The Hanged Man’s Song (15 page)

“How do we know he’ll be in?”

“It’s Sunday night. He could be out playing golf, and then have some friends over, but he ought to be home sometime in between-say, six o’clock. Dinnertime.”

“How about a FedEx shirt?”

“We can fake it,” I said.

“Somebody might see your face.”

“Can’t help it.”

She said, “I just went to eighty percent on the LuEllen scare-o-meter.”

THE
whole thing was complicated to talk about, but the actual
doing
was fairly quick. We needed to get very close to Krause very quickly, and without scaring him. Once we were close, he wouldn’t have a choice about talking-but getting within conversational distance of a major Washington politician, alone, was not a sure thing.

We went downtown and rifled a FedEx box, taking several cardboard letter-size envelopes and the bigger, sack-like envelopes. Then we stopped at an art store where I bought a jar of black poster paint, a watercolor brush, and an X-Acto knife. I bought a black golf shirt at a department store, and a black baseball cap from a sports shop two doors down the street.

Years before, we once had needed a full-face mask, and found one, of former President Bill Clinton, at a novelty store. To LuEllen’s delight, the store was still there, and open, and she bought another one just like the first. The great thing about the Clinton mask was that it was Caucasian flesh-colored, and from more than a dozen feet away it might be mistaken for an actual face.

We took all the supplies back to the hotel and up to LuEllen’s room.

On the back of the cardboard FedEx envelope we found a logo just about the right size for a shirt. We cut it out with the X-Acto knife, and LuEllen sewed it above the pocket on the golf shirt, tacking it on with three stitches of black thread from her sewing kit.

“Good from six feet,” she said, looking critically at the shirt. “If a cop stops us to give us a ticket, you can tear it off.”

“Can’t have any cops,” I said. “We’ll have to do the plates when we get close to Krause’s, but they wouldn’t fool a cop.”

“Gonna be some cops in that neighborhood,” she said.

“We need five minutes,” I told her. “Give me five minutes with the guy.”

“We could call him on the phone.”

“He wouldn’t believe us. We’ve got one chance at it.”

While we were talking, we cut another logo out of one of the FedEx bags, and we put that one on the baseball cap. “Who knows what a FedEx uniform looks like, anyway?” LuEllen said. “You just look at the logo, right? You just look at the box the guy’s carrying.”

Before we headed to Krause’s place, we went out on the hotel line-this was nothing sensitive, just a Google search-and found a half-dozen pictures of Krause. Took a long look: he had sandy hair, a narrow face, a long nose, a rounded chin. He looked English, upper-class English.

WE CRUISED
Krause’s house at five o’clock, driving my rental car. High summer and still full daylight. That was a particular problem, because we couldn’t see any signs of life-no lights, no movement, all garage doors closed. We cruised it at five-thirty and at six, at six-thirty and at seven. In between, we found an elementary school with a deep turn-in. That’s where we’d do the painting, if Krause ever showed.

“Maybe he’s not home,” LuEllen suggested, when we went by at seven. The house was still dark; and now the sun was going down. “A lot of these guys go back to their home states on weekends, right?”

“That should have been mentioned on one of the schedules,” I said. “It wasn’t… and he’s not up for reelection for four years.”

THE
house showed lights at seven-thirty and I headed back to the school yard. “You ready for this?” LuEllen asked.

“Let’s just do it,” I said. We pulled into the turn-in, and I got out and did a quick touch-up on the front license plate with the black poster paint-changed an H to an M, a 7 to a 1, made a 6 out of a 5. When I was done, I screwed the tops back on the paint bottles and put them in a plastic bag in the trunk. I pulled the Clinton mask over my face, held in place by a rubber band stretched around my head, above my ears. Once it was on, I rolled it up onto my forehead, so that when I was wearing the ball cap, the roll of the plastic mask was obscured by the bill.

“Ready,” I said, when I got back in the car.

LuEllen was in the backseat. “You know what you’re gonna say?” she asked nervously. We’d rehearsed the possibilities all the way over.

“Yup.” I yawned, as nervous as she was.

