The Lie (11 page)

“When was this?”

“Some days ago. Certainly before Mainz’s nighttime visit to the museum.”

“How did the security chief die?”

“An apparent accident. He fell down some cellar steps and broke his neck. He was an old man.”

Kate stared at the ceiling.

“The way I figure it,” said Nicko, “Mainz must have
taken wax impressions and brought them to the locksmith to make into keys. He probably broke the old man’s neck before tossing
him down the stairs.

“Well?” said Nicko Vorelli. “Do you feel any better, knowing?”

Kate Dinneson shook her head.

T
WENTY-FOUR HOURS AFTER
P
AULIE HAD CALLED
and spoken to Tommy Cortlandt about Klaus Logefeld, the CIA director telephoned him back with what he had learned. By this
time the German’s name was glowing like a giant candle in Paulie’s private dark.

“Here’s what our data base came up with on Logefeld,” said Cortlandt. “The man seems to have been a rather shadowy German
national with alleged radical connections. But very smalltime, very minor, and he’s never actually been booked. He’s used
two known aliases… Hans Schmidt and Walter Miller. But it’s pretty certain he’s not using either of them anymore and there’s
been nothing new on him for seventeen years.”

“What about known associates?” asked Paulie Walters.

Papers rattled at the other end as Cortlandt checked through his printouts. “I have four names that cross-check and tie in
with him,” Cortlandt finally said. “I take it you want them all.”

“Along with their last known addresses.”

Cortlandt read them off and Paulie wrote everything in a small notebook. One address was in Berlin, another in Florence, and
the final two in Rome. “I’d like you to do something for me when you’re in Berlin,” said Cortlandt. “And I’d appreciate your
making that your first stop.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“On September 13 there’s going to be an international human rights conference at Wannsee. It’ll be on the foreign secretary
level, with the German chancellor acting as host. What I need you to do is to spend a few hours going through the place, and
then give me as precise a security report as possible.”

“Isn’t security the host country’s job?”

“Ordinarily, yes. But in this case I have to make it ours as well.”

“Why?”

“Because Jimmy Dunster wants to put in a surprise appearance.”

“Who knows about this?”

“The president and I. And now you.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all,” said Cortlandt. “And it has to stay that way.”

“What’s Dunster’s purpose?” asked Paulie.

“There were a few lofty references to some African bloodletting and human rights. But I suspect the bottom line may still
be closer to personal ego.”

“That’s worth dying for?”

“Jimmy Dunster doesn’t expect to die.”

“Ever?”

Cortlandt’s laugh was flat. “A certain whiff of immortality seems to come with the territory.”

“You can’t talk him out of it?”

“I’ll give you his private number,” said the CIA director. “
You
talk him out of it.”

Paulie found himself gripping the telephone with a white-knuckled hand. “With all your resources, why am I the one you’re
asking to get involved with Wannsee?”

“It’s important that this doesn’t leak,” Cortlandt said. “With you I know it won’t.”

‘Go on,” said Paulie Walters.

Cortlandt remained silent.

“How about your trying to get me out of obsessing over my parents’ killer and into something more productive?” asked Paulie.

“You mean you think keeping the president alive might be more productive than chasing some unknown shooter through the dark?”

“No,” said Paulie. “But
you
do.”

M
IST HAD TURNED TO LIGHT RAIN
as Deputy CIA Director Harris drove along the Potomac. About twenty miles west of Washington he entered a long stretch of
Virginia pine.

It was a black night and he was alone in his own car, having left his official limousine and driver an hour earlier. He squinted
against approaching headlights and swung north away from the river on a two-lane blacktop. Then he turned west for a short
distance until he saw the remains of an old barn.

A gray sedan was parked behind it. Ken Harris pulled up alongside it and cut his lights and motor. His passenger door was
opened and a man he had known for many years as Daniel Archer slid in beside him.

“Mr. Deputy Director,” said Archer.

“Hello, Danny. How’s the old pulse? Slow as ever?”

