Truth or Die (30 page)

Again, Dobson read from the file. “Born in Iran, educated in the States. Stanford undergrad; MIT graduate program, nuclear science and engineering. Then, days after accepting a job with General Atomics in San Diego, he suddenly split town and returned to Iran.”

The subtext of that last sentence was crystal clear. Arash Ghasemi was now working for the Iranian nuclear program.

Less clear was whether it was by choice. And even less clear than that was what this Iranian nuclear engineer had to do with Sengupta, the Indian neuroscientist.

Until I replayed Dobson’s descriptions of the two in my head. Word for word. And the one word—the one school—he’d mentioned twice.

“Stanford,” I said.

“Very good, Mr. Mann. You win the Samsonite luggage,” said Dobson. “You see, this is a tale of two roommates.”

HE HAD it all right there in the file, right down to the actual dorm where they first met freshman year. Arroyo House in Wilbur Hall.

Prajeet Sengupta and Arash Ghasemi had become fast friends at Stanford. Put them most anywhere else in the world and they had little in common. Under the bright glare of a California sun, however, they might as well have been brothers. Two strangers thrown together in a strange land.

By sophomore year they had become roommates, all but inseparable, including rushing Sigma Chi together.

“And if you’re looking for a reason why Ghasemi trusted Sengupta so much—even twenty years later—look no further than that fraternity,” said Dobson.

The handsome and more gregarious Sengupta had been tapped to pledge. But Ghasemi had been passed over. That is, until Sengupta made it very clear that they were a package deal. Sigma Chi couldn’t get one without the other.

Of course, who the hell was some pledge to be making a demand like that?

“A pretty damn clever one,” said Dobson. “In true frat-boy fashion, Sengupta challenged the rush chair to a drinking contest—shot for shot, last man standing. If Sengupta won, Ghasemi could become a brother. And if he lost? That was the clever part. The rush chair outweighed the skinny kid from Bangalore by nearly a hundred pounds. It wasn’t a fair fight. How could he ever lose?”

But he did.

Dobson smiled. “Like I said, it wasn’t a fair fight. Sengupta, who was premed at the time, had injected himself with a derivative of a drug called iomazenil. Apparently, it binds the alcohol receptors in the brain. In other words, it’s a binge drinker’s dream come true.” Dobson pointed at me. “Okay, now this is where you ask me that question again, Mr. Mann.
How do I know this?
”

For sure, I was about to. Not Valerie, though. She’d been around the block a few times in the world of intelligence gathering. All she could do was sigh in a way that had only one translation.
We live in a very complicated world.

“CIA or NIA?” she asked Dobson.

“Both,” he answered. Then he explained.

Not long after Ghasemi returned to Iran—against his will—to work for the Iranian nuclear program, Sengupta was recruited by the National Investigation Agency of India, the NIA. This was at the urging of the CIA based on the greatest shared interest the US and India have as two nuclear powers: making sure Iran doesn’t become one as well.

“Sengupta knew that his good friend Ghasemi was miserable back in his homeland of Iran,” Dobson continued. “Iranians might despise what they see as US hegemony, but they do so having never spent time in this country. But Ghasemi had. We weren’t the enemy.”

I listened to Dobson, almost dizzy. It was hard enough to keep track of the names, let alone the motives and inferences.

Valerie might have had the pole position, but I was finally up to speed.

Ghasemi was giving Sengupta, his good friend and former roommate, Iranian nuclear secrets.

Dobson took another sip of coffee before leaning forward, his words coming slowly. “I understand you’ve lost someone very close to you, Mr. Mann, and that undoubtedly you want justice. I sure would. But I’m afraid justice means exposing Sengupta, and that would mean no more connection with Ghasemi. Thanks to that relationship, our government currently knows more about the Iranian nuclear program than the Supreme Leader himself. And I wish it were hyperbole when I say that the fate of the world could very well depend on that relationship continuing.”

Yes, indeed.
We live in a very complicated world.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, only that it was something. Perhaps a feeble attempt to strike some sort of “justice bargain,” the way I used to with prosecutors after I went to the dark side, as Claire liked to call it, and became a defense attorney.

