The disappointment in my professional abilities notwithstanding, I was fed up listening to the history of the world according to Jefferson Cutter. I said, “You had Peyton shot dead as a warning to Abraham to back off and not interfere with von Koeppen’s people-smuggling activities.”
“My son-in-law was a great disappointment. He—”
“Yeah, we’ve already talked about that,” I interrupted. “And you brought your own daughter into the loop when you discovered that she and von Koeppen were banging each other’s doors.”
“It was time,” said Cutter with an almost imperceptible shrug.
It was fucking
time
? Cutter had been manipulating his own daughter from the day she was born. “Through your contacts in the Department of Defense, you had Peyton’s autopsy and death certificate deleted. You had new information logged in the system but sent the original certificate to General von Koeppen. He passed it to Harmony when the time was right. Through von Koeppen, you had her show it to Abraham so that he’d know the truth about his son’s murder. The only way Scott could verify the truth was to compare his son’s corpse with the paperwork. You made sure he opened Peyton’s body bag. But you miscalculated.”
It dawned on me that Jefferson Cutter appeared to be mighty relaxed—almost jaunty—about admitting to being a killer, a conspirator, and a traitor to the American people, my people, the people I had sworn to protect against people like him. Cutter had to be certain I wouldn’t be passing on the details of this conversation to anyone.
“We are not going to make the mistake of underestimating you,” he said. “There’s far too much at stake.”
On the basis that a best defense is a good offense, I said, “It’s all over for you, Jefferson. You’re heading for a lethal injection. Von Koeppen is dead—another killing I suspect you ordered, along with the men Peyton served with, the medical officer who performed the first autopsy on Peyton’s headless corpse, the journalist from
The Washington Post…”
Cutter shrugged. I took that as a yes, which meant he was also personally responsible for the death of Anna Masters.
“Vince,” he said, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “A few insignificant and inconsequential deaths is not what this is all about.”
The complete absence of any remorse for his actions, specifically what was obviously Anna’s collateral killing, held the sting of a slap. I felt my eyes go hot and moist, but the pain helped me complete the picture. Cutter was right. It wasn’t just about the murders. This organization, The Establishment, had been set up by some unnamed government department to isolate and exploit potential threats to our national security for the benefit of our bottom line. When it all came out into the open, I had the feeling that no one would be putting their hand up to claim this nasty little child. Sometimes, it—The Establishment—went further. Cutter said it himself:
“Occasionally, however, if the need arises, we might manipulate some factors…It’s rare, but it happens.”
In the last century, we had the Nazis and then the communists. Now we have the evil genius who controls the world from a dirt-floor cave in the mountains of Pakistan. Thanks to him—and Cutter no doubt believed the master terrorist deserved a big pat on the back for it—we were spending billions more on war than we ever had during the Cold War.
If I was reading Cutter right, The Establishment was now looking beyond Muslim extremism, the current dominant threat to our national security, to find the necessary grist for the military-industrial complex’s mill. And, at our current rate of expenditure of more than two trillion dollars over the next five years, it had to be a hell of a lot of grist.
And I knew what it was.
“Abraham Scott nailed Alu Radakov’s true identity,” I said. “If his merry band of killers had known it, too, they would’ve turned Radakov into a worm farm.”
“Yes, I do believe you’re onto it, but would you mind explaining the details, just so I can be sure you’ve got it right?”
It didn’t look like I had much of a choice. Cutter was holding all the cards, but I’d have told him anyway, shoved it down his chickenshit throat, even if just to watch him choke on it. I took a deep breath. “Abraham Scott recognized Radakov from his time serving at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Maybe Scott had been unsure at first because that was a long time ago and people look different with an extra twenty years hanging off their faces. But then he got a look at Radakov’s passport, his
Russian
passport. Petrov Andreiovic, alias Alu Radakov. Back when Scott first met Radakov, the Russian was KGB. So Scott knew Radakov’s secret: He wasn’t Chechen at all. He was Moscow’s man. And the fact that he knew made everyone nervous, especially the Kremlin.
“Scott figured that with Radakov, and probably others like him, Moscow had infiltrated the Chechen leadership. So what about the massacre in Beslan’s School Number One a few years back, the one where all those children were killed. Was that really a Chechen operation? Or was it a Russian job just made to
look
like the separatists’ work?”