FOR
all the sweat and preparation, we got this:

I pulled all the way into Krause’s driveway, LuEllen lying down in the backseat. Once I was inside, she’d move up to the driver’s seat and get ready for a fast exit. I got out of the car, carrying a FedEx package full of newspapers and my Sony laptop, with the screen lit up. We thought that looked sort of like one of the FedEx delivery slates. If Krause’s wife came to the door, I would politely ask for her husband. If she wanted to take the package, I’d refuse, and say that I would come back the next day. If that didn’t get him, we’d leave.

If Krause came to the door, I’d turn away as soon as I saw him, duck my head and pull the mask over my face, and show him the gun. I’d taken all the shells out, because if he did something weird, I didn’t want to wind up shooting him. Unfortunately, when you take the shells out of a revolver, the person who the gun is pointed at can see the empty cylinders. I’d have to be careful, show him only the side of the gun.

MOST
of the working-out stuff wasn’t necessary. I walked to the front steps, rang the doorbell, and a minute later saw Krause walking toward the door. He was wearing shorts and a madras shirt instead of his usual blue shirt, but his long face was unmistakable.

As he came to the door, I turned my face away. The hand with the FedEx package was visible from the doorway, along with the lit-up computer screen; I pulled the Bill Clinton mask down. As I heard the door open, I realized that we were losing just a bit of the light-not quite twilight, but the sunlight was dimming.

The door opened and the senator said, querulously, “FedEx?”

I turned toward him and he shrank back, seeing the face.

I put the gun up but said, quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you. Shut up and don’t move. I need five minutes of talk and then I’m going to get out of here.” I was holding the door open with my foot, still had the package and the laptop in the other hand.

He took another step back and looked over his shoulder, looked back at me, and I said, “I’m going to save your career if you give me five minutes. If you start screaming, I’m gonna run, and it’ll be the worst decision you ever made.”

He said, “FedEx?”

“No. Listen to me. Do you know the shooting in Jackson, Mississippi, of the black man, where the cross was burned?”

“Yes,” he said tentatively. He looked back over his shoulder again. He thought about running, but knew he wouldn’t make it.

“The man who was killed was Bobby. Do you know who I’m talking about? The hacker Bobby?”

He frowned. Now, for the first time, he thought of something other than escape. “I saw it on the news, but they didn’t say anything about a hacker.”

“But you’ve heard of Bobby?”

“I’ve heard of him, but I-”

“Did you know that two men from your DDC group were killed yesterday?”

“Who are you?” He was a politician, trying to take the offensive; and he had heard.

I cut him off. “Bill Clinton. Listen, one of your former staff members at the Intelligence Committee, James Carp, killed Bobby-murdered him, beat in his head, and stole a laptop with information that could hurt me and other of Bobby’s friends. Then he killed your people, while they were looking for him. He used information from the laptop-
listen to me
-to do all of the political hits of the past week, all the so-called Bobby stuff. The daughter of the senator from Illinois, the military execution, the Norwalk virus, the Bole-blackface story… there are at least thirty more stories ready to go. We think a lot of the stuff was taken out of your DDC group.”

“What?”

Now I had his attention. I repeated myself, and added, “What in God’s name ever possessed you to run total background security probes on other members of Congress? Do you think there’s any chance your career will survive? What do you think your chances are of not going to prison?”

“I think you’re…” He looked at the gun. “Sir, I’m not sure that you are fully, uh, aware…”

“I’m not nuts,” I said. I looked past him. “Is there anybody else home?”

He hesitated, then said, “Not at the moment. My wife… should be home momentarily.”

“I don’t want to frighten your wife. But if there’s a telephone close by, you could make a call to someone who would tell you that I’m a reliable, mmm, source. There’s a Rosalind Welsh at the NSA.”

“I don’t know her.” He backed away a couple of steps, and I followed him inside.

“Maybe you can introduce yourself,” I said. “I’m going to let you make the call, but if you have a panic code, or something, I’ll probably figure it out, and I’ll be gone. I’ll be gone from here before anyone can get here, anyway, so there’s no point in trying to yell for help-and if you do, you might not find out the rest of what I’m going to tell you.”

“You said Jimmy Carp killed this boy… this, uh, man in Jackson.”

