Sudden Threat (58 page)

“This is a fun game, Saul. I’m glad I know you.”

Fox looked at Diamond and smiled again, lightly stroking his bare shoulder.

“I just got confirmation that Takishi is dead,” Fox said.

“Charlie Watts,” Diamond acknowledged, as if going through one of his checklists.

“Stone is not going to bother us, guaranteed. He keeps his job, we keep ours. I have a police friend who has the tape of Stone trying to rape that blond woman. If anything ever happens to me, he’ll run with it.”

“Mick Jagger,” Diamond whispered hoarsely.

“And we know what happened to Rathburn,” Fox said.

“Keith Richards,” Diamond whispered again, almost mournful, like a military funeral where the first sergeant calls the roll of the dead.

“The news articles about short sales and so forth have tapered off, and I want to thank you for using your media contacts to help in that regard. Though they didn’t mention us, it was a bit close for comfort.”

“You’re welcome.” Diamond smiled again.

Fox had just purchased magenta sheets that matched the chintz covering the bay window, which offered a commanding view of the Potomac River and the wooded area around the GW Parkway. Fox looked over Diamond’s shoulder at the heavy mauve design on the curtains. He thought he saw one of them ruffle with the wind, however slight, that was wafting off the Potomac and into his lair.

“Which leaves only one loose end,” Fox said.

“Ronnie Wood.” Diamond sighed.

Fox looked away, not sure if he was ready to act, but he grasped the knife handle with his free hand beneath the pillow and made a tense fist as he pondered his next move.

“Well, actually ...” Fox began.

“Before you do something stupid,” Diamond said, quickly. His arm had been hanging over the side of the bed, and he simply reached between the mattress and box springs and clutched the pistol handle in his right hand. “Who else could there be? I have enough dirt on you that, in the event of my death, you will be hanged in the media, tried in court, and most likely put to death by lethal injection when the world learns that you are at a minimum a Nine-eleven coconspirator. Or perhaps they will just put you in Guantanamo with the other terrorists, as Stone suggested.”

Fox’s grip on the knife relaxed a bit as he smiled at Diamond and stroked his cheek.

“Why would you say something like that to me, Dick? You know how I feel about you. We’re a team. I was just going to say that, actually, Ronnie Wood is going to be okay. He’s on board.”

“A team,” Diamond reiterated, as he relaxed his grip on the pistol.

“We have much work to do in testing our theories. We’re talking changing history in a forever kind of way,” Fox said, his words dueling with his instinct to kill Diamond. He had suspected for several weeks now that Diamond was Ronnie Wood, but still lacked hard evidence.

“The Brothers of Babylon. The future. Eternal fame, like Churchill,” Diamond said.

“Our theory about attacks on the homeland demonstrated outcomes that would have been otherwise impossible to imagine. Who would have guessed that the American people would have con-tributed a billion and a half dollars to charities? That patriotism would have surged so much? That country music would be the clear winner?”

They shared a good chuckle about the country music. Fox lifted the stereo remote and increased the volume on the Bach.

“Yes, country music,” Diamond said.

Fox continued, “And who would have thought that our movement would become so powerful. We can just point the way, and they follow, like sheep.” Fox eyed Diamond as he prepared his response.

“Yes, like sheep,” Diamond said dreamily as he licked his lips.

“We have navigated the most challenging possible tests. For so many years, from our university and think-tank offices, we could only dream about eternal fame. Jeffrey Sachs got all the credit for bringing capitalism to Russia and Poland after the Cold War. Now, we will be famous for what we will do in the Middle East.”

“Famous,” Diamond said.

CHAPTER 104

Pentagon, Washington, DC

It had been all Matt could do to heal and survive. Being pulled off the hospital ship
Mercy
that was by now situated somewhere in the Persian Gulf, in order to play the wheelchair-bound role as Father Sierra, was challenging.

He had heard about the big battle at Fort Magsaysay, and General Zater had flown to the
Mercy
to give him the news about Zachary’s death on the battlefield. Somehow, he had been able to push adrenaline through his body sufficiently to subdue the pain for one last mission. X-Ray, his protégé, had told him that there were no others who could speak Japanese as well as he or play the role required. It wasn’t so much an order as it was a request, his friend had said.

