Capitol Conspiracy (34 page)

58

D
EPARTMENT OF
H
OMELAND
S
ECURITY
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

B
en was pleased to see she was already in the computer room. That would make this ever so much simpler.

“Deputy Director Muldoon?”

She turned and greeted him. Her blouse was unbuttoned at least two buttons below what Ben might’ve expected from a deputy director, but he was not one to criticize. “Please call me Nichole, Senator. I got your message. How can I help you?”

Ben glanced over his shoulder before answering. “Nichole, what I’m about to tell you is extremely confidential. Can I trust you to keep this to yourself?”

She nodded. “The Department of Homeland Security is subject to congressional supervision. If a distinguished member of the Senate gives me an instruction, I’m honor bound to take it, unless it conflicts with other duties.”

“This won’t,” Ben replied. “Far from it. Nichole, you know that for some time many people have suspected the Oklahoma City assassins had inside information. I have reason to believe that information came from this department.” He took another deep breath. “From Director Lehman.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Even when he was deputy director, before Marshall was killed, he was one of the few people with the access and information to pull this off.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Think. Whose idea was it in the first place?”

“President Blake’s?”

“No. Blake got the idea from Lehman.”

Muldoon’s eyes fairly bulged. “Have you told him about your suspicions?”

“I just confronted him, yes. Problem is, he says the idea didn’t originate with him. He says he just took credit for it, but it originated with someone else in the department.”

“Who?”

“He claims he doesn’t recall. That it came in an in-house e-mail.”

“And you believe that?”

Ben smiled thinly. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. It’s easy enough to prove or disprove. If there was an e-mail, it can be traced. We just need to get into the building’s Internet server and search all Lehman’s e-mail. As you probably know, even if a message is deleted from a computer, it remains on the server until it is erased.”

“And you contacted me—?”

“Because Lehman told me that you oversee the in-house computer network. And I certainly can’t ask him to do it.” He took a step forward. “I need your help. Can you find that e-mail? If it exists?”

“Of course,” she answered. “It isn’t hard. I’ll get my tech staff on it immediately. I doubt if it exists—but if it does, we’ll find it, and then we’ll figure out who sent it.”

“Nichole, I need this as soon as possible.”

“Understood. It should be locatable employing some obvious and unique search terms. We’ll crack open the server and get right back to you.” She glanced at her watch. “Want to meet me again in an hour?”

“That would be great. I’ll be in the second-floor interrogation room waiting for you.” He paused. “Thank you for your help. If Lehman has been orchestrating this conspiracy, there’s no way of knowing what he might plan next. Too many people have already died.”

“Agreed. I’ll get right on it.”

“Thank you,” Ben said, barely above a whisper. “The future of this entire nation may depend on you.”

Fifty minutes later, Nichole Muldoon walked briskly into the second-floor interrogation room.

“Bad news,” she said, before Ben had a chance to ask. “Or good news, depending upon your current operating theory. There’s no e-mail.”

Ben rose to his feet. “You’re certain?”

“I’ve got the best people in the business. They checked and double-checked. It was an easy search to run. We scanned for references to a constitutional amendment prior to the presidential press conference when Blake announced it. Nothing.”

“Lehman didn’t get an e-mail giving him the idea?”

“I’m certain he didn’t. We ran several searches. Even if it was initially proposed in some form other than an amendment, we would have found it. It just isn’t there.” She glanced at the door, as if paranoid that someone might be listening. “Does this mean it really was Lehman’s idea? Why would he lie about that?” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God. Unless he really is guilty. Unless he is the mastermind behind the assassination attempts.” She almost fell into the nearest chair. “It was him!”

Ben glanced across at her calmly. “No.”

It took a moment for his response to register. “I…don’t understand.”

“It wasn’t Lehman.”

“But I thought you said—”

“I might have misled you a bit, Nichole. Sorry about that. But then—you flat-out lied to me, didn’t you?”