“Murdered him. According to your FBI investigation, he beat in his head with an oxygen tank. Bobby was crippled and in a wheelchair and couldn’t defend himself.”

“I saw the story. You’re sure it was Carp?”

“Yes. Not only that, he probably would have killed a little girl if we hadn’t stopped him, and he definitely killed your two men. Set them up and shot them down outside his apartment.”

“Sonofabitch.” Now he was worried.

“The whole thing started when he was doing research for your committee on Bobby. Now he’s got Bobby’s laptop and he’s decoding stuff from it. He’s got something with your name on it.”

His eyes narrowed, and his head tipped skeptically. “My name? Like what? I’ve never done anything.”

“Other people might not see it that way,” I said. “Now the woman at the NSA, she’s one of their top security people.”

I followed him down a hallway, past a coat closet, past a living room entrance, and finally to a big kitchen with a phone on the wall. The kitchen smelled like bread and peanut butter. I didn’t give him Welsh’s number and he didn’t ask for it. Instead, he dialed a number out of his head and when the phone was answered at the other end, he said, “This is me. There’s a woman at the NSA named Rosalind Welsh. She’s in their security branch. I need her home phone number right now. Instantly. Call me back.”

He hung up and said, “There wasn’t any panic code. What’s Carp got on me?”

“I don’t know everything he may have-or may not have-but he knows all about your bank loans from Hedgecoe Bank. What he actually has is scanned documents with your signature on them. I’m not a banker, but it seems like you got extraordinarily good terms, without collateral except for the stock you were buying. In fact, from the paper on the computer, it looks like the loans made you rich. You borrow big chunks of cash during the nineties, drop it into the stock market, Amazon, AOL, that whole crowd… you got to be a multimillionaire, right?”

“Nothing wrong with it,” he snapped. “Nothing wrong. Just good business. I paid all the money back, with interest.”

“Yeah, but how many ordinary guys could get a two-percent loan in 1990, with no collateral, and use it to speculate?” I looked at him, and answered the question: “None. You pulled a million bucks out of thin air, used it to make, what? Five million? Ten?”

“It was just…”

“You know where the money came from?”

“I knew some people on the board of directors,” he said hoarsely. “They know me and my reputation.”

“From the Saudis. From the Saudi Arabians.”

“What?”

“The Saudis are the money behind the bank, and you were running the Senate energy committee at the time. Unfortunately, it was some of the same Saudis who funded bin Laden. This does not look good, huh? Especially not now, post nine-eleven.” We were staring at each other in the now-gathering gloom; the phone rang to break the spell.

He picked it up, listened, wrote on a message pad, said, “Thanks,” and, “Talk to you about it later.” He hung up, grunted. “Cell phone, supposed to be full-time,” and dialed a number. It must have rung a couple of times, and when it was answered, he said, “This is Senator Krause. Is this Rosalind Welsh? Yes. I need to ask you a question. Would you prefer to call me back at my house, with your directory, to confirm who I am? Okay. I see. Mmm. Then this is the question. What can you tell me about…” He looked at me, and I tapped the mask. “Bill Clinton.”

Another pause.

“Yes, a mask. Is he… mmm, reliable?” I was already edging toward the door. He listened for another few seconds, then said, “Thank you. I’ll be back in touch.”

He looked at me and said, “The recommendation wasn’t the best.”

“But do you think I’m lying about Carp?”

“No, no.” A car pulled into the driveway, lights playing across the front of the house. “That’s my wife,” he said. I heard the garage door going up.

“I’ve got to run anyway. Welsh will have her NSA people on the way. I just wanted to let you know the quality of what’s out there. But I guess we’ll find out if you’re telling the truth if the word gets out.”

“No, no, that word can’t get out,” he said hastily.

“Give me your phone number. A cell phone. I’m going to call you tonight with a proposition that may get us all out of this mess.”

He gave me a number and we heard a door opening in the back. I repeated the phone number to him, and backed out the door. “Don’t follow us. Don’t try to spot the car. Just let us go, and maybe we can save your ass.”

But he said, “Wait. What was that you said about research on Congress?”

“I can’t believe you don’t know about that,” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”