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‘Unbelievable,’ he observed briefly.

Rogers stood and joined Carlson by the television.

‘George, do you still think this is what we’ve been waiting for?’ he asked. ‘I mean, everybody knows there’s more to this than Wade is admitting. Marfrela had it all set up, didn’t he? We had Wade just where we wanted him, in bed with the Benoni woman. All we had to do was wait, and then jump when the time was right. Maybe we could still…’

‘Yeah. But now she’s dead, isn’t she?’ Carlson interrupted. ‘Wade can just deny everything and get away with it. There’ll be a scandal for a couple of days, and then the press will find something else to write about.’

‘Right. God, George, Marfrela was a stupid asshole. If he hadn’t panicked and taken the woman out… Jesus, why in the hell did he do that?’

‘Janner said he was probably fucking her and something went wrong. You know Marfrela. Maybe she didn’t think he was so hot in the sack and was stupid enough to say so.’

‘I thought Janner was supposed to find out.’

‘He was, but unfortunately he didn’t. Apparently, he interpreted our instructions as being to blow Marfrela away once he admitted he was the one who iced her.’

‘He should have brought him here for me to run a few volts through his balls. Then we would know all there is to know about it.’

‘Well, it’s too late for that now,’ Carlson said.

‘It may still be a good opportunity, George. A little civil unrest, the nation divided against itself. Time for us to strike. That’s what you’ve always said.’

‘I know. But we just need to choose our time carefully, Dan. The way things are now, it may not come to anything. Maybe this will be it, maybe not.’

Rogers breathed out heavily, shaking his head as the air escaped loudly between his teeth.

‘You want another beer?’

‘Sure.’

Rogers walked over to the refrigerator, selected two bottles of Corona Extra, and took the caps off both with two casual strokes of the bottle opener.

‘George,’ he said slowly. ‘What about Janner, do you think? Are we going to keep him here indefinitely?’

Carlson took the beer from Rogers. He raised the bottle to his lips and swallowed almost half of it.

‘I don’t think we can. He will lead them to us. Goddamn it, he had to go and leave clues and witnesses behind.’

‘It wasn’t his fault those people were on the staircase, George.’

‘It was his fault he left fingerprints. Without the prints, the people on the staircase wouldn’t have been much use to the police, would they? There are a million people who look like Janner. And he would have been long gone. As it is now, they know exactly who they’re looking for, and they have a pretty good idea where they might find him.’

‘They’re not going to risk busting in here. We’ve always agreed on that.’

‘I don’t think they are. But who knows what those crazy sons-of-bitches in Washington might do? They’ve done some crazy fucking things over the years. Who would have thought they would have pulled that stunt at Waco, or the one with that Cuban kid down in Florida? Anyway, it’s not just a question of them breaking in. As long as Janner’s here, they’re never going to take their eyes off of us.’

‘They don’t now.’

‘It’s pretty low-key right now, Dan. It could get a lot worse.’

‘So, you think, what? Cut him loose? On his own? Get him out in the middle of the night, use the back gate?’

Carlson looked Rogers in the eye.

‘They’re waiting for him out there, Dan. They’d find him within twenty-four hours. They’ve got him dead to rights for the Marfrela killing. He might be tempted to cooperate with them. They would pay a high price for information about you and me and what we’re doing.’

‘So, we have to keep him here?’

‘No. The longer it goes on, the greater the risk. No. Janner goes out in a box, and we leave him somewhere where they can’t help but find him.’

Rogers sat down heavily in a chair.

‘Jesus Christ, George. Janner’s been with us a long time. He was in Africa.’

‘I know that, Dan. But he’s a threat. This Marfrela business could get out of hand. We haven’t worked all this time just to have some screw-up wreck everything. I feel bad about Janner, but he should have known better than to give himself away. We don’t have a choice. Look, Dan, if you don’t want to do it, that’s OK. I understand. I’ll find somebody else.’

Rogers finished his beer.

‘No. I’ll take care of it. You know I wouldn’t ever let you down, George.’

Carlson put an arm around Rogers’ shoulders and squeezed.

‘You’re a good man, Dan. I couldn’t do any of this without you.’

