The Death Trust (43 page)

I nodded: “Bishop?”

“Sir?”

“Win, lose, or draw, I just want to say that you’ve redeemed your countrymen.”

“Thank you. I think…”

The screen came to life. Bishop double-clicked on the small castle icon and the screen fluttered, revealing the familiar pulsing bars alive with electric light. He mentioned something about algorithms with a fuzzy logic base while he tapped away at a succession of keys. Suddenly, the animated electrical pulse vanished and the bars fell away, revealing two small icons marked “File A” and “File B.”

I clicked on File A, which caused Acrobat Reader to load, and then the file itself. It was a JPEG of a passport, a Russian passport. I read the name. It was unfamiliar: Petrov Andreiovic. I recognized the face, though, and the recognition was like a slap across my own. “Jesus,” I said. Then I clicked on File B, which loaded another JPEG. The type was small, so I enlarged it. It was a paragraph in what appeared to be the minutes of a meeting. The paragraph was labeled “The First Convention.” I read the text, and, by the time I finished, I knew I was feeling the same dismay Scott felt when he read it. This was a betrayal of everything I believed in. No, worse than that. It was a betrayal of the
only
thing I believed in.

“Sir. You okay?” asked Bishop.

I must have looked like I was in shock. I sure as hell felt as if I was in it.

“Yeah,” I said. The experiences of the past month were beginning to make a crazy kind of sense. I now knew why there’d been so much killing, and why I had to keep myself alive long enough to pass this shit on to someone I could trust. The trouble was, right at that moment and with the exception of the people in the Humvee, I couldn’t think of anyone.

“Bishop, you have to drop me somewhere,” I said.

I was now familiar with the street, the way it curved languidly through manicured gardens and fountains. For more than sixty years, since the end of WWII, American officers and our NATO brethren had rented these homes embedded within expansive, genteel gardens. It was an affluent neighborhood. A power neighborhood. I wished I had a tank-mounted flamethrower so that I could burn it all to the ground. At the very least, I was going to bring one household crashing down. If not for myself, then for Anna. And for General Scott and his son, Peyton, and for all the others…

The Humvee pulled up at the head of the cinder footpath that led up to the familiar fountain. I noticed that it was dry today, like my throat. I cleared it—my throat—and got out. I gave Bishop some instructions, what to do with himself and the laptop and so on, then shook his hand. This was good-bye. He had to get a long way away from me—that is, if he wanted to keep on breathing.

I strolled up the path toward the fountain. The bronze dolphins and the warrior figures were wearing crowns of bird shit. I noticed that the once immaculate grounds were untended, a weed or two among the flowers. Decay had begun to move in here, happy to share the place with its other resident. I glanced across at the garage. The doors were open. If my theory was right, I expected to find something in there that I’d overlooked.

I slid between the doors, into the darkness beyond, and waited a moment for my eyes to adjust. It was cold in here, and dry. I smelled Scott’s Mustang: grease, leather, and age.

I knew what I was looking for, but I wasn’t at all sure where I’d find them, or even
if
I’d find them. I made my way across to the workbench to where I’d seen the photos that charted Peyton’s relationship with his father. Abraham Scott and his son, Peyton. One growing old, the other growing up. The pictures told their own story, but not necessarily the one I’d originally thought. When I’d first seen these pictures, something about them had bothered me. Eventually I’d worked out what that something was. I’d been satisfied with the revelation at the time, but only because I hadn’t then known what to look for. But now I did.

I went on a hunt for a trash can and eventually found several of them in the shadows, tucked under the far end of the workbench. I pulled out the first one and dragged it across into a shaft of pale afternoon light falling through a side window. I dug through the papers, sawdust, and various empty plastic bottles until I reached the bottom. Nothing. The same result with the second trash can. What I was hoping to find lay in the bottom of the third. I felt around with my fingers until they brushed it, and then I pulled it out. I wiped away the sawdust and saw a photo of a young Harmony Scott with a four-year-old Peyton, lying together on a carpeted floor with a model car between their smiling faces. I recovered seven more framed photos from the trash, moments in the life of a once happy family—Abraham, Harmony, and Peyton—that had at one time sat up on the workbench. Abraham Scott had, for some reason, purged them from the lineup of the other Kodak moments. I believed I knew what that reason was. In fact, finding these pictures, as I thought I would, confirmed a lot, and none of it was pleasant. I scoped the house across the lawn and saw Harmony Scott looking down on me from a second-story window, talking into a portable phone.

