Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

Fine told the assembled news hawks that he had just come to a ‘very disturbing realization.’ He said that after he was appointed to fill William Broderick’s seat in the U.S. Senate, he eventually got around to looking at how much money was available in Broderick’s war chest. Well, Fine said, he was shocked — absolutely shocked — to discover that Broderick had vectored approximately eight million dollars to an account in the Cayman Islands. The fact that the money had been sent to an offshore account — well, that just smelled of ‘monkey business,’ he said.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Fine said to the reporters, ‘just two days ago I discovered that the account in the Caymans belonged to a man named Oliver Lincoln.’

A reporter’s hand shot up. ‘How were you able to find out that the account belonged to this man? I thought that’s why people put their money into offshore accounts, so nobody could figure out who the money belonged to.’

Fine chuckled. ‘A United States senator is not without influence, sir. I simply called up the president of the bank and told him that I very much wanted to know the name of the owner of the account. I don’t remember my exact language, but I may have hinted that it would be a grave mistake for the bank to, ah, annoy me.’ (The bank president later admitted that he did indeed tell the senator the name of the account holder, believing it was, in this very, very special case, in the bank’s interest to ignore its normal disclosure policies.)

‘Anyway,’ Fine said, ‘the name Oliver Lincoln tickled something in my memory. I remembered when Senator Broderick attended one of his first Senate Intelligence Committee meetings he asked me who Lincoln was, and I said I didn’t know. And I didn’t. As aide first to Senator Wingate and then to Senator Broderick, I didn’t attend all Intelligence meetings, because some of those meetings were limited to the principals, depending on the classification level of the subject matter. After that, I remember Senator Broderick asking me to provide him with the minutes from past Intelligence Committee meetings, some going back as far as ten years. I didn’t question why he wanted to see them. He was, after all, my boss.

‘I was just trying to decide what to do with the information I’d obtained when I was informed, this very morning, that the FBI had arrested Oliver Lincoln as the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks. I also found out that Lincoln has a history of carrying out complex operations, sometimes to help criminal cartels, and other times, unfortunately, to aid the American government, in particular the CIA. And that’s why Senator Broderick had wanted to look at past meeting minutes, so that he could research Lincoln’s past.’

The reporters started to buzz like angry bees around a ruptured hive. A dozen voices called out, which Fine ignored.

‘I believe-’ he said. Then he paused and repeated himself to increase the drama. ‘I believe — and I’ve told this to the FBI, and I say this with great regret — that William Broderick, in order to pass his bill, a bill as you all know I never personally approved of, paid this man Lincoln to orchestrate these terrorist attacks so American Muslims would get the blame.’

Whoa! the reporters cried. Why the hell would Broderick do that?

Fine said it was fairly obvious: Broderick was determined to make a name for himself in politics. He figured the best way to do it was to get his bill passed, and the best way to do that was by creating an atmosphere of fear and xenophobia caused by a series of terrorist attacks supposedly perpetrated by Muslim Americans.

But then why was Broderick killed? a reporter asked.

Fine shook his head. ‘My answer to that question, sir, is that I do not know.’ It was possible, Fine said, that a disgruntled Muslim had indeed killed Broderick just like the note found in his car had said. That would be ironic but also fitting. But it was also possible, Fine said, that there had been some sort of falling out among thieves, that Oliver Lincoln had killed Broderick for some reason. ‘I just don’t know why Senator Broderick was assassinated,’ Fine concluded. ‘That’s a mystery the good men and women at the FBI will have to unravel.’

‘One last question, Senator. Why on earth would Broderick have left records showing money going from him to this account in the Caymans?’

Fine hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said, and paused again as though struggling for words. ‘I hate to say this, but Bill Broderick was not the smartest guy I ever met.’

Nick Fine had cut the legs right out from under Oliver Lincoln.

Lincoln was sitting in his cell, on the lower bunk, dressed in a plain white T-shirt and a pair of too-short jeans. On his feet were flip-flops. Above Lincoln, another man lay on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, doing nothing. The man was a child molester named Martin Cole. The first day they placed Lincoln in the cell with Cole, Cole had been sitting on the lower bunk. Without saying a word to Cole, Lincoln had pulled him off the bunk, dragged him over to the foul-smelling, shit-splattered toilet in the cell, and bashed out two of Cole’s teeth against the toilet bowl. He then instructed Cole to move himself — and the mattress he’d been lying on — to the upper bunk, and he further instructed him that whenever Lincoln was in the cell, Cole was to lie on the upper bunk, doing and saying nothing.

Oliver Lincoln was a very angry man, and Martin Cole had been taught a lesson that many others had learned before him: Lincoln may have appreciated the soft and finer things in life, but there was nothing soft about him.

As it had done with Bianca Castro, the FBI had laid out its case against Lincoln. It had Bianca willing to testify that he had paid her to kill Jubal Pugh. Based on that testimony, they would then build the box around Lincoln, which would be constructed like this: Jubal Pugh had given statements prior to his death that a man named Mr Jones had paid him and directed him to coerce Muslim Americans to commit terrorist acts, the results of which had been the deaths of a number of people, two of them children. One of Pugh’s men took a photograph that the FBI had used to identify Lincoln. Previously, the photo had been of questionable value as evidence, but since Bianca had testified that Lincoln had ordered her to kill Pugh, the FBI now had the link between Pugh and Lincoln that it needed. So, as a minimum, the FBI could send Lincoln to jail for life for Pugh’s murder — and the murder of the poor man who ran the junkyard where Pugh had worked. But now, thanks to Senator Fine, the FBI could put the bow on the package: it could convict Lincoln for being the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks. All the Bureau had to do was to get him to admit that he’d worked for Broderick.

But he wouldn’t.

‘Nick Fine hired me,’ Lincoln said.

‘You’re lying,’ the Bureau responded. ‘You know that in order to save your rotten ass you gotta point the finger at somebody, and you knew if you pointed the finger at a dead senator you’d be screwed. So instead, you lying bastard, you’ve decided to accuse Nick Fine.’

‘I’m telling you it was Fine,’ Lincoln said.

‘Can you prove it?’ the Bureau said.

And that was the rub. He couldn’t prove it.

As a minimum he was going to spend the rest of his life in jail. His days of Rubinacci suits and champagne were over. He might be able to avoid the death penalty — the case that he’d organized the terrorist attacks wasn’t airtight, but it was tight enough that he’d never see the outside of a jail cell again.

On a glorious day in mid-June, Mahoney met with Emma and DeMarco at Emma’s house. It being Mahoney, DeMarco knew there was some selfish reason for this. Mahoney may have been in the neighborhood for some other purpose — a lot of wealthy Democrats lived in McLean — or he may have been on his way to Dulles to take off on some taxpayer-funded boondoggle. All that DeMarco knew for sure was that Mahoney had selected the location because it was best for Mahoney and not because it was convenient for anyone else.