Conspiracy (47 page)

Voices began to murmur in the other room. The reporters were snapping to. McSweeney would be there any second.

Ball took a deep breath, then turned around.

 

TOMMY KARR CONTINUED
his seemingly casual tour of the house, methodically checking each room while planting video flies.

“Oh, so there's the food,” said Karr, spotting a server leaving the kitchen with a tray of hors d'oeuvres. “What are these?”

“Liver pâté on herbed crackers,” said the man.

Karr took one and plopped it in his mouth.

“Tastes like liverwurst,” said Karr.

The man made a face and started to walk off.

“Hey, I like liverwurst,” said Karr.

Just as he grabbed two more crackers, a tall, balding man walked from the kitchen past him.

Ball. And he hadn't even bothered to don a disguise.

 

SENATOR MCSWEENEY SWEPT
into the house with a surge of energy, leading the President as if he were the host.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States!” announced McSweeney, injecting as much bravado into his voice as he could muster.

The crowd parted. McSweeney raised his hand.

I'll get through this easily, he thought to himself. I've been in much worse situations. It happened a million years ago, and they can't prove a thing.

TOMMY KARR PUSHED
the waiter to the side and started after Ball. But Ball was already going through the door, three or four steps ahead of him.

 

THERE HE WAS
; there was the bastard right in front of him, raising his hand, waving as if he were the King and everyone else peasants.

Ball knew he'd made the right decision. He pulled the gun out.

Someone yelled. Someone started to duck. Someone dove at him.

There were others—the President and his bodyguards.

Where the hell had they come from?

Ball pushed the gun forward and squeezed the trigger.

 

CHARLIE DEAN DIDN'T
realize what was happening at first. He saw a blond flash of hair flying out of the other room and realized it was Tommy Karr.

The Secret Service people grabbed at Marcke.

What's going on? wondered Dean.

And then he knew.

 

JIMMY FINGERS SAW
it from the side of the room, saw the man coming from the crowd. He recognized him, knew exactly who he was: Christopher Ball, small-town police chief from Pine Plains. The bastard had once threatened to lock him up during a particularly nasty committee fight years ago.

What the hell was he doing here, and with a gun?

 

MCSWEENEY SAW SERGEANT
Tolong in front of him, just to the side of his Secret Service bodyguard. McSweeney blinked, thinking it must be an apparition, a vision brought on by his unsettled nerves.

The vision didn't disappear. It was Tolong, not as he'd known him in Vietnam, but as Ball. He'd helped him settle years and years ago when the former sergeant hit rock bottom.
McSweeney, then a county legislator, had felt sorry for him—and guilty as well.

Plus, Ball had hinted that he might talk about what they had done if he had no other choice.

There was anger in Ball's eyes, anger that McSweeney hadn't seen since Vietnam.

He had a gun.

Something popped, and McSweeney felt a pain in his side.

 

TOMMY KARR THREW
himself forward. He grabbed Ball's back just as he fired the gun. Karr's momentum sent them both crashing to the floor.

Ball had more energy in him than Karr expected. The chief squirmed to his left, and worked his elbow up into Karr's ribs. Karr grunted with pain—he'd broken the ribs a few months back and they were still tender—then leveled a fist into the side of Ball's face.

“Secret Service!” yelled Karr. “I'm with the Secret Service! He's down! He's down!”

His cry was too late to stop the three burly agents from jumping on top of him, squeezing him against Ball, who still had his elbow in Karr's ribs.

“Just get the gun,” said Karr, fishing under Ball for his arm and the pistol. As he grabbed it, there was a muffled shot and a shudder beneath him.

 

JIMMY FINGERS CAUGHT
himself as he fell back against the table, propping himself against one of the dishes of fancy desserts.

McSweeney was down. Chief Ball was down. The President was being hustled from the house.

It was like a dream, a very, very bad dream.

But it was happening, right in front of him.

All Jimmy Fingers could think of was that the President had set this all up.

Of course he had. If Jimmy Fingers could arrange a mock assassination attempt, then it would be child's play for the President to arrange the real thing.

Someone with a tackle box came from outside.

A paramedic. The President had sent one of his Secret Service paramedics.

Jimmy Fingers pushed himself forward toward McSweeney. His legs were so rubbery that he nearly tripped, and after three steps he collapsed to his knees, right over the senator. The paramedic had pulled away part of his shirt and had what looked like a large towel pressed against the side of his stomach.

“Jimmy Fingers,” said McSweeney.

“Are you all right, Senator?”

“I know him,” said McSweeney. “Tolong.”

“No, it's Chief Ball,” said Jimmy Fingers. “I can't believe it. A police chief? You'll be OK.”

As the words left his mouth, he glanced up at the paramedic. The man grimaced and continued to work.

“I'm not going to run,” whispered McSweeney.

“Why?”

“I can't.”

“Did Marcke set this up? Did the President set you up?”

“The President has it all figured out.”

“You're going to be OK. You'll
be
OK,” Jimmy insisted.

“It's over.”

 

KARR FINALLY MANAGED
to convince the men on top of him that it was safe to get off his back. He slid his feet to the right of Ball's prostrate body and then, still holding Ball's arms, pulled him up.

“Still breathing,” said Karr.

“He shot himself in the chest,” said one of the Secret Service agents who'd jumped on Karr.

“We need another paramedic,” said another of the agents, talking into the mouthpiece at his sleeve. “Stat.”