FORTY-TWO

I
banged the eagle-and-deer knocker several times and heard the resounding boom roll through the hallway behind the solid wood door. I waited impatiently for the sound of Harmony’s footsteps to follow. She knew I was waiting out here on her front step. I also knew she could care less. I tried the doorknob on the off chance that it was unlocked and was rewarded by the heavy door swinging inward on its hinges. I smelled Harmony’s perfume mixed with her brand of cigarettes and followed them to their source.

The surroundings were familiar, the seventeenth-century gloom with its dark paneled walls and the stuffed shirts looking down from their heavy gilt frames. I found Harmony where I thought she’d be: close to the liquor cabinet. Indeed, she was seated on one of the Chesterfields, several glass tumblers on the low table in front of her along with a couple of bottles of Glenkeith, my brand, and a pile of used tissues. Dressed again in black and without makeup, she looked like an extra from a zombie movie. Her eyes were red from tears, alcohol, or cigarettes—I wasn’t sure which, although three packets of Salems were scattered on the table in front of her. Two of them were empty. A glass ashtray piled high with butts sat between the packets. She peeled the wrapping off the third pack, pinched out a cigarette, and lit it using the dying embers clinging to the filter smoldering between her lips. “I hate drinking out of dirty glasses. Don’t you?” she said, slurring her words, turning the
d
in drinking to a
j.
She dropped the butt in the ashtray and sucked on the fresh cigarette, pulling the smoke down into her toes, and blowing a blue cloud at the ceiling. Then she picked up her drink and polished it off.

“Depends on whose dirt it is,” I answered.

Frowning, she seemed to consider that for a second or two before giving up. “Well,” she said, “you want a drink or not?”

I was way past playing the puritan. “Single malt over ice,” I said.

She studied me for a moment, then said, “Well, what do I look like? Your servant? Glasses are over there.” She gestured at the liquor cabinet with a tilt of her head. “You can get me a fresh glass and ice while you’re at it. I hate drinking from a dirty glass.”

Yeah, I know.

I went to the cabinet and organized a glass for myself and for Harmony, adding rocks to both. “When did you tell your husband?”

“Tell him what?” she asked.

“About Helen. That her death wasn’t an accident.”

“You think you’re so goddamn clever.”

That’s something I’ve always hated about rich people, though maybe hate is too strong a word. It’s the assumed superiority that seems to accompany a hefty bank balance. More money, more brains. No money? Well, you must be a half-wit. With Harmony Scott, this feeling had been refined. She oozed with the presumption that those without wealth and position were less than human—Neanderthal, maybe.

“When did Abraham find out that, for most of his life, he’d been played?”

Harmony’s reaction was to pour herself a couple of additional fingers and toss them down, and from a dirty glass. And then she began to cry. “They killed him,” she blubbered.

“Who? Your husband?” I asked.

“Wolfgang,” she said. “They killed my Wolfy.” She ripped out a tissue from the box and held it to her nose.

That caught me by surprise. Had the target been von Koeppen and not Anna? Was Anna just collateral in the hit on the general? It had been his car. Somehow that made her death worse, like it was just bad fucking timing.

“I loved him. I loved him and the bastard had him killed,” she sobbed.

I wondered whether that love was genuinely reciprocated by von Koeppen. He supposedly had a preference for young women and, given his extracurricular interests, plenty of opportunity to have that particular thirst slaked. Perhaps he really did love her. He might have had the dream of uniting his vaguely royal German blood with that of a patrician American family. The man certainly had the ego for such a plan.

Tears streaked Harmony Scott’s face. I’ve seen some bad shit in my life but, for some reason I’ll never understand, I’m not immune to a woman turning on the waterworks. I didn’t want to feel sorry for Harmony Scott, but that’s what I felt. I let her cry and poured myself a drink, supersizing it. Throughout this investigation, a mysterious “they” had often been referred to—the so-called Establishment. Harmony’s mention of “the bastard”—an individual—was a first. I pretty much knew who she was referring to although I thought I’d ask, if only to get her to say his name.

