He didn’t concur, however, with Bradford killing American citizens whom he considered traitors. Morality aside, if it ever became known that Bradford had assassinated fellow Americans, every bleeding-heart liberal in the country-as well as every right-leaning anti-government militia nut-would have all the evidence they needed to justify their paranoia.
By the time he reached the Lincoln Memorial, Dillon found himself in exactly the same position where Martin Breed had been before he died. He saw the logic in the things Charles Bradford had done but knew in his heart that the man had gone too far. He also knew if Bradford remained in power that the assassinations would continue and the possible unintended consequences could be disastrous. As Claire had said, Bradford could actually start the war he was trying to prevent if he killed the wrong foreign politician.
Dillon’s thoughts were interrupted by a peal of laughter from a small girl, the sound of a child absolutely delighted by something. He looked over and saw a man his age holding the hand of a girl of four or five: a grandfather taking his granddaughter for a walk. The little girl was pointing a short, chubby finger at a fat, waddling pigeon.
Dillon had never even come close to getting married. He knew he’d make a terrible husband. And the thought of rearing children… well, that was absolutely terrifying. Yet for some reason after his sixtieth birthday, he occasionally wished that he had a grandchild to spoil, and preferably a granddaughter. It was an irrational desire.
But back to Charles Bradford.
Dillon was too objective not to recognize his own hypocrisy. What Bradford had done was in a way no different than what he and Claire were doing. Bradford had taken it upon himself to decide who America’s enemies were and then he eliminated them. Dillon, although he didn’t kill people-Hopper was the only exception-had taken it upon himself to invade the privacy of American citizens and trample on their constitutional rights. But Dillon knew there was a wavy gray line out there and he believed he was on the right side of that line, whereas Charles Bradford had stepped over it. Way over it. Was he deluding himself? Maybe. Nonetheless, he had made up his mind: Bradford had to go.
He stopped at a bench in front of the Lincoln Memorial, wiped off the bench with a handkerchief, and sat down, crossing his long legs. “What would you do, Abe?” he said, softly but out loud.
Abe didn’t answer.
As he had told Claire, he wasn’t convinced that releasing the Breed recording would be enough to force Bradford to resign, much less convict him of a crime. Unless John Levy was willing to testify against Bradford, which Dillon couldn’t imagine him doing, there was no concrete evidence to support Martin Breed’s claims. And Dillon could foresee congressional hearings going on for months, if not years, resulting in a national quagmire proportional to Watergate and possibly concluding with Bradford still in uniform and more popular than ever in some political circles.
Then there was the problem that exposing Bradford would most likely result in revealing the NSA’s role in Bradford’s downfall. That would be a calamity for the agency, and not just a public relations nightmare. If what Dillon and Claire were doing was uncovered, it could possibly result in the complete dismantlement of America’s most effective intelligence organization. He couldn’t allow that to happen. He wouldn’t allow that to happen.
So how would he do it? How would he, Dillon Crane, remove General Charles Bradford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, without exposing either Bradford or himself?
The answer, he was convinced, was John Levy.
From his briefcase he took out the file on Levy that Claire had compiled. He’d already read it twice and knew every word in it, but he read it again, hoping something would leap out at him.
The psychic impact of Levy’s tragic family history was obvious. When Levy was two, his father’s helicopter was shot down on some spy mission at the beginning of the Vietnam conflict-before the United States was even officially at war-and the body was never recovered. His brother, who was several years older than Levy, enlisted in the army at age eighteen, and then he also disappeared in Vietnam during the final days of that terrible war. Like his father, Levy’s brother was MIA, presumed dead, and no body was ever recovered. So it was no mystery as to why John Levy joined the army, nor was it a mystery why he became one of the sentinels at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The unnamed bodies in the tombs at Arlington were his father and his brother.
But Dillon believed that, for Levy, being a tomb guard was meaningful on another level. There was a religious aspect to being a sentinel but, instead of praying matins and vespers, the sentinels put on a uniform and walked at a measured pace in front of an unnamed corpse. The young men who guarded the Tomb of the Unknowns, like all those deeply committed to a particular faith, willingly dedicated themselves to ritual and sacrifice and a higher calling-and none was more dedicated than young John Levy. But Levy needed something more: he needed someone to replace his dead father, his dead brother. And when he met Charles Bradford at the time Bradford commanded the Old Guard, he found that person and later devoted himself totally to Bradford and his cause.
And that, Dillon believed, was the key to Bradford’s undoing: Levy’s blind, unswerving, religious devotion to a man who had become his father, his priest, his god.
36
DeMarco was going out of his mind with boredom, and at the same time he couldn’t relax or sleep because he couldn’t find a way to wiggle out of the box he was in.
They’d stuck him in a farmhouse west of Havre de Grace, Maryland. There were fifty barren acres surrounding the house, and he figured the land was never planted with anything that grew taller than lettuce so anyone approaching the place could be seen while they were still half a mile away.
Three men were guarding him, all guys in their thirties built like light heavyweights-and they were armed. And while one slept, the other two were always awake. DeMarco figured the only way he’d get away from them was if he had a hand grenade or if they had simultaneous heart attacks. They were rude bastards, too. They played gin most of the time but didn’t include him in the game, and the only time they talked to him was to call him to dinner.
There was a TV in the farmhouse but it got only two channels. He would have thought that the NSA, being who they were, could have at least pirated a cable feed. And the only thing to read was a stack of old newspapers. He was going to hang himself if he had to stay in the place another day.
He flopped down on the couch and picked up one of the papers again, even though he’d already read every word in it. One article was about Martin Breed and showed photos of the high-ranking folk who had attended his funeral. DeMarco looked at the photos again but this time saw something he hadn’t noticed before. There was an old guy in a wheelchair sitting near Charles Bradford. He studied the caption that identified the people in the picture, and then read the article again. Huh.
DeMarco heard a car coming up the driveway. He looked out the window and saw Dillon unfolding his long, lean form from the backseat of a black SUV. Dillon just stood there for a moment, looking out at the barren fields as if he were wondering why the NSA’s crop was so poor. Finally, he turned and walked toward the house, and DeMarco heard his guards yes-siring the guy as he entered.
“Good morning, Joe,” Dillon said. Then, after inquiring about DeMarco’s health and pretending to apologize for keeping him prisoner, he got down to business. “I want you to meet with Charles Bradford,” he said.
“You betcha,” DeMarco said, sounding as if it would be the most natural thing in the world for him to drop in on the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “You mind if I go home and change into my good suit for the meeting?”
DeMarco was no longer wearing the sweat clothes he’d borrowed from Perry Wallace. When Alice found his car abandoned in Falls Church, she’d been kind enough to retrieve his clothes as well as his wallet, watch, and cell phone. But the clothes were a mess since he’d been wearing them when he was shot by Levy and crawled around under the bleachers.
Dillon ignored DeMarco’s sarcastic comment about changing into a suit. “I obviously can’t meet with Bradford,” Dillon said. “The agency’s involvement in all this must be kept completely secret. I’m sure you understand.”
“Oh, yeah, I understand,” DeMarco said.
But he was thinking that maybe what he should do is grab Dillon and put a choke hold on him and threaten to