Karr rolled Ball onto his back, and pulled away his blood-soaked shirt. The bullet had made a large hole in his chest, though there was so much blood it was hard to tell where exactly the gunshot was.

Ball blinked his eyes.

“Mr. Karr, this is Rubens. Is Mr. Ball conscious?”

“Barely.”

“Please ask him if he took the shot on the senator at the hotel in Washington.”

“Did you try to kill McSweeney before?” Karr asked.

“What?”

Rubens gave him the date and hotel.

Ball gave him a confused look. “No,” he said finally.

“Paramedic's here,” announced the Secret Service agent behind Karr, tapping him to make way.

 

THE E-MAILED THREATS
had several things in common: they'd all been sent by e-mails, they had all come from e-mail accounts created only a few minutes before they were sent, and they had all been sent over the Internet by a user who had found an unprotected wireless network.

And that was about it, at least as far as Gallo could determine. He sent a number of e-mail messages to the addresses used to send the messages; each contained tracers that would have helped him track down the sender's “true” address. Not one was opened. The e-mail Services that provided the accounts were of little help, since the information that had been provided was quickly shown to be fake.

What else did he know? Gallo got up from his computer to give his eyes and neck a break. He started doing push-ups on the floor.

The sender had oldish laptops; the working theory was that they were secondhand and disposed of after being used.

The sender knew at least a little bit about computer networks.

The sender moved around a lot. A message had been sent from Washington, D.C., one from suburban New York, and one from Las Vegas.

Gallo was on push-up seventy-three when his phone rang. Usually the phone meant trouble, but he was getting winded and decided to answer it anyway.

“Robby, this is Hernes Jackson. The Secret Service has
been looking at the last of the threatening e-mails, the one sent to Dalton.”

“No kidding. I'm, like, working that thing right now.”

“That's why I'm calling, Robby,” said Jackson. “A custodian found the laptop in Las Vegas, and the police tracked the owner to the Washington, D.C., area. He said he'd sold it at a used-computer meet in Washington several months ago. When the Secret Service showed up looking for the e-mail sender, the police told them about the notebook.”

“Um, the thing is, Hernes, there aren't going to be records of the same, right?” said Gallo. “I'm going to guess it was a consignment thing.”

“I know, but I thought you'd like to know.”

“Yeah.”

“I did have another idea.”

“Fire away.”

“You compared the e-mails to make sure they had the same author, right?”

“Sure. Didn't really need the text compare, but I did anyway.”

Text compare was a software tool that took two or more pieces of prose and examined them for “commonalities”; it could tell whether they were written by the same person or not. In this case, the messages were so similar, the tool was superfluous.

“The constituents whom McSweeney had trouble with—can we compare those letters to the e-mails?”

“Yeah,” said Gallo. “On it.”

 

THE PRESIDENTIAL LIMO
and the caravan of agents and aides traveling with it followed a preplanned exit strategy, racing to the highway in the direction of the airport. Though by now the Secret Service not only was in control of the situation there, but also understood exactly what had happened, they were taking no chances with the President's life. Feeder roads were shut down, and even traffic in the opposite directions was stopped. The airport itself was locked down. Air Force One was reported to be ready to leave as soon as the President went up the stairs.

President Marcke, however, had other ideas.

“In this political climate, leaving like this will make it look exactly like I'm running away,” he told Vince Freehan, the head of his Secret Service detail, as the limo headed for the airport.

“Please, Mr. President. We really do know what's best.”

“No, I'm afraid you don't,” snapped Marcke angrily. “I am the President. Your job is to do what I say. Not the other way around.”

It was the first time Dean had ever seen the President mad. It was more than the natural reaction of a headstrong leader when an underling tried to tell him what to do. Marcke was angry that McSweeney had been shot; it had been his responsibility to keep the senator safe, and he felt he had personally failed.

Dean guessed that the President was carefully considering his next move, thinking not about his own safety but of
the effect of the incident on the country. While the chief of staff and the head of the Secret Service detail spoke excitedly to a variety of people outside the limo, Marcke switched on the live television feed and watched the initial reports of the incident on the local news stations.

He remained silent until the motorcade pulled onto the airport grounds.

“Find out where Senator McSweeney has been taken,” he told the chief of staff.

“Pardon me, sir, but it's Sisters of Mercy Hospital,” said Vince Freehan. “We have secured the hospital.”

“Good. We're going to visit him.”

“Jeez, Jeff, that's not a good idea,” said Cohen.

“Bullshit it's not,” the President told his chief of staff.

“Listen, if this is a conspiracy, if the Vietnamese are involved, there could be other shooters.”

Marcke turned to Dean. “Are the Vietnamese involved?”

“Not that I know of, sir.”

If Cohen's eyes had been daggers, Dean would have bled to death. Freehan began making logistical arguments about why the President should stay away from the hospital.

“I am the President of the United States,” said Marcke finally, his voice calmer than before. “The President goes where the President has to. What if an enemy thinks he can scare me into running away?”

“There's a difference between running away and showing prudence, Mr. President,” said Cohen.

“If that hospital is secure enough for Senator McSweeney, it's secure enough for me,” said the President.

“You still have to be in D.C. for the Iranian-Israeli crisis,” said Cohen. He was still arguing, but he had the tone of a defeated man.

“We'll get there,” said Marcke.