Ultimate Betrayal (31 page)

“Good evening, my name is David Hood,” the voice said. “The photograph you see was taken of my family four months ago. Some of you know me. I provide security services to many of you and your organizations. I want to say a few words about the great American hero, Rolf Bishop.”

Bishop had an almost uncontrollable urge to scream. He felt as though his mind was out of balance. How was this possible? He looked around. Although the flow of the video presentation had been broken, most of the people he saw reacted as though Hood’s appearance was part of the program.

“Rolf Bishop is known throughout the United States as a hero,” Hood’s voice continued. The voice paused for a second and then said, “Let me tell you the truth. Rolf Bishop is a thief, a traitor, a drug smuggler, and a murderer. He hired the assassin who murdered my wife, Carmela, and my two children, Heather and Kyle.”

The image on the screens changed. More photographs of the once happy and alive Hood family came up. Then the image changed to a picture of the bombed out Hood home. “The rest of this video includes proof of Rolf Bishop’s perfidy and betrayal,” Hood said, in voice-over mode. “Eyewitness proof! I ask you to watch and listen carefully, because, as unbelievable as what you will see and hear might seem, it is true in every detail and the proof is incon—” At this point, someone cut the power to the projectors.

The President called for quiet. The room was in an uproar. Some people stood and craned their necks to get a look at Bishop. The President raised his arms. It took a while for the commotion to subside. When it did, the President shouted, “It looks as though someone has played a practical joke. We have had a wonderful evening. I thank you for your attention and ask you to focus on my message about the world’s children. Please go forth and make a difference.”

The President wheeled to his right, left the podium, and rushed out of the room. His Secret Service detail had to hustle to catch up with him. By the time they reached him, the President had buttonholed his chief of staff and squeezed the man’s arm so hard that anyone could see he was inflicting pain. The President pulled the man close.

“I want to know what happened here tonight! I want to know who fucked with that video. And I want to know if there’s a shred of truth about what that guy said about Bishop! And I want to know now!”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” the Chief of Staff answered. “I’ll get right on it.”

“You do that,” the President said. “And destroy that fucking recording before the press gets hold of it.”

“Anything else, sir?”

“Yeah. I want to see Bishop in my room. After I’ve talked to him, I want the helicopter to take me back to Washington. I’ve been in the goddamned Big Apple long enough.”

Every word the President had spoken about the Year of the Children turned out to be a complete waste of time and effort. The only thing anyone remembered from the evening was David Hood’s aborted speech. The guests murmured among themselves as they filed toward the exits. The room fairly reeked with the odor of scandal.

As the guests filed through the ballroom exits, men dressed as waiters—members of Tomasino Portello’s crew—thanked the guests for their attendance and handed each a gift-wrapped package.

A woman looked at the package thrust into her hands and asked, “What’s this?”

“A token of appreciation from The Plaza Hotel.”

Portello’s men handed out five hundred copies of the flash drives Sol Lesser had made.

CHAPTER 50

“What the fuck was that fiasco downstairs,” the President growled.

“I don’t have a clue, Mr. President,” Bishop lied.

“I hear someone handed out flash drives to our guests tonight. Copies of what we saw tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Bishop said.

“Here’s one of the flash drives confiscated by the Secret Service. Why don’t you watch it? Maybe then you’ll be able to tell me something other than
I don’t know
.”

The President suddenly switched from outright rage to simmering anger. “Rolf,” he said, “if I find out you’ve done anything to jeopardize my administration, I’ll have your balls. I’ll ruin you.”

Irving Gold rushed from his table toward the closest door out of The Plaza Hotel ballroom. When a man handed him a small wrapped box, he continued through the ballroom exit and ripped the wrapping off the box. Inside, he found a flash drive. He stuck the memory device in his pants pocket and scurried toward the street. Short, fat, and out of shape, Gold ran as fast as his three-pack-a-day lungs would permit and beat most of the other guests to the row of limousines out front. He ran up to the first one in line and screamed at the driver, “I got five hundred dollars that’s yours if you can get me to
The New York Times
fast.”

The driver, who Gold guessed had been hired to take one of the dinner guests home, hesitated only a couple seconds. “Okay, Buddy, let’s go. But I want the money now.”

