Capitol Punishment

FOUR Confession

He had a choice office in the Rayburn House Office Building, one that gave him a commanding view of the west front of the Capitol, and a chairmanship of one of the most powerful committees in the House of Representatives, but Congressman Richard Vorhees would have traded it all to be diving out of a perfectly airworthy C-141B Starlifter into the Uwharrie National Forest once again. Rubbing his left leg, though, as he stared out upon the glistening power center of the United States, he knew that the only battles he would fight were destined to erupt right there. The limb was hard to the touch, though softer than the one he’d had until a few months earlier. Advances in prosthesis design and manufacture made the newer, lighter limb possible, but it would never be close enough to what he had, or what could have been his. A Cuban mine had seen to that as he led his company of 82nd Airborne troops into battle in Grenada so long ago. Ten pounds of explosives and steel. That’s all it took to end an Army career. And to begin one in Washington.

The new wars, Vorhees thought, as he turned his attention back to the Los Angeles Times. It was one of the four papers he read each day, and, like the others, a front-page story in today’s edition chronicled the budget battle over funding of research for a new fighter. Of course such a benign topic would never have made it to page one if there hadn’t been accusations of corruption by the anticipated lead contractor on the project, but that was a lot of bull. Everything was corrupted, the representative from Massachusetts knew. All you had to do was point a finger and you’d be right. He was corrupt. The speaker was corrupt. The president was corrupt. The system was corrupt. It was tit for tat, I’ll do this if you do that. Legalized influence peddling and vote swapping, interrupted every two years by the song and dance needed to get reelected. Vorhees laughed every time he heard the complaints about when an actor came to D.C. to be president, because he knew that getting elected to Congress was the perfect training for a career in acting, something reinforced each time one of them was reelected.

Bored with the same story for the fourth time, Vorhees flipped through the pages, scanning stories on the surprising rebound of California’s aerospace industry. Wait’ll they see next year’s budget. Then on to the inevitable litany of crime stories. A dead body here. A drive-by shooting there. A — Wait.

“Shit,” Vorhees said softly, the artist’s conception of the face of one dead… Nick King!…slapping him across the face. He read the accompanying story, including the complete account of a woman who lived near the house where the nerve gas accident happened. It took a minute more to sink in fully. “Goddamn you, Monte!”

Vorhees slapped the paper shut and tossed it over his desk, where it fluttered to the floor in separate pieces. He leaned forward, resting both elbows on his large wooden desk, and tried to think. Think fast. Wonderful! He had already hurled the requisite invective at the man, the former — as of now — contributor, who had gotten him into this. It will be good for the country, Dick. “Yeah, damn you again, Monte.”

Damage control. That was the priority now. And first? What came first?

Say something. That ran contrary to the rule about keeping one’s mouth shut, but silence was no longer accepted. No longer could an elected official not dignify such a ludicrous suggestion. He had to say something. And fast. But what? He thought on that question for a moment before coming to a startling conclusion.

“The truth.” He might have laughed if the chance for real political damage wasn’t so real, but the truth was his ally in this fight. It would have to be massaged, of course, to give it the proper feel. To portray him as terribly upset over this horrid, unforeseen twist. And that, too, was actually true. Vorhees emerged from the anger of the previous moment, now allowing a small laugh. He was really innocent in this. But who would ever believe that? he thought. The voters, he knew, answering his own question. Convincing them took little more than thirty seconds of video and some catchy ad copy. How hard could it be?

“Mark,” Vorhees said after dialing his chief aide, “get me a press conference for this afternoon… No, not tomorrow — today… I don’t care how hard it is, just do it. And make sure there’s press from my district there… Call them yourself, goddammit! Just get them here, all right… This is important.”

Vorhees laid the phone back in its cradle, his manner surprisingly calm. He swung his chair around and looked to the Capitol again. That was where it would happen, in a suitably sedate room. Some books in the background, he thought. Maybe a flag to… No, no flag. This had to be him and his shame.

He lowered his head, shaking it slightly. No. That didn’t feel right. This truth thing, and its requisite emotions, was, surprisingly, a tough act to master.

