“This is your company?”
“Yes. We have a highly trained security force of former Green Berets, Delta Force, and Rangers, who I used to rescue my employees in Afghanistan. I sent them after Vanessa because I knew how dangerous Carl could be. They were lucky enough to find her before Carl hurt her. My men were under orders to bring Vanessa to me. I was planning to call the authorities after I arranged for legal representation and psychiatric care.”
Wingate paused. He looked pensive. “Maybe I should have had my men take Vanessa directly to the police, but I have been able to do so little for her since her mother died and I…Well, I may have used poor judgment, but I would probably do the same thing if I had a second chance. Honestly, I just wanted my daughter safe and with me.”
“What happened after you learned that Vanessa had been rescued?” Kirkpatrick asked.
“I was in Cleveland making a campaign speech. I flew directly home.”
“Tell the court what Carl Rice did when he learned that your daughter was in your home.”
“Soon after I arrived, Carl invaded my house.”
“Was anyone hurt during this invasion?”
“Yes. Several of my guards were either killed or injured.”
“Once inside, what did Mr. Rice do?”
“He broke into the room where Vanessa was staying. I was talking to her when Carl attacked. One of my men distracted Carl, and I escaped and summoned the guards. We kept him pinned down until the police arrived. My daughter had called an FBI man named Victor Hobson, and he negotiated their surrender. I’m very grateful to him because Vanessa was not harmed.”
“I have no further questions for General Wingate,” the DA said.
The judge nodded to Ami. “Mrs. Vergano,” he said, “your witness.”
Ami slid a list of ten names out of her file. “Thank you, Your Honor,” she said, rising to her feet. “General Wingate,” Ami said, “who is Arthur Dombrowski?”
“I have no idea.”
“Who is Fredrick Skaarstad?”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of him.”
Ami read seven more names. The General denied knowing all of them.
“But you do know Carl Rice?” she asked after glancing up from the last name on the list.
“Yes.”
“Would it surprise you to know that I’ve just read you a list of the ten men whose records your daughter took from the safe in your home in California and gave to Congressman Glass?”
“Mrs. Vergano, those records never existed except in my daughter’s imagination. I assume she gave you those names, but I have no idea where she got them.”
Ami stared intently at the General, who braced himself for more cross-examination. After a moment, however, she shook her head.
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
The General looked surprised. He cast a quick glance at Kirkpatrick, who shrugged.
“Do you have any more witnesses, Mr. Kirkpatrick?” Judge Velasco asked.
“I may have one more. Can we recess so I can speak with him?”
“How long will you need?”
“Twenty minutes, half an hour.”
“Very well. We’ll adjourn for half an hour.”
As Wingate and Kirkpatrick walked up the aisle toward the courtroom doors, two Secret Service men and the General’s bodyguard formed a protective circle around him. More members of the General’s security force waited outside the courtroom. Kirkpatrick pushed through the doors, and the television lights flashed on as the reporters began firing questions at the candidate.
“The General will hold a press conference in an hour at his hotel,” Bryce McDermott said loudly enough to be heard over the din. “He won’t take any questions until then.”
“Let’s get you upstairs and away from this mob,” Brendan said.
They double-timed it up the marble staircase to the district attorney’s office, and Kirkpatrick led the General back to the conference room.
“Before you leave, there’s someone who wants to meet with you,” Brendan told Wingate.
“We don’t have much time,” McDermott said. “The General has to be in Pittsburgh tomorrow, and we still have the press conference.”
“I’m afraid this is important,” Brendan insisted as he opened the conference room door.
“Good afternoon, General,” said Ted Schoonover, President Jennings’s chief troubleshooter. He was seated at the conference table with Victor Hobson. “You know the assistant director, don’t you?”
McDermott pointed at Schoonover. “What’s he doing here?” he asked Brendan angrily.
“Mr. Kirkpatrick has no idea why I’m here, Bryce,” Schoonover said. “And the reason for our meeting is something I can discuss only with General Wingate. So, everyone but General Wingate and Director Hobson will have to step outside.”
“No fucking way,” McDermott answered. “General, we don’t have time for a chat with Jennings’s hatchet man.”
“You don’t have a choice, Mr. McDermott,” Hobson said. “This meeting is part of a criminal investigation and I’m exercising my authority as a federal agent to clear this room. You, the General’s bodyguard, and the Secret Service will have to wait outside.”
McDermott started to protest, but Wingate held up his hand.
“Wait outside, Bryce.”
“But…”
“I’ll be fine.”
As soon as the door closed behind Kirkpatrick, McDermott, and the General’s bodyguards, Wingate took a seat across from Schoonover and the assistant FBI director.
“We have a problem, General. Or, rather, you do,” Schoonover said.
“What problem?” Wingate asked.
“I’m afraid that some of your testimony under oath wasn’t true and I thought that you’d like to clear it up before the press finds out.”
“I’m not following you,” General Wingate said.
“You testified that you had no contact with Carl Rice between the time he was in high school and the time he invaded your mansion.”
“That’s correct.”
“During her cross-examination, Mrs. Vergano read you a list of names of men who were supposedly in the secret unit you ran out of the AIDC. You said you’d never heard of them.”
“That’s right.”
Schoonover took a sheaf of papers out of an attache case and pushed them across the table.
“Then how do you explain these?” he asked.
The General shuffled through the papers for a moment. They were covered with numbers and letters and appeared to be some kind of code.
“What are they?” he asked.
“Do you want to explain, Victor?” Schoonover said.
“Sure. Your daughter took the personnel records of the men in your secret unit from your safe.”
Wingate smiled. “There were never any records, Mr. Hobson. They are…”
“Yes, yes,” Hobson interrupted, “figments of the imaginations of two very disturbed people, as you testified, and I’m sure the originals don’t exist anymore. You’d have been a fool to keep them after Carl Rice killed Eric Glass to get them, and you are definitely not a fool. But neither is your daughter. Vanessa wrote down the names of the men before she gave the documents to the congressman, and that enabled me to track down the documents Ted just gave you.”
“These don’t look like personnel records,” the General said.
“They’re not. I did serve a search warrant at the army records center in St. Louis, Missouri, for the personnel records, and they found records for all the men on Vanessa’s list. They were similar to Carl’s official records. The men were all listed as having few if any combat missions, and most of those were early in their careers. They were also shown as having stateside duty for most of their time in the service. None of them had a rank over sergeant.
“But the personnel records weren’t the main thing I was looking for. Carl always claimed that he was a captain. A captain’s pay is significantly higher than a sergeant’s. Vanessa told me to look for the pay records, too. Strangely, none of the pay records for these men existed in St. Louis. The clerk I spoke with told me that a fire of mysterious origin destroyed a lot of their records in 1973.”