James Patterson - Truth or Die

Pants on Fire, Everything on Fire

Clay Dobson gazed across the clutter of his large oak desk, locking eyes with his 9 a.m. appointment while doing everything he could not to break into a shit-eating grin.

It wasn’t easy.

The morning had already brought the good news from Frank Karcher that their little problem in New York had been taken care of — right here in their own backyard, no less. The kid and the reporter’s boyfriend were both dead.

Of course, so was his old college chum, Wittmer, but there was a reason Dobson had had cameras placed inside and outside Wittmer’s home. He’d never fully trusted the guy. Wittmer was weak.

So, too, was Lawrence Bass.

That was what made this meeting with him such a lay-up, thought Dobson, the former small forward for the Princeton Tigers basketball team. Dare he think it, a slam dunk.

After all, Bass hadn’t bum-rushed him out on Pennsylvania Avenue or cornered him with a clenched fist in the men’s room at the Blue Duck Tavern, where all the political heavyweights fed both their stomachs and their egos.

Instead, he’d made an appointment. An appointment? That was like knocking on a door instead of kicking it down. Total milquetoast. No balls.

“I’d like an explanation, Clay,” said Bass, sitting with legs crossed on the other side of the desk.

Even that was weak, thought Dobson. He’d like an explanation? No, you dolt, you demand an explanation!

Yeah, the decision to sandbag Bass, the former director of intelligence programs with the NSC, was looking better by the second. He would’ve made a lousy head of the CIA, not that he ever really had a shot at the gig. Bass was simply a decoy, the fall guy who would pave the way for Frank Karcher.

“Trust me,” said Dobson, folding his arms. “Karch is not the loose cannon you think he is.”

“So it’s really going to be him?” asked Bass. “The rumor’s true?”

“This is Washington, Larry. What rumor isn’t?”

Bass let go with a defeated sigh, slouching a bit. Dobson was happy to have him vent a little, but they both knew Bass had no recourse. He was a good soldier, and good soldiers fall in line.

As if having just reminded himself of that, Bass straightened up in his chair. The air returned to his lungs, his chest expanding.

“I serve or don’t serve at the pleasure of the president,” he said. “I understand the politics in play, and I appreciate your wanting to look out for me and my family.”

“You have my word,” said Dobson. “In a few months, you’ll have your pick of jobs and complete financial security.”

Bass nodded. “I know, and like I said, I appreciate that. It’s just that... Karcher? Really? ”

“Listen, I understand your frustration, I really do,” said Dobson, rising from his chair. He walked over to the credenza and poured himself more coffee. It was his third refill of the morning. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, turning back to Bass. “Do you want a cup?”

“Actually, I do,” Bass said. “Thank you.”

Dobson cocked an eyebrow, surprised. The coffee offer was merely out of politeness. A perfunctory gesture. Everyone and their mother knew that Bass abstained not only from alcohol, but also from caffeine. It was the one and only thing he and Karcher had in common.

For a devout Catholic, Bass was more Mormon than most Mormons.

Was this the first loose thread, wondered Dobson? The beginning of the complete unraveling of Larry “Halo Head” Bass?

Coffee... then a little whiskey in the coffee... then hold the coffee, just give me the whiskey?

In the meantime, “How do you take it?” asked Dobson. “Cream?”

“No, but three sugars,” Bass said.

Dobson turned his back, reaching for the sugar bowl and spoon on the credenza. He began scooping. “You like it sweet, huh?”

“Yes,” said Bass. “Sweet.”

Like revenge.

There were two things on Frank Karcher’s to-do list that morning. Both bordered on a death wish.

The first was lying to Clay Dobson. Bright and early, at oh-seven-hundred hours, he told the president’s chief of staff that the kid and the former lawyer were eliminated, their bodies disposed of so thoroughly that even God himself didn’t know where they were.

How much time this would buy Karcher, he didn’t know. But there was only so much bad news and perceived incompetence he could dump in Dobson’s lap, and that quota had already been met in spades.

So it was time for plan B. As in, bullshit. He’d played the game inside the Beltway long enough to know how things really worked. When the truth doesn’t cooperate, stop telling it.

Sure enough, Dobson was so relieved to think the kid was no longer a threat that the collateral damage — the stuff that actually was true — was taken in stride. When he was told about Wittmer, as well as about having to shut down the now bullet-ridden lab behind M Street, Dobson’s only response, after a pregnant pause, was “So the kid is definitely gone, right?”

Of course, the fact that the kid actually wasn’t gone was merely semantics, a minor detail, as far as Karcher was concerned. Sometimes a lie is just the truth that hasn’t happened yet.

Or so he’d convinced himself as he made his way to the outskirts of McLean and the off-site training gym of the CIA’s Special Activities Division, the same division he’d headed up years ago before moving up the ladder to become the National Clandestine Service chief.

The reason the gym was off-site was because it “officially” didn’t exist. Nor was it open to all the agents-in-training of the Special Activities Division. Only a select group was invited to join, the CIA’s equivalent of Green Berets.

Accordingly, hanging a sign out front that read MEN ONLY would’ve been redundant.

Paying a visit to the gym was the second item on Karcher’s to-do list. It promised to be one the young agents would never forget, although that was precisely what they were required to do.

Nothing “officially” happens in a place that doesn’t officially exist.

Barging through the door, his heels stomping the cement floor with each and every step, Karcher marched straight across the middle of the windowless gym toward an old-school boom box on a milk crate that was pumping out Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

Without breaking stride, he grabbed a twenty-five-pound barbell off a rack and heaved it dead center into the boom box, a perfect strike that shattered the cheap molded plastic into a hundred pieces. The gym immediately fell silent, save for the lingering echo of Lars Ulrich’s drumbeats.

Then, as patiently as possible for a man desperate to save his career, Karcher waited until every set of eyes was looking directly at him. He scratched the chin underneath his oversized head before folding his arms, his deep voice filling the room until there was no escape, not for anyone.

“Okay, he barked. “Who’s the toughest motherfucker here?”

There were no takers, no volunteers.

This, despite the fact that membership in this particular gym was predicated on being a badass, and being proud of it.

A smart badass, though. Someone not prone to unnecessary risk or exposure, or, at the very least, someone who knew a trick question when he heard one.

Karcher glanced around amid the deafening silence, making sure to lock eyes with the dozen or so men in the room. He was giving each and every one of them his live-grenade look, the full-on crazy, the kind of batshit stare that could make Charles Manson himself step back and say, “Hey, man, whoa... chill out .”