Gold reached into his pocket, pulled out five bills, tossed them on the front seat of the limo, and settled into the back seat. He hoped his wife would be able to catch a cab home . . . and wouldn’t be totally pissed at him.

Five minutes after he arrived at his office, Gold and a senior editor named Mickey Gallagher viewed the video on the flash drive. Gold knew a couple of dozen other members of the news media had been in that ballroom. Television and radio would certainly broadcast the story within the hour. But he planned to have the best possible print coverage of the “Rolf Bishop Story” in tomorrow’s paper. He and Gallagher watched the disk twice from the point where David Hood appeared on the screen. Neither said a single word through either viewing.

CHAPTER 51

In his room at The Plaza Hotel, Bishop inserted the flash drive the President had given him into his computer. While he packed a bag, he watched his career and reputation dissolve. He knew it would not take the media long to verify the accusations on the drive. As badly as he wanted Hood dead, the man’s death now would do him no good whatsoever. It was too late. The damage had been done. He had to put his contingency plan into motion.

Bishop left the hotel by the rear delivery entrance and walked to the end of the alley. He’d instructed his driver to park there. He got into the car. “Let’s take a ride in Central Park. I need to think.”

They’d only gone a short way into the park when Bishop told his driver to pull over. “I want to get some air. I don’t feel so well all of a sudden.”

His driver immediately pulled over to the curb, got out, and ran around the rear of the car to open Bishop’s door. He reached in and helped his boss out of the back seat. As Bishop stood in the street and leaned into the driver, he stabbed him with a seven-inch, razor-sharp knife. The knife penetrated the man’s lower torso, sliced deep into his upper intestines, his stomach, and his liver. Bishop held on to him as he twisted the blade and continued to lean on the knife. Then he pushed the man backward toward the cover of some trees, where he released his hold. The young man sank to his knees on the damp earth. Bishop stared into his eyes until life drained out of them.

Now covered in his driver’s blood from the middle of his chest to his shoes, Bishop removed his jacket and tossed it into the car trunk. He took his topcoat from the backseat and put it on over his soiled shirt and dark pants, and used his handkerchief to clean off the top of his shoes as best he could. Then he tossed the blood-stained handkerchief at his driver’s body. Bishop got in the front seat and grabbed the wheel. His bloody hands stuck to it. He removed his hands from the wheel, took a water bottle out of the cup holder, and washed off as much of the blood as he could. Then he drove the car to a street four blocks from the apartment he’d secretly owned under a fictitious name for years. He abandoned the vehicle, removed his suitcase from the trunk, and walked to the apartment.

Bishop guessed the government would freeze all of his accounts it could unearth, but he would be able to access his foreign accounts. He needed to get out of the United States. With the aggressive policies of the NSA and the IRS, he wasn’t confident he could access those accounts remotely. He would have to fly somewhere where the Treasury Department wouldn’t be able to track a transaction. As far as the NSA was concerned, he would have to avoid telephones and the Internet. But before he flew out of the U.S., he needed to get to one of his safety deposit boxes, where he had stored cash, bearer bonds, a counterfeit passport, and other false ID. The closest one was here in New York City. But he couldn’t do a damned thing until the bank opened on Monday. He used the driver’s cellphone to make a call. He left a coded message for a pilot he’d had on retainer for years. He ordered the man to pick him up at a small air strip outside Drew, New Jersey at noon on Monday. Two hundred thousand dollars would ensure the man’s silence. Once he landed in Honduras he would be home free. He would have the balance in his Swiss account transferred and would live like an exiled king.

APRIL 29

CHAPTER 52

At 12:30 a.m., Irving Gold looked out through the interior glass wall of his office and noticed a lobby guard move through the newsroom with a small gang of people in tow. Gold smiled at Gallagher and said, “Mickey, I think you’re about to see once again that it is infinitely better to be lucky than smart.”

Gold recognized some of the men with the guard—David Hood, for sure. Some of the others had been in the video he’d just watched. He rose from his chair and walked around his desk to open his office door. The guard tried to explain, but Gold cut him off.

“Welcome to
The New York Times
,
” Gold said. “My name is Irving Gold. I am Editor-in-Chief.” He pointed at Gallagher. “That’s Mickey Gallagher, one of our best reporters. I watched your tape, Mr. Hood. I am very anxious to talk with you and your friends. Why don’t you all follow me to our conference room?”

