Dead Lawyers Tell No Tales (26 page)

FOR A WEEK,
the weather was hot and humid with highs reaching one hundred degrees, making global warming seem immediate and real. The forecast for Saturday, June 15, was no different. Possible afternoon thunderstorms. Light wind. Lots of sun and dripping with humidity.

Kerri wondered why anybody in their right mind would go to Busch Gardens on a day like this.

As it turned out, the park was jammed with thousands of people who could think of no better way to spend their Saturday than walking around on asphalt and standing in line with hundreds of other sweaty park guests, crushed together, winding their way to the front of the line, all to enjoy two or three minutes of bliss on one of the park’s big roller coasters.

As Kerri hustled through the park, heading toward the Festhaus at the far end, she looked with envy at the “normal” families. There were moms and dads with kids Maddie’s age, studying their maps and trying to decide what ride to go on. Eating cotton candy. Waiting in line at
the water fountain. Watching the Clydesdales. Laughing together. Even arguing with each other.

Is this the way normal families spend a Saturday afternoon?

She and Landon were burning the candle at both ends, and Kerri was worried that Maddie was paying the price. The Elias King trial seemed to have Landon handcuffed to the office. Kerri’s job had its own set of unreasonable demands. Add to that their 315-pound live-in guest and a mysterious man in a black T-shirt from Cipher Inc. following them around all day, and you had the ingredients for an extremely dysfunctional childhood.

Since the deaths of Brent Benedict and Rachel Strach, Kerri had been feeling separation anxiety whenever she was away from her daughter. Even on days like today, when she knew that Maddie would be safe with Billy, Kerri couldn’t help thinking about the what-ifs. There was still a serial killer on the loose and no serious leads to find him, and Landon had been letting his guard down lately. “God will take care of us,” he would tell Kerri. She agreed with that, of course, but she didn’t think God wanted them to be stupid.

She was at Busch Gardens today because Sean Phoenix had called and requested a meeting. For reasons he didn’t share, the meeting couldn’t take place at the Cipher headquarters in northern Virginia. Instead, on the theory that the safest place to meet was in the middle of a crowd, he had set up this meeting at the theme park on a busy Saturday afternoon.

Landon and Billy knew that Kerri had to meet with a source, but she couldn’t tell them who. Landon didn’t like Kerri running off on her own like this, but he knew the Wolfman would be trailing at a distance. Given the amount of time Landon had been spending at the office, he wasn’t winning many arguments lately anyway.

The Festhaus was a two-thousand-seat festival hall where guests were entertained by dancers and enjoyed traditional German food. While the crowd ate, the dancers taught the polka and re-created a bit of authentic
German Oktoberfest spirit. In other words, it was like a big German tailgate party.

The building had a Bavarian feel to it. When Kerri stepped inside, a wave of cool air hit her face as her eyes adjusted to the semidarkness. There were picnic tables scattered throughout the hall and a big stage in the middle. Kerri placed her sunglasses on top of her head and scanned the place. She was fifteen minutes late and didn’t see Sean Phoenix anywhere. She pulled out her phone and dialed his number.

“May I help you?” a deep voice said behind her.

Startled, she turned around quickly. “You about gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry about that,” Sean said, flashing a big grin and working the dimples. He looked relaxed in his shorts, T-shirt, dockside shoes, and baseball cap with his sunglasses propped on the bill. “You looked lost.”

Kerri hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and Sean talked her into going through the line with him. She grabbed some German bratwurst, a huge piece of chocolate cake, and a drink. She followed Sean to a picnic table at the far end of the hall. He placed his tray at the end of the long table, a good distance from the family of six at the other end who all looked exhausted.

Kerri sat facing the middle of the hall, and Sean squeezed in next to her, rather than on the opposite side. She looked askance at him, but he shrugged it off. “I never put my back to the crowd,” he said.

She thought about moving to the other side of the table but decided to slide down a little instead.

“I don’t bite,” he said.

“That’s what they all say.”

She thought about the fuss she had made over the pictures of Rachel and Landon and knew she would have a hard time explaining things if that same photographer was lurking about. But it was different, she told herself. There would be no touching or kissing or dropping somebody off at their apartment because they had been drinking too much.

Unlike Landon’s meetings with Rachel, this one was strictly business.

Yet Sean seemed determined to lighten things up and suggested a game where they would pick out a family and tell that family’s story. Sean was a gifted people-watcher, and he picked up on little hints that Kerri hadn’t noticed before. As they ate, he gave her an informal clinic on facial expressions and body language and even pointed out a few men who were stealing glances at other women when their wives weren’t looking. Including, to Kerri’s embarrassment, a guy they caught staring at her on two separate occasions. The man tried to pass it off like maybe he was just surveying the picnic tables, looking for a friend. But when his gaze lingered on Kerri, Sean lifted his beer in a mock toast, and the man looked quickly away.