“I—don’t follow—”

“You didn’t call in any tech help—because you didn’t need it and you didn’t want any witnesses. And you didn’t invade the Internet server so you could find the e-mail. You did it so you could delete it.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“I don’t think so,” Ben said, slowly moving toward her end of the table. “Although there are some who might disagree.”

“I’m telling you, the e-mail isn’t there. Search for yourself.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that it’s gone now. But it was very much present two hours ago when Carl Lehman and I opened up the server and searched for it. Wanna see a copy?”

Muldoon blinked rapidly several times. “You set me up!”

“Yes, and so successfully, too. Maybe I have a future in politics after all.”

She looked at him sternly. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I don’t know anything about any e-mail.”

“Please, Nichole—don’t waste your breath. I have a copy. And we’ve traced it back to your desktop computer.”

“Someone else must’ve done it while I was out of my office.”

“We figured you’d claim that, which is why I set up this little charade. If you knew nothing about the e-mail and weren’t responsible for sending it to Lehman, why did you delete it? And we can prove that you deleted it. By comparing mirrors of the server before you opened it and after. That constitutional amendment was your idea—your power grab. You were the brains behind the attacks in Oklahoma City and Baltimore.”

“You’re insane.”

“No, I’m right, and we both know it. So why don’t you stop playing games? It’s just us two in here, after all.”

“You’re wearing a wire.”

“I’m not.”

Which didn’t stop her from patting him down, quite thoroughly. If Ben weren’t a married man, he might’ve enjoyed it.

“All right,” Muldoon said, an expression on her face that Ben wasn’t sure about. Was it supposed to be flirtatious? Alluring? Or threatening? He finally decided it was all of the above. “Let’s just pretend for a moment that I masterminded those attacks. How did I do it?”

“Oh, I think it would be easy enough for someone as deeply entrenched in the world of crime as you are. Someone so knowledgeable about terrorist cells, who they are, what they can do. It wouldn’t be hard for you to find some half-baked, broken-down, wannabe, sex-trading terrorist cell with a decent sharpshooter and torturer. Nor would it be hard to bend them to your will, not with your ability to float departmental funds to them, or to threaten them with prosecution, or to erase their records, or to arrange for them to be granted citizenship. I’ll bet they were putty in your hands.”

“Such a clever idea. But why would I want to do such a thing?”

“To get your amendment passed,” Ben answered. “Oklahoma City was to get it on the national agenda. Baltimore was to make sure it passed—and to get rid of Lehman, so you would become the natural choice to take his place. You set him up—baited him into a foolish attempt to save Agent Zimmer’s life, then probably radioed your accomplice and told him Lehman was coming. That part of your plan fell through, thanks to Agent Zimmer’s enormous resourcefulness, but no matter. There would undoubtedly be other opportunities to knock Lehman off.”

“And I did all this to get an amendment passed?” she asked quizzically, eyebrows darting.

“It is your brainchild, after all. You let Lehman, then the president, take credit for it. All the better—deflect suspicion from yourself. Attract no attention, while quietly making yourself the most powerful person in the world.”

“Oh, please.”

“It’s a fact. The president may be the leader of the free world now, but as soon as the Emergency Security Council declares a state of emergency, they become much more powerful. They obtain the right to remove basic American rights and privileges. The president can’t do that. Neither can anyone else. Sure, you’ve got a committee, but there are only six people on it, and you’ve demonstrated repeatedly that you are very skilled at manipulating others. Especially men. And most or all of the other committee members were likely to be men. You’d smile that smile and unbutton your blouse and they’d give you whatever you wanted. You’d control law enforcement, plus you would no longer be bound by any constitutional restrictions. You, pure and simple, would be the most important, most powerful person in the nation. You could do anything you wanted to do.”

“But only as long as the emergency state continued.”

“And I have no doubt you could keep it going for a very long time, if not forever, by issuing Orange Alerts or alleging that someone has weapons of mass destruction, or staging an assassination attempt—whatever it took. You’re a clever woman. You’d find a way.”

She stared at him, her eyes growing gray. “Maybe the country would be better off.”