There was never any doubt that he would perform the
mission,
Matt knew. But the only way to do it was in tandem with Macrini as Father Xavier and Matt playing the feeble priest. Besides, the fact that there were two of them presented the Japanese commanders a new variable, and they had been able to parlay the confusion to good effect for the country. And while the doctors had all said no, all Matt had to do was think of Zach, and he said, “Yes—make it work.”

A full week after Zachary’s funeral and a complete debriefing from Meredith on the Rolling Stones, Matt thought he had pieced it together.

Stone and his cronies were fanning the flames of insurgency in an awkward move to derail the building momentum to fight in Iraq.
Create a war to stop a war?
He thought about Iran-Contra and wondered what this would be called: China-Abu Sayyaf?

But when young men and women were putting their lives on the line, Matt believed, the proffer of academic theorems by amateur political appointees about simplifying warfare were best rejected and left in the rough drafts of the professors’ dissertations and class notes.
Where and why you went to war mattered,
Matt thought.
Intelligence is central to the whole discussion. And we damn sure didn’t need to manufacture a war in the Philippines
. That thought had dropped another tumbler into place on figuring out the true identity of Ronnie Wood.

Every time I’m close, I’m moved
.

Matt walked through the E-ring of the Pentagon and passed a man who looked the other way as they approached one another. Matt immediately recog-nized him as a journalist for the
Washington Post.
The book on him was that he was shady at best; dishonest, even up for grabs, at worst. Matt strode confidently past the man and now the final tumbler of the lock fell into place in his mind. He had solved the mystery.

Energized, he stopped in front of Latisha’s desk directly outside of Secretary Stone’s office.

“You’re up next, Mr. Garrett.” Latisha smiled.

“Thank you.”

Matt was dressed in his usual garb: olive cargo pants, basic tan button-down cotton shirt, and dark windbreaker. His arm was out of the sling, and he could walk with minimal pain.

“Matt, come in,” Stone said.

Matt followed Stone into his office and sat on a blue leather sofa. In front of him was a small coffee table with an assortment of magazines and newspapers that were current but unread.

“How can I help you?”

Matt tossed the manila folder on the table. “Read it. Then we’ll talk.”

He watched Stone pick up the file and skim through the pages. Matt had to hand it to Stone; the man’s expression never changed. But he guessed that anyone who could pull off the kind of charade that Stone had must have the deadened sense of morality that allowed him to appear unfazed by shocking information. Stone closed the folder and placed it back on the table.

“Okay,” Stone said.

“All of this was some game?” Matt asked.

“Everything had its purposes, yes,” Stone said.

“Do the people who die matter?”

“Everyone dies eventually, Matt,” Stone said.

Matt stiffened at Stone’s insensitive comment and said, “Your compassion is overwhelming.”

“You’re not here to discuss my compassion. I agreed to see you based upon what you’ve been through. What we put you through. You know about everything now, and I would ask that you keep confidential your knowledge of Ronnie Wood.”

“But why?” Matt asked. He leaned back into the sofa, curious.

“I’ll appeal to your sense of patriotism. This is a great country, and we need to avoid further embar-rassment.”

“I could argue that exposing Mr. Wood would help us greatly in that regard.”

“Perhaps, but the short-term pain might be debilitating. We’re in a very vulnerable place right now.”

“He’s just another bureaucrat, but I’ll think about it,” Matt offered.

“Speaking of vulnerabilities, have you heard about the tragic deaths of my deputy Saul Fox and Dick Diamond?”

“Not even sure I know who they are,” Matt said, staring directly into Stone’s liquid eyes.

Stone seemed to consider his comment and nodded.

“Yes. You’re CIA, and a field agent at that. There would be no reason for you to know them.”

“No reason,” Matt replied. “But there is this.”

He pulled a small tape recorder out of his windbreaker pocket and placed it on the table as he punched the play button:

“This was all so very exciting. So close to Arma-geddon in Los Angeles …”

Matt let the recording play where the two lovers disclosed all the bits of the conspiracy to include Stone’s participation, albeit coerced.