Just when they had taken their first bite of German chocolate cake, having finished off the bratwurst, the music started. A band was lowered in a gazebo from the ceiling onto the stage, and brightly clad dancers, the boys in knickers and the girls in frilly dresses, came waltzing arm in arm down the middle aisle. They smiled and chanted and taught the crowd a few German beer songs. The audience, including Sean and Kerri, raised their glasses for a traditional German toast.

The second time the dancers scoured the crowd for volunteers, Kerri saw it coming. One of the guys eyed her and started weaving his way back to their table. She tried to shrink into her seat and duck her head, but it didn’t work. He bowed politely in front of her and asked her for a dance.

“No thanks,” she said. She scowled in case the guy was a slow learner.

“Nonsense!” Sean said. He took her by one elbow, and the persistent little German dancer took her by the other. Before Kerri knew what was happening, one of the female dancers had latched on to Sean as well, and the two couples were on their way to the dance floor to join in a German polka.

Sometime during that song, Kerri’s perception of Sean began to change. He was no longer just a sophisticated spy; he acted like a little kid, smiling and singing and twirling the girls around. He puffed out his chest, tilted his head back, and laughed. He was a terrible dancer,
but he didn’t seem to care. Kerri, by contrast, felt stiff as a board and self-conscious, counting down the seconds until she could get back to her seat.

Toward the end of the song, Sean managed to extricate himself from his dance partner and grabbed Kerri’s hand, turning her around in a rough approximation of what the other dancers were doing. She had to smile in spite of herself, and she somehow managed to keep from tripping.

The German dancers smiled and thanked them when the song was over, and Sean let go of Kerri’s hand. Like a perfect gentleman, he escorted her back to her seat while the dancers started prowling around for their next set of victims.

“If you ever do that to me again, you’re dead,” Kerri said.

Sean grinned, his eyes sparkling. “I’ve been threatened by less beautiful women.”

She ignored the comment but this time stayed on the opposite side of the picnic table.

WHEN THEY FINISHED THE CAKE,
Sean leaned forward and lowered his voice. The smile was gone, the eyes serious. Because the band was still playing, Kerri found herself leaning forward as well, making sure she heard every word.

“Her name was Fatinah Najar,” Sean said. “She was a beautiful Syrian woman who was once part of the Hezbollah. I flipped her and she became one of my assets, which is a nice way of saying that we used her to get inside information from the terrorist organization and some high-ranking Syrian officials. Do you know what the name Fatinah means?”

Kerri shrugged. She was thrown off by this new direction. But her source was talking now, and she knew the number one rule: keep him talking.

“I don’t have a clue,” she said.

“It means ‘fascinating, alluring, or enchanting.’” Sean paused for a moment and looked down at the table. “She was all of that,” he said, lifting his eyes back to Kerri. “She had these beautiful almond eyes and
this laid-back Mediterranean personality. As a little girl, she lost her dad during an Israeli bombing raid. One year later, on the anniversary, her mom died as a suicide bomber. Fatinah bought the Hezbollah party line until she turned twenty-five. That’s when I met her. We fell in love. Eventually she became one of us.”

This was, Kerri knew, the woman she had heard the rumors about. The reason Sean had left the CIA and started Cipher Inc. Sean did a quick visual sweep of the room before continuing, pain pulling at the edges of his mouth.

“A year later, the Syrians arrested us and put her in the cell next to mine. They released me unharmed but not until after they had interrogated me and made me listen to Fatinah being tortured and raped. After my release, we could have rescued her. We had enough agents and firepower to break her out of that place. But the guys in suits decided we couldn’t risk it politically.”

Sean seemed to be in another place now. He had a faraway look, describing what had happened in a calm and detached tone devoid of feeling. It was almost as if he wouldn’t allow his emotions to be part of the equation anymore, for fear that he wouldn’t be able to handle where they might take him.

He told Kerri about his short-lived attempt to rescue his lover, cut off by his own fellow agents.

“The Syrians killed her, Kerri, because she wouldn’t talk. They cut out her tongue and let her bleed to death. She probably choked on her own blood.”

The thought was appalling to Kerri, but she didn’t flinch. She had her hands folded together, forearms resting on the table, leaning forward. She kept her eyes on his. “I’m sorry,” she said. It occurred to her that the average American, the average Busch Gardens guest on this hot summer day, had no idea how much people like Sean Phoenix and Fatinah Najar had sacrificed to protect their freedom, to make days like this possible.

“Victor Carson made the call,” Sean continued, referring to the head
of the CIA. Kerri saw a flash of flint in the blue eyes, the same look she remembered from their first meeting. “He consulted his top lawyer, a midlevel bureaucrat from the State Department, and the two of them decided to just let her die. They probably discussed it over a Scotch and martini.”

