John Sandford - The Hanged Man’s Song

If Krause came to the door, I’d turn away as soon as I saw him, duck my head and pull the mask over my face, and show him the gun. I’d taken all the shells out, because if he did something weird, I didn’t want to wind up shooting him. Unfortunately, when you take the shells out of a revolver, the person who the gun is pointed at can see the empty cylinders. I’d have to be careful, show him only the side of the gun.

MOSTof the working-out stuff wasn’t necessary. I walked to the front steps, rang the doorbell, and a minute later saw Krause walking toward the door. He was wearing shorts and a madras shirt instead of his usual blue shirt, but his long face was unmistakable.

As he came to the door, I turned my face away. The hand with the FedEx package was visible from the doorway, along with the lit-up computer screen; I pulled the Bill Clinton mask down. As I heard the door open, I realized that we were losing just a bit of the light-not quite twilight, but the sunlight was dimming.

The door opened and the senator said, querulously, “FedEx?”

I turned toward him and he shrank back, seeing the face.

I put the gun up but said, quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you. Shut up and don’t move. I need five minutes of talk and then I’m going to get out of here.” I was holding the door open with my foot, still had the package and the laptop in the other hand.

He took another step back and looked over his shoulder, looked back at me, and I said, “I’m going to save your career if you give me five minutes. If you start screaming, I’m gonna run, and it’ll be the worst decision you ever made.”

He said, “FedEx?”

“No. Listen to me. Do you know the shooting in Jackson, Mississippi, of the black man, where the cross was burned?”

“Yes,” he said tentatively. He looked back over his shoulder again. He thought about running, but knew he wouldn’t make it.

“The man who was killed was Bobby. Do you know who I’m talking about? The hacker Bobby?”

He frowned. Now, for the first time, he thought of something other than escape. “I saw it on the news, but they didn’t say anything about a hacker.”

“But you’ve heard of Bobby?”

“I’ve heard of him, but I-”

“Did you know that two men from your DDC group were killed yesterday?”

“Who are you?” He was a politician, trying to take the offensive; and he had heard.

I cut him off. “Bill Clinton. Listen, one of your former staff members at the Intelligence Committee, James Carp, killed Bobby-murdered him, beat in his head, and stole a laptop with information that could hurt me and other of Bobby’s friends. Then he killed your people, while they were looking for him. He used information from the laptop- listen to me -to do all of the political hits of the past week, all the so-called Bobby stuff. The daughter of the senator from Illinois, the military execution, the Norwalk virus, the Bole-blackface story… there are at least thirty more stories ready to go. We think a lot of the stuff was taken out of your DDC group.”

“What?”

Now I had his attention. I repeated myself, and added, “What in God’s name ever possessed you to run total background security probes on other members of Congress? Do you think there’s any chance your career will survive? What do you think your chances are of not going to prison?”

“I think you’re…” He looked at the gun. “Sir, I’m not sure that you are fully, uh, aware…”

“I’m not nuts,” I said. I looked past him. “Is there anybody else home?”

He hesitated, then said, “Not at the moment. My wife… should be home momentarily.”

“I don’t want to frighten your wife. But if there’s a telephone close by, you could make a call to someone who would tell you that I’m a reliable, mmm, source. There’s a Rosalind Welsh at the NSA.”

“I don’t know her.” He backed away a couple of steps, and I followed him inside.

“Maybe you can introduce yourself,” I said. “I’m going to let you make the call, but if you have a panic code, or something, I’ll probably figure it out, and I’ll be gone. I’ll be gone from here before anyone can get here, anyway, so there’s no point in trying to yell for help-and if you do, you might not find out the rest of what I’m going to tell you.”

“You said Jimmy Carp killed this boy… this, uh, man in Jackson.”

“Murdered him. According to your FBI investigation, he beat in his head with an oxygen tank. Bobby was crippled and in a wheelchair and couldn’t defend himself.”

“I saw the story. You’re sure it was Carp?”

“Yes. Not only that, he probably would have killed a little girl if we hadn’t stopped him, and he definitely killed your two men. Set them up and shot them down outside his apartment.”

“Sonofabitch.” Now he was worried.

“The whole thing started when he was doing research for your committee on Bobby. Now he’s got Bobby’s laptop and he’s decoding stuff from it. He’s got something with your name on it.”

His eyes narrowed, and his head tipped skeptically. “My name? Like what? I’ve never done anything.”

“Other people might not see it that way,” I said. “Now the woman at the NSA, she’s one of their top security people.”

I followed him down a hallway, past a coat closet, past a living room entrance, and finally to a big kitchen with a phone on the wall. The kitchen smelled like bread and peanut butter. I didn’t give him Welsh’s number and he didn’t ask for it. Instead, he dialed a number out of his head and when the phone was answered at the other end, he said, “This is me. There’s a woman at the NSA named Rosalind Welsh. She’s in their security branch. I need her home phone number right now. Instantly. Call me back.”

He hung up and said, “There wasn’t any panic code. What’s Carp got on me?”

“I don’t know everything he may have-or may not have-but he knows all about your bank loans from Hedgecoe Bank. What he actually has is scanned documents with your signature on them. I’m not a banker, but it seems like you got extraordinarily good terms, without collateral except for the stock you were buying. In fact, from the paper on the computer, it looks like the loans made you rich. You borrow big chunks of cash during the nineties, drop it into the stock market, Amazon, AOL, that whole crowd… you got to be a multimillionaire, right?”

“Nothing wrong with it,” he snapped. “Nothing wrong. Just good business. I paid all the money back, with interest.”

“Yeah, but how many ordinary guys could get a two-percent loan in 1990, with no collateral, and use it to speculate?” I looked at him, and answered the question: “None. You pulled a million bucks out of thin air, used it to make, what? Five million? Ten?”

“It was just…”

“You know where the money came from?”

“I knew some people on the board of directors,” he said hoarsely. “They know me and my reputation.”

“From the Saudis. From the Saudi Arabians.”

“What?”

“The Saudis are the money behind the bank, and you were running the Senate energy committee at the time. Unfortunately, it was some of the same Saudis who funded bin Laden. This does not look good, huh? Especially not now, post nine-eleven.” We were staring at each other in the now-gathering gloom; the phone rang to break the spell.

He picked it up, listened, wrote on a message pad, said, “Thanks,” and, “Talk to you about it later.” He hung up, grunted. “Cell phone, supposed to be full-time,” and dialed a number. It must have rung a couple of times, and when it was answered, he said, “This is Senator Krause. Is this Rosalind Welsh? Yes. I need to ask you a question. Would you prefer to call me back at my house, with your directory, to confirm who I am? Okay. I see. Mmm. Then this is the question. What can you tell me about…” He looked at me, and I tapped the mask. “Bill Clinton.”