Дэвид Балдаччи - Daylight

“You’re out of time, Gorman,” she said.

“Good-bye, Pine,” said Gorman. “You fought the good fight. And see what it got you?”

The shot hit him right in the middle of the forehead, and blood geysered into the air from the entry spot. He slumped to the floor dead.

Pine jumped to the left wondering where the hell the bullet that had just killed Adam Gorman had come from.

Axilrod had ducked down out of the way. Now she screamed and started to raise her gun to shoot Blum, but Pine hit her with a ferocious kick that leveled the woman and sent her gun spinning out of her hand.

When Axilrod tried to struggle to her feet, Pine laid her out with a crushing blow to the jaw that put the woman down for good.

Pine whirled around at the doorway where the kill shot on Gorman had come from.

The door swung slowly open.

And there stood a heavily bandaged and pale John Puller, his M11 dangling down next to his right side. In a flash, Pine realized that Puller had fired through the gap between the back edge of the door and the doorjamb.

“John?” said a bewildered Pine. “What in the hell?”

“Army strong, Atlee,” he said quietly before collapsing to the floor.

“There will be very limited public disclosure of this,” said Warren Graham.

He was sitting in a conference room at the New York Field Office. Arrayed around him were Pine, the two Pullers, and Carol Blum.

“Why?” said Pine sharply.

Graham placed his hands palms down on the table as though he needed additional support for what he was about to say.

“It’s complicated and multilayered, but I’ll give you the Cliffs-Notes version.” He paused, seemingly to marshal his thoughts. “We have dozens and dozens of open indictments. They range from politicians at the federal and state levels to Wall Street money types to CEOs to judges to bureaucrats to cops to intel agents, and even to some people who ‘used’ to work for the Bureau. There will be more indictments as this unfolds. We have also arrested twenty foreign suspects.”

“So were other countries behind this?” asked Robert Puller.

“Doubtful. Our counterparts in other countries are now investigating similar operations going on there. Apparently, blackmail and pay-to-play ops do not stop at one country’s borders.”

When Pine started to say something, Graham lifted his hand. “Let me finish, Agent Pine. I will not downplay the seriousness of all of this. We all paid the price for their dereliction of duty. Now, some of them were innocent dupes, caught up in something that they never imagined would happen to them.”

Pine could contain herself no longer. “But they had choices, sir. They could have gone to the police. They could have come to us. They could have gone public.”

Robert Puller added, “Or they could have resigned their positions and thus taken away the possibility that they could use their positions to hurt this country.”

“They could have done all those things,” agreed Graham. “But none of them, not a one that we know of, at least, chose to do so.”

John Puller said, “But after having been blackmailed, why wouldn’t they warn others about this scheme? I mean, if they knew colleagues were going to these places and would be filmed and then blackmailed?”

“I have personally questioned seven of them on that very point. Their answers were remarkably the same: They were ashamed and they couldn’t bring themselves to tell anyone else their secret. And after they used their official positions to further their blackmailer’s biddings, well, it became legally impossible for them to admit to anything without suffering the consequences. That is a blackmailer’s stock in trade.”

Robert Puller said, “So how bad was the damage?”

“Very bad,” said Graham grimly. “It will take us years to unravel it all. But it does explain many decisions and acts by public officials and companies and other interests across a broad spectrum. They were serving another master, not the people of this country. The public servants violated their oath of office. The others committed serious felonies. This thing has apparently been going on for quite some time.”

Robert Puller said, “But Gorman and the like were being paid by others to blackmail these people to take the action they did. What about those folks? They are definitely enemies of this country. There needs to be consequences.”

“We’re interviewing people and compiling those lists. More indictments will come, as I said. I can tell you preliminarily that other nation states, foreign and domestic companies, and other monied interests are on those lists. If they couldn’t win by healthy competition, they apparently resorted to cheating by having folks in positions of power side with them for fear of their own sordid secrets coming out. Blackmailers usually just want money. Gorman and the others were playing a more sophisticated game. A court decision here, a law passed there, a merger okayed or not, a criminal prosecution dropped, a company making a decision to leave a market, the possibilities were endless.”

“Why did they have the parties up there for Tony Vincenzo and the others?” asked Blum.

Graham said, “They were filming them, too, and many of them were doing drugs and other illegal activities and engaging in things that might be embarrassing if they were ever made public. They figured it was a way to keep them in line down the road. Stay the course or the film ends up with the cops.”

“What about Peter Driscoll?” said Pine.

“Ironically, we could find no evidence that Driscoll was involved in this. But he’s not entirely blame free, either. Turns out his grandson, Jeff Sands, tried repeatedly to meet with him to seek help for his drug addiction. Driscoll never did so, apparently afraid that conceding that he had a drug-dealing relative, even one who was trying to beat his addiction, would tarnish his own reputation.”

“And Nora Franklin?” said Pine.

“One of the first recruits to the scheme. We’ve thoroughly interviewed her. That trip she and Gorman took overseas? It was to get her into the fold. She came back and immediately sought political office, backed by Gorman and his associates. And she won, and kept winning, gaining seats on powerful committees and relaying top secret information to Gorman, who, in turn, sold it to our enemies for top dollar. And she gained a fortune in the bargain.”

“And the opponent in her last election?” said John Puller.

“Became a significant threat. Franklin had begun to ignore her constituents. A local and charismatic businessman who was running on a campaign of reform came out of nowhere and was leading her by double digits.”

“How did they blackmail him?” asked Puller.

“They couldn’t find a way to do that, so they took a different angle. He grew seriously ill and had to drop out of the race. The doctors couldn’t identify what was wrong and he was still suffering. But knowing what we did, we had him tested for a variety of poisons. It was an industrial chemical that he was somehow exposed to. Now that they know, he can be treated. He’ll never be cured, unfortunately. But it can be managed.”

“Well, he’s luckier than Jerome Blake or Agent McElroy,” said Pine. “Jerome died because he knew about Jewel’s having sex at that penthouse. They were afraid of who he might talk to. And while McElroy was the one to die, I think they were aiming at John and me. But regardless, they were always going to pin it on Jerome to get him out of the way and scare Jewel into never talking.”

“I think you’re right about that,” said Graham.

“What about Lindsey Axilrod?” asked Pine.

“Her real name is Svetlana Semenov. She was an agent with the FSS, which is the successor to the KGB. She’s been in this country for years after having her real identity thoroughly laundered through three different countries. She is a real IT expert, and that landed her the job at Fort Dix.”