Vasquez Rocks, a popular county park north of Los Angeles, had seen much activity over the years. Formed by the geological forces of plate tectonics long before the first Mexican bandits used the giant rock formations as hiding places from which to launch raids upon arriving pioneers, the park now enjoyed favor as a place to climb and hike on the weekends. Hollywood, too, had taken notice of the somewhat alien-looking landscape, with its huge, rounded slabs of red rock jutting from the earth at near 45-degree angles, and had used the park many times in films and television shows, from the obvious westerns to the futuristic Star Trek series of the 1960s.

But during the week the visitors were fewer, mainly those dedicated rock climbers who simply could not wait until the weekend to travel to the more distant, and more challenging, Joshua Tree National Monument in the desert to the east of Los Angeles. There were also those who were there just to walk, to enjoy the sights. And there were those who enjoyed the solitude. And the privacy.

“Monte,” John Barrish said as he approached the man from behind.

Monte Royce jumped and spun around, the somewhat disguised face of the man he had once expected never to see again just feet away. “Christ, John, you scared the daylights out of me.”

John removed the sunglasses but left the large Aussie bush hat on as protection from the fine, chilly mist that was falling across the beautiful landscape. “You move fast for an old man,” he said, the observation far from innocent in its meaning. “When you want to.”

“What do you want, John?” Royce asked.

“I want more money, and I don’t want any of the crap you gave my boys while I was away,” he answered, his voice coming down after punching up the word he knew would carry the most impact.

Royce, his face long and lined after seventy years of life, stared into the younger man’s eyes, his breaths coming quicker. “Listen. I gave you what you said you needed before. I kept your family fed while you were locked up. I supported you.” His head shook. “No more, John. I can’t reconcile what you’re going to do anymore with what I believe.”

“Going soft, Monte?”

“No, just getting smart,” Royce said. He was much larger than the odd-looking man challenging him, but there was a power to John Barrish, one that had once drawn him into his inner circle. But now, with time away from the man to be with his own thoughts, Royce was beginning to understand the place he had been, a place as alien as television had made the landscape around him appear, but infinitely more real, and frightening.

“The choice isn’t yours, Monte,” John said coolly.

“You don’t have any—”

“Not me, Monte,” John said, reminding the elderly man of an undeniable fact. “I don’t think you make the decisions about the money.” He chuckled a bit. “You’re a middleman. A big, powerful middleman, who wouldn’t want to anger his mama.”

“Shut up, John, she has nothing to—”

“She has everything to do with this,” John corrected his reluctant benefactor. “Now do I need to go straight to her and put a strain on that ninety-six-year-old heart of hers?”

“I can turn you in,” Royce threatened. “I can tell the police everything.”

John shook his head with disappointment. “You wouldn’t like jail, Monte. Because, remember, if you hang me, you hang yourself…and your mama.”

Royce didn’t let his gaze break from that of the man he had once respected, but who had used him. Had used him so completely that death would be the only way out. But he was not ready for death. In fact he feared it, feared meeting a maker that would assuredly cast him into the fires of hell. No, Monte Royce was not ready for that. He never would be.

“How much?”

John Barrish looked up at the man, whose head was dripping from the hour he’d waited in the rain…as instructed. Humiliation. It was so easy to inflict, as it was merely a by-product of control.

“Now you’re getting smart.”

Director of Central Intelligence Greg Drummond leaned across his desk and handed the plain manila folder to Bud DiContino. “Take your pick. Forty-three groups, nations, or sufficiently wealthy individuals that Intelligence and S and T say could have provided the supplies and the technical expertise to pull this off.”

Bud scanned the multiple pages before closing and handing the folder back to the DCI. “This is quick work.”

“Intelligence put the press on,” Drummond explained, referring to the agency directorate he had headed until just ten months earlier. Now he was at the helm of the most powerful intelligence-gathering agency on the planet A company man heading the Company. It made many on the Hill nervous, but they would have been more apprehensive had there been another fiasco of leadership like the one that had preceded him. That was reasonably cleaned up now, just a few ripples disturbing the otherwise calm waters his ship was sailing upon. But the present situation was showing much more wave action, threatening a swell that would make navigation difficult and holding course tricky. But the youthful DCI, still older than the president he served, had seen troubled waters before, and knew the best way to sail around the offending storm, and how to sail headlong into it.