“Hey, if it was any slower I’d be goddamn dead.”

A wiry man who looked a decade younger than his forty years, Archer was a dedicated distance runner. He took pride in his
unusually slow pulse and checked it often, as he proceeded to do now.

“Thirty-eight on the nose,” he said.

The deputy director considered Archer through the dark. “I have something for you, Danny. The biggest ever. Think you’re up
to it?”

The question was a modest attempt at humor. It was generally accepted between them that there was nothing in Daniel Archer’s
area of expertise that he was
not
up to.

“Let’s hear it,” he said.

“The president will be at a trade meeting in Brussels next month. He’s planning to arrive early on the twelfth and leave for
home the morning of the thirteenth.” Ken Harris paused “Your job is to see that he doesn’t make it out of Belgium.”

Archer whistled softly. “Who’s behind it?”

“A few people who feel it’ll be best for the country.” “You mean true-blue American patriots?”

The deputy director’s smile was vaguely reminiscent of dirty river ice. “Now you’ve got it.”

“What restrictions?”

“You’re not to do it yourself. I don’t want any Americans involved. Pick a hitter from one of the local or international groups.
Afterward, toss the police a suspect with a history. We need someone to take the heat.”

“Can you get me estimated arrival and departure times for Air Force I?”

“I already have them. They’ll be coming into Brussels International at 9:30
A.M.
local and flying out the exact same time the next morning.”

“What about the routes to and from the airport?”

“Those are in the hands of Belgian security,” said Harris. “You’ll have to dig them out for yourself.”

Daniel Archer pursed his lips, a man with multiple problems trying to decide which to consider first. He had a sharp-jawed
face that gave him the look of a worried fox. “What kind of money are we talking?”

“It’s open, but don’t go crazy. It still has to come from covert, discretionary funds. You’ll get a few hundred thousand to
spread around as a starter. Then we’ll work from there.”

The light rain turned heavy and they listened to it drumming on the car’s roof.

“How does it make you feel, moving into the history books?” Harris asked.

“Dunster’s not really
my
target. You just told me I won’t be the hitter.”

“No, but you’ll be the one setting it up.”

“A hit’s a hit, Ken. I don’t personalize it.” Archer looked at the deputy director. “You’re the one who taught me that.”

“And you’ve learned it well. That’s why you’re handling this.”

Daniel Archer put a stick of gum in his mouth and sat gravely chewing. “Not that it matters,” he said, “but the one thing
I can’t figure in the whole deal is Jay Fleming having the guts to go for it.”

“Who said he’s going for it? Who said he even knows?”

“I just assumed.”

“Didn’t I also teach you never to assume?”

Ken Harris laughed abruptly.

“Well this time you happen to have assumed correctly,” he said.

K
EN
H
ARRIS’S FIRST CHANCE
to be alone with the vice president alter his meeting with Archer came later the following night in the deputy director’s
bachelor apartment.

Earlier, a purely social evening of dinner and a concert with the vice president and his wife had ended when Amy Fleming suffered
a sudden bout of migraine and had to be dropped off at home. The two men continued on to Harris’s condominium in Chevy Chase.

They were silent until Ken Harris had poured the obligatory Napoleon.

“It’s started,” said the deputy director. “I’ve set things in motion.”

Fleming briefly closed his eyes. He might have been offering a silent prayer.

“When?” he asked.

“Last night.”

“Tell me about it.”

Harris looked evenly at the vice president. “Are you sure you want to hear? There’s really no need for you to know every detail.”

“It could be worse not knowing. I’ve already begun dreaming about it.”

“Just don’t talk in your sleep,” said Ken Harris. “I don’t think Amy would enjoy the idea too much.”

Fleming rolled his eyes heavenward. “Christ!”

“Anyway, I met with my contact, told him what had to be done, and gave him the dates.”

“Just one man?”

The deputy director nodded. “Which means just a single link to me, and none at all to you.”

“He’s not one of your Agency people, is he?”

