John Sandford - Heat Lightning

The governor said, “I like to keep up.”

THE TWO Washington men, Mitford, the governor, and Rose Marie then went through a couple minutes of name-dropping and bureaucratic hand-wringing, and the governor finally said, “Look, I came all the way down the hill to hear this. I have other things to do, so let’s cut the horse hockey and get down to it.” He turned to Virgil: “Virgil, tell me what you know about all this.”

Virgil said, “Well, from what I’m able to tell, six Minnesotans went to Vietnam just before the fall of Saigon and stole a bunch of Caterpillar tractors and other equipment that was being abandoned by the military. While they were there, one of them, Ralph Warren, killed a number of people, including a couple of toddlers, and raped a woman who was, at the time, either dying or dead.”

“Disgusting,” the governor said.

Virgil continued: “A year or so ago, the Vietnamese found out who’d done it-found a couple of names, anyway. The murdered people had family who are now high in the Vietnamese government. The family decided to get revenge.

“To do that, they contacted an American intelligence agency and offered a trade: they had information about an alleged al-Qaeda plot coming out of Indonesia. They would turn over the information to Homeland Security, if Homeland Security looked the other way-and provided some direct informational support-for a hit team.”

Virgil continued: “A deal was made, and the Viets sent a gunman, a torturer, and a coordinator over here to kill the six people involved in the ’75 murders. They’d already killed one man in Hong Kong, I believe. They only had two or three names for the people here, and had to gather the others as they went. That’s why John Wigge was tortured before they dumped his body on the Capitol lawn.

“An American, Mead Sinclair, who may have been a CIA agent but who was well-known as a political radical with contacts in Vietnam, was coerced into working as a contact between the Vietnamese and the intelligence agencies here in the U.S. The idea was, he was deniable.

If he talked, the old intelligence agencies could point to the fact that he was a longtime radical friend of the Vietnamese and had no credibility. Sinclair didn’t want to do it, but threats were made against his daughter-”

“Let’s stop there,” Cartwright said. “Most of this is just speculation. I don’t doubt that Virgil here did a bang-up job in tracking these people down”-Virgil thought he detected a modest lip-curl with the compliment-“but that American intelligence agency stuff is fantasy.”

The governor looked at him for a moment, then said, “Virgil?”

Virgil said, “Well, you all know most of the rest of it. The Viets killed Warren last night. I’d discovered that they’d bugged my car, with a bug that looks like it was designed right here in the good ol’ USA. I used the bug, which was still operating, to convince them that I didn’t know where the last man was. Then we flew to the guy’s place and set up an ambush. The Viets walked into it this morning, three of them were killed, and two escaped to Canada, one of them wounded. So here we are.”

“And that’s just about nowhere,” Arenson said.

Virgil said, “We’ve got Sinclair. We’ve got him cold. He’s willing to turn state’s evidence.”

Cartwright looked straight across the table at Virgil. “That won’t happen.”

“Already happened. I accepted his offer, and he gave me a brief statement,” Virgil said. “I recorded it.”

Arenson pushed back from the table and said in a mild voice, “I don’t think you folks understand quite what is going on here. We represent the Homeland Security Agency. We’re not asking you what we’re going to do. We’re telling you what we’re going to do. What we’re going to do is, we’re going to smooth this whole thing over. The Vietnamese provided us with a key contact-”

The governor broke in: “Wait a minute. A whole bunch of Minnesotans are dead. Two were completely innocent. Five, maybe, were involved in a crime thirty years ago, but they get a trial.”

“Governor, in the best of all possible worlds, that’s the way it would work,” Arenson said. “Post-9/11, some things have changed, and this is one of them. I’m authorized, and I’m doing it-I’m classifying this whole matter as top secret. We will help you develop an appropriate press release.”

“You can’t… this is our jurisdiction,” the governor began.

“There’s been a tragedy, but a minor one,” Cartwright said. “What was done was necessary. We may have saved hundreds of lives. If the al-Qaeda plan had gone through…”

The governor said, “I can’t accept-”

Arenson snapped: “Let me say it again, in case you didn’t get it the first time: we’re not asking you, we’re telling you. What part of telling don’t you understand?”

THERE WAS A moment of silence, then the governor cleared his throat and said, “Rose Marie, Neil, Lucas, Virgil, let me talk to you in Rose Marie’s office for a moment.” He stood up and said to the two Washington guys, “Just take a moment. I think we can come to a satisfactory resolution of this.”

The governor led the way out the door and down the hall to Rose Marie’s office, closed the door behind Virgil, the last one in, then turned and bellowed, “Those MOTHERFUCKERS think they can come into MY state and kill MY people and they tell me that THEY’RE saying how it is? They don’t tell ANYBODY how it is in MY state… I say how it is-they don’t say a FUCKIN’ THING.”

The governor raged on and Virgil looked away, embarrassed. The tantrum lasted a full thirty seconds, then the governor, breathing hard, red-faced, looked around, looked at Rose Marie, looked at Mitford, and Mitford smiled and said, “Glad we got that cleared up.”

“What are we going to do?” the governor asked him, his voice rough from the tantrum.

Mitford shrugged. “You’re a liberal, God bless your obscenely rich little soul. How does it hurt you to go up against a bunch of fascists from Homeland Security?”

“Uh-oh. What are you thinking?” Rose Marie asked.

Mitford said to the governor, “You don’t have much political runway left here in Minnesota. What will you do when you’re not governor anymore?”

“I thought I’d just be a rich guy,” the governor said. “If somebody dies, I could run for the Senate.”

“Will that make you happy?” Mitford asked.

“Neil, skip the dime-store psychology,” the governor said. “What are you thinking?”

“We could arrest these two guys and charge them with conspiracy to commit murder in the planned execution of five Minnesotans, with two more murdered in the process. Before anybody has time to react, you have a press conference. You give an Abe Lincoln speech about protecting our precious freedoms, about how we don’t turn our laws over to a bunch of Vietnamese killers. You’d take some heat, but by this time next week, you’d be a national name. You’re on the cover of Time magazine. You’d be a hero to a lot of people in the party. Play your cards right over the next four years…”

The governor looked at him a long time, then said, “What’s the downside?”

Rose Marie said, “They arrest you for treason and you’re executed.”

The governor laughed and said, “Really.” That didn’t worry him; he was far too rich to hang.

Davenport turned to Virgil: “You did turn off that recorder, didn’t you?”

Virgil said, “Jeez, boss… I forgot.”

Davenport: “Wonder what they’re in there saying?”

“They already said enough,” Virgil said. “But… I wouldn’t be surprised if they said a few more things. Being in there by themselves.”