'Orville Madison, the C.I.A. guy?' I'd gotten McGarvey's undivided attention.
'Right. The rumors were to the effect that Madison has, or had, a long-standing connection with people in organized crime, specifically with one of your local boys-Liu Sakh Po.'
McGarvey frowned, leaned forward, and placed his forearms on his desk. 'Po was murdered a few days ago. We'd been trying for the better part of a year to put together a case against the bastard that would stick.'
'I'm aware of that, Captain, and so was the Senate. One of the rumors was to the effect that Madison had been receiving money for years from Po, in payment for Madison's having helped him enter this country secretly-and probably illegally-after the war, and then helping him to get back into business. In other words, it looked like the nominee for secretary of state might have been getting a piece of the action from Po's whorehouses and drug rings. On the other hand, the president had made clear that he was committed to Madison's nomination unless and until any of the rumors were proved to be true. I think you can understand why the committee wanted to bring in an outsider with a reputation for both fair-mindedness and discretion. Anyway, I got the gig. At the time, I thought it was because I must have been living right; that is no longer my thought.'
'That's a very heavy tale, Frederickson.'
'Yeah. Now I think it might be a good idea if you turned off the tape recorder.'
He did. 'Where does your brother come into it? He's a cop, not a P.I.'
'Soon after I got started on the case, two men tried to kill me. Obviously, they missed, but they did manage to burn down the apartment building where I live. Five people died in the fire, which made it a case of arson and murder. Garth was assigned to the case; since it was connected with my investigation, we decided to tag along together.'
'Who do you think was trying to kill you?'
'At first, I assumed it was Po overreacting to the fact that I wanted to investigate his business operations and political connections.'
'Po's dead,' McGarvey said curtly. 'And those weren't Albany mobsters we found dead up in the mountains- not with camouflage fatigues, night-vision goggles, and Uzi submachine guns. They were equipped like combat soldiers.'
'Indeed.'
'What were you and your brother doing up there in the first place?'
'We'd received a tip that there was an emotionally disturbed veteran living by himself up there, a man by the name of Gary Worde. We were told that Worde might have invaluable information on the connection between Po and Madison.'
'Who gave you the tip?'
'It was an anonymous caller. Still, Garth and I figured it was worth our time to go looking for him.'
'Did you find him?'
'No; it was a wild goose chase. If there is somebody living up there, we sure as hell couldn't find him; however, as you've noticed, somebody certainly managed to find us. The phone call had to be part of a trap; we were set up. We were wandering around up there, and the next thing we knew there was a plane dropping napalm and people shooting at us.'
'I don't believe the two of you killed all those men.'
'You believe right.'
'Who did kill them?'
'I don't know. We never saw six of the seven men you mentioned, except when they parachuted from the airplane, and the guy we took the Uzi off was dead when we found him.'
'Who's Veil Kendry?'
'Never heard of him; the name doesn't mean anything to me.'
'What about the two Con Ed men you killed?'
An unpleasant surprise, always a danger in improvisation. Some very nasty, fanged chickens were coming home to roost; Madison was pulling out all the stops. 'It's true that I killed two men who were inside a Consolidated Edison van, but they were assassins, not utility workers, and they were trying very hard to kill me. As far as I know, the matter's under routine investigation. Naturally, I made a complete statement, and a report was filed.'
'Strange; nobody seems able to find the report.'
'It'll turn up. You know how bogged down the police can get with paperwork; things get misplaced.'
McGarvey grunted noncommittally. 'You and your brother disappeared a few years ago, Frederickson, and you didn't surface for better than a year. You want to tell me where you were?'
A huge, ice-cold fist clenched around my heart and began to squeeze, making it difficult for me to breathe. 'No, Captain,' I replied simply, 'I do not.'
That raised McGarvey's eyebrows again. 'Oh? Why not?'
'Because where we were, and what happened to us, has absolutely nothing to do with this matter. I can't speak about it.'
'You mean you won't speak about it.'
'As you wish.'
'Were you in Russia?'
'I love it!' I said, and laughed. Laughter was the next best thing to whistling through this particular potential graveyard. Garth and I were in a lot of trouble, and I knew it. Madison had been doing his homework, and he'd concocted quite a dossier on us. 'That must be some report you got. The problem is that it's fiction; with any kind of promotion, it should make the best-seller list.'
'Answer the question,' McGarvey said in a considerably sharper tone of voice than he'd been using up to this point. He had the look of a man who thought he was about to close the books on a matter that was important to him. 'Were you and your brother in Russia for that year?'
'Not likely, Captain.'
'I think you were, Frederickson. I think you were with Veil Kendry, and you were being trained as agents.'
'To do what?'
'You were trained to train others to become experts in urban guerrilla warfare.'
I sighed, shook my head. Madison had carefully crafted a pastiche of facts and lies, sense and nonsense, that could keep Garth and me answering questions for a very long time-time we didn't have. I had no idea what McGarvey had told Madison's people to explain why he was refusing to turn us over to them, but the excuse wasn't going to last much longer. The trooper was almost convinced that we were guilty of whatever we'd been charged with, which meant that I had to find a way of bringing the game with McGarvey to an end, and in the process somehow get us sprung. I really had nothing to play with, and so I decided to play one card that had already proved valueless once, and follow it with another that was only a joker. After that, there would be nothing left to do but sit quietly at the table and see what might happen.
'Captain,' I said, uncrossing my legs and leaning forward in my chair, 'let's cut through this. I was hired by the Senate committee because of my reputation for discretion, but enough is enough. I'm going to give you a telephone number known by perhaps only a dozen people in the world. It's a private, direct line to the office of a man by the name of Lippitt.'
'Never heard of him.'
'You're not supposed to have heard of him, any more than you were supposed to have heard of Orville Madison before he was nominated as secretary of state. Lippitt is the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he'll tell you that most of what you've read in that report you received is bullshit. You might also mention the trouble we're in, and tell him we'd appreciate a personal visit from him as soon as possible.'
'Will this Lippitt tell me where the two of you were for that year?'
'I doubt it strongly.'
'But he knows?'
'He'll assure you that we weren't in Russia,' I replied, and gave him Lippitt's number. 'After you call him, place a call to Senator Kathleen Wyndham. She's-'
'I know who Senator Wyndham is, Frederickson.'
'Good. She's the head of the Senate committee investigating the nominees, which makes her my boss. You make sure you talk to her, not anybody else; tell her everything that's happened here.'