“Hell, no. I’d never use a Company man for something like this. That would give us too direct a connection if something went
wrong.”

“What if something goes wrong with this man involved?”

Harris shrugged. “He becomes expendable.”

“Who is he?” asked Fleming.

“A pro. The best. With no moral judgments clogging his arteries.”

“How long have you known him?”

“A lot of years. He believes we’re good friends.”

“And you? What do
you
believe?”

“Pretty much the same thing. Unless he becomes a threat.”

Sipping his brandy, Jayson Fleming got up and began to pace. “What about Cortlandt and this man of yours? Does Tommy know
him?”

“I doubt it.”

“You’re not sure?”

“What’s ever sure in this business? In any case, it hardly matters. Whatever has to be done will be done. We’re way beyond
Tommy now.”

The vice president stopped his pacing. “Is your man an American?”

“Yes. But he won’t be the one actually doing it.”

“Who will?”

“Some zealot with his own agenda. Someone who knows and cares nothing about either one of us and will probably end up dead
himself.”

It was nearly three in the morning when the vice president quietly slipped into bed and looked through the silvery
dark at his sleeping wife. The small frown of pain from her headache was gone and she slept as though she were eighteen years
old.

Amy
.

More than thirty years of living together and how much did they really know about the darker parts of each other? How many
secrets would they finally carry to their graves?

Just don’t talk in your sleep
, Ken Harris had warned.

Lord, if Amy knew.

Jayson Fleming’s eyes blurred at the thought.

Which left him with only one truly significant question. Did he really want the presidency badly enough to murder for it?

Obviously he did.

The whole concept of such a thing had not just sprung full-blown into his brain. It had been germinating ever since he was
forced to accept the fact that Jimmy Dunster was not going to honor his solemn, preconvention pledge not to bury him in all
the ceremonial nonsense that traditionally came with the vice presidency.

“Be honest with me, Jimmy,” he had said before accepting the Number Two slot. “I don’t want to spend eight years in a limbo
that could finish me as a future contender for Number One. So if you can’t offer me more than that, please tell me now.”

Jimmy Dunster had made his pledge, never kept it, and everything that Jay Fleming had feared would happen to him as vice president
had happened.

Except for this, of course. Who would ever have expected to be planning an honest-to-God assassination?

Clearly, Ken Harris. And probably his father, were he still alive.

Fleming smiled coldly. To his father, being Number One wasn’t just the best thing. It was the only thing. While there he was,
stuck with a son who had never gotten past Number Two.

This time would be different.

Yet Fleming knew that most of what he was into now was still coming from Ken Harris, who was strong, tough, and confident
enough to get exactly what he was after. Or was he simply evil enough?

Never mind that. If it were his own dead father’s approval he continued to chase after, killing for the presidency had to
get it for him. Hell, he could still hear his father bellowing after him as he ran onto any one of a hundred ball fields:
“Get in there and bust their legs, kid!”

That’s it. Blame it on Big Daddy and Ken Harris. As if he couldn’t come up with enough other reasons for wanting the president
out of the way.

If anyone was a foolish, do-nothing, political hack, it was Jimmy Dunster. How many precious fragments of the human condition
would finally be lost through the ineptitude of this one man who held the single most influential office on God’s earth?

Still, Jayson Fleming could not avoid recognizing his own troubled pride, the poverty of conscience that reduced his soul.
He had to know that what Ken Harris was offering him, and what he was offering himself, was only the darkest of illusions.
But the soul wanted what it wanted and he still loved and fell for the myth he had made up about himself.

The glory.

The courage.

The grace and exaltation.

To soar above the dirt and degraded clowning and into the light.

Yes. He wanted the presidency that badly
.

P
RESIDENT
D
UNSTER CAME UP OUT OF SLEEP SLOWLY
, pausing at each new level. He felt the pressure on his chest, but there was no pain and he thought it might just be part
of a dream. Then he heard himself groan and knew it was no dream and that he was awake.