I
N
THE
CONFERENCE
room of the Wilson Foundation, the Committee was silent as the broadcast ended. John Mason switched off the television and returned to his seat at the right hand of Congressman George Stanley. Stanley and the other six members of the Committee were seated in solid burgundy leather armchairs around the dark wood table. Mason’s secretary, Helen, had provided tall glasses of iced water on coasters – other refreshments were arrayed on a discreet wet bar behind Congressman Stanley’s seat at the head of the table.

Mason was not a member of the Committee. It was composed of two members of the House, one of whom was George Stanley, two senators, and three leading party strategists. Between them, they had an enviable amount of experience of campaigns – election campaigns, disinformation campaigns, and what the media was fond of calling ‘dirty tricks campaigns’; within the Committee, the preferred term was ‘tactical maneuvers’. Mason acted as the Committee’s convener and secretary. His relationship with the Committee, which provided and controlled the finances of the Wilson Foundation, fluctuated with the quality of the information Mason supplied through his source. The Committee knew that the source existed, but knew better than to ask who he was, or how he got the information. In all their interests, Mason would keep that to himself. Tonight, his influence with the Committee was on an up-swing. Selvey was in the process of striking the mother-lode, and Mason would hand the nuggets to the Committee or the press as he saw fit. He felt in control.

Senator Joe O’Brien had just returned from pouring himself a generous scotch at the bar.

‘Well, if I understand you correctly John, you don’t place much credence on what we just heard. Is that right?’

‘That’s correct, Senator,’ Mason said.

‘You think the President is still lying about the Benoni woman?’

‘I think that’s pretty obvious, Joe,’ said Alex Vonn. Vonn was a veteran campaign manager with a string of impressive victories to his credit. The only laurel missing from his brow was a successful presidential campaign, and he intended to put that laurel in its rightful place very soon.

‘Well, I’m not sure what’s obvious and what isn’t,’ O’Brien said. ‘It all seems pretty murky to me. I’d like to get a better handle on it before we take any major decisions. John, leaving aside gossip and rumor, what exactly do we know here?’

Mason sat up in his chair, and made a pretense of looking through some notes, of which he had no need at all.

‘The first thing we know is that Wade was involved sexually with the Benoni woman,’ he began. ‘He was sleeping with her in the White House, and a couple of different places on the road.’

‘Are you sure of that? Can we prove it? The man just denied it on national television, for Christ’s sake.’

‘There’s no question about it, Joe. We had been hearing about it for a while. It didn’t seem to be a big deal, so we didn’t pursue it. But after she was murdered, I had my source devote a certain amount of time and energy to it.’

‘With what results?’ Alex Vonn asked.

‘With rather good results, I would say,’ Mason replied, ‘including a potential witness in Chicago.’

‘Why Chicago?’

‘That’s where the trail led. My source went up there, interviewed the witness on tape, and got some interesting material.’

‘How interesting?’ Vonn asked.

Mason treated the Committee to a broad smile. He reached over to a small recorder he had placed on the table earlier, and pressed ‘Play’.

‘Listen for yourselves,’ he answered.

The Committee listened with rapt attention, as the tape of Selvey’s interview with Harold Jeffers was played to them. When the tape ended, there was a long silence.

‘My God,’ Senator O’Brien said, eventually.

‘What do we know about this Jeffers character?’ Congressman Stanley asked. ‘How do we know he isn’t just blowing smoke up our ass?’

‘He checks out. My source was very careful about that. And his story is consistent. I don’t think he has any reason to lie.’

Alex Vonn snorted.

‘You mean, other than the money your source gave him? He’s a whore. The press will eat him for lunch.’

‘I don’t think so, Alex,’ Mason said, trying to conceal the irritation he always felt at Vonn’s bluntness. ‘He didn’t approach us for money. He wasn’t even going to come forward with the story. My source had to lean on him pretty hard to tell what he knew, and that involved making it worth his while. It’s been done before. In any case, we don’t have to hand him to the press. He gave us the name of the Secret Service Agent. We can hand them her. They’ll believe her.’

‘Well, let’s put that aside for the moment,’ Senator O’Brien said. ‘What else do you have?’

‘The other thing we know,’ Mason said, ‘is that the President was sharing Ms. Benoni’s sexual favors with a man by the name of Hamid Marfrela.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Senator O’Brien said. ‘Who in the hell is that?’

