The Enemy Inside

TWENTY-THREE

By the time I step off the plane and make my way to the baggage area, Harry is already there waiting for me. He looks flushed, out of breath. He’s probably double-parked out in front hoping the cops won’t tow his car or worse, blow it up.

“Let’s go.”

“Gotta get my bag,” I say.

“Why did you check it?”

“Wouldn’t fit in the overhead. They downsized the flight, the plane was full. Two people got bumped, so you’re lucky I’m here,” I tell him.

“Apart from that, how did it go?”

“OK, I suppose. I’m not sure what I accomplished. The good news is Graves has what we need. The bad news is he won’t share it with us, at least not willingly. Instead he wanted to speak in parables.”

“Maybe he was having premonitions,” says Harry. “Tory Graves is dead.”

My head snaps around to look at him.

“He was killed this morning in the underground at one of the Washington Metro stations.”

“How?”

“An accident,” says Harry. He pushes his nose off to one side with his thumb as if to say, “for anyone stupid enough to believe it.”

Harry had set the browser on his computer to capture any news from or about the Washington Gravesite and feed it to his e-mail. This morning, about an hour after I took off from Dulles he tells me that the little bleeping telegraph message tone on his iPad started going crazy.

“According to the reports, Graves fell off the platform directly into the path of an oncoming train. Very convenient,” says Harry. “Perfect timing.”

“At least whoever did it didn’t blow up the station,” I tell him.

“We wouldn’t even know it was him,” he says, “except somebody who saw it happen recognized Graves and called it in to the Gravesite. All the other news blogs are reporting that authorities declined to identify the victim pending notification of next of kin. Did he tell you anything?”

Before I can answer, Harry says: “Hold that thought. I gotta cover the car. Grab your bag and I’ll meet you outside.”

Back at the office we settle into the conference room as I continue to update Harry.

“You think he was telling the truth about the deal with Arthur Haze?” he asks.

“I don’t know. But I have to say he made it sound plausible.”

“Haze is no fool,” says Harry. “If he forked over as much cash as Graves claimed, they must be sitting on one hell of a story. Which raises one other question.”

“What’s that?”

“Do you think whoever killed Graves knows about the deal, the fact that Haze has a copy of the story, at least as it stands?”

I hadn’t considered this until Harry mentions it. “Good point.” I think about it for a few seconds before I tell him: “There’s no way to be sure, but I’m guessing they don’t.”

“Why is that?”

“Graves told me that Alex didn’t know about the Haze deal, nor did any of his other employees. He was afraid if they knew the business was on the skids they’d be out looking for other work. So unless I’m wrong he held that information very close.”

“Why did he tell you?”

“The only purpose I can think of is to scare me off. Graves wanted to let me know that if we issued a subpoena for records and notes we’d be up against deep pockets, swimming in a pool filled with sharks. .”

“Meaning Haze’s lawyers,” says Harry.

I nod. Alex’s parents are comfortable. But in a drawn-out battle in court, Arthur Haze could buy and sell them a few million times over and not even feel the pinch. His attorneys could probably tie us up for years if we tried to go after the copyrighted draft of the story.

“What about this stuff on Abscam and Hoover?” says Harry. “What was the point? What do you think he was trying to tell you?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” I tried to go over it all with Harry in the car on our way in from the airport. Without any notes, I struggled to recall the exact words used by Graves. Now that he is dead and no longer available I’m forced to think more seriously about what he said.

I reach out and grab a legal pad from the table and try to make some notes while at least part of it is fresh in my mind.

“Politicians being people with big egos and appetites,” I say it out loud as I write so that Harry can follow along.

I make each one a bulleted point on the page with my pen. “Always testing the water to game the system.”

“Learning the lesson of going offshore.”

Little nuggets that probably lead nowhere.

“And finally, last but not least, the Hoover Effect. J. Edgar’s torrid card catalogue and how he used it.”

I look up at Harry. “Put it all together and what do you have?”

