Fatal Conceit (54 page)

“But what about her tearful testimony and all that talk about true love?”

Lindsey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, she said she came to New York to be an actress, and I guess she landed a starring role. I have to say, she pulled the wool over a lot of people's eyes. I know Rod liked her—that's why she was at the party—and the general was certainly taken by her.”

Caulkin walked over to the defense table to look at his notes, then turned back to the witness stand. “Would there have been any reason for General Allen to believe that his stance on the events in Chechnya would pose a threat to him?”

Lindsey looked thoughtful for a moment and then shrugged again. “General Allen was the acting director of the CIA and faced confirmation hearings. He made it quite clear in many circles that he expected to get the job. He might have seen this difference of opinions as posing an obstacle to his goals.”

“Was he expected to stick to the party line at the congressional committee hearings?” Caulkin asked.

Lindsey spread his hands as if the answer wasn't as clear-cut as all that. “Well, in any administration, a certain amount of common concurrence is expected. We all can disagree and voice those disagreements, but in the end, the president is the boss,” he said. “As in any company, disagreements are generally kept in-house, but a united front is presented to the rest of
the world. That's called loyalty. But if General Allen felt compelled to give his opinion to the committee, no one would have stopped him.”

Quiet for a moment as though to consider his next statement carefully, Lindsey then went on. “I have wondered since his death if he felt that Mr. Fauhomme and I would sabotage his chances for confirmation because of this disagreement. After all, he knew that we have the president's trust and confidence. I think he made his tape so that if the president changed his mind regarding his appointment, it could be ‘leaked' to the press as if he'd been prevented from giving his opinion.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Well, if he was being blackmailed by these women and Mr. Baum, then that might have had him rattled as well. He knew that Baum worked for Mr. Fauhomme, and that Lee was Rod's girlfriend. Sam Allen was under a lot of pressure, even more than I knew, and a guilty mind jumps to a lot of paranoid conclusions.”

Caulkin strolled over to stand in front of the witness with his arms crossed loosely. “Mr. Lindsey, the district attorney has made a great deal about some of your actions following the death of General Allen. One was your conversation with Constable Spooner after you learned from the FBI that Ray Baum had died in a car accident. Would you care to explain that?”

“Certainly,” Lindsey said, “though it's a long story. Anyway, following the discussion with General Allen regarding his proposed testimony to Congress, Mr. Fauhomme and I concurred that the general was exhibiting some rather unusual behavior. Then the morning of Allen's murder, I received a call from Mr. Fauhomme indicating that he'd overheard a telephone conversation between Miss Lee and Miss Blair in which they seemed to be discussing a video recording about General Allen. He didn't put two and two together until he turned on the television and saw the news about the general's death. He called me in something of a panic—I was
in New York and staying at a nearby hotel—and that's when I said he needed to send Ray Baum to Miss Blair's apartment to talk to her about this.”

“Mr. Baum? Why not the police?” Caulkin asked as if surprised.

“At that point the best information we had was that this was a suicide,” Lindsey replied. “I have to say that some alarm bells were going off in my head—I haven't been in the intelligence game all this time for nothing—and I wondered if this video had anything to do with the general taking his life. We didn't know anything about Mr. Baum's role as the killer, and he was the person we could get to her the fastest. Rod told me that in hindsight he wondered why Baum seemed so eager to go to Miss Blair's apartment.”

“So what does this have to do with your conversation with Constable Spooner?” Caulkin asked.

Lindsey nodded. “We were starting to put two and two together as far as Miss Blair and Mr. Baum having some connection, possibly with Miss Lee, though to be honest, Rod didn't want to believe that. I mean, Miss Blair just happens to be able to outwit and outrun someone she supposedly had no reason to suspect, except for a tattoo she saw on a grainy security camera? Mr. Baum had disappeared and we couldn't contact him. The next thing we know, I got a call from the FBI saying he'd died in a car crash and that I needed to contact Constable Spooner. Call it my spy paranoia, or a hunch, but Baum showing up in Orvin? Why was he in Orvin, except that he knew he could find Miss Blair there? Suddenly it was clear to me that he'd arranged to meet her there.”

