“Aren’t you the funny one.” She leaned back in her seat, thinking that if truth be told, she was glad to be going back to San Francisco. “What about you? Who are you spending Thanksgiving with?”
“I’m not-” His phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket, answered it. Suddenly he slowed, turned a corner, and pulled over, and Sydney knew that whatever news he was being told, wasn’t good. When he disconnected, he looked troubled. “That was McNiel. They picked up Harden this morning. Apparently he was denying any involvement with Adami, until they finally mentioned that his daughter had been a part of ATLAS. McNiel says he turned white as a sheet, then broke down.”
“So it was true,” Sydney said. “The ambassador was feeding Adami info.”
“Info that probably got his daughter killed. But Harden also implicated someone pretty high up the political ladder. He asked for a lawyer, and promised that once he had a chance to speak with his counsel, he’d tell us the name of the person he was working for.”
“That’s good, then.”
“Except that he and his attorney were both killed in a vehicle collision on their way to Langley a few hours ago.”
It was a second before the implication of it all hit her. “I take it that it wasn’t an accident.”
“McNiel’s fairly certain it wasn’t. Unfortunately for the parties involved, Harden’s lawyer had a written confession in his briefcase, and it survived intact. Harden implicated Jon Westgate.”
“Who is that?”
“He used to be a low-level crime boss who hailed from Adami’s hometown in New Jersey. And you’ll never guess whose number popped up several times on Westgate’s cell phone. Martin Hoagland.”
“Hoagland?” Sydney repeated. “As in Congressman Hoagland?”
“The same. He always felt he should have headed the committee for ATLAS.”
Sydney couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “This was out of spite?”
“Trust me,” Griffin said, pulling away from the curb, then back out to the main street. “If Hoagland did it for anything, it was for control. He and Adami are cut from the same cloth. Power and domination.”
“And what better way to dominate world powers than having inside intel into an organization such as ATLAS.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Only now he’ll have to attempt doing it from a federal prison cell.”
At the airport, Griffin and a
Their contact waited a discreet distance from the door that led out to the tarmac, and Griffin held out his hand. “I never did thank you for what you did to help Tex.”
She shook hands with him, said, “I sort of owed you one. I’m only sorry it wasn’t as dramatic as that night at Adami’s villa. Now
“Sorry.” He looked down at her hand, seemed to realize he was still holding it, then let go. “You know, if you ever get tired of the Bureau…”
She smiled. “Sorry. I have a job.”
“At the FBI Academy?”
“I like it. For a reason.”
“To hide.”
“Wrong. It’s giving me time to think where I want to go next.”
“If you change your mind,” he said, handing her bag to her, “you know how to reach me.”
“I do.”
They stood there for several seconds, the silence turning awkward, until Griffin said, “I don’t need to personally walk you to that plane, do I?”
“I’m going. I’m going.” She started toward the jet, thinking about everything that had happened since she’d left Washington. She was damned lonely at times, and hell, life these past few days had been more exhilarating than anything she’d done in a long time. She glanced back, saw that Griffin had turned to leave, was walking toward the security door where the
“Griffin!”
He stopped, turned, a bemused expression on his face. “You have a real problem getting on planes.”
Suddenly she was uncomfortable, not sure what he’d say. What she was even going to ask. She’d be on that plane tonight, alone.
He tilted his head, waiting.
“You never did say what you were doing for Thanksgiving…” she finally ventured.
“No plans.”
“Well, if you find yourself in San Francisco, you could stop by my mother’s house. She cooks a mean turkey, and with your connections, I’ll bet you have no trouble finding the address.”
Griffin stood there a moment, his hands shoved in his pockets, as though mulling it over. Suddenly he smiled. “Tell her to set an extra place. I’d like that. A lot.”
FACT OR FICTION
One of the more infamous conspiracy theories is that of the Freemasons running a shadow government in the U.S., and controlling the global economy. Proof of this can be found on the back of a dollar bill: the Illuminati’s “all- seeing eye” over the pyramid, which forms one half of a six-pointed star, with five of those points touching the letters to form the anagram that spells MASON. According to these theorists, that same shadow government that originated with our country’s Founding Fathers who were Masons, is still in power today.
Conspiracy theories aside, in this day and age it would be damned difficult to infiltrate and corrupt an entire country’s government, installing criminal networks in with the politicians and the national bankers, all to control the global economy.
Or would it?
In the early 1980s, the Italian government and banking system nearly toppled because of the infiltration and corruption from one Freemason lodge, Propaganda Due, or P2. P2 became a clandestine lodge from 1976 on after being expelled by the Grand Orient of Italy. Counted among its ranks in the lodge before and after the expulsion were prominent journalists, parliamentarians, industrialists, and military leaders, as well as the heads of all three Italian intelligence services. There were also high-ranking members of the Catholic Church listed in the membership, which perhaps explains how the Holy See’s bank became involved in the scandal with Banco Ambrosiano, becoming a major shareholder in a bank used by both the Mafia and P2’s shadow government-as well as the American government, which used the bank to funnel covert money from the United States to the Contras, among other things.
Add to that the mysterious death of Pope John Paul I in 1978 after a mere thirty-three days in office, allegedly linked to his investigation into the bank’s ties to the Mafia. Then a few years later, the murder of the chairman of the Banco Ambrosiano, found hanged beneath the Blackfriars Bridge in England, his pockets filled with stone and masonry-perhaps a not-so-veiled warning as to what happens to Freemasons who violate their oath of secrecy. His death was originally ruled a suicide-and rumor has it that it was investigated by Freemasons, hence the botched initial investigation. In other words, you have the makings of some great fiction-if not for the fact it was real life. For this novel, I was counting on the possibility that not all the P2 players were caught, and intended to start up again where they left off.
Anything can happen in a circle to which only a select few are invited. Such is the history of Freemasonry, the largest secret organization in the world. But where did they come from? John J. Robinson, author of
