Schrader just nodded. Stone-faced.
“I realize it’s difficult for you. . keeping an eye on our guest, as you so accurately dubbed him. But he’s serving a valuable function. More valuable than even you can realize. In the long run. . in the big picture. . he may be saving this nation.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when he stops serving his purpose. . and that will happen fairly soon, Hubie. . then we’ll be able to dispose of him the way we all would probably like to dispose of him.”
“I think I understand, sir.”
“You think?”
“Yes, sir. But to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t really matter whether I understand or not, does it? As long as I do my job.”
“So you’re fine with everything that’s going on?”
“I am, sir.”
“Good.” The man leaned back in his chair, gave a relaxed smile, as if everything was now okay, as if all the cares of the world had just been lifted. “Now, what about the cop?”
Hubbell Schrader took a long breath before answering.
“Justin Westwood, you mean?”
“Is that his name?”
“Yes, sir. The cop from Long Island.”
“So what about him?”
“He’s kind of a wild card, sir.”
“You care to explain that?”
“The Bureau has crossed paths with him before. He’s good at his job.”
“Meaning you’re not sure you can control him.”
“I can control him, sir.”
The man across the desk leaned forward now. The cares of the world seemed to have descended a bit.
“Agent Schrader,” he said. “I don’t give a damn if you can control him. I just want to know that he is controlled.”
“He is, sir.”
“You understand the resources that are at your disposal.”
“I do, sir.”
“Our people are in place?”
“They’re in place.”
“If there are any doubts, if we need to know anything from him, anything at all, you understand what’s available to you.”
“Yes, sir, I do. I’ve been in contact with the appropriate people. Just in case.”
“Good. And I want to make sure you understand one more thing. Because it’s very important, Hubie.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“We’re talking about the future of this country. The future of the United States of America, Hubie. Think about that for a moment. Are you thinking?”
“Yes, sir. The future.”
“Good. So if, even for a moment, one single solitary moment, you think you might be losing control? Or if our other alternative is not effective?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Then you’re to take more extreme measures. The most extreme measure.”
The man leaned back again, and the smile returned to his face.
“Is there anything else we need to discuss, Hubie?”
“No, sir.”
“Good.”
Hubbell Schrader understood that the conversation was over, so he nodded, left the office, and went back to do whatever it was going to take to keep things under control.
17
Justin was a big fan of lists.
Police work was about details and thoroughness and all sorts of other things. But mostly, he thought, it was about lists. Things to do. Things already done. Things that couldn’t get done. Things to tell other people to do. Things to follow up on. Things to learn. Things to forget.
He had spent four years at Princeton studying business and almost two years in Harvard Medical School. If things had turned out differently-if he’d become a banker or a doctor as he’d originally planned, as had been expected of him his entire life-he wondered if he’d be doing the same things he was doing now. Entering columns of numbers or potential stock buys into his computer. Or putting together strings of ailments and symptoms. He thought that would probably have been the case. No matter how complicated or high-powered the job, it was all about information, knowledge; it was all about who made the right connections between otherwise unconnected things. Which meant it all came down to lists. So by the early afternoon he was sitting in what had recently been Jimmy Leggett’s office-so much for sentiment; space requirements took precedence-working away.
There were five people who might have a connection to each other, each of whom was now dead. Justin made one column of names. One of dates. And one of facts: anything he could think of that might be relevant to the investigation. The fourth column was for questions, for things he didn’t know but needed to find out.
The names in the left-hand column were Bradford Collins, Hutchinson Cooke, Chuck Billings, Martin Heffernan, and Ray Lockhardt. He began-because it was the only way to begin-with the premise that each of the men had been specifically and personally targeted. Lockhardt and Cooke had definitely been murdered; Justin was satisfied with the evidence he had in hand. Was it possible that Collins was an accidental death-just another innocent person caught in the Harper’s bombing? Yes. Absolutely. The same with Heffernan; it could be coincidence that he was eating at La Cucina when that bomb went off. Even Billings. There was no concrete proof that he’d been murdered. It was conceivable that the bomb squad cop had changed his mind about flying with Justin, that he had, as the official report declared, driven home and fallen asleep at the wheel. But Justin hadn’t become a banker or a doctor, he was a cop. A dogged and oddly fanatical cop. So he didn’t much believe in accidents or coincidences. He didn’t have that luxury. He had to go with the premise that they were all murder victims. And if there was a link between them, between any or all of them, he was sure as hell going to find it. By learning whatever he could and seeing where all that information led to and where the different elements crisscrossed. It would all be done logically and dispassionately.
With lists.
He began with the first man killed-Bradford Collins. To the right of his name, Justin put the date of his death, the date of the Harper’s bombing. Next to that, Justin began to list all the scraps of information he had about Collins. He was the CEO of the Texas energy company EGenco. Justin realized he had only a vague idea of what EGenco did-it was in the oil and energy business-and that what he mostly knew was that the company was immersed in a burgeoning scandal rivaling that of Enron. So he skipped over to the right and wrote in, “Understand EGenco.” Beneath that he added, “Details of corporate scandal.” And underneath that, he added, “Follow the money.” He underlined that last phrase for emphasis. Going back to the third column, Justin quickly scribbled everything else he knew: that Collins was a friend of the vice president of the United States, Phil Dandridge, and of the attorney general, Jeffrey Stuller; that Collins was sitting at or very near to the detonation point of the Harper’s explosion; that it was possible that the briefcase that contained the explosives had been given to Collins or someone else having lunch at his table. That reminded him of something else he needed to check, and he added this question: “Who was Collins having lunch with at Harper’s?” He stared at his own handwriting for a moment, not the worst he’d ever seen but not the most legible either, and finally he added two more questions: “Who the hell is Bradford Collins?” and “Why would anyone want him dead?”
He decided to stick with chronological order, so next on his list was Hutchinson Cooke. Justin put down the date the small plane crashed, November 7-the day of Jimmy Leggett’s funeral-and added the following information: the make of the plane, a Piper Saratoga, and its tail number: NOV 6909 Juliet. He scribbled in a few comments about his conversation with the ditzy Cherry Flynn-the name she’d given him, Martha Peck, the head of the FAA, and the fact that Cooke’s files had been removed prior to the crash, indicating that someone knew the crash was going to happen. He added the info that Wanda Chinkle had given him, about Cooke’s Air Force background, that he flew government officials, that for the previous eighteen months he seemed to have disappeared from the Air Force and had been collecting a salary from a company called Midas Ltd. Justin’s pen hovered over his yellow legal pad as he hesitated about making a first but very tenuous link: victim number one was a friend of Vice President Dandridge; victim number two had piloted government officials. To get a private pilot, one had to be fairly high up in the government-but as high up as the vice president? Justin added a new page to his list, with the heading “Connections.” And he added that one-followed by quite a few question marks. Even if the link was a legitimate one, he didn’t know what it could mean. But he left it on the page.