“But what about the shootings?”

Lindsey shrugged. “Wouldn't be the first time there was a falling-out among killers.”

“And Miss Stupenagel and Mrs. Ciampi?”

“I have no idea, really,” Lindsey said. “Miss Stupenagel could be telling the truth—she was looking for Miss Blair, too, and figured
out where she was hiding. Or . . . well, I'll leave it to others to speculate.”

“What about the things you said to Constable Spooner?”

“Again, I tend to think in worst-case scenarios,” Lindsey said. “The whole situation was murky. I've got a dead general who was the acting director of America's biggest spy agency; I have a woman on the run who supposedly has some sort of recording involving the general, and I have no idea if it includes sensitive classified material; and I have a rogue NSA agent involved in a car crash. I didn't know who to trust or what information I could share with a small-town law officer.”

Caulkin walked over to the defense table and checked several items on a legal pad. Up on the stand, Lindsey attempted to pour himself a glass of water, but his hand trembled so much that he just put it back down. His attorney then closed his notepad like a professor finishing his lecture for the day. “Mr. Lindsey, you're a very well educated man. A Rhodes scholar. A Ph.D. in International Studies. Could you have made more money in the private sector?”

Lindsey smiled slightly. “That's not hard compared to a government salary.”

“So then I have to ask you, why did you decide to dedicate your life to public service?” Caulkin asked.

Lindsey blinked back what appeared to be genuine tears. “I wanted to serve my country,” he said, his voice husky with emotion, “and the American people.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lindsey,” Caulkin said, sounding a little choked up himself. “I have no further questions.”

Judge Hart nodded and looked at his watch. “I have a few administrative details I need to deal with, so let's take a thirty-minute break. Court is in recess.”

As everyone stood while the judge departed, Karp looked behind to his wife and Stupenagel and was at first alarmed, and then puzzled, when he saw the young man who'd been watching the
women walk quickly up to the reporter. He handed her something and then turned and left. Stupenagel looked at whatever was in her hand and then up at Karp before turning and running after the man.

Something in her expression said to Karp that he was expected to follow her. Still, it took him a little bit to work his way through the crowd and out into the hallway. At first he didn't see anything but then he spotted his wife down the hall, waving. He hurried to her, but she went around a corner ahead of him.

Striding as fast as his long legs and a bum knee could move, he rounded the corner and saw his wife, Stupenagel, and the young man in a heated conversation at the end of a hall next to a window. The young man was startled when he saw Karp and began to turn away, but Stupenagel grabbed him by the arm. “You owe it to him,” she insisted.

“I gave you the tapes,” he said, looking at Karp.

“It's not enough, damn it,” the reporter shot back.

“What's going on here?” Karp demanded.

Stupenagel looked at the young man. He stared at her for a moment but then nodded. She turned to Karp. “Butch, I want you to meet Augie . . .
the
Augie . . . he just gave me these two recordings,” she said, holding up a pair of DVDs. “He says they depict a drone's-eye view of the terrorist attack in Zandaq and the drone strike in Dagestan.”

“Is that true?” Karp asked.

The young man hesitated and then nodded. “Yeah,” he said, and then held out his hand. “Augie Nieto. I think you might want to hear what I have to say.”

After a brief chat with Nieto, Karp informed Jim Farley, the court clerk, that an emergency required his attention and that he'd be in his office during the break. He asked Farley to inform Judge Hart that he might need an extra half hour to handle the matter, which, of course, he would put on the record when court reconvened.

An hour later, Karp returned to court. Judge Hart gave him a funny look. “Everything okay?”

Karp smiled. “Yes, Your Honor, thank you for your consideration and during the course of this afternoon's proceedings it will become clear why I requested the extra time. Your Honor, with the court's permission, I am now prepared to cross-examine this witness.”