But before I could even push out the first word, the door of Dobson’s office opened. It was his secretary.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s—”

Dobson cut her off. “I said no calls, Marcy.”

“I know, but it’s not for you. It’s for Mr. Mann,” she said. “Apparently, it’s an emergency. Someone named
Winston Smith
?”

That got everyone staring at me. Although, with Dobson, it was more like glaring. If looks could kill. “No one outside this room is supposed to know you’re here, Mr. Mann,” he said.

Immediately, Crespin cleared his throat. Maybe he could just sense it, that something was up and I desperately needed a lifeline. Or maybe it was more than a sense. Perhaps he, too, had read
1984.

“Sorry, Clay, my bad,” said Crespin. “Mr. Mann’s sister is being operated on this morning, and that’s his nephew calling to let him know how it went. For obvious reasons, Mr. Mann ditched his cell phone once this whole ordeal started.”

I watched and listened to Crespin with nothing short of amazement. He was so calm, so convincing. The guy could probably fool a polygraph, if he had to. He had to be the best liar I’d ever met.

Actually, make that the second best.

Dobson nodded to his secretary. “Put it through.”

As she disappeared back to her desk, he handed me his phone. The longest two seconds of my life followed as I waited for the call to be transferred.

Click.

“Winston, is that you?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s me,” said Owen. “And what Dobson just told you is bullshit.”

THE QUESTIONS were bouncing around in my head so fast and deliriously I could feel my brain smushed up against my skull just trying to contain them all.

Where has Owen been? How did he know I was in Dobson’s office, let alone what was being said? And who’s the “new friend” he went on to mention, the one he wants me to meet?

The only thing close to an answer—or, better yet, what would get me closer to all the answers—was the address Owen gave me before hanging up. But not before first telling me I had to come alone. “For real, Trevor. I mean it. Just you.”

Of course, that went over like a fart in an elevator with Valerie and Crespin. Especially Crespin. He and his Spidey sense had bailed me out in Dobson’s office, and this was how I repaid him?
I’m off to go meet the kid, but you can’t come?

“I’ll be back, I promise,” I said. “And I’ll do everything I can to have Owen with me.”

It was either detain me or let me go. They let me go.

Almost one hour to the dot after saying good-bye on the phone in Dobson’s office to my nephew, Winston Smith, I arrived at Fifteenth Street NW and Madison Drive.

If the
Jeopardy!
category is Well-Known Washington Addresses, I’ll admit that I tap out with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Besides, who really needs to know the address of the Washington Monument? All you have to do is look up, right?

“Father, I cannot tell a lie,” came a voice over my shoulder.

I turned to see Owen, smiling at his own cleverness about the line and our location, although I knew he hadn’t chosen it for the irony. Just because I thought I’d come alone didn’t mean I actually had. The flat, sprawling grounds of the Washington Monument, with nothing but a circle of skinny flagpoles for cover, were his way of making sure that even if I had been followed, no one was within earshot.

Speaking of hearing things on the sly …

Owen pivoted to his right. “Trevor, I’d like you to meet Lawrence Bass,” he said.

I pushed aside what was now the latest question in the long queue—
How the hell did these two ever meet up?
—and shook the man’s hand.

I knew exactly who Bass was. Namely because of what he wasn’t—the next director of the CIA. Owen and I had watched him withdraw his name on television, standing in the East Room, flanked lovingly by his wife and two young daughters. We’d listened to him explain that he wanted to spend more time with his family. And we’d both known he was lying.

“Wait a minute,” I said, turning back to Owen. Gone fishing? Lawrence
Bass
? “This is where you went?”

“No one just walks away from being named CIA director,” Owen said. “There had to be more to it, not that I was really expecting Lawrence to divulge anything. But as it turns out, he was doing some fishing of his own.”

True to his military background, Bass took the cue and didn’t dillydally. Nor was there much emotion. The guy seemed to have everything wrapped in a blanket of calm and measured.

“Last week, I paid a visit to Clay Dobson in his office,” he said. “And I never really left.”

