The senator shifted uncomfortably. “She got mixed up with the wrong people.”
“Yeah.” Thornton sat upright with — calculated — indignation. “You.”
Langlind looked at a painting. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Thornton countered with a bluff of his own. “I uploaded the recording of the phone call where you say Cathy knows too much and your buddy tells you that she’ll be taken care of.”
Langlind paled. “You have a recording of that?”
“Why do you think I broke into SofTec?”
“What’s SofTec?”
“The listening post.”
“Is that the place where the Littlebird audio goes?”
Thornton realized that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was no more than a glorified cutout in the operation. The recipient of Langlind’s “Mr. Robertson” call about the supposed ad in the alumni magazine, however, was responsible for killing Peretti, for starters. Who had Langlind called?
“I take it you didn’t know there was a Littlebird in your head,” Thornton said.
Alarmed, Langlind, who wore his watch on his left wrist, shot his right index finger to his right sideburn and rubbed, probing for the device.
“If you’re right-handed, it’s behind your left ear,” Thornton said. “But it’s pretty difficult to feel it.”
Langlind tried.
“Anyway, it’s disabled now, on account of SofTec blowing up,” Thornton added, though it was probable that the Littlebird operation had a redundancy system, maybe even in Bridgetown. He wanted Langlind to keep talking.
The senator clutched his forehead, as though trying to staunch pain. “You have to believe me, I had no idea whatsoever that they were going to kill Cathy.”
“What did you think they were going to do? Send her a strongly worded e-mail?”
Langlind took the remaining half of his scotch in a single slug. He got up, poured another from the crystal decanter on the mantelpiece, and dropped back into the seat with the weariness of having just climbed a mountain. “How can we keep my name out of this?” he asked.
“Right now, your name’s conjoined to the operation, and it’s only going to get worse,” Thornton said. “If, however, you were to implicate the true guilty party …”
“There’s no way I can do that.”
“No one has to hear that call recording.” Thornton put on an air of sympathy. “You were used. If you tell me who had Catherine Peretti killed, you can walk away.”
Langlind winced. “To face charges of election fraud.”
“That’s something we can work—”
“Also you’re assuming they would let me walk away.”
“They’ll be in Allenwood.”
“They’ll take me to Allenwood with them, given what they’ve got on me. And that’s at best.”
Thornton recalled Mallery’s speculation that Langlind Petrochemical might have made hay with the Littlebird intel.
Langlind thrust himself into an upright position. Still he appeared to be crumbling. He continued to feel for the Littlebird, muttering, as if to whoever implanted the bug, “So that’s how you knew …”
Election fraud and passing along inside information probably ranked among the more benign of Langlind’s transgressions, Thornton suspected. “Senator, this is your chance to make amends,” he said. “If nothing else, you’ll be acting patriotically, potentially saving lives.”
Langlind rose abruptly, inadvertently elbowing his tumbler from its perch on the arm of the chair. The glass shattered against the stone fireplace. He didn’t seem to notice. Fixing moist eyes on Thornton, he said, “No matter what, I’m a complete goddamned disgrace.”
He punched the wainscoting to the side of the mantel. A hidden panel sprang open, revealing a pistol of heirloom variety, a Colt model 1911, it looked like, with a hand-detailed steel barrel, ivory-inlaid grip, and, more pertinently, 45 ACP bullets sufficient to take Thornton’s head off. Hands slippery with scotch or perspiration, Langlind struggled to get a firm grip on the weapon.
Thornton threw himself over the side of his wing chair, then dove for the floor behind the seat. The leather and stuffing would reduce the speed of a lethal shot by only a few negligible miles per hour, but if Langlind couldn’t see him, he would have greater difficulty hitting him.
Thornton landed sharply, the sounds lost beneath the roar of the gun.
In the reflection on a ceramic sculpture, Thornton saw Langlind topple before the fireplace apron knocked the gun free of his mouth and he lay stockstill, a crater where his left eye and cheekbone had been. Brain tissue and blood streaked the white wainscoting like spilled paint. Suicide, Thornton realized, with a mix of shock, relief, and revulsion. His hands and forearms were dappled with more blood. He pried what he took for the ricocheted bullet from his forearm. A skull fragment, he realized.
What the hell were you thinking in coming here? he asked himself.
Followed by the more pressing question: Now what?
Call the police? He’d gathered no evidence, only left it: His fingerprints were everywhere, including in blood on the wing chair. Which was the least of it. Another brick of Semtex would be required to erase his biological presence from this scene. And still he would be damned by testimonies of four witnesses from the DOJ. Calling the authorities now would only add another lifetime to his sentence.
The pool of blood beneath the body was spreading along the floorboards toward Thornton. An odd idea struck him: What if Langlind has his cell phone on him now?
Thornton could scroll through the list of outgoing calls and find out whom Langlind called the day before Peretti was killed.
Why the hell not?
Rising from behind the wing chair, he averted his focus from the gruesome remainder of Langlind’s face. Kneeling by the body, which lay on its left side, he dipped his fingers into the right suit pants pocket and hit something metal and boxy. He withdrew the keyless remote for a Ford. Nothing else in the pocket.
That the cell phone would be in the gabardine suit coat draped over the sofa was too much to hope for. He got up and looked anyway. Nope, no sign of it.
Stomach clenched, he returned to the corpse, took hold of the slick shoulders, and rolled over the torso. Heavier than he looked, Langlind fell onto his belly with a splash, the blood peppering Thornton’s face. Grimacing, he shot a hand into Langlind’s left pants pocket. He found a BlackBerry.
He backed away and began scrolling through the recent calls.
And there it was: OCTOBER 23, 9:02 P.M.
Same as on the transcript.
The recipient’s number was in the 305 area code: northern Virginia. Thornton tapped open the Web browser and accessed the potent reverse phone directory to which RealStory subscribed.
Nothing for this 305 number. Could be that the phone was a prepaid; often, even long-held cell numbers didn’t appear in directories.
He wished he had reason to believe the FBI could get any further with the number. But if and when Musseridge and company got around to it, the phone would long since have been disposed of.
For a time, though, Thornton realized he had capital that might net him the identity of the killers. For as long as no one else knew Langlind was dead, he could pose as the senator and call the 305 number …
But then what? It was unlikely the person on the other end would answer by name. And, although Thornton once wrote an in-depth feature about a versatile theater actor, he couldn’t pass for Langlind to save his life.
He noticed, however, that Langlind had texted frequently. None of the accessible texts had been sent to the 305 number. But what was there to lose in texting it now?
Thornton chose TEXT, then entered “need 2 meet u asap someplc crowded,” and hit SEND, blipping the message into the ether.