The judge's eyes narrowed for a moment, but then he said, “Okay, please proceed.”

Karp took up his favorite position standing beside the jury and placed his notes on the ledge. “Mr. Lindsey, as the president's national security adviser, how is it that you did such a poor job of vetting Ray Baum?”

Lindsey frowned. “As I noted, I believe that he came with a recommendation from his former Marine Corps officers.”

Holding up his yellow legal pad and a pencil, Karp asked, “Can you provide the names of these officers, or where they might be stationed?”

“Not at the moment,” Lindsey said. “I might be able to dig them up later.”

“Later?” Karp asked. “You mean after this trial is over. How about this evening, Mr. Lindsey; perhaps you could find them this evening and get back to me so that we can contact them.”

“I suppose I could try,” Lindsey said.

“Thank you, I'd appreciate that,” Karp said. “But again, as the president's spymaster, how is it that you were aware that the president's married appointee to head the nation's top spy agency was having an affair with someone you've labeled a ‘power groupie' and yet had not said or done anything about it?”

“I was . . . uh . . . in New York to talk to Mr. Fauhomme.”

“The president's campaign manager. So this was more of a campaign concern as opposed to a national security issue?”

“Well, both, in a way.”

“Both? So then you were talking to Mr. Fauhomme about the
possible ramifications for the campaign, but who did you discuss this with from a national security standpoint?”

Lindsey furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, did you contact your counterpart in the FBI? And if so, could you provide me with that name?” Karp said, again raising his yellow pad and pencil as though to write.

“No, I hadn't gotten that far,” Lindsey said.

“So the campaign was a greater priority than national security?”

“I wouldn't say that.”

“I think you just did. But let's move on,” Karp retorted. “So if I understood your testimony, the defendant Rod Fauhomme overheard Miss Lee talking to Miss Blair about some video of General Allen and then when he realized that Allen was dead in a New York hotel—apparently from suicide—the alarms went off and you told your codefendant to send Mr. Baum, a man you admittedly did a poor job of vetting, to what? Apprehend her? He's not a police officer. Or just to get that recording?”

“I guess just to ascertain what the conversation about a video recording of the general might be,” Lindsey said.

Karp looked puzzled. “What made you think it was something other than what a girlfriend might have of her boyfriend?”

“Oh,” Lindsey said. “I guess there was some indication that the recording depicted the general's murder.”

Karp's eyebrows shot up. “So now there's an indication that this recording could be evidence in a murder investigation, but instead of sending the police, or, say, the FBI, you told Fauhomme to send his man Ray Baum.”

“Or maybe Rod said he was sending Ray,” Lindsey stumbled. “I don't remember the sequence.”

“It's hard to remember a lie, isn't it, Mr. Lindsey? Or as a master spy, do you register the difference?” Karp said.

“To be sure, I do,” Lindsey shot back before Caulkin could object.

“Would it surprise you to know that my office did not determine,
or say, that this was a murder investigation until the day after General Allen's body was found?”

“Like I said, I believe Miss Blair said something to Miss Lee about it.”

“Indeed, we know from their testimony that Miss Blair had seen the murder on her laptop and called Miss Lee. But you said that Fauhomme only told you that he overheard a conversation about there being a recording.”

“There might have been more to it than that . . . yes, I think there was something about a murder,” Lindsey said. He was starting to lose the shell of confidence he'd displayed when first called to the stand and was taking on the look of a cornered animal.

“But you didn't call the police or tell Mr. Fauhomme to call the police?”

“I was concerned there might be a security issue.”

“Why? What led you to think that?”

“The general was the acting director of the CIA and this woman had a video of him. And now he was dead.”

“Okay. So Ray Baum trots on over to Miss Blair's apartment but she escapes—or, as you suggested, he let her escape,” Karp said.

“Perhaps.”

“Yes, perhaps. She goes missing and then so does Ray Baum?”