With that, Bass reached into his pocket and held out an iPhone. I recognized the app he tapped; it was the same one Claire always used to edit and organize her interviews. Voice Recorder HD.

Let the answers begin.

OWEN DIDN’T bother saying the actual words. That would’ve been redundant. One glance at him, the look on his face, was all it took.

What did I tell you, dude?

All I could see in my mind was the picture of Dr. Wittmer and his good ol’ college chum, Clay Dobson. And all I could hear now was Dobson’s voice telling someone in his office that Wittmer should’ve been killed sooner.

Of course, that someone was Frank Karcher—or Karch, as Dobson kept calling him in between rounds of cursing him out. For two guys in cahoots with each other, they sure weren’t seeing eye to eye on much. Cover-ups are a bitch.

“Jesus,” I said. “How …?”

“Well, I was the director of intelligence programs with the NSC,” said Bass, who somehow managed to convey that without a hint of bravado. It was merely fact. Same for the way he claimed he’d been able to hide the bug in Dobson’s office. “I just dropped it in his pencil holder when he wasn’t looking.”

Bass fell silent again so I could keep listening, but all I had were more and more questions.

“What about Landry?” I asked. Was the press secretary involved as well?

“Best we can tell, no,” said Owen. “There’s at least a half dozen times when the two are alone in Dobson’s office together and nothing ever comes up.”

“Anybody else?”

“Just Prajeet Sengupta,” said Owen.

The Indian doctor?
“I thought you told me that was all bullshit.”

“Not all of it. Like with any good lie, there’s always a bit of truth. Sengupta exists, he’s a real person,” said Owen. “Come to think of it, the Iranian guy from Stanford is real, too.”

I clearly didn’t follow. Bass paused the recording, his thumb shifting to another file. He pressed Play.

For the next minute, with the flags around the monument whipping in the wind above us, I listened to Dobson on the phone with Sengupta asking about his friends in college, specifically if there was anyone from the Middle East.

“Sengupta was Dobson’s man for the serum, botched as it was,” said Owen. “Turns out, Sengupta has a brother back in India doing twenty years for drug trafficking. Or at least, he was until Dobson intervened with Indian intelligence officials. The serum in exchange for time served. The brother’s now a free man.”

“So Dobson discovers an Iranian roommate and invents the story about him,” I said.

“Yeah, and of all things, the guy—Ghasemi—actually did go back to Iran. According to Stanford alumni records, he owns a software company in Tehran—but of course, that wouldn’t prevent him from moonlighting for the nuclear program, right? Dobson had all the angles covered,” said Owen. He then turned to Bass. “Except one.”

Bass raised his palms as if to deflect the credit. “I knew nothing about this serum, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was up. Especially when I heard Karcher’s name to replace me.”

“You were right. Hell, you were both right,” I said, giving Owen his due.

So why didn’t they look happier about it? Or even happy at all?

That was when I realized what they had already figured out. And to think, I was the only one with the law degree.

“DAMN,”
I muttered.

Owen nodded. “Yep.”

The recordings. “They’re inadmissible. Not only that, they’re illegal,” I said.

Owen nodded again. “Yep.”

“I don’t care,” said Bass.

“He really doesn’t,” said Owen. “Believe me, I’ve tried to talk him out of it.”

“Out of what?” I asked.

Bass shrugged. “So maybe I risk doing a little time. It will be worth it to implicate Dobson. And once the investigation starts, something else will have to turn up,” he said. “The truth will come out.”

I had every intention of making a great counterargument, beginning with the reason why Owen hadn’t wanted to go public in the first place. He wanted Dobson dead to rights. We both did now. But I’d just come from the guy’s office, where I’d seen up close and personal Dobson’s ability to construct an alternate reality. Dobson was good at it. Too good. Without the recordings from his office, the odds of his seeing the inside of a jail cell were anything but a sure thing. He’d be ruined politically, but he’d probably still go free.

Yeah, that was the argument I was about to make. Point by point.

Instead, all I could do was listen to the echo of Bass’s last sentence in my head. The truth will come out, he said.

The truth will come out.

I turned to Owen. “You still have the notebook from the lab, right?”