“In here,” he said, motioning her behind one of the tall shrubs into a small glade brightly illuminated by the reflected glow of the city lights. “You want to sit on the grass?” he asked.
“In this suit?” She laughed, motioning to a concrete bench and inspecting it closely before sitting down. “This will do. I think it’s clean.”
He sat down beside her and put his arm on the back of the bench in order to face her. His face was drawn and serious as he waited for the noise of a newly airborne 747 to pass, its lights winking as it climbed past them at what appeared to be a sedate speed.
“Agent Bronsky, I think—”
“Wait,” she said, holding up a finger. “Call me Kat, okay? ‘Agent Bronsky’ sounds too much like my dad.”
“Oh?”
“My father was career FBI, too,” she explained. “An assistant deputy director when he died. Sorry to interrupt.”
He shrugged. “Kat, what I didn’t want to say within earshot of anyone else is this: I think evidence exists that the crash of that SeaAir MD-eleven in Cuban waters was a terrorist act.”
She nodded solemnly. “You think evidence exists? That’s a strange way to put it. What evidence?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. “You don’t know?”
“I need to explain that.”
Kat nodded slowly. “You certainly do. What, for instance, makes you think SeaAir was a terrorist act as opposed to a mechanical failure or a Cuban missile?”
“Because my life has been threatened within the past hour, Kat, possibly for talking to you, and definitely because of something that happened in D.C. several days ago. I think our intelligence community is scared to death over something they can’t control and are trying to suppress.”
She raised her hand. “Okay, whoa. Let’s start at the beginning. You said someone had given you information. Is that the evidence you’re talking about?”
“No. And yes. That was Walter Carnegie of the FAA, an old friend of mine. We go back twenty years to when he joined the Defense Intelligence Agency as a terrorist analyst and I was a cub reporter in the Beltway. Wally racked up fifteen years at DIA and then CIA before moving to the Federal Aviation Administration to try to give them a better, more intelligent ability to sort out terrorist threats.”
“But what did he give you?”
“Nothing,” Robert said. “It’s what he told me.”
“What did he tell you?”
“A month after the SeaAir crash near Cuba he called me one afternoon, scared silly, from a pay phone. He told me he’d stumbled into something related to the SeaAir accident that had him very, very upset and worried.”
“Did he tell you what it was?”
“No details or supporting facts, but he said he’d been asking questions about SeaAir that were apparently upsetting someone, because his life had just been threatened by a couple of goons in a Metro station. At first he thought they were Company operatives — CIA. But by the time he called me, he wasn’t sure. He told me that nothing like that had ever happened to him before.”
“But, Robert, what the heck did he have? What was he probing? How was he involved? You say he was asking questions…”
“On behalf of the FAA, in his official antiterrorist role. Wally said that when he went to our intelligence community, he found them totally spooked over SeaAir.”
“You said that.”
“Let me finish. He said they’re spooked and totally uncooperative because they think the crash is the first major act of a new, sophisticated terrorist group about whom CIA and DIA know nothing. They know nothing and don’t want to admit it.”
“What else?”
“Wally also said the airline industry is pushing the President to flat-out tell the public that SeaAir was not a terrorist act. Is FBI getting the same pressure?”
Caution led her to sidestep the question. “Go on about Carnegie.”
“Wally said he had hard evidence, and he was scared. He wouldn’t give me any more details. He wanted a deep-throat meeting, and we set a place and time. He was desperate to tell what he’d found. Time, he said, was running out.”
“Meaning what?”
“I wish I knew. I asked him if he could get me a copy and he said he had the file all locked up. He repeated that twice.”
“‘Locked up’?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Robert held up his hand to stop her from continuing.
“Well, is Wally a credible guy?”
“Completely, though he did sometimes see the shadow of conspiracies that weren’t really there.”
“So, he didn’t tell you what the evidence was, or what he had, and he didn’t give you anything directly. Did he tell you what he thought this so-called new terrorist group wants? It makes no sense to blow an airplane out of the sky if you’re not trying to accomplish something. Even hijackers have a goal.”
“I don’t know. As I say, he never showed for the rendezvous. I couldn’t reach him by phone or with messages the rest of that day or the next. I even dropped by his house. He wasn’t there. A day later I had to leave for Hong Kong on this trip.”
“Have you tried to call him from here?” Kat asked, noting the pained look on his face as he nodded.
“Kat, Walter Carnegie is dead.”
She crossed her arms and looked at him for a moment. “How?”
“Suicide, so his secretary told me.”
“And you don’t believe it.”
He was shaking his head. “The pope would be a better candidate for suicide.”
“Did he leave you anything in writing?” she asked. “Of course there’s no way to know yet. You haven’t been back.”
“That was just this morning. I’ve been trying to assemble the pieces in my mind ever since. Why would someone murder Wally unless they wanted to suppress or reclaim whatever information he had? He said the crash was terrorist-caused, and the group was new and powerful and unknown. Three days later he’s dead. That’s too coincidental for me, even before I have a chance to start asking questions.”
Kat was chewing on an index finger, recalling the afternoon conversation with Jake Rhoades. He’d used the word “spooked” to describe the administration’s attitude. But MacCabe was still a dangerous ace reporter for a major paper…
She turned to him suddenly. “On deep, deep, permanent, unbreakable, blood-oath background, okay?” she said, as she tracked another jumbo jet climbing past them with a throaty whine that even a private pilot like her could not resist watching.
He nodded, his eyebrows raised. “Of course. Absolutely deep background and unattributable. You know something?”
Kat shook her head. “Probably not, other than the fact that he was right about the administration wanting a cause other than Cuba or terrorists.”
“That much was accurate, then.”
“But we don’t even have a viable theory, let alone knowledge of a specific terrorist group who might have wanted to shoot down that MD-eleven, and we don’t know what this so-called evidence is.” She slapped at a mosquito, the only one she’d seen.
“But you are getting administration pressure not to label it terrorism?”
“I didn’t say that, Robert. Not officially. In fact, I didn’t say anything,” she said slowly. “Truth is, we’re not even having this conversation, and come to think of it, I’m not even here.”
“Okay, okay. But, Kat, none of that really helps with this mystery. My friend’s dead and I know in my heart he was murdered, especially now that I’ve been attacked. If those guys back at the hotel had pushed me into that backseat, I’d probably be dead by now, too.” He shifted around to face her more squarely. “You disagree? You think I’m paranoid?”