Capital Crimes

46

KATE ARRIVED AT HER OFFICE and presided over a scheduled meeting, then she checked her email. There was one from Ed Rawls. Her first impulse was to delete it without reading it, but she couldn’t get past her curiosity.

“My Dear Kate,” it read, “Congratulations to somebody on ferreting out Teddy Fay’s name. The FBI has outshone itself, for once; they have the right man. Or rather, they don’t have him, do they? I can tell you where to find our Teddy- at one of two locations-and all I ask is my freedom and, of course, the reward the FBI has posted, to keep me in my old age. Come on, girl-let’s get this done before somebody really important gets waxed.”

Kate deleted the email and sat at her desk, staring at the Helen Frankenthaler painting hanging on the wall opposite, soaking it in. Finally, she pressed the intercom button.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Please ask Morton Koppel, Hugh English, and Creighton Adams to come and see me right away. It’s urgent.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

THE THREE MEN were in her office in five minutes.

“Something up?” Adams asked.

“Yes, Creighton,” she said. “We talked about this before, but now we have to talk about it again, and very seriously. It’s about Ed Rawls.”

Hugh English tossed a pencil onto the conference table in disgust, while Koppel and Adams sat quietly, waiting.

“Hugh, what do we hear from Stockholm?” she asked.

English shrugged. “All right, there were four bugs in the apartment.”

Koppel spoke up. “What apartment?”

“Let me bring you up to date,” Kate said. “After dinner, when he was here, Majorov, who was KGB station head in Stockholm at the time of Rawls’s arrest, told me that Ed was not involved in the killings of Lewis and Barbara Moore, that he didn’t set them up. The Soviets learned of their activities from a bug in the Moores ’ apartment-or rather, as Hugh tells us, four bugs. I asked Hugh to have the apartment torn apart, and they were found.”

“This still doesn’t make Ed Rawls anything other than a traitor,” English said petulantly.

“It makes him less than a man who would betray two people who worked for him in Stockholm, costing them their lives. Can we agree on that?”

English shrugged.

“Hugh, does this new information mitigate at all your determination not to see Rawls let out of prison?”

“No,” English said, “it doesn’t. I want him to rot there until he dies.”

Neither of the other two men looked at English.

“Mort, Creighton, are you still of a mind to see Rawls out of prison?”

“I have no objection,” Adams said.

“Neither do I, given his age and health problems,” Koppel said.

“All right. Hugh, I have other information for your consideration.”

“Sure, I’ll listen,” English replied, making an attempt to sound reasonable.

“I’ve had several communications from Ed regarding the identity of the man who killed Wallace and Vandervelt and Brennan, and tried to kill Calhoun. He told me that he knew the identity of the murderer.”

“Well, now we all know, don’t we?” English said. “Anybody with a television set knows.”

“The problem is, we don’t know how to find him,” Kate said. “Given the skills that he acquired at this Agency over the years, he could remain free for the rest of his life, killing at will, and he might never be caught. Rawls says he knows where Theodore Fay can be found.”

English sat up. “How the hell could he know that?” he demanded.

“I don’t know. Certainly, it’s possible that the two worked together on some assignment in the past, and it’s possible that Fay told Ed something that might be of use in finding him.”

“So Rawls is trying to trade this information for a presidential pardon?” English asked.

“Yes, he is. Does this at all change your views on letting him out?”

English said nothing, but seemed to be grinding his teeth.

“Hugh, we’re talking about two rogue Agency people-one who betrayed us and has served a long time in prison, and another who has betrayed us and is at large, killing prominent Americans.”

“Does the president know about this?” English asked.

“No. I learned about it only a few minutes ago, in an email from Rawls.”

“He has your email address?”

“I don’t know how he got it, but I’ve had the same address for a long time. It wouldn’t be all that hard to figure out.”

“What do you want me to do, Kate?” English asked.

“I want to go to the president and recommend a commutation of Ed’s sentence, if that’s possible, or a pardon, if it is not, based on Ed’s information leading to the arrest of Fay.”

English looked at Adams. “Creighton, you worked with Fay, didn’t you?”

“Several times, over the years,” Adams replied.

“Do you think he could be this murderer?”

“Yes, I do,” Adams replied. “And if he isn’t, we’ll know after he’s found, and no harm done.”

“Except his reputation and ours are smeared all over the media.”

“That’s already done. Nothing we can do about it. What about you, Hugh? You knew Teddy, could he be the killer?”

English’s shoulders sagged. “Yes, I suppose he could. All right, Kate, you’ve got me in a box. I’ll sign off on a commutation or a pardon or whatever. But I don’t like it.”

“You’re not in a box, Hugh, at least not one of my construction. You can dissent from this recommendation, and I’ll go to the president with Creighton’s and Mort’s backing and tell him of your objections.”

English raised his hands in submission. “No, no, I’ll go along quietly.”

“Fine,” Kate said. “I’ll compose a memo to the president and my secretary will bring it around for your signatures.”

“Why don’t you just call him?” English asked. “You’ve got the number.”

“I want this done properly and on the record,” Kate said. “And I want the president to have it in writing from us for his own protection.”

“I didn’t know this was about covering your husband’s ass, Kate,” English said.

“I would do the same for any president,” Kate said, “and Hugh, if you ever speak that way to me again I’ll fire you in the same instant.”

“I apologize,” English said, unapologetically.

The three men left, and Kate sat down at her computer to compose the letter. She had not wanted to do this, but she was the one in a box.