“Who are you talking about, Mrs. Scott? Who had General von Koeppen killed?”

That seemed to sober her up a little. Harmony Scott blew her nose, took another sip of her drink, put it down, and then wrung a wad of tissues between her fingers. In the ashtray, three cigarettes burned. This was someone under intense pressure. “Do you intend to charge me with anything?” she asked, dodging my questions. “Do I need a lawyer?”

She was a civilian and, as such, outside the jurisdiction of the Uniform Military Code of Justice. Under civilian statutes, she could be charged with being an accessory to murder, or perhaps conspiracy to murder, but those were nuggets a civilian investigator would have to consider. And, besides, I was after a much bigger fish. “Whether you call a lawyer or not is up to you, Mrs. Scott, but, you being a civilian, there’s nothing I can charge you with. I’m just here to ask you some questions, clear up a few things—that’s all.”

She nodded, her red, swollen eyes a long way off.

I repeated my earlier question. “When did your husband realize that his first wife had been murdered?” I knew it was within the past sixteen months: That’s when those photographs had been removed from the workbench, and from Scott’s study.

“Cooper, I’m going to give you some history. I’m only going to give it to you once. I’m also going to deny I told you anything. The only reason I’m speaking to you at all is that I want my own revenge, and not just for Wolfy’s death. I’ve been used my whole life. When I was in my twenties, I went to the White House to meet the Soviets, before their house of cards came down. There I met a handsome major, a widower with a young son. His wife had been killed in a car accident and I guess he was just about getting over the loss. Back then, I was considered beautiful. I was also promiscuous, and single. I seduced him. You know, we fucked in the Rose Garden. Can you believe that? Back then, surveillance wasn’t quite what it is today.

“It was only years later I realized I’d been sent there to meet the man I would marry. I’d been preconditioned to be attracted to him. My father had told me about this young air force officer who would be at the party and how he was being groomed for great things, that I needed to be careful with him—protective—because of the tragic loss of his wife. I knew he was a fighter pilot. And, let’s face it, when you’re a twenty-something party animal, who would you rather meet, a war hero who could fuck all night, or a bunch of old Soviet drunks who spent their time in Washington bouncing between hookers and vodka?”

I didn’t answer. Harmony lit another cigarette to join the others still smoldering in the ashtray, and stood, teetering like a building in a violent earthquake. She steadied herself against the armrest on the couch, then set off on a wobbly circuit of the room, bleeding cigarette smoke.

“You might not believe it, but Abe and I got married because we were in love. And I loved his son, Peyton. We moved to Moscow, where Abe continued his tour at the U.S. Embassy there. Just as my father had said, my husband was being groomed for the top. Promotion followed promotion, Abe’s star hitched to his father-in-law’s wagon. When Peyton turned eighteen, he joined the marines. He went in at the bottom, against his father’s wishes. That he even wanted a military life went against my wishes.

“As for Abraham and me, I don’t know when things began to fall apart, but it happened fast. We went from post to post and maybe the soda just went flat.”

Yeah, I knew what she meant.

“Some of the fault was mine. I got bored. By the time Abe received his fourth star and took command here, we were distant acquaintances living in the same house. And then things started to go seriously wrong between us. He said he’d come to the conclusion that his first wife had been killed to make way for me. He also said he was going to launch an investigation, that Ramstein was being used in a people-smuggling racket, and that he was going to find out who was responsible.”

“And then Peyton was KIA,” I said.

“Don’t interrupt,” she snapped. “Yes. Peyton was killed.”

“Were you seeing von Koeppen by then?” I asked, ignoring the demand.

She answered with her silent stare.

I’d had about enough of Harmony’s fairy tale. She needed to know the facts.

“Wolfgang von Koeppen was smuggling women from the East—countries like Russia, the Ukraine, and the Baltic states—into western Europe,” I said. “He dealt in human misery, Mrs. Scott. Either your husband figured it out, or someone tried to enlist him in the scheme, possibly even von Koeppen himself.”