Cutter sat behind his enormous desk, the seal of the Vice President of the United States of America on the wall behind his head. He was nodding. The Beretta, I noticed, had made a reappearance. I’d hit a nerve. It was motionless, aimed at the middle of my chest.
“As you’ve deduced,” said Cutter, “we are helping the Kremlin and the Kremlin is helping us. As I said, a grave threat to a state’s security is actually a politically stabilizing factor. The ongoing fight with the Chechens allows the Russian president to be strong, to centralize power and hold the Federation together. That’s in our interest. We don’t want a collection of autonomous independent states in that part of the world, running amok with their own agendas and foreign policies. And then there’s the important factor of economic stability. As I’ve explained, the military-industrial complex requires a threat equal to its output, and Russia’s needs in this vital area are the same as ours. Properly directed, the Chechen separatist movement is the one stone that kills both birds.”
I didn’t care who he was or what organizations he belonged to. Jefferson Cutter was operating way outside the law—civilian and/or military. At least, the laws of my country.
I thought about the players. Radakov needed to show his rebel buddies that the cash for their fight was coming from somewhere other than Moscow. That’s where von Koeppen came in. The people-smuggling was the perfect front, until Scott came along and threatened to put an end to it. So they—they being Cutter and von Koeppen—murdered Scott’s son as a warning. And, when they discovered that he’d refused to heed it, they killed him.
Radakov wasn’t in on it. Scott had come to some kind of arrangement with him. Radakov wanted out of the deal with Cutter and von Koeppen, and Scott wanted Varvara. It was a fair trade, quid pro quo. This deal forced cracks between Cutter, von Koeppen, and Radakov that killing Scott couldn’t smooth over, and each realized his vulnerability. The sick bond holding them together was broken. Von Koeppen thought he could protect himself from Cutter by getting close to the VP’s daughter. Wrong. Cutter thought he could remove the threat to himself by having a washed-up investigator put on the case of his son-in-law’s death. Wrong. What about Radakov? He had to believe that Cutter would get to him sooner rather than later, especially after von Koeppen was removed from the picture. Now I knew why the Russian had allowed me to leave Chechnya when he could so easily have wasted me. I was his attack dog. Radakov couldn’t get to Cutter, but he knew I could. Wrong again. I looked down the black eye of Cutter’s Beretta. Something told me my attack-dog days were over.
Other things fell into place. I thought about the men who’d brought me here from Germany, the same bunch who’d hit Masters and me in Baghdad and subsequently mugged me outside my hotel. I’d pegged them as Special Forces and they were. Only they weren’t ours. They had to be Spetsnatz, or maybe FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service, the current incarnation of the KGB. That also explained why they’d said not one word to me on the plane trip across the Atlantic, ignoring all my attempts to while away the flight with witty conversation. They couldn’t understand a word I was saying.
I continued. “So your son-in-law threatened to bring everything down on your head. Then he demonstrated his determination to do just that by photographing the lineup of body bags from Iraq and leaking the photo to the media.”
“Yes, right again, Vincent. Congratulations.” Cutter’s aim wavered slightly as his thumb searched for the handgun’s safety. “I should never have enlightened Scott about the First Convention. Up till that moment, he believed our troops in Iraq were there for reasons that had nothing to do with the reality—the
necessity
—of testing new weapons systems so that they could be sold to our armed forces and hence to other nations and, of course, NATO. He threatened to do whatever it took to get our people back home. As you said, we miscalculated with Abraham. Have you any idea what damage a man in his position, a serving four-star general, could do to America’s notion of itself if he revealed the truth?”
“The miscalculation was yours,” I said. “You killed his son, the only thing in this world he truly loved.
You
sent General Scott to war.”
I had one question outstanding, but it wasn’t one that Cutter could or would answer. Our time was up. I brightened and said, “So, where do I sign?”
“Sign what?” Cutter stood and took half a step back to steady himself.
“You know, the membership papers? The Establishment? You’ve sold me. I’d love to join. With all that money, you guys must have great resort facilities, member housing loans, that sort of thing.”