“Tell it to the people who died in Oklahoma City. Or Director Marshall or Senator Hammond. You must’ve been stunned when your henchman Senator DeMouy was murdered by his wife and her lover. But as always, you rose to the occasion. You realized that it helped you. You had no motive to kill him. All the murder did was silence a possible leak. You obviously didn’t care how many people died—just so your precious amendment passed.” He paused, then looked directly into her eyes. “Was your need for power so great that people had to die for it?”

Her nostrils flared. Her rosy face began to pale with anger. “You’re so pious. So self-righteous. Of course, you wanted the amendment too, before you lost your nerve and killed it. But now you want me to take the blame for trying to make this nation stronger.”

“You mean, for trying to make yourself stronger.”

“No, I don’t! Have you read anything about Rome?”

“I’ve heard this lame analogy before.”

“It’s a fact, Kincaid—America is dying. Can you seriously doubt it? Look around you. Crime everywhere. People getting dumber, not smarter. More violent, not more enlightened. More selfish. More desperate to be constantly entertained. And we face threats of a magnitude such as this nation has never seen before. Make no mistake—the barbarian hordes are banging at our gates. One well-placed coordinated attack could bring this nation to its knees—and they have the money and the determination to do it. What chance do we have? Namby-pamby do-gooders like you aren’t going to save us. The only hope we have rests with people willing to fight for our freedom. People willing to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure our safety.”

“By eliminating every constitutional right we have.”

“If necessary, yes!” Muldoon said indignantly. “Good God, what business do we have monkeying around with search and seizure laws when the barbarians have nuclear weapons? Do you think they care about constitutional rights? Hell, no. They use them against us! They count on them to handicap us. They depend on our inability to arrest without cause or to search without a warrant or to restrict their speech or their ability to assemble. They think we’re weak-willed fools. And they’re right. What would you rather have—freedom of speech or freedom to live with some terrorist regime threatening to kill you at any moment?”

“You killed fourteen people. I’m betting you planted the bomb on the presidential limo while it was still at the airport.” He paused. “The bomb that almost killed my best friend.”

“How many died on 9/11, huh? How many others have died in terrorist attacks all around the world? Are we just going to sit on our butts and take this? Or are we going to do something about it?” She was breathing rapidly, heaving. “Well, damn me if you will, but I tried to do something about it. I refuse to play prisoner to those bastards.”

“Except,” Ben said, “your amendment would’ve made us all prisoners. Just a different kind. Instead of being caged by terrorists, we’d be caged by ourselves. By our own government.”

“Isn’t that better?”

“I prefer to remain free.”

“At what cost?”

“Look—if you really wanted power, if you wanted to take on the terrorists, why didn’t you run for political office? Maybe even the presidency?”

“That might work for an ass like Blake, but I could never be elected.”

“I’ve been telling people for weeks now that I could never be elected. But the truth is—you just don’t know.”

“I do know. I’m unelectable. I’m pretty, smart, sexy, single, and female. No man would ever vote for me. They might all want to screw me, but they won’t vote for me. If I want power—if I want to be in a position to save this nation from itself—I have to go about it another way.”

“By killing innocent people.”

Her jaw tightened. She stepped toward him, her eyes on fire. “You know, I’ve had about as much of your indignant twaddle as I’m going to take, you—”

“If you’re about to threaten me, don’t.”

“You think I won’t hurt you because you’re a senator?”

“I’m quite certain you would. But you can’t.”

“I don’t need to kill a pip-squeak like you. That e-mail doesn’t prove anything. And as you may have noticed, my enemies have a habit of disappearing. Just when you least expect it. Maybe when you’re walking to work, or strolling in the park, or out on a picnic with that pretty new wife of yours. Maybe I’ll take her out, too. Two birds with one stone.”

This time, Ben’s jaw clenched.

“I know lots of people,” she continued. “Dangerous people. I can take you out anytime I want. And if you breathe a word of this conversation to anyone, I’ll deny it. I’ll deny we even spoke.”