Permanent Interests Read online

  "Is it also true that you believe our government is seeking to cover up the circumstances of his murder?"

  It hit Colleen like a ton of bricks. Amy! Her good friend and confidante had leaked what Colleen had told her about the Mortimer case.

  "Why are you asking me these questions?"

  "Like you said, it's our job to investigate. If you have some relevant information, we'd like to know."

  "I told the RSO in Rome everything I knew."

  "And about this alleged government cover-up?"

  "Beats

  me."

  D.S. Warren was visibly irritated. "Okay. Let's move on." He opened a dossier and studied it for a moment.

  "You are currently cohabitating with Mr. …Robert Innes.

  Is that correct?"

  Colleen blushed. "What business are my personal affairs of yours?!" she shot back.

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  "Everything, Miss McCoy. We're security, after all."

  He resumed examining the dossier, slowly turning page after page. "Relax. It's strictly routine. The regs state that you must report to us any long-term, steady romantic relationships. We all have to."

  "I don't believe this is happening!" Colleen protested.

  "Here are two copies of Form OF-174, 'Report of Relationship.' One is for you. The other for Mr. Innes.

  Please complete them and return them by the fifteenth."

  "And if I don't?"

  "You risk having your clearances suspended. No security clearance, no Bangkok, Miss McCoy. Please cooperate. On the other thing, we know that you've been insinuating that there's more to Ambassador Mortimer's death than is apparent and that you believe there is some kind of conspiracy to squelch it. Does Mr. Innes believe this also?"

  Colleen rose. "Mr. Warren, I think that ends this conversation. If I have any divine inspirations on the Mortimer case, I'll be sure to let you know." She turned around abruptly and walked out.

  Colleen immediately called Innes. "Bob, this is eerie.

  And it frightens me. Now everybody knows what we know. And think. If they're out to mess up your life, what will they do next? And now to me?"

  Innes paused to reflect. "Toby Wheeler."

  "Huh?"

  "The

  Post guy who was doing those stories on Mortimer and criminal connections with the government."

  "What about him?"

  "He's now off the story."

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  "Oh?"

  "He's in the hospital. Somebody attacked him. He may never walk again. What a coincidence, huh?"

  Colleen needed a moment to collect her thoughts. "Bob.

  This is getting really scary. Should we go to the papers?

  Or to Congress? Or sit still? Or what?"

  "Berlucci."

  "Who's

  Berlucci?"

  "I'll explain later. Gotta go now."

  Dom Berlucci agreed to see Innes immediately. Innes ran the five blocks to FBI headquarters. He arrived on time, but out of breath and perspiring. He related the latest happenings to the FBI man.

  Berlucci listened intently while Speedy took notes.

  "Bob, you and I see eye-to-eye on Mortimer's death. The guy was involved with some definite sleazeballs. It's criminal. No doubt about it. The Director has asked me to go full steam ahead on developing leads. But all this business about a cover-up and some cabal within the administration to do people in. I don't know. Sounds pretty far-fetched. What proof do you have?"

  "I guess it's only circumstantial at this point," Innes replied. "But look at it. After my memo gets leaked, everything in my life takes a nose-dive. Then Toby Wheeler gets hit. Now they're after Colleen."

  Berlucci looked skeptical. "And Scher? Is he part of this…this conspiracy?"

  "Scher? Scher's just an idiot. Maybe they're using him to throw monkey wrenches in the works. Otherwise, he's just one of those guys who runs in circles all the time. And he's a vain egotist trying to make a name for himself."

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  "So then, who's pulling the strings?"

  Innes rubbed his chin, searched his brain. "I don't know at this point. Maybe…Dennison. And the White House."

  Berlucci shot a quick, doubtful glance at Speedy. He strained to appear attentive.

  "You guys think I've gone off the deep end, don't you?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "But I can read it on your face."

  "Bob, look. Work with us on the criminal investigation.

  Drop this other stuff. We'll eventually get to the bottom of this case. That's our business."

  Innes nodded in resignation. "Yeah. Right. Uh, I'll be in touch. Okay?" He got up to leave.

