant thoughts come to mind.”

“You’re not exactly alone in them,” Jill said.

Ron tugged on one of the heavy drawers of the cabinet, which finally slid forward. “Forgive me, Jill… Gabe, tomorrow you may decide to certify me…” He pulled from under some hanging file folders a .25 caliber Browning automatic. He showed it to them for a moment, then pushed it uneasily, like a dangerous live thing, into the waistband of his trousers on his left hip.
He buttoned his jacket over it. He looked at them. “You guys figure I’m nuts?”

“An hour ago I’d have said yes,” Jill told him. “Now…”

Ron sat down behind his desk. “Martha Kingsley talked too much. Your intrepid leader got her off balance by convincing her he knew a damn sight more than he did. It played pretty well, if I do say so myself. But she also talked too quickly. I thought about it on the way back in the cab. Why would she open up and tell so much, so easily? Well… she knew she would call Gimbel and report everything that was said. Maybe she decided she could throw out any information she wanted to because—”

“No,” Gabe said firmly. “It’s too much, I can’t believe it—”

“They ran Ron’s car off the road Saturday night,” Jill said. “What he knows now is a whole lot more dangerous to them than what he knew Saturday—”