Including Gold and Gallagher, seven men and one woman took seats at the conference table.

“Mr. Gold, Mr. Gallagher,” David Hood said, “if you watched the entire video, you should recognize every person here except my father, Peter Hood, and Detective Jennifer Ramsey, of the Bethesda Police Department. Detective Ramsey is investigating the deaths of my wife and children. Next to Detective Ramsey is Montrose Toney, one of the men hired to kill me. Mr. Toney has been held incommunicado for the past several days. I’m sure you found his appearance on the video eye-opening.” Hood then pointed at O’Neil. “That is Detective Dennis O’Neil of the Chicago Police Force. He will be happy to expand on the comments he made on the video. Next to Detective O’Neil is Manny Segal, another hired killer—known professionally as Paladin—whom Bishop paid to eliminate eight men in the last month. Messrs. Toney and Segal are here under duress, but they’ve agreed to answer any questions in return for their freedom. That’s the deal I made with them.”

Gallagher stared dumbfounded at Hood. “Let me get this straight. You’ll turn two psychopathic murderers loose?”

“They’re going free,” Hood said. “I gave my word. It’s Rolf Bishop we want. I’d make a deal with the devil to get that bastard.”

“I think that’s already happened, Mr. Hood. That video just about did it.”

“I want him finished. If
The New York Times
writes about all that Bishop has done, there will be no way for him to ever recover.”

“Okay, Mickey,” Gold said, “let’s get down to business. My first question, Mr. Hood: Why should we believe what these two killers, or any of you, for that matter, tell us?”

“We’re here to allow you to challenge every claim we’ve made,” O’Neil said. “We want you to print every detail of this story. The destruction of the myths around Bishop is the only way David will ever be safe from him and his hired guns. And it’s the only way we can bring down that son of a bitch.”

“Where do you think Toney and Segal can go after you turn them loose?” Gallagher asked. “The cops, the Feds, maybe every client they’ve ever had will be after them.”

Gold guessed from the change in Toney’s expressions, from surly to suddenly mournful, that he hadn’t thought all of that out.

“What do you want to ask us?” Hood said to Gold.

“You claimed on the video that Bishop had hired assassins to murder men who’d served under him in Afghanistan. To hide his drug business. If you let Toney and Segal go free, how will you prove your claim?”

“Toney and Segal’s testimony would be challenged in court by any competent defense attorney, anyway. But what they tell you doesn’t have to meet in-court testimony criteria. You ask them questions; they answer. You quote them in the paper. All we want you to do is quote them.”

Gold considered what Hood had said. “Let’s do this. We’ll hear you out and then decide.”

David nodded.

O’Neil looked at Manny Segal, jabbed him in the ribs. “Okay, Manny,” he said. “It’s time for you to hold up your part of the deal.”

Segal shot O’Neil an evil look. “I’m not saying a goddamned thing,” he said. “I’ve changed my mind.”

Everyone gawked at him until Peter said, “Why don’t we take a break? I think Mr. Segal is just a little nervous. Mr. Gold, do you have an office you could lend me for a minute? I need to make a call to a friend out on Long Island. He’ll want to know about Mr. Segal’s decision not to cooperate.”

The assassin went pale. Before Gold could answer Peter, Segal said, “I was hired by Rolf Bishop to kill some men he served with in Afghanistan.”

Gold stared at the little killer with complete disgust. “Lady and gentlemen, I’ll record the rest of our conversations. Are there any objections?” Gold looked around the room and then nodded at Gallagher, who pressed a button on a recording device in the center of the table.

Gold then asked David, “How can you prove Bishop was involved with drug smuggling while he was in Afghanistan?”

David lifted a briefcase off the floor and placed it on the table. He opened it, unloaded files, and slid them along the table toward Gold. “These are copies of originals I stored in a safe place. They show cash deposits into a Swiss bank account. The total is just under twenty-three million dollars. The balance in the account, including nearly a decade of investment earnings, is now in excess of forty-one million dollars. I know the deposits were payments for drug shipments Bishop sent to a customer in New York. I won’t tell you who that customer was. But I
can
tell you that much money in a Swiss account ought to raise an awful lot of questions.”