Midas

34

Ted Ackland, the assistant attorney general of the United States, sat on the coarse, tweedish couch in the living room of his hotel suite sipping from a highball-sized glass of scotch and water. He was impeccably dressed, from the crisp starched collar of his white dress shirt to his perfectly tailored black wool Armani suit, to his black dress socks that didn’t have a millimeter of sag to them, and his black, highly polished Cesare Paciotti shoes. He crossed his legs, lifted his eyebrows in approval of the scotch, and motioned for Justin Westwood to sit down.

“Merry Christmas,” he said. “I apologize for the security you had to pass through. You wanted to see me alone, that’s what it takes in this day and age.” He raised his glass in Justin’s direction. “To crazy times.”

Justin sat. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“My wife wasn’t too damn happy. She’s wrapping our kids’ presents by herself. And having a candlelit dinner for one.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Agent Chinkle is someone everyone respects tremendously. For her to call and say that I should see you, and say that it’s urgent, well. . I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I didn’t respond to something like that. No matter what day it is.”

There was something ingratiating about the man. He drew you in with his warmth and his passion. Justin almost felt sorry for him. Ackland’s life must already be somewhat nightmarish. What Justin was about to tell him wasn’t going to ease his burden. “You look tired, sir.”

Ackland’s lips formed a distracted smile. “Well, my department’s been a little busy lately. Perhaps you’ve noticed.”

“Busier than I think even you’ve noticed,” Justin said.

The smile faded from Ackland’s face. “Are we getting to your business now, Mr. Westwood?”

Justin nodded.

“Good. If possible, I’d at least like to have a sip of egg nog with my wife before the night’s out.”

So Justin launched into his story. He began slowly and continued in as detailed a manner as he could manage. He left nothing out, beginning with Jimmy Leggett’s death at Harper’s, Marge’s request at Jimmy’s funeral, and the plane crash. He told the story step by step, just as it happened, and as he talked about investigating the crash and finding out about Hutchinson Cooke and Martin Heffernan, about Chuck Billings’s suspicions and suspicious death, about Ray Lockhardt, about talking to Colonel Zanesworth and Martha Peck, he saw Ackland go from curious to concerned to pained. He saw the fury begin to well up in the second-highest-ranking law officer in the land. And when Justin went into detail about the big boys, as he explained the growing connections to Dandridge and to Ackland’s direct boss, Jeffrey Stuller, and even to Thomas Anderson, the president of the United States, he saw the kind of deer-in-the-headlights expression that Justin knew he himself had been wearing for too many weeks now.

Justin described his time in Guantanamo Bay and Ackland began to pepper him with questions, but Justin asked him to please let him finish. It was the first time he’d put the entire puzzle together out loud and he wanted to complete it.

“This is the end of it,” he told the assistant attorney general. “Over the last two days I’ve been able to connect all the dots. I can put it all together backwards and forwards now. When Dandridge left as CEO of EGenco to run for vice president, he made a deal with Bradford Collins, the new CEO, and probably other key executives. They set up a Special Purpose Entity, a spin-off of EGenco, as an under-the-table payoff.”

“To what end?” Ackland asked.

“To a couple of ends. They made Dandridge and the other partners rich. Wildy rich. In exchange for which, EGenco received tens of billions of dollars of no-bid contracts for work in the Middle East. Which they needed because they were in danger of going under.”

“My office has been investigating them for nearly two years.”

“I know. It’s how Brad Collins was set up at Harper’s. He was talking to your people, he was about to blow the whistle.”

“Mr. Westwood, you’re saying that the attorney general of the United States, Jeff Stuller, not only knew about the bombing at Harper’s in advance, he helped to set it up as a way of silencing Brad Collins?”

“That is what I’m saying, sir. It’s why you couldn’t make any real headway into the EGenco investigation and it’s why you never got the kind of information you should have gotten from Chuck Billings. Stuller’s been stopping the investigation every step of the way.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I agree. But please let me finish, I don’t have much more to go.”

“Go, go.”

“The SPE that EGenco set up had five partners: Mishari al Rahman, Stephanie Ingles, Phillip Dandridge, Thomas Anderson, and Jeffrey Stuller.”