  Berlucci stood and approached Innes. "Bob. Cool it.

  And keep your head low." Berlucci poked a punch playfully at Innes's chin and smiled. "You got anything to pass along, contact Speedy here. He knows how to reach me."

  "Sure." Innes departed without making any assurances.

  Innes called the young presidential aides he'd met at the White House briefing, Wynn Kearnan and Prudence Harding. "I don't ask you to buy on to my thesis at this stage," he told them. "But the President should know that his people, especially Dennison and Scher, are botching the investigation. I think Dennison, at least, is doing everything in his power to sidetrack it. The White House can turn things around by banging heads and reassigning tasks."

  The staffers listened carefully, yet noncommittally.

  They promised to pass his views along.

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  And they did. In a joint memo to Nick Horvath, who promptly passed it along to his friend, Roy Dennison.

  "Thought you'd like to know what's going on in your Department!" Horvath scrawled jokingly in the margin.

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  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The day had started out particularly badly for the Secretary of State. The U.S. special envoy had delivered the Secretary's peace feelers to the Iraqi Sunni leaders the previous day. In typical Arab fashion, the envoy was received cordially and listened to attentively. Plenty of photographers and reporters were on hand to record the scene. All smiles. Quotable platitudes abounded -- "Peace Through Dialogue," "Weaving the Tapestry of Mutual Understanding," "Expanding the Foundation of Democracy." The NIACT cable Dennison had just finished reading was a dispatch from Embassy Baghdad detailing the massacre that same day of two Sunni villages by Shiite bands. The latters' leaders denounced American trickery in trying to lull the Shiites into a Sunni trap. They furnished to reporters the full text of Dennison's peace feeler. The media were having a field day. Once again, the inscrutable denizens of the Levant had dumped egg all over Uncle Sam's face.

  Senator Weems, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had just slashed the foreign aid budget for Pakistan and all of sub-Saharan Africa, and was making threats of going after aid for Israel next. It was PERMANENT INTERESTS

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  being whispered in the corridors on the Hill that the octogenarian, ex-boll weevil, Democrat-turned-Republican was suffering from early Alzheimer's and had it in for South Asians, Africans and Jews.

  The

  New York Times had printed its umpteenth editorial decrying "disarray in our foreign policy" and calling on the President to implement a "shake-up in his foreign affairs team."

  Horvath's memo followed. He still had an hour before his scheduled meeting with the Greek foreign minister to listen to the latest tirades from Athens against Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, northern Cypriots and all of Greece's other ancient enemies going back to the time of Pericles. Dennison asked to see security chief Ralph Torres right away.

  "Ralph, what the hell is going on here? Here's one of our officers going around blabbing about gangsters, Russians, conspiracies, corruption, a dead ambassador who might as well have been Al Capone's godson. The guy
's obviously unbalanced."

  Torres fidgeted nervously. D.S. Warren was with him.

  "Sure. We've pulled his clearances. Scher's fired him from his team. Human Resources has reassigned him to a no-brainer job. That's about as far as we can go."

  "Well, then fire the son of a bitch! Have him arrested.

  Or, better yet, committed!!" Dennison exploded.

  Torres exchanged an uneasy glance with Warren. "Mr.

  Secretary, we can't fire the man."

  "Why the hell not?!"

  "Uh, well, for one, there's no cause."

  "Treason! Insanity! Think of something, goddammit!!"

  "He doesn't fit the picture for treason, or more accurately, espionage. Why, we couldn't even nail Felix Bloch. As for insanity, Med would have to diagnose that--"

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  Dennison pointed a finger at Torres and spluttered, "You get Med to call him in for a physical. Today!"

  Silence.

  Dennison began to compose himself. "Okay. All right.

  What else do you have?"

  "Derek here called in his girlfriend, another FSO, and she was totally unforthcoming."

  "Have you talked to his Aunt Beatrice yet?" Dennison asked.