“How’s Fred doing?” Bud asked. Fred Stennis had replaced Drummond as deputy director, intelligence.

“Good,” Drummond answered. “Pete and Mike are bringing him along fast.” Pete Miner, deputy director, central intelligence, was the number-two man at the Agency. Mike Healy was Drummond’s former counterpart in the Operations Directorate and ran the spooks in the field. The combination of the two career intelligence officers had helped get the new DDI up to speed after an appointment that had created much controversy at the CIA’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. Stennis was young, too young some thought, but the thirty-four-year-old had caught Drummond’s eye while working for him as chief analyst, Mideast desk, in Intelligence, making calls that some considered reckless, but that the then-DDI had recognized as bold and based on superior reasoning. One needed to do no less than that to impress Greg Drummond, and Stennis had done much more.

“Pete’s off where right now?”

“Is this on or off the record?” Drummond joked.

“I’ve never worn a body mic,” Bud countered with a smile. “Unlike some people I know.”

“It worked,” the DCI pointed out, a glint of satisfaction sparking in his eyes.

“That it did,” Bud said. Where was the former DCI now? Some university in the Rockies somewhere, chairing the history department. And you could have been head of some major-league think tank, Anthony. But he had played the game like an amateur, the NSA knew, and now the once esteemed Anthony Merriweather, caught and secretly hung out to dry by his own words, was suffering a fate worse than prison. His sentence was political and professional oblivion.

“This isn’t for broadcast to anyone,” Drummond said. “He’s in India. Should be there for a week, maybe two.”

“An open-ended visit?” Bud questioned. That was almost unheard of in a town where itineraries and schedules were planned out months in advance. But then Langley wasn’t actually in D.C., in many respects.

“It could pay off,” Drummond explained. “A new relationship with Indian Intelligence would go a long way in keeping tabs on the Chinese.”

“Agreed,” Bud said.

Drummond poured himself a cup of tea from the warming pot on the credenza. “You want one?”

“Half a cup.”

The DCI poured a second and slid it easily across his desk. “So, that’s what we can do for you regarding this chemical thing.”

“I know it’s Bureau territory, but you never know where things start.”

“Gordy and I have a liaison group already set up,” Drummond said, testing the steaming liquid with a quick taste. “We’ll feed them whatever they need.”

“Good.” Bud took a generous sip of the warm brew and checked the time. “Where is Gordy? He was supposed to be here by now.”

As if on cue the door to the DCI’s seventh-floor office was opened by a security officer for the just-arrived FBI director.

“Sorry,” Jones apologized. “I hate doing the committee spiel for a bunch of voteheads I never deal with.”

“Which voteheads are those, Gordy?” Bud asked, amused by Jones’s term for anyone on the Hill who had to submit to voter approval every two years. Senators, with six years between their electoral challenges, were exempt from his disdain.

“House Armed Services,” Jones explained.

“Vorhees’s bunch,” Bud said knowingly. “Limp Dick can be a bastard when he wants to.” The Honorable Richard Vorhees, a former Army captain who had lost a leg in the Grenada invasion, chaired the House Armed Services Committee, one of the most powerful groups of legislators on the Hill. And Limp Dick, a term of no endearment bestowed upon him because of the stilted gait an artificial limb caused, ran it like his own personal military command staff. That Cuban-made mine had cut more than the congressman’s leg short, Bud knew all too well. It also ended what promised to be at least a trip to bird status, and maybe even a star or two in the distant future, leaving Limp Dick without the challenge, or the prestige, of command. His life was simply politics now.

“He’s one of your blood brothers, Bud,” the conservative Republican DCI commented with a devilishly superior wink.

“Not from the same cloth,” Bud protested mildly. “I’m a Kennedy man. Vorhees is one of those Johnson Democrats. You never can keep those folks in line.” An understatement, the NSA knew. Vorhees, despite his party allegiance, rarely stuck with the party line. He was as much a White House foe as a friend.

“Actually Vorhees was off at some breakfast thing,” Jones said, sliding a chair over next to the NSA. “Real concerned, eh? It was the rest of the bunch playing CYA. ‘Is there any evidence that the military…’ ” The director shook his head. “A waste of time, my friends.”

