Clear and Present Danger

'Like?'

'Senator Billings of Oregon.' Murray explained why briefly.

'Chairman of Judiciary. Why couldn't he just have stayed with Transportation?' Bright asked the ceiling. The Senate Judiciary Committee had oversight duties for the FBI.

'How new are you on this case?'

'I'm here because DEA liaison is my job. I didn't see the file until just before lunch. Been out of the office for a couple of days,' Bright said as he walked through the door. 'We just had a baby.'

'Oh,' Murray noted. You couldn't blame a man for that. 'Congratulations. Everyone all right?'

'Brought Marianne home this morning, and Sandra is the cutest thing I ever saw. Noisy, though.'

Murray laughed. It had been quite a while since he'd had to handle an infant. Blight's car turned out to be a Ford whose engine purred like a well-fed tiger. Some paperwork on Captain Wegener lay on the front seat. Murray leafed through it while Bright picked his way out of the airport parking lot. It fleshed out what he'd heard in Washington.

'This is some story.'

'How 'bout that.' Bright nodded. 'You don't suppose this is all true, do you?'

'I've heard some crazy ones before, but this one would be the all-time champ.' Murray paused. 'The funny thing is -'

'Yeah,' the younger agent agreed. 'Me, too. Our DEA colleagues believe it, but what broke loose out of this - I mean, even if the evidence is all tossed, what we got out of this is so -'

'Right.' Which was the other reason Murray was involved in the case. 'How important was the victim?'

'Big- time political connections, directorships of banks, the University of Alabama, the usual collection of civic groups -you name it. This guy wasn't just a solid member of the community, he was goddamned Stone Mountain.' Both men knew that was in Georgia, but the point was made. 'Old family, back to a Civil War general. His grandfather was a governor.'

'Money?'

Bright grunted. 'More than I'd ever need. Big place north of town, still a working farm-plantation, I guess you'd call it, but that's not where it comes from. He put all the family money into real-estate development. Very successfully as far as we can tell. The development stuff is a maze of small corporations - the usual stuff. We've got a team working, but it'll take awhile to sort through it. Some of the corporate veils are overseas, though, and we may never get it all. You know how that goes. We've barely begun to check things out.'

' 'Prominent local businessman tied to drug kingpins.' Christ, he hid things real well. Never had a sniff?'

'Nary a one,' Bright admitted. 'Not us, not DEA, not the local cops. Nothing at all.'

Murray closed the file and nodded at the traffic. This was only the opening crack in a case that could develop into man-years of investigative work. Hell, we don't even know exactly what we're looking for yet , the deputy assistant director told himself. All we do know is that there was a cold million dollars in used twenties and fifties aboard the good ship Empire Builder. So much cash could only mean one thing - but that wasn't true. It could mean lots of things, Murray thought,

'Here we are.'

Getting onto the base was easy enough, and Bright knew the way to the pier. Panache looked pretty big from the car, a towering white cliff with a bright-orange stripe and some dark smudgemarks near midships. Murray knew that she was a small ship, but one needed a big ocean to tell. By the time he and Bright got out of the car, someone got on the phone at the head of the gangway, and another man appeared there within seconds. Murray recognized him from the file. It was Wegener.

The man had the muddy remains of what had once been red hair, but was now sprinkled with enough gray to defy an accurate description. He looked fit enough, the FBI agent thought as he came up the aluminum brow, a slight roll at the waist, but little else. A tattoo on his forearm marked him for a sailorman, and the impassive eyes marked the face of a man unaccustomed to questioning of any kind.

'Welcome aboard. I'm Red Wegener,' the man said with enough of a smile to be polite.

'Thank you, Captain. I'm Dan Murray and this is Mark Bright.'

'They told me you were FBI,' the captain observed.

'I'm a deputy assistant director, down from Washington. Mark's the assistant special-agent-in-charge of the Mobile Office.' Wegener's face changed a bit, Murray saw.

'Well, I know why you're here. Let's go to my cabin to discuss things.'

'What's with all the scorching?' Dan asked as the captain led off. There was something about the way he'd said that. Something... odd.

'Shrimp boat had an engine fire. Happened five miles away from us last night while we were on the way in. The fuel tanks blew just as we came alongside. Got lucky. Nobody killed, but the mate was burned some.'

'How about the boat?' Bright asked.

'Couldn't save her. Getting the crew off was pretty tricky.' Wegener held open the door for his visitors. 'Sometimes that's the best you can do. You gentlemen want any coffee?'

Murray declined. His eyes really bored in on the captain now. More than anything else, Dan thought, he looked embarrassed. Wrong emotion. Wegener got his guests seated, then took his chair behind the desk.

'I know why you're here,' Red announced. 'It's all my fault.'

'Uh, Captain, before you go any further -' Bright tried to say.

'I've pulled some dumb ones in my time, but this time I really fucked up,' Wegener went on as he lit his pipe. 'You don't mind if I smoke, do you?'

'No, not at all,' Murray lied. He didn't know what was coming, but he knew that it wasn't what Bright thought. He knew several other things that Bright didn't know, also. 'Why don't you tell us about it?'

Wegener reached into his desk drawer and pulled something out. He tossed it to Murray. It was a pack of cigarettes.

'One of our friends dropped this on the deck and I had one of my people give this back to them. I figured - well, look at it. I mean, it looks like a pack of cigarettes, right? And when we have people in custody, we're supposed to treat 'em decent, right? So, I let 'em have their smokes. They're joints, of course. So, when we questioned them - especially the one who talked - well, he was high as a kite. That screws it all up, doesn't it?'

'That's not all, Captain, is it?' Murray asked innocently.

'Chief Riley roughed one of 'em up. My responsibility. I talked to the chief about it. The, uh, I forget his name - the obnoxious one - well, he spit on me, and Riley was there, and Riley got a little pissed and roughed him up some. He should not have done it, but this is a military organization, and when you spit on the boss, well, the troops might not like it. So Riley got a little out of hand - but it happened on my ship and it's my responsibility.'

Murray and Bright exchanged a look. The suspects hadn't talked about that at all.

'Captain, that's not why we're here exactly,' Murray said after a moment.

'Oh?' Wegener said. 'Then why?'

'They say that you executed one of them,' Bright replied. The stateroom was quiet for a moment. Murray could hear someone hammering on something, but the loudest noise came from the air-conditioning vent.

'They're both alive, aren't they? There were only two of them, and they're both alive. I sent that tape on the helicopter when we searched the yacht. I mean, if they're both alive, which one did we shoot?'

'Hanged,' Murray said. 'They say you hanged one.'

'Wait a minute.' He lifted the phone and punched a button. 'Bridge, captain speaking. Send the XO to my stateroom. Thank you.' The phone went back into place, and Wegener looked up. 'If it's all right with you, I want my executive officer to hear this also.'

Murray managed to keep his face impassive. You should have known, Danny , he told himself. They've had plenty of time to work out the little details, and Mr. Wegener is nobody's fool. He's got a U.S. senator to hide behind, and he handed us two coldblooded killers. Even without the confession, there's enough evidence for a capital murder case, and if you trash Wegener, you run the risk of losing that. The prominence of the victim - well, the U.S. Attorney won't go for it. No chance ... There wasn't a United States Attorney in all of America who lacked political ambition, and putting these two in the electric chair was worth half a million votes. Murray couldn't run the risk of screwing this case up. FBI Director Jacobs had been a federal prosecutor, and he'd understand. Murray decided that it might make things a lot easier.

The XO appeared a moment later, and after introductions were exchanged, Bright went on with his version of