He shakes his head. “To me? It’s a lotta crap,” says Harry. “I don’t want to take anything away from the dead but the fact that most politicians have big egos ain’t gonna make it as a hot news flash anytime soon. Now if he found one that didn’t, that might be a story. Nor is the fact that they game the system. The offshore part maybe,” says Harry, “but only if we can get the specifics. Who’s got what and where.”

“Do me a favor. Check something over there on the computer for me.”

Harry goes to the desktop in the corner.

“Google up one of their language translators.”

He does it.

“German to English,” I tell him. Then I spell out the word, the one with fourteen letters that I can’t pronounce under the man’s name from the business card given to me by Graves. When I’m done I tell him: “That’s it.”

Harry punches the return key and waits.

“What does it mean?” I ask.

“Foreign accounts,” says Harry.

It was late in the afternoon on the fourth day when Ana finally saw the man she thought might be Madriani. Her car was parked at the curb as Ana sat at one of the tables at an outdoor café watching the entrance to the parking lot behind the law office.

She wasn’t interested in the lawyers. What she wanted was more information about the people going through their trash. Who they were and whether they were connected with the man she had killed near the airport, the one who had her tripod and the satellite antenna.

She had been following the lawyer named Hinds for three days. She knew where he lived, an apartment on the other side of the bridge in San Diego, his name on the mailbox downstairs. She knew where he hung out, a small restaurant nearby where he had dinner each night and breakfast on two successive mornings. He always picked up a newspaper from a small cigar store on his way to work each morning. He had a dull routine and a life to match. No women. Lived alone. You could set your clock by him.

On the road she always stayed far enough behind him to allow anyone else who was tracking him to pull in front of her, but no one ever did. This made her nervous. The fact that the Dumpster divers disappeared into a military base meant that these people might well be looking down on both of them from an eye in the sky.

This morning she chose not to follow Hinds from his apartment into work and instead went directly to the office. He didn’t show up. She didn’t know why. Maybe he was sick.

She backtracked to his apartment, but his car was gone. Perhaps he was in court. If so there was nothing she could do but wait for him at the office. She sat at the table under the umbrella and watched the entrance to the alley behind the plaza that led to the parking lot. Hours went by and he never showed.

Ana kept an open paperback in front of her. Occasionally she stood to stretch her legs looking both ways up and down the street to see if anyone else was sitting in their car studying the alley entrance. Nothing.

She was about to pitch it in when, just before four, she saw Hinds’s car pull around the corner, pass by, its left blinker already flashing as it turned into the alley and disappeared. There was a man sitting in the passenger seat next to Hinds.

Ana grabbed her book, paid for her coffee, and made a dash down the street the other way. She circled around the front of the building, entered the small plaza, and down the path past the door to their law office.

She could hear them talking back by the parked car. Ana stopped. One of them was coming this way, a gravelly sound like something being dragged on the pavement.

“Paul, why don’t we lock your suitcase in the trunk? No need to take it into the office.”

“You’re right.”

The other man had to be Madriani, first name Paul. She heard him turn and go back, then the pop of the trunk as it opened.

“Did Graves have any idea that Serna was murdered?”

“No, but when I told him, he was all ears, pen at the ready. He wanted all the details.”

Ana made a note on the inside cover of the paperback in her hand, the name “Graves.”

“He wasn’t worried?”

“He didn’t seem to be.”

She heard the clatter of the suitcase as it was dropped into the trunk.

“But it got his journalist juices flowing.”

“Did you tell him about the girl? The explosion at the gas station?”

“Yeah.”

“And that didn’t bother him either?”

The trunk slammed closed. Ana didn’t hear the response, then: “Knowing what he knew you think he’d be worried.”

“Knowing what we know maybe we should be worried.”

What she heard was shoe leather on gravel coming this way. She turned and walked briskly in the other direction out toward the plaza. When she got there she turned just in time to get a look at Madriani.

He was tall, dark haired, a little gray around the ears, worry lines in the forehead and the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow. His suit coat slung over his shoulder and rumpled shirt made her think that he’d just gotten off a long flight. As soon as she got back to her hotel room she would run a news search for the name “Graves.”