Ackland groaned.

“They called the company Midas,” Justin went on, “and what I think they were given was a small to medium-size oil production company.”

“You can prove all of this?”

“No. But you can. It’s all accurate, if not provable yet.”

“Go on.”

“Somebody-my guess is Dandridge because he knew the most about the oil business and is probably the smartest one in the group-realized they could all make an almost unreal amount of money if they could make oil prices go up. And they did. Mishari was their link to OPEC, Dandridge and Anderson could obviously manipulate policy and limit oil sources, and Ingles could help limit oil sources domestically, like she did recently in Alaska. I think all this was worked out at the energy meeting Dandridge called when he first took office. The one the Supreme Court ruled he could keep secret.”

“What about Stuller?”

“Hard to say. He obviously doesn’t have much of a role in manipulating oil prices, but he was a crony and it’s logical that they’d bring him into this kind of business deal. Plus, once things got out of hand, he was the most valuable person they could have on their team.”

“Got out of hand how?”

“As I said, it started with Brad Collins. He was going to talk. The way I think it went down is someone in that group realized Collins had to go. At the time, Anderson’s popularity was way down and it looked like he might drag Dandridge down with him politically.”

“Dandridge’s poll numbers were low.”

“He was going to get blown out of the water in the next election. Until the explosion at Harper’s. They literally killed two birds with one stone. They got rid of Collins and when they made it look like a suicide bombing it not only threw off any suspicion that Collins was a specific target, it was a brilliant political move. The more afraid people are, the less likely they’re going to want a change. Dandridge’s poll numbers rose.”

“And the other bombings?”

“More of the same. Heffernan, the FAA guy, was small potatoes, but he could be a problem. He knew too much and he didn’t have any kind of big stake in the game, so it made sense to get rid of him. It worked perfectly for Collins, why not do it again?”

“It’s so. . cold-blooded.”

“You know them. How much of a stretch is it to believe they’d be capable of this?”

Ackland didn’t answer for quite a while. He took two more long gulps of his scotch, filled the glass up again and took another drink. Then he quietly said, “It’s not very much of a stretch.”

“The last real person who knew anything was Hutch Cooke’s wife. They basically knew she was too terrified to speak. . until I showed up to see her. Then they got nervous. And by then they also realized that every terrorist attack made their poll numbers go sky-high. Unless they looked ineffectual. So now they look even better-they caught the terrorists and suddenly they’re the only real guardians of the country. As long as no one finds out they were the cause of the whole thing to begin with.”

“But you don’t believe they caught the real terrorists.”

“Hell, no. It’s why none of them survived. It’s hard for dead men to protest their innocence.”

“So, who did they use to-”

“His name is Mudhi al Rahman. He’s Mishari’s son. He has a history as a radical. I wouldn’t be surprised if he really does have Al Qaeda ties. At some point he was picked up and removed to Gitmo. Mishari must have pulled some serious strings. What I’m pretty sure happened is that Dandridge or Stuller or Anderson put two and two together and realized they could get Mudhi out of prison and have themselves the perfect terrorist. They gave him the targets and then they gave him free rein.”

“If you’re right-”

“I am right.”

Ackland excused himself, stepped into the bathroom. Justin heard water run and Ackland came out toweling off his face, looking slightly more refreshed. He sat back down on the couch. “So what’s their next step?” he said, tossing the towel onto a countertop.

“This is guesswork on my part now. But it’s the only thing that makes sense. They don’t need this Mudhi al Rahman anymore. He can only do them damage now. Because he’s Mishari’s son, I’m guessing they won’t kill him. But they sure as hell are going to get him out of town.”

“Do we know what town that is?”

“Down to the street address.”

Ackland stood up. Paced behind the couch, rubbing the back of his neck with his right hand. On his third or fourth round trip, he stopped. “I think I should be calling you by your first name,” he said.

“Please.”

“Well, Justin. . I want to thank you for coming to me.”

“I didn’t see that I had a lot of choices.”