Sean clenched his jaw, and Kerri could tell that time had not healed the wounds. She wondered if Sean had ever truly loved anyone again.

“For the past three years, I’ve had some folks investigating Mr. Carson. I’ve now got sources and documents for everything I’m about to tell you.”

He paused so the magnitude of what he was saying could sink in. He had dirt on the head of the CIA, and he was about to entrust Kerri with the story! It might not be Watergate, but it was bigger than anything she had done before. Even the Universal Labs story was child’s play compared to this.

“Carson has files on D.C.’s top politicians,” Sean continued. “Democrats
and
Republicans. And we’ve got copies. He’s used the information in those files for blackmail. There’s a reason the CIA’s budget never gets cut. A reason that Carson is never called to the Hill for a congressional investigation.

“I’m big on loyalty, Kerri. You proved yours when you protected our sources in the Universal Labs story. Later, when we leave the park and you get in your car, reach under the front seat, and you’ll find a copy of my entire Carson file. You can take it from there.”

Kerri nodded. She had stepped through the looking glass again, into the Cipher Inc. dreamworld where stories fell from trees. Sean could have planted this story with any one of a thousand other journalists, many of whom had more experience and credibility than she did. “I appreciate your trust,” was all she could think to say.

Sean reached out and touched her hand. It wasn’t a romantic touch—more like a point of emphasis.

“I know that I’m emotionally involved with this,” he said. “And I want you to verify everything. I would like nothing more than for Mr.
Carson to get what he’s got coming. But that’s why I’m taking myself out of the equation. It’s got to be evaluated by somebody whose judgment isn’t clouded by revenge.”

“I understand,” Kerri said.

At some point, the Festhaus band had stopped playing and the dancers had retreated to their break room, where they would wait for the next show. The family of six had left as well. But Kerri hardly noticed. Her life, already a chaotic mess, was about to go to the next level of stress. She could already feel the pressure.

“We’d better get going,” Sean said.

“Yeah,” Kerri agreed. “We’d better get going.”

///

Sean walked with Kerri toward the main gate, keeping one eye on the other guests. He glanced a few times at her profile, struck by how beautiful she was.

On the way, the conversation turned to Landon’s upcoming trial. Sean listened intently as Kerri shared her fears about her husband’s safety and her concerns that Landon was defending a guilty man.

“Who does Landon think killed Erica Jensen?” Sean asked.

“That’s the whole problem. He has no idea.”

They were walking by the pasture where the Clydesdale horses were grazing. “They’re beautiful animals, aren’t they?” Sean asked.

“Yeah,” Kerri said, though she sounded distracted.

“That was enthusiastic.”

“Sorry, I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

“Why don’t I put our folks on it?” Sean suggested. “We can work behind the scenes so nobody knows. If we figure something out, I can tell you, and you can decide whether to share it with Landon.”

Kerri seemed to straighten her shoulders a little. “That would be tremendous,” she said.

They rode the tram together to Kerri’s car. Sean was parked in a dif
ferent lot but had insisted on accompanying her. A few rows away, they saw the Wolfman milling around.

“One last thing,” Sean said, as they approached her vehicle. “Before the King trial starts, I’m going to have the Wolfman deliver four Kevlar vests—one for you, one for Elias, one for Landon, and one for Billy Thurston. Do me a favor and wear them to and from court. And buy Thurston a suit coat, so everybody won’t know you’ve got them on.”

“Do you know something I don’t?” Kerri asked.

“No. I just need my prized reporter safe.”

He opened her car door and had her check under the seat before he closed it. She held out the file for him to see.

“How’d they get in?” she asked.

Sean smiled. “It’s what we do.”

He told her to be safe, closed the door, and stood in the parking lot as she drove away.

She reminded him so much of Fatinah. He could tell, though he knew Kerri wouldn’t admit it even to herself, that she felt the chemistry too.

Landon Reed was a lucky man. He had married way over his head, way out of his league, and he would probably be the first one to tell you so.

Sean liked Landon. The kid had guts. But still, Sean had to wonder: What kind of chemistry would exist between him and Kerri if Landon Reed weren’t in the picture?

///

On the way home, Kerri’s head was buzzing with the reality that she and Landon, just another young couple trying to make ends meet, were now in the vortex of some pretty big stuff. Even the Elias King trial, which had seemed all-important just a few days ago, would be dwarfed by the potential story about the director of the CIA. That story would dominate network news for months. First the director. Then every politician
who had yielded to his threats. Her mind raced with the implications of what was coming. Assuming, of course, that everything checked out.

She got off at an exit in Newport News, found a hotel parking lot, and pulled out the file. She spent forty-five minutes glancing through every piece of paper.

It checked out, all right. Not surprisingly, Cipher Inc. had done its homework.

The next few weeks were going to get very interesting.