  "No," Torres replied, not catching the sarcasm. "But her friend, another female FSO named Amy Chen, told us that Mr. Innes and Miss McCoy are talking about going to the media with their story. Apparently, Innes is already talking to the FBI independently about the case."

  Dennsion looked at them incredulously.

  "Again, they feel that there's a major cover-up of the Mortimer murder and--"

  "Wait a minute. We've now got a girlfriend. She won't talk to you. But she's willing to blab to the papers. But not talk to you…And she has a pal who does talk to you. Is she living with Innes as well? Who is this Innes guy, anyway, Charles Manson? How many others are under his sway?"

  "Not exactly, Mr. Secretary. Uh, Miss Chen, she came to us because she was worried that her friend, Miss McCoy, was losing it, and that Innes had a screw loose and was a bad influence on her."

  Dennison slammed his fist on his desk. "That's it! See?

  Amy's got it! She's right! And she's a Foreign Service officer, part of the team, for crying out loud! The guy's nuts! At the very least he's a troublemaker. Now, I want you guys to go back to the drawing board. Bring in Med.

  Bring in the lawyers. Bring in the fucking Forestry Service, if that's what it takes!! We can't allow one loony PERMANENT INTERESTS

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  officer and his gullible girlfriend to go around making all kinds of crazy accusations and continue to suck on the tit of Mother America. Got it?"

  The two cowed security men mumbled something about looking into it further, got up and scampered past the waiting Greek foreign minister and out into the maze of State Department corridors.

  The football terms flew freely and carelessly. "This will ensure a level playing field." "The best defense is an offense." "This will be a Hail Mary pass nobody'll forget."

  "If the other party wants to scrimmage, we'll scrimmage.

  We can afford the best linebackers." And on it went.

  Middle-aged men, unsure of their virility, commonly turned to jock-talk to simulate an all too rare experience for many of them: genuine male bonding.

  The President's chief of staff, Howard Selmur, and Secretary Dennison reverted to such banter during their biweekly luncheons, as if to reassure one other that each was just one of the guys.

  "The other side is starting earlier than we expected.

  They think they've got a chance at it this time around. The way they're attacking us at this stage, we've gotta hit back, and hard," Selmur asserted, slamming fist in hand to emphasize the point. "I'm steering the money to our PACs as soon as I get it. But it's going to be crunch-time before we know it," he declared as he picked at his crevettes marinières.

  "Wait a minute," said a confused Dennison. "Aren't PACs supposed to channel funds to the parties? Not the other way around?"

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  "Yes. But for special action projects, it works the other way." Les Nigauds was bustling with the usual clientele of legislators, lobbyists, diplomats, powerbrokers, would-be kingmakers, and the merely pretentious.

  "'Special action projects,' huh? Don't tell me it's called

  'SAP' for short -- in good bureaucratic fashion?"

  "Roy, the President didn't make you Secretary of State for no good reason."

  "Hah. Hah. Well, I just sent two-hundred thousand to the Caymans account," Dennison said as he signaled the waiter for another Tanqueray martini, straight-up, with a twist of lemon.

  "It's already spoken for. You've got to get more."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Like I said, it's gone." A plastic smile bloomed on Selmur's jowlly face as he waved back to a senator on his way out of the pompous but "in" eatery on tony lower Connecticut Avenue.

  "Gone where exactly?" Dennison demanded, suddenly losing interest in the martini and his escargots à la Créole.

  "In case you haven't heard, an election year is coming upon us, my friend. Things are gearing up. Ever heard of the New Hampshire primary? The Iowa straw poll?"

  "Howard, don't patronize me!" Dennison hissed, trying to keep his composure. "And, besides, our guy doesn't worry about primaries. It's the election he's -- and we've --

  got to worry about, remember?"

  Putting his fish fork back on his plate, Selmur donned an expression of indulgent patience, the look a parent gives to a child who doesn't quite get it. He locked his fingers together at chin-level. "Roy. Have you been watching the news? This Roger Jalbert will lock in the nomination. No doubt about it. He's young, handsome, charming, wounded PERMANENT INTERESTS

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  war veteran, family man. The media are calling him a

  'Cajun Kennedy.' This is a real contender."