Stone’s hand reached out for the tape, and Matt used his good arm to strike like a cobra against Stone’s wrist, grabbing it and squeezing it in a viselike grip. He leveled his eyes on Stone and began to speak.

“Scumbags like you think you can live in your little soundproof world so that nothing circles back on you. I look at it differently. I’m thinking that maybe Ronnie Wood and Mick Jagger will have a similar fight over these matters? Perhaps go the way of Fox and Diamond?”

Matt squeezed Stone’s arm so tight he thought he might snap the bone. Stone’s eyes fluttered either at the hint that Matt had something to do with the deaths of Fox and Diamond or the palpable desire for revenge transmitted from Matt through Stone’s wrist, like an electrical current.

“You send anyone after me, and I will know about it, Stone,” he said, his voice like granite. “And I will personally come to your little cottage in Orange County. I might be hiding behind the fireplace or perhaps in that nice refinished kitchen, who knows? Or maybe I’ll be at your McLean mansion, where you tried to rape Meredith. But I’ll be somewhere. So be smart. And being smart includes calling that slimy reporter you just told to out me and hang the bullshit failures on my back. I know how your type operates. Call him right now,” Matt demanded.

“Now?”

“I’ve got your E*Trade account that shows you made a fortune shorting stock before Nine-eleven. Rathburn was a meticulous record keeper. Now what are you going to do? Think about it. You’ve got a lot riding on this one, and you are walking on the razor.”

Stone stared at him for a moment, then looked away toward the window.

“I understand,” Stone said. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. Shortly someone answered, and Stone said, “Call it off.” There must have been a protest because Stone shouted into the phone, “I said call it off, or you’re dead, are we clear?”

“Do we have satisfaction?” Matt asked, sar-castically.

In the end, Matt knew there was nothing he could do to Stone that wouldn’t violate his principles or the law, but he would leave the tape behind as a tangible reminder to Stone of his influence.

And on that thought his mind spun to last night.

Matt had watched Diamond and Fox from behind the thick curtains in the bedroom. He had lined up the iron sights of his pistol on each of their foreheads with his good arm. He had a steady aim on Fox, then he would move to Diamond, and back to Fox.

When the moment came to pull the trigger, Zachary’s face flashed in front of him, saying, “Don’t do it. It’s not worth it.”

As he looked back up, though, he saw the glint of steel in Fox’s hand and a pistol in Diamond’s.

“What’s this letter, Dick?” Saul asked angrily, shaking the white paper at his lover as he walked from the study into the bedroom. His voice raged above Diamond’s favorite opera: Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma
”
…
None will know my name!

“It’s not mine, Saul. It’s a plant,” Diamond countered, holding up his hands as if to surrender.

The two men were naked except for boxer briefs in Diamond’s case and tighty whiteys in Fox’s. Both men had paunches that overlapped beyond the waistbands of the briefs.
Disgusting and comical at the same time,
Matt thought.

Of course, Matt had planted the letter and the dossier in Fox’s study once he learned of the Rolling Stones and thought of Dick Diamond’s role as Ronnie. Though he knew Ronnie was merely a cutout for a far-more-powerful person, as he had found a different picture beneath Diamond’s in the file Meredith had opened. It had been password-protected, and nothing could have prepared him for the image staring back at him.

Still, he couldn’t let Diamond or Fox get away with their crimes. Matt knew that, assuredly, the protective cocoon of the political-appointee bureau-racy would shield them from any accountability. Still, Matt had shaken his head at the internecine politics where there were double agents within cliques and power groups inside the Beltway and figured his ploy might work.

But what did that make him, he wondered? As he recalled the scene, he felt his own satisfaction:

“And what’s this?” Fox screamed. “You’re Ronnie? You’re a member of the Rolling Stones? You’ve been double-crossing me? I knew it, you bastard!”

Matt saw him hold the knife the way an orchestra conductor might hold an Uzi.
This should be interesting,
Matt thought.