The Sixth Man

CHAPTER 77

ELLEN FOSTER SAT at her chair in the bunker underneath DHS headquarters. Above her thousands of public servants went about their tasks of keeping the country safe from all attacks. Normally, Foster would be intimately involved in the strategy that went into this everyday battle. She lived and breathed it, thought of little else outside of it.

Right now she couldn’t have cared less about it.

James Harkes stood across from her at semi-attention.

She had confided in him what Kelly Paul had told her in that bathroom at Lincoln Center. He had asked a few relevant questions but remained mostly silent. She gazed up at him with the look of a person assessing her last, best hope.

“This changes everything. What can we do?” she asked.

“What do you want to achieve?”

“I want to survive, Harkes – isn’t that rather obvious?” she snapped.

“But there are many ways to survive, Madame Secretary. I just need to know which one you want to pursue.”

She blinked and saw what he meant. “I want to survive with my career intact, as though nothing had happened. That’s as plain as I can state it.”

He nodded slowly. “That will be very hard to do,” he said frankly.

Foster gave a little shiver and wrapped her arms around herself. “But not impossible?”

“No, not impossible.”

“Quantrell is trying to work a deal, rat me out, Kelly Paul said.”

“I wouldn’t doubt that, knowing what sort of person he is. But he has limited access to the people who matter. You don’t.”

“But the problem is I’ve already been to the president and built the case against Bunting. The president told me to take care of it. He gave me explicit authority to do whatever was necessary.”

“And to go back to him now with a new story about Quantrell would really make you lose credibility in the president’s eyes?”

“Exactly. I’ll be like the little boy who cried wolf once too often.”

“You may have answered your problem with what you’ve already said.”

She glanced sharply at him. “What do you mean?”

“The president gave you explicit authority to do what was necessary.”

“But Quantrell?”

“Collateral damage. And it’s not as difficult as it sounds. With Quantrell out of the way, your problems are solved. You have left nothing incriminating on the table. He goes, the road ahead is clear.”

Foster sat there thinking about this. “It might work. But how will the collateral damage thing work?’

“We’ve blamed everything else on Bunting, why not this too? It’s natural enough. They’re bitter rivals. Everyone knows that. The evidence of Bunting’s obsession with Quantrell will be easy enough to produce.”

“So we take out Quantrell and frame Bunting for it?”

“Yes.”

“But Kelly Paul said he was long gone.”

“You actually believed everything she told you?”

“Well… I mean.” She stopped, looked embarrassed. “I’m losing a bit of control here, aren’t I?” she said sheepishly.

“You’re under a lot of stress. But you need to push through it, Secretary Foster, if you really want to survive this.”

“Please sit down, James. You look uncomfortable standing there.”

Harkes sat.

“How do we go about doing it?” she asked earnestly.

Harkes said, “Here’s how the playing field shakes out, at least as I see it. Bunting must still be around.”

“Why?”

“He’s not the sort to walk away with his tail between his legs. For all we know he’s actually working with Kelly Paul and her crew.”

“Paul? But why?”

“Bunting met with Sean King. After that I sat him down and threatened him and his family if he did it again. Then he concocts the fake suicide attempt by his wife and does a bunk. If he were going to flee he would’ve taken his family with him. Even you admitted that he really cares about them.”

“I guess that does make sense,” conceded Foster.

“And think about the fact that he’d met with King and then planned this whole subterfuge with his family shortly thereafter.”

“Not a coincidence?” said Foster.

“Not even close. The other salient points line up nicely. King and Maxwell are working to help Edgar Roy. They actually visited Cutter’s Rock with Kelly Paul. They’re obviously in this together. And Bunting is in it with them.”

“And his motivation?”

“Bluntly put, Madame Secretary, he’s innocent. He knows it and he’s probably convinced them that he is, too. And King and Maxwell now likely know that Roy didn’t kill anybody. Bunting has few options left. Paul and probably King and Maxwell must’ve offered him a way out. What that is I don’t know yet.”

“I wish we had confirmation of your theory that they’re all working together.”

“Paul coming to New York was really confirmation of that.”

“What do you mean?” she said sharply.

“She used Mrs. Bunting’s ticket to get into the fund-raiser. We knew Paul and King and Maxwell had teamed up and now we have a direct connect between Paul and Bunting: the ticket.”

“Oh, shit. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

“That’s why you have me,” Harkes said.

She smiled and touched his hand. “Yes, yes it is.”

“If we had some bait to draw them out. Something that they value. It would go a long way to helping me put this together in the right way.” He looked at her expectantly.

“I think I might have just what we need,” she said.

She powered on the electronic tablet in front of her, hit a few keys, and spun the screen around for Harkes to see. It was an image of a room with someone in it.

“My ace in the hole,” she said.

The floors and walls were concrete. There was one bunk bed and a toilet in the corner. The person sat on the bed.

Megan Riley hardly looked herself.