‘According to a reliable source within the D.C. Police Department, Hamid Marfrela was their number one suspect in Lucia Benoni’s murder. And, by a curious coincidence, Marfrela himself was murdered by persons unknown shortly after he took out Lucia.’

There was a silence. The members of the Committee appeared dazed. Mason was enjoying himself.

‘Now obviously, with Marfrela dead,’ he continued, ‘the police don’t have much of an ongoing interest in the Benoni murder. But apparently someone did have enough interest in it to run some DNA tests. My source was told these tests prove that Marfrela had sexual intercourse with Lucia Benoni within a few hours of her death. Marfrela also had a thing for tying women up, which was how Benoni’s body was found. Probable conclusion: Hamid Marfrela killed Lucia Benoni, and someone killed Hamid Marfrela to stop him talking about it.’

‘Our friend Steve moves in interesting circles,’ Alex Vonn observed.

‘How in the hell do they know about the Marfrela guy tying up women?’ Senator O’Brien asked.

‘They found some literature in his apartment,’ Mason replied. ‘I don’t know the details.’

‘Unbelievable,’ O’Brien said. ‘Is that it?’

‘Not quite,’ Mason replied. ‘Hamid Marfrela was an accredited diplomat in the Lebanese delegation.’

‘Damn it, I thought the name sounded familiar,’ Alex Vonn said. ‘His murder was in the papers. The ambassador was making a big deal about how the United States should do a better job of protecting diplomats against the rampant crime in Washington. A real whiner.’

‘Right,’ Mason said. ‘That’s the guy. So, to summarize, what we have here is the President of the United States sharing a Lebanese mistress with a Lebanese diplomat. A mistress who could enter the White House pretty much any time using a special pass issued to her at the request of the President.’

‘So,’ Alex Vonn said, ‘a reasonable question might be ‘what kind of things might the President say to Lucia Benoni at the moment of climax or during the afterglow?’’

‘And a second reasonable question,’ Mason added, ‘is ‘how much of what the President said did Lucia Benoni pass on to Hamid Marfrela?’ But right now, it’s nothing more than speculation.’

There was complete silence around the table for some time. Senator O’Brien felt the need to freshen his scotch.

‘I don’t believe that Steve Wade would betray his country, if that’s what you were implying,’ he said, walking slowly back from the bar to retake his seat. ‘God knows I don’t care for the man, but I can’t believe he would do that. And that’s the implication here, isn’t it? That he divulged material during his pillow talk which might have compromised national security?’

‘That is most definitely the implication,’ Congressman Stanley said. ‘And frankly, I don’t care whether he did that or whether he didn’t. The point is that it looks bad, and there’s no excuse for it, and he’s lying his ass off about it. That’s enough for me.’

‘Enough for what, George?’ Vonn asked.

‘To begin impeachment proceedings,’ Stanley replied. ‘What else?’

Every eye in the room was focused on Stanley.

Alex Vonn gave a contemptuous laugh.

‘George, are you out of your ever-loving mind? Does the name William Jefferson Clinton mean anything to you?’

‘This is a different case,’ Stanley said.

‘Yes, it is. Clinton lied his ass off to a Grand Jury and tried to lie and manipulate his way out of a federal lawsuit. And they still couldn’t get him. So far, we have no evidence that Wade did anything other than screw the Benoni woman behind his wife’s back. The only positive difference is that, with Steve Wade, we’re probably not going to have to debate whether getting sucked off does or does not constitute having sexual relations.’

‘He’s right, George,’ Mason said. ‘Based on what we have now, impeachment wouldn’t have a prayer. If anything, Wade is even more popular than Clinton was.’

‘Then find me something else,’ George Stanley said angrily. ‘Let’s find some evidence on the national security angle.’

‘We’re working on it,’ Mason said, as evenly as he could. ‘But we’re not sure there’s anything to find. If you’re anxious to move it forward, we need to know what’s been going on between the United States and Lebanon recently. If anyone wants to look into that for me up on the Hill while we’re digging elsewhere, I could use the help.’

‘It will be my pleasure,’ George Stanley said. ‘I’ll get on it first thing in the morning.’

‘Good,’ Mason said. ‘But discreetly, George. We don’t want anyone jumping the gun here.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Congressman Stanley said. ‘The bastard will never know what hit him.’