Stuart Woods - Mounting Fears

The following afternoon, Gene stopped at the Georgetown house, collected the tape from the recorder, inserted a new one, then drove to the offices of the National Inquisitor. He put the tape in the envelope, wrote Nelson Pickett’s name on it and left it at the reception desk.

The envelope was sent to the Inquisitor’s mail room, and shortly before the office closed, it was left on Pickett’s desk. He returned from the men’s room to find the envelope there. The cassette had no name on it, just the date and time of collection.

Pickett took a small tape player from his desk drawer, inserted the cassette, and pressed the play button. Then he listened, with increasing interest, as he heard the conversation between Barbara Ortega and the vice president of the United States. Before he had finished he was on his way to the office of William Gaynes.

He burst into Gaynes’s office to find him on the phone. Gaynes pointed at his sofa and put a finger to his lips. Pickett waited impatiently while Gaynes continued his conversation. Finally, he hung up the phone. “What?” he said to Pickett.

“Running that story in yesterday’s edition did the trick,” he said. “Listen.” He played the tape.

Gaynes waited until it was finished before he said a word. “Brilliant!” he said, finally. “She actually used his name!”

“And he didn’t deny it,” Pickett said. “Do you realize what effect this could have on the national election?”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what effect it has on the election,” Gaynes said, “I’m Australian. All I care about is circulation.”

“Well, before you make a decision to run this story, let me explain something to you about this woman. She is the head of the Criminal Division of the United States Justice Department. Do you understand what that means?”

“All right, tell me,” Gaynes said.

“It means that all the United States attorneys report to her on criminal matters.”

“So?”

“Making this recording is a criminal matter-it’s against the law. Do you see where I’m heading here?”

“I think I get the picture,” Gaynes said. “If we run it, we get busted by the feds.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“So we can’t run it.”

“Not as such. We can’t even allude to this conversation, because if we do, Ortega will immediately know that we could only have gotten it by taping her phone conversations. Not only would we be charged with illegal wiretapping, but she would have her house swept for bugs in a flash, and no more telephone tapes.”

“So how are we going to handle this?” Gaynes asked.

“The story that ran yesterday, which was just supposition, set her off and made her get indiscreet on the phone. We need more stuff about Stanton and Wharton, stuff we can back up. If we can get that, then Ortega might get even madder, and who knows where that could lead. We’ve got a couple of weeks before the election, so let me put more people on Stanton and Wharton, and more people on Stanton and Ortega when they were in Sacramento, and we’ll see what we come up with. If we can get something more concrete we can name Ortega and blow the lid off the whole thing.”

“Well, get your ass on it!” Gaynes said. “Spend whatever you have to!”

Todd Baconlanded his airplane at Peachtree Dekalb airport, an Atlanta general aviation field, then rented a car and drove to the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, only ten minutes away. He ordered some dinner from room service, set up his laptop, and got online.

He had no evidence of where Teddy Fay was or what his plans were, but the Reverend Henry King Johnson was easier to find, since he published his travel schedule, like any candidate, on his website. Johnson was traveling, mostly in the Southeast, and Todd tried to put himself in Teddy’s shoes. If I were Teddy, he asked himself, where would I kill Johnson? He’d worry about how later.

Todd looked for locations that were outside large population areas like Atlanta and Charlotte; Teddy would find smaller venues easier to deal with and, most important, easier to run from. His airplane was likely to be his escape vehicle, so Todd went through Johnson’s schedule, looking for smaller cities with airports nearby. There was only one stop on the reverend’s campaign trail that fit the bill.

Amelia Island was an expensive resort community near Fernandina Beach, just east of Jacksonville, Florida. Todd, being a southerner and the son of a flying southerner, had visited there with his father as a teenager. They had landed at Fernandina Airport and spent a weekend playing golf.

Then he noticed something even more attractive on the schedule. The reverend was to perform a marriage ceremony on Cumberland Island, the next up from Fernandina Beach. Todd had visited there once, too, with his parents. They had stayed at Greyfield Inn and had taken a nature tour with a guide in an old truck. The place was mostly national seashore now, so the number of visitors was restricted to the inn and a campground that had a capacity of a couple of dozen. The marriage was to take place in the old slave village, now mostly deserted but maintained. Todd remembered that John F. Kennedy, Jr., and his wife had been married there, in the tiny village church, which Todd had visited with his parents.

He found a map of the island on the Internet and, right in the middle of it, the grass landing strip where his father had landed the family Bonanza. He remembered that they had had to buzz the strip before landing, to clear away the wild horses and feral pigs that foraged there. The inn was south of the airstrip, and the slave village was north of it. Teddy could get in there in his airplane, do what he planned to do, and get out in a hurry, and, flying low, he would be virtually untrackable.

Todd went through Johnson’s schedule once more, which ran right up to election day, and Cumberland Island seemed Teddy’s best choice. Amelia Island would do for a backup, but the place was fully built up, and there would be other people at the Fernandina Airport.

The wedding was three days away, and Todd started looking on the Internet for an airplane to rent at Peachtree DeKalb Airport. He jotted down a couple of numbers and would phone them in the morning.

Todd watched a movie on TV and got to bed early, tired from his long flight. He fell asleep and dreamed of stopping one murder and committing another.

Martin Stanton was rattled, first by the appearance of the National Inquisitor article and then by the phone call from Barbara. And as if that were not enough, he had a phone call from his lawyer.

“This is not good, Marty,” Jake said. “I was supposed to get the signed settlement from Betty’s attorney today, and it hasn’t arrived.”

“Shit,” Stanton said.

“I have no way of knowing whether either of them has seen the Inquisitor piece, but I think we should assume that they have.”

“Jake,” Stanton said, “I give you full authority to deny the Inquisitor thing on my behalf. It’s nothing but scurrilous supposition, based on nothing but hunches. I am not having an affair with anybody. I go to bed, exhausted, every single night after half a dozen campaign appearances and speeches. I have neither the time nor the inclination to be screwing anybody.”

“I’ll do what I can, Marty. If I don’t hear from her attorney, I’ll call first thing tomorrow morning and have at him.”

“If they don’t deliver by noon, sue. Thanks, Jake, and good night.” Stanton hung up and looked at the naked Liz, propped up on an elbow beside him in bed. “You and I have to deny everything,” he said.

“Well, of course we do, sugar,” she said, dallying with his crotch.