Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

‘Like what?’

‘I saw a bunch of books in Edith’s apartment and Neil discovered from a credit card statement that she made a sizable purchase from a bookstore in Manhattan. Neil hacked into the store’s inventory records and found out that she purchased every book they had dealing with Muslims and terrorism and al-Qaeda.’

‘So?’ DeMarco said.

‘Edith’s doing research. If she was engineering the takeover of a rival company, she’d know everything there was to know about the company. And if Edith’s initiated some sort of campaign against Muslims, she’d do the same thing.’

‘Big deal, she bought some books.’

‘She also hired a PR firm. They’re the ones that have been producing Broderick’s television ads. And based on the amount of money she’s thrown at them, they’re probably doing other things like direct mailings and phone polling. She’s also engaged a lobbyist in D.C., and through him she’s been making donations to a number of congressmen. The ones she’s been giving money to are those who appear to be on the fence when it comes to the bill, and she’s obviously trying to knock them over to Broderick’s side.’

DeMarco shrugged. ‘She’s a rich person with a cause and she’s doing what rich people do. If she was supporting the Sierra Club on some kinda environmental legislation, she’d do the same thing.’

‘Neil also discovered that she sent a large check to a private security company.’

‘A security company? You mean like Dobbler’s outfit?’

‘No, I mean like mercenaries. This outfit supplies people to augment U.S forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. They provide protection for Iraqi poli ticians, Halliburton’s operations, oil fields, any mission that the U.S military’s too thin to support. But they also work for people like Charles Taylor, that sweet fellow who used to be the dictator of Liberia. They’re not choosy about their clients.’

‘So what are they doing for Baxter?’

‘I’m not sure. But we were saying earlier that if Edith was involved in something like what you suspect, she’d need people with expertise. This company has the expertise.’

‘Yeah, but do you think she’d hire them so openly? I mean, write ’em a check with her name on it?’

‘No. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense. What did you find out about Dobbler?’ Emma asked.

‘A couple of interesting things but no smoking gun. He seems like a rotten guy who would do anything to get ahead, but I didn’t learn anything that would lead me to conclude he’s doing anything illegal. He told me he spent twenty years in the army and worked in military intelligence, whatever that means. His Web site says he retired as a colonel, so he had some rank, and he probably knows a lot of other ex-military types. If you add it all up, he’d have the experience to organize these attacks. The other thing is, according to a guy that works for him, Dobbler muscled out the competition in Philly when he first got started.’

‘Muscled them out how?’

‘He hired pros to break into buildings being protected by other security companies to ruin their reputations. Supposedly.’

‘Huh,’ Emma said. ‘Well, as for him being in military intelligence, that covers a lot of ground, but he couldn’t have been anyone of note or I would have heard of him. But I’ll check out his record. One other thing about Mr Dobbler,’ Emma said. ‘He called Broderick’s office after you visited him.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I have Neil tapping his and Edith Baxter’s phones.’

‘Jesus, Emma, do you know how much Neil charges? There are surgeons who bill less than him per hour.’

‘I’m sure the speaker’s budget can handle it.’

That was true; the speaker’s budget, only part of which was visible to the General Accounting Office, was bigger than the GNP of some countries.

‘Anyway,’ Emma said, ‘he called Broderick’s office. But because of the way their phone system is set up, Neil didn’t know if he spoke to Broderick or Fine or someone else. On top of that, Dobbler and whoever he talked to were using STU-III phones.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘It means the call was scrambled — encrypted — and Neil doesn’t know what was said.’

DeMarco shook his head. ‘We just keep getting these little pieces, pieces that might mean something but we can’t be sure. Did that girl ever call you back, Mustafa’s niece?’

‘No. So what’s next?’ Emma said.

‘I dunno,’ DeMarco said.

They sat there in silence a moment. Then DeMarco said, ‘We have two things that are solid, or more solid than anything else. We have a fingerprint connecting Donny Cray to Reza Zarif, and Cray worked for Jubal Pugh, who, according to the DEA, is a white supremacist who kills people.’

‘Yeah, but Pugh can’t be the mastermind behind all this, Joe,’ Emma said. ‘That just doesn’t wash.’

‘Maybe not, but if he’s involved, he may know who is.’

‘Okay, but so what?’ Emma said.

‘Well, I think I have a way to nail Pugh based on something Patsy Hall, the DEA gal, told me.’

‘Nail him for what?’

‘Drugs. And if I can get him arrested for dealing drugs, that gives us the leverage to make him talk.’

‘How would you get him for dealing drugs when the DEA hasn’t been able to get him in five years?’

The Cuban watched the subject as he left the house in McLean. It was a beautiful place but she wondered how much the owner spent to maintain it. She thought it was foolish to own a home that size.

Before coming to the house, DeMarco had had breakfast in the same restaurant on Capitol Hill where he had eaten the morning he had driven to Philadelphia. He sat at the same table he’d used the previous time, and based on the way the waitresses greeted him, he was clearly a regular customer. This could be useful.

When DeMarco had been in Philadelphia, the Cuban had ruled out the idea of bombing the bar he was in, but a restaurant on Capitol Hill was a different matter. The country was in a complete uproar because of what these Muslims were doing, and … well, it was like the politicians said. It was only a matter of when , not if . No one would be surprised if a bomb exploded in a restaurant visited by congressmen and their staffs. Yes, if a better idea didn’t occur to her, she might enter the restaurant while DeMarco was eating and attach a bomb to a nearby table.

There were two good things about the idea. First, DeMarco would be the apparently random victim of a terrorist attack and there would be no reason to think he had been singled out. Second, she’d have plenty of time to get away. What she didn’t like was that she’d have to enter the restaurant and somebody might remember her. On second thought, why should she go into the restaurant at all? She’d make this fool, Jorge, plant the bomb for her. Yes, that would work. But planting the bomb wasn’t the biggest problem. The biggest problem was that every cop in the country would be looking for her if she exploded a bomb on Capitol Hill, particularly because of what had happened in the last few weeks. So it was a viable option, but not ideal.

Her second option was to make DeMarco a victim during a robbery. Last night, after he’d returned from Philadelphia, he’d stopped at a small grocery store near Georgetown and bought a couple of things. Like most men, he didn’t shop in bulk; he just bought whatever he needed on the spur of the moment, probably not even paying attention to the sales. So there was a good chance he might pop into the same store again this evening to buy something for dinner, and if he did, she’d walk in, a ski mask covering her face, clean out the cash register, and then execute the clerk and all the customers. She noted that in the grocery store where he shopped the windows were covered with advertisements, and a store like that wouldn’t normally have more than two or three customers at any one time. She liked this idea better than bombing the restaurant. A robbery was a fairly mundane sort of crime, even if two or three people were killed; it happened all the time. The downside of this plan was that the store was on a fairly busy street.