“It’s the same game we all play, Gordy,” Bud reminded him.

The FBI director grunted and opened the folder he had brought with him. “Well, I know I’m supposed to share any new info I have, but I really don’t have any. Zero.”

“Nothing on who actually made the agent?” Drummond asked.

Jones shook his head. “Still the mystery man…Nick King. L.A. believes it’s an alias of some sort. He’s possibly a foreigner or an immigrant.”

“Wait,” Bud said. “I haven’t heard that yet.”

“Me either,” Drummond added.

“Well, I guess I do have something for you. L.A. has good information that King spoke with a pretty heavy accent.”

“From?” Bud asked.

“European,” Jones answered. “That’s as close as they can narrow it down for now.”

Drummond looked down at the list Intelligence and S&T had put together. Half of those groups and individuals listed were based or affiliated with those located on the European continent. “Some of these people share similar philosophies with Allen. Neo-Nazis. Some ultra-nationalists.”

“All possibilities are being looked at, Greg,” Jones assured the DCI. “But King made himself an island. Finding out who and what he was before he was that is a tough job.”

“It’s a damn important one, too,” Bud observed.

“Everyone knows that,” Jones said. He was on a mild hot seat, responsible for one of the more important investigations during his tenure as head of the Bureau.

The door to the DCI’s office opened after two quick taps. Deputy Director Operations Mike Healy rushed in behind the abbreviated warning. “Turn the TV on.”

“What’s up?” Drummond asked, taking the remote in hand. Healy swiveled the cart-mounted set so that all could see it. “CNN, quick. Vorhees is making one whopper of a statement.”

Vorhees? Bud turned his chair, as did Jones.

“About?”

Healy looked to his boss as the picture exploded from a single point of light at the screen’s center, becoming an image of the Massachusetts Democrat against the requisite backdrop of filled bookshelves. “You’ll see.”

“…when the situation of Nikolai Kostin was brought to my attention by Monte Royce, chairman and chief executive officer of Royce Pharmaceuticals in California. Mr. Royce, who has a facility located in my home district, had traveled to the former Soviet Union in 1993 to tour several of their pharmaceuticals plants. While there, he was contacted by Nikolai Kostin, a Russian citizen who had worked in defense-related industries during the Cold War. Unemployed after massive defense cutbacks, Mr. Kostin was desperate for a job, and wished not to follow the path that many of his comrades had chosen. Those paths led to countries unfriendly to the interests of the United States, countries such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, and others.”

“Kostin was King,” Healy said.

Drummond glanced at his deputy, understanding now creeping into his consciousness. “He didn’t…”

“Greg?” Jones asked, gesturing to the phone.

Drummond pressed an outside line and turned his phone to face the FBI director, who dialed his deputy’s office at the Hoover Building.

Vorhees looked up at the cameras from his prepared statement, a gaggle of flashes going off at the same instant, then back to the two pages, which he gripped like a lifeline. “Mr. Royce, upon returning from his trip, met with me and made the offer to give Mr. Kostin a position with his company, if I could render assistance in getting him into the country and protecting him while here. It was feared that, should Mr. Kostin’s past line of work become known, he could be the target of threats from individuals opposed to his presence. The Immigration and Naturalization Service agreed to quietly help in the matter, providing not only entry but also an assumed identity for Mr. Kostin to use. Once here he became Nicholas King.”

“INS,” Jones said while on hold. “Who gave them the power to do that?”

“I wonder how Limp Dick voted on the INS budget increase,” Healy wonderingly suggested.

The DCI gave a slight nod, but said nothing.

“I believed, from Mr. Royce’s assurances, that this unusual undertaking would help to reduce future threats to this nation’s security by preventing a Russian weapons scientist from being lured to work in countries similar to the ones I have mentioned. At no time was I aware that Mr. Kostin was going to become involved in the activities he undertook while here. At no time.

“Of course, I will cooperate fully in any investigation of this matter. Immediately upon learning of the situation from newspaper accounts I drafted a letter for transmittal to Director Gordon Jones of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whom I also assured of my cooperation. Because of the ongoing investigation being conducted by the FBI, I will not make any further statements concerning this matter until it is appropriate.” He looked to the reporters a final time, folding and pocketing his statement as he did. “Thank you.”