“No. But at least you made the right choice.” Ackland looked very uncomfortable now, as if he weren’t sure what he should or shouldn’t say. The struggle was a brief one and he began to speak freely. And the more he spoke, the more relieved he looked. “I wish I could tell you you’re crazy, that what you’re saying can’t possibly be true. Unfortunately what you’ve told me is not a complete surprise. But my nuts are between a rock and a hard place. And have been for a hell of a long time.”

Now it was Justin’s turn to look shocked. “You’ve known this?”

“Not all of it, not by any means. I’m extraordinarily impressed with some of the things you’ve come up with, because my team and I have been working on this from the very beginning and you got things we didn’t. You also took them a hell of a lot farther than we’ve been able to. And you’ve filled in some gaps, clarified some motives, certain actions. Just so you know, I’m not convinced that President Anderson knows anything about this. And you haven’t given me any new facts to convince me that he does. I think he’s been manipulated and lied to. But I am damn sorry to say I’ve had a very quiet investigation going on to look into the vice president. Jesus, it makes me sick to even say that out loud.”

“I understand that,” Justin said.

“I don’t know if you can. I’m close to Phil Dandridge. In many ways, he was my mentor. But the things we’ve uncovered are not so far off from the story you presented. I believe you.”

“And Stuller?”

“We’ve been closing in on Jeff, too.” Ackland started to say more. Seemed to be unable to speak, so he just shook his head from side to side. “My problem now,” he finally said, “is that I feel a little bit like I’m in the middle of the Caine Mutiny. I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know who I can go to who’s above me and I don’t know who I can go to who’s below me. You’re saying even top FBI agents are involved in this.”

“Working under Stuller’s orders. I suppose it’s hard to turn down an order from the attorney general.”

“I’ve even fed Stuller information. When I began investigating. Before I began to suspect that he was involved.” Ackland rubbed his eyes. “Are you sure about Hubbell Schrader?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve worked with Hubbell. I’ve worked with Hubbell on this case. He’s been privy to. . Goddammit.” Again, Ackland didn’t seem to know what to say. He began pacing again. When he stopped, he said, “Do you have any idea what’s going to happen when this becomes public?”

“Some.”

“But you don’t care.”

“No, I don’t,” Justin said.

“I don’t either,” Ted Ackland said. “Not anymore. Wanda said you’d have something specific in mind. I don’t mind saying that I will gladly take any suggestions you’d like to give.”

“Mudhi al Rahman,” Justin said. “I want to pick him up.”

“Pick him up, hell,” Ackland said. “I want to kill the son of a bitch.”

“And I’ll help you pull the switch. But not yet. For one thing, he might be the only witness we can find out of this thing. If they move him out of the country-”

“-we’ll lose our proof. Do you know that he’s still here?”

“No, I don’t. It’s just my hunch.”

“Can you get him?”

“If he’s still here, I can get him.”

Ackland poured himself one more stiff scotch, took a healthy swig. “Wanda Chinkle says you’re a hell of a cop.”

“I’m glad she thinks so.”

“Tough guy, huh?”

“Not that tough.”

“Just tough enough?”

Justin nodded. “As tough as I have to be.”

“You know,” Ackland said, and Justin thought the scotch was beginning to get to him. “I’ve spent a lifetime in law enforcement. I was a pretty tough guy, too. But I knew how to put a good face on it. I tried to be fair. Tried to see different points of view. It’s how I got to the position I’m in.” He started to put the glass to his lips again, thought better of it, and put it down on the glass coffee table in front of the couch. “You know Phil Dandridge put me in the mix to be on his ticket.”

“I’ve read that.”

“Not bad for a cop from Wisconsin.”

“No, sir. Not too bad.”

“I guess I can forget it now, can’t I?”

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

Ackland picked up his glass again, took one more drink. “What the hell,” he said. “How about we both show how tough we are. How about you do your job and I’ll do mine.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Justin said.

He turned and left the assistant attorney general of the United States. Before Justin walked out of the room, he glanced back to see Ted Ackland staring out the hotel window, looking lost and confused and a little bit desperate.

Justin didn’t blame him one damn bit.