  Dennison sipped his martini nervously.

  "Gallup is going to announce tomorrow that the President's approval rating has sunk to 34 percent. Ergo: We've got to gear up the PACs, the state and local campaign committees, the media advertising. The whole shebang. And, with the way things are going, we're already late in the game."

  "Christ. Why didn't you domestic guys tighten things up a lot earlier?"

  Selmur glanced to each side, then leaned forward slightly to capture Dennison's undivided attention.

  "Russia's going to hell in a hand basket and rampaging all over its former republics, the Iraqis just spat in your face, NATO is on the verge of paralysis, the President was upstaged at the last economic summit and the fucking State Department can't develop one single, solitary lead on who butchered one of its ambassadors. Now, I ask you, where does the administration look the weakest?"

  Dennison gulped. His cheeks reddened. "Don't give me that shit, Howard! If Corgan would get off his duff and take a foreign trip now and then, or make a major foreign policy speech between elections, maybe, just maybe, the public might start getting the impression that their President cares about what's going on around him. Horvath tells me he's lucky if he sees the President once a week. You tell me where the problem really lies."

  Selmur pondered this a moment, then resumed his initial point. "What we need is more rainmaker Mortimers. And the Three C's: cash, cash and cash. And that's both our jobs, my friend. Unfortunately, our buddy Mortimer is irreplaceable, at least for the foreseeable future."

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  The waiter exchanged the finished appetizers with Coquilles St. Jacques for Dennison and cuisses de grenouille Provençale for Selmur, which they attacked lustily.

  "Speaking of Mortimer," Selmur continued, "the heat seems to be off since that black reporter got mugged."

  "Yeah…But there's a new twist I'm worried about."

  "What's that?" Selmur slurred as he chomped on a fat frog leg.

  "I've got one officer, maybe two now, who's
making noises about a government-organized crime connection in which Mortimer was just one player."

  "So,

  fire

  'em"

  "Can't. The regs won't allow it. Not unless he's caught selling secrets or stealing Uncle Sam blind. I've had him taken off Scher's group and pulled his clearances."

  Dennison snickered. "The son of a bitch is now processing Freedom of Information requests. Trouble is, he still won't let up. I'm pretty sure he was leaking stuff to Toby Wheeler."

  "What about Scher?" The sommelier replenished their glasses with a St. Emilion, Château Trotteville, '90.

  "Scher's like an obedient lap dog. He's bucking for a higher job in the administration. He knows on which side his knish is buttered."

  A light bulb went on in Selmur's head. "Your little troublemaker there. You say you can nail him for espionage. Why don't you make it happen?"

  Dennison was closely scrutinizing the dessert cart.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Set it up. Frame the twerp. I know a couple of Cubans who can help you."

  Dennison selected the tarte a la crème framboise.

  Selmur's idea broke his concentration. He turned to PERMANENT INTERESTS

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  Selmur. "Howard, I don't care what the rest of the world says about you. You're okay in my book."

  A

  simple

  café au lait topped off the meal.

  They were old hands at this stuff. They were taught by the best at CIA. And constantly keeping one's eye over a shoulder at all times for twenty years made one vigilant and cautious. Castro reportedly put out a contract amounting to one-hundred thousand dollars on each of their heads. An abiding obsession with anonymity, however, made them elusive targets.

  Getting over the shaky plank fence and up to the sliding rear door was easy. With a rubber truncheon, Ramirez crushed the neck of a neighbor's terrier before the creature could manage to get out the beginning of a bark. They procured much of their equipment, like the truncheons, from surplus sales of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and South African riot police. They used the best.

  Morales drilled three holes into the aluminum sliding door frame, using his silent, high-speed battery-powered drill, a gift from an ex-Stasi officer, now free-lancing, whom he had befriended in Berlin after the wall came down. The door opened easily and the two Cubans scampered into the Arlington townhouse. The place was just moved into, with boxes and trunks strewn about. Innes and Colleen still had a lot of uncrating to do.