The once brash, seemingly Teflon personality turned away from those gathered to hear his statement and disappeared through a door, the view cutting back to a white-haired anchor once the door was closed.

“What the hell was he thinking?” Bud asked the screen.

“When does he think?” Healy asked more profoundly.

DCI clicked the set off and let the remote drop on his desk with a plastic-versus-wood slap. He took the list before him and crumpled it into a ball, tossing it into the wastebasket for two points. “We have a list of one renegade Russian now.”

And who else? Bud wondered, still staring at the now blank screen. The unknown. The goddamned unknown.

Frankie dropped the receiver into its cradle while still recording the information on a legal pad.

“Where are they located?” Art asked impatiently, the CNN wrap-up of the unexpected news conference running in the background. Agents Hal Lightman and Omar Espinosa stood waiting for the same information.

Frankie finished noting what Lou Hidalgo’s secretary had read to her from the Chamber of Commerce directory. “Royce Pharmaceuticals has its main facility in Santa Clarita. Old Road and San Fernando.”

“That’s a half-hour at most from King’s place,” Espinosa commented.

“From Kostin’s place,” Art corrected. “Frankie, find out if Monte Royce is at that location or if they have a corporate headquarters somewhere.”

“Gotcha,” Frankie said, picking up the phone once again.

“Hal, now that we have a place of employment, you and Omar start feeding Royce Pharmaceuticals into the equation,” Art directed. “All the people we interviewed, go back to them and throw Royce into the picture. See if it rings any bells.”

“What about Allen?” Lightman asked.

Art mentally checked the assignments he’d given so far. He had forty agents — twenty teams — assigned to work with him fulltime, and he’d divided those into two groups: those checking on King, now Kostin, and those working on Allen. “Burlingame is running the Allen side. I think he’s running down Freddy’s old probation officers. Find him and fill him in.”

“Okay,” Lightman said with an eager nod. He and Espinosa were on their way without delay.

“Got him,” Frankie said. “His secretary says he’s in. I told her we want to talk to him. She said a whole slew of reporters do, too.”

“Let’s step on it then,” Art suggested, grabbing his coat.

“I like progress,” Frankie commented, following her partner to the elevator.

“So do I, partner,” Art agreed, though he knew that the difference between real progress and a wild goose chase was often indistinguishable until it was too late.

John Barrish sat alone in the family room of the house he could not really call his home, staring at the television as the CNN anchor blabbered something over the live picture of Congressman Richard Vorhees trying to evade the pack of reporters as he hurried to his car. Two uniformed police officers were attempting, with some success, to keep the microphone-armed mob at a distance, allowing the limping legislator a scant fifteen feet of breathing room.

“Fucking bastard,” John muttered. The idiot had to go and jump in front of the cameras and blab his head off. “You stupid son of a bitch.”

“John?” Louise Barrish said, walking into the family room. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine,” John said tersely, the unspoken ‘Get the hell away from me’ tagged on to the cold assurance. His wife retreated back into the kitchen without saying anything more.

Why did he have to say anything? John wondered with frustration. He had to remind himself that Vorhees didn’t know anything of substance, but now the State pigs would have another target to pursue, one that did know something…or too much.

No. John wiped that thought away, focusing again on the picture of Vorhees hobbling away from the media, trying to save his own skin, all because of an error in his judgment. Because he trusted the wrong people.

That he had, John Barrish thought, but those who trusted too much were often used just as much, and Vorhees had unknowingly offered his services with no reservation. Barrish knew he could continue being angry at the half-crippled member of the State machinery, but really he wanted to laugh. He watched Vorhees try to run, doing that silly half-skipping thing that approximated a trot. The man had acted like a fool, and he looked like one, too. They could have anything from him — and they would. He was as easy to manipulate as soft clay.

John chuckled, smiling knowingly at the TV. He laughed fully now, watching the picture change as a cameraman got past the police and took a low shot of Vorhees limping up to his car, the alabaster dome of the Capitol providing a suitable backdrop. “And we’re not even done with you yet, you beautiful, gullible gimp.”