Cutter informed me that I wouldn’t be joining. “There’ll be two gunshot wounds. One here,” he said, grabbing a handful of fat on the side of his belly. “The second shot will be fatal. For you. You threatened me, I pulled my gun to defend myself, there was a struggle. You had the upper hand at first and shot me, but you lost your balance and I got lucky.”
Cutter had worked it all out. He could so easily concoct a believable story about why he had granted me this late-night interview.
Special Agent Cooper had been investigating the death of my beloved son-in-law before mysteriously going AWOL. Then he suddenly turned up here in D.C. and claimed to have news…At the very least, I owed it to my daughter to hear him out and, of course, to keep a weapon handy just in case things turned sour…
After all, I was, as everyone knew, “unpredictable.”
“You had me brought here to kill me.” I tried to appear relaxed about stating the obvious and put my feet up on the edge of his desk to demonstrate it.
“Well, you know, if you want something done right…” He displayed his expensive bridgework. Or was it a smile? I wasn’t sure.
“I have a copy of Scott’s hard drive. If you kill me, I’ve left instructions for it to be forwarded to the media.” It was an oldie but a goodie.
“I didn’t give you enough time to make those arrangements. I expected more from you, Vincent. You really think I’d fall for that old ploy?”
Shit!
“Believe what you want.”
Cutter raised the Beretta. I’d already assessed the distances, the angles, and the potential force required. I was waiting for the opening, but it was clear Cutter wasn’t going to give me one. I had half a second left. I shoved the desk toward him with my legs as hard as I could. The damn thing was heavier than I expected. My chair shot backward, but not before his precious hundred-year-old bottle of XO teetered.
Cutter wavered as he watched the bottle fall, his concentration on me breaking for the briefest instant while he considered catching it. I launched myself at him, flying over his laptop as the bottle smashed on the marble floor. I drove into his gut with the point of my shoulder and he slammed into the wall with an animal grunt. We both dropped to the deck, rolling into the puddle of XO and smashed glass. He had the gun, but I had his wrist pinned to the floor. Blood was everywhere. The Beretta went off. Whatever the slug hit, it wasn’t me. The gun fired a second time. Plaster dust drifted down from the small hole in the ceiling. Cutter was a strong fuck, despite his age. Our hands were interlocked and we both shook with effort as we battled each other’s grip. He was attempting to turn the weapon on me. I was trying to prevent that from happening.
I drove my head down into his face. I missed his nose and instead heard his cheekbone crack like a Styrofoam coffee cup underfoot. Cutter released the Beretta as his bloody hands flew to his face.
I stood over him, swaying, blood pumping from deep cuts to my lower legs and arms, but I had the gun, which meant I’d won. Then the door burst open. The Secret Service guys rushed in, Glocks raised. It all happened in slow motion. It was like an out-of-body experience, and I knew how it was going to end: badly—for me. Here I was, standing over the Vice President of the United States, a man these two Secret Service types had sworn to protect with their lives if need be. Their boss was down, there was blood spattered on the floor, the walls, his desk. The weapon in my hand had discharged—I noticed the neat bullet hole in the door for the first time. That first shot. It must have been what had brought them in. Their training took over. They had no choice but to do what they had sworn to do. I swung away, bringing my hands up in front of my face as I turned. “No!” I yelled as they fired into me at point-blank range.
FORTY-SEVEN
I
’m not sure exactly when I realized I wasn’t dead. It might have been when I tried to play my harp and found I couldn’t move my arm. Either that or I didn’t have an arm. Nevertheless, I felt no panic. Morphine is like that. It’s like a heavy, warm blanket thrown over the senses, similar to that period of sleep just before awakening, when the bed is the most supremely comfortable place in the universe. I could get used to morphine, except for the vomiting.
I floated for I don’t know how long. Could have been hours or minutes. The previous month came back to me in bits and pieces and not, I suspected, in chronological order. I remembered Anna, for instance, but not that she’d been killed. That came later. Being shot myself was also a late arrival, but I eventually remembered Cutter and those scorpions with their knives on top of the mountain in Afghanistan. Was that part of this investigation? My memory was a bunch of jumbled fragments. Gradually, though, I sifted out the salient points and strung them together into some kind of order.